Tales from the Guild

World Tour

Edited by Ocean Tigrox

Co-edited by Madison Keller, George Squares, and MikasiWolf

Tales from the Guild: World Tour

Production Copyright © 2018 FurPlanet Productions

She Who Eats © 2018 Frances Pauli

The White World © 2018 Dark End

Waterlogged © 2018 Madison Keller

Frost Bridge © 2018 Amethystos

Tempus Imperfectum © 2018 Al Song

Forgiveness Hex © 2018 George Squares

Vanillupus and Other People’s Wits Take on the Inhospitable World © 2018 Slip Wolf

The Gaucho © 2018 CorgiW

Cover illustration by Lando

furaffinity.net/user/sicklyhypnos

Cover design by George Squares

Published by FurPlanet Productions

Dallas, TX

www.FurPlanet.com

ISBN 978-1-61450-437-5

eBook ISBN 978-1-61450-446-7

First Edition Trade Paperback 2018

All rights reserved. No portion of this work may be reproduced in any form, in any medium, without the express permission of the author.

Table of Contents

What is the Furry Writers’ Guild?

Foreword

She Who Eats

Frances Pauli

The White World

Dark End

Waterlogged

Madison Keller

Frost Bridge

Amethystos

Tempus Imperfectum

Al Song

The Forgiveness Hex

George Squares

Vanillupus and Other People’s Wits Take on the Inhospitable World

Slip Wolf

The Gaucho

Corgi W

About the Authors

About the Editors

About the Artist

What is the Furry Writers’ Guild?

The Furry Writers’ Guild aims to support, inform, elevate, and promote quality anthropomorphic fiction and its creators. Since its origin in 2010, the organization has worked with writers to provide information to help them grow and learn. The membership requirements are simple and, although there are benefits to being a Guild member, many of the resources provided are there for both member and non-member authors.

The Guild is not just for writers, though. It aims to be a resource for readers, as well. With this anthology, you can see a showcase of some of our members at their best.

Furry or not, author or reader, writers of fiction or nonfiction, there is something for all within the guild. Our forums and online chats welcome all comers, and we hope that you will find something to help, something to delight, and a community of which you can be a part.

Find out more at furrywritersguild.com

Proceeds from the sale of this anthology will go back to helping fund the Guild. Thank you for your contribution!

Foreword

There’s so much diversity on this big blue rock we live on. From vast societies scattered across the globe, to simple differences in slang from one province to the next. We each know so much about where we’ve grown up and the places we’ve travelled, but so little compared to everything still to see. There are countless stories happening around the globe and this anthology is an attempt to use those locations, those societies and those experiences to craft our own creative tales around them.

Although these stories are works of fiction, I hope they’ll encourage you. Whether it inspires you to explore more of what’s out there, travel somewhere you’ve never gone, take some time to learn more about the history of where you live, or even find out more about what’s happening on the other side of the planet, remember that all this can lead to creativity and inspiration in your own works. Never take your own life and experiences for granted or for something mundane. Always be looking to add more to your own life story.

She Who Eats

Frances Pauli

Ternate, Indonesia

The boat railing pitched again, making the Molucca Sea a diagonal slash of blue and turning Kit’s stomach inside out. She clenched both paws around the wood and closed her eyes tight against the vertigo, the sense that her world was toppling overboard.

Ms. Jones, we regret to inform you that your mother has passed.

Kit swallowed bile and pushed the echo of the letter to the back of her mind. Stay in the moment, Kit. She needed to keep it together. The wood felt smooth under her pads, the sea matched the blue of the sky, and on the horizon, the rocky cone of Gamalama crowned her destination.

The last place she wanted to go. The worst reason to be arriving.

“Miss Jones?” The tiger captain she’d hired in Sofifi called to her from the wheel. His striped arm waved, and Kit reluctantly released the railing and staggered toward the rear deck.

“How much longer?”

“Minutes.” The captain pointed a curving black claw toward the volcanic island. “This is not a place for city kitties to holiday.”

