Page 100 of Blacktail

She felt his lie, nonetheless. The Old Kitty Mother reached into the heart of him, into his essence. His soul is like his face, she thought. It was shredded once, I think. How did you survive such? I wonder. How, unless…“Ahhh,” she said. At the sound of her voice, cold and ancient, all the wolves drew back a step, muttering among themselves. All of them but Raze. “You knew Him.”

Raze’s eyes grew wide.

“You are a hunter, yes…now you are a hunter and fearless. Even the wolf kings down from the mountains do not challenge you. But it wasn’t always like this. Not always. Your mate, I think…you loved her, and…” The Old Kitty Mother trailed off, looking into the middle distance. “Of course. Your ‘mate’—she was a two-legs.” Her tail swished. “Wasn’t it so?”

“Please,” whispered Raze. “I have never spoken of this.”

“You feel shame,” the Old Kitty Mother said. “Normally I’d agree. But in your case…there is no need. You have redeemed yourself, many times over.” She sniffed him again. “You hunted men, didn’t you? Even before the blood curse, you hunted them. I can hear them, you know. They still scream inside you. Even now they scream.”

“What are you?” the old king whispered furiously. “What are you?”

“I am nothing, Chester,” she said. “I am your supper.”

“HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT NAME?” he screamed, loud enough to blast her whiskers back.

“Now who needs to keep his voice down? Hmm?” She examined her paw, gave it a light lick. “It’s all right. I’ve had my fun. You can have yours.”

His horror was such that he could only look at her.

“Oh, come now. It’s supper time, King Chester!” she said. “Be quick, if you please.”

“I will not.” He sounded weak, frightened.

“No? May I ask why? I’ll confess to being a bit confused.” She waited, but he made no answer. “I can make you, you know.” He tried to pull back, but she reached out and held him. He could not retreat…but bringing him forward, leaning down his head, binding his jaws to her will, even as he crushed her bones…This would be a pesky chore.

“Oh…very well.” She sighed. “We’ll sleep on it, then, hmm? Perhaps in the morning you’ll feel differently. I will be over there if you feel peckish in the night.”

“Yes,” he said, backing slowly to his pack. “Sleep.”

“Oh, and Chester?”

“Yes?”

“It would anger me greatly if you tried to sneak away.”

iii

They called her the Old Kitty Mother as a sign of respect, but no one now living even suspected her true age. She was older than the oldest sea turtles, older, perhaps, than all but a few trees. How many winters had she seen? Four hundred? Six? Even she no longer remembered. Her kittenhood was dim to her now, most of it lost forever on the other side of a vast ocean of blood. She had lived long and seen much. Death held no further terrors for her.

“But what comes after,” she whispered, “ahh, now that is something else again.” The sound of her voice carried in the night air. One of the young dogs in Raze’s pack whined at the sound of it.

He’s right to cry, she thought. If she still possessed a soul—something long in doubt—there were sins on it to damn herself and ten others like her. The roots of her tree twined around the body of god-emperor Nobununga, the good tiger of the east. Her sisters’ corpses decorated the branches.

She had stood before the gate of hell many times. On the first occasion she was dragged, bound and screaming. Not much later she began to go of her own free will. Now, nearing the end of her long life, she had seen more than she cared to of what lay inside that gate. Worse, she feared she would see the rest before long.

But the threat of hell had loosened its grip on her since the passing of men. More and more often these days, she found her thoughts drifting over the field of violets, one of the few scraps of her kittenhood that she had clung to over her long journey of years. It was a real place, that field—which is to say, it was a physical place. The lands which exist solely in the mind can be as real as any, and more terrible than most.

She was called Night Dancer, then, and was counted the least of her mother’s litter. She was sickly. She came late to speech. By their first autumn her sisters were well along in their apprenticeship. Mother was a great witch from a family of great witches, though getting on in age by then. She had borne her litter not out of love, but in hopes of finding one among the kittens to take her place when she was gone.

The field of violets was one of Mother’s lessons, and the only one the Old Kitty Mother remembered fondly. The field was a good place, the best place she had ever known. She carried the memory of it in her heart next to that of Karakaa. She retreated there sometimes, when her future was too dark to bear.

“Magic is like water,” Mother said as they gathered around her among the flowers. “It is in the air always. Sometimes it will collect, like beads of morning dew. We have all seen it, yes? It is the mouse, who ducks into a bolt-hole that is not there when the shadow of the hawk falls over him. It is the little bird who wears the flesh of a demon to protect her eggs.” They all swished their tails, for they were no longer kittens. Most had seen such things in their wanderings, or heard tell of them.

“Little magics,” said her mother on that long-ago spring morning, “like beads of morning dew. But given a channel of ways, the dew will collect and flow through it, will it not? That is the first task before you. Build in your mind a channel of ways, that the magic may flow in you.”

Among the sisters, Bird-Feather was considered the likely heir to her mother’s coven. Knowing this, she had grown arrogant. She saw fit to interrupt Mother’s lesson. “But, mistress,” she asked, “how are we to build channels in the mind? To touch the inner fleshes, even gently, is a killing blow.”

Mother’s eyes flashed. “That is a foolish question,” she said, “and the fact that you interrupted me is the least of it. Perhaps we have misjudged you, Bird-Feather. Will another of my talkative apprentices answer you, hmm? Anyone? No? Perhaps a fast will help you concentrate on your lessons. A week or so, I think—”