The night watch guard stepped into the cold stone corridor, counting her strays. Six tonight. She wanted a full patrol, every hall covered, every corner watched. But the deeper halls had been spitting her cats back out for a week now. Tonight, she would find the cause. Past the second bell, the dark grew thick. A trail of glowing blue notes drifted down the corridor, humming a tune that made her ears feel stuffed with wool. The strays froze. One of her sleepy-eyed guard cats raised his sword at nothing, swinging at the empty air as if fighting a dream. The notes poured from the decrepit tower at the west end. She pushed inside and saw it. A tall black harp, wrapped in cobwebs, strings trembling on their own. No hand touched them. The music swelled, and her strays bolted as one, tails low, claws skittering on stone. She chased them out into the courtyard. They streamed across the wet grass toward a gnarled tree she had never trusted. Its trunk gaped open like a mouth. One by one, the strays vanished down the hollow into the dark below. The guard knelt at the opening. Cold air breathed up at her, carrying the same faint tune. The roots curled down into a tunnel she could not see the end of. Her drowsy swordsman caught up, blinking hard, finally awake. She drew a slow breath and climbed down after her cats. The harp's song followed her into the earth. Whatever fed those strings, it lived below the castle. And tonight, for the first time, she was going to meet it.

The blue notes drifted past her in the tunnel, humming that sick, twisting tune. The guard clamped her hands over her ears and ran. Her boots pounded the dirt as she chased the last flick of a tail into the dark. The music would not stop. Neither would she. The tunnel spat her out under a huge gnarled tree, its roots curling like ribs around a black opening. At the foot of the trunk lay a jagged pile of tiny swords. Her guard cats had dropped them in pure panic. She picked one up, felt its weight, and set her jaw. She climbed into the hollow. The drop came fast. She slid past twisted roots, scraping her shoulders, until her boots hit cold stone. She stood up in a cavern lit by towering crystals. They pulsed pink and gold in time with the harp song above. Some were split clean through, their cracks weeping faint light. The music was breaking them. She pressed deeper, one hand on the wall. At last she saw them. Her six guard cats, shrunk back into kittens, huddled and shaking. They circled a pillar of dark stone. None of them looked at her. None of them came. The pillar bore Latin scratched deep into its face. A keyhole sat in its crown like a small black eye. She read the words aloud, slow and careful. Her heart has gone cold. Find the keys to open her stone cold heart. The harp's tune slid through the cavern and the kittens flinched as one. The guard knelt and scooped the smallest kitten into her arms. It did not purr. It did not know her. She understood then that no calling, no training, no patient sitting would bring them back tonight. She would have to find the keys. She tucked the little sword into her belt and stood, facing the dark beyond the pillar.

The guard stood with the small sword at her belt and the ring of dark keys cold against her palm. She had pulled them from a hook deep in the tunnel and carried them down without knowing if any would fit. The kittens still circled the dark pillar in a tight, frozen ring, eyes fixed on the keystone. The blue harp song poured down from the hollow above and would not stop. She pressed her hands to her ears and forced herself to look at the cavern instead of the cats. She saw it then. Tall cracked crystals lined the walls, pulsing in time with the song. They were catching the harp's music from above and throwing it inward. At the top of the pillar, a single dark crystal hung in the air without a chain. The wall crystals fed it. The floating one trembled and held the kittens still. That was the lock on them, not the pillar itself. A shadow dropped through the hollow. Whisper Thornpaw landed light on the stones, hood thrown back, tambourine in one paw. The jeweled rim caught the cavern light and rang once as she found her footing. The note slipped into the resonance. The wall crystals flared. The floating crystal pulsed harder, and the kittens broke their circle. They hissed. Their small backs arched. One swiped at the guard's boot. "Put it down," the guard said. "You are making it worse." Whisper lowered the tambourine and crossed to the pillar. She studied the keyhole in the crown. "I have keys like that," she said. She pulled a ring from her satchel. Three keys, plain iron, nothing like the eerie set on the guard's belt. She picked one and slid it into the keyhole. It turned with a soft click. The floating crystal above the pillar cracked straight down its center. The humming cut off. The wall crystals dimmed to a low, ordinary glow. The kittens dropped flat to the stone, shook themselves, and looked up. Six small faces found the guard at once. She knelt. The smallest kitten walked to her boot and pressed its head against her shin. The others came after. She gathered them in against her coat and felt their weight settle. They were still kittens, still small, but they knew her again. She let out a breath she had been holding since the first bell. Whisper stood at the pillar, turning the broken half of the floating crystal in her paw. Behind the keyhole, a narrow seam had opened in the stone. A thin shelf slid out on its own. On the shelf sat a folded sheet of paper, edged in the same blue light the harp had used, and a second keyhole carved deeper in, waiting. The guard looked at the kittens in her arms, then at the new lock. The song was done. The work was not.

