The Tangle Box by Terry Brooks

That had been almost two years ago. No one had seen or heard from Edgewood Dirk since. But now, here he was suddenly, and again he had been sent by the fairies, and again no one but the fairies really knew why.

Edgewood Dirk was a fairy being himself, though one of the more independent ones, as much cat as anything, and therefore likely to do exactly as he pleased despite anyone else’s wishes, which made it very hard to determine his purpose in events. He had proved that beyond anyone’s doubt during his time with Ben. Dirk was a prism cat, a creature possessed of a very rare sort of magic. He could transform himself from flesh and blood to a crystalline as hard as iron that allowed him to capture light and transform it into a deadly fire. Dirk used this power sparingly, but with great confidence. However distant and aloof Dirk appeared, however removed from what was happening around him, he was no one to fool around with.

So Willow accompanied him with some sense of assurance that if trouble threatened, Dirk was probably its equal. She would have preferred to have Ben with her, but that option had already been eliminated by the Earth Mother. Sometimes you took what you could get. Willow was experiencing enough uncertainty about her quest that she was grateful for any sort of company.

Dirk, of course, seemed indifferent to the entire matter.

“Were you sent because of Ben?” she asked him their first night out. They sat together before a small fire that Dirk had insisted be built to ward off some imaginary chill. She had arranged the deadwood, and he had set it afire. The beginnings of a working partnership, she had thought.

Dirk was licking one paw diligently. “I wasn’t sent. I am never sent. I go where I choose.”

“Excuse me,” she apologized. “Why did you choose to come, then?”

Lick, lick, lick. “I can’t remember, really. It seemed like a good idea, I guess.” Lick, lick.

“Can you tell me where we are going?”

“West,” the cat said. Lick, lick.

“Yes, but …”

Dirk stopped preening and gave her his cat look, the one that suggested sly amusement, deep understanding, grave concern, and total amazement all at the same time. “Just one moment, please. You are losing me. Don’t you know where we’re going?”

She shook her head in confusion. “No, not really.”

He stared at her thoughtfully. “Oh, dear,” he said. “Oh, well. I guess we will just have to find our way as best we can.” And he went back to licking himself.

A little while later she grew brave enough to ask him again, taking a slightly different approach.

“We should reach the fairy mists by the day after tomorrow,” she advised cautiously. “Once there, what do we do?”

Dirk had finished his bath by now and was seated on a patch of grass close by the fire, paws tucked under himself, eyes closed.

The eyes opened to slits. “We pass through the mists into Holiday’s world.” The eyes closed.

“How do we do that?”

The eyes came open again, a bit wider. “What kind of question is that? I must say I will never understand humans.”

“I am a sylph.”

“Or sylphs.”

Willow’s lips tightened. “It is just that I am concerned for my baby. I am required to do these things to protect its birthing, but I do not know how I am to do them.”

Dirk regarded her with genuine interest. “Cats learn early on that very little is accomplished by worrying. Cats also know that things have a way of working out, even when the means are kept hidden from us. Best to deal with things as they arise, and let the future take care of itself.”

“That seems very shortsighted,” she ventured.

Dirk might have shrugged; it was hard to tell. “I am a cat,” he offered, as if that explained everything.

She didn’t talk to him about the matter again that night or all the next day, and so by nightfall when they had crossed out of the lake country and passed up into the foothills that bordered the fairy mists, she was surprised when he brought it up again of his own accord.