Reunited and anxious for some good news, the ThunderCats flew south for a full week. Wishing to keep a low profile, Tygra, piloting the Feliner, barely cleared the razor-sharp peaks of a towering mountain range, its slopes whitened by snow. In the distance, a land green with crops unrolled toward the sky. They left their shining aircraft parked in tall grass yellowing in the heat of late summer, and hiked into town on foot.
Cautiously, the ThunderCats made their way to a repurposed stable right in the middle of a bright, hot, noisome street. The only thing that distinguished their destination from all the other shops on the street was the sign nailed above the narrow door: The Iron Oxen.
"Come on," Lion-O muttered. He pushed through the rusty gate first, stepping off the dirty street into the dirtier yard.
Hattanz-O's rumor had led them far off the beaten path to Oxborough. It was as different from Swordtown as it could possibly be. Swordtown had relied on machinery to run its beast-like forges. Here, hulking creatures of flesh and blood provided the power. While Swordtown had been populated by drifters of every species, this little settlement had flourished smack dab in the middle of minotaur country. Felline wondered how many foreigners found their way to this quiet rural town.
The seven travel-worn cats passed between iron showpieces lining either side of the path like sentinels: Cart wheels and plow blades, banded barrels and cookpots on tripods, beautiful birdbaths and wall decorations, statues of animals – those who spoke and those who didn't, all masterpieces, all works of art – gleamed chrome or oxidized red in the sun.
At the door, Panthro stopped Lion-O. "Are you sure this isn't a trap?"
Unease spread through the group. No one could blame the old general for asking – after all the times they'd been betrayed, they'd be stupid not to see it coming now.
Felline turned and surveyed the street. As far as she could tell, no one had noticed their trek through the town. Smiths banged away with their hammers, discordant and loud in the heat. The street teemed with minotaurs hurrying to some other errand, looking as if they'd turned down this dusty avenue by accident. Watch chains glinted across the shabby waistcoats of the bulls, and checkered handkerchiefs flapped from their back pockets. The heifers wore bonnets tied behind their stubby horns, dragging along calves bigger than WilyKit, who clung to their mothers' aprons. Strapping younglings lugged carts behind their employers in their cleanest skins and coveralls. None spared the strangers in their midst a second thought. Peace and the slow languor it brought pressed down on them as heavily as the sun's rays.
"Hattanz-O wouldn't lie to us," Felline said at last.
"Only one way to find out," Cheetara said with a shrug, so Lion-O pulled open the door.
The building was enclosed on three sides, none of which housed the freestanding door. Felline watched as Cheetara and Tygra entered after Lion-O and moved left along a waist-high, three-rail fence. WilyKit and WilyKat squeezed past Panthro through the door. As usual, she was the last one in. They made way for her, jostling those in front as a worn velvet rope forced them into the first stall, which she assumed was the office. The shade beneath the slanted roof offered relief from the merciless sun. Felline brushed a stray curl off her neck.
The office, if that was what it was, surprised her. It was just as dirty as everything else so far but meticulously organized. The desk, encased in a thick coat of grime, hosted neat stacks of paper-filled trays. One metal cup held what looked like twists of wire-thin metal, and another a handful of broken, frayed quills. A tin of stained pen nibs sat next to that. A filing cabinet stood guard from the corner, and more showpieces – weapons, this time, mostly swords – took up the right-hand wall.
"Can I help you?" asked a voice as deep as the innards of a volcano. A minotaur, presumably the proprietor, approached from the direction of the loudest hammering, unhooking the velvet rope as he did. He wiped his hands in a rag so stained it was only a shade or two lighter than his extremely short and close-lying black fur. He wore no shirt. Sweat glistened across his massive chest. His horns curled magnificently on either side of his heavy, triangular head, and a plain ring dangled from his septum. Billowing trousers flapped around his hooves with each step, fitting easily over his crooked knees and high, surprisingly svelte ankles.
"Maybe," Lion-O answered him, his voice gruffer than usual. Felline's heart twisted. He was still in a great deal of emotional turmoil over the broken Sword. With each day that passed, he sank further into a brooding mire. "I'm looking for a blacksmith."
The minotaur said nothing. One brow rose over a tiny eye.
"A specific blacksmith," Lion-O added, locking stares with the mountainous bovine as though trying to communicate his meaning telepathically. A tense moment passed.
Abruptly, the minotaur turned and marched back past the rope, leaving it swinging, and bellowed, "BEN!" in a voice that shook soot from the rafters.
The cats exchanged perplexed looks as a muffled reply took the place of the banging.
"Get your furry butt out here! You've got customers," the minotaur roared.
Another unintelligible reply, longer than before.
"I don't care! It's your call!"
