Chapter 15: A New Morn

In the night Violet dreamt. She didn’t remember most of the scenes that came, her dreams slipped and slid through her mind like lengths of silk thread, unraveling even as they went.

There were images and little fragments of cohesion, but Violet felt like a flake of ash swirled through the smoke rising from a fire. It wasn’t unpleasant, that feeling, and she let herself be buffeted from place to place, over and along interminable stretches of dreamscape.

She remembered one dream, a quiet one. She was in the forest and though it was a moonless night she did not feel afraid, for the Glow was bright enough that it poured through the treetops like an electric fog, softening the world’s edges and making her feel calm and sedate. Violet was looking for the cat and found it at the base of a tangled old oak, chewing away at an exposed root.

Even in the dream she found this odd, though only in a faint, half curious sort of way, and so she knelt down next to the cat and looked over its work.

“What are you doing?” She asked, but the cat only gave her a sidelong glance and spit a scrap of bark. Its whiskers were askew and it looked rather silly with little splinters of sap streaked wood caught in the fur around its mouth.

“I have my hatchet.” Violet gently offered but the cat, which had grown to the size of a small house, only shook its head curtly and went back to gnawing on the tree. Its teeth were very large now and Violet could see blood dripping from them, nearly black in the Glow light. It was not the cat’s blood, Violet knew, but that of some other beast. She felt no fear and instead looked to where a round hole had been chewed into the base of the oak tree, just about the size of a small person.

“What’s that?” She asked, brows furrowing. Thoughts came painfully slow in the dream and she felt muddled, caught in a fog.

The cat regarded her with silvery eyes that seemed larger than the world.

“You will need a place to live,” it explained. “For when the demons come across the river.”

Violet awoke to an uninterrupted field of wrinkled plasticky blue that hung low over her face. Her makeshift tent had half collapsed in the night and she rolled out from underneath it, an icy trickle of morning dew running down the back of her neck as she cleared the tarp’s edge.

Shivering, a sleepy grimace seated none too firmly on her face, Violet stood up and did her best to stretch, though her movements were ponderous and slow. She felt stiff and more than a little cold, the morning was chilly and she could see hints of a morning fog lingering between the trees edging the clearing. Violet yawned and rubbed her eyes, which were still grainy with sleep.

The fire had burnt out in the night, leaving behind a little bed of soft gray ashes, from which still issued a single slender thread of hesitant white smoke. It barely stood out against the silvery morning air and when Violet looked up to examine the sky she found that the stars were all vanished and the moon had become a pale echo of itself, hanging low in the sky. The sun was not yet up, but it would be soon.

Violet stretched again, a little smoother this time, and rolled her shoulders. The ground had not been nearly as soft as her bed back home, or even the sacks of potting soil stacked in the back of the garden shed.

The assembled aches and other discomforts rolling through her only enhanced the general fatigue she still felt. Dreams were supposed to be a sign of good sleep, her mother had said that, but if that was true it seemed her experience had been something of an exception.

“Good morning.” The cat said from behind her.

Violet didn’t startle this time, only yawned again and turned around. The cat was sitting atop the boulder she’d set her tent against. In the morning light the cat looked grand and dark, like the capper at the head of some ancient monument. The moss ahead of its front paws was blotched with crimson and Violet supposed the cat had just finished its breakfast.

“Good morning.” She answered, then wondered for a moment if she ought to share her dream. It was a funny image, the cat chewing busily away at the roots of a tree, but then she remembered what had come after. The cat’s words. Freed from the soft edged surreality of sleep, they seemed newly foreboding.

“Well,” the cat paused to examine the slowly lightening sky. “It would seem we’ve both survived a night in these terrible woods. How do you feel?”

The question was posed lightly but Violet could hear a little teasing edge buried beneath. The cat was clearly in an excellent mood, having been proven right once again. It had spent quite a lot of time since they’d first met coaxing her ever further from the comforts of her village. Now she was as far from her bed and the walls of her house as she’d ever gone…and still no serious harm had befallen her.

Violet shrugged.

“Sore.” She said.

The cat rolled its eyes.

“You should be proud,” it insisted. “You’re probably the first human to be out here for years, decades even.”

“Longer than that.” Violet said, thinking of what her mother had said about her own childhood, when things in the village had been about the same.

