‘Out the water. Out the water! OUT THE WATER!’
“Ember!” Cloud yowled. “Ember, are you okay?”
He ran down the ravine. Ember climbed onto the creek bank, back in her own territory. Eclan bounded toward her again.
She lowered herself into a fighting stance. ‘Ohhh tahg, what am I doing? I’m going to fight a rogue. I’m about to die.’
“Be careful. I’m coming, okay?” Cloud called. “Try to hold him there.”
Eclan leaped out of the creek. He swiped at her flank. Ember jumped a clawlength out of reach. Before all four of his paws hit the ground, she sank her teeth into his hind leg. Eclan hissed and spun to bite her. She pounced out of the way again, still shaking. Her heart pounded in her throat. Adrenaline pulsed through her veins like lightning bolts of energy.
‘Why is he attacking me? Why is he attacking me? Oh, I’m so cold.’
His claws ripped her shoulder. Sky blue; pain blue. Ember squeaked and staggered back. ‘Why are you worrying about why? Focus on how you’re going to stop him, or you’re definitely-probably going to die.’ She ducked beneath a swat. Wind tore through her fur. ‘Oh, the fire pits would be nice right about n—FOCUS!’
Ember faked a lunge for his throat. When he moved to counter it, she adjusted her course and shoved him off-balance. He stumbled. Before he could right himself, she darted up the ravine. He caught his balance as Cloud ran to scruff him. Eclan jumped out of reach and charged after her.
The ground leveled off. Ember spun to face him. He pounced on her. She landed hard on her back, air leaving her lungs in a painful huff, and he took the opportunity to shove a paw against her neck. Ember bit her tongue. Her breath dissolved into shaky puffs of steam. Cyan and yellow.
“Shouldn’t ’a stopped, kitten,” he said. His claws dug pinpricks into her skin. “See, when you turn, it has to be in a direction your attacker isn’t coming fr—”
She kicked him in the chest. He staggered backward. His hind paws slipped on a patch of damp leaves, and he plummeted down the ravine. Ember rolled back to her paws and watched in silence as he tumbled past Cloud.
‘It actually worked. Hum, maybe I’m not so crazy after all.’
Eclan’s head struck a rock on the creek bank, and he stopped sliding with his lower half submerged in the shallows. He didn’t get up. Ember’s throat tightened.
“H-h-h-hey, um, he’s s-still breathing, right?” Ember asked. A gust of wind tore through her fur. She shivered harder.
Cloud walked down to him. “Yes, he is.” He looked up at her, face unreadable again—this time without the smile. “I . . . I told you to keep him there, Ember. That was dangerous. I could’ve helped you.”
She lowered her head. “S-s-sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’m just glad you’re alright. You are okay, right? Those cuts look bad,” he said.
‘Cuts?’ She craned her neck to look at the wounds. Four stripes of bloody fur lined her shoulder. “Oh, yeah, I-I-I’m fine. Just a little c-cold.”
“I know,” Cloud said. “Hold on; we’ll go back to the Glade. I just have to get Mintbreath here and take him back for Aspen to deal with.”
Cloud dragged Eclan up the ravine. He set him down at Ember’s paws, then licked her forehead. “Let’s get you warmed up.”
“Th-thanks, Dad.”
He nodded once, picked Eclan back up, and they started down the mountain. As they walked, Ember studied the rogue’s soaked form.
“So d-do you think he’s a m-mercenary?”
“Maybe,” he replied through a mouthful of fur.
He looked away. They moved in relative silence, the only sounds being the forest’s ambience. Birds chirped. Branches rustled. The ever-present breeze hissed. Ember pulled her head and tail as close to her body as she could. Every change in the wind cut through her fur and bit her skin.
‘I messed up again, didn’t I? I wish you’d tell me what I’m doing that’s so wrong. At least I stopped him. Isn’t that good enough?’
