"How could I…" Fritti began to protest, but Stretchslow silenced him with a paw gesture.
"I have no more time, I fear. Smell the wind."
Fritti inhaled. Indeed, the breeze did carry a strange smell of cold and damp earth, but his senses could make nothing of it.
"You must learn to trust your feelings, Tailchaser," said Stretchslow. "You have some natural gifts there that may aid you where your lack of experience leads you into trouble. Remember, use the senses that Meerclar gave you. And be patient."
Stretchslow sniffed the air again, but Fritti could no longer smell anything unusual. The older cat then rubbed his nose on Tailchaser's flank.
"Keep your left shoulder to the setting sun when you leave the forest," he said. "That should put you in a profitable direction. Do not hesitate to speak my name as recommendation on your journey. In some fields I am well remembered. Now, I must leave."
Stretchslow trotted forward a few paces. Fritti, overwhelmed by events, sat watching him go.
The big cat turned around. "Have you had your Initiation to the Hunt, Tailchaser?"
"Umm…" Disconcerted, Fritti needed a moment to assemble his thoughts. "Umm, no. The ceremony would have been the Meeting after Eye-next."
Stretchslow shook his head and loped back to him. "There is not time, nor proper surroundings, for the Hunt-singing," he said, "but I shall do the best I can." In a daze, Fritti watched as Stretchslow settled back on his powerful haunches and closed his eyes. Then, in a voice much sweeter than expected, he sang.
"Allmother, the hunt-gifts We praise now, We praise now.
Keep us in your Eye; Our true-tails You compass us.
The sun is but fleeting, The Eye is of Always…
Allmother, listen us We pray you, We pray you.
Claw, Tooth, and Bone Is our pledge to your light."
Stretchslow sat with his eyes tight shut for a moment, then opened them and sprang to his feet again. No trace of the slowspeaking, slow-moving cat that Fritti had known seemed left but the cool gleam in his eyes. He appeared charged with purpose and energy; as he approached, Tailchaser involuntarily shrank back.
Stretchslow, however, only reached out and touched his paw to Fritti's forehead. "Welcome, hunter," he said, then turned and sprinted away-pausing briefly at the edge of a facing thicket to calclass="underline" "May you find luck dancing, young Tailchaser." With that, Stretch-slow vanished into the undergrowth.
Fritti Tailchaser sank to the ground in amazement. Had all this really happened? He had been gone less than a day from his home, and yet it seemed forever. Everything was so astonishing!
He brought his hind foot up and began to scratch behind his ear-an outlet for the conflicting blur of emotions. As he scratched wildly, eyes half closed, he sensed movement all around. He leaped to his feet, alarmed.
The surrounding trees were full of flicker-tailed squirrels.
One of the larger ones-not the squirrel he had spoken with earlier-had shinnied down an elm trunk to his own eye level, and it clung there and looked at him.
"You-you, cat-thing," it said. "Now come along-come. Now you talk-talk. Time you talk with Lord Snap."
CHAPTER 5
The difficulty to think at the end of the day, When the shapeless shadow covers the sun And nothing is left except light on your fur-
–Wallace Stevens
Fritti was climbing high into the treetops. The Rikchikchik who had summoned him stayed several branches ahead, leading him upward. Behind and all about, the rest of the squirrel party were leaping and chattering in their own tongue. He felt as though he had been climbing for days.
In the dizzying upper levels of the great live oak the procession halted for a moment. Fritti sat on a none-too-wide branch and waited for his breath to come back. Like all cats, he was a good climber, but he outweighed his squirrel companions manyfold. He had to cling tighter and maintain better balance than they, especially up here where the branches were getting thinner: from time to time a limb had swayed dizzyingly under him, forcing him to climb quickly to a sturdier one.
They stopped in one of the last trunk crotches: several large branches flaring out from the trunk of the oak. They had climbed so high that Fritti could no longer see down to the earth below through the overlapping limbs. The fetching party, augmented by scores of other Rikchikchik, watched him from a safe distance and squittered between themselves in amazement at the sight of a cat in the Lord's tree.
His legs aching, Tailchaser was again forced to rise and follow his hosts. After ascending a few more feet up the central trunk, spiraling upward on radiating branches, they turned out along a wide outreaching limb. Away from the trunk the bough's circumference became rapidly smaller, until Fritti balked for fear that it "would not hold his weight. The Rikchikchik urged him on, though, and he edged forward until he was forced to lie on his stomach and cling. He would go no farther.
As he lay-swaying gently in the breeze-the squirrel who had led the party chirped a brief signal. The tok-tok-tokking noise that he had heard earlier resumed. Craning his head, Fritti could see several of the Rikchikchik with nutshells clutched in their fore-paws, banging them sharply against the tree's trunk and branches in organized, staccato bursts of cadence.
From the other side of the treetops a new round of raps answered.
On a branch perpendicular to Tailchaser's, separated from his by several jumps of empty air, a slow and dignified procession was moving-dignified by squirrel standards, although perhaps a little brisk and hoppy in comparison to the sinuous grace of the Folk. Fritti thought he recognized Master Fizz and Mistress Whir near the front of the procession, which contained several pawfuls of Rikchikchik.
Leading the strange parade was a large squirrel with grayshot fur and an exultantly bushy tail. The old squirrel's eyes were as black as obsidian, and they studied Tailchaser intently as the line of tree-dwellers stopped and crouched.
After eyeing the cat imperiously for a moment, the old one turned to Mistress Whir.
"This cat-cat-folk who saved?"
Mistress Whir looked demurely across at Fritti, who clung gamely to his branch. "Is most yes cat, Lord Snap," she shyly affirmed.
Tailchaser could not help but notice how the Rikchikchik had protected their leader from him, an untrustworthy cat. Out at the end of this wand-thin limb he had no leverage by which to spring; even if he could manage to, the distance separating his and Lord Snap's branches was too great. Not that he had the urge to spring at anyone at this particular instant- still, he admired the Rikchikchik's cleverness.
"You, cat," said Lord Snap sharply.
"Yes, sir?" answered Fritti. What did this old fellow want, anyway?
"Cat-folk, Rikchikchik not friends. You help Mistress Whir. Why you do, so-strange cat?"
Fritti had not quite puzzled it out yet himself. "I'm not sure, Lord Snap," he answered.
"Could have sheltered with chiknek-stealer under log, under log!" broke in Master Fizz suddenly. "Didn't," he added significantly. Lord Snap lowered his head and gnawed meditatively on a twig, then looked at Fritti again.
"Always hunt, fight-fight with cat-folk. Moon-last four cat climb great tree. Steal chiklek… steal younglings. Steal many. Who cats?"
"I don't know, Lord Snap. I entered the forest only today. Did you say four cats? All together?"
"Four so-bad cats." Snap affirmed. "One each leg Rikchikchik have. Four."
"I do not know, my lord, but it is unusual for my Folk to hunt in such large numbers," said Tailchaser thoughtfully.
Snap deliberated for a moment. "You good-cat. Keep-keep promise. Sacred Oak binds. First time Rikchikchik owe cat-folk favor since Root-in-Ground. T-t-t-teach you thing-you need-need help, Rikchikchik give. Yes?" Fritti nodded, surprised. "Good-cat have troubles, sing: 'Mrikkarrikarek-Snap,' get help. Sing!"