The Last Panther

by Todd Mitchell

  “Now what?” asked Paulo.

  Kiri wanted to climb through the fence and run to the beach so she could see the waves and splash her toes in the water, but if any fugees spotted her, they’d know there was a break in the fence. She had to be patient. “Crawl under it before anyone sees,” she said.

  Paulo made a face. “Yeah, right.”

  “Trust me. I have a plan for how we can make things go back to normal. Now come on.”

  Paulo stared at the fence for several seconds, then he shrugged. “Devi Paulo to the rescue,” he said in a goofy voice. He lay on his back and slid beneath the lowest strand of spider steel.

  As soon as Paulo got clear of the fence on her side, Kiri rotated the stick, and the switch clicked back on. Immediately, the buzzing returned, and Kiri and Paulo jumped back.

  “Huh, so this is how it looks over here,” said Paulo, gazing about appreciatively. “Okay, I’m ready to go back.”

  “Paulo…”

  “Kidding.” He grinned. “But I really shouldn’t stay long.” Paulo glanced toward the sea-grape tunnels. “If someone sees me over here—”

  “We just need to do one thing, then I’ll turn off the fence and you can cross back.”

  “All right. So what’s this ‘one thing’ we need to do?”

  “Find the Shadow That Hunts.”

  “Very funny.”

  “I’m not joking,” said Kiri. She scooped up Snowflake and set him on her shoulder. He nuzzled her hair for a moment before returning to her hood. “Let’s go, before anyone sees you.”

  She set off into the ghost forest, away from the fence line. Paulo followed close behind, stepping clumsily. He’d explored a few of the ghost forest ruins with her in the past, but he didn’t know his way around the woods nearly as well as Kiri did. She almost always went to the beach to see him. Traveling inland together was a new experience for both of them. Kiri had to stop several times to let Paulo catch up. Along the way, she explained why they needed to find the panther.

  “Think about it,” she said. “It’s the reason all this has happened. My da put the fence up so he could trap the panther and send it to the wallers. And the netters are angry because they want to trap it and sell it to the boat people.”

  “So?”

  “So we need to find the panther first,” said Kiri. “If we can find it and keep both sides from trapping it, they’ll listen to us. They’ll have to, because they both want it.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then we can make it so they’re not fighting each other anymore. I’ll get my da to promise not to trade the panther to the wallers, and I’ll get the fugees to promise not to trap it and kill it. Then my da will take down the fence and everyone can get along again.”

  “Not all the fugees want to kill it, you know,” said Paulo. “Some think it’s a devi, like the Witch Woman said. She says it’s wrong to trap it.”

  “Maybe it is a devi.”

  “You think so?” Paulo gave her a skeptical look.

  Kiri shrugged. She didn’t want to explain the connection she felt to the panther, or the strange way it had brought her mother to her. It all seemed too personal and crazy to admit. The more she thought about it, though, the more the marks on her shoulder and cheek tingled with wild energy. Devi marks.

  “I think, whatever it is, we need to find it before anyone else does,” she said.

  Paulo bit his lip. “Say we do find it. What if it attacks us? It’s probably hungry.”

  Kiri touched the wound on her shoulder. Not only was the panther much bigger than her, it was terrifyingly strong. She had no doubt it could end her life in an instant if it wanted to, only she wasn’t about to tell Paulo this. She didn’t want to scare him off. “It didn’t kill me before,” she said. “Besides, we’re going to feed it. That way it’ll know we’re friendly and it won’t hurt us.”

  “Feed it what?”

  “Meat,” said Kiri. “Fresh red waller meat. And I know exactly where to get some.”

  “Ow!” yelled Paulo.

  Kiri couldn’t believe how ridiculously noisy he’d been, tromping through the ghost forest. “Shhh…,” she said. She had to giggle, though, when she saw him hopping around, doing a crazy dance while slapping his legs. “What on earth are you doing?”

  “Something’s stinging me!”

  Kiri noticed a footprint, right in the middle of a fire ant mound. She was about to tell Paulo to grab some pine needles and rub them on his legs to brush off the ants when she noticed something else on the ground. “Paulo, stop jumping.”

