Free Tailchaser's Song by Tad Williams

“There are strange things afoot, and not just in the Old Woods. The Rikchikchik and the Folk making bargains is not the strangest. I cannot sense what is happening with certainty, but my whiskers tell me bewildering stories. You have a part to play, Tailchaser.”
    “How could I ...” Fritti began to protest, but Stretchslow silenced him with a paw gesture.
    “I have no more time, I fear. Smell the wind.”
    Fritti inhaled. Indeed, the breeze did carry a strange smell of cold and damp earth, but his senses could make nothing of it.
    “You must learn to trust your feelings, Tailchaser,” said Stretchslow. “You have some natural gifts there that may aid you where your lack of experience leads you into trouble. Remember, use the senses that Meerclar gave you. And be patient.”
    Stretchslow sniffed the air again, but Fritti could no longer smell anything unusual. The older cat then rubbed his nose on Tailchaser’s flank.
    “Keep your left shoulder to the setting sun when you leave the forest,” he said. “That should put you in a profitable direction. Do not hesitate to speak my name as recommendation on your journey. In some fields I am well remembered. Now, I must leave.”
    Stretchslow trotted forward a few paces. Fritti, overwhelmed by events, sat watching him go.
    The big cat turned around. “Have you had your Initiation to the Hunt, Tailchaser?”
    “Umm ...” Disconcerted, Fritti needed a moment to assemble his thoughts. “Umm, no. The ceremony would have been the Meeting after Eye-next.”
    Stretchslow shook his head and loped back to him. “There is not time, nor proper surroundings, for the Hunt-singing,” he said, “but I shall do the best I can.” In a daze, Fritti watched as Stretchslow settled back on his powerful haunches and closed his eyes. Then, in a voice much sweeter than expected, he sang.
    “Allmother, the hunt-gifts
We praise now,
We praise now.
Keep us in your Eye;
Our true-tails
You compass us.
The sun is but fleeting,
The Eye is of Always....
Allmother, listen us
We pray you,
We pray you.
Claw, Tooth, and Bone
Is our pledge to your light.”
    Stretchslow sat with his eyes tight shut for a moment, then opened them and sprang to his feet again. No trace of the slowspeaking, slow-moving cat that Fritti had known seemed left but the cool gleam in his eyes. He appeared charged with purpose and energy; as he approached, Tailchaser involuntarily shrank back.
    Stretchslow, however, only reached out and touched his paw to Fritti’s forehead. “Welcome, hunter,” he said, then turned and sprinted away—pausing briefly at the edge of a facing thicket to call: “May you find luck dancing, young Tailchaser.” With that, Stretchslow vanished into the undergrowth.
    Fritti Tailchaser sank to the ground in amazement. Had all this really happened? He had been gone less than a day from his home, and yet it seemed forever. Everything was so astonishing!
    He brought his hind foot up and began to scratch behind his ear—an outlet for the conflicting blur of emotions. As he scratched wildly, eyes half closed, he sensed movement all around. He leaped to his feet, alarmed.
    The surrounding trees were full of flicker-tailed squirrels.
    One of the larger ones—not the squirrel he had spoken with earlier—had shinnied down an elm trunk to his own eye level, and it clung there and looked at him.
    “You-you, cat-thing,” it said. “Now come along-come. Now you talk-talk. Time you talk with Lord Snap.”

5 CHAPTER
    The difficulty to think at the end of the day,
When the shapeless shadow covers the sun
And nothing is left except light on your fur—
    —Wallace Stevens
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Fritti was climbing high into the treetops. The Rikchikchik who had summoned him stayed several branches ahead, leading him upward. Behind and all about, the rest of the squirrel party were leaping and chattering in their own tongue. He felt as though he had been climbing for days.
    In the dizzying