Chapter 1

I had been in the forest for two days and I had nothing to show for it. I’m not exactly sure where my mind was at. Normally, I would have had at least a deer, maybe a boar, or a few fat birds to show for my efforts.

I was close on the trail of a solitary deer, the tracks were still fresh and I had a feeling I knew the meadow it was heading for. A cool breeze blew through the trees and tickled the fur along my ears and tail. Flicking my tail playfully, I was just about to dash off in the direction of my prey when I heard her. My ears twitched. I heard sticks and leaves crushed underfoot, gasping breath, and running feet. It was one person but ... I smelled the air ... I couldn’t smell her, but she sounded like a herd of elephants running through the forest.

Curious, I ducked down behind a bush just before she came into view. Her eyes were wild, her long hair was matted to her head with sweat, and the dress she was wearing was covered in dirt and leaves. She looked afraid, desperately afraid. She ran by me like she was on fire, like there was a wild animal nipping at her heels. I almost called out, the thought crossed my mind, but I didn’t know why she was running. It wasn’t often that settlers came this far into the forest. Was there someone chasing her?

She was running as fast as she could, her black boots digging into the soft earth with every step, but her clothes and the fact that she obviously wasn’t used to running in the woods made her incredibly easy to follow. She was fast, already out of sight when I stepped out from behind the little bush I had hid in, but I knew I could catch her.

Three days hunting and nothing to show for it. Looking back, I probably should have let her go, but I couldn’t. Settlers fascinated me, always had, and after I was sure there was nothing chasing her, I slipped onto the trail of broken branches and downtrodden bushes she left behind and started after her.

She was running toward the Aspera, the river that divided our land from the Ghe. What she didn’t know was that the hills formed a natural valley with steep dropoffs above the river’s edge. I stopped when I saw a deep divot near a fallen tree, her heel had dug into the earth and then twisted. She had apparently tried to jump the width of the trunk but missed. There was a small piece of black cloth hanging from the point of a broken branch. I picked it up and smelled it.

It never ceased to amaze me, the way settlers smelled. Their clothes, their skin, even their hair always had some kind of odd smell. They called it perfume, but to me it smelled like bitter flowers.

My ears twitched and I felt the earth vibrate slightly. I thought of the hill we were on, the way you had to cut west if you wanted to avoid the sudden drop to the river. She must have missed it. I heard the woman fall, a little scream echoed through the trees.

I shook my head and started running again. I couldn’t help but smile. I loved running through the forest, loved the way the light flickered between the leaves and branches, the way the air felt as it moved past my ears and along my skin. I glanced down at my bare feet and saw the anklet Dumi had given me. The little orange feathers she had tied to the back of the leather strap floated and bounced like they were trying to fly every time I took a step.

Grabbing a low branch, I swung myself up into a tree, ran along one branch and then jumped higher into the next tree. To the settlers, moving through the trees was impossible, but for us it was second nature. We had better balance, we were leaner and lighter.

I ducked under a branch, into another tree, and stopped. From my perch near the edge of the hill, I could see the place where the woman had slipped. She had tried to grab a small sapling and had yanked it free. The hole in the ground was where her fall began, a hundred paces further down was where it stopped.

I crouched down and stared at the forest around me. Although my cat ears could hear amazingly well, I still needed to concentrate to separate the sound of the woman’s footsteps from the river and the rest of the forest’s sounds. I couldn’t see her. I listened for a moment, turning my ears this way and that, trying to catch the sound of her running, but there was nothing.

Maybe the fall injured her. I held my breath and listened again. She couldn’t have gone far. Then I caught it, the sound of footsteps along the pebbled shore of the river. She was dragging her feet, obviously exhausted, and probably trying to find a place to cross. I tried to gauge the distance in my head. She wasn’t running anymore, but if she crossed the river, she was going to be in the middle of Ghe territory. And the Ghe didn’t treat the settlers like we did.

I glanced around and tried to pick the cleanest, fastest route down the hill and along the shore. I doubled back a bit and stayed in the trees, running high in the branches to catch up with her. I darted left and found myself facing a long jump, longer than I was ready to just dash for.

I backed up against the trunk of the tree and tried to count how many paces I had. I picked the place I wanted to land. I could make it. I was sure. I took a breath, ran as fast as I could, and leapt out into the air.

There is nothing quite like a good jump, especially a dangerous one that pushes your limits and sets a flock of butterflies loose in your stomach. My tail whipped back and forth, the air sounded like the world was whispering a secret I couldn’t understand.

The branch I had aimed for flew at me like a spear, but I was lower than I wanted to be and so I had to reach out and grab it with my hands, use the force of my jump to swing myself back up, and then regain my balance on top. It was tricky, and a little noisier than I had hoped - every tree branch I touched seem to thunder and shake its leaves like it was shouting at me - but I made it.

