WHEN last we saw our brave feline heroes, they were fleeing their forested hideout after escaping from the cold hand of Chillwave.

MOVING quickly, Void Cat and Shadow cut across the fields and brush, navigating by starlight.

TWINKLING overhead the stars guided the pair to where they knew the warm lights of a log cabin with a crackling fire awaited them. It was lit by the duo’s protectors and trainers: Sifu and The Professor.

UNBEKNOWNST to them, the fox followed their every move as they ran through the countryside. The closer they got to their destination, the more the fox saw….

“How much further do you think it is Woid Cat?” Shadow asked as she hopped from one snowdrift to the next, her grey-blue fur blending in with the other shadows being cast on the ground. She was effortless in her movements.

“I… don’t… know…” Void Cat responded, jumping nowhere near as gracefully from drift to drift in her adoptive sister’s tracks. “Another… quarter… mile?” The black cat huffed, kicking snow from her paws every other leap, her ears barely breaking the surface of the snow. Shadow chuckled.

“Dis is nothing, in Soviet Russia, dis was a gentle spring storm, kittens played in this without their parents,” She said, bouncing up another drift. Her green eyes reflected the moonlight as a self-satisfied smile played across her lips.

“That’s great… sis… this must have been… fun for the little ones,” Void Cat responded, breathing heavily.

“Da, it was. Do you need to rest?” Shadow asked, stopping in a drift, her oversized paws bunching snow as she slid to a halt.

Void Cat needed the break, she wasn’t as robust as the other, and she surely wasn’t accustomed to this much cold and snow. Not that she was a wimp who couldn’t keep up, this was just deeper than she was used to, and navigating by starlight was harder than she thought. At least that is what she told herself. In truth, she was cold, and her hindquarters shook from the chill. Even her backpack wasn’t enough to insulate her from the cold.

“I need to stop for a bit, I need to check where Leo is,” she said, quickly looking up at the sky and extending a paw to the horizon.

“Isn’t it too early for Leo? Dat is a spring constellation, no?” Shadow asked turning to the direction the other was facing. Void Cat froze, pretending to concentrate on the horizon more.

“Uhh, yeah, that’s good, thanks for reminding me toots.” Void Cat stopped and turned to her left, she stood up on her hind legs, which shook almost uncontrollably, and she held both paws up to the sky. “Yeah, Orion is what I meant. Which should be over here, where we can find Pol… Pol…”

“Polaris, Da?”

“Yeah, Polaris. The cabin is to the north, and we should have no problem getting…” Void Cat’s voice was cut short in a tumble of black and orange fur.

“WOID CAT!” Shadow yelled, as her sister disappeared into a snowdrift, with only her discarded backpack and an outline of a canid to mark her vanishing. “WOID CAT! SESTRA!!” Shadow yelled, and then jumped into the bank to follow. “Hold on, I am coming!”

In the snowdrift, Void Cat pawed and scratched like mad at her assailant. Its orange fur was a constantly shifting blur in her eyes. Each time she felt like she had a handle on its location, it would move again and strike out of nowhere. Whenever she moved and stepped back she sunk deeper into the snow, eventually falling into a previously unseen cavern. She swung again and again, yet could not connect, as if she was punching a cloud. “Shadow! Shadow!” She cried, hoping her sister would come barreling through the snow at any moment and save her, but in the end, she had no idea if Shadow even knew where she was. After another unsuccessful swing, she howled in pain as a bite clamped into her front-right paw, its teeth piercing her skin. However, with the bite, she was able to finally see it. A large red fox, with piercing blue eyes, clenched down on her arm. It growled deeply, and shook its head, slamming Void Cat into deeper snow and then sending the pair of them off a large rock and into a large open space. Void Cat could smell rotting wood and something familiar in the blur, she couldn’t place it. Another hit and she could feel herself falling, accelerating towards an unknown surface. With a splash, she broke the surface of an underground pool and the shock of the impact knocked the fox away, sending it to the other side of the small body of water.

“Gotta get you away from me, you mug. I don’t know who pegged me for a chump, but you won’t put a bag on me that easily,” growled Void Cat. Now that she was free to move she looked around the cavern; from the water, mud walls met ice and snow, which angled up toward a root-filled dirt ceiling. At the center, a brick tunnel led up to the surface. “A well? We fell down a well?” The fox yipped from the other side of the water and then rushed toward her. “Great, and you ain’t Lassie.” She dodged to the left, ducking out of the way of a bite from the fox, it slammed into the ice wall behind her. She spun and jumped back across the water, and planted her back paws into the mud. Lifting her front paws, she extended her claws anticipating the attack. Blood trickled down her arm and dripped into the freezing water. The fox sprang at her.

Just as the canid arched over the water, its maw wide open, Void Cat’s backpack dropped from the opening of the well, slamming into the head of the fox and instantly knocking it out. Void Cat spun to the side and let the body come to rest against the snow.

“Sestra? Can you hear me?” Shadow called down to her, her face emerging from the brick opening above the water.

“Yeah, what kept you?” Void Cat joked, then stepped into the water to retrieve her pack. When she did, Shadow disappeared to be replaced by a rope with several knots on it. The rope lowered to the surface of the water.

“Come on up, I’ve got you,” the soothing voice of Sifu called down.

“Just the dame I was looking for!” Void Cat called back, grabbing the rope with her front paws and wrapping her back ones around it.

“You’re gonna love this. The den up here is full of bits of costume and weapons we have left behind. The fox must have found out where we were by smell alone,” the professor said calmly as Void Cat rose from the water.

“And tipped off Chillwave, da?” Shadow asked, soberly.

“Tipped him off? How can a fox tip off a human, unless…” Void Cat’s voice trailed off as she looked around the den that surrounded the opening to the well. Mud and rocks were piled into the corners and everything was surrounded by rotting wood walls. Bent in half, Sifu and the professor rushed to Void Cat to tend to her wounds.

“I thought vee were the only ones? Can there be… others like us?” Shadow asked, hugging her sister.

“It must be, but I don’t know how,” the professor explained. “I thought I was the only one who knew that kind of advanced science. I don’t have any contemporaries. Lots of animals can be trained yes, but to be able to actually speak?”

“Wait a second, Pops,” Void Cat asked. “If the fox could talk, what did it say?”

“That,” the professor started as he looked through some of the detritus scatted about the fox’s den, “is a very good question.”

How could the fox have been stalking the fearsome felines for so long and not be noticed? How long was it stalling souvenirs? How did it tip off Chillwave? Find out in “The Canid Speaks” on the next thrilling episode of “The Adventures of Void Cat and Shadow!”