“There are more ways than one to skin a cat,” whispered a familiar voice. Too earthy to be Moon, but ethereal still.

  “Moeee!” My friend landed on the roof next to me, his wings drooping with the effort as he let out a deep sigh. He was looking rough. Rougher than I who was properly dead. “What happened to you?” I asked, nosing at his pale luminesce. He smelt very tired.

  “Rats,” he said, “Rats in the woods.”

  “But we kill-”

  “Wraiths,” he said. “Or wraith? I am unsure whether I fought one or many. But it was near impossible to kill, and painful to fight. In the end, I fled.” He lifted one singed and charred wing. The edges curled with sickly qi, and something oily black. “My healing is slow. Unnaturally slow, there is something in their bite that is unwholesome.”

  “A biting wraith?” He nodded. “A really nasty ghostie? Do you think…For-Molsnian?”

  Moeee nodded again and the wind shivered through the trees.

  “I did not see it clearly,” Moeee said. “It was a shade hiding in darkness. But I saw and heard enough. Our work is not done.”

  We both sighed then, gazing up at Moon, who sighed with us, then down to the dark forest where the shadows pooled. The darkness had been deeper since the necromancer had come. I was sure of it…or perhaps my undead eyes just saw things differently. I stared at them for a while, then shook myself back to the present as Moeee started to speak.

  “But what happened to you?” he was asking. “You look different. Your qi signature is different.”

  I sat tall and straight, conscious of the black silken stitches that my Maud had darned neatly into my sides, to hold everything in place. “I am dead,” I said. “But death cannot stop me.”

  “So it would seem.”

  I filled him in on my adventures. Moon listened and hummed and wrapped her light around us both most lovingly. But around me in particular.

  “But can you cultivate?”

  “I am figuring it out.”

  “Figure it out quickly,” Moeee said, flaring his wings. “What are you looking at?”

  “Nothing!” I tore my eyes away from the ominous shadows.

  After he left I spent some more time watching the forest, but I didn’t see any wraiths. I would have to hunt for them, but in truth I was scared to do so without my cultivation. My body was not tired but my mind was oh so weary. I tried again to sleep once more.

  Curled into a tight ball I squeezed my eyes shut. My mind went blank. I relaxed.

  Nothing happened. Nothing happened. Moon spun above me like a top. The sun rose. The sun set. I wanted so badly to sleep, to dream, but my body no longer had the need, despite the fatigue of my mind. This was not how things should be. Back home I paced the stone floors of the cottage, yowling my distress to the heavens but the heavens did not answer me. They did not care. There was no one to hear me.

  The pixies were gone, my friends were gone, Maud was gone. She likely had problems of her own. I reminded myself that I was a gloom stalker, a dream walker, a hunter of the night. A glorious cat with a proud heritage and a divine future. I was beautiful. I was Jenkins Greenleaf and I was important and wise. I could solve my own problems.

  So I set off in search of hope, but instead, I found Wuot.

  Wuot was also dead.

  She ran towards me, wings outstretched, honking and screeching. She stank of smelly Old God.

  “You too!” I shouted, bounding towards her.

  “You too!” she honked. “Jenkins I can’t cultivate!”

  “I can’t sleep!”

  “What will we do?”

  We ran about in a circle together screaming and shouting, and in a weird way it made me feel better. It was nice to have friends.

  After a while we stopped. Not because we were out of breath, because of course we weren’t, but because I had an idea.

  “Let me watch,” I said.

  And so I watched the flow of ambient qi as Wuot tried to cultivate, and then she watched mine. We conferred. We discussed. We tried again. It was easier with someone else there to help. After a great deal of effort, encouragement, and meditation, we both succeeded, but the effort required to coax even the tiniest bit of ambient qi within was immense.

  Once it was inside us, we were able to mimic the functions of a living body, air qi as breath, water as saliva and so on. The act of basic cultivating remained sluggish and difficult, the qi trickling along my channels with even less enthusiasm than I had had when I first began, in Montadie’s glade so long ago.

  It was supremely frustrating, but better, I supposed, than nothing. Wuot and I parted ways, uneasy but united in our frustration and determination to overcome this.

  Stolen story; please report.

  I went to see Mama, and Montadie, both who lamented my condition. Mama wept, Montadie scolded, then sobbed into her warts, but this is not why I visited. I did not want pity, I wanted answers.

  “How can I open my heart meridian,” I said, “now that my heart is dead? Look at it? It is cold and dead. A lump. The blockage will never open at this rate.”

  “You cannot put back together a shattered piece of glass,” said Montadie, her tone gentle and her eyes full of sorrow. “It is possible that your cultivation journey ends here, Jenkins. You have achieved a great deal, and the fact that you and Wuot are able to cultivate at all is remarkable and a testament to your will power and abilities. You should be proud of what you have done, but acceptance is needed. You are different now. Things are different.”

  You chose this. The words remained unsaid but I heard them anyway.

  “Unacceptable,” I said, and I left, seeking other wisdom.

  My heart was not a piece of shattered glass. It was an organ. It was mine. I could mimic the body functions of the living, there must be a way to do it more efficiently.

  “Love must be the answer,” whispered Moon, shyly. “If you would open your heart meridian?”

  “Love, how?” I yowled. “I already love me! And I love you - and Mama, and all my other friends, of course,” I added quickly.

