His weight bore her down and she felt his paws press into her back, alternating in a deliberate rhythm. He loosened his grip on her ruff and seized her further back, between the shoulders. His tail swept hers aside. Ratha arched her back to meet him, and a new note came into her call. His voice joined hers and they were together, stiff and trembling.
With a violent motion, he pulled away. The sudden pain was so sharp and deep Ratha screamed and flung herself around to face her tormentor. Her claws dragged through his fur and the skin beneath, opening a bright wound on his shoulder. He staggered back, and Ratha could see from his eyes that he had not expected such a vicious assault. She lunged at him again. He fled, not out of sight, but beyond her reach, crouching beneath a bush and watching her, measuring her.... She turned away from those glowing amber eyes and began to smooth her coat. She licked angrily, trying to wash away the traces of his odor that remained on her, but his smell kept wafting to her from where he crouched, still watching. She flattened her ears and snarled.
“Come near me again, raider and I’ll tear you into pieces too small to be worth eating!”
“I imagine you would,” Bonechewer replied, keeping his distance. “I’ll wait. You’ll feel differently about me in a little while.”
Ratha turned her back on him, stalked back to the hollow tree and climbed inside. She was still sore and throbbing, but she felt much more like herself again. She resolved to have nothing more to do with him. She curled up and went to sleep.
To her dismay, she woke up as hot and itchy as she had the first time. This time she stayed inside the tree, licking herself, rolling on her back, wondering again what was the matter with her.
“You smell good, clan cat,” came Bonechewer’s voice from just outside. “Shall I come in?”
Ratha stuck her paw out, bared her claws, swiped back and forth several times, hoping his nose would get in the way.
She waited, listening. Nothing. He had gone. Good, she thought vehemently.
Her frustration, however, remained and grew until she could hardly endure it. She thrashed around, sending up a storm of dry leaves and needles inside the hollow tree. At last she collapsed in a disgruntled heap, letting the leaves settle on her. She lolled her head out the entrance. What am I going to do, she wondered. Am I always going to feel like this? I won’t be able to hunt. I’ll starve to death.
Ratha let her head sag, closing her eyes against the midday sun. She felt someone’s breath against her face and then a tongue, tentatively licking her cheek. Bonechewer again. She grunted, letting her head sag further. The tongue stopped.
“Are you going to claw me again?” his voice said in her ear.
Ratha growled, but she knew there was no menace in her voice. He knew too. The tongue laved her ear and went under her jaw. Defeated, she let herself slide back inside the tree. His tongue followed her. She felt him step inside and lie down beside her.
They mated several more times that day and the next. Each time Ratha’s memory of the pain that came at the end of their coupling made her vow she would never join with him again, but the fever of her heat drove her to him. Her appetite was magnified and she devoured the morsels he brought her with savage bites. The self she had once known seemed very remote and far away. Would this feeling pass or would she be forever enslaved to her body’s demands?
Bonechewer tried to comfort her in the intervals between matings. Some of his harshness and indifference seemed to fall away, revealing a gentler nature than Ratha had thought him capable of.
The sun rose and set several times before her fever finally began to cool. Bonechewer’s smell became pleasant rather than intoxicating. Her senses lost their heightened sensitivity. Other thoughts crept back into her mind as the urgency of mating faded. Her mind became clear enough to think about the future and survival. For those few days, she thought, it had been as though the future no longer existed, so strongly did her needs focus her mind on each moment as it passed.
Although Ratha rejoiced in the return of stability to her body and mind, there was a lingering regret. The few days of her heat, detached as they were from the rest of her life, had brought her new sensations, new thoughts and new feelings. Now that she had experienced it once, she knew what to expect if and when it came again. There might come a time, she thought, when she would welcome the changes in her body; she would willingly enter the waking dream that swung her between madness and delight.
Ratha thought at first that she would be exactly as she was before her heat. Some of her new feelings lingered, however, telling her that not everything was the same. Certain places on her belly remained tender. Deep in her loins was a heaviness that did not change whether she ate much or little.
During the next few days Ratha hunted with Bonechewer. They saw no more of the Un-Named. She thought less and less about them, although the encounter with the gray-coat returned to her mind. As days passed and no other intruders appeared, Ratha decided that the strange cub and the gray had indeed been traveling alone. When she said as much to Bonechewer he drew back his whiskers, took her out in the downpour and showed her tracks filling up with muddy water. The marks were neither hers nor Bonechewer’s.
Ratha stared at the tracks, then at Bonechewer.
“Why don’t I challenge them, clan cat? Is that what you are asking with your eyes?”
“There are too many of them, you said ...” Ratha answered cautiously.
He grunted and said, “This is the only way the wanderers can go. On one side of my ground lies the lake. On the other lie the mountains. They must cross my ground. I can’t stop them. I do not want to.” He circled the tracks and then began to paw mud over them. “I make sure that as they pass, they catch no sight of me.”
“Why?” Ratha asked. “Do you fear them?”
He patted the mud down. “No. But I don’t want to share my prey with everyone that passes, as I did the cub and gray-coat.”
“The wanderer’s claim,” Ratha remembered. “Is that a law among the Un-Named?”
“As close as we come to a law, I suppose.” Bonechewer sounded annoyed. “But we have work enough to fill our own bellies so I let the strangers hunt for themselves.” He turned away, flicking his tail. Beneath the sharp tang of irritation in his scent, Ratha detected a trace of worry.
He turned away to hunt. Ratha gazed at the smeared pawprints. She dipped her muzzle and smelled the edge of one track, but the rain had washed its scent away. She lifted her head and jogged after Bonechewer.
The next day Ratha returned to the same spot and saw fresh tracks. Bonechewer did not come with her and she decided to say nothing to him about it. He knew and, it seemed, he didn’t particularly care. Ratha began leaving the den earlier, hoping she might see the ones who made the tracks. Once she hid before sunrise and caught a glimpse of shadows moving far away in the misty drizzle.
Where were the travelers coming from, she wondered, and where were they going? Why would Bonechewer retreat each day to the far reaches of his territory and not venture near the trail? Part of it, she knew, was selfishness, but his odor and his manner suggested something more.
Once or twice, Ratha, hunting mice on the hillside, saw him stop on the trail the Un-Named Ones had taken. He looked down the path after their tracks and there was a longing in his eyes as if he wanted to join them on their journey. Then, as Ratha watched, his expression changed to disgust. He rubbed out the remaining pawmarks and leaped away through the bushes.
She noticed that his prowling was not random. Each day he spent in a certain section of his territory, inspecting it, marking it and making sure everything was as it should be before....
Before he leaves, Ratha thought to herself and felt cold and lonely as she shadowed him in the early morning drizzle. He had said nothing to her about such a journey, yet he appeared to be making preparations, catching more than he could eat and storing the rest in the crotch of a tree or under a flat stone. Often he would break away from these activities, as if he did them against his will, but if Ratha watched long enough, she would see him renew his efforts. She should go, she thought miserably. She had learned enough from him that she might survive the rest of the winter if she worked hard. He seemed caught up in some inner struggle that she could not understand, yet she sensed that it involved her in some way, as well as the Un-Named she had seen on the trail. The deer carcass they had fished from the lake was part of it too. She had a few of the pieces, but not enough to fit together.