It had happened just at midnight. She had been hunting beneath the trailers, where field mice had burrowed away from the driving rain, mice displaced and disoriented and easier to catch than most. Despite her lack of skill she had trapped two and eaten them; and as she padded along beneath the wheeled houses, hoping to find more such foolish morsels, smelling from above her the sour scent of sleeping humans, hearing through the thin trailer floors the rumbling of their ragged, crude snores, she had heard something else. Footsteps thundered overhead, and she heard a door creak open.
She stopped suddenly, spun around, and drew back against a wheel.
A man left the trailer, heading across the sodden yard to a shed where firewood was stacked; she was afraid of him until she saw that it was only the old man who came here with the lady-the lady called him Pedric. The kit was crouched to leap past him when another man came out, shutting his door so softly that only a cat would hear it.
He walked soundlessly in the rain, following Pedric. The smell of him, in the wet air, made her fur bristle. A cruel smell, and when he drew close behind Pedric, she hissed with fear.
Suddenly in the darkness the silhouettes of the two men merged. She heard a loud crack, saw Pedric fall heavily into the splattering mud.
Immediately the man who had hit Pedric grabbed him and dragged him down the steep hill. He bent over him listening, studying him, then he half threw, half pushed him. Pedric fell, rolling limply down and down, until his body lay against the boulders that formed the mouth of the cave.
The thin man climbed again. Before he reached the trailers a third man came out of the shadows, crouching low, a big, heavy human, broad as a rutting bull. The two fought, pounding and grunting, hitting one another until the big one fell and lay still; that surprised her, that the smaller man had been so clever and quick. Then she saw the rock in his hand. He had hit with that. He dragged the big man down the hill past her. She smelled the death smell.
He dragged and threw him, just as he had thrown old Pedric; how strong he was, like a fighting weasel. The big man rolled farther than Pedric had. Rolled and fell. The dun man ran after him, kicked him, threw him again so he slid down and down onto the highway; the heavy soft thuds of his falling body made her think of the mice she had crushed between her young, sharp teeth.
The thin man went away, down below the road. She crept out to look at Pedric.
The old man was alive, twisted among the rocks. Nosing at him, she could feel his breath, faint and ragged. She knew nothing to do but yowl.
For such a little thing, she had a huge, demanding cry. Leaping to the top of a boulder, she faced the trailers and bawled.
She mewed and cried until a light went on, then another light, spilling into the night like a yellow river. A woman shouted at her to shut up. A door burst open, and a man ran out, hefting a shoe. Then another man, swinging a hunk of firewood; he heaved it at her, and she dodged. Yowling twice more, she fled down the hill behind the thin man who had hurt Pedric.
Down swiftly past the dead man. There, the thin man ran across the dark highway and down again, down the steeper cliff. She was close behind him; humans were so slow. At the edge of the cliff he lifted his hand, she saw the rock and smelled the blood, the rock that had killed the big man, watched him heave the rock away into the sea.
Rain came again, beating into her face. Above her, up the hill, car lights were racing among the trailers. A siren screamed, and men shouted.
She followed the thin man up again, across the road and up the hill, and watched him vanish among the trailers. But in a minute he was back, pushing in among the crowd, crying out with surprise, and then with pain and anger, a mourning cry that, to the little kit's ears, was as fake as the kitten-mewl of a seagull.
Galloping up the hill through the dark, she drew as close as she could to the killer and tried to catch his scent, but she could not; too many humans were crowded all together. Before, when she had followed him downhill, she had smelled only the dead man's blood.
Frightened and puzzled at humans, the little cat went down to the dark, empty cave and sat hunched in its yawning mouth, looking out, watching the moving reflections of lights from above, and on the road below. Despite the shouting, she dozed, mewling in her sleep. She woke fearful.
Alone on the hill, she waited. It was her nature to wait, to expect something better to happen. Ragged and starving, bone-thin, outcast by her own kind and without any reason to hope, the small kit was filled with hope.
She thought of the hills her clowder had come from, hills like this one, dripping wet in the rain but, in the sunshine, bright with yellow grass, sweet and rustling above endless, sunstruck sea, and she was filled with hope. She believed that no matter what trouble came, all would be well again if only one waited and watched-and moved swiftly with a fast paw at the right moment.
Closing her round yellow eyes, she dozed. When next she woke, two shadows approached her, padding up through the dark wet grass; two pairs of long, gleaming eyes silvered by the pale sky, two pairs of eyes, watching her.
Joe and Dulcie studied two round yellow eyes peering out at them from the black and dripping grass. They could see no more than the eyes, disembodied in the blackness-until the shadows re-formed themselves, turning into mottled black-and-brown fur.
The waif stepped delicately forward through the sodden grass. She was so thin that the sea wind should have blown her tumbling across the hill. Her narrow little face was all black-and-brown smudges. Her expression was not the innocent look of a normal kitten, but brighter and more intelligent, more lively and knowing than any ordinary cat. Dulcie lifted her paw, enchanted; this kit was like them. Not for an instant did she doubt the wonder she sensed in this small kitten.
But the kit made Joe uneasy.
The two experiences he'd had with cats of their own kind had badly shaken him. First, Kate Osborne, whose skill at shapeshifting had left him nervous and unsettled: to know a human woman who could become a cat, deeply disturbed him. And then Azrael, that other like themselves, black, lecherous, lording it over them, coming onto Dulcie all testosterone and gleaming claws.
Now here was this ragged kitten. Like them. And frightening in her wide-eyed yearning-but before Joe Grey knew what had happened, he had reached a protecting paw to scoop the little kit close to him. Before he knew what he was doing, he was washing her smudgy face.
She had a little, tilted nose, a dish face. How boldly she rubbed against his leg, purring so hard that the ragged rhythm shook her thin body, and shook him, too.
Dulcie came close and licked her face, purring.
But around them, hidden in the night, Joe could sense the clowder of wild cats creeping close, could sense their anger as stealthily they moved closer through the dark wet grass, the wild beasts watching them-as if they did not want the kitten to be with outsiders. The darkness around them felt brittle with feline rage.
Joe stood up tall in the night, glaring into the darkness, daring the beasts to so much as hiss at them.
He caught a startled gleam, but it was quickly gone. He scowled and leered, then licked the kitten's face.
Dulcie said to the kit, "A man was killed tonight."
The kit's eyes widened, she looked up at Dulcie and twitched her long, wet tail. "How did you know to speak to me?"
Dulcie smiled. "I knew. A man was killed tonight, kit, and another man was hurt. Did you see? Can you show us who did this?"
The kit's yellow eyes grew wide. "I saw," she said softly. "I was hunting mice, and I saw."