The sun cast a kaleidoscope of shadows from the trees as it moved overhead. Gold and dark swirled along the road as it turned from concrete to gravel. Pilot followed it until she spotted a worn dark patch of earth that ducked underneath a twist of creeper vines. The pungent scent of feral cats marked the edge of the forest colony, warning any cats away who thought to visit uninvited.

This is a bad idea, she thought. Her instincts would have to take a back seat to the greater… not 'good.' The greater sense of survival. If a cat of the wild was manipulating the veil, then it was better to find out sooner than later. And better to not let them get their paws on the stone.

Pilot scooped leaf litter and soil out from beneath the crook of a hickory tree. The stone shivered between her teeth, absorbing the warmth of her breath. It twisted in her jaws before she dropped it, almost as if it were fighting to stay in her grasp. She felt a shock of warmth as she dropped the stone into the hole, and the sound of birdsong filled her ears like the roaring of a river as she buried it.

Carrying that around is probably not a good idea, either, she thought. How did Saffron not notice something was wrong?

Before she could ask him, she would have to find him. Finding the orange tom would satisfy her obligations, though, and once the stone was back with the Collector, did she want to involve herself any further?

Pilot prowled into the forest. The decision would come later, once she had the luxury of time. She pushed deeper into the forest and even the light of the afternoon sun filtered to a faint emerald glow through the canopy.

She heard the sound of thorns twisting against fur and ducked off of the path. The smell of another cat perfumed with sap and unripened berries.

"I know you're there, Pilot." A silver-fur queen spoke as she approached the path. Her dark stripes shifted with her pelt as she flexed her shoulders, then relaxed her paws on the leaf-strewn trail. "Don't insult me by trying to disappear."

If only one of us would. Pilot's hackles raised. She got a good grind out of her teeth before forcing herself to become calm and approaching the queen.

"Been a while, Midnight," said Pilot.

Midnight swept her tail from one side of the path to another, eyes fixed on Pilot. "Not long enough."

Pilot found herself in bitter agreement. When she and Pilot first arrived in Twin Rivers, he had made a point of introducing himself to everyone – including the queen of the forest colonies. How he thought they would get along, she didn't know. Midnight was outright tyrannical about her laws, and her borders, and was still too eager to push them onto the cats that lived townside.

"If I see you put so much as a paw out of line, the Territory Guard will see you off." Midnight turned her paw over, examining her claws with mild disinterest. "With what I would consider a generous amount of your pelt left intact."

Pilot raised her hackles. The queen was used to bossing around city cats, but she knew that the challenge would get under Pilot's hide. The shadow dancing along her pelt longed for pulsing blood and snapping teeth.

But declaring war on Midnight would be a problem. Satisfying as it might be.

Before either of them could draw the pleasure of surrender from the other, a careless crackle in the brush drew their attention. Both queens turned to watch a bundle of white fur bound his way onto the fork.

Midnight's tail perked in an instant. "I was not expecting the Prince of the Hollow Pines!"

"Please, just Prince," said the tom, curling his tail up. "And you still prefer Queen of the Midnight Walks?"

"If you're comfortable with it, Midnight will do." The silver queen turned, no longer facing Pilot. It was as if the shadow-furred queen no longer existed in her presence.

Suits me just fine, Pilot thought, letting her claws slide back into her paws.

"Wonderful!" Prince purred. "Now, I don't have any prey to offer, but if you're willing to accept a couple of toys for the kittens."

Midnight watched with amusement as the tom bundled out a pair of felt mice. "How generous. I think Thistle and Lark will love them." She inclined her head to the side. "It's always a pleasure receiving a soul of the old courts. To what do we owe the pleasure?"

Pilot laughed and drew the toys to rest on the brush of his tail. "The pleasure is mine," he said. "Now—I know that you and my friend don't have the most stellar of histories…"

Midnight stifled a sound that sounded like a dying vole caught in her throat.

"...but she's taken on a job on my behalf. It would really help me out if you'd let her look around the forest, maybe talk to a few of your cats."

