Tailchaser’s Song

CHAPTER 5

Fritti was climbing high into the treetops. The Rikchikchik who had summoned him stayed several branches ahead, leading him upward. Behind and all about, the rest of the squirrel party were leaping and chattering in their own tongue. He felt as though he had been climbing for days.

In the dizzying upper levels of the great live oak the procession halted for a moment. Fritti sat on a none-too-wide branch and waited for his breath to come back. Like all cats, he was a good climber, but he outweighed his squirrel companions manyfold. He had to cling tighter and maintain better balance than they, especially up here where the branches were getting thinner: from time to time a limb had swayed dizzyingly under him, forcing him to climb quickly to a sturdier one.

They stopped in one of the last trunk crotches: several large branches flaring out from the trunk of the oak. They had climbed so high that Fritti could no longer see down to the earth below through the overlapping limbs. The fetching party, augmented by scores of other Rikchikchik, watched him from a safe distance and squittered between themselves in amazement at the sight of a cat in the Lord's tree.

His legs aching, Tailchaser was again forced to rise and follow his hosts. After ascending a few more feet up the central trunk, spiraling upward on radiating branches, they turned out along a wide outreaching limb. Away from the trunk the bough's circumference became rapidly smaller, until Fritti balked for fear that it "would not hold his weight. The Rikchikchik urged him on, though, and he edged forward until he was forced to lie on his stomach and cling. He would go no farther.

As he lay-swaying gently in the breeze-the squirrel who had led the party chirped a brief signal. The tok-tok-tokking noise that he had heard earlier resumed. Craning his head, Fritti could see several of the Rikchikchik with nutshells clutched in their fore-paws, banging them sharply against the tree's trunk and branches in organized, staccato bursts of cadence.

From the other side of the treetops a new round of raps answered.

On a branch perpendicular to Tailchaser's, separated from his by several jumps of empty air, a slow and dignified procession was moving-dignified by squirrel standards, although perhaps a little brisk and hoppy in comparison to the sinuous grace of the Folk. Fritti thought he recognized Master Fizz and Mistress Whir near the front of the procession, which contained several pawfuls of Rikchikchik.

Leading the strange parade was a large squirrel with grayshot fur and an exultantly bushy tail. The old squirrel's eyes were as black as obsidian, and they studied Tailchaser intently as the line of tree-dwellers stopped and crouched.

After eyeing the cat imperiously for a moment, the old one turned to Mistress Whir.

"This cat-cat-folk who saved?"

Mistress Whir looked demurely across at Fritti, who clung gamely to his branch. "Is most yes cat, Lord Snap," she shyly affirmed.

Tailchaser could not help but notice how the Rikchikchik had protected their leader from him, an untrustworthy cat. Out at the end of this wand-thin limb he had no leverage by which to spring; even if he could manage to, the distance separating his and Lord Snap's branches was too great. Not that he had the urge to spring at anyone at this particular instant- still, he admired the Rikchikchik's cleverness.

"You, cat," said Lord Snap sharply.

"Yes, sir?" answered Fritti. What did this old fellow want, anyway?

"Cat-folk, Rikchikchik not friends. You help Mistress Whir. Why you do, so-strange cat?"

Fritti had not quite puzzled it out yet himself. "I'm not sure, Lord Snap," he answered.

"Could have sheltered with chiknek-stealer under log, under log!" broke in Master Fizz suddenly. "Didn't," he added significantly. Lord Snap lowered his head and gnawed meditatively on a twig, then looked at Fritti again.

"Always hunt, fight-fight with cat-folk. Moon-last four cat climb great tree. Steal chiklek… steal younglings. Steal many. Who cats?"

"I don't know, Lord Snap. I entered the forest only today. Did you say four cats? All together?"

"Four so-bad cats." Snap affirmed. "One each leg Rikchikchik have. Four."

"I do not know, my lord, but it is unusual for my Folk to hunt in such large numbers," said Tailchaser thoughtfully.

Snap deliberated for a moment. "You good-cat. Keep-keep promise. Sacred Oak binds. First time Rikchikchik owe cat-folk favor since Root-in-Ground. T-t-t-teach you thing-you need-need help, Rikchikchik give. Yes?" Fritti nodded, surprised. "Good-cat have troubles, sing: 'Mrikkarrikarek-Snap,' get help. Sing!"

Fritti tried: "Mreowarriksnap." Lord Snap repeated the phrase, and Fritti tried again, troubled by the difficult squirrelish sounds. Over and over he repeated it, tasting the odd chattering feel. All the Rikchikchik leaned forward, encouraging him, showing him how to make the noises.

If Stretchslow saw this he'd really have a laugh, thought Fritti.

Finally he approximated it closely enough to satisfy the old squirrel-lord.

"In my so-so-nice forest, you use for help. Also sing for certain in trees of brother, Lord Pop. Further… Snap-knows-not."

The old squirrel leaned forward and fixed Tail-chaser with his gleaming eyes. "Other thing. You hunt Rikchikchik, no help. Promise gone-gone. Rule of Leaf and Bough. Agree, good-cat?" Snap looked at him cunningly.

