Chapter Text
Sandy lifted the blind and gazed out onto a blanket of pure white. The branches of the ancient pines around the cottage drooped under the snow’s weight; the squirrel feeder hanging from the nearest tree, usually busy in the morning, was deserted. Only a trail of tiny footprints – a robin, most likely – disturbed the otherwise pristine surface, while a few flakes still drifted down from the ominously dark clouds above.
Faint voices came from the kitchen. Sandy pulled on her dressing gown and wandered through to fire up the coffee maker.
“Looks like it really came down overnight,” she commented as the machine gurgled away on the counter. “The forecast did say this could be the snowiest winter we’ve had in a few years.”
“And there’s still a blizzard up on the plateau,” said Alli, her attention fixed on the radio. She lifted one little arm when Sandy opened her mouth again. “You’ll want to hear this.”
Frowning, Sandy collected her mug and joined her kwami by the radio.
The newsreader finished running through the morning’s headlines and continued with the first item.
“A group of fifteen French students and their teacher are missing on the Cairngorm Plateau,” she said, far more sombre than her usual chirpy demeanour. “The students, from the Valérian High School in Paris, were due to arrive at their hostel in Aviemore yesterday afternoon following a day of orienteering in the mountains; when they did not appear and failed to send word, the hostel owner contacted the police. Although mountain rescue teams have been mobilised to look for the missing group, fears are growing for the students’ safety due to severe weather conditions on the Plateau.”
She went on in more detail, giving the names of the teacher and a few of the students as well as a recorded interview with one of the rescue teams, but Sandy had ceased to listen. She gulped down the last of her coffee, grabbed a croissant from the bread bin, and ran back to get dressed.
Without speaking, Alli switched off the radio and rose from the worktop, hovering midair as Sandy re-emerged from her bedroom zipping up her fleece with the silver badge of her Miraculous pinned to the front.
“Come on,” said Sandy, pulling up her hood. “We’ll take the mountain road up to the funicular and go from there.”
Alli whisked inside the hood and curled up against Sandy’s neck. “I doubt the railway will be running in this weather,” she said. As always, her voice utterly failed to match her appearance: though she roughly resembled a little tabby kitten, she spoke with a deep, resonant purr rather than a high-pitched mew.
“Probably not,” said Sandy, collecting her keys from the hook by the door. “But if my sheltered little garden is this bad, what do you think the open hillside will be like? The tracks will be easier to climb even if the cars aren’t moving. Let’s go – the Catmobile will still handle the snow.”
“You’ve got to stop calling your old Land Rover that,” said Alli with a sigh. “It… it doesn’t sound good.”
“Oh, shush. Let me have my fun.”
Minutes later, the aged Defender rolled out of the driveway. As it made its way up the winding mountain road, amongst the snowbound trees and past the iron-grey expanse of Loch Morlich, the snow fell thicker and faster with every turn of the wheels. Soon even the snow tyres and four-wheel drive were struggling to keep the car moving, but eventually they made it up to the base station at the road’s end. The Land Rover wasn’t alone in the car park, but any other vehicles – three cars and a minibus, from their sizes – were no more than snow-covered mounds in the blizzard.
Sandy switched off the engine and climbed out, shading her eyes against the snow. Alli poked her head out from inside the hood and pinned her ears back.
“Well?” she asked.
Sandy squinted upwards. The snow was so thick that she could barely even see the station, let alone the summit. “And on my day off, too,” she said with a sigh, and squared her shoulders. “Alli – the hunt is on.”
The light of transformation crackled over her, and Wildcat loped out to shoulder open the base station door.
The man at the ticket desk, bundled up in a thick tartan blanket, sat up straight. “Good grief, you even come out in this weather?” he asked.
Wildcat shook the snow from her hood. “This weather’s when I’m needed the most, Davey,” she said. “I take it the funicular isn’t running?”
Davey shook his head. “We haven’t been able to clear the track – and there are still people stranded up at the Ptarmigan. They’ve been there since last night! I’m only still here in case we can get the trains moving again.”
“You might be waiting for some time if this doesn’t let up.” Wildcat vaulted the barrier onto the platform and hopped down onto the tracks in front of the stationary train. “I’ll see you in a while, most likely,” she called back. “I’ve got work to do out in the mountains.”
Davey lifted a hand in farewell and pulled his blanket back around himself. Wildcat nodded back and stepped out from the shelter of the base station. The steel claws on her toecaps slid from their sheaths, digging into the snow gathering on the tracks, and she set off at a dead run.
It didn’t take long to find her rhythm, bounding easily from one sleeper to the next as the track climbed higher towards the summit of Cairn Gorm. Snow gathered on her suit with every step, but Alli’s power kept the cold and damp at bay nonetheless. Within the space of only a few minutes, she ducked inside the tunnel at the top of the track and leapt up to the Ptarmigan Station’s platform.
A dozen people looked up in surprise when she burst into the café, shedding snow in all directions.
The woman at the till almost collapsed in relief. “Wildcat!”