The kittens came back up the tunnel one at a time, slow on the stairs, blinking at the courtyard light. By the time the last one climbed out of the hollow tree, they were full-grown again. Their coats settled. Their swords fit their paws. The guard counted six and let her shoulders drop. Whisper Thornpaw stood at the edge of the courtyard with the broken crystal in her satchel, waiting. "Your fine," the guard said. "I am lifting it. Play at the gates whenever you want." She pulled the slip from her coat pocket and tore it in half. Whisper watched the pieces fall. "Cold ground, warm ground," Whisper said. She offered a paw. The guard took it. They shook once. Whisper turned and walked out through the iron gates without looking back. The guard led her six to the stone post by the gates. She lit the tall floor lantern inside the door. Its star-cut panels threw light across the small room. The cats sat in a half circle on the flagstones. "New rule," she said. "There is still music out there. Not the harp. Something else." She made them listen. Past the second bell, a thin line of notes drifted in from the woods, pale and curling, neither close nor far. The cats' ears swiveled toward it together. "You do not chase it alone," she said. "You walk in pairs. You keep each other's lantern in sight. If you find the source, you raise your lantern straight up. The rest of us come to that light." She walked them through the route. She took them along the wall, past the hollow tree, to the edge of the moor where the drifting notes hung thickest in the air. The notes were visible there if you stood still long enough — faint marks moving on nothing, like ink in water. She marked the turning point at the old stones and the turn back at the gate. Two pairs would walk the outer line. One pair would hold the post. She had each cat lift its small lantern overhead until she could see the signal clear from the far end of the wall. The smallest one struggled. She knelt and adjusted his grip until the light stayed steady. At the third bell she called them in. They came at a run, six lanterns bobbing through the dark, and formed up at the post door. She raised the tall lantern from its hook and held it above her head. "Watch is set," she said. The cats answered with a low, even sound, not a meow, something closer to assent. She sent the first pair out. They went without flinching. She stood in the doorway and watched their lights move along the wall, and listened to the music she still could not name.

