The Great Old One Myrowl-Shu

Content Warning

decapitation, dismemberment, violence

 

by Deborah L. Davitt

Oh, you’re here, are you? Well, so am I, so there’s that. Mind if I get comfortable in your lap?

Oh, you’re allergic. That’s cute. I know someone else who was allergic, but he got better. I helped. I didn’t particularly want to help, mind you — I just sort of got caught up in events. And I got to be a god for a while. Not that I’m not already pretty well divine, if I do say so myself. But this just put some underlining and exclamation marks on it.

Now that I’ve got your attention — my claws kneading into your leg will do that — let’s start with the business of names. My humans, being more sensible than most, have graced me with the name of Myrowl, which entirely suits me. You’ve already noticed my soft white fur all over your black pants; you can’t smell the rest of my introduction, since your nose is pretty feeble, so my name alone will simply have to do.

My story begins on Halloween, the night on which doors between worlds open wide. Wider, when they’re forced open by inept magic and botched spells, I might add, but I’m getting ahead of myself. The adult humans were out at a business party, leaving Ki, their daughter, Seong, her brother, and two of Ki’s schoolmates at home alone for homework purposes. Ben’s the allergic one I mentioned before. Angela’s the feisty one with the flute. I mention that because it’s important. Just because the sound of it makes my ears lay flat against my neck doesn’t mean that it’s not music, I suppose. And music has magic in it.

The three older children were doing more talking than studying. Marching band gossip from Angela. Skateboard talk from Ben — I made sure to brush up against him repeatedly, in the hopes that this time, he’d drop down and scratch behind my ears. He finally complied — he has good fingers, so I started to purr as I continued to listen, vaguely, to their endless talk.

Finally Ki cut in, and her voice was so upset that I had to listen. “It’s so unfair,” she whispered, as if afraid to voice the thought. “My parents keep insisting that I go pre-med. I don’t want to be a doctor. I want to be a translator for the U.N. Something. Anything that gets me away from here.”

“Wow,” Angela replied softly, looking around as if the adults were about to walk in at any moment. “What brought this on?”

Ki’s face crumbled. Even I noticed it. “My Chinese grandmother sent me a birthday gift. My father saw it and pitched a fit.”

“Why would he do that?” Ben asked, and I took the opportunity to leap up into his lap when he wasn’t sufficiently on guard.

“I don’t know!” Ki wailed. “He went on and on about how he wasn’t going to encourage me.”

“Well, what was the gift?” Angela asked practically. A girl after my own heart.

“I’ll go get it. They put it in their closet, but … it’s mine,” Ki said, raising her head with shaky defiance.

She hastened off, returning with a box. Inside nestled a pair of serious antiques. A scroll so old that it smelled musty, making me sneeze. And a bronze mirror, shiny on one side, elaborately carved with fish and dragons at the back.

“Whoa,” Ben said, then amended lamely, “That’s pretty awesome.” Articulate, I thought. Maybe you could throw in a righteous in with that? Still, I could smell awe on him, which was the proper respect for something that old, so I purred in his lap and kneaded without drawing blood.

At that point, Seong, Ki’s younger brother, stuck his head in the room. “I’m telling,” he announced. “Dad said you weren’t supposed to have that.”

“Go put on your costume,” Ki snapped. “I’m supposed to take him door-to-door when we’re done studying,” she told her friends apologetically. “Though I might not, if he tattles.”

“Then you’ll be in trouble twice,” Seong told her loftily, clearly having figured out how the household worked long ago. “Once for having opened the box while Mom and Dad are at that hospital party, and again for not doing what they told you—”

Ki unrolled the scroll, deliberately turning her back on her brother. “Go put on your costume, or we’re not going,” she warned, examining the scroll. “Oh, wow, this is really old. I don’t recognize half of these characters.”

“What does it say?” Angela asked impatiently.

Ki began to read aloud in Mandarin. I understood it perfectly, of course, but she had to translate it for her poor human friends. “To open the gates,” she said, “on a propitious night, between here and the lands of the mirror? That can’t be right.”

Angela picked up the mirror and looked into its depths. “Nothing here,” she reported, laughing.

