CHAPTER ELEVEN
Wings, beating, rowing through the sky, flapped drops of blood from their feathers as they strained to take the body of a small gray bird far from the massacre beyond. Muscles ached against the gales of a thundercloud brew that whipped up the wind and covered the stars. The sky was pale and grey, and the air was unsafe to traverse, veering hard in unsteady gusts and tossing its passengers about like orphaned leaves. The bird, a dove, was bloody and wounded, though the blood was not its own. The blood was the blood of those below, an open moor of cats who had died in battle, their corpses strewn across the soil, hungry ravens milling among them, perching on their bodies and picking at their tender eyes.
The dove's wound was not a battle wound, as it should have been, but instead was nothing more than a hole in the dove's chest, letting the wind pass clean through it, just as the stormy air passed under soft feathers and scaly legs which were sticky and red. The wound, it seemed, was self-inflicted. Somehow, there was an instinctive sense, a certain sudden knowing, that this breath of life had once been one of the others, inclined toward another form, but then it had stolen away, felt fear of tooth and claw, and made itself into a dove, to flee away far from where it should have died with the others on the battlefield. These things were not supposed to be. It spirit had been torn from its rightful place. Thus it came to be carrying the blood of its brethren, flying from all signs of war toward a forest of metal trees, corroded with orange moss like all things the Twolegs had left behind.
Rather than face the peril of the hawk or the cawing of the ravens or face the death it left behind, the dove gathered up snips and twigs of greenery in its feeble talons, creating for itself a ground nest of herbs to hide in and to wipe away the blood. It immersed itself in the sharp smell of burdock, spiny and dry, and the sensual pungency of catmint, its odor reminiscent of lust and urine. It amassed a smothering collection of soft, mellow chervil and fresh, green leaves of borage, hairy and attached to bright blue flowers, and it drowned its senses in the tang of dock and comfrey and the salty punch of wild garlic and the acidity of sorrel. With the help of the passive plants it brushed the blood from its wings and left the feathers smeared with the clinging remnants of crimson residue. It was committed to blocking out all sight of it with layer upon layer of greenery. It could feel the blood against its very skin, but it turned its attention to the cultivation of its nest instead. Its nest was safe, perfect, home. But there was still a gaping hole in the bird's chest.
Now and then the raging war could still be heard calling, the yowls and battle cries carried on the wind, the caterwauling of an endless hunger, praying to the ancestors for more warriors to fill its graves. The dove remained far away from these things. It wanted nothing to do with harm. It placed itself here, distant, in peace, but there was more to the forest than the cold charity of its plants, forms of life which spoke no deeper comfort, and even with all its medicine, the dove could not heal itself.
Then, among all the many strong smells of roots and flowers and herbs, there came the smell of smoke. There was only a whiff at first, small, the breath of an ember, harmless and hard to sense. As the fire grew, its pale light cast flickers on the horizon, faint but bright at the same time, an impossible color which could be seen through the spaces in the impossible weavings of the dove's green nest. Quickly, the space was sealed over with another broad leaf to block away the light, but the fire was growing, and as it crawled its way through the metal trees, its eminence began to glow through the thin leaves which formed the flimsy bars of the cage. The dove cooed and hid its face with a wing. That shielded its eyes, but it could still hear and smell the fire. Its crackling was soft and gentle, a deceptive sound, suggestive of crumbling leaves in a gentle breeze and the popping of joints in kittenish play. The smell, however, could not lie, for it was the fear-inspiring stench of smoke, hot and black and ashen, whispering to the nose of audacity and passion and pain, billowing from an ever-strengthening blaze. And yet somehow these came from the same source, the sound and the smell, rumbling of a pleasure that hurts, an ecstasy at a cost. The dove was a creature of moderation, not extremes. It wanted to hide, now and forever, against the onslaught of a conflagration, but there was nowhere to go. The sky began to darken with the flood of a dark gray gaseous mix, the dead spirits and cinders of organic things consumed. The air could not be navigated.