Ember sighed. It turned into a shudder halfway through. ‘When I become the new historian, you’ll see that I can do something. I can recite every passage and law I’ve read in any order you want. I can do it, and that’s my place. It has to be. Because if I don’t have a place, I’ll be just another outsider to chase off.’ She shook her head. ‘Tagh,’ she thought, ‘I wish I could just say it. But come on, Ember; even if you could get every word out without stuttering, or switching something up, it’d only make things worse. So be quiet. Focus on not freezing to death.’
Cloud pressed closer to her. His warmth offered some refuge from the frigid air; not much, but enough to ease her wandering mind. An image appeared in her subconscious: her as a kitten, falling asleep in her parents’ paws. It came encased in a halo of dark blue, maple orange, and a tired, distant mountain green.
‘They love me. Calm down, Em. He’s just worried. He’s doing the best he can. And he knows I’ve got a place here. Everything’s going to be okay.’
“You okay?” he asked, voice still muffled.
She kept her eyes on the ground ahead. It flickered in and out of focus as she fought to keep herself awake. Already the effects of the adrenaline rush were gone. “I guess so.”
Cloud set Eclan down. “You guess so? Don’t you think that’s a little indefinite for a yes or no question?”
“Maybe. I don’t kn-know. It’s n-n-nothing, really.”
The tip of his tail twitched back and forth. Ember watched it move; it gave her something predictable to focus on.
“One thing life’s taught me is that it’s never nothing,” he said. “If something’s wrong, or if you have any problems with anything at all, you really should tell me. I can help, or at least I can try to. It is my job to fix things, after all.”
‘I just want to go to sleep. And if the dreams I have are nice, I don’t want to wake up. I don’t think you can help with that. Besides, I’m an adult now. I need to start fixing my own problems.’
“I’ll b-be fine, but thanks,” Ember said. “Let’s j-j-j-just hurry before I fr-freeze to death. Then I-I won’t be fine, because I’ll be dead.”
He sighed. “Okay. You know me; I like to worry. I hope this fluffhead doesn’t wake up before we get back.”
Ember yawned. ‘And I hope I don’t pass out.’
He grabbed Eclan’s scruff, then they went back to walking. Ember sucked in a noseful of burning, freezing air. She closed her eyes a moment to savor the quiet bustle of Dark’s Valley before burrowing back into the world within her own windstorm of a mind.
———
The smell of smoke drifted through the forest, filling Ember’s nose with the savory scent of home. She smiled softly as a broken ring of sharpened sticks came into view. Some of the sticks were coated in flame-hardened clay, and others were exposed; still others were rotting. Each one had a name marked into it, letting observers know which cats had done the carving. Ember searched the lake of sticks for the one with her own name. She didn’t have to read it to find it, because it stuck out at a skewed angle near the Glade’s side of the abatis wall. She chuffed gently as they passed by.
For the most part, gatherers were the ones who maintained the wall. However, every trainee was expected to contribute to it at least once, and how competent they were determined how much they would be trusted with when they became apprentices.
They walked through the northern entrance, a break in the wall lined with a young ash and a birch. Ember’s eyes locked onto the nearest of the fire pits. Cloud nudged her toward it.
‘Fire. Finally!’ She nodded her thanks, then ran to the glowing pit of warmth. She stopped a paw-length away from the clay spires surrounding and guarding the dancing flames. They once supported a platform, on which clayworkers could harden their bowls and bijoux, preparing them for sale on market days. Many winters of wear, tear and exposure, however, had made the platform crumble long before anyone still alive had been born. Instead of repairing the old structu
re, clayworkers had made a separate pit just for their work about twenty winters back.
Ember leaned as close as she dared and let the heat of the flames engulf her. It would never compare to curling up beside her parents in the old family den, but it would be more than enough to keep her from freezing.
As the fire crackled, radiating with welcoming warmth, she peered past the pit to study her home. Huge, slanted boulders connected by a rise of dirt formed a second, south-facing wall which blocked the breeze from entering the Glade. With multiple natural and feline-made crevices and caves, it housed several family dens. In the trees nearby, sleeping cats lounged: seven of them. They were night guards, resting up for another evening of protecting their colony. Across the Glade, two mothers watched over their playing kittens. Squeals and faint snores hit her ears, along with playful paws on frozen ground, chirping birds, and the mothers talking about hunting. She bit her tongue.
