FREE STORIES 2012(20)

The trees were a bit lower here and as I swung around, I saw moonlight gleam off the water. The big cats came to grass, and went on skirting the long glade, tree-to-tree. They didn’t ask again. Maybe they could also smell it now.

And then they stopped. The big tail in front of my face waved a sort of snaky bend and then quivered. I could smell what the cat had seen, although I struggled to spot them at first. They were almost perfectly camouflaged, their hides seeming to shimmer slightly and take on the patterns of the grass as they moved. There were a herd of them, grazing... baring the biggest, with a head of antlers that I’d taken for a dead branch, as near to middle of the glade as possible.

Ghost cats plainly fed on ghost deer, and mosquitos and fleas probably fed on both of them. They were welcome to them, if only I could leave them all to it.

“Put it down, Mwarrr. They’re right in the open. We’re going to need you as well junior, if we’re to make a kill,” said the bat-killer, the excitement of the hunt thick in his growl.

She spat me out like a hairball into a big fork in the tree. “Tastes terrible. Thing. Stay here. Don’t frighten the prey.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. Good hunting.”

“You know, it could be a useful thing that you have found, little one, if it can smell prey that far off,” said the bat-catcher.

I thought of offering to help herd the beasts... but firstly I was still shaking from being far too high up in trees and jumping from swaying branch-to-branch. And secondly, being cats, I hoped they would be so intent on hunting as to let me alone to get away. And yes, they did. They were totally focused on the water-deer. I could have tied ribbons in their tails—if I’d had hands for tying ribbons—and they wouldn’t have noticed.

I watched as they stalked. Another dog might have started running, but I have some advantages on other dogs. Also I was trying to work out how I could get down from the tree without disturbing their hunt and making them really mad. I was still far too high for any self-respecting dog. I was not too high for a dog that wasn’t that worried about self-respect, but wanted his dragon.

I waited until they were busy with the kill itself, yowling and performing. And then I jumped.

It was further than I like jumping. Fortunately, I had picked on a nice thick patch of bracken. It was less fortunate that it was full of brambles too, but they are springy and forgiving, if thorny. I left some black and white fur there for the big kitties.

And then I ran as fast as I could through the trees. I wanted to put a long distance between the cats and me, before they got around to thinking about me.

The downside about this, of course, was that I knew my needed direction for Meb, and I had some idea about which direction the cat had swung me along through the tree-tops. But some idea was not precise. And my head only had room for knowing just where Meb was, always, not where Fionn the dragon was, although I was getting quite fond of him.

Still: We dogs are brave creatures of the wild. We can follow the moon, stars, and of course the smell of someone’s roast dinner over long distances. Or the smell of our own scent marks, when we’re nervous enough. I was.

I was never so glad as to smell where I’d been before. Humans just don’t get the value of it. It’s obvious they don’t need to find their way back after being dog-napped by catnappers (and yes it did seem like a dream, a bad one. I prefer the dreams where I chase rabbits).

I spotted the silver birches that were Lyr at last. I don’t trust tree people, so I gave them a bit of a wide berth, but after that I could pick up our trail.

And there, sleeping peacefully in the darkness under the trees, was a spiky nasty looking black dragon. It was just what this dog needed most right then.

I snuggled in as close as I could to my dragon, with my back against him. Dogs are quite right to chase cats. If they get as big as that, they’ll chase us. And as a parting thought before I went to sleep, I thought that the law of unintended consequences could just catch up on the next person to come over devil’s leap to this place. They wouldn’t expire peacefully in their sleep. And if they took to fishing for food... it was likely they’d meet the other denizens of the water, and what fed on them. Sometimes we exchange bad for worse. . .

Fionn had trouble getting me to get up the next day. “Hmph. You’d swear you’d had a night on the tiles last night, instead of snoring next to me, Díleas,” he said, prodding me with a spiky tail-tip. “Well, there’s no breakfast, and we’ll just have to keep going until we find some.”

Humans often say they wish we dogs could talk. I only wish they could listen, and dragons too. Then Fionn would have known what those barks meant, and it wasn’t as he assumed: “I’m hungry and let’s get going.” Those ideas are true too, but he’s putting barks into my mouth that I didn’t utter. And, although I know the water-deer are hiding in those lakes and he could catch them, I’m not pointing this out to him. Too many kitties are watching for them, and maybe there is even this dobhar-chú in the water. Anything that eats ghost-cats I do not want to meet, not even with a dragon. My heart-magnet draws me to my Meb, and the way is not that far, and I will know when it is open.