Angry Cat's Arc

Chapter 10 of 11

The hills rose ahead of them, steep and covered in loose stones. Angry Cat's paws ached from the climb, but he didn't slow down. Harriet walked beside him, her breath coming harder now. Neither of them spoke. The map had shown a signpost somewhere near the top, and that was all they needed to know. They found it where the gravel path split into two branches. Harriet pulled out the map and held it flat against the ground. Angry Cat studied both trails. The left path curved into thick brush, its stones scattered and overgrown. The right path stayed clear, marked by a worn groove in the dirt. But the map didn't say which one led forward. Harriet traced the lines with her paw, then looked up at him. "The map stops here," she said. "It doesn't show what comes next." Angry Cat's claws scraped the gravel. He had followed this far because the map promised answers. Now it gave him nothing. He walked toward the left path and stopped at its edge. The bushes looked undisturbed, no prints in the dirt. Then he turned to the right path and saw something—a single paw print pressed into the mud near the fork. Old, but not erased. Someone had walked this way before. He crouched and touched it with his pad. The size was wrong for a cat. Larger. Older. His chest tightened. This was the path. He knew it without needing proof. Harriet stepped beside him and looked at the print. She didn't ask if he was sure. She just folded the map and tucked it away. "Then we go right," she said. Angry Cat straightened and started down the path. The anger in his chest shifted into something sharper—not rage, but focus. The map had brought him this far, but it couldn't take him the rest of the way. He would have to trust what he saw, not what someone else had written. And for the first time, he was ready to do that.