Sweetdew learns what company she's in

The western wind had swept the empty road bare, but Sweetdew trotted purposefully down the center of it, aligning her course between the parallel ruts of wheels and stepping daintily over the half-​​moon prints of hooves.

She had a few pleasant duties by day, the most disagreeable of which consisted of allowing herself to be overfed tidbits from the table. At night she was free but for one momentous task: she had to wake Dantalion by dawn.

The moon had nearly come to set behind the western hills, and she knew that in this season, the sun was only waiting for the moon to hide before peeking out in the east. Nevertheless, at this fateful hour, Sweetdew allowed herself to be distracted.

She caught the odor first, as the wind turned briefly into the south and brought her a sniff of what she had missed the first time she had passed by.

Sweetdew turned back on her pawsteps and hopped over the ruts to stroll up to the side of the road. There with her experienced eyes she saw what many more careless cats would have missed. In the tangle of leaf-​​litter and knotted weeds there was one outpost of order: a tiny hollow had been tamped into the grass stems, perfectly bowl-​​shaped, and just the size to hold the delicious body of a fat shrew.

She glanced uneasily at the eastern sky, but the horizon was still a sickly dark green. She would have time to wait for the little creature to return, would she not? And Dantalion would appreciate a few extra minutes of sleep… Or would he not?

She had so agitated herself with thoughts of what Dantalion’s wrath might be that she cringed in guilt and fear at an unanticipated thump behind her.

It was not a particularly Dantalion-​​like thump, but her body reacted instinctively to the arrival of a dominant male.

“I was just on my way home!” she squeaked.

“Surely you can spare me a moment?” the male drawled. It was only a cat – but not only. It was Tom Dragonhowl.

“Oh! Drag! …onhowl…” she mewed meekly, unsure of how to speak to the great Tom. He was lord of these lands, from the bean fields to the downs, and Sweetdew was only a foreign lady. But he was also the father of her kittens. He had loved her, and she, irresistibly, had loved him.

He nudged her roughly with his broad nose as he sniffed her flanks, and then, suddenly, he was on top of her.

Sweetdew yowled in panic and outrage. He had just smelled her – how could he not know she was pregnant? Was this how the toms treated the ladies in this barbaric country?

He bit down on the scruff of her neck to hold her still and pressed her hips against the earth with the weight of his body.

“Drag!” she screeched. “Not now! I’m expecting!”

He spat out her fur and purred savagely in her ear, “That’s not what I want, my pretty puss.”

She tried to escape him by rolling her hips from side to side, but he was easily twice her weight, and she was frightened by the way her belly bulged out as she was flattened beneath him. She had to protect her babies.

“But they’re your kittens!” she pleaded.

“I know that,” he growled. “But I’m not certain I want you for a mother for any kittens of mine.”

“What?”

“Tell me a little something, sweetheart,” he purred. “How is it that since you came to the elf-​​house, all the other cats there stop coming out at night?”

“Because they’re – too tired – from gossiping about me all day!” she snarled as she fought against him.

“And when you go away for a few days, I suddenly see them about again? And as soon as you return, I see them no more?”

“I don’t know! I swear it!” She dug her front claws into the marly earth of the roadside and tried to drag herself out from beneath him, but it only made him sink his claws painfully into her shoulders.

“And how is it you don’t have fleas, as I am told?” he hissed. “What cat alive has no fleas!”

“I don’t know! I don’t know!”

“There’s only – one thing – to do about that,” he growled as he tugged and tore at the skin of her shoulders with both paws. “Make you a dead cat!”

“Help me, help me, O my mother!” she mewed frantically, crying out like a kitten.

But she was a mother, and she had to act to save her own kittens.

“Help me, help me, O Qatal!” she yowled, as Dantalion had instructed her if she were ever in dire need.

She spit and choked over the strange word, but as soon as it was out, Dragonhowl’s body was lifted off of hers. It went up, as she had hoped, but it kept going up and up, strangely, and straight over her head so she could not see.

But she could still hear. She, who had so many times felt between her jaws the satisfying pop of a broken spine, recognized the sound even far above and grotesquely oversized.

And she, who had so many times flung a tiny, limp body into the air for the amusement of watching it twist as it fell, was horrified to see the mighty body of a great Tom tossed into the road like a stringy old rat unfit for food.

Nor was it just any Tom. Here the lord of these lands, from the bean fields to the downs, lay dead in the road that divided them east to west, dawn to dusk. Here was the noble father of her kittens sprawled in the dust, the fur of his belly damp with unlicked urine, and the fur of his back ruffled by the western wind.

Sweetdew noticed only a moment later that she herself was standing between the furry hocks of some bull-​​legged creature, who tamped the earth beside her into double-​​crescent moons with his cloven hooves.

“How dare you?” she snarled, too furious at this outrage to feel fear as yet.

Far over her head a deep voice rang like thunder in the bowl of the sky. “You called me.”

“Not to kill him!” she shrieked.

Suddenly she too was in the air, lifted up and up, strangely. Her last thought would have been of her kittens, but her neck was not snapped.

Instead she was brought muzzle-​​to-​​mask with a nightmare.

The voice echoed hideously behind the unmoving mouth of steel. “I could not let him see me and go away to tell.”

Sweetdew unclenched her jaws slightly and gave a chattering mew of terror.

“If you want your problems solved your way, solve them yourself,” the monster growled. “It is no pleasure to me.”

He set her on her feet again, neither roughly nor carefully, and before she could swing her body around to snarl up at him, he had vanished.

Sweetdew flopped her haunches down onto the road and frantically began to wash. She had to calm herself, but more than that she had to lick that creature’s touch from her fur. Dantalion had not prepared her for any such thing – he had not warned her – he had all but lied.

She had been tempted by his promises of a life without fleas. She had been tempted by his tales of warm firesides, of fresh cream, of caresses and cuddles. In exchange she only had to keep a frightened young girl happy. She only had to wake him by dawn. She had only made a deal with some sort of devil.

He could sleep until noon for all she cared. She was only a simple cat, scarcely a lady. She did not wish to be the accomplice of such unholy folk as these. By dawn she would have left Tom Dragonhowl’s lands forever. By the new moon she would have left the valley. By the dark night of midwinter she would–

As soon as she turned her head to lick her flank, she remembered.

There were her kittens: Tom Dragonhowl’s last kittens, and she was their worthy mother.

And there was the young girl, too, and her little babies: Dantalion’s children. Eithne would be needing someone who understood how it was to love the precious kittens in spite of their terrible fathers, and to love the terrible fathers, too.

Sweetdew could not leave her.