The first pair came back at the fourth bell short one man. The guard counted them at the post door and saw the gap at once. The smallest cat set his lantern down and would not look up. His partner said the older guard had stopped on the moor path to listen. A thin song had drifted in from the water. He had told her to keep walking and stepped off the path. She had raised her lantern the way she was trained. He had not come back to the light. The guard pulled every cat off the wall and formed them at the gates. She lit the tall floor lantern and took it herself. "We walk to the lake," she said. "No pairs split. No one steps off the path." She heard the notes before they reached the moor, faint marks moving in the air like ink dropped in water. She made the cats stopper their ears with wax from the post kit. She did not stopper her own. She needed to hear where the song thickened. They found the broken lantern at the water's edge. Its frame lay cracked on the stones. The glass panels were shattered around it, the wick still warm. Beside it lay his whistle, the cord snapped clean, as if he had reached for it and been pulled before he could blow. The guard knelt and closed her hand around the whistle. The song rose off the water in a slow curl. A pale shape moved under the surface further out, watching. "He is not in the water," a low voice said from the reeds. The mermaid cat rested her arms on a flat stone. Her crown caught the moon. "I did not take this one. He heard me and ran the wrong way." She tilted her head. "I keep the ones who come to me. He did not come." The guard stood. She knew the singer by every account in the watch book. She did not thank her. She turned her cats away from the lake and lifted her lantern high. "Fan out along the shore," she said. "Lanterns up. Call his name every ten steps." They moved in a slow line through the grass. The song stayed behind them, quieter now, losing its grip. The guard listened past it for anything human. For a long stretch she heard only her own boots and the cats' small breathing through wax. Then a bell rang. Not the castle bells. A single dull clang from further up the rise, then another, steady as a signal. The guard turned toward the sound. A squat stone tower stood against the sky, its door hanging open, a faint light in the upper window. The bell rang again. She started to run. The cats ran with her, lanterns swinging, and the song at the lake fell away behind them for good.

The tower rose black against the sky at the top of the rise. Its stone was cracked and streaked with old rain. A carved cat sat over the arched door, worn smooth at the ears. The bell in the upper window swung on its own, slow and uneven, throwing dull clangs into the dark. The door hung open a hand's width. No light burned inside. The guard slowed his cats to a walk and raised his lantern. At the base of the tower, the cats stopped at the flagstones under the mahogany door. Two of them sat. One flattened his ears. None of them stepped closer. The guard did not push them. He had learned not to. He set his lantern down beside them and cupped his hand to his mouth. He called the missing guard's name up the wall. He called it twice. The bell rang again above him. No voice came back. The guard drew his blade from the sheath at his hip. The dark grip fit his palm. The edge caught the lantern light in a thin white line. He told his cats to hold the door. He told them if he did not call down within a hundred count, they were to run for the castle and not follow him in. The smallest cat pressed a paw against his boot. The guard stepped through the mahogany door alone. Inside, the air was colder than the moor. He climbed the stone steps with the blade forward. Roots had broken through the floors above. Thin trees grew straight up through the boards, their branches feeling for the window slits. Leaves lay in wet piles on the steps. He kept his back to the wall and counted landings. At the top, the bell chamber opened around him, its beams sagging, the great green bell swinging in short jerks over the stairs. A small dark shape crouched on the beam above the bell rope. A raccoon. It had the rope pinched in both paws and was pulling it hand over hand, chewing on something round and orange between tugs. It stopped when it saw the blade. It did not run. The guard lowered the sword. He stood in the empty chamber and listened for a man's breath under the beams. There was none. No coat on the floor. No lantern. No blood. The tower held nothing but the animal and the trees. The guard sheathed his blade and went back down the steps. At the door he told his cats what he had found. The bell had been a lie. The missing guard was still out in the woods somewhere, with no light and no whistle, and no bell he could ring to bring them to him. The guard picked up his lantern. He looked at the black line of trees below the rise. Then he called his cats into pairs and started down toward the woods.

