Alexander the Caracal's Halloween

The Mystery of Halloween

In the suite that the twenty girls were sharing, Alexander looked back and forth as the girls unpacked their luggage. To say that Alexander was confused, would be stating the obvious, for he was just as confused as when the children had been packing back to Quebec Castle. The boys, the girls, both were packing clothes that completely confounded the Northern caracal.

Anne Davis had brought a garment reminiscent of the kimono that Gemma wore, but as different as he and Roxana were from Miltiades. Agatha King was had brought a garment that was a complete mystery to Alexander for the ballet was something he knew absolutely nothing about. Nicole Ball had brought something most horrendous in appearance for the attire was Alexander's first introduction to clowns, something he would be become more familiar with.

All these strange attires, what was Alexander to make of them? All of the students, all of them ten years old, seemed to have gone mad! What was the meaning of these strange garments? Was there something he knew nothing about? Was there one of these masquerades he had heard spoken of? Was there going to be someone costumed as the Red Death like that Phantom of the Opera fellow that Alexander had heard Alan read of? He knew not. All the mystery, all the enigmas, was this somehow connected to Halloween?

As Alexander investigated a black dress and a pointy hat of the same colour, he quickly found Gemma standing over him. The sixteen-year-old daughter of Mr. Robert Cook, Quebec Castle's gardener, looked down at him with her large, reddish-brown eyes. Alexander looked back up at her, giving a meow as a greeting to which, she responded by giving him a pat on the head. She was a slender damsel of fight feet and six inches with light skin and red hair that was long and straight. She was wearing her blue kimono and shoes and her pink turban, the attire that Alexander most associated her with. She was fairly attractive for a human, with an honest face and a mouth that might have been called cute by a human.

"Are you making sure the costumes are alright, Alexander?" Gemma asked.

Costumes? There must have been a masquerade! Would someone he knew be costumed as the Red Death? Would it be someone he didn't know? Alexander was very curious.

"Is he in there, Gemma?"

"He is here, Ms. Lombard!"

As Ms. Lombard entered the room, Alexander's ears pricked up, but that was more because Roxana was following their master's fiancé. Jumping down from the bed, Alexander approached his mate and the two started sniffing each other's faces.

Roxana was a year old, just as Alexander was. As a female, she was smaller, being sixteen inches at the shoulder, her head-and-body length forty inches and her tail twelve inches. She was uniformly sandy in colour opposed to Alexander's reddish-tan, overall making her distinct from her mate.

After sniffing one another, Roxana sat down and proceeded to groom herself. Beginning by licking her right paw, she proceeded to rub her wet paw against her head and then repeat that. Alexander then proceeded to aid in the grooming, licking Roxana's right shoulder. For Alexander and Roxana, grooming had become a sort of bonding experience.

Soon, the students began to speak about going out onto the streets with the apparitions, the brownies, the pythonesses, the bats and the ghouls. Upon hearing this, Alexander looked to them in confusion. Apparitions he knew, he knew an apparition, for although he had succumbed to his wounds inflicted by Miltiades, Alexander's predecessor Darius still lived at Quebec Castle. Bats he knew as well, for he had seen them flying some nights through the sky, but what were these other things? What were brownies, pythonesses and ghouls?

"My Aunt Tulip used to say..." began Niall Hirst, one of the youngest of the twenty boys, as he entered the girls' quarters. "That on Halloween the Devil play the bagpipes while riding on his goat!"