Wildcat brushed the last few errant snowflakes from her shoulders and shook out the coil of rope across her chest. “Good to see you too, Heather,” she said, letting her claws retract. “Is this everyone here? Nobody else has wandered off onto the hills?”
Heather shook her head, but lowered her gaze. “Some people did set off on their skis last night, but we got word from the base station that they made it down safely. But… there’s still no sign of those French kids. Look at it out there.” Heather gestured towards the nearest window. “Total whiteout. They’ll never get a rescue helicopter through it. If they don’t show up soon…”
Wildcat grasped her shoulder. “I won’t let this be 1971 all over again,” she said. Letting go, she looked around the café. Both tourists and staff looked back at her, the tourists with much more confusion. “The heating’s working, so you have power?” she asked. Heather nodded. “Right. I ken you all want to get back down the mountain, but you’ll have to wait a while longer – it’s a nuisance but you’re in no danger so long as you stay in here. I’ll be bringing those kids here if they’re close enough, so have soup, tea and blankets ready, enough for everyone.”
“What happened in 1971?” one young skier asked his companion, who just shrugged.
Heather nodded and waved to one of her colleagues, who nodded back and began filling kettles. A few others went to raid the gift shop, returning with armfuls of blankets, fleeces and rugs.
“Sit tight, then,” said Wildcat, opening the outside door. “I will find them.”
Not 1971, she told herself, and not ten years ago either.
The door swung closed behind her, and she disappeared into the driving blizzard.
A hundred yards uphill, the snow filling her footprints behind her, she went down on one knee, planted one hand flat on the ground, closed her eyes, and listened. The ears on her hood twitched back and forth, picking up on all the signs of life for miles around.
A little flock of ptarmigan, fluffed up beneath the snow.
A mountain hare, digging a shallow scrape for itself.
A pair of golden eagles, safe in their nest on a rocky crag.
A group of reindeer, picking their way across the high plateau.
And there, to the south, beyond Cairn Gorm itself and near the summit of Ben Macdui: humans, one adult and fifteen teenagers, in whatever little shelter they had managed to find. Weak, distressed, and close to freezing, but alive.
Wildcat rose to her feet, turned south, unsheathed her claws again, and began to run. Up the mountainside to the summit of Cairn Gorm, then south across the plateau; over tiny, half-frozen streams carving deep furrows in the ground; skirting the edges of some cliffs and clearing others with a single leap, until finally, on the snowfield above Loch Etchachan, a flash of colour caught her eye amongst the white. She abruptly changed course, her claws preventing an uncontrolled skid on the deep snow, and brought herself up short an instant before she would have toppled forwards into the small hollow in the rock. Normally it would have filled with snow, but today it housed sixteen shivering figures in brightly-coloured hiking jackets, all reds and blues and yellows, huddled close against the teeth of the storm.
Wildcat dropped to her knees and grabbed the teacher’s shoulder. The middle-aged man slowly lifted his head, revealing a face almost hidden by a hat and scarf, and eyelashes encrusted with snow.
“Is anybody hurt?” Wildcat asked, raising her voice over the wind. “Can you all walk?”
For a moment he just looked at her in blank confusion, before he nodded and replied – through violently chattering teeth – in accented English. “We are all very cold,” he said, “but nobody is injured. I think we can walk.”
“Good. Let’s get you all indoors.” Wildcat lifted the rope from around her chest, tied one end to her belt, and began looping it around the wrists of all the lost walkers until they were linked together in one long, snow-covered crocodile, Wildcat at its head and the teacher at the tail.
Little by little, as they got moving and slowly warmed up enough to speak, Wildcat caught snippets of conversation from the students behind her.
“C’est un super-héros!”
“Comme Ladybug?”
“Non, plus comme Chat Noir!”
“Mais c’est une femme…”
Wildcat frowned for a moment, but quickly put it out of her mind. Curiosity could wait until they were off the mountain.
The walk back to the Ptarmigan was a great deal slower than her journey out, constantly interrupted by slips and trips where the snow concealed rocks and roots and sheets of ice, but nobody lost the rope and the students worked hard to keep each other moving. One step at a time, they descended from the plateau and finally stumbled into the warmth of the café.
“Somebody contact Mountain Rescue,” said Wildcat, freeing the students from the rope and looping it around herself once more. “I don’t like to think of them still out there looking when the kids are in and safe.”
“We have their radio frequencies,” said Heather, nodding as she set out steaming bowls of soup and mugs of tea and coffee, while staff and customers alike worked to help wrap the young rescuees up warm. “We’ll get the news out to them.”
Wildcat nodded and surreptitiously checked her Miraculous. She wasn’t sure how long she had spent out in the mountains, but the little wildcat’s stripes had not yet begun to vanish. Plenty of time to get back down before she lost the transformation.
As she turned to leave, one of the students grabbed her hand.
“Merci, Chat Tigré,” said the girl, a woollen blanket and a sheepskin rug wrapped around her shoulders. “Merci.”
Wildcat gently freed her hand, taking a moment to call up the dregs of her high school French. “De rien,” she said, fairly certain that was how to say ‘you’re welcome’. “I have to leave,” she said, her French exhausted. “You’ll be safe here until the train starts running again.”