  “I can’t,” he said. “They’re everywhere!”

  “Calm down and back up very slowly.”

  Paulo must have heard the fear in her voice, because he froze. Then he followed her gaze to a snake coiled in the dirt. The snake’s tail shook, making a fast rattling sound, like an angry cicada.

  “Snake!” said Paulo, jumping back onto the fire ant mound.

  His sudden movement caused the snake to strike. Luckily, it was a small diamondback and couldn’t reach Paulo’s leg. But Kiri saw two more diamondbacks coiled in the grass nearby. If Paulo started jumping again, he’d get bit for sure.

  She grabbed a stick off the forest floor and used it to scoot the nearest snake away, right as Paulo yelped from the second round of fire ant stings. He stumbled toward her, frantically slapping his legs, eyes wide with fear.

  “Sorry, little one,” said Kiri to the snake, hoping she hadn’t hurt it. She’d relocated diamondbacks dozens of times before, and she could usually pick them up with a stick and set them aside without them even coiling. They were generally calm and lazy, but Paulo’s spastic movements had upset them.

  “Did you just apologize to the snake?” Paulo asked.

  “Yes. It was sitting there, basking in the sun, when you almost stepped on it. It could have died.”

  Paulo shook his head. “I could have died.”

  “Maybe,” said Kiri. “But diamondbacks hate to bite people. It’s a waste of venom.”

  “Snakes are a waste of venom.”

  Snowflake chittered from Kiri’s hood, agreeing with Paulo’s sentiments about snakes.

  Paulo sat on a log a good distance from the snakes and fire ants. He took off his sandals and counted twenty-one red welts on his legs. “I think I’ll name them all,” he said. “That’s Stinger, and Red Rage, and Freckle Beast…”

  Kiri groaned. “If you soak your legs in a tide pool when you get home it will take some of the sting away,” she said. “Now, let’s go. We have to find the Shadow That Hunts.”

  Paulo shot her a strange look. His brow knotted as he put his sandals back on. He glanced around the forest warily.

  “What?” asked Kiri.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just, why do you call it the Shadow That Hunts instead of a panther, like your da?”

  “It means the same thing, doesn’t it?”

  “No,” said Paulo. “If it’s the Shadow That Hunts, then we shouldn’t even be out here trying to find it.”

  Kiri studied him. Usually Paulo was full of jokes and mischief, always making goofy faces and saying funny things. A lot of kids considered him weak because he was small and skinny, but Kiri knew it took courage to make others laugh. He was loyal, too, and honest, and not afraid of getting in trouble to help a friend. No one else in the village would have dared to cross the fence to search with her, even if she asked them to, which she wouldn’t. Paulo was braver than almost anyone she knew, so it took her a moment to realize that he was truly frightened. “I’ll make sure to avoid any snakes and fire ants,” she said. “You just have to step where I do.”

  Paulo snapped off a branch nearby. “It’s not that.”

  “Then what?”

  He sighed and thumped the branch against the log. “The Shadow That Hunts is another name for death. People in the village are saying that you’ve been marked by death. And they say that whatever death marks, it always returns to claim.”

 
“If it comes to claim me, then it will be easy to find. Right?” replied Kiri, hoping to lighten the mood.

  “I don’t want death to claim you,” said Paulo. He nodded to her shoulder. “That doesn’t look good.”

  “It’s just a scratch.” Kiri pulled her shirt over the red marks on her shoulder. “It’ll heal.”

  “Do wallers believe in devi?”

  “Why are you asking me that? I’ve never even been to a waller city.”

  “Tae says the wallers used to have gods, but they stopped believing in them. So their gods got angry and left, and that’s why they hide behind walls. They’re afraid of everything because they don’t have gods anymore.”

  “I don’t know what wallers believe,” Kiri said. “Maybe they believe they’re the gods.”

  “Is that what your da believes?”

  “Who knows? He never talks about stuff like that. He just talks about specimens—things he can study and capture and preserve.”

  “Typical waller.”