The dove hoped to survive by covering and concealing itself with its only beneficiaries, its last resort, the profusion of assorted herbs that had supported its solitary life. They would do little to help, but they were all it had: its place as a creature of the plants and earth. At the same time, though, there was a sense of wrongness, a destiny misplaced, for this cannot continue to be. A dove is not a creature of the earth. A dove is, and will always be, a creature of the sky.
The air was becoming warmer, the smell of smoke overwhelming. Heat emanated throughout the forest and set the trees aglow. The fire was brilliant and awe-inspiring, as orange as the setting sun, with tongues of poppy red and dandelion yellow, forceful and bright, reconciling destruction with energy and lightness and love. The intensity was mounting. The very air felt like the scraping of claws, burning the dove before the fire even reached it. It was agony at first. It hurt. It ached like hate and oblivion, swirling away all sense of reason. Panicking with the desire to escape again, the dove spread its wings but could not fly.
All around it, the cats of StarClan appeared, solemn and unharmed, some of them known and some of them unknown. There was Doveheart's mentor, the old medicine cat, as well as past deputies of KnollClan, past medicine cats of BrookClan and MeadowClan, a past leader of BrookClan, and many other cats older and wiser from a time long ago, while some of them were far too young to be among them or had passed as recent as the last dawn. They stood calm and impassive within the fire, and they were chanting, eyes without wings, eyes without wings, eyes without wings.
The dove's heart was beating hard in its chest, growing larger and filling the hole as it swelled near to bursting, giving a nervous flutter as its own blood pumped under its skin—not the blood of the others, but its own health and needs and fervor, its very own rivers and tributaries of life. As the temperature of the air shot higher than ever before, the heat changed and began to feel like the soft warmth of a clear sunny day, wrapping around and soaking in like the juices of herbs into a wound. The dove turned its head and tilted it into the brim of its wing, closing its little eyes.
The progressing flames reached its nest, and a few tiny embers floated out and up and brushed against the exterior leaves, singing the outside of the walls. Then the tongues of the flame licked more and more at the barrier of herbs, stroking their tender stems and veins, taking them away with itself. Catching fire, the plants began to burn away. The smoke was everywhere, but the dove did not take flight. The tremors in its heart strengthened at the nearing of the blaze, its body warming, and a strange excitement bubbled up within. The fire was dangerous but meant no harm, it knew in its heart.
The little bird shivered, its cage of wordless herbs demolished and rising off in the new form of cinders and smoke, and now the dove was surrounded by hot, ardent tongues of amber, gold, and rose-red flame. The dove was uncertain, but its pining thirst and joyous worry were beginning to overflow, and it welcomed them. It let the fire sweep in around it and it did not try to fly. The smoke was thick and the fire burned loud, like a momentous purring, shaking in the blood. The dove let the fire touch its feathers, producing a feeling of immeasurable and fulfilling simultaneous sacrifice and happiness, a joining of the march of fate and delicate, vulnerable flesh. This was the only way forward. With wings outstretched, the dove alighted up toward the sky and a flew deeper into the blaze, unresisting, thrusting its sensitive wings into the midst of the flames and allowing the throbbing heat to penetrate to its core. The ravenous fire burned the bird alive, consuming it slowly in a prolonged, impassioned dance of lingering, pulsating rapture, suffocating all protest, melding body with smoke, and culminating in a hot burst of forbidden release. When the last of its meat was scorched off the bone, the spirit within was freed. Not one, but two, were released from the bones, one of the fire itself, and one of the peaceful bird, which, in satisfying its repressed yearning, finally found its rest. At that same moment, the metal trees began to fall, crashing down like thunder, and from the intensifying flames emerged the face of the rogue.
Doveheart woke up panting, xir paws damp with sweat. Xe could still smell and feel the charring smoke in xir lungs. Xir pelt still felt the tongues of the fire. Xir heart still hammered like drumming of a woodpecker. The dream had been vivid and visceral and stuck with xem, some of the details slipping from memory, but the intense feelings hovered with a lingering touch over xir heart. There was nothing xe could think or do to shake the ominous foreboding that hung over xem for the rest of the day. Though xe was deeply shaken, xe did not tell any cat of what xe had seen.
