Catfantastic- Nine Lives & Fifteen Tales by Martin H Greenberg & Andre Norton

Author:Martin H Greenberg & Andre Norton [Greenberg, Martin H & Norton, Andre]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Dreaming Kind

by C. S. Friedmart

1

There was a time between sunset and evening when the wall between the worlds grew thin; when, if one was watching—if one knew how to watch—the dark little creatures of the dreamworld could be seen slithering through.

The one called Hunter-In-Darkness knew how to watch.

The time would come just before true darkness fell, in that moment when Night and Day were most precariously balanced. It would last for just a few seconds (but they were long enough) and then the way would be closed again, and the things which had come from there to here must now remain here forever.

He never hunted until after it was over. Never failed to watch it happen, once he had learned how. The shadowy dream-creatures fascinated him, as did their presence in his world. He had seen such things in the dreamlands, of course, and had hunted them there; to do so was a cat-custom as old as the worlds themselves. But here they seemed … wrong, somehow. As if passage between the worlds had weakened them. Their inner light was dim, often flickering, and their edges dissolved as the wind brushed against them, trailing off into thin wisps of fog. They came in a thousand shapes, no two alike: from tapering worms of amber-gray mist to the deep carmine crabs that scuttled over unseen pebbles and stones in their path to an invisible sea. And all seemed wrong to him.

He had hunted them once, in his kittenhood, but had quickly learned the futility of such action. In the world of dreams these creatures had substance and might be hunted, slain, and eaten, but in the waking lands they were wraithlike and could not be grasped, either by claws or in the teeth. One was left with only a foul tasting residue wherever contact had supposedly been made, a bitter reminder that something had not been caught. It was better to leave such things to one's shadow-self, and devote one's waking hours to the capture of more solid prey.

Tonight he would hunt in the manlands. The moonless night was perfect for it, the darkness so thick that he could feel it brush against his coat, black against black in the chill autumn wind. There was the fence to deal with, of course, but that was no real obstacle. Like a neuter's spray it lacked any scent of authority; his people had scratched their way under it or climbed across the branches that crossed over it so often that it looked—and smelled—like a thoroughfare. He found a channel that cut under the wirework and crawled through it easily, into the home turf of the same twofooted creatures who had once tried to kill him.

And there he found prey. He saw it first, a point of light against the ebony darkness. Mouse? He was already downwind, and began a careful approach. Soon the scent came to him, cool and promising: Mouse. He put one paw forward onto the carpet of dying leaves, shifted his weight slowly to follow.

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