Although the family's nest was in a heap of wood and rubble behind one of the massive dwellings of the Big Ones, many days Fritti's mother would take the kittens out past the outskirts of the M'an-nests and into the open countryside-wood lore was quite as important as city lore to the children of the Folk. Their survival depended on their being smarter, faster and quieter, wherever they found themselves.

Forth from the nest Grassnestle would go, her young forming a straggling, cavorting scout party about her. With the patience passed down through countless generations, she taught her ragged crew the fundamentals of survival: the sudden freeze, the startling leap, true-smelling, clear-seeing, quick-killing-all the hunting lore she knew. She taught, and showed, and tested; then patiently re-taught time and again until the lesson stuck.

Certainly her patience was often stretched thin, and occasionally a botched lesson would be punished by a brisk pawsmack to the offender's nose. Even a mother of the Folk had limits to her restraint.

Of all Grassnestle's kittens, Fritti loved learning most. Inattention, however, sometimes gained him a smarting nose-especially when the family went out into the fields and woods. The tempting whistles and chirps of the fla-fa'az and the swarming, evocative scents of the countryside could set him daydreaming in a moment, singing to himself of treetops, and wind in his fur. These reveries were frequently interrupted by his mother's brisk paw on his snout. She had learned to recognize that faraway look.

The dividing line between waking and dreaming was a fine one among the Folk. Although they knew that dream-Squeakers did not satisfy waking hunger, and that- dream-fights left no wounds, still there was nourishment and release in dreams unavailable in the waking world. The Folk depended so much on the near-intangible-senses, hunches, feelings and impulses-and these contrasted so strongly with the rock-solid basics of survival needs that one supported the other in an inseparable whole.