Thornghost Read Free Page B

something in the tree with him.
    It sat crouched and tense in his throne, watching him with slanted eyes that were rimmed in black and white.
    A lynx.
    For a long moment, they stared at each other, boy and cat. Below them, the hunters came clambering up the bank under Niklas’s branch. He only had to call out and the men would have both him and the lynx at close range.
    But Mr. Molyk spoke first. “If I catch this thing, I’m going to make it pay for my lamb.”
    The lynx turned away, looking out over the valley. It had paws as big as saucers. Even a male that size would be reckoned as large, but Niklas was sure this one was female. He took in her long whiskers and white chin fur, the elegant curve of the flecked back and the tall tuft that crowned the right ear. The left ear had a split down the middle, a nasty old wound that had robbed her of the tuft.
    Huge or no, this could not be the same creature that had chased him. She wouldn’t crash into trees on the path. She didn’t stink. And though he had no idea how or why, Niklas had the strangest feeling she felt sorry for the lamb.
    So he didn’t call out. He stayed still until the hunters had passed under them and disappeared down the trail.
    When their voices had completely drowned in the Summerchild’s noise, Niklas edged farther out on his branch, until it creaked under his weight. If it snapped, he would probably break his neck, but he wanted to put whateverdistance he could between and himself and the giant cat. One thing was certain: The lynx had to leave first. Niklas could not climb down until she was gone. He didn’t want to be pounced from above.
    The lynx didn’t make him wait. She slid out of the tree, melting from limb to limb and onto the path without ever snapping a twig or shaking a leaf. Before the woods swallowed her, she turned and looked up at Niklas one last time.
    She opened her mouth and a voice came out, slurred and rough, but clear enough to almost send Niklas tumbling from the branch.
    â€œThhhhank you.”

C HAPTER F OUR

    A ll the way down from Oak Bridge, Niklas fought to keep his eyes forward. He needed to watch where he stepped, but his back crawled with sneaking horror. He waited for the hunters to cock their rifles, for the smell of the green-eyed creature to catch up with him, for the lynx to attack. Had he imagined that she said those words? He must have, because it was impossible. Maybe it was just a desperate need to be right that she wasn’t the killer beast. That she was somehow kind and gentle, even if she was a predator. Uncle Anders’s warning churned in his head:
You be careful now. If the cat is big enough, it might consider you prey.
    The cat was big enough, and she could very well be the lynx from this spring.
That sneaky lynx,
as Grandma Alma had put it. His grandmother was still angry about the roast, and she didn’t understand when he tried to explain about Lin and Rufus.
    Rufus was Lin’s pet, a little redback vole that she had rescued in the mountains. Niklas had never had a pet, and he really wanted one. He had asked for a dog a hundred times, but Grandma Alma always answered with a
gruff “We don’t keep dogs at Summerhill,” or “We have animals aplenty.” And sure, there was Tobis the cat, who hated kids and preferred the hayloft to humans anyway. There was Dokka, Uncle Anders’s horse, who liked only him. There were the milk cows, who let him pat their foreheads, but only if he brought them salt. None of them loved Niklas, not like Rufus loved Lin.
    Then the lynx turned up during a spell of heavy snows last March.
    They had found her tracks near the edge of the thicket just above the screaming stone. Round four-toed footprints under the biggest ash tree, where she must have perched for a while, or so Uncle Anders reckoned. “That must be one hungry cat to come this close to the house,” he had said, shaking his head. So Niklas