Which was when a giant floating fish emerged from the mirror, even as Angela dropped the bronze implement from nerveless fingers. It was the biggest golden koi I’d ever seen, by far larger than the ones in the backyard pond. It was partially translucent and it unfolded. Like origami made from multidimensional phase-space, but with dull, lifeless eyes the size of dinner plates.

I hissed and tried to get at it. This magical interloper was in my territory, without invitation, and I was going to gut it for its temerity.

Unfortunately, I was still in Ben’s arms, so I raked his forearms bloody trying to get to the fish. Stupid human wouldn’t put me down. I could have prevented the whole rest of the incident if he’d just complied.

Seong, standing in the doorway, shrieked as the fish cruised towards him, flicking its fins idly. The boy turned to run and bloop, the fish sucked him in, like a crumb tossed in a pond.

“Stop!” Ki screamed, grabbing a tiny end table, and hit the fish in the gills with it. I heard the wood crack. “Give him back! Give me back my brother!”

I have to give Ben full marks for courage. He dropped me and grabbed the fish. Seized its slick, scaly body, and held on. His heels skidded along the plush carpet towards the door, and he kicked up to plant his sneakers on the wall. “Can’t hold him!” Ben shouted. “What do I do, give him a Heimlich?”

Then the tail slipped through the circle of his arms, and he fell to the ground heavily.

I ran past him, trying to follow the ever-growing koi, hearing Ki sob behind me. “Oh my god, he’s d-dead, it’s my fault, m-my … parents are going to kill me…”

Angela’s voice now: “Try reading some more! Maybe you can fix this if you say it right.”

“Or I could mess it up worse!” Ki wailed.

I had no time for this. I leaped for the koi, scrabbling to get any kind of hold on it. If I could just scratch through its scales to the soft underbelly—

—and then it went through the front door, as if solidity were simply elective for it. I dropped to the floor and headed to my window beside the door, scrabbling at it with my paws in my urgency to get out and deal with this intruder, who’d taken one of my humans…

Then Ben was there, looking out my window, above me. The fuchsia bushes that lined the street writhed with tentacles that extended menacingly at some child dressed up like a cartoon character — potato-shaped body, yellow skin, little stubby legs. The potato-toddler fled, shrieking in terror as an adult beat back the tentacles with a flashlight.

“How?” Ki blurted in horror, joining us. “The mirror’s in here!”

“It’s spreading,” Angela said, pointing. “Look! The side mirrors of that parked car — are those monkeys jumping out of them?” She sounded dazed. “Are we all hallucinating? Am I just dreaming that you guys are here with me?” She grabbed Ben’s arm.

“Oh, god,” Ben muttered. Clearly, he’d seen what I had. Next door, plastic lawn flamingos uncoiled from around a fashionable reflecting pond, inflating into large, vicious birds with wiry metallic legs.”Your neighbors are going to be pissed,” he said blankly.

“The Vermillion Birds,” Ki whispered as the towering birds leaped over the hedge into the street, pecking and kicking at anyone in range. “From Chinese legends.”

“Any other critters we should know about?” Ben asked.

“The Black Tortoise—”

“You mean like a Japanese kappa?” Angela asked sharply.

“No, he’s … why?”

Angela pointed shakily. I saw at once what they were talking about.

“I thought that was someone dressed up as Raphael from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” Ben said, his voice wavering. “Hey, um, weren’t kappas the ones that, like, take control of your body by giving you an enema?”

“Sometimes,” Angela replied, sounding horrified.

Whatever the creature was, it looked tall. Bipedal. Turtle shell, check … but now it lifted a costumed child over its head, as another adult beat on it with a flashlight. Then the kid hit the ground, shrieking, and the adult kicked the turtle-creature solidly away before picking up the child and running away.

“You’re the one who’s into anime,” Ben told Angela, as the not-a-kappa turned its head slowly to regard the house. “Anything we can do? Anything that works on it like garlic on vampires?”

 “Cucumber!” Angela yelped. “They like cucumber!”

“Great, I’ll make it a salad.“

I couldn’t take my eyes off the turtle creature. I’d failed against the koi. I couldn’t let this thing enter my territory. If the humans would just open the door, I could take care of this! I yowled to get their attention, but failed in that, too.

