Эрин Хантер - A Forest Divided

It was stupid of me to get so far ahead, Slate thought. What if something happened to him ?

Cricket is always getting into mischief. There were foxes and badgers on the moors, she knew, not to mention those aggressive cats who had appeared out of nowhere a few seasons before and settled down in huge groups as if they owned the place. What if Cricket had run into them?

Though they were littermates, Slate and Cricket were completely different cats. Slate had amber eyes and thick gray fur, quite unlike Cricket’s orange tabby pelt. Cricket was lighthearted, always joking and playing around, while Slate was more serious and liked to plan ahead.

Once they had been part of a happy family. But the sickness that stalked the moor had taken their mother and their sister, leaving Slate and Cricket alone.

We only have each other, Slate thought. I have to find him!

“YAAAHHHHH!” Slate let out a terrified yowl as something heavy landed on her back and she felt four sets of claws digging into her pelt. Instinctively she hit the ground and rolled, sliding out her claws and bracing her muscles for a fight. But her attacker still clung on, and Slate heard bubbling mrrow s of laughter coming from him.

“Cricket!” she spat. “You stupid furball!”

Cricket leaped away from her, and Slate scrambled to her paws to see him standing close beside her, his green eyes bright.

“You frightened me out of my fur!” she exclaimed.

“Yeah, I really got you.” Cricket’s tail curled with amusement. “You should have seen your face!”

Slate drew her lips back in the beginning of a snarl, then a moment later relaxed and swatted at her brother, brushing his ear with her claws sheathed. I can’t get angry with him. I love him too much.

“We can’t mess around all day,” she meowed. “We need to hunt.”

Cricket nodded vigorously. “My belly has never felt this empty.”

“Come on, then. I bet I catch something first.”

“We’ll see about that,” Cricket retorted.

The two cats split up. Cricket disappeared around a scatter of boulders, while Slate prowled across the moor, heading for the clumps of longer grass that grew around a pool. That’s a good place for prey to hide.

Slate parted her jaws to taste the air, and picked up the scent of mouse. When she angled her ears forward, she heard tiny sounds of scuffling from the long grass and saw the stems twitching as a mouse pushed its way between them. Setting her paws down lightly, Slate crept up on her prey, then bunched her muscles for a pounce. Her paws slammed down on the terrified creature and she grabbed it in her claws.

Suddenly a yowl of alarm came from behind the boulders where Cricket had disappeared. Slate paused, her head raised, the mouse wriggling desperately in her grip.

Is Cricket playing another joke? she wondered. I’ll make him sorry if I lose this mouse and we don’t eat today.

Sniffing, she caught a trace of rank scent drifting toward her. Fox! Releasing the mouse, she spun around in time to hear another yowl as Cricket burst into the open from behind the clump of boulders.

A big fox was hard on his paws, jaws wide to grab him.

My brother is not your prey!

Her heart thumping hard, Slate raced across the grass and hurled herself at the fox, swiping at its shoulder with her claws extended. The fox whipped around, faster than Slate had thought possible.

She screeched as the fox’s teeth sank into her ear and pain flooded her senses.

Slate pulled back, horrified to feel the tip of her ear tear away. For a couple of heartbeats darkness covered her eyes and her legs wobbled unsteadily.

When her vision cleared, Slate saw Cricket and the fox circling each other, both poised for the next blow. For a brief moment she realized how hungry the fox must be, now that the sickness on the moor had wiped out so much of the prey. It needs food, just like us.

Then she saw the blood pouring from her brother’s shoulder, and any sympathy she might have felt for the fox vanished like dew under hot sunlight. She lunged again, raking her claws down its side, then leaped back out of range as the fox turned toward her, snarling. Cricket dashed up behind it, nipping at its hind paws.

Slate wanted to reach her brother so that they could attack together, but the fox was too wily for that. It kept its body between the two cats, attacking so viciously, so fast, to one side and then the other, that Slate and Cricket couldn’t join up to fight side by side.

It could kill us, Slate realized, cold terror trickling down her spine.

She made one final attempt to dart around the fox, slashing it across the snout with both her forepaws as she lunged. For a heartbeat she thought she had made it past the bigger animal. Then searing pain tore across her belly, and she realized that she had left herself vulnerable to the fox’s powerful claws.

Slate let out a shriek. Her paws slipped on her own blood and she collapsed onto her side.

“Slate!” Cricket screeched, a look of horror on his face.

For a moment he stood frozen, staring, as the fox swung back toward him.

“Cricket!” Slate choked out in warning, afraid that he was too shocked to defend himself.

But Cricket recovered just in time to meet the fox as it sprang toward him. He raised one paw and scratched the fox along the side of its face. The fox yowled in pain as Cricket’s claws sank into its eye. It drew back, stumbling and shaking its head from side to side as blood streamed down its face.

It can’t see out of that eye, Slate thought. I can attack it from that side, slash its throat, and end all this.

But as Slate tried to heave herself to her paws, she realized with horror that she couldn’t move anymore. The blood from the wound in her belly was soaking the grass all around her. Dark mist was creeping up on her from every side.

A screech of rage reached her ears, seeming to come from far, far away. As her vision blurred, she made out a blocky shape—she couldn’t even tell whether it was Cricket or the fox—hurling itself toward the other in a furious attack. Then the mist swirled around her, thicker and thicker, until with a defeated whimper Slate gave herself up to darkness.

Huge green eyes peered into Slate’s and whiskers brushed across her face as she blinked groggily awake. With great effort she managed to raise her head, her torn ear aching with pain.

At her movement, the cat who was bending over her, a thin gray tabby tom, leaped back, startled.

He looked vaguely familiar, but for the moment Slate couldn’t remember where she’d seen him before.

“You’re alive!” he exclaimed, relief in his voice.

Slate barely paid any attention to his words. She had spotted some fur lying in the grass just beyond him: the most familiar fur in the world. The orange tabby fur of her brother, Cricket. Slate closed her eyes, trying to block out the sight of her littermate’s fur strewn in a mess of grass and blood.

“No…” she choked out.

The gray tabby followed her glance, and moved to stand between her and Cricket, fluffing out his fur to block her view. “You friend wasn’t so lucky,” he mewed, his voice soft and regretful. “I was out hunting and found you… and the remains of him,” he added after a moment’s pause. “The fox had gone by then.”

Slate closed her eyes as grief washed over her like a cold wave, sweeping her away to drown in darkness. Cricket gone… it’s not possible. She seemed to live the moment over again when she could have saved him, could have killed the fox or driven it off, if only she could have moved. I failed my brother. It’s my fault he’s dead.