‘You’ll need to learn it someday, Em. Being able to hunt well can mean the difference between life and death,’ her cousin’s voice scolded. Tainu was a group hunter who had become obsessed with her craft; so much so that she seemed to think everyone else should share her obsession.
The mothers noticed her and stared for a few moments. Why they stared, Ember didn’t know, so she looked away and laid down. Her ears rung. She’d asked Fern, her aunt and one of the healers, why they did it sometimes. Fern hadn’t known. It seemed some mysteries were never meant to be solved.
She let out a long, gentle sigh. Burning wood crackled and snapped, giving her something constant to focus on, so she closed her eyes and tried to use the flames to burn out the noise.
“Commander Aspen,” Cloud said from somewhere across the Glade, dragging her tired mind away from the fire.
Ember bent around to watch them. A ruddy brown tom with a half-white face walked over to her father. His right ear twitched. It had been torn during the Battle of Stone Ridge, along with much of the right side of his head. The damage caused his ear to spasm any time he got nervous or felt uneasy. Ember liked it in the sense that she could physically see anytime he got aggravated.
“You’re back early,” he said. “Earlier than I had in mind, but better than being late.” His eyes, one blue and one yellow, caught the light and appeared to glow. He stopped and sniffed at Eclan. “Who is this?”
“That would be Eclan. He attacked us, so we brought him here for questioning. Ember seems to think he’s a mercenary. What do you make of him?” Cloud asked.
Aspen looked the rogue over. “You’ve nearly drowned him. He’s soaked through his skin. Get him by the fire. Mercenary or not, you can’t question a dead outsider.”
Cloud helped Aspen drag Eclan closer to the fire. Ember edged away from his cold, silent body as disgust, a bright pink, tinted her thoughts. She pulled her tail closer to her side. The tip of it flicked in unease.
‘Go away, please. You look like a dead cat, and I don’t like sitting next to dead cats. Okay, focus Ember. Think about fire. Hopefully this time it’ll distract you.’
Her mother had once suggested that she try to find a focal point anytime things started to overwhelm her. It didn’t usually work, but she’d made a habit of it nonetheless.
Aspen walked over to Ember’s side. “You’re wet, too. What happened? Were you the one who fought with him?”
‘Why am I being included this conversation?’ Ember lowered her head. “Yes, sir. I’m pretty sure he was trying to kill me. I, uhm, did what I had to do.”
‘Think about fire. I like fire. It’s warm . . . It’s warm. And nice. And what else? It’s, uhm . . .’
Aspen groomed a mat of blood from her shoulder. “Impressive work. I can tell you stood your ground well.”
Ember flinched with each lick. ‘Please don’t do that. I don’t want to be touched. Oh, it gives us light. There you go; there’s something you can work with. Yes, it helps us see where to go when it’s too dark to find things on our own. That’s good.’
He stopped grooming. “Once you get warm enough, go get a healer to take care of that shoulder. It looks painful.”
‘It protects us from predators. It keeps food fresh longer. Bites if you get too close.’
Ember nodded once, but tried to ignore the implications of his words. The ambience of the Glade continued to batter her ears. “Yes, sir.”
‘Nope. Still not working.’
Aspen inspected her for a few more moments, then turned his attention elsewhere, apparently losing interest in Ember’s waterlogged fur. “Cloud, why do you think this cat is here?”
“I’m not sure,” Cloud said. “Worst-case scenario, he could be a spy—or an assassin. If he is, he’s not a very good one. He could also be a stubborn outsider who doesn’t know when to quit, which is the most likely option. We’ll have to wait until he wakes up to get anything close to definite. In the meantime, we can discuss those points you said you wanted to bring up.”
‘I’m done here,’ she thought. ‘Have fun talking about the meeting. I’m going to the other fire pit to continue getting warm. Alone this time, not that you can hear me.’
Ember crept away across the Glade, head and tail low. Her fur wasn’t dripping anymore. Instead, it stuck out in damp spikes, as if she’d been dipped in tree sap, then licked by a herd of deer. She got the urge to find a puddle to see her reflection in, but it hadn’t rained all mooncycle, so she ignored it.
