Peregrin

Ambrose Smith was a spectacular young man, they say. He was the first-born son of a middle-class family, owning a small business named Smith&Peregrin Wooden Goods. However, few were aware that Peregrin was the name of their old cat, which was once Ambrose Smith's first pet.

Peregrin was a peculiar little thing, all white, except for the limbs and the face, which were deep orange as the dawning Sun.

She had sharp, distrustful yellow eyes seemingly gazing into every existing direction as if the thin, distrustful kitten always looked out for a betrayal from the outside world.

She hated everyone and everything, except for Ambrose, whose left shoulder was its mighty throne almost all day. That is how it got its name since the boy always wanted to have a falcon as a child. Now, with the cat proudly sprawling beside his nape, his wish came true might have come true.

Let's say, Ambrose was the complete opposite of his disdain-filled, loathful cat. His smile rarely left, and even if his words were occasional and hoarse, his voice strangely had a soft and gentle tone, akin to a mother singing lullaby to her child.

When the boy passed his fifteenth year, his father died in the war, which brought no true victors upon the pages of history books. Only two pictures remained of Adelaide Smith, who lived a simple life, but full of wonders.

And his greatest wonder, his son took over the business for him. He would work hard and decent, yet his attention still often drifted away. Ambrose loved working with wood, especially from the High Mountains atop the village's farthest paths.

During his breaks, he would glare at the age rings of the trees, tracing their lines with his fingertips. Those times, Peregrin deigned to leave his shoulder, either curling up around his leg with satisfied purring, or chasing away anyone with claws, teeth, and whatever violent means she needed to ensure her best friend wouldn't be disturbed.

Ambrose believed that the trees were writers, eager, sedulous creatures with the curiosity of children, while they reached for the sunlight, feeding on the tales of the wind. They would carve their memories into their bodies as they grew antique and strong, embracing the roots of one another to share them, until the great forests breathed as one enormous form of life, elder and more wondrous than any form of human remembrance.

The boy grieved the trees, but he was also grateful, for reading their stories, which he would hold on to, to share only with Peregrin.

Ambrose loved building houses the most, large or small, for the rich or the poor. He enjoyed every bit as he saw the wood create something new, its strength and heart flowing into those who lived under the roof he formed.

For him, this is what a home meant. The trees passed but kept maturing in a way, with the memory of the people who lived there, and the next ones, until each human and board crumbled into dust, together.

Ambrose lived for his work, each day until sunset, with Peregrin watching over his job as a protective deity. The cat spent its time balancing above the boy's shoulder as he moved around, but the two never made a mistake, as if they were carefully shaped puppets dragged by the same strings of their master.

There was only one thing that Peregrin didn't like, which was when Ambrose clicked his tongue, his small habit of expressing displease. Whenever it happened, the punishment arrived as thunder and lightning, a quick hiss, and a slap of kitten paw on the young man's sunburnt skin. Ambrose always blushed in shame after, quickly bowing his head, and apologizing in Spanish, as the cat only seemed to understand only that.

Perdóname, Peregrin, Perdóname.

As the years passed, Ambrose grew slow with his age. He ate slow, walked slow, and talked slow when he at last opened his mouth, everything adjusted to the oppressor residing over his shoulder, clearly despising every soul around them, be it human or animal.

There was only one way to calm Peregrin, the same he used to put her to sleep. Once the day was over, Ambrose walked home and sat down to his piano, while the cat curled up over its top, on the golden-edged, crimson pillow that was sewed specifically for her, and by the past years, had the cat's shape almost engraved in the fabric. In the candlelight, the pale cat glowed in contrast to the cold, dark lacquer of the instrument.

And Ambrose would play, for long hours, even when his hands hurt or were injured, or when he could barely see from the exhaustion, he would play for Peregrin, who slept and dreamed of the songs that the young man sang, that he learned from the trees through his long life.