“All the better,” the cat continued. “You weren’t eaten by wolves or driven into the river by herons. You evaded the spirits and didn’t have to hide behind me once.”

There was real ebullience in the cat’s voice but Violet couldn’t completely focus on it. This seemed to be a graduation of some sort, like she’d passed a big final test by spending the night way out in the woods, but she still felt just the same as she had the previous night.

She looked up into the surrounding treetops, but if the spirits were watching, sullenly perhaps, they did nothing to make their presence known.

“I guess….” She said, turning a small circle in place, feet shuffling through the dew soaked grass.

The obvious conclusion to what she’d realized was that now there was nothing standing between her and the true beginning of her journey. Where before she’d enjoyed a comfortable buffer of learning from the cat, now there was only the river and then whatever lay beyond.

From its place atop the boulder the cat rose and slipped smoothly off the side, landing soundlessly in the grass below. It turned a circle around Violet’s ankles, examining her posture, then made a small hmph sort of noise.

“Was this your first time sleeping on the ground?” It asked.

Violet nodded. She hadn’t really been on the ground, there had been a quilt beneath her, but that still wasn’t much compared to a good feather mattress.

“My first time sleeping outside too.” She added and had to pause for a moment, absorbing the enormity of that. She’d spent a night outside, with nothing but a thin plastic tarp between her and the unknown. It shot a shiver through her, but rising above the fear was a very real sense of pride and accomplishment.

The cat’s earlier praise was beginning to sink in now. She really had done all of those things.

Violet began to pack her belongings, rolling the tarp into a tight bundle before tucking it down into the bottom of her pack. She took more care to pack precisely, with an eye to preserving space, but even as she folded her topmost blanket she couldn’t quite shake a pervasive soreness along her back. Sighing, she let herself flop face first onto the invitingly soft spread of the quilt she was using as a groundcloth. There was the hardness of paned earth just beneath, but she felt a little better lying still.

“Something wrong?” The cat asked, pausing alongside the half packed remnants of her camp.

Violet shrugged.

“I’m not used to….”

“Sleeping on the ground?” The cat finished for her, and Violet was surprised to hear a trace of sympathy in its voice.

She nodded as best she could while lying face down, and then the cat had jumped onto her back. It landed surprisingly delicately and turned a small circle in place even as Violet jolted and tried to look back over one shoulder.

“Stay where you are,” the cat instructed. “And relax, I’ve seen this done before.”

Slowly, Violet relaxed back to where she’d been before, resting the side of her face against the crook of one arm. She could feel the weight of the cat along the center of her back now, its paws soft and just a little ticklish.

“Seen what done?” She asked, resisting another urge to glance back and see for herself.

“I’m forgetting the term but I’m sure it was very impressive, now lie still and let me work.” The cat said, and Violet could tell that it was making an effort to sound serious and professional. Its stance had gone very straight and Violet could feel tension rolling through its front paws, like a hunter approaching prey.

None of this made her any less confused as to what the cat was about to do but she sighed and dutifully relaxed as best she could. Then the cat reared up onto its hind legs and pounced onto the space between her shoulders.

The suddenness of its move startled Violet but rather than claws or even pain all she felt was a sudden soft weight, then the determined kneading of the cat’s front paws as it worked busily away at loosening the sore muscles along the base of her neck.

But the softness of the cat’s fur also tickled and Violet found herself squirming in place, giggling helplessly.

“What?” The cat asked, coming to a sudden stop. It had fallen back upon its hind legs and Violet could see the faint outline of its shadow atop hers, cast by the first rays of the rising sun. The sight of the cat up on two legs like a person only made her want to laugh even more and she snorted into the crook of her arm.

“I’m fine,” she managed to say. “Keep going.”

The cat did and again Violet broke down into squirmy giggles as it jumped up and down between her shoulders with an only slightly confused determination. It clearly didn’t understand why she was laughing but seemed to appreciate the response all the same.

By the time the cat was done Violet felt quite a bit better and slightly more awake. She rolled onto her back and spread her arms, letting out a slow breath as she watched the sunrise dye the whole sky red.

Yet the immediacy of her journey still lingered in the back of her mind, like a weight of lead that could not be ignored.