Mira Thorn's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Mira Thorn had three nights to save a species, and something in the dark was eating her clock. She crouched at the base of the cypress where the last breeding pair of eyed raptors had built their nest. The female lay flat on the platform of woven roots, her ribs working too fast, the cluster of glowing eyes along her brow ridge dim. The male paced a tight circle above her and would not stop. Mira had been a swamp vet for nine years. She had never had patients she could not afford to lose until now. Last night she had found prints in the mud at the waterline. Six pads, then six more, in a stride too long for any cat she knew. Tonight she heard it before she saw it: a slow wet push through the reeds, circling. She killed her lantern and listened. The thing moved in a wide ring around the cypress, testing the ground, working closer. If it reached the female before sunrise, the male would fight it and die, and the nest would end. She had hauled in coils of bracken brush that afternoon, the kind with hooked thorns that locked into fur. She had piled it in a half ring on the land side and left the water side open, because she could not cover both and the water side was deeper and harder to cross. She had guessed. Now she would learn if she had guessed right. The sabercat came from the water. It rose out of the channel in one long motion, too many legs folding and unfolding, tusks pale against the black of it. Mira's hands shook on the flare. She waited until it was three strides from the trunk, then struck the flare and threw it low. The cat flinched sideways, into the thorn wall. The hooks caught. It twisted, dragged the brush with it, snarled, and the more it fought the deeper the thorns set. It backed off the bank and slid into the channel and was gone, pulling a tangle of bracken behind it. Mira stayed on her knees a long time before she climbed to the nest. The female was still breathing. The male had not moved from his circle. On the trunk above her head, four fresh claw gouges ran down to the wood, where the cat had reached before she lit the flare. It would come back, and next time it would come from the land side, and she had used the brush she had. She thought of the researcher who came when she could, who had sat two hours and written nothing, and she understood for the first time that the woman had been saying goodbye. Mira was not ready to say it yet. She started planning the next night before the sun came up.