He sang of ancient people who lived in the mountains, born from the earth and the lakes, with green eyes and black hair. He sang that they always longed for the sky, which was mysterious and unknown, unlike the land they loved since their first cry. So they visited the cat gods of the highest cliffs, gigantic, fierce cats with claws as knives and fur like the burnt grass after a scorching summer, sallow and scraggy.

So the cat gods taught them spells and helped them fly. In return, the people would sing of them, so the past ages would know their tales. Humanity would roam the forests and carve their homes from the memories, sleep under their charms, and let the gods live on in beating hearts once their age had arrived at its end.

Whoever heard Ambrose sing of this, was enchanted by the voice, caring and quiet, but clear, and it felt like it grew stronger after finding someone, like the soul welcomed and spread the sound to reach even more, as the roots of the trees. They didn't understand how a man with no education could use the instrument so subtly, someone who spent his days cutting and carrying wood, his skin always thick and crusty from his work.

But who heard him play, smiled, and so smiled Peregrin in her sleep. She dreamed of the sky and the mountains, and she dreamed of Ambrose taking her to collect the stars and bite the Moon, to sink into the black velvet of the space no one had touched before them until they were one with the universe and its secrets.

And one day, after thirty long years side by side, Peregrin didn't wake up from her sleep. Ambrose went silent after that. He continued his work but never sang again, nor alone, nor to anyone. He would wander the forests alone, sometimes gone for days before returning to his home. People found him strange, but treated him with kindness, as his melody still dwelt in the wooden toys and walls of the houses, all across the valley.

He was kind.

Every time he leaned down, he would still lift his arm, like he was afraid Peregrin would fall from his shoulder. At night, he always watched the sky with a faraway expression, face now wrinkled by the years and marked by the fangs of time.

And after his mother was gone too, Ambrose Smith planted a tree in the garden of their home, and carried his piano there, playing for one last time. The townsmen gathered around him and listened, nobody dared to talk, and they would cry as ravines opened in their hearts, swallowing up their whole existence into the life after, which was open for the old carpenter, but not for them, for whom it was only a place of dreams and promises, buried treasure in the depth of the ocean.

They felt like they were floating, and slowly drifted away into the bright, colorful mists of the skies that closed them in, they would dance with the constellations, bath in the raw light of foreign stars, and reside under the deserts and icy seas of other realms that watch the same heaven from above, beautiful, infinite and full of shadows.

And by the time they awoke, Ambrose was gone, only his piano remained by the planted sapling, covered with Peregrin's claw marks from the past.

Decades passed, mere as seasons and seconds, and the names slowly faded away as the willow tree grew, running around the remains of the forgotten piano, its long branches and leaves shadowing the instrument until nobody was alive to remember its sound.

But the willow tree stayed, listening and growing, and it held the tale of Ambrose and Peregrin, who it believed to be its friends. It saw more than our blind eyes, it saw the dance of the stars and heard the tremors of the soil, and most of all, he heard the songs of the past.

He reached for the sky to find Ambrose and the small, winged cat who carried him to the stars, where they laughed every night, before returning to the Earth during the day, and resting under the tree, listening to its myths that became one with them.

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Lucie embraces the wooden cat that Benedict lays next to her pillow, and smiles at the young man brightly, whose grey eyes linger on the carved toy, which he finished reading.

He takes a deep breath, and tucks in the edges of the little girl's blanket, under the roof of their old cottage, from the valley where homes are rumored to be standing until the end of time.

After the child falls asleep, Ben walks out to the garden and lays down in the smooth, green grass until he drifts into the dreams, too. His eyes close, and beside him, a boy appears, with a winged white-and-orange cat sitting over his shoulder, ready to take him back to the sky where he now belongs.

Ambrose smiles, the kindest smile one has ever seen, and touches Ben's forehead, as his own goodbye since he doesn't wish to return any more.

He will fly again, so Peregrin can take them to their new lives.

As Ambrose's silhouette withers away, a lonely tear flows down Ben Smith's face, down his cheek, jaws, and neck, until it falls over the ground, where a tranquil, blue flower blooms from it.

And since that night, he has been hearing the whispers of the trees.

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