“Trust me, it’s not a holiday.” She’d have much rather stayed in Jakarta, where she kept a comfortable apartment in a city full of the happy memories of her childhood. Despite the lawyer’s insistence, Kit knew all she’d find in Ternate was the sting of her mother’s abandonment. She swiped her long tail against the deck, accidentally soiling the calico fur with salt water and filth. Kit scowled and flicked it irritably in an attempt to dislodge the dirt. “I’ve no interest in staying a moment longer than necessary.”

I’ll be back for holidays, Kitten. It won’t be forever.

She closed her eyes and heard her mother’s voice whispering empty promises for the thousandth time. It had been forever, in the end. Every apologetic letter, every well-intentioned excuse did nothing to erase the fact. Mom chose Ternate. She picked this place over me.

“Three hours to sail back once you send word,” the captain’s baritone growled, dragging Kit into the present.

“You’re not staying?” Her whiskers tightened as the scent of the docks, thick and full of fish, reached her nostrils. Her stomach threatened to evacuate her morning meal of fruit and synthetic tuna.

“Things you’ll have to do will take time. More than you believe, I think. Enough time to earn another fare or two.”

“I was hoping to be quick.” She flicked her tail against the back of her legs and pressed the tips of her claws against her pants leg. “I’m not here to sightsee.”

“These things take a while,” the tiger insisted. “You’ll see. Island animals don’t move like city animals, don’t do anything like city animals.” He shuddered, prompting her curiosity despite her intentions.

“What does that mean?”

“Island life is slow,” he said. “But Ternate is different. Some say, in the shadow of Gamalama, they still eat the meat.” He grimaced, showing a mouthful of yellow-stained fangs.

“That’s ridiculous.” Kit sniffed and then pressed a paw pad over her nose. She mumbled, trying not to let the smell in. “My mother wouldn’t have stayed if they did.”

The salty odor only became a thicker presence as they neared the shore. The blurred line between land and sea clarified into a row of shabby buildings on stilts. Docks projected between these at random intervals, and behind it all, the green slope of Gamalama lifted toward her peak.

“Someone’s waiting for you.” The tiger maneuvered his craft toward the widest of the docks.

A crowd had gathered: a cluster of the short reptilian locals that she recognized from the few photos her mother had sent home. Monitor lizards. The animals which made their home on the island wore loose garments that matched their black and yellow scales, scant clothing designed for an active life in the tropical setting.

Their natural lack of fur had made Kit twitchy when she was younger. Now, it showcased how different Ternate was and caused her to doubly question her mother’s decision to live there. Research was one thing. Mrs. Jones had always put her career first. But to live like this… surrounded by half naked reptiles?

Kit meant to close her eyes to will the approaching island and its colorful population out of existence. Instead, a flash of white caught her attention. Her eyes were drawn to a larger motion, a taller figure among the mob.

“Flat head cat.” The tiger grinned and then turned his head and spat onto the deck of his boat. “He’ll take care of your business.”

“Who is he?” Kit hardly had to squint to see the crowd now. The wash of colors solidified into individual animals. The cat in the middle of the lizards wore a white suit and hat. He stood tall and out of place among the shorter islanders.

“Marshal,” the tiger said. “Ternate liaison to all of Indonesia.”

“Sounds important.” Kit narrowed her eyes and made out a pelt of gold beneath the white suit.

“Not really.” The captain laughed and spit again. “He might have money, but he’s got no power in the jungle. On these slopes, it’s the little Bomoh who runs the show. That one, city kitties would do good to steer clear of.”

“The shaman or Marshal?”

“Yes!” A striped fist pounded against the ship’s wheel, and the tiger captain laughed until it turned into a growl. “Both of them, and the island too. City kitty should have stayed at home.”

“Maybe so.” Kit watched the dock grow, the lizards milling, and the single, white-clad cat prowling among them. She inhaled the aroma of salt and fish, bracing against her stomach’s complaint and wishing she’d been able to do what the captain suggested. Wishing she’d stayed in Jakarta.

Mrs. Jones specifically requested that you come to Ternate.

