Instinct - Chapter 2

“Why aren’t we headed to the agora?” Cairo asks, quietly turning around in the direction of the camp.

I sigh. I was thinking the exact same thing. We’re trekking down the hardest of the city’s paths, covered in cracks, dust, and leafless ivy. Not to mention that it’s freezing down on the ground. If we could take a higher path. The roads maybe.

Juno turns back to us, her lips pursed. “Just trust me. If Nebula knew, he’d kill us.”

“For telling him that Lettie’s sick?” I counter.

Juno jumps up a rose bush’s snowy branches. “It’ll be a waster of his time, Ferris. Besides, we’ll be faster.”

I growl beneath my breath. Even though there are only two wolverines among all the Mustelids, we wouldn’t want to waste his time. Besides, there’s famine to worry about.

“Alright, Juno,” I mutter. “But if we get into trouble over this…” I trot through the snow, keeping pace with the others, but still allowing Cairo to keep in sight. Why did Juno have to bring him along?

Suddenly, a stench hits my nose. I look up to see if anything is nearby, but I don’t see anything. Flicking my head, a begin to trot even faster. “Canid territory, guys.” I remember Nebula saying they’re patrolling their borders and even expanding them slowly. They aren’t doing it slowly if we can barely walk past the cul de sac and hit the Canid border.

We keep walking, Cairo holding his head down behind splintered benches whenever even a bird flew by. I wish I could tell him that there wouldn’t be any wolves outside of the Hospit. Especially when it was this cold. But if there were, then we’d be breaking the laws. And who knows what a wolf would do to trespassing Mustelids?

We turn a corner, me scrabbling onto the sidewalk like a normal human actually would.

Cairo stops dead in his tracks, lowering his tiny ears.

I crouch down onto the ground, my spotted white pelt blending in with the snow. Figures are running all along the front of the concrete stretch in front of the Hospit. Some leap high over the red letters that fell to the ground long ago and others bask in what little sun is shining.

“Cairo. Hide,” Juno commands, taking a step back behind a street corner.

Hiding behind the corner, I press myself against a tiny snowbank on the closest building’s brick wall.

“Well, what’ve we got here?” a voice says from behind. I whirl around to see a silver fox towering over me. He has amber eyes and a sneer that is so obviously meant at us I want to curl my lip right back at him.

“We need help,” Cairo says. Dammit.

The fox raises a furry black brow. “Well, this one’s new,” he replies. “What’s the patient sick with?”

My claws scratch into the ground, and Juno walks forward. “We need an apothecary. That’s all.”

The fox looks down at us loftily. “You’ve come to the right place then. Though I can’t help unless I know the disease.” He turns to me, yellow eyes shining.

I clench my teeth. This is the healer we find? I already hate him. “That’s the problem,” I say through gritted fangs. “We don’t know.”

The fox gives us a hearty smile and lowers his head. “Well, it hasn’t hit us, so we’ve got no reason to help you.”

“Look here, you—” I’m stopped as Cairo gives off a cough, not near as loud or as dry as Lettie’s though. Is Cairo faking it for us?

Juno probably thinks the same, especially as she looks the fox straight in the eyes. “Well, Cairo here’s sick too. And it spreads through the air.” She smiles smugly, and I notice her tail sweeping clumps of snow away.

The fox looks taken aback. “Well, I guess we’re forced to help.”

“Don’t even think about it,” someone says from above. It’s a deep growly voice, like pebbles on burning coals. I look up and notice a timber wolf glaring us down from a window pane. He climbs out and onto a rusted iron platform, starting to jump down the stairs below it.

“Almarys?” The fox lowers his head and ears.

“Cairo’s a fake. No sicker than anyone here.” The wolf, Almarys, stops as soon as he comes into full view. “Ishmael, come here.” He raises his ears.

The fox crouches against the ground, and leaps up to the railing. He climbs up multiple rails, lowering his ears and keeping his nose pointed to the ground.

“Stand up,” he commands.

As the two Canids speak to each other, I can’t help but look back at Juno and Cairo. I give Juno a glare. Why’d she get us in this situation?

The fox, Ishmael, and Almarys walk down what must be a fire escape from what I've read about, and leap down onto a dumpster before hitting the ground next to us. “We’ll help you,” the wolf says. He blinks a scarred eye and leans down towards us. “But we’ll need a hostage. For safe conduct, you see.”

Motioning with my tail to the front of the Hospit, I purse my lips. “But… what about the other Canids?” I ask.

The fox smiles, curling his lips back like a snarl. “Oh don’t worry about them,” he says slyly. “You’ll be safe in our paws.”

I hesitate. Who would go, in the first place? I glance back at Juno, who is shaking her head ever so slightly. And Cairo? I’d never let Cairo go. But even then, I don’t think I’d ever want to go here. I bite my bottom lip in frustration. “Can we discuss this?” I turn back to Almarys.

