The Secrets of Names. Snow Chronicles. Book 1

«What are you doing?» Vera gasped.

«Confusing the trail,» said Yin shortly.

«We’re simples!» Yang shouted, and golden sparks flew from his hands into the air. «But useful ones! I can muddle the near things, she can hold a shape steady. Between us we are pure bureaucracy for any pursuit!»

The first Rustler sprang.

Vera did not even have time to scream.

Right in front of her face a thin white arc flashed into being, and the creature struck it with a dry, horrible sound — not like an animal hitting a wall, but like a knife striking ice. The Rustler recoiled. Grey sparks spilled from its hollow eye-sockets.

«Run!» Yang bellowed.

They fled down the slope.

Or rather, Vera fled down the slope, trying not to look behind her and at the same time wanting desperately to look behind her, which, as is well known, is very bad for dignified running. Yin and Yang skimmed beside her, not so much running as directing the landscape itself. Bright tracks flashed beneath her feet. Stones shifted aside. Drifts opened into passages.

Behind them the pack rustled on.

The Rustlers came without growls, without howls, without any respectable warning at all. Only that dry hungry shh-shh-shh over the snow, which made the throat feel suddenly hollow.

One burst out on the right so fast that Vera did not see it until the grey shape was already reaching for her shoulder.

«Look out!» cried Yin.

But Yang was quicker.

He clapped his hands — sharp and furious, with an accuracy one would not have expected from so fidgety a creature. A golden ring flared in the air. The space in front of the Rustler jerked and folded like a sheet of paper, and the beast struck not Vera but its own shadow.

Vera had never seen a shadow scream before.

It was deeply unpleasant.

«Good heavens!» she gasped, still running.

«I told you I was useful!» Yang shouted, sounding absurdly gratified.

«You can boast later!» Yin snapped.

They shot out into an open stretch between two high shining cliffs.

Here the snow was falling more thickly. More brightly. The air was so crowded with radiance that everything looked as though it had been sketched in lightning.

And that was bad.

Because the Rustlers could see them perfectly too.

They were circling fast, skilfully, with that dreadful patience peculiar to creatures that have been doing the same thing far too long.

«They’re cutting us off from the path,» said Yang.

«I can see that,» said Yin.

«What does cutting us off from the path mean?» Vera demanded, breathless.

«It means exactly what it sounds like,» said Yang. «We are about to be divided into convenient parts.»

«That is a horrible way to explain things!»

«But a clear one!»

One of the Rustlers crouched to spring.

And then Vera saw that in one of its hollow eye-sockets something familiar flashed for an instant.

Not a face.

Not a word.

A feeling.

Warm summer. Laughter. Someone’s hand in hers.

Gone.

Vera went cold.

«Have they… already eaten things?»

«A great many things,» said Yin quietly.

And at that moment the Rustler sprang.

Vera flung up her arms over her head, though she knew perfectly well that elbows were poor defence against creatures that ate memories.

But no blow came.

Instead the world split with thunder.

Not metaphorical thunder.

Not beautiful thunder.

Actual thunder.

The sky — that deep strange sky with no sun in it — blazed with a white-gold crack. A shock rolled across the snow that flattened every Rustler to the ground at once, and inside Vera’s chest everything jumped as if her heart had suddenly decided it was leaving on its own.

A shadow fell across the clearing from above.

Huge.

Cat-shaped.

«Just try,» said a voice that made the air itself remember discipline, «touching my girl again.»

Vera looked up.

And for a second forgot how to breathe.

Domino was there.

And not merely there, either — for standing was a word for ordinary cats, the sort that slept on radiators and despised humanity in comfort. This Domino towered over the clearing like a thunderstorm that had taken the shape of a cat out of convenience and personal preference. His fur was blacker than water at midnight and whiter than fresh snow all at once. Thin lightnings ran along his sides. His whiskers shone like silver wires.

And above his head — whether one believed it or not — there gleamed a crown.

A real one.

Slightly crooked, because otherwise it would not have been Domino at all, but something much too official.

His tail moved once, slowly.

