A shadow has infinite forms, and yet it was not until ages and eons past my birth, when my daughter’s blood soaked my feet, that I first took the shape of a fool.
I am a thing of cold and dark. When this world first formed, a fragment of the blackness between stars broke away and walked upon its cooling surface. When the world first sprouted Life, the blackness swallowed a piece and became me. When Life learned to think and speak, I laughed at their attempts to give me a name.
I have had many names. I have only had one daughter.
I made her when the forests were greater and deeper, when I happened upon the bleached bones of a great stag. On whim and curiosity I filled the empty spaces where marrow had been with my own darkness, and my precious daughter sprang to life before me. The stag had been torn to pieces in death, only skull and spine and a few ribs with scraps of clinging flesh when I found it. My daughter’s darkness filled in the rest. In this form, even with its ungainly bones, she still learned to change her shape like me.
My beautiful, clever daughter of bone and rot and darkness. I will miss her until the stars burn out and leave behind so much black that I forget where it ends and I begin.
She had only a thousand years when she first took human form, and a scant thousand more when she fell in love. I could not help but like the man she chose. He loved her in all her wildness and danger, did not shy away from the burning chill of her touch, and when she shed all her forms and showed him the bone and darkness beneath, he loved her all the more. And when he met me in my glory, and learned my favorite of the names his kind had given me, he merely smiled and said it suited me.
I have known joy—eons upon this world and its wonders, how could I not—but the day I first laid eyes upon my grandson has no equal. A human with my darkness in him, and my daughter’s eyes, and her husband’s heart.
I was so far away when they bled and burned. When I returned, all I found was ash and charred, empty bones.
I thought myself clever, how I stalked my prey. To kill my kind leaves a stain that can never wash away, a scent that lingers after the murder is done. I followed the smell of smoke and ash and my daughter’s blood, and found them.
They call themselves heroes, monster-slayers, warriors of all that is light and good. As if evil does not thrive beneath cloudless sunny mornings. As if all shadows hide pain and misery. Though I suppose they did, on the day that I came.
I didn’t count the throats and hearts I ripped bloody from my daughter’s killers. I was hungry, and I ate well that day. I became everything they might call a monster, and the proud hunters fled before me. Through light and dark, day and night, I pursued them.
And then one day that woman, that murderer, met me with divinity singing in her weapons.
Can you imagine it? There was one mortal trail left to follow, one last murderer to rend apart with tooth and claw and beak, and she met me wielding blades and bullets blessed, in hands that still stank of my daughter’s corpse. I know not what celestial turncoat gave such arms to one that slaughters our kind for pride and profit, but when I find out, I will swallow them whole.
I fought her longer than I should have. Even dying would satisfy me as long as she took her last breath with mine. But with every swing of my enemy’s weapon, I lost more and more of myself, until I was a puddle when I had once been an ocean. No more could I tear my enemies asunder or swallow them whole, and so at last the chase turned round and I was the prey.
Perhaps I should have fought to the last, thrown myself against that hateful blade until there was nothing left of myself, but what then? Who would kill this murderer, if not I? How many more daughters would bleed and burn by her hand if I did not live to kill her?
Mere whim and luck saved my life one afternoon. There were few places to hide that they could not follow, for many of them bore those shining markers that instill fear and obedience in others of their kind. But that day, as they pursued me through streets and alleyways, a clever turn bought me seconds to breathe. I saw my salvation in an open window, and took a form I had not touched in many a long century.
I have loved cats since the first of their ancestors were born tens of millions of years ago. I loved them all the more when I saw them remake themselves in barns and grain stores and primitive dwellings. For ages did I favor the form, until a few indiscretions of mine in centuries past cost the species so dearly that I avoided it since.
I did not think. I simply climbed the wall with nimble paws, and vanished through the open window before my pursuers could see even the tip of my tail. The place smelled like a home, as my daughter’s once did. I slipped through its warmth, beneath the notice of its people, and found a bed to hide under and rest.
Oh, but my huntress persisted. Perhaps she had some power of clairvoyance, or perhaps the same celestial who armed her gave her knowledge as well. By nightfall, before the owners of the home I had invaded had even noticed me, the hunters knocked on their door.
I braced myself as I listened, waiting for the inevitable footsteps that would lead to my flight.
But the door did not open. A slayer’s voice rang from outside, sharp and commanding, but the man within did not let them in when he answered. For the first time, I watched as the mortal unwittingly sheltering me did not flinch at shining badges and sharp orders. Instead his words—equal parts blunt and deft—wove rules and laws into a wall that even holy blades could not breach.
The hunters left. I stayed beneath the bed for the rest of the night.
In the morning I awoke to a hand on my flank, and buried my claws in it without a thought. The voice that cried out was not a murderer, but the silver tongue that had sent them away.
“It’s alright, it’s alright,” he called to me soothingly even as he bled. “Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
He most assuredly had not. To prove as much, I came out to meet them.
It was—
It was not in the least bit like seeing my daughter and her husband again. She smelled of animal blood and he looked at her with love, and that was where the similarities began and ended.
They were polite enough in their greetings, though I did suffer the brief indignity of having my tail grabbed and lifted. The woman dodged my claws with practiced ease and inspected me quickly before announcing, “Girl,” and letting go.
…Truth be told, I hadn’t noticed. I don’t often pay much mind to such things. But I suppose, if I’m to be a cat, I may as well be a queen.
