Soon enough, Jada began to mention the need for another trip— didn’t Thorn love having fresh fish and meat?—interspersed with griping about the short days and long, dark nights of midwinter. A quick excursion would do the trick, Jada mused during their extended evenings by the fire, to disperse the winter doldrums.
Thorn greatly feared Jada would continue to stay away even longer with every excursion, then eventually leave and never return to the little cottage in the woods that would become Thorn’s immortal tomb.
That low-grade, background terror accompanied Thorn on her walks through the sleeping, snow-covered garden. The bluebirds still flitted through, bright spots of sapphire in a white world, and the bunnies revealed their continued presence via the prints in the snow, trammeling through the lighter, delicatescribing of mice and birds across the otherwise pristine surface. The chickens and Nessie, though, kept to their steamy warm enclosures. Even the surrounding forest stood muffled and still, no soughing of wind or scraping of branches, the silence so complete Thorn could hear the soft impact of the giant, lacy snowflakes as they fell.
She might as well be entirely alone, already sleeping away, another frozen thing in a lifeless world. Waiting in agonized paralysis for a spring that would never arrive.
Recognizing that the gloom of early dusk did nothing to improve her morose mood, Thorn turned her feet back to the warm and cheerful lights of the cozy cottage, wishing she could find a way to escape it. Her prince would never come to find her because she didn’t exist, and she existed less with the slipping away of each day. She needed help and there was none to be had.
A black shape materialized out of the snowy twilight, as if the deep shadow of the bare-branched willow tree detached itself, and slunk toward her. Sleek and sinuous, it moved silently, stalking her with the predatory grace of the hawks that circled, lazily eyeing the hapless baby bunnies before striking. Like those bunnies, Thorn stilled. The cottage and safety lay on the other side of the creature, Jada blissfully within and ignorant of the danger.
As it drew near, the black shape grew distinct, outlined by falling snow. Gleaming black fur and emerald eyes that shone as if lit from within, color brilliant even in the gray light. It was like the forest cats that sometimes leapt the rose hedge, but so much larger. The massive paw it lifted to lick, almost thoughtfully as it gazed at her with placid calm, briefly flashed white claws longer than Thorn’s fingers.
Was this the danger Jada had so diligently guarded her from?
“Hello, Thorn,” the cat said, its voice a warm, throaty purr.
Thorn couldn’t contain her surprise. “You can talk?”
“When I choose to.” The cat made it sound like that was a rare occurrence. “At the moment, I choose to talk to you.”
“How do you know my name?”
“Mine is Moriah. If you knew enough to recognize my name, you would also understand that it is my nature to know all things in the world.”
“Must be nice.”I am having a conversation with a cat,she thought to herself in wonder and terror. Was this yet another symptom of her mind slowly shredding, the once-firm reality of the waking world blurring around the edges into nothingness? “It seems to be my nature to know nothing, in or of the world.”
“Is it, though?” Moriah seemed to smile. “You are but a young thing and, as you say, ignorant of much. But is that your nature or by someone’s design?”
Thorn’s heart thundered with an emotion that might be hope. She forgot the bizarreness of a talking cat knowing her name and fastened on the possibility that all she’d suspected might be true. Maybe she wasn’t crazy. “Do you know the answer to that question?”
“Of course,” the cat replied with a hint of fang. “As already discussed, I know the answers to all questions. Take note, child: I speak rarely and don’t care to waste words when I do.”
“I apologize,” Thorn said meekly, as she would to pacify Jada in a snit.
“Here is a better question for you to answer. What becomes of the caterpillar that spins a cocoon and never breaks free?”
“It dies,” Thorn answered on a hush, thinking of those sad, dried-up pods she occasionally found in the garden.
“And the world loses a butterfly.”
Was she the fossilized butterfly or the trapped caterpillar? “I don’t know how to break free. She puts me to sleep. And there are wards.”
The cat looked almost pitying. “In dreams, all things are possible, all barriers surmountable, all wishes made substantial—if only for the space of a dream.”
Dreams again.“I don’t dream anymore, not since I grew up.”Even as she spoke the words, she tasted the lie in them, as if the cat’s omniscience illuminated the untruths planted in her own mind.
“Thorn, listen to me well: Everyone dreams.”
“But I don’t.”
“Then look to the reason why.”
Jada.
The cat uncoiled to its feet, long black tail waving idly. “I suspect the one answer, once you hit upon it, will fit any number of questions. Also, there can be many answers to the same question, all of them correct.”
“And even if I have an answer, that still doesn’t tell me what I need to know or what I should do.”
