Song of Ashes

2: The Wildcat

Passing by the township's graveyard in the gloaming, Sarka looked out over the rows of crooked stones. Back in one corner was her mother's. She acknowledged it only with a glance; she did not stop walking, but turned her face toward indifference back toward home.

Sarka had ample time for grief. There was nothing but time in the wastelands of Kogoren. But grief served no purpose, and she pretended not to feel it.

As she approached her house on the outskirts of town, Sarka searched the horizon for any signs of life. There was no movement in the ash desert except the haze of dust blowing across the dunes. She saw her wasted garden, empty of anything green, and the low shadow-shape of her well standing in front of her house.

Sarka went inside to exchange her basket, in which she carried an old curtain to be made into a child's dress, for a bucket. She went back out into the night and headed to the well. As she stood there, an errant breeze whisked past, pressing her thin dress close against her body. She looked down to see her meager figure revealed for a moment: skinny arms, skinny legs, and a sharp hip bone. Her tangled curls swept over her brow. As she reached to brush them back, she glanced up at the horizon again and saw it.

The dark shape of a wildcat slid over the ground a distance away, near an outcropping of rock. The roll of the creature's shoulder and hip echoed the shape of the dunes.

Sarka's fingers went slack. The bucket plummeted into the well, plunking into the water far below. Animal instinct sparked in her stomach, compelling her to run.

She darted across the ground and tripped over her threshold, falling in through the open door of the house. She could not see or hear it, but she sensed the cat giving chase, sensed it leaping from its hiding place and streaking toward her.

She scrambled farther inside, rolled onto her back, and kicked the door closed. In the instant before it shut, she saw that the wildcat had closed the distance between the outcropping and her house in those few precious seconds, as fleet as the wind.

Sarka sprang to her feet and slammed the bolt home with shaking fingers. As she did, the door shuddered under the weight of the cat; she heard its claws scraping down the wood, splintering it.

Trembling, Sarka crept away from the door, every one of her senses sizzling with adrenaline. She reached blindly for the knife she kept in a drawer in the cupboard-sized kitchen of her house. Holding the blade close to her side, she moved to the hearth, sat down by the fire, and stared wide-eyed at the window.

She could not see the wildcat, but she did not have to. She could feel it out there.

Hungry.