The guard led his cats down the rise into the woods. The trees closed over them and the sky went black between the branches. Then the rain came. It fell in one sheet, cold as well water, and the kittens broke formation before he could turn his head. Two bolted sideways. One flattened against a root and hissed at the drops. The smallest sat down in the mud and shook so hard his lantern rattled at his hip. The guard whistled the recall twice. He crouched low and put out both arms. The kittens came back one by one, ears flat, coats already soaked to the skin. He counted them in the lantern light. Six. He pointed off the path toward a shape he knew in the dark — a mound of piled stone carved into the face of a cat, its mouth a low cave. He had marked it on his first patrol. He drove the kittens through the stone mouth ahead of him and ducked in after. Inside was dry. He shrugged off the black supply pack he carried for weather nights and set it on the floor. He unbuckled the flap. He pulled out six small dry uniforms rolled tight, and a bundle of kindling wrapped in oilcloth. He stripped each kitten out of its wet coat and buttoned a dry one on. He built the kindling in the old fire ring at the back of the cave, where blackened stones still held the shape of a hundred past fires. He struck a flame. The wood caught. He waited until every kitten was pressed against a warm stone. Then he stood. He told them to hold the cave. He told them not to follow. The smallest one lifted his head. The guard did not look back. He stepped out into the rain and started for the lake alone. The water was flat and black when he reached the edge. He cupped his hand and called Selune Depthsong by name. He called her three times. She rose slow, unhurried, as if she had heard him the first time and chosen the third. Her crown dripped. She rested her arms on a wet rock and looked at him without warmth. "You again," she said. He asked her which way the missing guard had gone. She was quiet a long moment. "He darted," she said. "That way." She lifted one clawed finger toward the far bank, into the deeper trees. "Before I could come close." He asked if the man had been running from her. She tilted her head. "I keep the ones who come to me. He didn't come." She paused. "Something moved on his side of the water. I don't know what. I don't go there." She sank without another word. The guard stood in the rain and looked at the far bank. His cats were warm and behind him. The missing man was across the lake, and something over there had spooked a creature who spooked nothing.

The guard walked the shore with the lake on his left. The water gave back no reflection. He needed a boat. He had no boat. Every minute he spent hunting for one was a minute the missing man's trail went colder on the far bank. He kept walking. His lantern picked out reeds, then rocks, then a shape ahead that did not belong to the shore. It was a signpost in a glass bowl of moon water, its letters picked out in yellow on dark purple. The Enchanted Ferry. A narrow path led from the sign to a small dock tucked behind a bend. At the end of the dock sat a cottage, and outside the cottage stood a sphynx cat in a starred robe, holding a lantern high. She watched him come without moving. "You want across," she said. It was not a question. He told her yes. He told her a man was missing. She nodded once. "I've seen your kind. Get in." Her boat was a dark purple skiff with a moon-shaped lantern hung above the mast. She stepped down first and set her lantern on the bow. Before she cast off, she knelt and dipped a small jar into the lake. She held it up, tilted it, watched the water inside. "Clear tonight," she said. "We can cross." She capped the jar and slipped it into a pocket of her robe. He stepped aboard. The skiff did not tip when he moved to the bench. She rowed without speaking. The lantern above them threw a soft ring on the water. Once she lifted her chin toward a patch of lake off the bow that stayed flat and black under the moon, and steered wide of it. The far bank came up faster than he expected. She brought the skiff into a hollow in the treeline and held it steady against a root while he climbed out. "I wait one hour," she said. "Then I go." He nodded and turned toward the trees. A web blocked the hollow. It stretched from trunk to trunk, thick as rope, and pale butterflies hung caught in it, wings still twitching. A faint purple glow ran along the strands. He would not touch it with his hands. He crouched, found a long stick at the roots, and lifted it. He wound the web onto the stick the way a spindle takes thread, turning slow so the strands did not snap into his face. The butterflies came away with the web. He set the loaded stick against a rock and stepped through the cleared gap. The forest closed over him. He walked ten paces before his lantern caught what was pressed into the mud at his feet. A paw print. Wider than his own boot. Water had not yet filled it. He crouched and put his hand near the edge without touching. The print was fresh. Whatever made it was still ahead of him, and close.

