Wildcat

by Rebecca Hutto

  “What? Die? You're not going to die in a few winters. You can’t!” Hyrees said.

  Ember pushed herself closer to the wall. “Please, I just want to be left alone right now.”

  “Ember? Is that Ember? Ember! You’re alive?” A familiar, innocent-yet-devious voice mewed.

  Cloud turned to find Kivyress standing behind him. She charged forward into the den, eyes wide and mouth in a smile so large it looked painful. “Emmmmbeeerrrr! Hey, what’s wrong? Why you hiding away in here? Nice legs, by way. You’re practically glowing. Oh tahg, oh tahg, you’re alive! What happened? Oh, hey, why are you crying?”

  “Kivy,” Ember said.

  She pulled away from the wall and got to her paws. They touched foreheads.

  A leap behind where Kivyress had been, Songbird stood frozen in shock. “Oh my . . .” she whispered.

  Farlight waited beside her. He nudged her shoulder and Songbird walked forward with a dazed expression. Ember jumped up to nuzzle her the moment she set paw on the den’s cold, dry floor. Songbird wrapped her paws over her daughter’s shoulders and placed her chin against her neck. They sat there, chest to chest, in sweet, somber silence.

  An icy lump formed in Cloud’s chest. ‘I said something wrong earlier, didn’t I? Send a fox on it, what am I doing wrong?’

  “It’s going to be okay. You’re home now. You’re safe. I’m here. You’re here, and it’s going to be okay,” Songbird whispered. She groomed the small line of fur running between Ember’s mechanical shoulder blades. “What’s going on, Ember? What happened?”

  “Everyone was being so loud, and they were all so close, and . . . and that’s not at all what you meant, was it?” Ember said.

  “N-not exactly, but that does sound scary. It’s over now, though. And you know what? I’ll try to make sure everyone stays quiet and keeps their distance. Sound good?”

  Ember sighed and backed up, forcing Songbird’s paws off of her. “Thank you.”

  “Wait, where are you going?”

  Ember pushed her way past everyone and exited the den. Her eyes were already dry. “Lupine wants me to see if I can start patrolling again. I’m going for a walk to make sure I can, and also to think through some things, because there’s a lot I need to think about right now.”

  “Wait,” Cloud said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Accepted.” She kept walking. “I just want some alone time, okay?”

  “Ember, you’re not supposed to patrol alone,” he called.

  “I could go with you,” Hyrees said.

  She lifted a hind paw and shook off some unseen annoyance. The mechanical parts inside it whined and whirred in protest. “Sorry, Hyrees. I know you want to be with me, but I need some alone time.”

  Kivyress perked up. “I can go.”

  “Not you,” Cloud said. “She just said she wants to be alone, and if she’s going to have a partner, that partner needs to be an adult.”

  “She can come. I’m not actually patrolling anyway. Just going for a walk,” Ember said.

  Hyrees’s face fell as Kivyress darted to her sister’s side, her smoky tail in the air. Cloud shot him a sympathetic, slightly confused glance, trying to communicate that he also didn’t know what to make of it.

  “Great! Thanks!” Kivyress said. “Now come on, Em, let’s go before they try to stop us. Bye, Mom. Bye, Dad.”

  “Have . . . fun,” Songbird said. Her voice contained a mixture of emotions as confusing as Ember’s.

  Cloud sighed again as they left the Glade. Hyrees watched them go, then excused himself and wandered off.

  “What did you do?” Songbird growled when they disappeared from view.

  “It was Sumac, okay? You know what he’s like. Always has to push the limits. He was jealous and started snapping insults at her. I lunged at him, and Lupine demoted me.”

  She leaned forward, ears pinned. “You what?”

  “It was a fluffheaded mistake, I know, but what was I supposed to do? He can call me whatever he wants, but I’m not going to let him hurt my family.”

  “Cloud, what did I tell you before? You don’t need to protect us. I know she might seem fragile, but she can take a lot more than you give her credit for. If you pick fights for her, or for any of us, you’ll only make things worse. There are some things we need to do alone.” She sighed. “There are some things I need to do alone. Please, just stop.”

  “At least I didn’t get kicked off the council entirely,” he suggested.

