Once I had reached the alley again, I turned to ensure that I was not going to be followed. The servant was apparently too intent on saving her. If the man rushed her too a hospital, she might survive, but I had damaged her too seriously, even for a Bastet, to heal, and no amount of home medicine would do the job. I doubted he would take her to any proffesionals, though, since she, no matter how much she valued her own life, could not afford to risk revealing her true nature to the doctors there. And since she was not in homid form when I slashed her, she would not revert to it, or her feline, depending on what form she had been born in, either until she died or with an act of will I doubt she was any longer able to muster.
Still, even if she did survive, it mattered little. I had what I wanted from her, and I didn’t care if she did survive. She’d be a fool to try to steal from me again.
I looked down at the object of the recent battle. It gleamed in the bright sunlight. The wicked blades that went all round the grip were still as sharp as before. On the outside at least, it was undamaged. I closed my eyes and called to the spirit that should be still within. It answered, apparently unharmed by the Bubasti witches damnable spells. For the moment at least, the war spirit’s blood lust was satiated, after the copious amounts it had spilt today in my hand. It did not usually get used in combat, for I did not actually know yet how to use it effectively. It was a ceremonial gift from my kuasha, but he had not given me with it the skills of how to use it.
On my last day as a kit, even after I had been told the tribe yava and had been taught my rituals and we had performed the Speaking of the Name, my kuasha came up to me, only minutes before our parting, and drew forth the most beautiful weapon I had ever seen. The grip was an intricate tooled leather design, and the blades circled it in a wide arc. They were all gracefully curved, and razor sharp. I took it gingerly in my hand and reached up instinctively to place my hand on one of the blades. He startled from my reverie "Careful, its all silver." I looked up and stared now at him.
"This is a hakarr, isn’t it?" He had told me of them before, but he had never shown this to me before.
"Yes. It is not a gift," I must have looked crestfallen, because he smiled and went on "it is, for now, a loan. When you are old enough, and strong enough, and wise enough, I will seek you out again and I will teach you how to use it. Until then, do not attempt to use what you do not yet understand. Treasure it as you would you’re own life, for it is among the rarest of things. Its loss or destruction will mean that I shall seek you out, not to teach you, but to kill you. This hakarr has been passed from kuasha to kit since time immemorial. Keeping it safe is the final proof that you are a worthy member of the Swara. Failure means death. I give this to you for you have been my most promising pupil ever. I have high hopes for you, do not disappoint me." And with that he embraced me, careful not to touch the hakarr I still held. Then he turned, shifted to his feline form, lean and swift as always, and darted away. I was still so in shock that it did not occur to me to actually say good-bye until he was long gone. I looked again at the hakarr, admiring its beauty still. Then I picked up the special sheath that he had dropped when he drew it, and placed the fierce weapon within it. I turned in the opposite direction from the one he had gone in, and began to walk along my own path, alone again.
I turned after a moment, looking off into the direction he’d gone. I looked down at the sheathed hakarr and whispered to myself "I shall see you again then, Jonas, and I shall not disappoint you."
Coming back to myself, I realized that several minutes had passed while I was lost in my memories. I realized further that it was dangerous to remain in the open in my Crinos form. I quickly shifted back to human, chiding myself at this small stupidity. Then, concealing the hakarr within my loose shirt, I walked back out of the alley.
The fear I had been feeling since the previous week was finally lifted. When I had discovered the hakarr gone, I had genuinely feared for my life. I had no idea either how long before or if Jonas would know it was gone, and in desperation, I had gone in search of it, hoping to find it before he found me. I was apparently successful. I breathed a deep sigh of relief. It had been three years since I’d seen Jonas, on that last day, and I had no idea how long before he deemed me ready for the knowledge of how to use the hakarr. In my early arrogance, I thought I could teach myself, but when I discovered quickly the hard way that it was not so simple as all that, anything more complex than a simple slash like the one I’d used on the witch was impossible for me without injury, I gave up trying to use it at all. That lesson had taken weeks to heal.
I had been careful and elaborate in my guarding of the silver blade, buying expensive and complex security and always hiding it carefully. I never kept it in the same place for all that long, and never wherever I was living at the time, so that there was no possibility of it being taken by some petty thief. I never carried it with me, for fear of loosing it somehow, and was always careful about not letting anyone know that I even had it. But all that had not been enough to keep out the Bubasti witch. Somehow she had found it anyway. Fortunately I was just then coming to check on it, after a strange feeling that it was in danger, and caught her in the act. I got a good scent from her before she threw down a small sphere that proceeded to emit a noxious gas that obscured my vision and quickly made me too groggy to move very fast. She escaped absurdly easily. But when my head and the air had cleared, I followed, tracking her scent as I went.
My life had never been like this before the change, that was certain. I had grown up in quiet suburbs, and my life had been relatively uneventful. I had a mother and a father, though my father and I never got along all that well, and I had been too distant to get really close to my mother. They never got divorced or anything as so many people do these days. I never had any siblings, and I always had few friends. Most people didn’t understand me, but then, that was fair, since I didn’t understand most people. They were fascinating in all their stupidity and glory and remarkable creativity, but totally beyond my comprehension most of the time. So I had always been apart, never truly belonging to anything, even the groups of people that did accept me for who I was. Even when I became close to people, there was a small part of me that was separate, forever alone. I didn’t really mind it most of the time.
During my teenage years, I was opened up to the realm of the invisible. Without any formal training, though, my delving into the mystical was always limited to amateurish work. I never became truly proficient at it, though if I hadn’t had the changing gene, I might have become a mage someday. One never knows. By those who could tell, I was told that I had enormous potential, but that it was unlike anything that they had ever seen before. Most likely they had never seen a werecat before.
I was aware long before Jonas appeared to me that the concepts judeo-christianity professed were frankly wrong. There was a whole lot more to it than that, I just wasn’t sure yet what it was exactly. I knew it had something to do with a balance between order and chaos, life and death, darkness and light. I just never suspected that the balance was so badly out of joint. Now I know better, and I have been doing what I can to set it right. It isn’t enough, but it helps. Its how I got my name, Tekaria, which is close to the old Sylvan for Lost Cause. I know that order and chaos both are threatened by the power of destruction, which in truth is neither one. We that know this fight a loosing battle right now, but I, unlike so many of my tribal brothers, cannot help but hope for a turn in the tide, though it belies my name, perhaps. In my darker moments I wonder if Apocalypse truly is nigh, and I despair for all the beauty that will be lost if this is so. But then I look around me and see again that beauty, and I reaffirm my vow.
Reality is more complex than I ever dreamed before the change. Perhaps someday I will truly understand it all. In the meantime, I’ll have fun trying to figure it out.
End of Part 2