And light rippled over the snow.

The Rustlers fell back.

«Domino?» Vera breathed.

The enormous cat turned one yellow eye on her.

«And whom, precisely, were you expecting?» he thundered. «A committee for public safety with apologies?»

One of the Rustlers, evidently, was either exceptionally hungry or exceptionally stupid. Unfortunately those qualities often travel together. It launched itself straight at Domino’s chest.

Domino did not move.

He merely looked.

The creature came apart in mid-air into strips of dull grey smoke, which the wind whipped away into the darkness between the hills.

«I did warn you,» said Domino almost lazily.

The others sprang back farther still.

The lightning in his fur burned brighter. The crown trembled and grew a little taller.

«Listen carefully, you rustling scraps,» he said, and there was so much cold dignity in his voice that even the snow seemed to lie flatter. «Human beings may be confused. Human beings may be tiresome. Human beings may even be mildly educated. But only by cats. To touch one of my subjects without permission is simple impertinence.»

In spite of everything, Vera nearly snorted.

Even as a thunderous cat-deity Domino somehow sounded like a householder lodging a complaint about an empty food bowl.

The Rustlers circled the edge of the clearing. They did not attack. They did not retreat. They waited.

For fear to weaken.

And Domino saw that.

He took one step forward.

One step — and the snow beneath his paw burst into white fire.

«Out,» he said.

A second step — and a jagged bolt of lightning tore between him and the pack, lighting the clearing so fiercely that Vera had to screw her eyes shut.

«Of here.»

He did not take a third step.

He simply fluffed up his fur, and over the clearing rolled such a crack of thunder that at last the Rustlers lost their nerve — if creatures of that sort can be said to possess anything so respectable.

The pack broke and scattered over the slopes, melting into the bright snow. Within seconds there was only their dry, affronted rustling, fading farther and farther away.

Then that vanished too.

Silence.

Only the snow still glowed faintly. Only the air still smelled of storm — if storm can smell of ice and ringing and slightly singed dignity.

The storm-cat stood with his head high until everything around them had fallen still. Only then did he turn to Vera.

She was sitting in the snow, trembling, looking at him with an expression that caused a small, awkward sensation somewhere inside him.

«You… came,» she whispered.

Domino snorted. Looked away. Looked back. Came over. Sat down beside her. For a moment he said nothing.

«Of course I came,» he muttered at last. «Who else was supposed to save you?»

She threw her arms round one enormous thunderous paw.

Properly.

He went absolutely still, as if struck.

«Now then,» he said quietly. «No crying on the fur. It isn’t waterproof.»

«I was frightened,» she whispered. «I thought I’d never see them again. Mum, or Dad, or the boys…»

«Nonsense,» said the cat.

Quietly. Not grumpily. Almost kindly.

«I always find my own. Even if they have forgotten who they are. Even if they have forgotten who owns them.»

He got up, shook the snow off one ear, resumed his ordinary cat shape, and turned as if to go.

Then stopped.

Domino let out a long breath.

And began to grow smaller.

Not all at once, not with some vulgar magical snap, but with the strange natural dignity of a great wave going back into the sea. One moment he was huge, taller than a cliff, more alarming than a storm. The next he was merely a very large cat. Then just a large one. Then ordinary Domino.

Or ordinary for Domino, at any rate.

The crown remained.

He shook his head crossly. It slid over one ear.

«I detest this thing,» he muttered.

Vera flung herself at him and, before she had time to remember that he was still a cat with the temperament of a vindictive war god, hugged him.

She gave a short laugh through the last of her fright, clutching the black-and-white bundle with the crooked crown.

Then she looked at him — at the crown, at the whiskers still trembling faintly from thunder — and asked with pure, childlike astonishment,

«Domino… what are you, exactly?»

Domino gave her the look of a being who had been caught doing something altogether too solemn and was now expected to explain it in a domestic tone.

«That,» he said, adjusting the crown with one paw, «is an unreasonably large question for a girl who was, ten minutes ago, lying here as a puddle.»

«I was not lying here as a puddle,» Vera said automatically.