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Leo wasn’t a normal cat, and he wasn’t catching mice tonight.
* * *
As the morning light streamed into the loft, Archie stretched and turned around. He didn’t expect to see anyone. He had moved from the house to the mill when the room he shared with his two brothers had seemed a little too cramped. Now, Rupert would be in their late parents’ former room, and Harris would be in their old room alone—until Rupert had his own wife and children and kicked Harris out here. And then Archie wouldn’t have a place at all.
As such, Archie expected the day’s work would be loaded with more not-so-subtle hints that he soon would be forced to make his own way. But instead, there was the brown tabby cat sitting on the windowsill, staring at him. “Puss?”
The cat let out an angry yowl, then looked more pointedly downward.
On the floorboards of the loft, a handful of grain had been arranged to form three figures. But they weren’t just figures. They were letters. Maybe even a name?
Archie rubbed at his eyes, but the message remained as clear as day.
He looked back at the cat. “Leo? Your name is Leo?”
And then something happened that Archie had never heard from the ornery brown tabby before. The cat purred.
Archie grinned. “All right. Leo it is then.”
Leo the magic cat.
Chapter 5
Cat Amongst the Pigeons
Leo watched as Archie pulled back the string of his grandfather’s old bow and aimed an arrow at a tree. It went wide and landed in the brush, closer to the gnarled thorn trees of the Darkwood.
Again.
Leo made a show of grooming his left paw, completely unimpressed. Archie really was terrible at this. This patch of glade near the faerie’s forest was always a great place for rabbits, but the boy’s shooting would only serve to frighten them away. What were his parents thinking, calling him Archer? Or even Archibald?
But then again, they were humans. Peasants. Maybe his name really was just Archie.
Archie rubbed at his crow’s nest of sandy blond hair and frowned down at the bow. Since Leo had appeared in the loft that morning, the boy had been biddable and hopeful enough. All Leo had to do was point his tail at the old bow to get his new pet human moving his bare feet in the proper direction, but Archie’s enthusiasm for the sport seemed to have rubbed off from him as surely as the skin had been rubbed off his forearm when the bowstring went wide. “Are you sure this is the best way for me to earn my fortune?”
Well, they would have to do something to impress the king—he was the key to getting what both the cat and the miller boy wanted most. Leo wanted to get inside the king’s castle, and the boy had his lowborn eyes on the princess. Princesses didn’t just decide on their own who they were going to marry. They married whoever their royal fathers deemed worthy.
It was a truth so obvious even a miller’s son should know it.
Absent of a title, the bow seemed like it would be the boy’s best chance of getting his sovereign’s attention. Archie might currently be a shoeless, scruffy, and frequently smelly son of a miller, but the king loved his huntsmen. Somehow, Leo knew that in his bones.
“And you couldn’t—I don’t know—enchant the bow? Help me out a bit?”
Yes. Archie still seemed to think Leo was some sort of faerie. Pointing his tail and moving around grain to form a few letters could only communicate so much. But at least in this case, Archie was asking for something a cat was well-equipped to provide for him.
Leo let out a disdainful yowl and went out to the brush, letting the useless miller boy sit in his own failure. A few moments later, the cat returned, dragging a snowshoe hare in his mouth.
And then another.
“Oh,” said Archie with a bit of bemusement. “You got them. Good job.” He reached down to pet Leo, but the cat stepped sideways, glaring to warn the boy off.
Leo might have accepted Archie as his human pet, but there were still rules. Accepting affection from a comely maiden, a doting matron, or even the occasional child (as long as their hands weren’t too sticky) was tolerable, but not from another male with hair on his face.
The thought seemed so natural that it should go without question.
“Sorry.” Rubbing at the old scratch on his hand, Archie backed away. He looked at the bow. “Now what should we do?”
Leo sighed. It seemed he would have to do everything himself. Maybe even find his own rucksack and fancy pair of knee-high boots so he could personally deliver their catch to the king.