She walked back down the tracks at a more leisurely pace, nodding to Davey at the base station as she let herself back out into the car park. The blizzard was finally beginning to lessen, and the snow had not yet built up to impassable depths around her Land Rover.
Her Miraculous began to flicker just as she climbed into the driver’s seat.
“The hunt is over,” she said. With a flash of light, her suit vanished and Alli perched on the steering wheel. Groaning with the fatigue that the magic had held at bay, Sandy reached behind herself and took a cocktail sausage from the coolbox in the back seat’s footwell. Alli delicately took it between her arms, inspected it for a second, and wolfed it down in three bites.
“You and I need to have a conversation,” said Sandy as she switched the engine on and Alli settled on her shoulder. Alli made a noncommittal sound. “But it can wait until we get home. Do you speak French, by any chance?” she continued as she cautiously steered back down the mountain road.
“I speak the languages of my chosen wielder,” said Alli. “If they speak French, I speak French. You don’t, so at the moment, I don’t.”
“Right. That’s… less useful than it could be. I was just wondering what that kid called me.”
“Chat Tigré?” asked Alli. “Something Cat.”
Sandy jerked her shoulder upwards, tossing the kwami into the air. “I understood that much,” she said as Alli floated back down. “Ach, I’ll look it up once we’re home.”
Back in the cottage, she lit a fire in the hearth and flicked through her old French dictionary, scarcely opened since leaving school. “Tabby Cat,” she eventually announced. Alli, steadily working her way through a large slice of smoked ham, said nothing but pointed her ears forwards. “She called me Tabby Cat. I wonder what… No, this doesn’t have ‘wildcat’ in it. I’ll work that out later. So.” Sandy pulled out a chair and sat down opposite Alli, resting her elbows on the table and clasping her hands in front of her mouth. “Something those kids were talking about caught my attention. Who – or what – are Ladybug and Black Cat?”
Alli looked to one side, still saying nothing as she finished the ham. When she had swallowed the last mouthful, she waved her tail dismissively. “Nothing for you to worry about. Other Miraculous – Miraculouses… Miraculi? They don’t concern you.”
“But there are others,” pressed Sandy.
Alli lifted herself from the table to hover at eye level. “You’re Wildcat,” she said. “A solitary hunter in wild places.”
“Right, you think I’d work as a park ranger if that didn’t appeal to me?”
“My point is, Wildcat hunts alone. That’s how it’s always been, ever since the beginning. There have been many Wildcats since the badge was first cast. Celts. Romans. Picts. Vikings. Scots. None of them worked in groups, never sought out other wielders. The last before you was a Jacobite, but even he didn’t join the rest of the army – he fought his war alone, from the forests and the mountains.”
“I’m guessing that didn’t end well for him, since I found your Miraculous on the ground in the forest,” said Sandy drily.
“Well… No. But it’s not as if you need to worry about Hanoverian troops hunting you down! No.” Alli shook her head. “So, yes, there are others out there. But like I said, they’re nothing for you to worry about.”
Sandy prodded her in the stomach. “I refuse to be lectured by a floating kitten.”
“I am far older than you,” said Alli, holding out her arms. “I am the very spirit of the hunt. When the first predators pursued their prey through ancient tropical seas, I existed.”
“Don’t get all metaphysical on me,” said Sandy. “You may well be an ageless being from the dawn of time, but you’re still a cat.” Alli wrinkled her tiny snout. “Carrot and stick, then. Explain, and I’ll get in some of that venison you like. Don’t, and you can recharge on roadkill for the next month. It won’t be hard for me to scrape a dead badger or two off the tarmac.” She sat back in her chair and folded her arms. “Your choice.”
Alli did not answer for several seconds, scratching her neck and turning little circles midair. “That nice venison steak?” she asked.
“The expensive stuff.”
Alli took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and let it out in a rush. “Fine. There are many other Miraculouses out there. Some are active, with chosen wielders. Others aren’t. The Earrings of the Ladybird and the Ring of the Black Cat are the oldest and most powerful of them all, granting creation and destruction respectively – and to balance each other out, their wielders have always worked as a pair. My guess is, they’ve gained new wielders somewhere in France. I can sense when another active Miraculous is nearby – what kind of hunt spirit would I be if I couldn’t? – but not over that kind of distance.” Alli briefly turned herself upside down. “That’s all I really know about it. Who the current wielders are, where in France they are… That, I can’t tell you.” She landed on the table and jabbed her arm at the nearer of Sandy’s hands. “I will hold you to that about the venison.”
“I never go back on a bribe,” said Sandy, splaying the fingers of her other hand against her chest. “Promise, next time I do a grocery run into Aviemore, I’ll buy all the venison you can eat.”
Alli sighed happily. “It’s good to work with a wielder who keeps her word. Malcolm wasn’t nearly as honourable.”
“Malcolm?”
“The Jacobite,” said Alli. “Surly man and a bit grubby, but handy with a dirk.”
“Huh. You’ll have to tell me about the Wildcats before me some time. Until then…” Sandy cracked her knuckles and eyed her computer. “I have a few things I need to look up.”
