Kira smelled the blood before she heard the scream. Three gardens away, a woman labored to give birth, and the sound pulled Kira from her tea. She set down the cup. Her striped ears flattened. Every daughter born into her bloodline carried the cat goddess's curse, and Kira meant to break it before another girl paid for a sin made centuries ago. She climbed the roof to think. Her claws found the wood easy. Two blue falcons perched on the beam, the ones her grandmother had trained to carry messages across the valley. They watched Kira with sharp eyes. She watched them back, and envied how they lived without any curse at all. The midwife had sent a note that morning. A cousin's labor was cursed. The baby was a girl, and the family wanted Kira to come. They believed she could bless the child with her foresight. No one in her family had ever stopped the curse. They only passed it down. She wrote her answer fast. She would not bless the child and lie, but show empathy and assurance with her presence. The old shrine in the bamboo held the goddess's name carved in stone. Kira believed If a curse could be placed, it could be unplaced. Kira tied the note to the nearest falcon's leg. "Take this to the midwife," she told the bird. "Tell them I ride tonight." The falcon shrieked and dropped from the beam. Its mate followed. Kira watched both birds shrink into blue dots above the trees. Then she went down to pack hoping she could inspire hope and faith. Her senses made the packing quick. She heard the loose coin under the floorboard. She smelled the dried meat gone stale and left it behind. The curse gave her a tiger's body, a tiger's hunger, a tiger's nose. Her family feared these gifts. Kira had stopped fearing them long ago. She only wanted the choice of whether to pass them on. The scream three gardens away stopped. The baby cried instead, thin and new. A girl's cry. Kira's hands went still on the pack. The curse had landed on another child, exactly as she figured. She shouldered the pack and stepped outside. The falcons were gone over the ridge now, carrying her message. Kira thought to herself “A blessing only accepted the curse.”Kira wanted it gone. She began to walk. She looked toward the dark line of bamboo where the shrine awaited. The goddess curse carved in stone there. Tonight she stopped hiding from her families curse and started to think of ways to fight it.

Kira reached the shrine before dawn. The carving waited under a cap of moss. She wiped the stone clean with her palm. The goddess's name sat there, deep and old. But the lines around it made no sense. The marks were a script Kira had never seen. She traced them with one claw and felt nothing come loose in her mind. She could not read the curse that ruled her blood. To break it, she first had to understand it. She sat back on her heels. Anger rose, then cooled into a plan. Someone in the valley must know this script. Scholars kept old records. The grandest house she knew stood a half day's ride off, a stone complex with a bath wing and a stable full of horses. Travelers said its owner collected ancient things. If anyone owned books on dead scripts, it was there. Kira copied the marks onto a scrap of cloth. She drew each line slow, checking twice. Then she whistled, high and sharp. Her grandmother's two blue falcons dropped from the bamboo and landed on a fallen beam. They had followed her through the night. She tied the cloth to one bird's leg. "Carry this ahead," she told it. "Let the scholar see what I bring." The falcon shrieked and climbed. Its mate rose after. Both birds turned toward the far house and vanished over the trees. Kira rode hard. By midday the stone complex filled her view. Painted tiles ran along the roof. A stable sat at one end, and inside stood horses of every color, a gray, a black, a brown, a painted white. They stamped as she passed. Her tiger smell reached them before she did. A servant met her at the gate and took the cloth. Kira waited in a cool bathing chamber while water dripped somewhere behind her. The servant returned, face stiff. "The master knows this script," he said. "But he will not read it for you." "Why not?" "It is temple writing of the cat goddess. He says to speak her words is to invite her eye. He wants no curse under this roof." The servant held out the cloth. "He asks you to leave." Kira took the cloth back. Her claws dented the stone floor. She had found a man who could read the curse, and he had shut the door on her. But the servant had slipped, and she had caught it. Temple writing. The script belonged to the goddess's own priests. That meant a temple had once taught it. Temples kept students, and students left records. She stood and tucked the cloth away. The scholar would not help. So she would find the place that trained men like him. She walked back to the stable, mounted, and turned her horse toward the valley's old roads. The script had a home. Kira meant to ride to it.