Trixie Longclaw's Arc

Chapter 9 of 13

Trixie woke before light with the third rope still tight in her chest. She had not slept well since the split oak. She slipped from her den and climbed toward the great tree to think alone — and stopped at the edge of the grass. The clearing was already full. Cats ringed the oak in a loose circle, sitting in the wildflowers, tails curled tight. Not her cats. Not only her cats. Word had moved in the night, and they had come to watch. Celeste sat at the front of the ring, small and still, green eyes fixed on the trunk. "Someone called them," she said, without turning. "Not me." Trixie pushed through the circle and saw it. Fresh claw marks, deep and jagged, scored the bark from shoulder height down to the roots — longer than her own reach, set in a pattern she did not know. The scent on them was cold. Whoever made them had done it at dawn and gone, leaving the watchers to do the work of the challenge for him. She felt every head turn to her. This was the trap. Match the marks, or be matched. Trixie rose onto her hind legs against the oak and dragged her long claws down beside the stranger's — slower, deeper, four clean lines that went further. She scented the base. She turned and looked at the ring of cats one by one, and one by one, their heads lowered. Celeste's lowered last, and only a little. "He'll come back," Celeste said quietly as the circle broke up. "He wanted them to see you answer. Now he knows what you are." Trixie stared at the two sets of marks side by side on the trunk. She had held the tree. She had also just told an unseen cat exactly how far her claws would go.