The Prophecy and the Familiar

SIX

Frost and fog silvered the night, turning the full moon to a dreaming ghost face in the sky. Ivy wanted nothing more than to curl up on Bernard's back and sleep until the first stirrings of dawn. She wanted nothing more than the boring life of a cat, catching mice and rats in the barn, the occasional bowl of milk on the farmer's hearth, her dragon friend for amusement. But a Cat without a mistress or master—an orphan Familiar—must obey her Queen.

"A full moon on Samhain eve," Ivy called to Sebastian as she ran. "There hasn't been one in my lifetime. It's a terrible omen."

"Well, it must happen sometimes." Sebastian groaned as he flapped his wings harder to keep up with her. "But—but—you'll tell me if you sense goblins or some other evil, won't you?"

"Of course I will." Ivy was dubious. She'd never sensed evil in her admittedly short life, unless you counted the gruel that the farmer's wife liked to make from turnips in the winter. And goblins...

A feeling, strange beyond telling, trailed down her spine like a pointed fingertip. Ivy stopped, fighting not to hiss, and crouched in the lee of an extravagant fern. They were at the edge of the cornfield that stretched from the cattle pasture to the woods.

There was something in the corn.

Sebastian turned in mid-air, his eyes wide. "What is it? Your fur is standing straight up!"

That was probably true. She probably looked like a porcupine. She'd sensed magic before—any Cat, or any other creature that could become a Familiar, could—but it had been vague, as ethereal as the fog shrouding this Samhain's blue moon. She'd assumed that if she had a witch or wizard, if she were a true Familiar, in other words, her own magical senses would awaken from where they lay dormant. Now, though, a horribly strong, horribly distinct, horribly specific impression of menace overwhelmed her. She couldn't even summon a mew of dismay.

Samantha, the largest cow in the herd, who feared nothing, let out a nervous lowing from somewhere to their north.

Sebastian rose a little higher, whispering in a terrified voice, "...Ivy?"

"Get down!"

The voice that emerged sounded like her mother's. Ivy leaped up and snatched the dragon from the air, just as...something, something huge and insubstantial and powerful all at once blew past them. The fog swirled in patterns far too large to be made by the flying cat.

Sebastian whimpered, but he didn't struggle. Even the misplaced dragon had the sense not to move with a Cat's claws on his chest. "What...what was that?"

"Never mind.  Not a goblin." Ivy felt her fur settle back to her body. "But I'm more worried about what it's running from."

She slipped under the fence and into the corn.

"So let's run toward it, whatever it is," Sebastian sighed. He flew after her, low to the ground.

*     *     *

The moon broke through the fog and turned the cornfield into a maze of shadow and light. Old spiderwebs shimmered with frost, as did the hard ground. The dry yellow stalks and leaves left musty smelling dirt on her fur. The farmer was late harvesting this year.

Ivy knew, from evenings purring on the hearth, that the farmer feared the woods beyond the corn, and put off the harvest until after Samhain. His wife thought him mad and said so often enough...although Ivy had cause to think the woman believed more than she let on.

Maybe they are both mad, but they aren't wrong, Ivy thought, just as a hoot from an owl brought her to a halt.  No owl would bother a Cat, though. It was one of the things she recalled her mother, Willow, saying. 

Willow had been the Familiar of the wizard Alastair, the kindly-faced man in the painting on Isabella's table. When Willow had died, Ivy had been but a half-grown kitten, but she liked to think she remembered everything.

The owl's hoot warned of evil in the woods. Ivy could have told Sir Owl all about it.

"Sebastian," she said as the dragon landed on her back. "You mustn't follow me. The Standing Stones are where my mother and her wizard died."

"You never told me that." Sebastian slid to the ground and gazed up at her with his bright red eyes. "And so the farmer's wife found you..."

"In the graveyard, yes." Ivy shuddered. "Seb, the Queen said I could come back if I fulfilled the prophecy. So this isn't goodbye."

Necessarily goodbye, that was, though neither of them said it. Instead, the dragon said, "Where shall I go if you don't come back, Ivy?" His wings drooped.

She leaned down and rubbed her cheek along his head. "Find your way back to the Distant Lands." She couldn't help chuckling sadly. "Be a real dragon."

The spines along his back bristled. "I'm fine the way I am."

"Of course you are," she said, and hugged him in her front paws.