The Tangle Box

“If I choose.” Dirk began washing himself. “But cats are secretive by nature and tell little of what they know. It is because no one listens to us, mostly. I spoke of that often to Holiday when I traveled with him last. He was like everyone else. I would tell him things, but he wouldn’t listen. I warned him that he was making a mistake, that cats know many things, but no one ever seems to pay attention. It was a mistake he should avoid, I cautioned.”


“I will listen, if you will tell me something,” Willow offered. “Tell me anything, Dirk. Any of your secrets. I know so little of what is happening, and I am hungry for even a small bit of knowledge. Can you tell me something?”

Dirk looked at her, then began to wash. He licked himself fluffy and then licked himself smooth, stopping every now and then to see if she was still paying attention. He took his time with the job, but Willow waited patiently, refusing to become perturbed. Finally Dirk was finished, and turned his emerald gaze upon her.

“You are going to have a child,” he declared. “But matters will not work out as either you or Holiday expect them to. Expectations are dangerous things for parents to have, you know. Cats have none and are the better for it.”

She nodded. “We can’t help ourselves. Like not listening to cats.”

“I suppose that is true,” Dirk agreed. “A shame.”

“Tell me something more.”

Dirk narrowed his gaze. “Are you sure you want to hear what I have to say? I mean, that is part of the reason no one listens to cats.”

She hesitated. “Yes, I want to hear.”

“Very well.” He considered. “You and Holiday will be lost to each other for a time. In fact, you are lost to each other already. Didn’t you know?”

“The vision,” she said softly. “My mother’s vision.”

Dirk looked off into the growing dark. “You spend so much time wondering who you are, don’t you think? You flounder about, searching for your identity, when most of the time it is as plain as the nose on your face. You struggle with questions of purpose and need, and forget that the answers are found mostly inside yourselves.” He paused anew. “Cats are not included in that analysis. Cats don’t waste time wondering about such things. Cats just get on with the business of living.”

“Is the vision true, then?” she asked, trying to mask the growing sense of desperation she felt that something terrible was happening to Ben, something beyond her control.

Dirk blinked. “What vision?”

“Is Ben in danger?” she pressed.

“How would I know?” Dirk growled, stretching once more. “Better step back from that deadwood.”

She did so, and Dirk shimmered and turned to crystalline in the fading twilight, gone from flesh and blood to liquid glass, drew in the glow of sunset, two early moons, and a scattering of stars, and sent fire lancing from his emerald eyes into the wood. The blaze burned hotly, and the prism cat transformed back again, settled himself down anew on Willow’s cloak, closed his eyes, and was instantly asleep.

Willow watched him for a time, then fell asleep as well.

She slept poorly, haunted by dreams of Ben and their child, of each being drawn away from her, stolen by invisible hands that wrapped about and pulled them from her side until nothing remained but the echo of her voice calling after them. There was an unspoken suggestion in her dream that somehow she was to blame for what had happened to them, that somehow she had failed them when they needed her most.

She had no appetite for breakfast, and since Dirk never showed any interest in food, they washed and were on their way up to the beginnings of the fairy mists shortly after sunrise.

The day dawned hot and still, the summer air a suffocating blanket that clung to the land even in the high country. Dew formed a slick upon the ground, and its dampness glimmered in the hazy first light. They climbed the rest of the way into the hills, found a narrows that led into a pass, and walked back toward the gray gloom of the mists.