Fritti was taken by surprise. "I… I suppose so. Yes, I promise." A gasp of pleasure went up from the attending squirrels, and Lord Snap beamed with delight, showing his worn incisors.

"Good, most-good." He chuckled. "Is bargain-bargain." The Rikchikchik chief gestured with his tail to the squirrel who had brought Tailchaser. "Master Click, take cat-folk down tree."

"Yes, Lord Snap," said Click. Fritti-sensing the end of his interview-began to inch backward along the narrow tree limb. The squirrels chattered brightly behind him. He thought he heard Whir and Fizz bid him good-journey.

As he descended behind the brisk and efficient Click, Tailchaser reflected with chagrin on the bargain he had just struck with the Rikchikchik.

All I have to do is meet the King of the Birds and the King of the Field Mice, he thought sourly, and I'll most likely starve to death.

The waning moments of Stretching Sun had turned the sky above the great forest into flame. The glow of the setting sun reached through the tangled branches and speckled the leafy ground at Tailchaser's feet. On the eve of his journey's first night he padded on, deeper and deeper into the ancient secrecy of the Old Woods.

He was hungry. He had not eaten since Final Dancing of the previous day.

Suddenly, as if it had been swallowed up by the Venris Hound, the light disappeared. In the half-moment it took his eyes to adjust, Fritti was blinded.

He paused, and as his night vision compensated for the sudden darkness, Tailchaser shook his head and shivered. To live always in darkness! Harar! How could the hole-dwellers and burrow-sleepers stand it? He thanked the Allmother for having brought him into the fields as one of the Folk, who enjoyed all their senses.

Continuing on his way with the effortless stealth native to his race, Tailchaser noted the nighttime life of the great woods in its first flowering. His whiskers received the faint heat-pulses of small creatures cautiously emerging to test the evening. All their movements were tentative, though-cautious and hesitant. Fritti himself was a factor most of them were already aware of. The small animal that charged headlong from its huddling place at first dark did not usually live long enough to pass its foolishness along to offspring.

Thinking of food now, Fritti moved with control, each step coming down on packed ground that would betray no sound. He wanted to find a place where the air currents moved in more favorable ways, or did not move at all: he was going to effect a trap. He had walked hungry for too long, and did not want to wait for a chance kill.

Besides, Grassnestle, his mother, had taught him hunting lore, after all. He was not going to be forced into digging up Squeaker-nests for newborns on his first night out!

He would make a clean kill.

Night birds wheeled and soared above. He could feel the presence of the Ruhue in silent overflight. They were not hunting, he guessed: the Ruhue preferred to search and swoop over flat ground. More likely they were leaving nests in the nearby forest.

Just as well, he thought. The nearness of an owl would freeze the forest creatures and make it that much harder to find dinner.

Other night-rising fla-fa'az whistled and piped in the trees, up in the farthest reaches where the Folk were too heavy to travel. Fritti dismissed them without a second thought.

Hopping down into a dry, rock-strewn gully, Tailchaser got a sudden and surprising whiff of cat-scent. He turned, muscles tensed, and the smell was gone. In a moment it was back again, and he breathed it long enough to note some familiarity in the odor. Then, oddly, it disappeared once more.

Fritti stood perplexed by this bewildering phenomenon, hackles raised and nose twitching. The scent had not changed in intensity from movement or wind failure-it had simply vanished.

When the scent returned to him he recognized it. No wonder it had seemed to have a familiar tang to it-it was his own scent.

His nose wrinkled delicately as he sampled the air, confirming his suspicions. He had walked into a night-eddy: a slow, barely detectable whirlwind. The rocks in the dry creek bed, heated by the sun during the day, were warming the air above them. Contacting the cool night air descending, trapped and rerouted by the waffs of the gully, the resultant swirl of air made lazy circles… carrying his own scent back to him. If he had not paused for a moment, he would not have been in place long enough for it to circle around!

Pleased that he had solved the puzzle, he leaped up to the far side of the stream bed and was moving away when an idea tugged at him. He turned back and inspected the gully wall for several jumps up and down on both sides. He found what he had been looking for-the half-concealed entrance to a Squeaker-burrow.

He knew that the sunwarmth would dissipate eventually. He also knew that the trick would work only once. Carefully, he set himself in place: lying atop the gully wall three or four jumps down the stream course from the burrow opening. He tested the edge of the stream-bed wall on which he lay, and found a spot that would not crumble under movement and send a shower of earth down to betray his plot. Then, working the catechism that his mother had taught him, he stilled himself into immobility to wait.

Unwilling to move his head, he sensed, rather than saw, that Meerclar's Eye had moved but a short distance. When he was finally rewarded by a faint movement at the tunnel mouth, it seemed as if he had waited several lifetimes.

Carefully, so carefully, a nose appeared from the hiding hole and sniffed the air. The rest of the Squeaker followed. It sat frightened-eyed on the lip of the tunnel for a moment, every movement showing a readiness to run at the first sign of danger.-Crouched, with nose wrinkling, it tested for hazard. It was a field mouse, brown-gray and skittery.