Her mother’s last wishes had dragged her to this island, and despite ten years of abandonment, resentment, and anger, Kit had answered without hesitation. She’d obeyed like a good kitten, as if she’d even had a mother for the last decade.

She sighed and swiped her tail back and forth. “I didn’t really have a choice.”

***

“Kittitas Jones, I’d know you anywhere.” The cat in the white suit had a broad face and a wide, friendly smile. He extended a paw to help Kit from the boat, and used his other to tilt his hat for her in a remarkably courteous, if old-fashioned, gesture.

“How is that?” She took his paw and allowed him to steady her on the swaying dock. “Have we met?”

“No.” His smile only stretched further, showing white teeth. Perhaps the island food was better than in Sofifi. Kit’s belly warmed at the thought, but the cat in white ruined it with his next words. “Your mother has shown me many photographs. Your face is known in town, though of course the images could not fully convey how lovely you are in person.”

“My mother…”

“I’m very sorry for your loss.” His smile dimmed, but not enough for Kit to believe his words. He still clutched her paw in his, and his eyes flashed as if the sun had gone out, as if they stood alone in the dark.

“Who are you?” She pulled her paw away and braced herself against the dock’s movement by stepping wider and counterbalancing with her tail. “The captain said—oh.”

The boat had already pulled away from the dock, making more distance than she’d have expected in a few short moments of conversation. Kit flattened her ears and watched her contact shrinking into the sea. The tiger had assured her she could send a telegraph as soon as she was ready to leave, promising he could return within a few hours.

She still felt the weight of his abandonment as an ill omen.

“My name is Jake.” The flat-headed cat had removed his white hat. He held it in front of his chest now, and his expression had turned serious. “Jake Marshal, and I am sorry for your loss, Kitten, but not so sorry that you’ve come at last to Ternate.”

“It’s Kit.” She glared at him. Only her mother called her Kitten. “And I plan on leaving as quickly as possible.”

“A tragedy.” He grinned again, showed her white teeth, and held out his elbow. “But not unexpected. Shall we?”

“Shall we what?” The sea swirled, conspiring against her and tossing her toward Jake Marshal. Kit kept her stance, tried to grab his elbow casually, without giving away how much she needed him for balance.

“I’ve been charged with helping you complete your business here. You wish to finish as soon as possible, but perhaps we should get the viewing over with first?”

“The viewing.” She’d known, of course, that she’d have to see the body. It still hadn’t felt real until that moment. Her mother was dead, lain out here in the middle of the sea with only the lizards for company. Kit allowed Jake Marshal to lead her from the dock to the land. She moved automatically, numb, her head full of her mother’s voice.

If you’d only come to visit, Kitten. You might understand.

But she never would, not if the volcano towering overhead crumbled to dust, or the shacks around them turned to gold and the skies rained synthetic fish to drown out the stink of real flesh. She’d never forgive her mother, and now, she’d have to face her knowing there would be no answers, no explanation ever.

“Kitten?” The face of Jake Marshal resolved into focus. He peered down at her, worry pressing his ears to either side of his wide head. “Sorry, Kit. Are you well?”

Her fugue had dragged them to a stop in the middle of a rough dirt avenue lined with shabby buildings. They’d walked inland far enough that the stilts had vanished, and the street angled up at a gentle but obvious slope toward the jungles at the base of Gamalama. Though the smell of the sea lingered, a new aroma swept inland, sweet and pungent and oddly familiar.

Kitten.

She shook her head and swiped her tail high enough above the road to keep it from any further sullying. “Sorry about that. Lost in thought.”

“Would you rather wait?”

“No.” She wanted this over as quickly as possible. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”

The crowd from the dock had dispersed while they spoke, and now the reptilian locals continued about their business, readying outbound crates and pushing carts and cargo from the dock to the shops along the street. They pointed long snouts at Kit and blinked round eyes surrounded by bright yellow scales. When she glanced in their direction, the faces turned quickly away, but as soon as her eyes moved on, she knew their attention fixed back on her, on Jake Marshal holding her arm, leading her toward her mother’s body.

“I’m fine.” She asserted it, louder this time.

