Tailchaser’s Song

Pleased that he had solved the puzzle, he leaped up to the far side of the stream bed and was moving away when an idea tugged at him. He turned back and inspected the gully wall for several jumps up and down on both sides. He found what he had been looking for-the half-concealed entrance to a Squeaker-burrow.

He knew that the sunwarmth would dissipate eventually. He also knew that the trick would work only once. Carefully, he set himself in place: lying atop the gully wall three or four jumps down the stream course from the burrow opening. He tested the edge of the stream-bed wall on which he lay, and found a spot that would not crumble under movement and send a shower of earth down to betray his plot. Then, working the catechism that his mother had taught him, he stilled himself into immobility to wait.

Unwilling to move his head, he sensed, rather than saw, that Meerclar's Eye had moved but a short distance. When he was finally rewarded by a faint movement at the tu

Carefully, so carefully, a nose appeared from the hiding hole and sniffed the air. The rest of the Squeaker followed. It sat frightened-eyed on the lip of the tu

Without awareness, Fritti began to flick his tail back and forth.

The Squeaker, scenting nothing immediately dangerous close by, moved a cautious distance away from the hole mouth and began to search for food. Its nose, ears, and eyes were constantly trained for predators. Never straying more than a quick leap away from its hole, the Squeaker scavenged from side to side of the dry stream trough.

Fritti found that it took all of his control to not leap down on the mouse that seemed so close. His stomach clenched silently with hunger, and he could feel the impatient trembling of his hind legs.

But he also remembered Bristlejaw's admonition to be patient. He knew that the little Squeaker would be back down its bolt-hole at the first sign of movement.

I will not be a kitten, Fritti told himself. This is a good hunt-plan. I will wait for the proper moment.

Finally, he judged that the mre'az was as far from the burrow as was necessary. When the mouse turned its back on his position for a moment, Tailchaser brought up his forepaw and dipped it slowly over the edge of the gully wall, halting and freezing if the mouse seemed about to turn his way. Gradually, with great care, he stretched his paw down, until he felt the faint currents of the night-eddy ruffle the fur of his extended foot.

The eddy carried the scent around-down the gully walls to circle slowly back up to the mouse from a point seemingly near its own tu

As the cat-smell reached it the rodent went stiff, nostrils flared. Tailchaser could see the bound, shivering tension of the mouse as it scented a mortal enemy-apparently between it and the escape route. The Squeaker remained frozen in place for several heartbeats as the eddy carried Fritti's scent past it. Then, in an agony of confusion, it made a halfhearted lunge away from the hole mouth, toward Tailchaser.

All the cat's pent-up energy was discharged at once. His tight-coiled muscles took him over the edge of the stream bed in one motion. As soon as his hind legs touched the ground, he was airborne again. The mouse did not even have a chance to utter a noise of surprise before it died.

Following his left shoulder in the way Stretchslow had directed him, Fritti thought about his strange encounter with the older hunter.

He had always seen Stretchslow at leisure-an aloof, unapproachable figure-but he had not acted like that today with Tailchaser. He had been different: animated and energetic. Even more strange, he had treated Tailchaser with great kindness and respect. Although Fritti had been very careful not to offend Stretchslow in times past, he had certainly never done anything to merit respect from a mature hunter. There was a riddle there that he could not solve as he had the night-eddy.

Such a day! How the others back at the Wall would laugh and call out at the story of one of the Folk learning Rikchikchik language in the tree of a squirrel-lord.

But he might never return to Meeting Wall to sing his song. He was of the Folk, and his oath would bind him. And now he was a hunter-sung and blooded.

Still, the hunter felt very sad and small.

Past the midpoint of night he began to feel a continuous weakness in his tired muscles. He had walked far by the Folk's standards; even farther for one his age. Now he had to sleep.

Nosing about for a sleeping place, he selected a grassy indentation at the base of a large tree. He sampled the breeze carefully, and found nothing to prevent him from bedding down. He turned three times around in the small hollow-honoring Allmother, Goldeneye and Skydancer, the life-givers-then curled up, covering his nose with his tail-tip to save warmth. He was asleep very quickly.

Dreaming, he was under the ground, in darkness. Fritti was struggling, scrabbling at dirt that gave way under his paws, but always there was more dirt.

He knew something was hunting him, just as he hunted Squeakers. His heart was racing.

His scraping paws at last broke through, and he fell through a wall of earth into the open air.

There, in a forest clearing, were his mother and siblings. Hushpad stood there, too, and Stretchslow and Thinbone. He tried to warn them about the thing that was chasing him, but his mouth was full of dirt; as he tried to speak, dust fell out onto the ground.

Looking at Tailchaser, his friends and family began to laugh, and the more he tried to indicate the danger they were in from the following-thing, the thing that hunted him, the more they laughed-until the sneezing, high-pitched sounds swarmed in his ears…

Suddenly, he was awake. The laughter had become a high-pitched barking. As he listened, stock-still, he could hear it clearly. It was quite close by, and in a moment he identified it: a fox, yipping in the darkness beyond the trees.

Foxes were no danger to grown cats. Fritti had relaxed back into his sleeping position when he heard another sound-the unhappy mewing of a kitten.

He leaped up instantly to investigate, springing out of the copse and down a tree-crowded slope. The barking and snarling became louder. He leaped onto a crest of rock that jutted from a welter of underbrush.

Many jumps downslope from him an adult red fox had backed a small catling against a hummock. The young cat's back was arched, all the fur puffed out from its small body.

Still not a very daunting sight, thought Fritti, not even to one of the Visl.

As he jumped down from the rock, Fritti noticed something unusual in the young cat's posture: it was injured, somehow, and despite all its loud hissing and spitting, was obviously not in much shape to fight. Fritti felt sure that the Visl knew this, too.

Then, shockingly, Tailchaser realized that the fox-cornered catling was Pouncequick.