Born of Myth: Part Two

II. Predator and Prey

            The sun blared directly overhead, and Vera hopped from this shadow to that. The depth of snow varied from one spot to another because the trees caught some of the downfall. Her cheeks bulged with pine seeds, which she had pried from the fallen cones with her claws and incisors. Before working on the pinecones, she had sniffed them for bugs; if they were infested, she ate the seeds and the insects rather than storing the former. She needed to eat more than the typical pound of food per week, for her intense hunger accompanied the movements in her belly. Vera knew no fewer than three kits would arrive inside of a week.

            Early February brought with it less frequent but more focused thoughts of Drilltooth. It had been five weeks since they parted ways high in the pine tree where her present litter had been conceived. Before he left, he had nuzzled his head against her cheek and marked her with his scent. Her faintness had magnified with the clicks of his last words. “Adieu, ma cœur. We shall meet again in this life, to be sure!” He had smiled; his teeth had glistened. “Keep warm. Keep safe!” Then he had bounded through the branches, a black shadow in the moonlight. He was as a creature born of myth, she thought. Drilltooth.

            “Vera!”

It was a booming chirp, and she twisted around.

“Can it be you?”

The newcomer was a Grey squirrel. Her coat blended shades of heather and mahogany, and she was haphazardly groomed. Similar to Vera, her stomach and the underside of her tail were white. Her black eyes seemed to protrude.

“Amélie!” Vera saw that she, too, was pregnant. “How good it is to see you!”

Amélie sauntered near, and the two embraced; each knew that any meeting could be their last. Yet Vera was assured of her friend’s will to survive, for Amélie had managed to escape the previous year from the closest Green-bombed city. The refugee’s near-death state had frightened Vera no less than the strange words the former had muttered during her fever dreams. In her delirium, Amélie had spoken of the hunters of humans: Scaled Men with teeth that dripped and tails that lashed. After Vera had nursed her new friend back to health, the Grey squirrel chirped of bombs with emerald blasts. She had said they kept poison from the earth and that the Scaled Men told her this. “They told everyone,” Amélie had said, “Not with sounds but with thoughts. Everyone knew.”

Her words still caused Vera to shiver with fear and to wring her paws together. She had been glad to see Amélie leave, but now she exulted at this reunion.

“I see you are almost ready to bear,” Amélie clicked. From her left cheek she produced three mushrooms, each bathed in brilliant amber with a flourish of auburn about the crest. They smelled of the earth, rich with nutrients. “Take these, mon ami. They will nourish your kittens.”

“Ah!” Vera gasped with delight. “C’est incroyable! They are lovely! And so rare now with the cold. Are you positive you do not need them for your own little ones?”

“Take them. I have more.”

Vera threw her forearms around the startled Amélie. “Merci.”

“It is the least I could do.”

A twig snapped fewer than fifteen feet away from the pair. Vera and Amélie bolted in opposite directions toward the nearest tree. From behind a cedar adjacent to the one to which Amélie sprinted, a lynx pounced. It issued a scream that tingled Vera’s spine as she raced up her birch. The pound of its claws against the tree bark exploded in her chest. When Vera turned upon her bough, she saw that Amélie’s tail was caught under the cat’s paw. Specks of black dappled its white and gray fur, and the muscles beneath its skin pulsed as it worked to secure its grip. The lynx’s hind legs shifted position for better support while its left foreleg hugged the trunk to remain upright.

The Grey squirrel squealed and struggled. The din of her scratching forced Vera to recoil. Amélie’s tail was pinned between the middle two claws; it was the predator’s pad that trapped her. In order to pierce through her tail, the cat lifted its paw for a millisecond. The squirrel clawed up the cedar in a frenzy, too quickly for the lynx to follow. The rage in the feline’s scream chased Amélie as she flew away among the trees. The sound seemed to rip the air about Vera’s ears, and she watched, frozen, as the lynx spotted her. It bounded for the base of her birch, and she heard words in the rumble of its growl.

“I shall catch you this time.”

The kits writhed in her womb. She dashed up the tree and did not stop until she reached the location of her closest den, a kilometer away.