The queen sighed. Her eyes flicked to Pilot, and then back again to Prince with a delighted curl of her whiskers. The toys satisfied protocol, but Midnight's reward would be to demonstrate just how far above her rival queen she placed the furball. "For you, Prince, I will tolerate it."

"Thank you!" Prince chirped.

"I don't know what good it will do either of you," she went on. "If that cat you're looking for tried to enter our territory again, he'd meet a quick end at the teeth of the Territory Guard. I have made it clear that he is not to see my daughter, and we have not so much as smelled him on this side of the river in moons."

"I won't be long," Pilot swore. It was a promise to herself more than Midnight. "I just need to talk to a few of your cats."

"Please, you've come all this way," Midnight almost purred, slowly lidding her eyes at Prince. "Stay as long as you'd like."

* * *

Though Midnight's colony lay on the far side of the Twin Rivers, the scent of the wetlands still lingered on its edges. Pools of water sat in moss, reflecting swaying green branches and a cloud-dotted sky. Clusters of pine, oak, and hickory dug their roots deep, drinking in the bounty of the Twin River wild.

The woods here were ancient, far older than Twin Rivers or any of the menfolk that ever wandered there. Only the water itself remembered the first seedlings that watched over the forest now. The branches cooled the backs of thirty-odd cats who lived beneath their branches.

True to Midnight's word, the cats there knew little. No, they had not seen Saffron since his initial visitations to Orchid. And no, they weren't willing to share their thoughts on Midnight's decision to ban the tom from their forest. Any hopes Pilot had of picking up his trail had vanished by the time she'd had the same hollow exchange for the twelfth time.

She sat in a beam of sunlight and listened to the settlement. The laughter of kittens echoed from a particularly large oak, where a pair wrestled Prince between the roots. His offerings lay tucked safely at the foot of the tree while he entertained the children.

Midnight, of course, was watching from a branch above where she could keep an eye on both Pilot and the children. They seemed oblivious to the prying eyes all around them.

Pilot spotted Orchid, watching from a shaded spot beneath a nearby fan of ferns. Her gaze drifted after the kittens, but her attention seemed to be somewhere else far and beyond the colony.

"I'm afraid I haven't made much progress," said Pilot. Orchid jumped, her fur nearly doubling in size as she turned to see the queen slipping out of the shadows and into the space beside her.

"Excuse me?" Orchid blinked.

"What you asked me to find," said Pilot. "You figured out the same things I did, didn't you? He was last seen on your side of the bridge. So why'd you have me running a big dog chase all over the city?"

Orchid rasped her tongue down the fur of her neck in three deep swipes, moving her eyes away from view. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Pilot clawed at the earth, but understood her reluctance. I get it. Your whole colony might be listening in, but discretion isn't cutting it.

"If you know something, you need to tell me," said Pilot. "You said three days. That gives me until tomorrow to find answers."

Orchid turned to watch the kittens again, curling her tail against her side. "Don't worry about it," she whispered. "You've done all you can, right? Then I won't trouble you any longer."

Sweet freedom. Pilot wondered how she had gone so far off track from spending her nights on her porch, letting the distant melodies of Twin Rivers coax her to sleep. She wanted so badly to quit the forest and return to her spot on the rail to welcome in the last days of summer.

But Orchid was hiding something, and she took great offense to that. Had Pilot not gone to great lengths to aid her? She was remarkably comfortable with the fact that the love of her life had vanished without a trace.

Could she have gotten rid of him? Pilot wondered. No. Orchid would kill for Saffron, and she certainly wouldn't hurt him. So if she does care… she's either a master of hiding her emotions, or she knows exactly where he is.

If Saffron was safe, then the matter of the stone he found was far more pressing. She needed to find a cat who knew more about it. If one didn't live in the city, then there must have been one in the wild.

Pilot sucked in a deep breath. Asking a favor of Midnight on some other cat's behalf was bitter, but medicine she consigned herself to swallow. Now that the investigation was personal, there was no such logic to shield her pride.

