Page 97 of Blacktail

“I will not call your mate, Leaper, back to you,” he said softly, so that the others would not hear. “It is not the proper way of things. He is dead. Your puppies as well. But know that they are together now, at my Far Hill. They wait for you. Do you understand?”

Joy-Hop paused. “I would be with—”

“No. I know it is hard. I know this very well. But no. You are free now. You will never be caged again. You must go out into the world. Life is your gift from the Forest God, but it is also your duty to Him. You must carry on—even past the outer edge of your courage.” He paused. “Do you understand?”

After a moment, Joy-Hop wagged her tail. It clanged against the walls of her cage.

When they were all freed, Blacktail stood in the center of the room. They gathered around him in a rough circle. Moonlight streamed in through the single window.

“Why is the light red?” someone whispered.

“The moon is bleeding, you idiot,” said the white cat. “He has bitten it. What else could it possibly be?”

When they all sat before him, Blacktail lifted his paw. He bit deep. His own blood flowed out, rich and black. “You must taste of this and be healed. Take more than a taste if you are sick. Afterward you will go out into the world, into your packs and trees and burrows. There are no more cages. Tell those you meet what you have seen.”

“Lord…” Joy-Hop said, halting and afraid.

Blacktail looked at her.

“The blood curse in us. It is very hungry. It might pass into you. I would not see th—”

“Hush your mouth, fool!” the white cat hissed. “It’s not for the likes of us to question Him.”

Joy-Hop fell silent, though she did not understand. The cat went first. She approached Blacktail and stood under him. Blacktail lowered his paw to the cat’s mouth. Silence licked it once with her rough tongue. The taste of Blacktail’s blood was strange but not unpleasant, and she shivered down the length of her back. She never forgot this.

The rest of them approached one by one, tasting in kind. When it was done, they walked out into the night. Most of them bolted for the hills. The forest around this place was not deep, but it was enough to hide them for a few days.

After that it would not matter.

But the white cat—Silence—was crafty. She remembered much of the ways of the forest. She only hid herself in a tree and waited. From there she saw some of what came next.

iv

The first man arrived just after dawn. It wore a long, flowing white skin. When Silence recognized it as Doctor, the pack lord who burned-with-a-fang, she swished her tail happily. Her eyes glittered with anticipation.

Doctor paused before the gate, curious but not yet afraid. He reached out to touch the twisted metal, unable to credit what his eyes were seeing. The cat feared he might run then, but she needn’t have worried. Doctor had lived so long in his arrogance that he had forgotten what it was to know fear.

He entered the den. A short time later he screamed once in terror, then again in pain. He fell silent, then, but perhaps not in death. Not yet anyway, the cat thought, purring a happy little purr.

Blacktail walked out a short time later. His muzzle was bloody. He scented the air for a moment, then fixed his eyes on the cat. He padded over and stood beneath the tree.

“Why haven’t you run?” he asked.

“It is not every day that a little cat stands in the presence of the Forest God,” she answered. “I was very curious.”

“Such is the way of your kind.”

“Then please, Lord, tell me if you would. What is it you have done?”

Blacktail poked out his tongue and ran it across his muzzle, now red with blood. “Men bound you here in sacrifice, that they might learn the secrets of the blood curse,” he said. “I have granted them their wish. They will learn more of it than they ever wished to know.”

Behind him, Doctor staggered out through the crumpled doorway and dropped down on all fours. He was bleeding, Silence saw, he was wounded…but not dead.

Not yet.

“What have you done, Lord?” Silence said. “I do not understand.”

But it was too late. Blacktail had already turned away. As Silence watched, he walked slowly back into the forest. Before he had gone far the morning mist closed around him, and he was seen no more in that age.