There was a curse, and then the ringing of metal on metal, as if someone had thrown a pair of tongs onto an anvil.
"Look, send them packing if you want," the minotaur retorted, apparently unaware that everyone from there halfway to New Thundera could hear him. "You've got five minutes."
"Ten!" indignantly cried a much smaller figure than Felline had been expecting when it rocketed out of a stall.
The minotaur waved over his shoulder, disappearing into another stall. The banging resumed.
"Slave driver," the figure named Ben muttered.
Felline squinted, unable to see him in the low light of the stables. This was apparently true for him, too, because he didn't react to their appearance at all.
"Welcome to The Iron Oxen. The name's Ben, and if you're looking for the best smith this side of the Hoarfrost Mountains, that's me, not the glorified moo-cow back there."
He spoke very fast. He moved fast, too. He strode to the desk without glancing at any of them, nearly stepping on Snarf, and began opening drawers. Like the minotaur, he wore no shirt, just a burned leather apron over his baggy gray trousers, and a pair of smoked, unsophisticated goggles over half his face. He clipped a sheaf of papers to a small board with one of the bent wires, plucked one of the ratty quills out of the cup, and held them out. "I'm going to need you to fill out your order, and then you can have a seat over there –" he poked the quill at a pair of extremely uncomfortable-looking metal chairs, "while I check our schedule. We're booked solid for the next two months –"
"Great Thundera, he's a tiger!" the twins shouted.
"A white tiger," Cheetara amended thoughtfully.
Tygra cast a quick look at her.
Ben's mouth shut with a click of teeth. He ripped the goggles from his head, revealing a pair of vivid blue eyes centered in a mask of robin's-egg blue. Aside from the mask, two black bands curving along his cheekbones, and the smears of soot, his face was pure white. He looked older than Lion-O. He was taller, too.
The white tiger blinked at the whole lot of them, and then he rolled his eyes.
"Aw, whiskers," he sighed. He scrubbed a hand through his mane, smoothing the long, sleek, white strands against his neck and behind his pointed ears. Black stripes made a chevron pattern on the top of his head, matched by the stripes down his lean, muscled arms. Under his breath, he said, "Mighta warned me, you dumb ox."
"Hello, Ben," Lion-O purred.
Felline glanced at him. She knew that purr. Lion-O was reacting to Ben much the way he reacted to his brother, and he was asserting himself as the dominant male in attendance.
"Actually, that's Ben-Gali to you," the other said. He flipped the clipboard onto his desk, where it landed with a clatter, and gave Lion-O a cheek-stretching grin. "Sorry you came all this way, but we have nothing to sell you."
"We don't want to buy anything except your services," Tygra said, moving to back up his brother.
Ben-Gali shrugged. "I told you. We're booked solid for the next two months."
"This is urgent," Lion-O said.
"Anyone who has the coin to spend can buy their level of urgency," Ben-Gali said. "We're booked up. Go somewhere else."
Felline couldn't believe her ears. By the startled hisses barely heard under the constant banging, the others felt the same. Who was this strange cat, and how had he ended up here, apparently alone, on the wrong end of nowhere? How had he escaped the devastation of the Tiger Clan? Why was he refusing to help them? He certainly didn't seem surprised to see them, as if he'd been expecting them to show up, and dreading it at the same time.
Lion-O, already pushed to breaking, snarled, "Maybe you haven't heard. I am Lion-O –"
"Lord of the ThunderCats," Ben-Gali finished for him. "Even way out here in Cow Town, we've heard of you. You haven't heard of me, though. Know why? I'm not a ThunderCat. Never was. Never will be."
"You're the only one who can help me!" Lion-O exploded. He yanked the wrapped Sword from the Gauntlet. Hands shaking, he placed it on the desk and undid the wrapping.
No matter how many times Felline saw it, she couldn't make it seem real. Like every other cat in the hot, dark office, she stared, hypnotized, at the pieces of the once-mighty Sword, dull and silent, the Eye of Thundera an opaque, unknowing red.
"Aw, what did you do to it?" Ben-Gali moaned in a kind of horrified agony. He picked up the largest piece by the hilt, the whole thing no bigger than the Sword's dagger form, and examined it inch by inch, both by feel and by sight. He seemed completely unaware of his audience.
"We need your help," Lion-O quietly said. "You're the only one who can fix it."
"I can't help you," Ben-Gali said, just as quietly, so that it took a second for his refusal to sink in. He slowly replaced the piece and re-did the wrapping.
"Can't, or won't?" Panthro rumbled, frowning.
Ben-Gali, unfazed by the big cat's size, gave Panthro a belligerent stare that he must have frequently turned on his boss. He passed a white hand over the sad bundle. "Can't. There's no way to fix this. You can't fix the dead. Congratulations, Lion-O, Lord of the ThunderCats, I think you're the first animal in the history of Third Earth to break a cosmic alloy without using magic."
