Chapter 1

His whiskers twitched.

They always twitched when something interesting was nearby, but tonight they vibrated with a frequency he had never felt before. Something was different in the air, and it wasn't just the changing of the light.

"MoooOOOoo!" A low, rumbling call rolled across the pasture like distant thunder. "Mikutis! Mikutis, come here! You won't believe what I saw!"

Karvė Marija lumbered toward the fence, her brown and white bulk swaying with each step. Her wide eyes were wider than usual, which was saying something. She had the look of someone who had been holding in a secret so long it was about to burst out of her ears.

"What is it, Marija?" Mikutis leapt down from the post and landed softly in the grass. "Did the farmer's dog get into the grain shed again? Meow?"

"No, no, no!" Marija's head swung low, her nostrils flaring. "Something in the sky. Big, round things. Floating. And they smelled like... well..." She paused, her tail flicking nervously against her flank. "They smelled like cow dung. But also like those gas balloons the drunkards use in the village. You know the ones?"

Mikutis tilted his head. He did know the ones. Every market day, men stumbled through the village square clutching small balloons filled with some kind of gas that made their voices squeak and their feet stumble over each other. The balloons floated above their heads on strings, bobbing like strange fruit. The whole affair had always struck him as odd and a little bit wonderful.

But big ones? In the sky? That smelled of dung?

"Are you sure, Marija? Meow? Big ones?"

"Moooo! I saw it with my own two eyes!" She stamped a hoof for emphasis. "Big, round things in the sky, and... well, you know the rest! They drifted over the eastern hill and then just vanished. Poof. Gone."

Mikutis felt a prickle of excitement travel from his ears all the way to the tip of his tail. Vanishing objects in the sky. Gas balloons that smelled of manure. None of it made sense, and that was exactly why he couldn't let it go.

He thanked Marija with a quick rub against her warm flank — she always liked that — and darted across the barnyard toward the old stone wall where Bobutė spent most of her evenings.

He found her exactly where he expected: curled into a perfect circle on the sun-warmed stones, her black fur blending with the shadows until only her amber eyes caught the last of the daylight. She looked like a cat who knew things. Because she did.

"Bobutė," Mikutis panted, skidding to a stop. "Something happened. Marija saw these things in the sky, big floating things, and they smelled like gas balloons and cow dung, and I think — meow — I think something strange is going on."

Bobutė opened one eye. Then the other. She lifted her head with the slow grace of someone who had been woken from a very good nap and wanted you to know it.

"Little one," she said, her voice a soft purr beneath the words, "the world is full of wonders, if you only know where to look... and who to ask." She stretched, long and luxurious, her spine arching like a question mark. "Tell me everything. From the beginning. Slowly."

So he did. He told her about Marija's description, about the eastern hill, about the way the objects had vanished. Bobutė listened with her eyes half-closed, her purr rising and falling like breath.

When he finished, she was quiet for a long moment. The barnyard sounds filled the silence — crickets, the shuffle of chickens settling onto their roosts, the distant lowing of Marija retelling her story to anyone who would listen.

"Gas balloons," Bobutė finally murmured. "How interesting." Her amber gaze fixed on him with an intensity that made his fur prickle. "You said they smelled of dung as well?"

"Yes, meow. Marija was very specific about that part."

"Hmm." Bobutė rose and padded to the edge of the wall, looking east. The hill rose dark against the deepening sky. "There are stories, little one, that the old cats used to tell. Stories about things that float without wings. About the village men and their foolishness with gas. And about what happens when that gas meets certain... materials."

"Materials? Like dung?"

"Perhaps." Her tail curled around her paws. "Or perhaps something more. The eastern hill has always been a place where things disappear. Even before you were born. Even before I was born, if you can imagine such a time."

Mikutis could not imagine a time before Bobutė. She seemed as permanent as the stones beneath her paws.

"What should I do?" he asked.

She regarded him steadily. "What you always do, little one. Be curious. Be brave. And be careful about believing everything a cow tells you — even when she believes it herself."

He nodded, though his heart was already racing ahead. He thought of the balloons in the village square, bobbing on their strings. He thought of what it might feel like to rise above the barnyard, above the fence posts and the hayfields, up into the violet sky where the strange lights had vanished.

He had never told anyone about that dream. Not even Bobutė. It lived in the quiet space behind his ribs, tucked between his curiosity and his caution.

But what if the balloons aren't just for floating, he wondered, but for... something else?

The first stars blinked open above the eastern hill. Somewhere beyond it, something waited.

Mikutis jumped down from the wall and began walking toward the pasture gate, his green eyes bright in the darkness.

He had a mystery to solve.