Chapter 6:
Not all animals liked Mortimer. Dogs barked when he passed. Horses stamped nervously, pulling at their reins. Even birds sometimes scattered as though a sudden wind had disturbed them. There was something about him—some invisible weight—that set creatures on edge.
But the cat was different.
It appeared one evening on the edge of the garden wall, its coat black as coal except for a single white streak on its chest, like a crooked lightning bolt. Its eyes were not the usual yellow or green but a burnished copper that caught the moonlight like fire.
Mortimer had been talking to himself, muttering the way he often did when no one else would listen. "They never believe me. Not the children, not the adults. No one hears. No one wants to hear."
The cat tilted its head, flicked its tail, and replied.
"I hear you."
Mortimer froze. For a long moment he thought he had imagined it, another echo of his restless thoughts. But then the cat licked its paw leisurely, as though it had said nothing unusual at all.
"You… spoke?" Mortimer whispered.
"I do more than speak," said the cat. Its voice was calm, almost amused, resonating inside Mortimer's head rather than from its mouth. "I listen. And I understand."
Mortimer's chest tightened. For the first time in weeks, maybe months, he didn't feel alone.
---
The cat's name, it explained, was Ashes. It did not belong to anyone, and yet it belonged everywhere. People had tried to keep it—feeding it scraps, coaxing it with bowls of milk—but Ashes always slipped away. It wasn't meant for leashes or cozy hearths. It was a watcher, a wanderer, a keeper of things too old for people to notice anymore.
"You hear me when others don't," Mortimer said one night, sitting cross-legged on the grass while Ashes perched beside him. "Why?"
Ashes swished its tail. "Because you speak on more than one level. Your words carry weight most creatures shy away from. They smell of endings. Most prefer beginnings."
Mortimer shivered. "Endings? You mean… death."
The copper eyes blinked slowly. "Yes. You call it death. I call it passage."
No one had ever said it so plainly to him. Mortimer wanted to recoil, but Ashes' steady presence anchored him. For the first time, someone wasn't afraid to speak about the thing that clung to him everywhere.
---
But the cat had secrets, too.
Ashes didn't only hear Mortimer—Ashes heard everything. The hushed arguments between neighbors, the secret wishes muttered in sleep, the final thoughts of a dying mouse in the field. To Mortimer, the cat admitted something few had ever known:
"I have guarded these whispers for longer than you have lived. I keep them because secrets, once scattered, can change the world in ways it is not ready for. And some of those secrets concern you."
Mortimer's breath caught. "Me? What do you mean?"
Ashes didn't answer immediately. Instead, the cat leapt gracefully down and padded into the shadows, tail vanishing like a question mark. Mortimer scrambled after it. "Wait! You can't just say that and leave!"
But Ashes was gone.
---
For days, Mortimer searched for the cat. He left scraps of food near the wall, whispered into the night, even tried calling its name. Nothing. He began to wonder if he had dreamed it, if loneliness had tricked him into imagining the one creature who might understand.
Then, on the seventh night, Ashes returned. Its fur was ruffled, and its copper eyes seemed darker than before.
"You've been gone," Mortimer accused, though his voice cracked with relief.
"I had to see if the path was clear," Ashes said.
"The path to what?"
"To telling you the truth."
Mortimer leaned closer. "Tell me, then."
Ashes' tail twitched. "You think you are cursed because you sense what others cannot. But it is not a curse—it is a summons. You are meant to hear the voices of those who pass. You are meant to guide, not to suffer. But those who gave you this gift… they did not expect you to survive it."
Mortimer's heart thudded. "Who gave it to me?"
Ashes looked toward the horizon, where the moon was climbing. "That, little one, is the secret I guard most closely. And secrets are never given freely. They are earned."
---
The nights that followed became lessons. Ashes taught Mortimer to listen more carefully—to separate the whisper of the wind from the whisper of a soul, to know when a shadow was only a shadow and when it was something more. Sometimes the lessons were frightening: the groan of a tree that wasn't only wood straining, the silence that wasn't truly silent at all.
"You rush," Ashes chided. "You fear what you hear, so you hurry past it. But to guide, you must linger. You must respect."
It was not easy. Mortimer's stomach twisted each time he sensed a presence that wasn't visible. Yet, with Ashes beside him, he began to find courage.
And in return, Mortimer noticed something about the cat: sometimes, late at night, Ashes' copper eyes dimmed, and it grew quiet, as though weighed down by memories too heavy even for a creature of shadows.
"What's wrong?" Mortimer asked once.
Ashes curled its tail around its paws. "Every listener pays a price. Even me."
"What price?"
But Ashes never answered.
---
One evening, when the air smelled of rain, Mortimer asked the question that had burned in him since their first meeting.
"You said some of the secrets you keep are about me. Are you ever going to tell me?"
Ashes studied him for a long time. Then, slowly, it said:
"There will come a night when the voices grow so loud you cannot shut them out. When that night comes, you will want to run. Do not. Stay. Listen. That is when you will understand who you are meant to be."
Mortimer swallowed hard. "And until then?"
"Until then," the cat said, "you are not alone. I am with you. Even when you cannot see me."
The rain began to fall, soft at first, then harder, drumming on the earth. Mortimer blinked against the drops, but Ashes remained where it sat, fur slicked dark, eyes gleaming like fire against the storm.
And for the first time in his life, Mortimer felt that maybe his strange gift wasn't only a burden. Maybe it was the beginning of something larger—something he could not yet name.