Eva wasn’t wearing a raincoat, or a backpack, or a sleeping bag, or a tent, not even a simple flashlight.
All she had was the clothes on her back, four little coins in her pocket, and a cat.
And even so she’d headed into the middle of the woods, at night and in the rain.
What she did have was a fire inside. The one that had sparked in her the moment she saw that closed door, when she’d had that vivid image of running away from her own life.
And that fire burned so fiercely that, when it started raining harder, she didn’t even flinch. Just the opposite. She lifted her face to the drops and quickened her pace, laughing on the inside at the whole thing.
Let it rain. Let whatever had to come down come down.
For the first time in ages she was going somewhere because she’d truly decided to.
Neither the rain nor anyone else was going to stop her.
“We’re doing alright, eh, Fay?” The cat went ahead, a pale smudge in the blackness, stopping every so often to check that she was following.
Behind her, above the trees, she could still make out the glow of the city. She had her back to it.
One step. Another. One step. Another…
She walked at a good pace, lost in her inner fire.
She kept it up for a couple of hours like that, chasing the little white smudge moving ahead of her.
The night she’d found Fay came back to her. The very same one she’d run away from home, leaving her nitpicking sister behind.
That had been at least a year ago. Back when her parents had died and the only thing left of her family was an older sister who behaved just as badly as them, or worse.
“I don’t care what you want! Around here we do what I say and that’s that!” She remembered the scene where her sister snapped the bamboo flute she’d made herself.
She relived her parents arguing. Always arguing. Her whole life had been nothing but that: rushing, schedules, piano exams, the right clothes. And what for?
She remembered Fay meowing all alone in the middle of the street that night. That cat had been with her ever since, from the moment she made the decision to leave it all behind and start a new life on her own.
Ouch! She’d stepped on a stone that was pointier than it had any right to be.
She stopped.
And when she stopped, she looked around.
She saw nothing.
She looked back for the glow of the city. It wasn’t there anymore.
The distance had swallowed it.
The little light there was came from a faint moon that barely lit the endless path.
There, in the middle of all that silence, her inner fire went out.
Everything she’d been ignoring for a good while came crashing down on her all at once.
The cold first. She was soaked to the bone and hadn’t even noticed.
The exhaustion. The hunger. And once again, not knowing where she was or where she was headed.
What was she doing here? What the hell was she doing here, in the middle of nowhere, drenched and in the dark?
She patted her pocket. Her four little silver coins were still there, jingling. In any city they’d cover a room to sleep in, a hot shower, and a bit of dinner.
Out here they were worth nothing. There was no one to give them to. There was nothing.
Then she felt something warm on her foot.
Fay was licking her toes, one by one. His tongue was the only warm little thing in that whole place.
She looked down.
The cat was as soaked as she was, an absolute mess.
But there he was, lovingly licking her little toes, as if telling her it wasn’t such a big deal. That there were two of them. Drenched, lost, and together.
She huffed and wiped her face with the back of her hand.
“Come on, Fay. We’re not staying here.”
The cat shook the water off with a wriggle and set off. But not along the path.
He headed toward the trees, toward the dense blackness of the woods.
“Hey, hey. Where are you going?” Eva stayed at the edge of the path. “Not that way, you silly thing.”
Fay stopped where the mud ended and the undergrowth began.
He turned, stared straight at her, and tipped his little head toward the woods again.
Once. And again. As if telling her the way was over there.
“No, Fay. I trust you, but enough adventures for today, please.”
The cat didn’t move.
“In the next village we’ll ask about Axel. A kid with a big backpack. He won’t have gone far, somebody’ll have seen him. We’ll find him, you’ll see.”
Fay stayed a moment longer, looking at the trees.
Then, just like that, he came back to the path and set off ahead of her.
Eva followed him.
Luckily it was starting to stop raining.
She walked the rest of the night behind the little white smudge, not thinking.