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| - ❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅❄❅ And there's no redemption, in trying to find your way out — Grizfolk, Vagabonds FOUR DAYS PASS. The peak falls into a new routine. In the morning, the first rotation of guards take their posts. ForestClan's hunting patrol (which is comprised of all six warriors and apprentices) goes out. Late afternoon, the guards change and patrols of SnowClan cats head out. In the evening, RiverClan finishes the hunting, and the guards change again. Lastly, at night, a patrol of Guard cats goes out and keeps watch on the wolves. I've been helping out guard the peak tunnels. Greer doesn't seem to notice me, which is an advantage; Jett just has me shadow Sasha, accompanying her on all her duties. None of the other Snow Guard cats seem to mind. I don't talk to Lucifer during these four days of falling into routine. I see him occasionally, heading out of the training room with dirt staining his white fur, sweat gleaming on his pelt and accentuating his rippling muscles. Each time, I drop my eyes and turn away. On the fourth night, I have a nightmare. It's about Lucifer. In it, he stands at the top of Thorn Mountain. Shadows, bloodthirsty phantoms, attack him from all sides. They rip him open mercilessly, their jaws ruthless. The shadows take on the forms of wolves. I scream and rush to help him, but someone holds me back. It's Greer. She's laughing, a mad light in her eyes as she watches Lucifer. "He'll die!" I shout at her. She raises her eyebrows at me. "Go help him, then." She throws me at Lucifer. "Save him!" she shrieks insanely. I can't, of course. I twist my body so that I won't hit him, but he grabs me. "LUCIFER, NO!" It's a dream; I don't even know what I'm saying. "I'll kill you!" I tell him as he holds onto me, stopping me from pitching forward. "I don't care." And then the two of us plummet off the mountain. I can only taste Lucifer's blood, and I can only feel the wind. Before we can hit the ground, I wake up. And see Lucifer standing above me. I open my mouth to ask him why he's watching me sleep, but he speaks before I can. "You were screaming. Shut up. You'll wake everyone." We haven't spoken in four days, and he chooses to greet me with those words. I can't be surprised, I guess. I almost like the nightmare version of him better. More polite, even if I only knew him for a second before we fell to our deaths. Now, we pad out of the room where the rest of the Guard sleeps. He leads me to the training room. I recognize it from the vision I saw last time I went into the boreas lux. I remember seeing Lucifer crouched over his own young, bleeding body. I remember the raw look in his eyes, so foreign in those glacial irises. As I study him now, I see that a lot of that helplessness has faded. The coldness is back in those eyes--but is it the same as before? Something has changed in him. Something is different about the way he looks at me. I just can't pinpoint what it is. "What is it?" he asks abruptly. I blink. "What?" "Why were you screaming?" "I had a nightmare." I shiver. "About you." His jaw clenches. "I see." "No--I didn't mean... I had a dream that you died." "What?" Quickly, I tell him a vaguer version of what my nightmare entailed. I truthfully tell him about the phantom wolves shredding him apart, but all I tell him is that that Greer threw me at him and I knocked him off the mountaintop. I don't tell him about the part where he latched onto me when he could've dodged me. I figure it would sound ridiculous; obviously if we were ever in that situation, which we will never be, Lucifer would not risk his life for me. "Phantom wolves. I'd rather worry about the real ones down the mountain; if anyone's gonna shred me, it'll be them," says Lucifer. My cheeks burn at his scorn. "You wanted to know." "Don't go just yet. I wanted to talk to you," he says, calm in the face of my emotions. "If you can stomach it." I raise my chin in a surge of defiance. "I'm not scared of you, Lucifer." "Is that so?" "Yes, it is. There isn't anything to fear about you." I don't know if that's true. His claws are pretty sharp. But it sounds good, so I stick with it. For a second, he seems almost satisfied at my response, like he would like to hear that again. Then his face shutters off again. "You should be scared of me," he says quietly. I give him a stubborn little smile, and he sighs exasperatedly and continues, "Anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about." "Everly, I can feel," he blurts. As soon as he says it, he looks shocked, as if hearing it aloud has made its reality hit him all at once. "I can