The paw print sat fresh in the mud, and the guard rose from his crouch with the lantern low. He moved off the trail into the brush, following the drag of broken twigs. The bushes on either side of him leaned wrong. Branches snapped down at knee height. Leaves crushed flat in wide, uneven patches, as if something heavy had circled and settled and moved again. He stopped. He counted the patches. Four, then six, then a seventh behind him. He had walked into a ring of trampled ground and only noticed once he stood inside it. A low growl rolled out of the bush to his right. He swung the lantern high and drew his watch sword in the same motion. The light caught yellow eyes and a spine of grey and purple fur before the thing left the ground. He turned his shoulder into the leap. Claws raked the cloth of his coat and split the skin beneath. Hot blood ran down his arm. The creature landed, coiled, and came again — a cat's body with a wolf's weight behind it. He braced his boots and swung. The blade grazed its flank. It howled, a sound too high for its size, and tore back into the dark. The brush shook once and went still. He stood in the ring with his sword up until his breath slowed. His shoulder throbbed. He pressed his palm against the tear in his coat and started walking. The mud gave way to root, the root to packed earth, the earth to worn stone. He came out of the trees onto a square of cobbles laid with moon and star marks between the seams. Lanterns burned on iron posts. He had walked out of the deep woods and into the edge of a town. Across the square stood a low building with a painted sign above the door. A woman knelt on the cobbles beside a man in a blue coat lined with gold. The coat was the missing guard's. She had a cloth pressed to the man's leg and a small clay pot beside her knee with a green shoot rising from the soil. The missing guard was pale but breathing. He lifted his head when the light from the guard's lantern crossed him, and his mouth opened, but no sound came. The woman looked up. She saw the blood on the guard's sleeve and stood at once. She crossed the cobbles to him without hurry and without hesitation, ink stains on her sleeves, the cloth still folded in her hand. "Sit," she said. "You're bleeding." He tried to say the man's name and could not remember if he had ever known it. He sat on the edge of the low wall she pointed to. She knelt and pushed the torn coat back from his shoulder. "Something in the woods," he said. "I know," she said. "He came out of the trees the same way. You found him. That is what matters tonight." She wound the cloth around his arm and tied it off. The missing guard was alive. The thing in the brush was wounded and gone. The trail had ended at a bright square of stone, and he had, against every doubt he carried, kept his watch.

The guard sat on the low wall with his arm bound and counted the cost. The missing guard lay on the cobbles behind him, breathing but pale, one leg wrapped tight above the knee. Neither of them could walk the woods again tonight. The ferryman had promised one hour. That hour was almost gone. If the guard left now, alone, he could catch the boat and send help back. If he stayed, the ferryman would push off without them, and the crossing back would cost him a favor he did not have. He looked at the man on the ground and knew he could not carry him. He knew, too, what waited in the brush between here and the water. The woman knelt beside her clay pot and pressed the shoot deeper into the soil. Ink stained her sleeves to the elbow. She had watched him weigh it. "You can't carry him," she said. "And you won't outrun what cut you." She stood and brushed her hands on her dress. "Stay here. Both of you. The boat will go. Another will come." He started to argue about his crew, about the wall, about the hours past the second bell when the dark grew thick and something got bold in the corridors he was not there to walk. She let him speak. When he stopped, she said, "You cannot guard anything from a grave in the woods." He let the hour pass. He heard, in his mind, the ferryman's oar dip once and push off. The sound was not real. It settled in him anyway. Across the square, a tall lantern stood on an iron post, its glass shaped like a cat's ears, small painted notes drifting up its base. Its light held the cobbles in a wide yellow ring. The woman helped the missing guard to his feet and walked him under that ring toward a small cottage at the square's edge. The door was cut in the shape of a black cat. Books leaned in stacks against the outer wall. She looked back and waited for him to follow. Inside she set two cots by the hearth and boiled water. She cooked without hurry — broth, bread torn by hand, a bowl set on the floor beside each cot. She unwrapped his arm and cleaned the claw marks again. Her fingers were steady on the torn skin. She did not speak while she worked. He watched her hands and thought of his cats on the wall without him, of the east tower where sound came from the wrong side, of the strays who stayed because they sensed what he sensed. He thought of them, and then, for a long quiet minute, he thought only of her hands. "You'll heal," she said. "Then you'll go back." She tied the fresh cloth off. "Not before." He nodded. The ferry was gone. The watch was not his tonight. He had traded one duty for another, and the trade was made.