Another slash on the side of its neck as it went up, and I moved back to gain some distance, and I pretended I didn’t hear the screams coming from deeper into the forest.
The clockbeast licked its fresh wounds with a long black tongue, then stalked toward me as I moved back, both knives raised, my heartbeat shaking me like a drum.
The fear was there still, but…I wasn’t as terrified as I had been in the beginning. Without really understanding what the hell I was doing, I analyzed the beast’s movements, saw how weak its back legs were, how its front leg where I’d struck it on the shoulder was shaking, how it was hesitant to jump me the way it did a moment ago.
But it only waited another three seconds before it opened its jaws wide and jumped.
My body was prepared. I stepped aside at the right split-second with my arm pulled back, and swung my knife with all my strength, handle first.
The butt of it slammed right onto the clock I’d just fixed, and the creature fell to the ground without a sound like all its strings had been cut off at once.
Silence.
The sound of my breathing echoed in my head. No more screams that I could hear in the distance, either. The beast was down, the clock on the side of its head broken once more.
I was alive—and terriblyexcited,when…
“There you are, finally gone. I was worried you wouldn’t arrive before you left again.”
The voice came from behind me, up above. A miracle I didn’t drop my knives when I jumped, definitely not excited anymore. Pure terror had seized me by the throat, and itdidn’t let me breathe until I’d looked at every single tree surrounding me, both the dark ones and those with lanterns hanging on the branches.
But there was nobody there.
“I myself tried not to arrive early, I really did. And I almost didn’t recognize you without all the blood.”
The voice was there, I wasn’t making it up. And it was coming from behind me—alwaysfrom behind me whichever direction I turned. It was a male voice, I thought, but I could have easily been mistaken, considering I was alone in this forest with a dead clockbeast at my feet and no idea what to expect the next second.
But it sure as Sparetime wasn’ta grin.
It was there, hovering just above a branch over which hung a lantern, so there was plenty of light to see.
It was a grin made of perfectly aligned sharp teeth that looked like a crescent moon at first—and then the eyes appeared, big and green. The nose, a shiny black button. The fur, gray and black and white.
A cat.
“Don’t look so grim,O-ra. You’re perfectly safe here. See? Nothing has tried to kill you for seconds!”
A talking cat.
A talking cat that laughed, but I didn’t actuallyhearit, more like Iimaginedthe sound in my head. The soft, velvety waves of its voice as it rolled and crashed against the walls of my skull…
“It’sOra,” I found myself saying because that was not my name. It sounded all wrong when the cat said it—oh-rah—and that wasn’t it.
“Is it now,” the cat said, and its laughter rolled again in my mind as it slowly stood up and stretched.
A talking cat, and I was telling it how to pronounce my name.
Something wasn’t right here.
Was I dreaming again? Had the clockbeast gotten me? Had I lost consciousness without noticing?
But no, the clockbeast was still on the ground near a trunk, its clock broken. It wasn’t moving—but the cat was.
The cat was walking down the side of the tree as if it were as straight as the ground, its thick tail swooshing to the sides slowly as it took its time—and it was walkingbackward.
I blinked and blinked at least three times, and the image didn’t change—the cat was walking on the bark backward, tail first.
My legs carried me away, too, on instinct.