  A rush of anger made Kiri’s brow knot. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You know…” Paulo looked back through the woods toward where the fence was. “Wallers like to put things in jars and boxes, right? They like to separate things and control them. That’s how they are. It’s what they do.”

  “And fugees are better?” countered Kiri. “They catch things and kill them—like that sea turtle your da killed.”

  “That’s different,” Paulo said. “Fugees only kill to eat, and they make what they eat a part of them. They don’t separate themselves from everything else. They take and give and share. Like the sea turtle: my da tried to share it with your da. He even would have shared it with other sea turtles if any had come by,” he added with a goofy grin.

  The ridiculous image of turtles lining up to eat turtle soup caught Kiri off guard, and she laughed. Just like that, her anger faded.

  She headed north, toward the area in the ruins where her da had set up one of his traps. Paulo followed, careful to step where Kiri did this time. “What about you?” she asked after a few minutes. “What do you believe?”

  Paulo didn’t answer at first. Kiri glanced back and saw him staring at the stick he carried, as if the answer might be in the twisted grains of wood. “I believe the gods are still here, only they’re broken into little pieces now. And some of those pieces might be devi, like the Shadow That Hunts.” He scooped up a pinecone, tossed it into the air, and tried to hit it with the stick, but missed.

  “You think some sort of god piece scratched me?”

  “It wasn’t a feral cat that did it. Or if it was, then it must have been the god of all feral cats.” Paulo picked up another pinecone. This time he managed to hit it a little ways. “Anyhow, the Witch Woman says that when three devi mark someone, you have to listen to them because they’ve been chosen by the Wise One to speak. She’s telling everyone that you’ve been marked by two devi already—one from the water, and one from the land.”

  “So what happens if I’m marked by a third?”

  “Who knows? Then I’d have to listen to you, I guess.”

  “So I could tell you to eat sand and you would?”

  Paulo mimicked gulping down a spoonful of sand. “Yum!” He smiled, but he still seemed anxious. “Things in the village are different now, Kiri. People are hungry, and angry about the fence. They’re saying a lot of stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  He shrugged. “Stuff about wallers taking everything and ruining everything. I know you’re not like that, but not everyone knows you like I do. Just be careful, okay? I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  Kiri spotted the vid eye first—a small black cube strapped to the branches of a pine with a thin antenna sticking up.

  “Wait!” She tugged at Paulo’s shirt, pulling him back.

  Luckily, the glass lens seemed to be pointed the other way, at the crumbling ruin that Kiri had seen on the vid screen that morning.

  They crept up to the base of the tree. From there, Kiri could see what the vid eye was watching. Only a corner of the concrete ruin remained, and it was mostly covered in kudzu vines. Against this green-and-white backdrop a thick cut of red meat dangled from a strap. It looked odd, hanging there in the open, until Kiri tilted her head and spotted a glint of sunlight off a thread of spider steel.

  The more she looked, the more she could make out the spider steel mesh and rods that formed the trap. Her da had done a good job hiding the walls of the trap beneath kudzu vines and Spanish moss, but Kiri could tell that if something tugged on the hanging meat, the open side would snap down, closing the rectangular box.

  She cut a long palm frond with her knife and handed it to Paulo. He looked confused until she pantomimed climbing the tree and covering the vid eye with the palm leaves. “Gently,” Kiri whispered to him. “Try to make it look like a leaf fell in front of the lens.”

  Paulo scampered up the lower branches and leaned out, holding on with only one hand while swinging the palm branch in front of the lens with the other.

  Once the vid eye’s view was blocked, Kiri went to investigate the trap. The dangling meat looked thick and fresh. Kiri recalled seeing packages of red meat in some of the cold boxes the wallers had sent in the tridrone. Her stomach rumbled as she stared at it. They never got to eat meat like this. She would have traded a bucketful of sand fleas just to taste a bite.

  Snowflake took advantage of her stillness to climb onto her shoulder. His nose twitched as he sniffed the air and caught a whiff of the meat.