“They don’t mean to be rude,” Jake said. “They’re just very curious.”

“I suppose my mother showed them my picture as well?”

“Oh yes.”

“Well that’s just great.” Kit lashed her tail against her legs and pressed her claw tips into her pads. So many eyes watched her, and all of them knew who she was. All of them knew her mother better than she did.

Jake tried again. “Your mother—”

She pulled her arm from his and stepped a pace to the side. “Just take me to her.”

“Very well.” He bowed low, dragged his hat close to the dusty road, and straightened without taking a step. His stance shifted just enough to notice if you she were really looking.

She caught the tension in the new set of his shoulders and she saw the tip of his tail twitch.

Ahead of them, one of the lizards had taken center stage. He posed beneath an arch of rough wood, behind which the city faltered and the jungle swooped in to take the place of civilization. He stood the same as the rest, about chest high to Kit, and his scales were black over most of his body, brilliant yellow in the stripes running over his eyes. Still, nothing about him felt the same as the islanders wandering between Ternate’s buildings.

This one wore a long, emerald green sarong and a crown of spiky feathers. He raised one arm straight into the air. Kit would have known exactly who he was even if his gesture hadn’t silenced the movements of his people. The shaman held something in his claws. He shook it and it rattled, chasing away the echo of the lizard’s hissing with a sound like bones clattering, like the tumbling of stones down the side of Gamalama.

“It’s okay,” Jake Marshal whispered. He’d sidled up to Kit again, and one of his paws settled against her shoulder. “Pikau is our Bomoh.”

“A shaman?”

“Of a sort, yes.”

“That explains my mother’s interest.”

“She fought for them,” Marshal’s voice adopted a defensive note. “Went to the city many times to argue on their behalf. Because of her, the lizards are allowed to keep their ways, if only on this corner of the island.”

The shaman rattled again and shouted something in a language built of hissing sounds and the clacking of teeth. His voice refused to pick an octave. It warbled high and low at turns and echoed all the way past them as if he spoke to the sea.

Kit’s fur lifted. Her whiskers twanged against the sounds, the rattling, and the soft rumbling in the distance that might have been the volcano. Her tail twitched a warning, and she remembered the tiger captain’s words. Only minutes after he’d dropped Kit off, she stood in the street with Jake Marshal, facing this Pikau, when he’d suggested she steer clear of them both.

“He welcomes you to Ternate,” Jake assured her. “And expresses the island’s sorrow for your mother.”

Kit tried to smile. Her whiskers were too tight, and she feared she showed more fang than the lizard would appreciate. “Thank you.”

The shaman shrieked and leaped into the air. Kit flinched into Jake Marshal’s side. A wrong choice, but something that happened too fast to remedy. Jake’s scent filled her nostrils, and her body tensed, reacting to the proximity of the attractive tom.

The Bomoh jumped so high that the very tip of his tail became the only thing anchoring him to the island. He threw up both his arms this time, and when he fell back to earth, he flung the rattle to his feet.

It shattered against the street.

“It’s okay.” Marshal repeated. “It’s just…”

“I’m not a child.” Kit cringed from him. She kept her eyes on the lizard shaman, but now that his tantrum had ended, he seemed to deflate. His claws dragged against the street, etching something around the broken instrument. Once he’d finished scratching, however, he turned without ceremony and stalked away, deep into the jungle.

“Come.” Jake said. “This way.”

“After him?”

Jake Marshal stuffed his white hat back over his ears and shrugged. “Of course.”

He marched away without looking back. Kit hesitated, but only until the nosy locals returned to their business. Then she hurried after, and when she reached the spot where Pikau had thrown his fit, Kit kept her eyes on the ground. She found the remains of the shaman’s toy, a burst gourd and a scattering of teeth.

If the marks he’d scratched in the dirt meant anything, Kit couldn’t guess what. She stepped over them, reluctant for some reason to disturb the detritus. Needle teeth in the dust, shards of gourd and one larger fang that couldn’t have come from a lizard.