  Moon hummed and sang encouragingly. Moon was ancient and wise, as well as lovely. If she thought love was the answer then there was hope because I was so very good at loving. Under her worried oversight, I wandered the woods, glaring at shadows, and watching carefully for rat-wraiths. I had not yet seen any rat-wraiths. At least I did not think so.

  Sometimes I thought the shadows behaved strangely, flowing and bobbing like living things, but I was not sure. Whenever I turned my head there was nothing to see. Still, I felt that horrible sensation of being watched.

  Sending out my senses I registered death qi, mixed in amongst the rest. An unusually high amount of death qi. It was unsettling. Even more unsettling was the knowledge that sometimes something was running alongside me, shoulder to shoulder. Sometimes there, sometimes not. Was I losing my mind? What was it? A figment of my imagination? A ghost? A shade? A spirit? Whatever it was did not attack me. It was just strange.

  With no outlet for my frustration, I stopped and sharpened my claws on a stout tree stump. Normally I would hunt but the thrill of the chase was less now that I had no desire to eat my prey. No desire to eat at all. One of life’s great joys, ripped from me by the silver blade. I hissed into the wood. No eating, no dreaming, oh how unfair it all was.

  I went to find my siblings.

  Both Hush and Thimble were keeping their distance from the village, Thimble nursing his own broken heart and Hush wary of all the undead goings on. I thought this was probably wise, though it pained me. Especially since I was now very much a part of the undead goings on, whether I liked it or not.

  I told them some of my woes.

  “Can you still love?” asked Hush. Her whiskers quivered with curiosity, once she had got over the shock of seeing her favourite brother as a draugr.

  “Of course I can,” I snapped. But her words planted fear in my cold dead heart. Quickly I warmed it with a little fire qi. I had to use it sparingly, gathering more took so much longer now, and I had not yet found another Fire, let alone one I was friendly with. Fire did not grow on trees in winter. But the warmth in my heart made me feel better, and so I was able to consider her words.

  Could I still love? Were my feelings still warm and true?

  After considerable pondering I decided yes of course they were. Nothing had changed there, I still loved as ardently as ever. Perhaps even more so, as my time beneath the heavens felt more finite and precious.

  I stayed some time with my siblings but left when they went to sleep.

  Not being able to join them was excruciating. I could not watch, I was too jealous. I missed the feeling of floating away into relaxation. I missed the dreamworld. I missed how easy it was to visit everyone. I had only had the ability a few months but already it was a core part of me. It was like mourning the loss of a limb.

  I paced restless circuits around my forest, inspecting leaves, peeking under hollows, and occasionally exchanging words with the friendly Small Folk that remained. While seeking answers and restless shades in mossy roots, I became aware that once more a shadow was strolling next to me. A shadow. A shadow of -?

  Examining it from the corner of my eye was difficult.

  It was barely there, coming and going like the spaces between dappled moonlight. After a while I realised with a shock that it was a cat. Black like me, but bigger. Or was it? Now it was the same size, now a little smaller. It was beautiful, in the moments my eyes could focus on it.

  For a brief moment I thought it might be Hush, or Thimble, come after me, or one of the other village cats that I did not know so well? But no, there were no other black cats. I was the only one in the forest.

  We walked side by side in silence.

  Clearer now, he didn’t look at me, although I could make out ink black whiskers, and even more strangely, pitch-black eyes. His size changed again, like the wind, usually when my attention was called elsewhere; by the fluttering of wings, or the scent of something interesting.

  Sometimes he was exactly the same size as me, sometimes as big as a lynx. Sometimes it seemed to flow like liquid over the ground, and at other times paced with heavy tread. Very occasionally, I felt him brush against me, and his touch was gossamer cool.

  An owl called, and I looked up, and then back, sneaking a glance.

  The beast next to me was now a slavering hound, with wicked fangs, hunched shoulders, and hackles, all black fur and sharp edges. I gulped, and kept my tread casual, ostensibly unconcerned as we traversed the woods together. The beast did not attack me, merely stalking onwards by my side. Almost… companionable.

  The wind huffed and the creature rippled. A shadowy fox flowed next to me. Then it was a squirrel, barely coming up to my stomach, bounding along on midnight paws that barely grazed the earth. A badger trotted across the earth, tail wiggling, becoming a hare that leapt into the sky, soft nose sharpening into a hooked beak. A vicious kestrel flapped its wings once, twice, thrice, then shrunk in on itself, scurrying downward. A mouse for a score of steps, the wings folding into its back. Then the shadow grew, becoming an ugly rat with twisted fangs, rearing up into the form of a great, midnight stag, then a rat the size of a bear.

  The shadow exuded death qi.

  I blinked. The wind blew, and once more a black cat trod softly by my side.

  “Are you ready to know me?” said the shadow cat with the pitch-black eyes. His voice as soft as the wind through the pines.

  “I- Who are you?” I came to a halt, and turned to face the handsome stranger. Despite the uncanny darkness of his eyes somehow I could tell he was looking at me.

  He did not answer, but started walking once more.

  I turned and followed, because what else would I do? Once more we strolled side by side in silent companionship. I did not stop, and for one, brief, brief moment our tails intertwined as if we were friends or lovers. It felt… odd.

  “Who are you?” I asked once again, turning but the shadow cat was gone.

  Only the night remained.