Raven Catclaw's Arc

Chapter 2 of 12

The gray tomcat stood below her, his face still buried in the bundle of catmint and root. He had spoken. Now he waited. Raven clung to the oak branch, claws deep in the bark, and knew that one wrong word would send him back into the trees. She could smell prey from miles off. She could not think of a single thing to say. So she said nothing. She dropped from the branch and landed soft in the grass, a body's length away. He tensed. His blue eyes fixed on her, wary, tired, ready to run. She sat and looked at the ground between them instead of at him. "I watched you," she said. "I learned what you liked. I laid it out to bring you close. That was a trick." She made her voice flat, like his. "You should know that before you trust me." He did not run. His ears turned. "Most cats lie about the trick," he said. His voice came out deep and slow, with a small strange lilt to it, softer than his stare. "You are the first to name it." "I don't know your name," Raven said. "I don't know anything true about you. Only the smell you love." He was quiet a while. His claws pressed the dirt, then let go. "Whisper," he said. "Whisper Nightbeam." He looked past her, into the dark trees. "My mother raised me alone. Deep in the forest, in a den with no light. We were always hungry." He stopped. "A bear killed her while she hunted. I was small. Four months." Raven held still. She thought of her own flight as a kit, the thing that ran beside her and vanished. The anger she still carried. She had never told anyone. "Something ran with me once," she said. "When I was young and scared. I lost it. I never found out what it was." Her claws dragged two lines through the grass. "I'm still angry about it." Whisper looked back at her. The bored mask was gone. For the first time he seemed to see her, not a trap, not a trick, but a cat who had also lost something in the dark. "You don't have to bring me plants," he said. "You could just come." Raven's chest loosened. She had feared silence. Instead she had traded him one true thing for another. It was not the bundle that held him now. It was the loss they shared. "Tomorrow, then," she said. "No trick. Just me." He nudged the bundle toward her with his nose, an offer, and stepped back into the weeds. He did not vanish this time. He waited at the edge until she rose, then walked beside her a little way before the trees took him. Raven had his name now. She had his story. She also had a promise she had to keep, and no gift to hide behind when she returned.