Without awareness, Fritti began to flick his tail back and forth.

The Squeaker, scenting nothing immediately dangerous close by, moved a cautious distance away from the hole mouth and began to search for food. Its nose, ears, and eyes were constantly trained for predators. Never straying more than a quick leap away from its hole, the Squeaker scavenged from side to side of the dry stream trough.

Fritti found that it took all of his control to not leap down on the mouse that seemed so close. His stomach clenched silently with hunger, and he could feel the impatient trembling of his hind legs.

But he also remembered Bristlejaw's admonition to be patient. He knew that the little Squeaker would be back down its bolt-hole at the first sign of movement.

I will not be a kitten, Fritti told himself. This is a good hunt-plan. I will wait for the proper moment.

Finally, he judged that the mre'az was as far from the burrow as was necessary. When the mouse turned its back on his position for a moment, Tailchaser brought up his forepaw and dipped it slowly over the edge of the gully wall, halting and freezing if the mouse seemed about to turn his way. Gradually, with great care, he stretched his paw down, until he felt the faint currents of the night-eddy ruffle the fur of his extended foot.

The eddy carried the scent around-down the gully walls to circle slowly back up to the mouse from a point seemingly near its own tunnel.

As the cat-smell reached it the rodent went stiff, nostrils flared. Tailchaser could see the bound, shivering tension of the mouse as it scented a mortal enemy-apparently between it and the escape route. The Squeaker remained frozen in place for several heartbeats as the eddy carried Fritti's scent past it. Then, in an agony of confusion, it made a halfhearted lunge away from the hole mouth, toward Tailchaser.

All the cat's pent-up energy was discharged at once. His tight-coiled muscles took him over the edge of the stream bed in one motion. As soon as his hind legs touched the ground, he was airborne again. The mouse did not even have a chance to utter a noise of surprise before it died.

Following his left shoulder in the way Stretchslow had directed him, Fritti thought about his strange encounter with the older hunter.

He had always seen Stretchslow at leisure-an aloof, unapproachable figure-but he had not acted like that today with Tailchaser. He had been different: animated and energetic. Even more strange, he had treated Tailchaser with great kindness and respect. Although Fritti had been very careful not to offend Stretchslow in times past, he had certainly never done anything to merit respect from a mature hunter. There was a riddle there that he could not solve as he had the night-eddy.

Such a day! How the others back at the Wall would laugh and call out at the story of one of the Folk learning Rikchikchik language in the tree of a squirrel-lord.

But he might never return to Meeting Wall to sing his song. He was of the Folk, and his oath would bind him. And now he was a hunter-sung and blooded.

Still, the hunter felt very sad and small.

Past the midpoint of night he began to feel a continuous weakness in his tired muscles. He had walked far by the Folk's standards; even farther for one his age. Now he had to sleep.

Nosing about for a sleeping place, he selected a grassy indentation at the base of a large tree. He sampled the breeze carefully, and found nothing to prevent him from bedding down. He turned three times around in the small hollow-honoring Allmother, Goldeneye and Skydancer, the life-givers-then curled up, covering his nose with his tail-tip to save warmth. He was asleep very quickly.

Dreaming, he was under the ground, in darkness. Fritti was struggling, scrabbling at dirt that gave way under his paws, but always there was more dirt.

He knew something was hunting him, just as he hunted Squeakers. His heart was racing.

His scraping paws at last broke through, and he fell through a wall of earth into the open air.

There, in a forest clearing, were his mother and siblings. Hushpad stood there, too, and Stretchslow and Thinbone. He tried to warn them about the thing that was chasing him, but his mouth was full of dirt; as he tried to speak, dust fell out onto the ground.

Looking at Tailchaser, his friends and family began to laugh, and the more he tried to indicate the danger they were in from the following-thing, the thing that hunted him, the more they laughed-until the sneezing, high-pitched sounds swarmed in his ears…

Suddenly, he was awake. The laughter had become a high-pitched barking. As he listened, stock-still, he could hear it clearly. It was quite close by, and in a moment he identified it: a fox, yipping in the darkness beyond the trees.

Foxes were no danger to grown cats. Fritti had relaxed back into his sleeping position when he heard another sound-the unhappy mewing of a kitten.

He leaped up instantly to investigate, springing out of the copse and down a tree-crowded slope. The barking and snarling became louder. He leaped onto a crest of rock that jutted from a welter of underbrush.

Many jumps downslope from him an adult red fox had backed a small catling against a hummock. The young cat's back was arched, all the fur puffed out from its small body.

Still not a very daunting sight, thought Fritti, not even to one of the Visl.

As he jumped down from the rock, Fritti noticed something unusual in the young cat's posture: it was injured, somehow, and despite all its loud hissing and spitting, was obviously not in much shape to fight. Fritti felt sure that the Visl knew this, too.

Then, shockingly, Tailchaser realized that the fox-cornered catling was Pouncequick.