  Her ears perked up, but in the sudden, bitter way that made him wish he hadn’t spoken. She stared at him with critical eyes. “I . . . I should get back to hunting.”

  She turned and trotted out the southern entrance, leaving him alone. Cloud watched her go with a sinking heart. “That’s just great. Now I’ve hurt everyone.”

  “Everyone, huh?” Farlight asked, reminding Cloud of his presence. “Yeah, at this point, I guess so, but that might not be such a bad thing.” Farlight offered him a smile. “After all, it’ll give them a chance to see just how much they need cats like you. For now, though, just give yourself a break. I’ll take care of the colony.”

  Without another word, he walked into Lupine’s den and disappeared, just like everyone else.

  Chapter 17

  Ember

  “Hmm. That’s interesting. I wonder if I’m on a spectrum too,” Kivyress said. She pranced across a fallen tree, following Ember as she picked her way through the forest. “A different one. There are different ones, right? Because no one thinks I’m normal, and I still haven’t decided how I feel about that.”

  She reached the end of the log and jumped back onto the hard, icy ground. “Oh! Ouch. There was a rock under that snow. Oh well. Guess I’ll just have to walk on three legs from now on.”

  She held one of her hind paws off the ground and dramatically limped along. Ember kept her eyes trained on the dirt, following her old routine of plotting out the path she would follow.

  “I don’t know about that. You don’t seem all that spectrum-y, and I don’t think being generally weird counts as autism,” Ember replied.

  She smiled. The stress of her most recent overload was almost forgotten, but it refused to leave her mind completely. In addition to overwhelming her senses, the flood of cats and near fight had reminded her both how much had changed and how much remained the same. No amount of biting her tongue and counting to five would ever fix the real, underlying problems. Knowing why the problems existed hadn’t fixed anything at all. She still needed to figure out how to cope, as Matthew had done.

  Yet despite the emotional strain it caused, it had also served as an educational experience. When the first sharp cyans of panic had seeped in back at the Glade, and mist and static started flooding her head, she’d thought-called Matthew for help. Despite being busy, he’d patiently talked her through finding the strength to get back up and leave. Knowing what to do and communicating with someone who understood made recovering easier than usual, even with the attack itself being worse.

  “You know,” Kivyress mewed, “I don’t think anyone thinks Mom and Dad are normal either. Mom more so than Dad, yet I think everyone likes Mom, and most cats like Dad too.”

  Ember still felt a sense of relief over how quickly Kivyress had responded to her talk signal. They’d developed the gesture before Kivyress had even begun her training. It meant ‘let’s speak in private.’ Ember was the one to have the basic idea but it was Kivyress who came up with the exact signal: two shakes of a hind paw.

  Over the past hour, as they walked up the mountain, Ember had tried her best to explain her experience with the humans. Kivyress had listened quietly, yet asked enough questions to let her know she was paying attention and still interested.

  “No one’s entirely normal. And if someone was entirely normal in every way, that would be really weird,” Ember said.

  Kivyress flicked a stone over the edge of the ravine. It tumbled and rolled down the steep cliffside, then landed with a splash in
the creek. Far below, the creek water warbled and trickled along. The ice coating its edges muffled the noise, making it seem more distant. Wind came in waves, ruffling their fur and howling through the forest.

  “True. True,” Kivyress said. “I don’t think I’d want to meet someone perfectly normal. Could you imagine how boring they’d be? So unspecial they’re painfully unique. Nothing surprising about them at all.”

  Ember lifted her muzzle to the breeze. Frigid air burned the insides of her nose, bringing with it the scents of dirt, wet moss, and creatures the forest. She tried to imagine what a normal cat would look like. Despite the number of tabbies existing in the East, she couldn’t imagine it having anything but the agouti fur and orange eyes of an average Westerner. She shook herself off and let her focus drift back to her surroundings. Even with the patchiness of the snow remnants, her woods were just as beautiful as she’d remembered. Seeing them again was enough to make her feel at ease.

  Ember chuffed. ‘What about secrets, though? Everyone seems have secrets, but is there a normal secret? No, there can’t be. They’re all different, because the ones keeping them are different. Even someone perfectly normal in every way would have his or her own unique set of secrets. Wait a moment. What am I thinking?’