Kit didn’t want to know whose tooth that was any more than she cared to see her mother’s body. Today, the universe didn’t seem to give a damn what she wanted. Gamalama rumbled in the distance, Jake Marshal continued in the wake of the shaman lizard, and Kit had no choice but to lift her tail high and follow.

***

They’d laid her mother inside their temple. The island’s buildings grew less modern the farther they wandered from the shoreline. The walls shrank, and eventually most of the houses existed primarily as roofs held aloft by sparse poles and the occasional privacy screen. The temple proved the grandest of these structures by far, sitting atop a shelf in the island landscape like a huge, open-aired vulture waiting to pounce on the town below.

Or maybe that was her mood talking.

Kit stared up at it and tried to think of a reason not to keep going. The jungle encroached on civilization here. Dense green foliage replaced the walls, and the steady music of Indonesian birds and insects played her mother’s funeral dirge. A merrier sound than Kit would have expected, but then, the decorations heaped around and up the temple walkway suggested one hell of a party.

A long stair wound from the street to the temple, lined with a rugged rail made of wood that had not been hewn in any uniform fashion. Garlands of flowers twined over and under the railing, and the blooms spilled onto the steps. The air filled with a sweet smell—a fresh but also spicy aroma that Kit couldn’t quite pin down. There were bundles of bright cloth amid the flowers, too, and strings of polished stone, boxes, plates of food. A treasure lining the pathway to her dead mother.

Kit focused on Marshal, on the only thing that seemed even slightly familiar to her in Ternate. “What is all this?”

“The islanders show their appreciation for She Who Eats.”

The accent was perfect, which threw her for a moment, since Jake Marshal’s lips had not moved. He stood beside her as mute as the flowers, and her answer had come from the stairway. His eyes narrowed though, and Kit followed his gaze to find the lizard, Pikau, had reappeared facing them from three steps up the climb. Eye to eye now.

“She Who Eats?” Kit blurted, and the reptilian eyes blinked.

“It is how they know your mother,” Jake whispered. “The name the locals gave her.”

“Her title,” Pikau corrected. “She Who Eats honored Ternate with her life. Now we honor her in death.”

“It’s an old custom.” Jake Marshal explained away the shaman’s severe tone and earned a narrowed gaze from Pikau. The lizard’s tongue slid out and down, forked at the end and reaching near to the ground. After descending, it retracted so slowly that Kit found herself mesmerized, watching the pink tips below the scowling face. The deliberate slowness of the gesture felt like a reprimand. This time, Kit suspected it was not meant for her.

“Come, daughter of She Who Eats.” Pikau turned and darted up the stairway, moving more like a snake than a lizard. His body flowed around the bends, and his stout but generous tail whiplashed through the air behind him.

“It’s okay.” Jake repeated it like a mantra.

From the stairway above, however, Pikau’s voice reprimanded again, sharp and lilting, this time in the language of the lizards.

Kit allowed Jake’s paw at her elbow, and they climbed together behind the priest, stepping gingerly over the offerings that the locals had heaped upon her mother. She Who Eats. Kit couldn’t reconcile the words with the cat she knew, with the upright, formal queen who’d raised her affectionately from a distance. She closed her eyes, breathed, and let Jake’s grip steady her progress.

“What is that smell?” A sweet burning filled her nose. Her stomach rumbled.

“Ternate and her sister are known as the Spice Islands,” Jake answered. “For many years, her forests were plundered for the clove and the nutmeg.”

“And now?”

“Now we eat very well here.” His grin flashed, drawing Kit out of her musings, from dark thoughts and regrets. The flat-headed cat had a jovial spirit, and even in grief and confusion, Kit found it infectious. His fangs were white and sharp. His eyes flashed like his smile. “Yes. We eat very well in Ternate.”

“Is that why they called her She Who Eats?”

Jake Marshal tripped over the next stair. They both teetered, gripped each other for balance, and ended up muzzle to muzzle. Kit smelled it on him too: a warm comfort of spice. His eyes flashed, and he whispered, “Perhaps.”

