sat. I felt them step away from the coming fight. Felt their aggression vanish. I opened my eyes and sat upright, to see Rick walking away, into the night, his full gobag with its change of clothing in one hand, the second small gobag and his antiquated cell in the other. The car lights picked out scarring on his back at his kidney and over his shoulder. Claws had raked him deeply enough to leave puckered flesh, an old injury.
Occam walked toward the car. He was caught in the headlights, the left side of his face and skull fully illuminated, the scars showing a shocking white in his tanned face, his mouth and eye drawing up on the side. His ear a shriveled mass. The scars were a patchwork and a veining of pure white that spread down his neck, likely onto his torso, along the outer part of his arm, and down to his maimed hand. Two fingers had been burned away in the fire that had killed him and hadn’t grown back properly. They curled inward, the tendons permanently contracted like curled vines, not much more than scars over bone. He blinked against the glare.
The automatic car lights went out, leaving us all in the dark.
Occam opened the door and slipped inside. Closed it. Silently, we stared into the night, waiting for Rick to dress. He said, “His cat was loose. About to shift.”
“I noticed,” I said.
“You pulled on Soulwood.”
I frowned, uncertain.
Occam touched my forearm with an unscarred finger. “It’s okay. I felt a sense of peace. I smelled the firs and the poplars. I felt the soil and the grass and knew it was a safe place to bed down. I felt … Soulwood. I felt you, Nell, sugar. I knew you.”
I looked down at my hands, fingers laced across my lap in the dark. And studied his right hand, the contact between us the pad of a single, warm finger just above my wrist. I said, “I shared the land with you both. I wondered if you could tell.”
“Can’t say as I always know when you draw on Soulwood, but this time I could feel it. It felt good. Peaceful. As if the moon wasn’t in charge of what and who I am. As if you gave me a different kind of power over my cat, that I don’t normally have.” He withdrew his hand and I missed the warmth.
Rick, dressed in dark jeans and a white T-shirt, reappeared, moving smoothly in the night. Occam opened the car door and the overhead light came on and the wild poured in. Evergreens and heat and mosquitoes. I hated summer in Knoxville. Rick said, “Thanks for coming. I have something to show you. Ingram, you too. Got your field boots?” It was as if the previous scene had never happened, and since Occam seemed fine with it, I guessed I was too.
Rather than reply, I unzipped my one-day gobag and kicked off my sneakers, hauling on the boots. While I changed shoes, Rick ate a protein bar. It smelled nasty and I bet it tasted nasty too. I’d tried making protein bars for the cats, but the whey protein powder was awful, the egg-based protein was dreadful, and the powdered fishmeal protein was yucky and hard to work with. Come fall I could make venison jerky and wild turkey jerky from kills the wereleopards brought me. I could also smoke trout from mountain streams. I had ordered some dried skipjack tuna shavings to increase the protein content. Until I got the shavings and hunting season was right for butchering meat, the cats were stuck with the icky commercially prepared stuff.
Stepping out of the car, I twisted my silky skirt up between my legs and tucked it in at my waist, making a kind of baggy drawers. Not having cat eyes, I flicked on my flashlight and slid my gobag over one shoulder as Rick led us into the dark, off to the right, away from the road and toward the Tennessee River. We crossed a field planted with a healthy crop of soybeans, the knee-high plants swishing as we moved, grasshoppers flying up, most moving slow, nearly dead from the poison I felt/smelled/tasted as we walked toward the water.
When the moon rose, it might be bright enough to see something, but for now, my flash was a thin beam on the plants of the field. I sent my awareness into the land as best I was able without