Mittens

A boy calls for his cat in the wood behind his family home. The sunlight is just starting to fall beneath the treeline, and he worries the cat will be late for feeding time. He calls and calls until long after the word “Mittens” sounds no more like a word than “higgly piggly.” By the time the North star points at his green eye, the tuxedo cat is still nowhere to be found. 

The boy still has hope, for Mittens has never stayed away from home too long. For three days he’s searched out in the forest and comes home only with a smattering of burdock and thistle heads stuck to his pants to show for it. Even though his mother grumbles about spending each evening cleaning him up, the boy knows she misses Mittens just as much as he.

Between the leaves just past a stump, the boy notices something shiny. He runs over to pick it up. It’s the bell from Mittens’ collar. The piece of twine that had once secured it is torn, and the red collar is nowhere nearby. 

Then, caught on a bristle branch, he finds a tuft of black fur. At first it didn’t concern him, until he noticed the pure white ends, similar to the ones he’s found floating around his house.

Soon after, amidst the falling darkness, the boy stumbles across a foxhole, with claw marks scratched into the dirt around it. It doesn’t seem that a fox is home, but he does find a tiny, disheartening strand of bright red thread buried into one of the grooves of said scratches.

“Oh no,” the boy thinks. “This can’t be good. Mittens!?” The gnarled oak trees gaze down at the boy pitifully. The boy turns back the way he came, sorrow melting his face. How would he tell his mother? 

Before he’s almost home, he hears a wooosh off in the distance, like a wing mid-flap. He looks around, but nothing stands out to him in the deep twilight wood. He continues to walk. But there it is again, this time a sliver of pitch black high up between the trees snaking out of the corner of his eye. Even through the brief glimpses he gets, he knew it was a massive creature. Much bigger than an owl, or even a raven. 

The boy picks up his pace, hiking over fallen logs and muddy pits, terrified of becoming supper for mysterious creature. He runs and runs but it seems none of these trees or boulders are familiar. Was this the way back home? No, this way must be. Wait, no that can’t be right.

The creature woooshes again, closer, right above him, behind him, below him? The boy is sprinting and screaming now but it seems the creature is everywhere. Its presence always looms just behind his ears. Its breath on the back of his neck. No matter how fast the boy goes or how loudly he screams, the mysterious creature is not deterred. The boy prays the creature holds off until just around the next turn where the safety of his home and his mother’s arms will surely be. Won’t it? 

Suddenly, the boy emerges into a clearing. He didn’t come through here before, did he? No, he’s never seen this meadow before. Thick black trees peer down at him. The stars pay him no mind. The boy shouts for anybody, but he knows by now that no one can hear him. Except of course, for the monster. 

Up in the sky, a black silhouette weaves between the stars. It soars across the face of the moon, massive wings extending, with feathers as long as the boy’s face. It swoops down and lands, perching on the top of a pine tree with its huge paws. The griffin eyes the boy with deep golden eyes. The boy starts to back away, but then he notices something. Although the rest of the griffin is blacker than the night sky, its large paws are unmistakably pure white. 

“Mittens?”