A giant oak tree sat in the middle of the Glade. Its branches were covered in the clawmarks of Dark himself, along with the carved words of generations of historians. It beckoned her to take shelter in its massive branches and read all morning—and maybe even add a few marks of her own one day. Ember sighed.
‘I’ll be back for you,’ she thought. ‘My training is almost over. I’m getting close; I know I am. But I really should get dried off. Then, I guess I’ll go back to patrolling, with or without Dad. Because I have to start taking control of myself, or I’m never going to achieve anything. And, of course, I have a routine to keep up, otherwise I’ll be all antsy for the rest of the day, and that’s never fun. I’ll be back tonight. With Hyrees. I’ll be back. Hopefully.’
As she lay by the second fire pit, sparks flickered around her, flashing like the last fireflies of the year.
‘How is Hyrees doing?’ she wondered. ‘What will he think of Minty Murderface the rogue? If he’s still around when they get back, obviously. He’ll probably just talk to him. It’s what he’s best at. Or ignore him completely. I guess that would be just as Hyrees-y.’
She chuffed gently to herself. The thought of her best friend, and now mate, sent a little blossom of orange fluttering through her mind. It was the color of family; the color that reminded her she was never truly alone.
Ember rested her chin on her forelegs, ears flicking around at every sound. She tried to catch bits of Cloud and Aspen’s conversation, but they were too quiet and too far away, so instead their words meshed with the rest of the ambient symphony, creating a gentle, unfilterable murmur. She half-smiled. It wasn’t the most calming of lullabies, but it was home.
When she could leave the fireside without shivering, she loped toward the northern entrance. As she neared the abatis, she shot a look in Cloud’s direction. He and Aspen sat on either side of an awake Eclan.
‘Guess he’s not coming. It’s okay, Ember. You can do this. You’re an adult, and it’s an easy patrol. You can do this alone.’
“Where are you going?” Aspen asked.
‘Is he talking to me?’ Ember stopped, heart pounding. She turned to face him, eyes studying the scars along his neck. “To patrol again. I don’t want to leave a gap on the northern border for too long.”
Cloud flicked back his ears. “Ember, you don’t have t—”
“Has your shoulder been looked at?” Aspen asked, cutting him off.
Ember lowered her head. “N-no sir.”
“Then go to the healer’s den,” he replied.
“Who’s in right no
w?” Ember asked. A prickly lump formed in her chest. Her lower jaw started to tremble. Faint blotches of cyan appeared in her head; swirling, pressing, and relentless.
‘Not this again. Calm down. Now is not the time to panic.’
Aspen sighed. “That would be Silentstream.”
Ember let a tiny huff of air escape her mouth. “I, uhm, I think I’ll take my chances with infection. Now, I have a border to guard, so—”
“Ember,” Cloud said.
“What?” she asked.
Cloud slow-blinked. “You don’t have to patrol today. You’re free. Take some time to rest, or study for when Whitehaze gets back, if you want to.”
‘This is a test, isn’t it? Some kind of evaluation. Right? Because you don’t usually bring Whitehaze into these conversations. Not unless you know something I don’t, in which case: what are you trying to tell me?’
Ember sighed. “I really should go. I’m already breaking routine enough with the meeting tomorrow. I don’t need to mess myself up for today too.”
“No, wait,” Cloud said, “I can get you some mash once we’ve finished up here. We need to get your shoulder cleaned. Just give me a few moments.”
Eclan pawed at the ground. Ember squinted. ‘Is he clawmarking?’
“Cloud,” Aspen said. His gaze drifted to whatever Eclan was drawing. “Let her g—”
Aspen jumped to his paws, eyes wide. Eclan wiped away whatever he’d written.
“Oh,” Aspen said softly. “Eclan, was it? You’re, ah, you’re free to go. Come back tomorrow, after the meeting. Meet me by the log on the northern border, just after the sun peaks. We can talk more there. Is that . . . acceptable?”
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