Her whiskers tightened, twanged with the proximity of the tom, with his scent, with his presence. He’d offered no real answer, and she suspected he knew it. But she allowed him to hold her for a breath longer, a warm moment, before they continued their climb. Her curiosity won again a few more steps up. “She never told me anything about this place. The letters all just asked me to come, asked how I was and how soon I could get away.”

“She missed you always.”

“Not enough to come home.”

The closer they drew to the temple, the more the stairways overflowed. Kit had to climb over the offerings now, to wade through flowers that reached her hock, and carry her tail unnaturally high for her mood.

“Perhaps her work here was more important than you imagine?”

“More important than her family?” Kit flicked her tail against the railing. “Yes. That’s exactly what I think.”

“I’m not sure you understand.” Jake reached the last step, stood on the temple platform beneath a woven roof, and offered her a paw she suddenly didn’t care to take. “Come.”

She shrugged off his assistance and stepped up. The temple occupied the entire level space at the edge of the spice forest. The walls were knee-high plank barriers that did nothing to keep out the insects and birds but left a stunning view of the sea on two sides of the building. Rough poles supported the frond roof, and flower garlands hung from the lattice between them.

A red bird perched on one beam, its head tilting to one side when Kit entered the temple. A round orange eye examined her, and a sharp avian alert announced that her attention was fixed, pointedly away from the reason for her visit: the funeral bed occupying the center of the rectangular space.

A trail of offerings led the way, but Kit’s steps refused to follow it. Her neck craned in all ways but forward. She spied a green beetle on the railing, a place to the right where the garland had snapped and the flowers scattered across the floor.

“Kit?” Jake’s voice softened and purred.

“I’m fine.”

“You keep saying that.” He took her elbow and eased her back into position.

The lizard shaman knelt beside the platform, his feather crown now removed. If he cared that they’d arrived at last, it didn’t show. He’d twisted his head and laid his pointed muzzle across the funeral shroud. His long neck stretched out baring a smooth yellow throat. His yellow eyes streamed with tears, and his tail curled protectively around his body.

Kit gaped at the pose, the submission of it. Why? Pikau ruled Ternate. Everything about the Bomoh was a claim to power. Why did she suddenly feel adrift, as if the temple floor rocked with the sea, and the green wall of jungle swayed and shook?

She stumbled forward, pulled by the intimacy of the lizard’s posture. His throat tightened. A low hissing rose to the beams above. But it was her mother lying there. Kit looked now, had to look, with that yellow throat vibrating everywhere else.

They’d piled mats beneath the body, heaped cushions, pillows and gorgeous printed fabrics there for her mother to rest on. Mrs. Jones reclined atop the mountain of comfort, shrouded in veils of mosquito netting and looked for all intents and purposes as if she were having a nap.

Kit circled her and stepped well out of reach of the priest’s tail should the hissing escalate. She approached her mother from the opposite side, and the exposed yellow throat stilled. The temple fell silent. Only an island breeze riffled the netting as soft as a whisper.

She Who Eats. Kit gazed at her mother through the veils and tried to see the change there. The soft calico fur was as tidily groomed as ever. The fluffy paws had been posed across one another over her mom’s chest, a position she’d seen her use at least daily for nineteen years. Her wedding ring was gone, but Kit herself had urged the removal of it only six months after her father had left them for his European mistress.

No matter which way she tilted her head, that was her mom lying on the pile of pillows. No matter how many times she said it in her mind, no matter if she’d come to the end of the world or not, her mother was dead.

Kit pressed her eyes shut. Her ears lowered to the sides, and her tail dragged against the planks. No chance of a reunion now. No point in clinging to anger, in feeling resentment. She pricked her claws against her thighs. None of it would help her.

Nothing would bring her mother back.

If she screamed her accusations now, if she gave into the urge to rail at her mother’s body, Kit was pretty sure the lizard shaman would try to tear her to pieces. Would he crush her into the dust like his rattle? Like cast off bones and teeth?

She inhaled and heard how ragged that breath was, how much it threatened to break her. Her mother dreamed behind closed eyes, whispered through tight lips, sounding just like the wind. Kitten. An insect hummed. Kit wept for the answers she’d never get. She cried for the fury she’d have to swallow, the rage that had devoured her for the last ten years.