feel things." I feel a wild urge to laugh. "Uh... okay?" His lips curl in a snarl. "It's not a laughing matter. If you don't-" "No, no, calm down. I'm sorry. What are you going to do?" "What am I going to do?" "Yes. How will you hide it from Greer?" Lucifer shakes his head. "I don't know. I've gotten really good at keeping secrets, though." I sigh. "Do you think she'll actually care, one way or another?" Lucifer looks almost disappointed. "All my life I've thought I was just born this way... To you it might seem sad, but to me, it always seemed a blessing. One less vulnerability to worry about. But I wasn't born like this. Everything feline about me was driven out as a kit. Greer made me what I am." He shudders. "I have never known anything else. All my life, my world has been colorless. I've never seen anything beyond Greer's will." "Has that changed?" I ask tentatively. "I don't know. Can I still be what Greer wants if I'm not what I thought I was?" "That's not something I can tell you," I say apologetically. "I'll get used to it," he says, waving it off. "How hard can it be?" I don't respond. I imagine trying to shut out all of my feelings, but I can't. My mind is always a storm driven by my heart. I don't know what I'd do without my emotions. They hurt, of course--the sadness of losing my family in particular--but they tell me who I am, what I've been through. To have that replaced with a numb would completely change me. Who is Lucifer? I search his blue eyes. They are even more beautiful now that they've lost some of their coldness, like melting icicles in a blinding winter blue sky. Who will he discover within him, now that some of his armor has fallen? I'm not foolish enough to imagine a complete turnaround, a cat who is all of a sudden kind and polite and warm. But there is something almost... alluring about him now. There is a ghost layered over his form, a would've-been, a new potential. "Who are you?" I murmur. "We'll find out," he says. I detect a trace of fear in his voice. "Will you keep it a secret?" So that's why he called me here. "Of course," I say. I want to feel offended that he would even ask, but I tell myself that's stupid. He doesn't know me well enough to expect better of me; anyway, there's nothing in his life that would lead him to trust cats without good reason--or even with it. Again, the image of a bleeding Lucifer as a kit flashes across my mind. My heart clenches with pity for him. There's something agonizing about thinking of that kit, of knowing what he became, and seeing those walls coming down--even just the slightest bit. I look at the large, virtually indestructible tom before me, with his icy pelt and his breathtaking sapphire eyes, and realize I've seen him at the most vulnerable he's been since his kithood. "Stop staring at me," mumbles Lucifer uncomfortably. "Let's go." "Go where?" I ask curiously. He hesitates. "I thought we could--there's still some things we need to discuss. We could go somewhere on the mountain-" "I'm sorry, I can't. I'm on guard duty with Sasha." "Oh." He frowns, then wipes his face carefully blank. "I'll see you later, then." He trots away. I join Sasha outside. She stands with Farrah, Calder, Ruta, and Britta, preparing for guard duty. "We're on the far western end of the Stretch," Sasha says. The Stretch is the most exposed area around the peak, and we have several posts along it to ensure that we are watching for danger from every vantage point. We. It's taken so little time for me to start grouping myself with the rest of the Guard cats. I wonder if that's a good thing or a bad thing; I still haven't made up my mind about this place, but my heart seems to be making its decision about the cats here and their friendship. I don't trust Greer--I'm beginning to think I hate her, like I've hated no other cat before--but I desperately want to believe I can trust the others, that they don't fully understand what Collection is, that if they did they would stop it, would never be able to act like everything was normal on the mountain. I imagine my siblings' reactions to my thoughts. "You're being stupid," Starlight would scoff. "Why are you staying with them in the first place? Get out of here. Go somewhere else--and make it somewhere warm while you're at it!" Juniper, on the other hand, who was as sweet as he was sensible, would tell me to give the mountain a chance, to see if I could change the Guard for the better. The problem was, I couldn't do either of these things. I lacked the intelligence and resourcefulness to make an escape and strike out on my own, and I lacked the brilliance and the inspiring persona that would help me rally the Guard cats