  “I don’t think there is such a thing as ‘perfectly normal,’ ” Ember said. “To be alive and able to think for yourself means there’s no one else exactly like you, and that there can’t be a normal. If someone was normal, as a whole, I think that would imply there are more of them. If you duplicated yourself, and no one else did, you would automatically become the normal, because there would be two of you, and only one of everyone else, no matter how many everyone elses there were. Like how leaves are normal in the spring, but not now, because there are less leaves than trees now. They still exist, but there aren’t many.”

  Kivyress tilted her head but kept walking. “Uhm, hah, maybe. I guess so, but is that even how normal works?”

  Ember hesitated. Her face became warm as grey and dark purple mottled her mind. “I don’t know. Maybe not.”

  “But anyways,” Kivyress continued, “Dad’s . . . honestly been kind of scary ever since you left. Which is another reason I’m glad you’re back. Maybe he can finally stop working on that project of his and start spending more time with us.”

  Ember’s ears perked up. “Project? What kind of project?”

  “He hasn’t told you yet? Surprising.” Kivyress stopped walking to stare down at an especially pretty patch of creek. A series of time-smoothed boulders broke up the flow and made a whitewater obstacle course, complete with several miniature waterfalls. A large tree had fallen halfway down and wedged itself between the two cliffs. “He wants to make everyone these ‘guard pieces,’ as he calls them, that will supposedly make it harder for the East to kill us, but I don’t know. It looked uncomfortable when he showed me how it worked. I can’t imagine trying to fight with bark strapped to my legs.”

  “Bark? Tree bark?” Ember asked, sitting down at the ravine’s edge. “That’s both a great idea and a terrible one. Oh, maybe the humans have made something similar but better for themselves. I’ll have to ask Thai about it later. It can be improved. I know it can. Almost anything will work better than bark.”

  Kivyress laughed and sat beside her. Their tails wrapped around each other’s hindquarters, making Ember feel warm inside.

  “I was going to be mean and taunt you by jokingly suggesting snow would work better,” Kivyress mewed, “but now that I think about it, it actually might. Have you ever bitten snow? It’s painful. It freezes your teeth.”

  Ember chuffed. “Unfortunately, yes. Last winter, when I was the same age as you, the creek froze over entirely and we had to drink snow. It was disgusting, in case you were wondering. At one point I stopped drinking for a while and got really sick.”

  “I know. Mom told me about it; I really hope it doesn’t happen this winter.”

  “The creek freezing over, or me getting sick?”

  Kivyress turned her head to look at her for a moment, then went back to watching the creek. “Both.” Her tail twitched against Ember’s side. “So what do you think of Lupine’s project?”

  “The second wall?” Ember asked. “It’s a terrible idea. Do they not realize Easterners can climb trees? Really, any cat can climb trees. Why does no one else see that?”

  “I know. That’s what I said. Not to Lupine but to Farlight. He agrees with me, of course, but he doesn’t want to say anything until he can come up with something better to do. He wants to keep Lupine feeling like he’s achieving something to stay on his good side.” Kivyress flicked another stone into the creek. The rock bounced three times before sinking. “Whoa! Emmy, did you see that? It hopped like a rabbit. I didn’t think rocks could do that.”

  Ember burst into laughter. “Yes, I saw it. And don’t call me Emmy, you furball. Please.”

  Kivyress chuffed. Her breath formed a cloud of steam that swirled around, then faded into nothingness. “Don’t call me a furball then. Emmy.”

  ‘What are the chances?’ Ember mused, partially ignoring her sister’s mews. ‘Sitting in this exact spot with that exact rock, and Kivy deciding to flick that exact rock at that exact time with this exact thing happening. The funniest thing is, it happened, so it was going to happen a few moments ago and chance is negligible. Oh. Is there such thing as chance then? Because if something happens, it was going to happen all along, because time can only go down one path, and once it steps, I can’t change it. Is my life planned out? If so, by who?’

  Something snapped on the other side of the ravine, dragging her back into the external world. Ember got up and strained her neck, trying to see who or what had made the noise. “Hello? Is anyone there?”