“This is my fault,” Ki whispered. “I have to  … I have to fix this. Angela, did you bring the mirror?”

“Well, yeah,” Angela replied dubiously, hefting it. “You going to try reading again?”

“Yes. Somehow, creatures from the mirror-lands have come through. It’s the only explanation. Maybe if we reflect them again, they’ll be sucked back through—”

“Whatever you do, do it fast. That tortoise guy can’t run, but I bet he can phase through the door. Just like the fish,” Ben added, ignoring the swords on the walls and grabbing his skateboard instead. Some weapon he chose. But, I suppose the one you’re most familiar with is the one to pick in battle. And we were all in for battle together, it seemed.

Angela and Ki set up beside my window, while he stood in front of it, watching the not-a-kappa lumber closer. “That turtle has teeth,” Ben pointed out uneasily as Angela brandished the mirror at the window and Ki began to read.

“Shu, that’s a book, probably this one, um …  read the book, unlock the doors, read the book, bar the gates—” the hasty translation shifted into Mandarin.

And at the last moment, I realized, Wait, they’re pointing the mirror at glass. What happens when you point a mirror at a mirror — infinity—

Ben must have realized it at the same moment.”Wait, stop!” he yelped, just as I, trying to get their bloody-minded attention, leaped off the ledge, right onto his shoulder, latching on, claws drawing blood —

—and then something went off like a bomb somewhere behind my eyes, and reality twisted and distorted. Something old and powerful grabbed onto my consciousness and squeezed, pouring through from someplace else and into me.

I could hear Ben’s panicked, gibbering thoughts and I have to admit, shamefully, that I shared them: I didn’t ask for this, there’s no room in me — look, do whatever you want to me, but leave my friends alone —

An odd gentleness in the mental touch. Like a fellow cat grooming my fur. Peace, young ones. I’m rarely invoked when there isn’t trouble, but this smells worse than usual. How did you tear so wide an opening to the realm of the gods?

What? Ben thought, numb.

I recovered my sang-froid. The other young one read from an ancient scroll, invoking power through a mirror, I supplied in the liminal space in which I currently floated with the other two awarenesses. I could feel Ben’s astonishment that there were two consciousnesses in his mind with him, and I purred reassuringly. I had no intention of doing him any harm. He was a kitten by the standards of his species, not an adult, and I was quite literally in his territory at the moment.

Strange smells filled his — our — nostrils, warm and primeval, like a great beast’s hide. Sun baking hot sand. Myrrh and incense rising in a temple, the smoke rising in lazy tendrils towards the sun that slanted in through narrow windows. Worshippers calling out a single name, over and over, and it was his name, but it wasn’t his name at all: Shu, Shu, Shu, wise and powerful…

Benjamin and I hit the ground, feeling as if he — no, we — were riding his body as if it were a horse. I disliked the sensation of only having two legs immensely, but the situation wasn’t under my control. At least, not entirely. In the darkened window, we caught a hazy glimpse of ourselves as we staggered back upright. No. That’s not me. My hair isn’t white!

Mine is, but is that a mane ? Am I a lion now?

And then the door burst in on its hinges as the tortoise-man made its entrance, ducking down to pass under the lintel. Ki leaped for one of the swords attached to the wall and yanked it down. “Go away!” the girl wailed. “I did not invite you into my home! You’re rude!“

The tortoise laughed. Ki brought the old sword down at the creature’s arm, shouting, “Give me back my brother!”

The sword shattered, like glass. “Stupid kid, with your shiny, reflective blade,” the tortoise replied in English. How odd, Ben thought distantly. You’d think he’d speak Mandarin, but he sounds like he’s from South Jersey…

And then the other voice spoke in our head again. It’s speaking its own language, young one. I understand it, so you understand it. We’re effectively one being at the moment, which is not the way I normally manifest myself in your world when I’ve been invoked. A hint of annoyance in the voice. The cat helped bridge us, I suspect, but the malformed use of my Name probably did the most damage.

I have a name as well, I pointed out crisply. Myrowl. Nice to meet you, Shu.

No time for pleasantries! the god replied as the tortoise-man lifted Ki off the ground by the throat, shaking her.