against Greer. Without Starlight and Juniper actually by my side, I was useless. Sasha nudges me gently. "Hey, you okay? You look really distracted." I push thoughts of my siblings aside and manage a small smile. "Yeah, I'm fine. You ready to go?" Sasha nods. "Farrah's coming with us." "I'm not on guard duty now, so I thought I'd go out for a little hunt," explains Farrah. "Thought I'd join you guys while I was at it." I give her a smile. "Sounds good to me." The three of us make our way down the Stretch, nodding a greeting when we pass Jett and Calder, who are having a heated argument about what the tastiest variety of prey is. Farrah lets out a mrrow of amusement as their voices fade behind us. "Calder is very passionate about doves, he's convinced they're the best kind of prey--he even has this dance thing he does whenever someone catches one." "The one where he hops around and shakes his tail?" guesses Sasha amusedly. "That's the one," confirms Farrah. We've reached the western end of the Stretch by now, where Sasha and I are assigned as guards. Farrah seems to prefer conversing to hunting, as she settles down next to our post and begins an at-length reminiscence about one of her and Calder's adventures. Sasha and I listen avidly; Farrah's a good storyteller, and her voice carries a faint, melodious accent that differs from the broguish northspeak of the other mountain cats. I wonder if she, like me, was born in the valley, or somewhere beyond the range. As if reading my mind, she says, "Calder was the one who brought me to the peak, you know. I used to live far south of here, on a wooded hill." She shakes her head. "And I used to think winters there were tough. Being up here was almost unbearable at first; it was so cold and lonely... but I made friends." She shoots Sasha a warm smile, which the pale ginger she-cat returns. Sasha is remarkably pretty when she's not cowering in the back of a cave; her pale turquoise eyes catch the winter sunlight and turn the color of robin's eggs, and she seems relaxed, perfectly at peace with the world. Surely Sasha's not evil in any way. If she likes Thorn Mountain, maybe it's not all that bad... maybe Shadowstar's death was just something random Greer did... maybe Lucifer was mistaken about Collection... I shudder at the vileness of my own thoughts; I am homeless, it's true, but am I desperate enough to find a home to excuse murder? "Why did you come to Thorn Mountain?" I ask Farrah. "I lost my family." She bows her head. "My parents, and my two baby sisters. A terrible disease swept through the hill; the warmer weather meant it could spread much quicker than it would be able to up here. I alone managed to escape; I headed north, towards the mountain range." I swallow back a lump in my throat. "My family... they died too." It's a lame sentence, and probably something they'd already heard about me, but Farrah doesn't seem to think so. Both of us have been driven from our homes and up to Thorn Mountain, both of us have lost something irreplacable. Even as the conversation turns towards more light-hearted subjects, this thought remains heavy at the back of my mind. Eventually, Farrah excuses herself to go hunt. Sasha and I sit side-by-side, scanning the mountain and talking quietly, listening to the wind whistling through the pines and the occasionally screech of an eagle as it glides through the air. Towards evening, we are approached by a pair of gray tabby she-cats. "We're your replacement. Guard duty's over," one of them says. "Thanks Plover, Eider," says Sasha. "Have the hunting patrols come in?" "RiverClan's due back any minute," says Plover. She and Eider look so much alike that I'm sure they're sisters; they have identical silver-and-gray striped fur, and their eyes are matching shades of sky-blue. Their names fit them too; with their small paws, thin legs, daintily pointed faces, and huge wing-like ears, they definitely put me in mind of birds. They look young, too; neither can be much older than the Clan apprentices. "Greer says each of us can grab a piece of prey when we're done with guard duty, though," Eider adds. "Really?" Sasha says curiously. "Yeah. I think she did it because Moonstar told her to put the Clan cats first. You know how Greer hates being bossed around," Plover says, rolling her eyes. "Well, c'mon then." I nudge Sasha. "Let's get out of the cold and get something to eat." "Bye Sasha! Bye Ariel!" calls Eider. Plover shoves her sister. "Her name's Everly, dingbat." "Who're you calling a dingbat, big-ears?" I chuckle, feeling happily surprised that they even bothered to wish me good-bye. I didn't know that any other Guard cats even noticed