“She might be pregnant,” the woman went on. “That’s how Janie got her cats—the first one got into her apartment somehow and had babies in her closet.”
“Hope not,” the man replied, offering a dark brown hand for me to sniff. “This house only has room for one pregnant lady.”
The woman laughed and smacked his shoulder, and before I could become properly annoyed with them, there was cooked fish before me.
Charity is anathema to me. The world gives back what is put into it, and so do I. I accept nothing that I am not willing to pay for, and give nothing that cannot be bought. Though they did not know it yet, when they gave their hospitality to a lost and wounded shadow, these mortals gained its protection. I recovered slowly, sleeping in warm beds and licking wounds that my hosts could not see. I was fed and stroked and praised when I allowed it, and left alone when I did not. Another name was added to my long, long list of gifted titles: Lucy.
In the safety of silence and solitude, I allowed myself to laugh at that. I, a creature of shadow and darkness, once more named for light.
Then one night, my mortals—for they were mine the moment I claimed their home as my sanctuary—jolted from sleep and hurried from their beds. I did not follow them outside for fear that I might call my pursuers down on them while they were vulnerable. I stayed behind instead, and kept watch through the rest of the night.
They returned two days later, with a sleeping infant between them.
I—
They did not mean to fall asleep when they did. New parents, you know. But they. It.
The child fussed, mightily, and my mortals were so tired, and it had been so, so very long since I’d held a human infant in my arms.
It hurt to make myself so large. A mere four months was not enough to put me back together again. But for a crying babe, I managed it, if only to cradle him back to sleep while his weary parents rested. He was a good child, all pink and brown and wrinkled, without a single tooth in his smiling mouth.
Of course, I couldn’t feed him myself, so when my presence alone could not comfort him, I became a cat again and swatted his mother awake. She thanked me for it, and rightly so.
And so, I was part of a family again, all thanks to a chance open window, and the persistence of a cruel woman. They are… dear to me. More precious in some ways than even my own daughter had been before her murder, for I did not know then how easily I would lose her. And with mortals, loss is an inevitability. So my heart, in bleeding tatters though it may be, cherishes them all the more.
Before my grandson, I had never stopped to watch one grow from infancy. It was fascinating, watching the wriggling thing learn to roll over and crawl and walk, hearing his noises refine into words. His gentle hands rarely pulled at my fur, though on one occasion he managed to put the tip of my tail in his mouth while my attention was elsewhere. I slept often by his side from crib to bed, and he spoke to me as if he knew I could answer. When he learned to read, he practiced reading to me, and such an attentive listener was I that he continued long after he had mastered the skill.
I was—am fond of him. I dreaded watching him wither away.
And then, one night, my boy—my beautiful, mortal mayfly of a boy—left in the morning and did not return when he should have. HIs parents flew into a panic, and I—I nearly left the sanctuary of that home for the first time in years. For hours, I worried that my enemies had found him, that they had somehow divined that his family had hidden me from them. I worried that I would have to leave my mortals forever, after enjoying only a fraction of their already short lives.
Instead, my boy returned home late into the night. His eyes were red with more than just tears and weariness. The smell of blood clung to him, sticky and thick. When I climbed into his lap and let him bury his hands into my fur, the chill in his fingertips could nearly match even my own.
My boy was changed. Mortal no longer—I selfishly rejoiced that at least one of my new family would be mine for more of eternity than I ever could have hoped.
And that brings us—not here, not quite. But now we reach the parts you know.
I am sorry, my boy, my beautiful boy. I should have been there when they came for you. But I had gotten comfortable with hiding, with keeping you safe with secrecy, and in my newfound joy and safety, I forgot. I forgot that the hunters of the night are monsters themselves, in the eyes of the hunters of the Dawn.
After they took you, for a few shameful minutes I sat frozen. Even now I am not what I once was. But I was a savage, mindless thing when I fought them before. Numb with fresh grief, with nothing left to live for, I threw myself upon that woman’s hateful weapon with no thought for my own survival, first arrogant, then self-destructive. But now—oh, now. For you, my child, born from those who sheltered me, I will fight and live.
While your parents searched the city in vain, I tracked you through many. In their arrogance they did not kill you, but spirited you away for some unknown purpose. I tempered my rage with hope, and forged it into cunning. I caught their scent, for the first time in sixteen years. I had not forgotten it. I will never forget the smell of my daughter’s blood. As long as her killer still lives, it will not fade from this world.
I followed them. I found them. I found you. And as they closed in around us, I swallowed my fears and revealed the truth to you.
Did you know that I was afraid? I am a monster who brought monsters into your peaceful home. You have every right to hate me. I always thought that you would, one day, if you ever learned the truth.
But
You are my boy. You have always been my boy. Somehow, fool that I am, I forgot that I am your cat.
You fought them fiercely. Beautifully. I watched as you wielded your newfound strength at my side. Your kind can change forms too, did you know? I cannot wait to teach you.
Years ago, back when I spent far too many days as a fool, I might have carried on the fight. I might have torn myself to pieces on their weapons, desperate for their deaths. But I had nothing then, and I have you now. I love you. I love you. I will live for you, I will swallow all my grief and rage and pain and let my love fill the empty space they leave behind. My beloved daughter is gone, but you, my boy. You are here. You are enough.
Let us go home. Let us rest. Let us be ready, if they are foolish enough to come for you a second time.
They will not take another family from me.
