Andre Norton: Catfantastic II

The female human screams and falls, blood steaming in the cold air. The kitten sets up a thin wailing as the mad two-legs snatches it up. The other people stand trapped as one of us might alone at night on a road with two suns racing toward you and a horn blaring.

"He's got a knife!" someone whispers.

"Call 911."

"'Fraid to move."

The mad two-legs starts to back off, clutching the two-leg infant he has stolen. He kicks the wheeled box away.

"No," whispers Merlin's human. Again, she is afraid. The smell of the other's blood turns her sick.

"No," she says again. She cannot take her eyes from the mad one's thorn. She cannot shut out the smell of the blood, the thin wail of the human kitten. She can not run away. She is afraid to move, afraid to die. The fear builds up and up past bearing. And then-

"No!" she screams, a yowl of battle fury that would have done any of the Free Folk proud. "Oh, no, you don't!"

She tugs her pouch from her shoulder, runs forward, swings it, and lashes down with it upon the arm that holds the thorn. The thorn drops. It rings upon the dirty stone.

"Get the knife!" she screams. Carrying his prey, the mad one starts to run off.

"No!" Merlin howls. "Let's stop him!" He flings his spirit self clear of his body toward his human. I yowl and follow him. In that instant, our strength burns through the ties that hold him to his flesh and her to her fear. She shrieks and hurls herself forward, stumbling on her foolish "shoes," and toppling forward. At the last instant, she reaches out and grasps the madman's knees.

"Help!" she gasps. Blood pours down her muzzle. The mad one begins to thrash. As small as Merlin's human is, she cannot hold him long. Merlin and I pour our strength into her, and her grasp tightens. Her eyes blaze like the full moon in a fighting cat's eyes, sweeping round the people who stand, still too afraid to move, and kindling them.

"Great tackle, lady!” yells a burly male and leaps in to help. Two others join him.

"I'll call 911!"

And Merlin's human, creeping forward fast, snatches the baby from the mad two-legs, clutches it to her breast as if it were her own, and runs to the female who lies bleeding on the ground.

"The baby's fine," she tells the woman. "But you're not." She hands the baby over to a friend, then reaches about her neck and pulls free a wrapping much like Merlin has to wear. "So much for this scarf," she mutters and begins to wind it about the hurt one's arm.

She has the blood flow stopped when a pack of male humans arrives, as alike in what they wear as littermates can be in markings.

"Police," she says. "Thank God."

She wipes at the blood on her muzzle. When the men came up to her, she speaks calmly. We can see them shake their heads and purse their lips in admiration.

"Lady, you've got guts," one tells her as he writes down her name.

"She's not afraid, did you see that?" Merlin exults. "She's not afraid! Not any more! Not ever again!"

His spirit leaps in the air for joy…

… and comes down in nothingness. "Free!" he whispers. "At last I'm free to hunt!"

His eyes fill with awe and wonder. "How beautiful it is. And look-!"

I see him leave his body behind and race toward the deep, darkness of a stand of trees I have only seen in my dreams. I follow him in thought. Within the Dreamtrails would be patches of sun and shadow, clear, clean streams, and fat, stupid fowl and fish. He will hunt until he tires and sleep on soft grass, then rise to hunt again or roll in a meadow, letting the sun shine upon the fur of his underbelly. There will be mates for him, and kittens. He will be young again, forever.

Still, he had feared to be alone. Well, perhaps I could follow. And I do want to see. I hurl myself forward, but a door I cannot see slams before my nose, and I go sprawling. My thoughts reel, but I think I hear Merlin meow with joy at the sight of a tall, stocky human male, whose face I had seen in his human's dreams and whom she had mourned as gone ahead. He comes walking beside a creature that dwarfed us all in size and length of fangs: one of the Free Folk of the very longest time ago.

"Look at the furball, Steelsheen," booms the human. "I think I know this one."

So humans do hunt the Dreamtrails, companioned by the eldest Folk of all.

Merlin runs toward him and is swept onto his shoulder where he chirps and purrs like a kitten. They disappear into the lush shadows…

… and I awake beside the cage in which Merlin's husk lies cast aside.

I nose open the door and begin to groom him. He and his human had been vain of his fur; when she returns, as I know she will, it would hurt her to see him with a matted coat.

The vision at the last of Merlin entering the Dreamtrails dazes my senses, or I would hear my people come in.

"Puff? What are you doing in… ohhh, Merlin slipped away. Do you think Puff Knew?"

"That one? He doesn't care. Not Puff." Pain quivers in the young human's voice as she moves me gently aside and reaches to straighten Merlin's body's limbs. "Not like this one. What a neat cat. Well, I'm not looking forward to seeing Ms. Black come in, are you? At least Dr. Colt will have to be the one to tell her, not me."

She shuts the door to the cage and moves away, walking slowly, her shoulders bent. I smell sadness on her. It hurts me, too.

I pad toward her, slip between her legs, and sit before her feet. I mew.

"Why, Puff! What is it, lad?"

I mew again, arch up, and paw at her knee.

"You want to be picked up? You, Puff? Feeling all right?"

Again I cry. She bends and lifts me. To my surprise, the teeth of pain that clench me loosen a little. I begin to purr. As if the sound eases some pain-rat gnawing her, she holds me tighter-though never too tight-and lays her face against my head. Her skin is warm. Under the masking scents of bitter waters, it smells sweet, like a faint dream of my mother and my littermates.

I put up a paw as I had seen Merlin do and pat her face. Salt water falls upon my fur, but for once, I do not care.

We both still feel the pain, but it is less-for both of us. Then, she sets me down.

"Thank you, Puff. I needed to hold someone."

Another of the things that humans say; this time, I know she means it. I need it, too. She was a healer, or she would be. Well, I am a healer, too. We are all in our rightful places-though she does not know yet just how right they are. Well, she is young for a human; she will learn. I will see to it.

I trot out where the humans and their sick friends wait. If they can take comfort from me, they are welcome to it. Perhaps it will ease the pain I feel: so little time to know a Soulsinger; but losing him aches like a clawed nose.

So much they know, these humans, and so little. So much they take from us-and so much they give.

She materialized, stood on her familiar padded paws and looked around at an utterly strange place. After every long sleep the world was more changed, and after every incarnation the next lifetime became more bizarre. The last time, a Norwegian peasant woman fleeing "holy" wars, she had come a long sea voyage to what was called the New World. Now she found it so new she scarcely recognized it as Earth at all. Under her paws lay a great slab of something like stone, but with a smell that was not stone's good ancient smell. Chariots of glass and metal whizzed by at untoward speeds, stinking of their own heat. Grotesque buildings towered everywhere, and in them she could sense the existence of people, more people than had ever burdened the world before, a new kind of people who jangled the air with their fears, their smallness, their suspicion of the gods and one another.