Nodding, the wolf points to a door. “We won’t be listening.” He sits down and puts a paw to his chest, like he’s promising it.

I flick my head, motioning for Juno to come along. When Cairo tries following behind us, I hold my paws out to stop him.

We step inside the brick building and look around. The walls are scratched on like a badger’s sett, and the carpet is nothing but string laying all along the ground. It’s hard to imagine any room that looks like they’re described in the old books. I walk to the corner farthest away from Almarys and Ishmael, and narrow my eyes at Juno. “So. Don’t tell Nebula?” I challenge.

“What does it matter? You’ll be safe. Almarys said so.”

“I’ll be safe?” I say. “You’re the one that wanted to leave in secret.”

Juno walks closer to me, fur bristled. “What about Cairo?”

We stop as a mouse, not even a human one, scrabbles across the floor in fear. I watch it carefully, but when our eyes meet again, I’m brought to my senses. “You shouldn’t have brought him.”

“So?” she asks. “He wanted to come, Ferris.”

“So you’re the leader of this mission. You’re staying back,” I spit at her. If I can help it, Juno’s going to show some actual responsibility for on

In the darkness of the room, I can barely see Juno lift a paw. “Well… fine. You win,” she says, walking towards the door. “I’ll stay, but if I escape, you won’t blame me.”

I scowl at her, yet I’m thankful.

I step out of the door to see the Canids watching us. “So you’ve chosen? Remember, if you hurt Ishmael, then we’ll hurt this jill here.” He brings Juno close to him, smiling wryly. We know that the Canids are larger than us, and any fight against a larger one would end in death. He didn’t need to threaten us more.

I sigh and look back at Juno, who nods slowly. “I’m going,” she says quietly.

“Good choice,” Almarys says to me. He flicks his head, ears raised. “Then follow me, Miss.”

His paw pads scrape along the cement blocks. “And you, young man,” he says, with a nod towards me. “You’ll wait until Ishmael comes back with supplies.”

I stop and raise my brow, walking towards Cairo. “We can do that.”

“Good,” the silver fox says, running off towards the Hospit, with his claws skittering on the pavement.

I stand on Cairo’s too-large sandals, made by Primids.

A rabbit runs past, stopping to glance at us. What? It hops towards us, ears twitching.

I glance at its paws, checking to see if they look like hands in any way. They don’t.

Once it raises its nose, it backs away and starts running. I stare in the direction the rabbit ran in, towards a bunch of bushes and trees. That was a non-human rabbit. And it even tried sniffing us out. Next, there was that much prey in Canid territory? My stomach starts to grumble, and I could see even Cairo watching the trees.

It took a few more minutes for Ishmael to come back with a torn leather satchel, and even in such a short time-frame we’d seen three more squirrels and a quail strutting across the snowy streets.

The fox smiles. “Show me the way to your camp, if you please. And Almarys says I’ll be back by tomorrow morning. So your friend will be coming back soon.

I glance at the sky. It’s just noon. “Well, follow me, I guess.” I run along down the streets, keeping an eye on Ishmael. Cairo starts jogging back behind us.

I slow down for Cairo, and watch the trees as I wait for the kid to catch up. We aren’t even in Sclurid territory, but I see squirrels everywhere. They chatter like birds and hop from tree to tree, like they’re teasing me. How much prey is there in Canid territory?

Cairo catches up, slowing down to a trot. “Don’t worry, Ishmael, we’re almost there,” he says, almost cheerily. His voice is a little low as he looks back East, the direction of the Hospit.

“If you hurt her, fox,” I growl, scratching my claws on vines that have grown from one side of the road to the other. Because the frost killed the leaves, a patch of them fall without much effort on my part.

Ishmael stops, taken aback. “I’d never hurt any patient. Ever.” He sits down, lashing his white-tipped tail. “I can’t believe you’d even insinuate that.”

He actually sounds hurt by it. What a load of Bull. “I am. I don’t trust foxes, alright?” There was an ancient man named Aesop who wrote about foxes being sly, although the bats tried to tell me that Aesop was an owl and men never existed.

Well, I found my way to the restricted section of the Chiroptids’ home.

“Well, you should really start changing that habit, eh?” The fox glances at Cairo, who is running down the road and ignoring us. He smiles with his head pointed in the direction of Cairo, but his eyes trained on me. It’s a dangerous look, saying that if I don’t trust foxes, he’ll give me a reason not to trust them.

“I’ll do if you do,” I say. I start walking, keeping my tail low and my head high. My thin-furred paws start pounding against the snow as I try keeping up to Cairo. I see the fox, with his snout pointed right at me now, his eyes wild. He — he’d keep to the laws, wouldn’t he? Never kill a human-animal? I’m not so sure, as I run down the road behind Cairo.

But Ishmael sighs in amusement, like he was joking, and trots with long legs behind us.

What’d Nebula say to bringing a Canid into his camp? I’d rather not know, but here I am, watching the Wolverine turn the one corner separating us from camp. We’re doomed.