Lillian had never been in the forest at night before today, but it wasn’t as bad as she thought it would be. In fact, she decided as she walked through the tall grass behind the barn, it was rather nice. Magical, almost, from the fireflies dancing in the meadow below the orchard to the stars twinkling above. An owl’s cry from deeper in the woods sounded mysterious rather than spooky.
Lillian’s cat eyes had such good night vision that it was easy to see where she was going, and though the night was filled with strange, scurrying sounds, her nose quickly identified each of them as harmless.
There, a row of small brown birds inside the shelter of a cedar, shifting in restless sleep.
There, a deer stepping delicately through the ferns—a doe, not the young stag she’d chased earlier today.
“Hello hello,” Lillian called out to the deer, but the doe was skittish and disappeared among the trees.
Reassured that things weren’t nearly as dangerous as her imagination could make them seem, Lillian walked in between the trees with a spring in her step and her tail held high. Her cat body gave her a grace and agility that she’d never before experienced. She bounded with ease over fallen branches and landed lightly on her paws.
The woods thrummed with the activity of nocturnal creatures. The scurrying of voles and mice tempted her to forget about Old Mother Possum and spend the night hunting and pouncing instead. But she remembered her goal and kept moving.
Lillian was deep into the forest when she felt the first pinprick of fear crawl up her spine. She thought she heard something following her. Every time she stopped to listen—ears flat, body low to the ground—the echoing footfall she thought she’d heard wasn’t there, so onward she’d go. But the spring in her step was gone and the dark woods no longer felt like familiar territory or a safe place for a kitten to go journeying.
Jack Crow’s warnings returned to her. Why would she ever think that the forest at night would be safe? She should have waited until morning to set out.