The Wild Road by Gabriel King

Author:Gabriel King
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Epic, Fantasy, Fiction, Cats, General
ISBN: 9780345423030
Publisher: Del Rey
Published: 1997-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

THE RAW AND THE COOKED

My cats are compromised. I do not entirely trust them— they may be spies, like dolphins, reporting to some unknown authority.

—JAN MORRIS

They slept in the barn that night. Mousebreath woke Tag about two hours before dawn.

"Listen!" he said. "Look!"

The air was bitterly cold. The darkness had a faint, hard luminescence to it, as if it had been lacquered.

Flakes of snow were blowing in through the partly open door, then floating toward a peculiar smoky twist of light that had established itself between the cobwebby walls of the opposite corner. Every so often this apparition fizzed quietly and shifted on its axis, an adjustment accompanied by a small convulsion that raised dust from the floor beneath it.

"What is it?" said Mousebreath.

"You don't want to know," Tag told him. "How long's it been here?"

"I been awake fifteen, twenty minutes."

They watched for perhaps another five. Nothing else happened. Then the light flared up with a kind of silent crackle, a current of warm air passed across the floor of the barn, and everything returned to normal. Warily, Tag approached the corner. A few snowflakes had been left blowing about the concrete in the drafts. When he tried to touch them with his nose, they turned out to be little gray sparks of fight. There was a faint smell of burnt cobweb.

"I've seen this before," he told Mousebreath. "It won't come back tonight. But we should leave as soon as we can."

Mousebreath curled up, grumbling. Alone with his thoughts, Tag licked his paws until his eyes closed of their own accord. The tabby, who had followed all this with lively interest from the darkness, waited until she was sure they were both asleep again. Then she crept carefully into the empty corner, sniffed it thoroughly, and sat there like a china ornament on a mantelpiece, her eyes wide open and alert. After a moment, the snow began to drift in through the open door toward her.

First light, Tag led his little band up the side of the ridge.

The snow had consolidated itself while they slept, piling up quietly on an east wind so that in places it was higher than Mousebreath's shoulder. Through it protruded the occasional thin shaft of reed grass. Powder, whipped off the crest of each drift, hissed away across the empty fields. At first it was fun to bound and tumble through the cold spindrift. But they soon grew tired—especially Cy, who could hardly keep her nose above it—and settled for a steather pace. Tag and Mousebreath took turns to force the way. They were soon soaked to the skin and panting for breath. Their feet grew numb and somehow at the same time tender.

When they stopped an hour later, two hundred feet below the crest of the ridge, Tag saw that they had ploughed one long, untidy furrow across the flank of the hill. Either side of it, acres of unturned snow glowed frail pink and gold in the rays of the risen sun. He shivered in delight.

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