Angela sailed in from his left, a jade bookend in her hand, taunting, “Hey! Mr. Turtle! Over here! Can I interest you in something better to eat? Like … cucumber?”

The tortoise turned to sneer, “Like tea-party sandwiches, little girl?”

“Sure, can I take your order? You want mustard and mayo with that?” She swung the heavy jade, and the creature’s scales crunched. “Let go of her!”

The tortoise dropped Ki, seizing Angela instead. Stonelike talons crushed her throat. “Non … reflective …” she choked out.

We should probably intervene at this point, don’t you think?

Oh, yeah, right. I mean, how do I — how do we—

Act now, before my human of the soft lap and gentle hands dies!

Right.

We leapt for the tortoise, Ben noting absently that he seemed to be a lot stronger all of a sudden. We landed just behind it in a crouch, and then lifted our shoulder up and into the lowest quarter of its shell.

The tortoise went flying. It flipped ass over teakettle and landed against a bookcase, which promptly toppled, landing atop it. Then the bookcase lifted as the tortoise stood. It threw the bookcase at us.

We dropped to the floor, over the top of Angela, who was still gasping for breath. We let the wood fly overhead, allowed random books smack us in the head, rather let them fall on her.

We heard Ki scream behind us, but launched ourselves again — through the fallen shelves — with an earth-shaking roar tearing its way out of our throat. I gloried in this, of course. My own roar sounds more like a yowl of defiance on its best day.

We reached out a hand that Ben dimly realized looked a good deal more like a paw, complete with talons, and a sword-hilt smacked into his palm. We and the tortoise met at the center of the hall, and we dodged the tortoise’s lumbering charge at the last minute. Swept behind the creature, swung the verdigrised bronze blade in our paw — no reflection, nice! — removing the tortoise’s head from its shoulders.

The head flew down the hall, bouncing and rolling and finally coming to a halt in Angela’s lap. She’d only just now managed to sit up. And now she yelped, scrambling away from the head and waving her hands as if it were a cockroach.

I couldn’t help but snicker at the back of our conjoined mind.

Ki emerged from a room off the hallway, stepping over the wreckage of the bookshelf, her mouth hanging open. “The White Tiger,” she murmured, and gave a haphazard little bow. Angela’s eyes just showed white all the way around. Oh, god. I don’t want them looking like that at me, Ben thought.

And why not? I replied.

Since when do men not court awe? Shu sniffed in his mind.

We’re not supposed … I mean, it’s not considered … I mean—

You don’t want them to pet us?

A moment of panicked reflection. I snickered again. Yes — no — wait, was that from the damn cat who’s also stuck inside of us?

Very well. Shu sighed. Be as modest and humble as your society requires you to be. Let them think that you had nothing at all to do with events. Take neither credit nor responsibility.

All that passed in a flash. Externally, Shu was now responding to Ki. “Tiger? No. Lion, thank you. You’re the one who summoned me, young magician?”

“Summoned,” Angela repeated slowly, her eyes still locked on us. Glancing down, we decided it was the blood sprayed over our chest. “How’d we summon you? Who are you?”

“I distinctly heard someone call my Name. Shu.” Behind us, our tail twitched as we noticed, That’s not fear. She smells like she likes what she sees.

—It’s been awhile since I’ve experienced direct adoration.—

—oh, god, which of us thought that? We’re — I’m not supposed to notice things like that—

 You spend a great deal of time worrying about what we should and shouldn’t do, notice, or feel. It must be annoying to be you, I put in.

“Like, go away, ‘shoo’?” Angela asked, her voice distant now. “You look like some ancient Egyptian god, and we’re in the middle of some kind of Chinese voodoo…”

“Voodoo?” Ki sounded affronted.

Don’t let them think it’s me. It’s not me. I’m not this much of a jerk!

“I am Shu, brother of Sekhmet.” Our ears twitched. “You’re not prostrating yourselves.”

Angela’s mouth opened. Closed.

Ki suddenly slapped a hand over her mouth.  “Shu. The Mandarin word for book. I used the wrong vowel tone!” She sounded embarrassed. “And summoned an ancient Egyptian god?”

“Why would that make any less sense than summoning giant koi and tortoise monsters?” Angela pointed out.

