Trixie Longclaw's Arc

Chapter 8 of 13

They tracked the rival at first light. Celeste followed the faded map, her small paws sure on the trail. The scent led away from the hollow, deeper into woodland Trixie had never walked. Trixie kept her claws out the whole way. She did not look at Celeste, and Celeste did not ask her to. The trail ended at a split oak — a huge tree gaped open at the base, its insides dark and damp. The rival was inside, backed against the curve of wood, eyes bright. A lean tom, pale-furred, ribs showing. Trixie blocked the only way out. "Run and I take a leg," she said. He did not run. He looked past her, at Celeste, and his ears flattened in something that was not fear. "You brought her," he said. He nosed something forward from the shadow at his feet — a small arrangement of tiny bones, set in a careful ring. Kitten bones, clean and old. "She knows this place. She knows what's buried here." Trixie's tail stilled. Behind her, Celeste's breathing changed — just once, just slightly. Celeste stepped past Trixie into the hollow. She did not look at the rival. She looked at the bones. "They were mine," she said. "Three of them. A long time ago." She turned, and Trixie saw now what she had walked past on the trail without knowing — a weathered upright stone at the tree's roots, scratched faintly with three small marks. "I lived here before the bridge. Before you. I left because I couldn't stay." Her voice did not shake. "He's my brother." Trixie stood very still between them. The rival was cornered. She could end him in two strides. But the map in her teeth that morning, the withheld hollow, the careful waiting — it all rearranged itself into one shape, and the shape was not betrayal. It was a cat coming home the long way. Trixie sheathed her claws. "He leaves the hollow," she said. "He does not leave the wood. He answers to me now, through you." She turned her back on both of them and walked out into the light. The partnership she had meant to dissolve had just grown a third rope, and she did not yet know whether to pull it or cut it.