That night, lying in her bed in her new room, Tala was awakened by a cry of terror.

     <Fear! Pain! Fear! Pain!>

     <Gotcha!> another voice cried with satisfaction. <Now we'll have some fun.>

     It was the cat, she realised, and it had caught a mouse. She almost called out a demand for the cat to release the mouse but stopped herself just in time. There was a chance the Crone didn't know where she was living yet but she was probably asking all the animals in the area if there was a girl that could talk to them and the cat, like all cats, would betray her in a moment for a reward. She didn't dare reveal itself to it. She buried her head under the pillow, therefore, in an attempt to block out the voices.

     It didn't work, though. green voices could go through anything. Only distance stopped them. The mouse's cries of pain and terror came through plainly and Tala could do nothing but weep in sympathy. Why did cats have to be so cruel? she wondered. Why not just kill the mouse and have done with it? Neither the cat nor the mouse knew the other could think, of course. They could both talk to green witches and to others of the same species, but not to animals of other species. The cat probably had no idea that it was causing suffering to another sapient being, but Tala had a very good idea that it wouldn't have cared if it did. She'd read the minds of many cats over the years and, so far as she could tell, they were totally incapable of mercy or compassion.

     Finally, the mouse's cries of terror were too much for her to bear, though, and so she climbed out of bed and pulled on the nightie she'd found in the wardrobe beside the window. She would find the cat, she decided, and make it release the mouse 'accidentally', as I'd she'd just happened to be passing. She couldn't tell what direction the voices were coming from, but they grew louder as she padded softly along the corridor and so she continued in that direction, listening intently.

     <Lovely, the way it squirms and wriggles,> the cat was thinking, and the joy in its thoughts sickened her. <Fat, juicy and plump. It'll taste so good when I bite into it.> The thought was accompanied by a louder cry of pain from the mouse as if the cat was pressing its teeth into it. Not hard enough to break the skin. Not yet. Just enough to make it squirm harder, to increase the cat's pleasure.

     <Monster's got Long Whiskers,> came the thoughts of another mouse. <Poor Long Whiskers.>

     <There's nothing we can do,> another mouse said, the voice so filled with anguish and grief that it tore Tala's heart. She found herself contemplating the fact that the natural world was full of killing, pain and anguish. Predators killing prey all over the world, all the time. Everyone knew it, of course, but only green witches could actually hear the cries of pain and grief. Normal people were so lucky, she thought. They could just ignore it. Pretend it wasn't happening. She didn't have that luxury.

     She crept down the stairs, the voices still growing louder ahead of her as she went, until she came to the kitchen. The moon was shining in through the window and there was the cat, the mouse held in its paws, illuminated by a slanting shaft of silver light. The cat had the mouse's head in its jaws, but then it looked up to stare at her curiously.

     Tala marched over to it, reaching out to grab the cat, but the cat jumped out of her reach, the mouse held securely in its jaws. It ran through into the clean living room and Tala followed after it. No point trying to chase it, she knew. Any cat could elude any human easily, but perhaps she could entice it into coming to her.

     "Here puss puss puss puss puss," she whispered, holding her hands out to it. She saw its eyes, glinting in the darkness, staring at her in puzzlement. <Why is the human chasing me? What does it want?>

     Tala crept towards it, one hand outstretched, her fingers already making tickling movements. "Come here, let me tickle you," she whispered to herself. "Cats like being tickled." The cat had found something it enjoyed more, though, and it retreated from her, the mouse now hanging limply in its jaws. It was still alive, Tala could sense, but it had become catatonic with terror. It had given up and probably wouldn't recover even if Tala managed to rescue it.

     "Tala?" said Sarah from behind you. "I thought I heard someone moving around."

     Tala froze in guilty fear and forced herself to relax. "I came down for a drink of water," she said, "and saw the cat had caught a mouse."

     "Has it?" said Sarah in delight. "Good cat! Good Mister Chops!" She turned to her new house guest. "Dougal gave him that name when we first got him as a kitten."

     Tala forced a smile. "Let's see if we can rescue the mouse..." She began.

     "Why?" asked Sarah. "Let him have it. His reward for keeping the house free of the filthy vermin."

     Tala thought about telling her that the house was far from free of the filthy vermin but thought better of it. "I suppose," she said. The cat, meanwhile, had been creeping towards the door back to the kitchen as if sensing that Tala disapproved of its hunting prowess. The mouse was starting to move again in the cat's jaws, she saw, as if it was beginning to recover, but that would only mean that it would suffer more when Mister Chops was free to give it his full attention again. <Afraid,> she heard it moaning softly. <So afraid.>

     An idea came to her. If she couldn't save the mouse, she could at least end its suffering. She locked eyes with it and used what the wolves called the Eyes that Bite. The power that she didn't understand and that her mother had died before being able to tell her about. This time, though, she used the power not to cause pain but to stop the mouse's tiny heart. The mouse died instantly and slumped limply, its last cry of terror falling silent to Tala's immense relief. The cat didn't notice, though, and bounded away with its prize into the kitchen.

