Grimalkin - Chapter Eight (complete) (Patreon)

Sadly, I have found myself in unexpectedly dire straits more than once during my journeys. While the actual experience of being chased by giant, carnivorous beetles was terrifying, the memory is quite invigorating. So my advice to any young adventurer is this: do whatever you must to survive to tell the tale later.

-Lady Chatterwick’s Journey

Maria and Tia ran. Buildings and streets flashed by as they raced, hearing the pounding of small, bare feet on the hard-packed dirt of the roads close behind them. The first boy fell behind fairly quickly, but then there seemed to be an entire horde of small children who would appear as if from empty air, shouting, “Kitty!” Every time the pair paused, sides heaving as they gasped for breath, some sticky urchin or other would jump up and give chase once again.

When Maria finally came to her senses, she found that she and her new friend were perched high in a tree, with at least three pudgy angels circling the trunk like ravenous hounds. In fact, if she wasn’t mistaken, one of them was a ravenous hound, or at least a hound of some kind, though its round body gave lie to the idea that it might be chasing the two cats because of hunger.

Tia, who was perched on a dangerously spindly branch nearby, hissed and spat at the pack below. Maria’s own throat was sore from making similar sounds, but, now that they were at least momentarily safe, she found herself calming down. She felt the strange sensation of the fur on her back and shoulders settling into place, and she began to lick her paws without consciously deciding to do so. Smoothing a paw over her whiskers she said, “What do we do now?”

Tia glanced at her, then threw one more kitty curse down on the laughing children below. “I don’t know! Tobias and Tosep may be bossy and annoying, but at least they know what they’re doing. I don’t even know where we are!”

The kitten’s voice sounded perilously close to tears, and Maria was reminded that she was the older of the two. In fact, Tia was the same age as Caroline and Lottie, the second set of twins in Maria’s family. The two girls had been the babies of the family for nine long years before Evangeline and Jonas showed up so unexpectedly, and Lottie, especially, with her huge blue eyes and golden ringlets, had been coddled and spoiled terribly. In that moment, Tia sounded so much like Lottie that Maria wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference if the two girls had spoken from behind a curtain.

Maria firmly reminded herself that, as the elder, it was her job to remain calm and in charge. She pressed close against Tia’s trembling body, attempting to reassure the smaller kitten with her presence. Raising her eyes from the baying trio below, she peered through the leafy branches surrounding them. To their left, blue sky shone through, but on the right was a solid, dark mass.

Cautiously, Maria edged that way, and as she did, a stone whistled through the air beside her ear. One of the horrid children had actually attempted to knock them from the tree! She yowled angrily down, noticing as she did that more dirty ragamuffins had joined the first, and one of them was doing a credible job of trying to climb the tree.

“Tia, come on,” Maria hissed. “We’ve got to go, now!”

Tia’s entire body was fluffed to at least twice its original size, and she clung to the branch on which she sat as more projectiles hurtled toward them. At a loss, Maria nipped a furry black ear sharply.

“Ow!” Tia exclaimed, but she managed to tear her eyes away from the encroaching hoard and look up at Maria.

“Come on,” Maria said again, urgently, as a little hand reached up to grab the thickest part of their branch, making it sway dizzyingly. “You said cats can do anything, right? Well, now we need to run!”

Tia’s yellow eyes flashed between Maria and the grasping hand, and then she reached out, and, with a swift swipe of her sharp claws, drew four deep red lines across the back of the hand. A child yelled in pain, and Tia looked momentarily triumphant. With a final glance back, Tia turned and raced past Maria, heading for the same dark object Maria had seen. Glancing over her shoulder, she yelled, “Well? What are you waiting for?”

Maria followed, her claws digging deep into the bark of the branch as the limb grew narrower. Just as she thought it had to bend or break, she was nearly thrown off of it as it snapped back after Tia launched herself from it. Maria mewed, desperately clinging on, but got her paws beneath her as she took a few more steps. She emerged from between the thick leaves to find herself almost running face first into a dark stone wall.

A meow came from above her, and she looked up to see that Tia was already perched on the edge of the house’s steep roof. “Come on,” the kitten snapped, for all the world as if she herself hadn’t been frozen in fear only moments before. “There’s a drainpipe to the right!”

Maria barely had time to see that she was correct before her own feline intuition took over, and she, too, was flying through the air. She landed on the pipe with an ease that astonished the distant part of her brain that was watching her body in action. Scrambling up the pipe, she twisted her body nearly completely around so she could climb onto the roof with liquid ease, at which point all grace abandoned her, and her paws attempted to go in four entirely different directions.

It took two tries to gather her feet back beneath her, and when she managed to look up, breathless, she found Tia watching, the other kitten’s body shaking in convulsions of laughter. “You look like a newborn trying to walk for the first time!” Tia gasped out. “I’ve never seen anything so funny in my entire life!” A rock nearly clipped her tail, and she sobered abruptly, glaring toward the edge of the roof.

Maria gritted her teeth. “I’m glad I could provide you with such entertainment, but don’t you think we should leave now?”

More rocks clattered on the clay shingles, and a shout came from below as some adult chastised the miniature mob for their behavior. Jeers and laughter echoed up from below, but the hail slowed, then stopped. Tia and Maria took the momentary break in the attack and ran again, scampering along one roof after another until they came to a broad thoroughfare. The gap between the building on which they stood and the next one was too far to jump, but they didn’t dare go back.

The two cats stared at each other in consternation. “What do we do now?” Maria asked. “If you could turn human, you could ask someone how to get to the carriage station, but-”

Tia’s back hunched. “But I can’t, so that’s pointless. I haven’t got any clothes, anyway, so I don’t think anyone would be particularly willing to talk to me even if I could shift.”

Maria heard the hurt in the other girl’s voice, and knew she should apologize, but she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. It was, after all, entirely Tia’s fault that Maria was even there in the first place. She looked away. “We’ll just have to find somewhere to hide until dinner time. Tobias and Tosep will start looking for us soon, right? Minitaw isn’t that big, so surely we’ll see them.”

Tia, still looking miserable, said, “I suppose. I don’t want to go back down there, though.”

Now that they had stopped running, Maria was beginning to realize just how warm the clay tiles were beneath her paws. The toe pads felt as if they were burning, and she danced in place, just a bit. “We can’t stay up here. We’re out in the sun. It’s too hot.”

Tia’s pink tongue curled out, as if searching for a drink. “That’s true. I’m really thirsty.”

Both of their stomachs growled at the same time, and their gazes met as they both giggled. “And hungry,” Maria added.

Tia nodded, picking up her own feet to shift uncomfortably. Her gaze swept the road below, and her fluffy black ears perked up. “Look at that,” she said, and Maria turned.

A large, covered wagon was trundling toward them down the road. Two broad draft horses walked sedately before it, and the female driver clucked at them as she urged them to pick up their pace. The wagon bounced a bit as one wheel rolled over a particularly large cobblestone, and loud squawking came from inside the canvas covering.

“Chickens,” Tia hissed, her shoulders lowered, hindquarters raised, and tail twitching in a classic hunting pose. “Probably heading to market, which shouldn’t be too far from the coach house and inn. Things like that tend to be all bunched together, I’ve noticed.”

Maria wasn’t so sure, but it was as good a theory as any, and the white canvas would certainly be cooler than the dark tiles on which they stood. She was fairly certain if they delayed too much longer, she was going to find out what cooked cat smelled like. “So, we jump?” she mewed.

“We jump,” Tia confirmed.

They jumped.