  “Careful,” she whispered, more to herself than Snowflake. If she got too close, the sliding wall of the trap might catch her when it closed. She worked a stick through the wire mesh and snagged the meat with it. Then she gently swung the meat closer to the open side, being careful not to tug it. Pull too hard, and the trap would shut.

  After several tries, she managed to swing the meat close enough that she could grab it with two fingers.

  Paulo whistled impatiently, but Kiri ignored him. If she could get her knife out, she might be able to cut the strap that held the meat without setting off the trap.

  Paulo whistled again, louder this time.

  Kiri finally looked over. He was leaning far out from the tree, trying to keep the palm frond in front of the vid eye with one shaking arm while attempting to blow a fly away from his face. His hair kept going up and down with every puff of breath, but the fly continued to buzz around him. Hurry! his eyes seemed to say.

  Several things happened at once. Snowflake scampered down Kiri’s arm to get a taste of the meat and Kiri jerked her hand back the tiniest bit.

  Snap!

  The door of the wire cage slid shut. Then Paulo started to fall, uncovering the vid eye as he went.

  Quickly, Kiri rolled away from the cage until she was beyond the vid eye’s view.

  Snowflake bounded toward her, spooked by the quick snap of the trap. He scurried into her hands and nuzzled her fingers to calm himself.

  “There was a fly,” said Paulo.

  Kiri glared at him.

  “It was a big fly,” he added.

  “Let’s go before my da finds us.” She kissed Snowflake on his head and returned him to her hood. The little rat shivered. “Even if the vid eye didn’t see me, my da will know the trap’s been sprung.”

  They ran as fast as they could toward the fence.

  “Did you get it?” asked Paulo once they stopped to rest.

  Kiri held up the cut of meat she’d pulled free. “Clever as a crab.”

  Paulo’s eyes widened and a grin dimpled his cheeks. “Nice! Devi Paulo wants some!”

  “It’s not for us. Or rats,” she added when Snowflake climbed onto her shoulder.

  “Pretty please? Just a tiny bite? I’m starving.”

  Kiri considered cutting off some of the thick, juicy meat she held. They’d have to cook it first, and that would mean a fire….

  “Paul-ooo!” called a distant voice. />
  Paulo’s smile fell. He crouched behind a bush.

  “Paulo! You better come home right now!”

  “It’s Tae,” whispered Paulo. “My ma probably sent him to find me.”

  Kiri checked the sky. The sun was already setting. Several hours had passed since Paulo crossed over.

  “I should go. My da must be back from fishing.”

  “Give me a minute,” said Kiri.

  She jogged to a patch of sandy ground between two pine trees. It wasn’t very far from where the tracks she’d seen the other night had led. One of the nearby pines was still alive, even though kudzu vines covered most of it. Kiri cut off a long vine and tied one end around the meat. She looped the vine over a branch so the meat dangled about four feet off the ground, where pythons and rats wouldn’t be able to reach it.

  “Why’d you do that?” asked Paulo, practically drooling as he stared at the meat dangling from the end of the vine.

  “It’s an offering for the Shadow That Hunts, so it knows we’re friends.”

  “You’re just going to leave it there?”

  “Yep. It’s the perfect place,” said Kiri. If the panther came for the meat, it would leave tracks in the sandy ground that she could follow. And this way, the panther wouldn’t be lured by hunger into one of her da’s traps.

  “Paulo!” Tae called again. “I swear if you don’t get your butt over here, I’m going to rub your face in fish guts!”

  “It’s always fish guts with him,” said Paulo. “Never bird poop or sea slugs. Help me cross back?”

  Kiri took one last look at the offering she’d left before jogging with Paulo to the fence. The meat swayed in a breeze above the sandy ground—a dark red heart among the ruins.

  That night Kiri couldn’t sleep. Despite how tired she felt, every time she closed her eyes, her head spun and her shoulder itched.

  She did her best not to toss and turn. Earlier in the evening, when she’d become dizzy and stumbled on her way up to the sleeping loft, her da had fussed over her. He inspected the wound on her shoulder and put some cream on it, but as far as Kiri could tell, the cream didn’t help. The scratches were still puffy and red, and the surrounding skin felt warm and red too, like a sunburn.