When I got to a large oak whose branches actually crossed over the Astera, the woman was picking her way along the river bank thirty or forty paces ahead of me. I looked around. If I was going to cross the river and stay in the trees, this was where I needed to do it. But is the woman didn’t cross and just continued on, I was going to have to double back.

I stared down at the woman as she held her arms out from her sides, trying to stay balanced, stepping from stone to stone along the bank, scanning the running water for a shallow place to cross. I recognized the dress, there was a yellow cursi on the sleeves, she was a nun.

It had been a long time since the settlement had sent anyone to our village. I guess they figured that, since the last three (two nuns and a priest) hadn’t returned, we were probably beyond their message. Of course, they had no way of knowing that both nuns had decided to join our tribe and that the priest had died happily on the altar.

I decided to cross the river. I wanted to stay high in the trees, and there was an easy path to get ahead of her if she did decided to cross. I used the oak’s thick branches like a bridge and darted into the trees on the Ghe side of the river, stopping once I was even with her, moving through the trees parallel to her.

The woman walked for a few more minutes, stepping and sliding along the moss covered rocks, before she decided on a place to cross.
From my perch, I looked down at the middle of the river and it was so deep the water went from clear to almost black. I would have had trouble crossing the spot she chose and I wear little clothing and have cat-like reflexes.

I wanted to say something, shout a word of warning, and show her that there was a better place just a few paces down, but then she would have known I was there.

The nun stepped into water that barely reached her ankles. She looked relieved and then faced the span of the river with determination. She took another, unsteady step. Her leg disappeared to the knee and she gave a sharp little gasp as the cold water filled her boot.

I realized I was holding my breath as I watched, wrestling with myself for not helping. We we were not allowed to visit the settlement, that was a rule. But there was no rule that said we couldn’t interact with a settler we found in the forest. I stared down at her and something inside of me stirred. I almost felt bad for following her this far without saying anything, for spying on her, but I didn’t know what to say or if I should say. I was confused and a little scared.

Meanwhile, the woman caught her left leg up with her right and stood in the current holding the black dress up around her thighs. She had gone too far to go back. She was nervous. I watched as she looked back and forth, trying to find better footing. She turned at the waist and lifted her left foot, to take a step back toward the shore, but her right foot couldn’t hang on and she slipped.

A sharp little gasp and scream echoed through the trees around us. Then came the dunking sound of her splash. She fell backward into a sitting position. The water came up to her chest.

I stifled a laugh and watched as the nun slammed her hands against the surface of the water and groaned in frustration. The fabric of her dress spread out in the billow of the current.

It took her a few moments to get to her feet. Soaked, her tunic reflected the dappled sunlight and clung close to her form. I lowered myself along the branch and stared down at her.

Even with her habit askew and soaked to the bone, she was pretty. If I had to guess, I would have said early twenties. It was difficult to tell, every settler I had ever seen always looked older than they really were. Some said it was because they weren’t from our planet, that they were not children of the forest and therefore part of the world rather than inhabitants of it.

Every time one came to our village, they looked exhausted, like they hadn’t slept in days or weeks, but this one looked younger than most. I watched as she she slogged her way across the rest of the river. She fell once and had to swim through the deepest part, but she made it.

When she reached the far side, she looked around for a moment. The bank of the river on the Ghe side was a wide blanket of green grass and trees. And maybe that is why she picked that spot to cross, but she wasn’t concerned with the forest. No, she looked around like she wanted to be sure no one was watching or following her.

I sat as still as I could, convinced she must have sensed me in the tree above her. She looked around, scanning the opposite shore and the nearby trees for a few minutes. Once she was satisfied, sure there was no one around, she lifted off her habit and let her long, dark hair free of the wrinkled headpiece and haphazard bun she had kept it in.

It was always so strange seeing people without furry ears on top of their heads or long, furry tails. I remembered the first time I saw a settler. He was escorted into the village by three of our hunters who said he had been spying for the ship that had crashed on the far side of the forest.

They had bound his wrists with thick rope and walked him right past our house to the center of the village, to the circle of elders, and stood him next to the altar. Everyone had been there. I remember walking around the man with all of my friends talking about the fact that someone must have cut off his tail and maybe his ears too. We laughed at the strange way he watched us, spinning his head around at every sound rather than just focusing his ears like we did.

The older ones, my parents and everyone else in our village, had spoken of him like he was a devil. Of course, back then, humans were still new and strange, so much like us, but different enough that everyone was a little afraid.

Of course, I didn’t know anything. I acted tough like I had seen a hundred, but all I knew were the stories. People had only just realized that the people from the crash were survivors of some other race, some travelers from the stars. At first the elders said they were evil spirits.

Later, after they had built their first towns, the settlers sent missionaries deep into the forest to teach us and the other tribes about their gods.