Ki nodded rapidly. “Um, Shu? We need help, please. These creatures took my brother…” she waved at the world outside, “and they’re hurting people. Please. Help us.”

We sauntered towards the window to appraise the situation. When we stopped and put a taloned hand on the glass, we heard Angela ask behind him, “Hey, where’s Myrowl — heck, where’s Ben?” A pause. “Oh, no,” Angela wailed, and then dashed towards him to touch our elbow gingerly. “Er, Shu? Do we, um … get our friend back after all this?”

 “I am not in the habit of stealing bodies,” Shu informed her haughtily.

Ben wasn’t particularly pleased with rating below me in her litany of concern, but I was very pleased that she’d noted my absence first. “However, due to the malformed nature of the incantation that summoned me, I’m not entirely sure I can remove my essence from this particular, ah, vessel. Though I will attempt to do so after the current crisis has been averted.”

“Vessel—oh … you’re in Ben … ?”

He gestured out the window. “I haven’t seen such a mess since the last time someone loosed Apep.”

“Apep?” Angela asked, sounding lost.

“The serpent of darkness. I’m a sun-god. Fighting darkness is my job.” He groomed his whiskers neatly. “However, there are more creatures out there than even I can fight at once.”

Modest, aren’t we? Ben snarled inside.

Ki approached, throwing up her hands. “So you won’t help?”

“I didn’t say that. However, I’ll require your assistance with stratagems. Most of these creatures should be drawn to rhythmic sound.”

“Like music? So turn Pandora to a dubstep station?”

We smiled. “They wouldn’t recognize it as music. Your flute, however, should attract them.”

“You … you remember that I play. Ben is in there.” Angela’s smile lit up her face, and then faded. “You want me to lure them back.”

We nodded.  “Yes, fetch your flute, please. And you, young one,” — we looked at Ki, all three of us feeling grim — “must read your incantations clearly when the enemy is close, so that the mirror can catch them once more.”

“But if we banish them … with my brother still inside the fish … he’ll go into the mirror-lands with the fish,” Ki objected, her voice just above a whisper.

Shu grinned with our face. But it was my words that were spoken next. “Trust me to know how to gut a fish without harming a hair on your brother’s head.” We flexed our long, yellow claws, studying them. “Just like the koi in the backyard that your father scolded me for last week.”

“I might throw in some sunlight to dazzle their eyes,” Shu added. “Be wary.”

We could smell their fear, but they covered it well. We didn’t want to make them any more nervous by taking note of it. But we could hear them talking. Trying to reassure each other. And the part of us that had once watched chariots rattle off to war smiled at how similar they sounded to young soldiers in any era.

“It’s okay,” Ki whispered. “We’ll … get through this. And my brother will be all right, and…”

“Your parents won’t notice the kappa bloodstains on the carpet or the broken bookcase…”

Ki laughed shakily. “Don’t worry about my parents. Just … concentrate on what you need to do. And I’m going to get my cellphone to read this by—”

“No! The screen will reflect—”

“Oh, crud. Right. Even a flashlight has a lens. A candle it is.” She stumbled off, and we heard the sound of matches being struck.

And then we heard the hollow, unearthly calls of the plastic flamingoes. The scritch, scritch, scritch of their metal legs approaching, attracted by the light in the door and windows.

“Play!” Shu hissed. “We need to pull all of them to us.”

Angela settled her lips in place and did so. Haltingly at first, and then with gusto.

And then the terrorbirds hopped through the shattered front door, heads swaying as they searched for fresh prey. Angela looked alone and exposed in the hallway, her fingers dipping over the flute’s stops.

The first of them ululated and began to charge towards her, and we leaped, pouncing on the avian. We hit the ground, rolling, and the bird screamed as our massive jaws closed over its slender throat. A hot burst of blood to the back of our mouth, feel of tearing flesh—

—and yet we could hear her still playing determinedly, the notes only wavering a little. But there were five of the terrorbirds and only one of us, and we heard their metal limbs scritch the floor as they approached us. Felt the first razory beak hit our shoulder as we uncoiled from our dying prey and rolled to our feet, sword back in hand to take the head off the second bird. Then a confused impression of bobbing, weaving heads and cold, alien eyes, and pain as their beaks and talons sank home—

—which was when Ki emerged from the kitchen behind us, setting her candle on the table. She held up the mirror and began to read in clear, steady Mandarin.