Her paws felt like four anchors dragging in her wake as she approached the queen in her perch. Anyone looking on would think that Midnight did not notice Pilot, but they did not catch the slightest glimpse down in her direction.

"Are there any cats here that are knowledgeable of strange phenomena?" asked Pilot.

Midnight mouthed the word and then her lips curled in a silent laugh. "You mean a practitioner of the mystic arts, don't you? Oh, my, you must be desperate if you're looking to soothsayers for help."

Pilot flattened her ears and waited for an answer.

"The closest my colony has is storytellers," said Midnight. "But I know who might help you. Or at least who might tempt you to get out of my territory." The queen gestured with her tail back into the thickening forest. "Where three become one, and the forest once began, you will find what you seek. A witch lives in these woods, fur as black as night. She may be able to answer your questions."

Pilot looked in the direction Midnight's tail pointed to the deepening forest. "Are you going to give me actual directions?"

The queen tilted her head to one side. "No, because it's a witch thing. You're a smart lady. You'll figure it out."

More and more Pilot regretted coming to the forest colony. She dropped her gaze from Midnight but hesitated in her rush to leave. "Make sure his royal highness gets home safely, okay?"

"How dare you insinuate I would do anything but." Midnight hissed but then softened her voice. "He'll be safe with us."

"Good," said Pilot. As she stalked away, she listened to the fading jubilation of the tom.

Whatever happens next, don't let him get caught up in this.

* * *

First, Pilot went to the road to recover the stone. If she was going to make a journey to see this so-called witch, she was going to make sure that the Territory Guard wasn't following her the whole way.

It also gave some time for the sun to pass beyond the tips of the canopies, making the heart of the forest much cooler and lending more shadows to soak herself in.

'Where the forest once began.' The old storytellers used fancy phrases like that to refer to old growth. I'm looking for a part of the forest where the oldest trees grow.

The trunks grew thicker and the treetops climbed even higher toward the blue sky. Their distant points swayed, pointing and chasing clouds. Bird cries and the steady hum of insects surrounded her, even as their singers faded beneath layer after layer of faintly glowing leaves.

Where three become one. Oak, hickory, and pine… the witch lives where there is only one of these.

Pilot traveled deeper into the woods, and found she was still not yet removed from the world of men. Her path was reunited with a dirt road that trawled between trees and bridged fledgling wetlands to drier ground. Their little splits tapered off, but only one led to the foot of a squat cabin surrounded by old pine.

As she grew near, a window with a cross-bar frame creaked and opened. A black-furred queen pushed her head through. She squinted at Pilot from the edge of the sill, and then like a waterfall of fur she descended to the patch of herbs growing at the edge of the house.

"What do you have here?" The so-called witch inquired, quickly padding closer. "Let us see!"

Pilot held the stone more tightly in her mouth, and then realized that, even if she wanted to keep the object close, it would be all too inconvenient if she were unable to speak. She lowered it onto the ground, keeping one claw braced against it as she studied the other cat.

"You're the…"

"The witch?" The black cat looked up for just a moment from the stone and laughed. "Yes, yes, and all those things they call me. You can call me Darline."

Pilot started to open her mouth to question Darline. What was her connection to Twin Rivers? How had she come into the practice of whatever arts she claimed to have? Before her stream of thoughts could interrupt, the queen chirped and pushed closer.

"Enough of that! Let me see..."

The black cat pressed a paw pad on top of the stone and then rolled it across the ground. She changed the paw, and then pushed it the other way, studying the reflections in the dark crystal faces.

"You seem awfully eager to help," Pilot remarked.

Darline did not look up from studying the stone when she replied. "I felt you coming and knew you had something. Less interesting than you hoped, I imagine. This stone is not from this world," she said. "Though, it might be more correct to say it isn't 'from this side of the world.'"

Pilot's whisker tips shivered. She had a feeling that it was connected to the other Twin Rivers, and now she was more certain than ever. "The 'other side'? I saw another city when I was beneath the crossing. Was it a doorway?"