     "Come on," said Sarah, taking Tala gently by the arm. "Let's get back to bed."

     Tala nodded numbly, and she glanced once more in the direction the cat had gone before following her host back to the stairs. Behind her, she heard the other mice still wailing with grief, but she knew it wouldn't last. By the time morning came they would have forgotten that their fallen comrade had ever existed.

☆☆☆

     Tala didn't get any more sleep that night, and as a result she was still tired and light headed when she heard the others moving around downstairs. She climbed out of bed, pulled on her clothes and went to join them.

     Sarah was cooking sausages and frying eggs on the wood stove when she entered the kitchen. The cat was there, staring hopefully up at the table where Daisy was arranging food on wooden plates for the rest of the family. The girl cut off the end of a sausage, blew on it to cool it and dropped it onto the floor where the cat jumped eagerly on it.

     "You'll make him fat," her mother told her as she turned the second batch of sizzling sausages on the steel tray with a long fork. "Besides, he's already eaten." She turned to smile at Tara, sharing the joke with her.

     "Who fed him?" asked Daisy, looking back and forth between the other two women.

     "He fed himself," Sarah told her. "He caught a mouse last night."

     "About bloody time," said Drisco, taking the plate his daughter was offering him. He pushed the eggs and sausages aside to make room on the plate and took two tomatoes from the fruit bowl. "Never seen so many mouse droppings in the pantry. Going to have to start putting some traps down."

     Tala forced herself to show no outward sign of her distress. Mouse traps were apposed to kill them quickly and cleanly but they didn't always. She remembered a time a few months back, going into the corner shop to buy a new pair of shoes, when she'd heard the agonised screams of a mouse coming from the back storeroom. She had fled the shop, ignoring the puzzled looks of passers by in the street until she was out of range of the poor creature's voice.

     "You can get humane traps," she said as Daisy handed her a plate. "They catch the mouse alive. You take them out into the countryside and set them free."

     "What's the point of that?" Drisco asked her. "They'll just come back."

     "Not if you take them far enough away."

     "Better to just kill them," said Drisco, though. "All you've got to do then is throw the thing to the pigs."

     "Tara doesn't like to see living creatures dying," said Sarah sympathetically. "She's got a kind heart."

     That was just the reputation Tara didn't need, though. Not when the King's men were hunting green witches. "I don't mind them dying," she said therefore. "I just don't want them suffering. I hate the way cats play with their food."

     "Well that's the good thing about traps," said Drisco around a mouthful of sausage. He began spreading butter on a slice of bread. "It snaps their spines. Kills them instantly."

     Tala knew that that wasn't always true but she didn't want to give away that knowledge. "Yes, of course," she said therefore. "I suppose."

     "Back in the old days, a green witch could have just told them to leave," said Daisy as she took the second batch of sausages from her mother. "They could control animals."

     "They could talk to animals and reason with them," Tala corrected her. "They couldn't control them." She cursed herself instantly. She couldn't give away that kind of knowledge! Why couldn't she just keep her mouth shut?

     "Who told you that?" asked Dougal as he took a plate from his sister. He also took a couple of tomatoes from the fruit bowl, then began buttering a slice of bread. "They could control them. They got their powers from the devil. That's why the old King had them all put to death. Because they were evil."

     "Yes, of course," said Tala quietly as she also took a plate. She put it on the table and stared at it for a moment before reaching for the knife and fork sitting beside it.

     "So no more talk about green witches," said Sarah as she placed the last egg and sausage on her own plate. "They're all gone now and this is a godly house. No more evil talk around the breakfast table."

     "Let's talk about the dance instead," said Drisco, smiling as he glanced back and forth between Tala and Dougal. "I expect the two of you will be going together now that you're courting. Right?"

     They were courting now? thought Tala as she dipped her bread into the runny yolk of her egg, Nobody had asked her. Everyone just assumed. Of course, she had no choice. It was either choose Dougal or choose some other young man. With her cottage gone, any thought of an independent life was now impossible. And if she had to settle down with a man, it might as well be Dougal.

     "Yes, of course," she said therefore. "The dance. Of course we'll be going."

     Everyone around the table grinned with happiness, and then Brian was asking Daisy who she would be going with. The air was filled with the clatter of cutlery as they cut up and devoured their meal while, under the table, the cat waited patiently for any scrap that might happen to fall to the floor.