She Who Eats.

Movement at her side pried her eyes wide again. Kit’s fur stood at attention. Her whiskers vibrated as another low hiss erupted from Pikau’s throat. Jake Marshal had crept to her side. The shaman stood erect now, his throat no longer bared and his eyes blinking away the tears that had possessed him. He hissed at Jake, Kit was sure, but the flat-headed cat paid him no heed. A warm paw slipped into hers, a living pulse beating beneath a golden pelt.

“It’s okay,” he said, lying whether he knew it or not. However flat his reassurance, the squeeze of his paw steadied her, even when he dropped to his knees beside her dead mother. Even when he tilted his head back and bared his throat.

Kit held to his paw and felt the life beating. She held to Jake Marshal, and let her mother’s crimes fade in the hissing of the wind, the insects, and the little black-and-yellow shaman. Ternate had taken her mother from her, and in the shadow of Gamalama, Kit finally let her go.

***

“She lived here?” Kit leaned over the balcony wall and eyed the verdant slope, the strip of beach where it met the sea. “How could she afford this?”

“She Who Eats didn’t have to afford anything.” Jake Marshal’s voice drifted through the open living area from the nook kitchen. The scent of whatever he was cooking came with his words, rich and thick and, Kit hoped, protein-heavy.

“Wait? What did you say?” She turned away from the tropical view and faced the room again. More drapery, thin cloth draped across the woven furniture. A platform that served as both bed and couch filled the majority of the space, but her mother had collected island things too. Vases and boxes and strings of shells—were these also offerings to She Who Eats?

“Come.” He breezed between kitchen and lanai, carrying two plates and a lungful of delicious aroma. “You eat, I’ll talk.”

Kit scrambled to follow, past the vase with peacock feathers and the wall with twin fans made of some sort of local bark. She darted after Jake Marshal with her stomach in knots, and not only from the idea of a decent meal. It had been a long time since she’d allowed herself to notice a male.

The view from the lanai showed more beach and one side of Gamalama reaching down toward the sea. Her mother’s home was surrounded by spice trees, the breeze adding ambiance to the meal Jake had prepared. Kit dived into a protein patty soaked in sweet sauce and tried to remember what she’d even asked him.

“You’re sure we can get things in order tomorrow?” She swallowed one gulp and reached for her coconut cup, sniffing the contents. “This isn’t water.”

“Rum.” Jake’s laughter purred. “Only thing worth drinking here.”

He took a bite of his own food and then leaned forward on his elbows and watched her instead.

“It’s good.” Kit ignored a wave of self-consciousness. She was starving. “Does mom have taurine handy or… I have some capsules in my purse.”

“It’s in the sauce.” His eyes sparkled, reflecting the sky and sea. “Your mother’s position, you see, is very important to the lizards’ culture.”

“Mom was a scientist.” Kit sipped the rum and felt the heat instantly. “She came here to study their diet and the effects of low protein on the locals.”

“But she became much more than that to the people here,” he insisted. “She Who Eats is a spiritual leader, and an important part of the annual festival. Without her…”

He shook his head, left that dangling in the warm air, and stared out to sea.

“What did you mean about not affording anything?”

“She Who Eats is given everything she needs and more.” Jake’s gaze swung back to her. His eyes flashed. “This home and its contents will pass to her successor.”

“I’m not here to make claims.” Kit tightened her ears against her skull. “I don’t want anything to do with her life here. I came because the letter said there were legalities that needed handling. What exactly those are, I haven’t a clue. But you’ve no need to worry about me wanting anything that should go to the next She Who Eats.”

“Not even that title?”

Kit slammed her coconut mug to the table and gaped at him. He didn’t blink, didn’t flinch away from the insane suggestion. “You’re mad.”

“There are worse things than staying in Ternate and living like a goddess.” He shrugged it off and turned back to the view. “But I never thought you would accept it. I told Pikau as much before you arrived.”