Darline thought about this a moment before shaking her head. "Most likely a window." She looked back to the window from which she'd descended and then shook out her pelt. "Bad example. But if you could have passed through, then you would have not returned so easily."

Wait, thought Pilot. If I couldn't have passed through, then Saffron can't have either. Then how did he pull off his disappearing act?

"Could it have opened a door?" she asked. "Big enough for a cat to fit through?"

The witch frowned and pushed the stone back towards Pilot. "Not even a little. The stone is from 'Between,' but it is just that – a pretty rock. An inert thing. It cannot exert a will of its own. The window is a sign that the world Between is reaching out for it." Darline shifted uncomfortably. "The first rule of crossing the veil: 'All that is taken from Between must be returned Between.' I assumed you knew that."

Darline's remark raised Pilot's brow and her tail, but her choice of words echoed those of the Collector. It must be returned. She wasn't asking for it back. She was saying it had to be taken to its home plane.

She looked into the window and twitched her nose at the scent of boiling soapberries. "How did it get here in the first place?"

The witch curled up the tip of her tail. "Someone, or something, would have had to make an opening in the veil."

Pilot blinked. An idea was starting to form in her head—where the stone had come from, and where Saffron had vanished to, why Orchid had all but begged her to search for her mate one day and calmly called off the search the next.

"One more thing," she said. "What happens if this stone stays in our world?"

"It won't," said the Witch. "One way or another, the Between will reclaim it, even if it means destroying the border from this world to the next."

She scooped the stone close. A jolt of cold surged up the tip of her claw to her spine, and she felt a familiar presence dance along her shadow. It felt like an old friend trading scents after seasons apart.

"I won't let that happen," she said. "Thank you for the help."

Darline rippled her spine. Her familiar called from the doorway in a series of endearing chirps and hollers. The witch made to go, but not before offering a reply and a final warning. "You'll more than make it up," she said. "Dark omens come in threes, each stronger than the last, and Twin Rivers wants for a champion."

Pilot would rather not be caught up in a series of spurious supernatural affairs after this one. But that was a complaint she would deal with after she'd finished this job.

* * *

Pilot returned to the forest colony at sunset. Orange and lavender spilled from the clouds that dwindled against the setting sun.

She expected resistance when crossing the border, but none came. She did not feel the persistent gaze of the Territory Guard. An uneasy electricity gripped the air and she heard screeching and spitting before she arrived at the forest camp.

Pilot arrived to find two lines of cats circling the center of the colony, facing one another. On one side, the Second lashed his tail angrily, signaling his followers to position themselves for an attack.

On the other stood Midnight, regal and defiant as gold colors washed over her silver coat.

"You're lying," growled the Second. "I don't like being lied to."

"I'm not even going to humor such an accusation," said Midnight. "I don't care who you're looking for. It seems the cats of the Row need a lesson in manners."

Why are they still seeking a blood feud? wondered Pilot. Unless Rue didn't tell them what happened after all. I am going to kill that fleabag…

Pilot dropped the stone between her paws and licked her jowls. "If you would like to carry on biting and maiming one another, don't let me stop you. Unless you want to know where both Rue and Saffron are right now."

The Row gang and the forest cats glared at Pilot. She did not flinch and rolled the stone from one paw to the other. She could feel its voice like numbing sparks from its very core. The closer it got to the colony, the angrier it became, and now it was nearly vibrating with fury.

"What are you on about?" Midnight growled. "If you know something, tell us!"

"I will," promised Pilot. "But I can't do it alone. I'll need the assistance of your daughter."

Midnight spat and drew her claws. A few of the forest cats gasped. The Row gang coiled in place, ready to strike at any moment, but the Second watched her with curiosity. He held his paw up, bidding Chestnut and the others to hold their position until Pilot said her piece.

Pilot rammed the stone and flung it through the air. It tumbled and bounced across the ground until it came close to the black-furred queen. She froze, eyes wide at the sight of the stone, which began to shriek and tremble. The orange of the sunset darkened to red and intertwined with the shadows of the gathered cats.