Something warm brushes my outstretched fingertips. In a sea of cold-blooded bodies, that can only be Dain. I throw myself sideways, hands grasping as I reach. My fingers close on Dain’s arm. It’s thinner than I expect, but it’s warm, and so I grasp it and pull.
Dain screams. It’s a spine-chilling scream, and I imagine him being ripped apart by colocolos. I yank with all my might, and my hands rise above the colocolo tide, gripping Dain’s wrist, his skin darker than I remember—
That isn’t skin. Nor is it Dain’s hand. I’m holding the leg of some black-furred beast, with a paw as big as my palm. A webbed paw. Claws shoot out, four dagger-like claws, and my brain whispers that this is the point at which I should release my hold. I don’t. I’m holding some creature—some monster—and if I let it go, it will die.
When those razor claws spring out, I only release my hold with one hand to keep feeling around for Dain, because he is my priority. I will let go of this beast if I can’t hold it and save him, but—
Dain slams into me. There’s no doubt it’s him—the cursing gives it away. He rams into my side, and I twist and grab him even as his own hands find my tunic and hold tight. A shout from the shore and we are being pulled in, scrabbling and gripping with all our strength until Alianor gives a tremendous heave and we fly free of the stampede, Dain still clutching my tunic and me holding his arm. We tumble to the ground, and Rhydd lets out a shout, and then there is a scream.
Something rips at my hand sharply enough to make me howl. There’s a moment where I think it’s Dain clawing at me. Then the scream and the pain merge, and I remember Dain wasn’t the only one I was holding. Which may explain why my brother is running at me with his sword out.
I leap to my feet and lift both hands to stop Rhydd. Dain jumps up and pulls his dagger, and then Malric is there snarling and snapping at…
A black cat. That’s all I see at first, everything happening so fast that my brain is reeling. I blink, and the shape comes into focus. It is a cat…sort of. It’s the size of a hunting dog, low and lean and rippling with muscle. A sleek black-furred wildcat with webbed feet and gills that flutter as it breathes. What looks like dark stripes at first becomes strips of jet-black scales, glittering in the sunlight that pierces the forest canopy.
“Cath palug,” I whisper.
“I can see that, princess,” Dain growls, brandishing his dagger. “Now back away from it before it skewers you with those claws.”
“But it’s…it’s a cath palug. I’ve never seen one. It must have gotten swept up in the colocolos and—”
“And it is now crouched in front of you, trying to decide whether you’re too big to eat. The answer is no, princess. You are not too big for a cath palug. It’s already scratched you, and it can smell the blood, which is dripping from your arm, in case you can’t feel that.”
I wave off his concern and absently wipe the blood away. It’s a small wound, not even worth bandaging. The monster feline keeps staring at me, its tail swishing. That tail ends in a barb—or it should, but I can’t quite make it out while it’s moving.
I glance over at the colocolo river, but it’s only a trickle now, the main body of rodent monsters disappearing through the forest.
“I want a better look at it,” I say.
“Great,” Dain says. “Just let me kill it first.”
I give him a look for that.
Dain turns to Rhydd. “Please, your highness, could you talk some sense into your sister?”
“Having known Rowan from birth, I can tell you that dissuading her from this is a fool’s task. One does not come between Rowan and her monster studies. Would you like me to restrain it, Ro?”
Both Dain and Alianor squawk in alarm.
“Oh, come now,” Rhydd says, moving forward. “I’m sure I could wrestle it to the ground and—”
I lift a hand to stop him. “You’re giving Dain heart failure. He doesn’t realize you’re joking.”
Rhydd’s lips twitch. “Perhaps I’m serious. We are nearly thirteen. Filled with the madness that overtakes young men, I shall throw myself upon the beast and pin it down, surviving with the scars to prove my—”
“Utter stupidity,” Alianor says.
“I was going to say warrior blood, but that works, too.”
Rhydd takes a strip of dried meat from his pocket and passes it to me.
I peel off a piece and toss it to the beast. It sniffs first, and then snatches up the meat and swallows it whole. The cath palug regards me then, golden eyes fixed on mine. I take a closer look at the creature while tossing it bits of meat. A cath palug is an aquatic feline, like the ceffyl-dwr is an aquatic equine. Many monsters seem to be a mash-up of two or more regular animals. That leads to stories about their origins, usually some variation of “animal x fell in love with animal y and had a baby.” Romantic, but as any scientist knows, impossible.
The truth is evolution, with the monsters being a later version of the animals.
At first glance, the cath palug just looks like a black wildcat. Then you notice the adaptations: the webbed feet, the scaled stripes and those glorious gills. I don’t manage to get around its backside to get a close look at its tail, but it is indeed barbed, almost like a fishhook. I’ve seen pictures of cath palugs “fishing” with their tails, which is nonsense, of course. The barb is for fighting. Its claws and teeth do the hunting work.
When
