Her Chance

The darkness clung to my fur as I padded over the loamy ground, paws damp. Leaves stuck to me too, a coat of tiny twigs and slimy leaves covering my belly from where I’d had to wade through the shallow pools of water. Thankfully the mud was behind me, but the gross, thick feeling was still matted between my toes and on the undersides of my knees.

My body was a deep grey, ebony spots gleaming in non-light, seeming to absorb the moon. The trees offered me an escape from the slick ground, but I was almost there and I was already dirty. Besides, it would be difficult to climb the steep, smooth-barked trunks while plastered in so much muck.

I could tell I was close because the ground was getting warmer and harder to walk on. The hairs on my neck stiffened until I had a mane down my back and a tail that tried to be bushy even though it was sticky and disgusting. Claws sinking into the earth, I had to pull myself forward until all I could do was stand, unable to move.

Before I could think to fight the sudden need to lie down and give up, a pressure heaved my mind open, and something that felt like warm water washed through my head. It bubbled and frothed until I felt like I would lose consciousness, eyes heavy and blank.

Then a voice spoke, and a great gasp was pulled from me as the water drained away.

"She has come, Naullo. Your kitten has arrived," a mocking female voice said, setting my teeth on edge. It wasn't friendly, and I felt distinctly like I was being laughed at. My ears flicked back, and I smothered a growl in my chest.

Still, my body felt pressed to the ground, but I fought the force, legs locked against folding. My paws began to ache and burn as what felt like hundred of pounds weighed on them, the soil folding up around the edges of my feet.

"Awfully bold, this little kitten. It is good she is well, little brother," a different voice murmured, this one a deep male tone. It felt like cool rain on my face and crumbling mountains down in my bones, but a stern weight was shed when it laughed, a contented chuckle that seemed to move away. The burden wasn't gone, but it was lessened without the mind of the God of Dwarves adding to it.

"So you have arrived, Nichole-Anne," a light male voice called to me, and I struggled to turn my head. A shadow detached from the tree line, vague and watery until he got closer and I could see his face. This was the one who had done this to me, and I wanted to savage him for it.

My lips needed to pull back over my fangs, needed to teach this one respect. Thankfully, my human side realized this idea might not be a good one, so deep in the Mother Wood.

Yes, I have, I thought curtly, knowing he would pull it from my mind. He did, smiling in pleasure.

"I trust you like my gift?" he asked innocently, gesturing to my body. This was too much, and I did finally did growl, my chest heaving in a rattling snarl when he only smiled harder.

Somehow I will make you pay for this humiliation, I swore, scraping at the ground, tail thrashing. He was so close, and my jaguar mind said to strike now - he was in range! I knew I couldn't though. Even if he looked to be standing before me, only ten feet away, I knew it was only my eyes fooling me.

"It gave you what you needed, Anna. Didn’t it?” his innocent face made me hesitate, kneading the ground with my claws. The already ripped up soil shifted like worms and I thought hard. Had the jaguar’s form given me anything?

Then I remembered the men who had waited in the shadows of my corridor, and a chill ran through my fur. Had they been there for me? Had I narrowly escaped death, not even realizing it? Seeing it in my mind, I could remember thinking they were a group of palace guards sent to watch over me. What if the opposite was true?

I couldn’t recall their faces; I’d been in too much of a hurry to get out of the palace at the time. I knew how it would look come daylight – my room was a disaster, the sitting room not any better.

The panic had driven me mad, and the single maid in the room had almost lost her life coming to see what the commotion was. As it was, the only thing she would remember is a huge black cat jumping at her. She had fainted directly after, and the loud crash of the silverware she’d landed on had shocked me out of my attack.

My bed was in shambles, the fine lace canopy shredded beyond repair, my nightgown torn into pieces. Everything I could reach had been mangled, including my wardrobe and the lovely carpets padding the floor. The wonderful tapestry that had floated on its invisible attachments had been ripped into with long, savage slashes, bright threads stuck in my claws.

Standing there a moment had given me time to look around, and realize that people would assume me dead, even without a corpse. I was a duchess from an important family, and the country was on the brink of war. With my room destroyed and my clothes torn apart, it heavily implied that I had been either kidnapped or killed. The maid’s story would tell them it was the latter, and my parents and brother would be heartbroken.

So I had marched down the mountain side, sure of where to go but not what to do. With that mischievous message in my dream, I knew the only way I could reach the god was in the holy forest. Thankfully it wasn’t too far a journey, the palace having been built as close to the Mother Wood as possible while still respecting the boundaries.

After a night’s walk and very sore feet, I stood here, filthy, bristling from indignity, and feeling much like a scolded kitten.

You couldn’t have sent guards instead? I demanded.

His face changed, growing into a black mask of anger, and the words he spoke were deadly quiet, “Do you think to rebuke a gift from a god? Do not overstep your bounds, girl!”

As I took in his temper, I let go of mine. Finally giving in to the bone-deep need, I laid down on the ground. The torn earth was uncomfortable, but I knew it was better than provoking an irate deity. As human as he looked, as playful as he could be, Naullo was still a god, and he had a god’s capacity for rage. One I didn’t desire to test.

No matter how close it felt like we’d grown in the past months, I had to remember that this was not someone I could yell at. But, perhaps predictably, when I met his dark eyes, I saw a glimmer of amusement.

Before I could explode again, I clenched the words between my teeth and tried to relax. Now that I wasn’t fighting to stand I could think clearer, and I realized that the sudden transformation had done more for me that what I saw before. Besides saving me a great deal of pain (and probable death), it had given me what I had wanted for weeks now. The freedom to move through the country unmolested. A wild jaguar was a kind of sacred animal that was only supposed to live in the Mother Wood.

Nobody would dare harm one, and so my invisible chains had been cut. Not that I minded, being a duchess; it is what I was raised to be. However, with everything happening so quickly it was impossible to make it to the enemy on time, or know where they would strike. Now I was free to spy on the troops that had crossed the nation’s borders last winter.

My brother was fully capable of running the estate in my ‘absence’, after all. Indeed, he would probably handle the incessant clerks and assistants better than I had been.

“Now you see, little one,” Naullo said, his voice kinder than before. I started, having drifted away with my thoughts. My mind came back to me slowly, and I realized – not for the first time nor the last – how very old Naullo really was. To my eyes, he looked to be in his late forties, or an early fifty. In reality, the mentions of him were colorful and lasting in our history from beyond the knowledge of written word. The ancient tombs portrayed him as half man, half jaguar, the god of the hunt. He was a guide to lost souls, a quiet voice of comfort in the dark, and the last thing you ever hear at the same time.

His name is sometimes whispered when a mother is pregnant, to ask a blessing of His own wit and cunning upon the child. Or perhaps a prayer from a desperate man trying to feed his family, to ask for luck with his bow.

I myself had never put too much thought into the gods before last Midwinter, accepting them as a natural part of life the same as everyone else. Now here I was, sitting in the dirt, talking to one.