  A series of icy crunches and rustles replied. Kivyress stood and sniffed the air, but with the wind against their backs, Ember knew it wouldn’t do any good. Black and white materialized from the hazy, twiggy underbrush. The small tom’s eyes were mottled yellow and brown, like dying birch leaves.

  ‘I’ve seen that cat before. Where have I seen him from? I know I don’t like him, but wh—’ Ember narrowed her eyes. “Oh. It’s you.”

  “What’d you say, kitten? You’ll have to speak up if you want your voice to make it ’cross that ravine alive,” Eclan said. He sounded a little more sober than he’d been during their first meeting.

  ‘Probably ran out of mint. Or, at least, I hope he did. Or, wait, no, I hope he didn’t. If he could fight that well while half-dazed, I’d hate to see what he can do with a clear head. And I somehow doubt he’s the kind of cat who falls for the same trick twice. Tahg, if he decides to try to cross, we’re in trouble.’

  “Why are you here?” she yowled. “I thought Dad and . . . C-Commander Aspen told you to leave.”

  ‘I’m never going to see him again either, am I?’

  “Why wouldn’t I be here? This ain’t your territory, kitten, in case you’ve forgotten. I don’t even have to answer your question. Though I must admit, I didn’t think you’d remember me.”

  “Oh, no, I had blissfully forgotten all about your existence until you came along and reminded me.”

  “Huh. Well, you’ve changed. ’Less my memory is flawed. Which it usually isn’t.”

  Kivyress jumped up and turned to Ember. “Oh! He’s the rogue y’all captured, isn’t he? That is a lot of scars, but hey, he’s actually kind of handsome, isn’t he? You know, all outsider things aside.”

  Eclan grimaced. “You know I can hear you, runt.”

  Ember stared at her sister for a few moments, trying to figure out if she was being serious or not. Nothing seemed to suggest otherwise. She bit her tongue and turned in the general direction of the Glade. “But anyways, we should be going. Come on, Kivy.”

  “No, wait,” Kivyress said. “I have questions. I’ve never met a rogue before. Come on, Em. It’s not like he can hurt us. He’s on the other side of the ravine. The ravine, Ember. And what’s
more, it’s this part of the ravine. You know, where if you fall over the edge, you plummet to your death? We’ll be fine. The absolute worst that can happen is him shouting swears at us.”

  Ember flattened her ears. “I don’t know about that. He’s not exactly predictable. We really should tell Lupine about this. He did show up right before the East attacked last time. I know he’s not Eastern, but he could be a hired scout.”

  “Rogues can be hired? Interesting. I’ll have to remember that.”

  Ember swatted at her sister’s side. “It’s also possible he’s an assassin sent here to kill you. Now come on.”

  “Uhm, Ember?”

  She closed her eyes and sighed. “What?”

  “Miiight want to look.”

  Ember spun toward the ravine. Eclan was gone. She darted back to the edge, cyan pulsing with her heartbeat. He was scaling down the cliff face, heading for the tree bridge. She bit her tongue harder. “Kivy, you should go.”

  “No, I’m not leaving you here alone with some crazy assassin. Besides, two against one means better odds for both of us.”

  ‘Odds. Chance. There’s only one outcome, and chance has nothing to do with it. If the future is a direct result of the things I do right now, I’ll just have to make the right decisions to get the right outcome. No pressure. Should I make her leave? If she runs fast enough to get backup, yes. Also, she’s not ready for this. She’s not a border guard. She’s not even planning to become one.’

  “Uh, no, you should go find help. Three or four cats make for even better odds. If you hurry, you might make it back before he gets out.”

  Kivyress pinned back her ears. “Are you sure? You don’t even know if you can still fight yet. Why not go together and hope he’s here when we get back?”

  Ember snorted, trying to keep herself as calm as she could. “And we don’t even know if he’ll survive the climb across. You’ve got enough time. Just go, okay? Someone needs to stay here and make sure he doesn’t get in. Who knows what he might be here to do? I’ll be alright. I’ve survived some cats’ worst nightmares. I can deal with one crazy rogue.”