me, besides the ones Jett had introduced me too. Plover and Eider's welcoming attitude contrasts with the frigid "ask no questions, hear no lies" vibe I've been getting from the rest of this mountain. Sasha and I race back to the dens, and breathe a simultaneous sigh of relief when we dash into the main cavern, where the bodies of many cats have turned the air toasty. Jett calls us over to where he, Calder, Farrah, Ruta, and Britta are sitting. Turner lurks near the edges of the group, looking as apathetic as always. Sasha sits down next to Farrah, and I take a seat beside Ruta, who nods a greeting. "How's the weather?" asks Calder, tossing a mouse over to Farrah. "Pretty nice for guard duty, actually," Sasha says. "We didn't even have to use the bunker--they're little scrapes in the ground nearby all the guard posts, to shelter us from wind and snow," she explains to me. Ruta gets up. "Still, you must be cold, tired, and hungry." She makes her way across the cavern towards the fresh-kill pile, replenished by the day's hunting patrol. As she selects a few sparrows, a sullen looking ForestClan warrior raises his head and glares at her. "Look at them Guard cats," he says loudly. "I caught that sparrow," he tells a blue-gray SnowClan tom lying beside him. "But she's helping herself to it like she did all the work. It's not right, having the Clans do all the hunting and the Snow Guard do all the eating." With her mouth full of prey, Ruta cannot retaliate. I leap to my feet and walk over to her, falling into pace with her as a show of soldiarity. I don't dare argue with the obnoxious ForestClan tom for fear of starting a fight, but I shoot him a withering glare as we pass him. The blue-gray SnowClan tom lays his tail on the angry tom's shoulder in a pacifying sort of way. "Calm down, Hawkcry." "Calm down?" fumes Hawkcry. "Foxthroat's dead, there's only three of us left, Riverfrost." Riverfrost. I stare at the blue-gray tom with curious intensity. So this is the tom Shadowstar suggested for Collection from SnowClan. I can see why; he seems older than the rest, with specks of pale white flecking his muzzle. But he also seems soothing and wise, a valuable warrior to have. Not many warriors would go out of their way to pacify a warrior from another Clan. Ruta and I pass the two Clan toms and rejoin our group. Ruta gives one sparrow to me and one to Sasha; we both thank her and fall upon the prey eagerly. Hawkcry doesn't yell anymore, though I hear dark mutterings regarding Guard cats coming from behind me. Nearby, another ForestClan warrior, this one a she-cat, is complaining about Hawkcry himself. "Always making the Clan look so vulnerable, talking about how few warriors we have left..." "I know, Treeflight, he's a pain," responds another cat. Treeflight. Another cat nominated for Collection, the one Shadowstar lost a life to save. I turn and see a brown she-cat sitting across from Hawkcry and shooting him angry stares. Beside her is a young black tom; I assume this is Owlpaw, Shadowstar's son and Treeflight's apprentice. "This room is so full of ill feeling," Ruta says in a subdued tone. "It's a shame, really, it would've been a good system had feline nature been stronger-" "What do you mean?" I ask her. She smiles thinly. "Isn't it obvious, Everly? The Guard and the Clans, we're falling apart. There is resentment on all sides. The Guard was formed to protect the Clans with undying loyalty, to put them first. However, in order to defend Thorn Mountain, the Guard also had to be made up of cats of immense strength, bravery, and intelligence. Cats of such caliber are unlikely to take to subservience well. And forcing all three Clans into the Guard's home is treading on the last threads of our patience. Greer and the Clan leaders better work out a better system soon, or one group is bound to throw the other to the wolves." I am silent, taking in this dire prediction. The others, who haven't been paying attention to Ruta, are busy laughing at Jett's impression of a wild boar. No one notices when I excuse myself and hurry out of the main cavern. As I dash down one of the tunnels, I hear voices coming from somewhere ahead. It's Greer, this time only with Moonstar and Blackstar. "Collection tonight," she says, as I hurry to hide so that I can eavesdrop again. "Riverfrost from you, Blackstar. And you, Moonstar?" "Dawnlight." "Very well. It shall be done at midnight. Would either of you like to come?" "No thank you," chorus the leaders. The sound of their footsteps fade away, but I remain frozen in place. Two cats are going to die tonight. Unless I can do something to stop it.
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