Loneliness rolled off her in a wave so strong I couldn’t have missed it even if I didn’t have Spirit pumping through my blood. I looked at Peta, knowing how much comfort she brought me in the dark hours of my life even in the short time she’d been with me.
I wasn’t sure I could find Giselle her own Peta. But maybe something close. “Wait here a moment.” I touched Giselle on the shoulder and headed to the door that led to the backyard. Cactus lifted an eyebrow and I motioned for him to wait too. Peta butted my head with her nose. “What are you thinking?”
“She’s lonely. What can we do to soften our leaving?”
“I’m not staying with her,” Peta said.
“No. But . . . you know the human world better than I do. Is there something we can do? A form of comfort we can leave with her?” The last thing I wanted was for Giselle to struggle after we were gone. She had a hard enough path ahead of her as it was.
Peta leapt from my shoulder and landed with a thud on the grass. “Maybe. Wait here.”
She took off, a streak of gray and white, bounding across the lawn and then up and over the wooden fence. She didn’t make me wait long. A few minutes later Peta leapt over the wooden fence once more, though this time in her snow leopard form. In her mouth was a dead dog. Its head flopped at a bad angle and its legs swayed with every step she took.
“Peta!” I couldn’t believe what she’d done.
She spat the dog out at my feet. “Pick it up, Lark.”
With a grimace I did as she asked, and realized it wasn’t a dead dog. Though it looked like it. The fur was silky soft, and the eyes were made of a black material that was not natural.
“The humans use them as fillins for real companions,” Peta said.
I touched her on the head, gently. “Thank you.”
We hurried back into the house. Cactus was having his palm read.
“ . . . broken over and over. That is all I can see,” Giselle said, putting his hand down.
I held the soft, stuffed dog out to Giselle. “For the dark nights. It isn’t the same as staying, but it—”
Her eyes lit up, and a smile curved her lips. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”
Peta shifted and leapt to my shoulder. “Of course it is, I picked it out.”
Giselle smiled even wider but it slipped as she looked to me.
I touched her cheek. “I’m sorry, we have to go now.”
Her eyes welled up and a tear trickled down as she clutched the stuffed dog. “This path you are on won’t end well. You should stay here with me.”
I took a step back. “I’m sorry, you know we can’t.” Not wanting to drag the goodbye out longer than we already had, I gave Cactus a quick look.
He slid a hand through my belt loop and I reached up and twisted the armband counter clockwise. We had to go back to the Traveling room in the Rim before we could Travel to London.
The memory that washed over me as we Traveled was not Cactus’s this time, but Peta’s.
Her body was tiny, she knew, but already she’d been chosen for an elemental. Her first charge! How exciting. Wouldn’t her mother be proud . . . no, her mother was a simple snow leopard. Yet she, Nepeta, had been chosen to become more. To become a familiar who could talk and teach and help an elemental.
How wonderful! Her purrs grew with each step the mother goddess took toward wherever they were going. It didn’t matter, she knew it would be good. That she would belong. She trotted beside the adult snow leopard who resembled her own mother, the deep snow making it difficult.
“Nepeta, your life is going to be different from other familiars,” the mother goddess said. Her voice was kind even though the words were a little concerning.
“But I will have my charge, and he will love me.”
“He will love you, that is true. But he will be the only one to truly love you for a long time.”
Nepeta frowned, her lips turning downward. How could that be? Would she not only have one charge? Rare was the case where a familiar outlived their charge, or was handed to another elemental.
“Whatever you wish for me, Mother, I will do,” she said as they trotted through the belly-deep snow.
“I know. That is why I must ask this of you.” There was a thread of sadness in her words but there was no time for more questions. They stopped at the bottom of the mountain where a young man waited for them. His hair was a deep brown, but his eyes were blue, so blue they made her think of the sky high in the mountains after a storm. So blue they pierced. Yet on closer inspection the blue was rimmed with a pale gold edge.
The mother goddess nudged her forward. “Go to him, he is the first of your charges, and only one other will know your heart better.”
She trotted forward, eager to meet him. He crouched down and held his arms out to her.
“Peta. My very own snow kitten.”
With a leap of both body and heart, she jumped at him. They tussled in the light dusting of snow until they both were short of breath. He grinned at her as they sat side by side, and the sun dipped down behind the mountains.