“You told him… Pikau wanted me to?”

“He still does.” Jake refilled her rum, though the little coconut was only half empty. “Finish your meal. I want to take a walk, show you the beach.”

“I’ve no interest in staying.” Kit swallowed a bite of the sweet patty and glared at him. If he meant to help the priest convince her, to join Pikau in the crazy notion that she might take her mother’s place, he had a colossal disappointment coming. “I just want to finish my business.”

“The island mourns.” Jake sighed and stared up toward the peaks of Gamalama. “The locals don’t take business as seriously as they do ritual.”

Kit gripped the edge of the table with her claws, let the tips drag over the iron. She felt like she’d stepped off the tiger’s boat and landed backwards in time. There weren’t supposed to be any shamans left on Ternate. This Bomoh, his rituals and the ridiculous title they’d given her mother set her teeth together and made her fur prickle and lift. Now she was stuck waiting here until the locals decided to come back to reality?

“Relax, Kit.” Jake smiled and his eyes flashed. “The offices will open tomorrow. I’m sure of it. Tonight, let me show you what Ternate has to offer, yes? Let Jake give you a tour. Relax a little bit and you might just enjoy it.”

Kit plucked her claw tips from the metal and felt his promise in the twanging of her whiskers. His eyes flashed. The air carried in thick spices, and the sea danced below like a diamond blanket. She swiped her long tail against her mother’s deck and spoke through her fangs. “Fine.”

***

Come, Kitten. Look and see.

“Mom?” Kit stumbled, reached for a low branch, and scanned the path ahead of her. “Is that you?”

A flash of calico fur danced behind the waving fronds. Come Kitten. Hurry now. The wind swirled the jungle, and Kit felt a presence at her back, something pushing her to run. She scrambled forward, ducking leaves and weaving between the overgrowth that made an obstacle course of the trail.

Come.

Her mother’s ghost led her onward. The same voice that had once sang her to sleep now lulled her into a sense of complacency. She moved obediently, following the flashing tip of a familiar tail down the slope toward the scent of dead fish.

Here, Kitten. Look. Understand.

The trail widened at the bottom of the slope, exposing a dark stretch of beach, a midnight sky and thrashing sea below. The sand tugged at her steps, but Kit dragged her claws through it, lifted her tail and followed the shaggy shadow of her mother to the water’s edge.

She Who Eats. See.

Her mother stepped into the water and it rippled and tugged at the long skirt of her island-made dress. She kept her back to Kit, but her voice sounded from all directions, from the air above and the sand below. It’s almost time.

“Why?” Kit’s voice cracked. The words had no power, no volume. She thought the things she wanted to shout, the questions, but when they fell from her lips, the sea devoured them. “Why didn’t you come home?”

Look.

Her mother hunched forward and plunged her arms into the water. Her fluffy tail skimmed over the waves and her head fell back. She lifted her paws again, dripping, clutching something that flashed and wriggled.

See, Kitten.

She Who Eats held the fish high. The moon emerged from cover, lit her in a silver halo to match her prey. Her claws extended, gleaming now, pricking the fish scales and freeing thin red rivulets that dribbled over her white fur. She turned and faced Kit with a smile as familiar as a reflection.

“Mom.” Kit choked on the word. The sea roared.

She Who Eats opened her mouth, curled her pink tongue, and stuffed the fish head against her fangs.

***

“Kitten?”

Kit screamed. She shook her head, pressed her eyes tight.

“Kit!”

“No. No.” She opened her eyes and blinked in confusion at Jake Marshal. Memories of the night before rushed back, the walk on the beach, the dancing, and the massage that had gone a long way toward easing her frustration.

“Are you okay?” He sat up in bed, and the covers pooled around them both. Jake’s paw cupped her shoulder, as warm as the concerned look on his face. “You were screaming.”

“Bad dream.” She tried to smile, tried to erase the image of her mother gorging herself on a still-wiggling fish. Jake’s paw brushed the fur of her shoulder and down her arm, managing to twist her thoughts to less horrid topics. His fur was golden everywhere, but he had spots… in lovely places.