"Magic was involved," Felline said, alarmed at how Lion-O swelled in fury.
Ben-Gali graced her with a dismissive sneer – and then he looked twice. His whole face lit up.
"Hello," he said. He elbowed his way between Tygra and WilyKit and grabbed one of Felline's hands. His grin hitched higher on one side, revealing the tip of an ultra-white fang. "What's your name, beautiful?"
Thoroughly taken aback, Felline leaned away from him, shoulders and tail as stiff as one of the statues in the yard. His wintry eyes bored into hers with such intensity that a blush rose into her cheeks, her embarrassment so strong that it prevented her from speaking.
"That's Fluh-uff-fee," WilyKat said in a chirpy, knowing singsong.
Aghast, Felline glared at him. He and his sister smirked at her, daring her to contradict him out loud, their big eyes half-lidded, their tails curling playfully. Panthro, Tygra, Cheetara, and Snarf gazed at her and Ben-Gali with their mouths open, apparently as stunned as she.
Lion-O looked ready to blow a fuse.
"Fluffy, huh? Cute." Ben-Gali bent closer and gazed up at her through his lashes.
Felline leaned farther back. His hold of her hand was the only thing keeping her from keeling over backward.
"We were told you could help us," Lion-O said loudly, as though volume alone could get him what he wanted. "There is a way to repair the Sword of Omens. The Hammer of Thundera."
"I don't have it," Ben-Gali said to Felline, his tiger charm turned on full blast. She eased her ears back in response.
Next to them, Lion-O's eyes almost bugged out of his head. "What do you mean, you don't have it?" he spluttered. "It must have been entrusted to you! You're the only cat within leagues of this place! How could you not have it?"
Nettled at last, Ben-Gali dropped Felline's hand. Panthro caught her before she fell.
"Look around you, Lion-O," Ben-Gali snapped. "This isn't your precious Thundera. I sold a useless artifact that my mother smuggled out of the caves her people died in, just like she smuggled me out, way back when I was a cub, to keep me alive."
His eyes flicked to Tygra as he spoke, but it wasn't a look of friendship. It was a calculating look. A question, afraid of its answer. Tygra's expression mirrored it. He opened his mouth, but Ben-Gali cut him off.
"She didn't know it, but she was sick just like them. She died not long after bringing me here. I had no money. I needed to eat. If you want that Sword fixed, I suggest you take it to the fires of Magmel and throw it in. Put the poor thing out of its misery, because I can't help you."
Just then, a hoarse voice called from the yard. "Ben! Ben, are you there? I need to speak with you!"
With a groan, Ben-Gali rolled his eyes so hard they almost didn't come back down.
"Yeah, I'll be right there!" he shouted. He scowled at the ThunderCats. "Look, this has been a fantastic waste of time, but I need to get to work. The door is that way. Good luck. Don't come back."
He stomped out of the office and vaulted the low railing. Felline watched him approach a stooped figure, swathed in a black cloak in spite of the heat, hooded so that she couldn't see his face. He hobbled up to Ben-Gali, who met him with his hands out as if ready to catch him should he fall.
"I found it," the cloaked figure rasped urgently. He sounded like a lizard. What would a lizard be doing here, swaddled like Mumm-Ra on a bad hair day? "It's time. We could finish this once and for all."
"Not now, old man, I'm on the clock," Ben-Gali hissed, casting a furtive glance over his shoulder. His eyes met Felline's. Fleetingly, regret touched his gaze, but then his expression hardened. He hooked an arm around his friend and steered him toward the rear of the building, voice too low for even Felline to make out over the hammering. They vanished around the corner.
"What was that?" Kat wondered. He hoisted himself onto his sister's shoulders, trying to see past the long building. Annoyed, Kit shook him off.
The older ThunderCats exchanged stunned glances. This hadn't gone at all as they'd expected.
"What do we do now?" Lion-O asked.
"Snyarf," Snarf answered sadly.
A/N2: I have been waiting to post this for FAR FAR too long! I'm not sure whether to be super excited or super scared! X3 Just . . . no tomatoes, okay? LOL.
Reviewer Thanks! KelseyAlicia, Heart of the Demons, Atea1793, Darwin, The Night Whisperer, St4r Hunter, Champion of Justice, and Hestia28 (Wahhh, I can't really respond without giving anything away! LOL! But - your review really made me smile!).
Guys, I'm tired. Mind and body. August was so busy and I keep forgetting it isn't August anymore. But, I'm happy, too. I love that you're taking this journey with me. *hugs everyone*
Yours,
Anne