Hurry, hurry, hurry!

“Shu, get out of the line of the mirror!” Angela shouted as the flute music died. We rolled away just as a gentle golden light emanated from the mirror to bathe the three remaining birds, and they clattered to the floor, inanimate once more.

“Well done!” Shu called, grooming the blood off our lips with the back of our paw. “We have our … proof of concept. Now we just need to repeat it until all the creatures loosed tonight are back where they belong.”

Angela looked wanly at the door. The Ben part of us hated to ask her to do this again. To put herself at risk as the bait. But to suggest otherwise would dishonor what she’d accomplished so far. So, we contented ourselves with putting a paw on her shoulder to try to show solidarity — and then removed it politely when she jumped at our touch.

Steadily, the call of flute and mirror radiated out over the neighborhood, drawing the dark things back. The last to reappear was the first they’d seen — the koi. “He’s dead,” Ki whispered, her face ashen in the candle’s light. “My brother must have suffocated.”

“You have very little faith in yourself,” Shu chided her as Ben and I faded under the god’s will, overcome by a sense of terrible responsibility. We weren’t in time. This is my fault. Should have been faster, better…“Surely someone who wishes to speak on behalf of kings should be more certain of the power that words possess.” He sank one clawed hand casually into the fish’s gills and used his hooked sword to rake open its belly. Glistening roe spilled out, and then Seong’s limp body.

Ki ran to her brother. Cradled him to her. “I love you,” she told him. “Don’t be dead. Breathe.”

“Needs more will behind it,” Shu recommended, licking his sword clean of fish eggs as the koi flopped in its death-throes, mid-air. “Give it another try.”

“How can you be so calm?” Angela demanded. “It’s her brother. Don’t you feel anything?”

Ben fought to say. I care! I care a lot—

“I’d lick him clean to stimulate his bloodflow, but humans tend to take that sort of thing amiss,” I managed to reply.

Then Shu cut in. “Ki has the power she needs to restore her brother within her. She just needs to speak the words. And make them mean something.”

Angela turned to stare as Ki lowered her head and whispered something into her brother’s ear. As the boy’s eyes opened, light filled the room, dazzlingly, as if the sun had just come up.

And maybe a little help from a sun-god accustomed to the idea of being reborn every day out of night.

Yeah, but don’t take credit for it—

Your humility and modesty overwhelm me.

Are you going to leave now? I asked. While I despised having only two legs, I’d enjoyed the raw power of being a god, and being able to speak in a fashion that humans could actually understand.

I’m trying. I don’t particularly want to be confined to a mortal body, fated to die when you do. A puzzled pause from the god. And yet, I can’t get out.

Panic. Full-bore panic, even from me as I understood that I might never be a cat again—no, I think we can eject you; we can work on the rest of the entanglements later, maybe once Ki’s better with her magic—

—fine, do it, and make me look like me again. Anything else, and we’ll wind up in a hospital being dissected—

That, I can manage.

With a dizzying whirl, I found myself six feet in the air, and went limp to absorb the shock as I dropped to the ground. I looked up at Ben — who looked solely like Ben again, but who smelled like a lion — and he slowly winked at me.

The two girls barely even noticed, so wrapped up in the resuscitation of Seong as they were.

Oh, there were consequences. Humans scurried all over the street for the next several days, positing explanations ranging from a gas leak to hallucinations caused by the explosion of a meth lab. We all knew the truth, of course, but even the humans were too wise to speak it.

Ever since, when Ben-Shu comes over to study, he’s not allergic to me anymore. Exposure therapy, or a little help from a god. And every now and again, I’m not entirely sure that the god’s entirely left me, either. After all, how else am I able to tell you this story, sinking the words directly into your mind?

About the author and the piece

Deborah L. Davitt tells us that this story was written in 2017 as part of a writing challenge for an online writing community she’s part of, and that it has racked up 28 rejections at other markets. For more about her poetry and prose, see www.deborahldavitt.com. 

 

©2025 by Deborah L. Davitt. All rights reserved. May not be used for A.I. training.