Wrathfully yet regretfully, she watched him go.
Ratha didn’t feel hungry, but she knew she should eat. She trotted back and forth until she found a likely looking hole and settled down beside it, waiting for the occupant to emerge. But she could not keep still. She itched and prickled and burned until she could no longer stand it. She gave up after several tries and scratched herself furiously. She began licking, dragging her tongue over her chest and belly. That was good, but it still wasn’t enough. She flopped on her back and began rolling back and forth in the grass. That still wasn’t enough. She lay and pedaled her rear paws in sheer frustration. I want something and I don’t know what it is. How can I want it if I don’t know what it is?
She stopped wriggling. Bonechewer was back, two lizards dangling from his jaws. He dropped one, went away and began eating the other. Ratha scrambled to her feet and shook off the dirt and pine needles clinging to her coat. She didn’t want to be caught acting like a cub. Soon the urge to roll and rub overwhelmed her embarrassment. She flung herself on her back and writhed and wriggled until she thought her coat would be worn off.
A shadow blocked the sky and something hit her face. The something was limp, scaly and smelled delicious. Ratha’s hunger came back in a rush and she seized the lizard Bonechewer had dropped on her face. She devoured the prey, savoring every bite and crunch of bone until the morsel was gone. She looked up, licking her whiskers.
Bonechewer’s eyes seemed to glow amber in his dark face. He nosed her and this time she did not leap away. He began licking her and, although she shivered, she stayed put, sensing that his tongue was the answer to all her itches and prickles. He was warm, and his scent so rich….
A strange cry bubbled up inside her throat, wild and plaintive. Ratha could scarcely believe that this was her own voice. She lay with her head and chest against the ground, her heart threatening to burst her ribs. Teeth seized her ruff. She cried out again and again, unable to stop calling, even though the sound of her own voice frightened her. She felt his belly fur against her back and she felt him shift, slowly, repositioning his feet. His scent washed over her, taking her, spinning her until the hunger, the fright and the astonishment all blended together. She rubbed her head against the ground, calling until her voice was raw.
His weight bore her down and she felt his paws press into her back, alternating in a deliberate rhythm. He loosened his grip on her ruff and seized her further back, between the shoulders. His tail swept hers aside. Ratha arched her back to meet him, and a new note came into her call. His voice joined hers and they were together, stiff and trembling.
With a violent motion, he pulled away. The sudden pain was so sharp and deep Ratha screamed and flung herself around to face her tormentor. Her claws dragged through his fur and the skin beneath, opening a bright wound on his shoulder. He staggered back, and Ratha could see from his eyes that he had not expected such a vicious assault. She lunged at him again. He fled, not out of sight, but beyond her reach, crouching beneath a bush and watching her, measuring her…. She turned away from those glowing amber eyes and began to smooth her coat. She licked angrily, trying to wash away the traces of his odor that remained on her, but his smell kept wafting to her from where he crouched, still watching. She flattened her ears and snarled.
“Come near me again, raider and I’ll tear you into pieces too small to be worth eating!”
“I imagine you would,” Bonechewer replied, keeping his distance. “I’ll wait. You’ll feel differently about me in a little while.”
Ratha turned her back on him, stalked back to the hollow tree and climbed inside. She was still sore and throbbing, but she felt much more like herself again. She resolved to have nothing more to do with him. She curled up and went to sleep.
To her dismay, she woke up as hot and itchy as she had the first time. This time she stayed inside the tree, licking herself, rolling on her back, wondering again what was the matter with her.
“You smell good, clan cat,” came Bonechewer’s voice from just outside. “Shall I come in?”
Ratha stuck her paw out, bared her claws, swiped back and forth several times, hoping his nose would get in the way.
She waited, listening. Nothing. He had gone. Good, she thought vehemently.
Her frustration, however, remained and grew until she could hardly endure it. She thrashed around, sending up a storm of dry leaves and needles inside the hollow tree. At last she collapsed in a disgruntled heap, letting the leaves settle on her. She lolled her head out the entrance. What am I going to do, she wondered. Am I always going to feel like this? I won’t be able to hunt. I’ll starve to death.
Ratha let her head sag, closing her eyes against the midday sun. She felt someone’s breath against her face and then a tongue, tentatively licking her cheek. Bonechewer again. She grunted, letting her head sag further. The tongue stopped.
“Are you going to claw me again?” his voice said in her ear.
Ratha growled, but she knew there was no menace in her voice. He knew too. The tongue laved her ear and went under her jaw. Defeated, she let herself slide back inside the tree. His tongue followed her. She felt him step inside and lie down beside her.
They mated several more times that day and the next. Each time Ratha’s memory of the pain that came at the end of their coupling made her vow she would never join with him again, but the fever of her heat drove her to him. Her appetite was magnified and she devoured the morsels he brought her with savage bites. The self she had once known seemed very remote and far away. Would this feeling pass or would she be forever enslaved to her body’s demands?
Bonechewer tried to comfort her in the intervals between matings. Some of his harshness and indifference seemed to fall away, revealing a gentler nature than Ratha had thought him capable of.
The sun rose and set several times before her fever finally began to cool. Bonechewer’s smell became pleasant rather than intoxicating. Her senses lost their heightened sensitivity. Other thoughts crept back into her mind as the urgency of mating faded. Her mind became clear enough to think about the future and survival. For those few days, she thought, it had been as though the future no longer existed, so strongly did her needs focus her mind on each moment as it passed.
Although Ratha rejoiced in the return of stability to her body and mind, there was a lingering regret. The few days of her heat, detached as they were from the rest of her life, had brought her new sensations, new thoughts and new feelings. Now that she had experienced it once, she knew what to expect if and when it came again. There might come a time, she thought, when she would welcome the changes in her body; she would willingly enter the waking dream that swung her between madness and delight.
Ratha thought at first that she would be exactly as she was before her heat. Some of her new feelings lingered, however, telling her that not everything was the same. Certain places on her belly remained tender. Deep in her loins was a heaviness that did not change whether she ate much or little.
During the next few days Ratha hunted with Bonechewer. They saw no more of the Un-Named. She thought less and less about them, although the encounter with the gray-coat returned to her mind. As days passed and no other intruders appeared, Ratha decided that the strange cub and the gray had indeed been traveling alone. When she said as much to Bonechewer he drew back his whiskers, took her out in the downpour and showed her tracks filling up with muddy water. The marks were neither hers nor Bonechewer’s.
Ratha stared at the tracks, then at Bonechewer.
“Why don’t I challenge them, clan cat? Is that what you are asking with your eyes?”