Tad Williams - Tailchaser’s Song

Unwilling to move his head, he sensed, rather than saw, that Meerclar's Eye had moved but a short distance. When he was finally rewarded by a faint movement at the tunnel mouth, it seemed as if he had waited several lifetimes.

Carefully, so carefully, a nose appeared from the hiding hole and sniffed the air. The rest of the Squeaker followed. It sat frightened-eyed on the lip of the tunnel for a moment, every movement showing a readiness to run at the first sign of danger.-Crouched, with nose wrinkling, it tested for hazard. It was a field mouse, brown-gray and skittery.

Without awareness, Fritti began to flick his tail back and forth.

The Squeaker, scenting nothing immediately dangerous close by, moved a cautious distance away from the hole mouth and began to search for food. Its nose, ears, and eyes were constantly trained for predators. Never straying more than a quick leap away from its hole, the Squeaker scavenged from side to side of the dry stream trough.

Fritti found that it took all of his control to not leap down on the mouse that seemed so close. His stomach clenched silently with hunger, and he could feel the impatient trembling of his hind legs.

But he also remembered Bristlejaw's admonition to be patient. He knew that the little Squeaker would be back down its bolt-hole at the first sign of movement.

I will not be a kitten, Fritti told himself. This is a good hunt-plan. I will wait for the proper moment.

Finally, he judged that the mre'az was as far from the burrow as was necessary. When the mouse turned its back on his position for a moment, Tailchaser brought up his forepaw and dipped it slowly over the edge of the gully wall, halting and freezing if the mouse seemed about to turn his way. Gradually, with great care, he stretched his paw down, until he felt the faint currents of the night-eddy ruffle the fur of his extended foot.

The eddy carried the scent around-down the gully walls to circle slowly back up to the mouse from a point seemingly near its own tunnel.

As the cat-smell reached it the rodent went stiff, nostrils flared. Tailchaser could see the bound, shivering tension of the mouse as it scented a mortal enemy-apparently between it and the escape route. The Squeaker remained frozen in place for several heartbeats as the eddy carried Fritti's scent past it. Then, in an agony of confusion, it made a halfhearted lunge away from the hole mouth, toward Tailchaser.

All the cat's pent-up energy was discharged at once. His tight-coiled muscles took him over the edge of the stream bed in one motion. As soon as his hind legs touched the ground, he was airborne again. The mouse did not even have a chance to utter a noise of surprise before it died.

Following his left shoulder in the way Stretchslow had directed him, Fritti thought about his strange encounter with the older hunter.

He had always seen Stretchslow at leisure-an aloof, unapproachable figure-but he had not acted like that today with Tailchaser. He had been different: animated and energetic. Even more strange, he had treated Tailchaser with great kindness and respect. Although Fritti had been very careful not to offend Stretchslow in times past, he had certainly never done anything to merit respect from a mature hunter. There was a riddle there that he could not solve as he had the night-eddy.

Such a day! How the others back at the Wall would laugh and call out at the story of one of the Folk learning Rikchikchik language in the tree of a squirrel-lord.

But he might never return to Meeting Wall to sing his song. He was of the Folk, and his oath would bind him. And now he was a hunter-sung and blooded.

Still, the hunter felt very sad and small.

Past the midpoint of night he began to feel a continuous weakness in his tired muscles. He had walked far by the Folk's standards; even farther for one his age. Now he had to sleep.

Nosing about for a sleeping place, he selected a grassy indentation at the base of a large tree. He sampled the breeze carefully, and found nothing to prevent him from bedding down. He turned three times around in the small hollow-honoring Allmother, Goldeneye and Skydancer, the life-givers-then curled up, covering his nose with his tail-tip to save warmth. He was asleep very quickly.

Dreaming, he was under the ground, in darkness. Fritti was struggling, scrabbling at dirt that gave way under his paws, but always there was more dirt.

He knew something was hunting him, just as he hunted Squeakers. His heart was racing.

His scraping paws at last broke through, and he fell through a wall of earth into the open air.

There, in a forest clearing, were his mother and siblings. Hushpad stood there, too, and Stretchslow and Thinbone. He tried to warn them about the thing that was chasing him, but his mouth was full of dirt; as he tried to speak, dust fell out onto the ground.

Looking at Tailchaser, his friends and family began to laugh, and the more he tried to indicate the danger they were in from the following-thing, the thing that hunted him, the more they laughed-until the sneezing, high-pitched sounds swarmed in his ears…

Suddenly, he was awake. The laughter had become a high-pitched barking. As he listened, stock-still, he could hear it clearly. It was quite close by, and in a moment he identified it: a fox, yipping in the darkness beyond the trees.

Foxes were no danger to grown cats. Fritti had relaxed back into his sleeping position when he heard another sound-the unhappy mewing of a kitten.

He leaped up instantly to investigate, springing out of the copse and down a tree-crowded slope. The barking and snarling became louder. He leaped onto a crest of rock that jutted from a welter of underbrush.

Many jumps downslope from him an adult red fox had backed a small catling against a hummock. The young cat's back was arched, all the fur puffed out from its small body.

Still not a very daunting sight, thought Fritti, not even to one of the Visl.

As he jumped down from the rock, Fritti noticed something unusual in the young cat's posture: it was injured, somehow, and despite all its loud hissing and spitting, was obviously not in much shape to fight. Fritti felt sure that the Visl knew this, too.

Then, shockingly, Tailchaser realized that the fox-cornered catling was Pouncequick.

… cats in their huddled sleep (Two heaps of fur made one)

Twitch their ears and whimper- Do theyd ream the same dream?

–Eric Barker

"Pouncequick! Little Pouncequick!" Fritti loped down the shrub-spotted slope. "It's me! Tailchaser!"

The youngling, from his sagging defensive posture, turned a drooping eye in Fritti's direction, but showed no sign of recognition. The fox turned sharply to look at the oncoming Tailchaser, but gave no ground. When Fritti drew to a halt a jump or two away, the Visl barked a warning.

"Come no closer, bark-scrabbler! I will do for you, also!"

Tailchaser could now see that the Visl was a female, and despite her ruffled hackles, not much bigger than he. She was thin, too, and her legs were trembling-whether from anger or fear, Fritti could not tell.

"Why do you menace this cat, hunt-sister?" sang Fritti, slowly and soothingly. "Has he done wrong to you? He is my cousin-son, and I must stand for him."

The ritualistic question seemed to calm the fox a little, but she did not back off. "He menaced my pups," she said, panting. "I will fight you both if I must."

Her pups! Tailchaser understood the situation better. Fox mothers, just as the matriarchs of the Folk, would do anything to protect their litters. He looked at her protruding ribs. It must have been a difficult autumn for mother and young.

"How was your family menaced?" Tailchaser inquired. Pouncequick, a jump away, was staring fixedly at the Visl, seemingly unaware of Fritti's presence.