M iarr gazed out from the Watching platform on the CattRokk Light - a lighthouse perched on a rock in the middle of the sea, the very top of which resembled the head of a cat, complete with ears and two brilliant beams of light that shone from its eyes. Miarr was on Watch - again. At his insistence, Miarr did every night Watch and many of the day Watches too. He did not trust his co-Watcher any further than he could throw him - and given their huge discrepancy in size, that would not be very far, unless...a small smile flickered over Miarr's delicate mouth as he allowed himself his favorite daydream - heaving Fat Crowe out of one of the Eyes. Now that would be a very long throw indeed. How far down was it to the rocks below? Miarr knew the answer well enough - three hundred and forty-three feet exactly.
Miarr shook his head to clear it of such beguiling thoughts. Fat Crowe would never even make it up to the Light - there was no way he could squeeze through the tiny opening at the top of the pole that led from the Watching platform to the Arena of Light. Thin Crowe, on the other hand, would have no trouble. Miarr shivered at the thought of Thin Crowe squeezing up to his precious Light like a weasel. Given the choice between the Crowe twins - not a choice he ever wanted to make - he would choose the fat one any day. The thin one was vicious.
Miarr pulled his close-fitting sealskin hat down so that it covered his ears and wrapped his cloak tightly around him. It was cold at the top of the lighthouse, and the storm made him shiver. He pressed his small, flat nose to the glass and stared out into the storm, his big, round eyes wide open and his keen night sight piercing the dark. The wind screamed and the rain whipped against the thick green glass of the Watching platform windows. The two beams of Light picked out the undersides of the black storm clouds, which formed a continuous blanket so low that Miarr was sure the Ears of the lighthouse must be touching them. A silent sheet of lightning passed through the clouds, and the hairs on the back of Miarr's neck crackled with electricity. A burst of hail spattered against the glass, and he jumped in surprise. It was the wildest storm he had seen in a long time; he pitied anyone out there tonight.
Miarr prowled lightly around the Watching platform, checking the horizon. On a night like this it would be all too easy for a ship to be swept too close to the lighthouse and the danger zone. And if that happened he would have to get down to the rescue boat and try to guide the ship to safety - no easy task on a night like this. From the tiny sleeping cabin far below, loud catarrhal snores from Fat Crowe echoed through the cavernous stairwell of the lighthouse. Miarr sighed heavily. He knew he needed a helper, but why the Port Harbor Master had sent him the Crowe twins he had no idea. Ever since his fellow Watcher, his cousin, Mirano - the very last member of his family left, apart from him - had disappeared the night of the first visit of the new supply boat, Marauder, Miarr had been forced to share his lighthouse with what he had at the time considered to be creatures little better than apes. Since the Crowes' arrival Miarr had - out of respect to apes - revised that opinion. He now thought of them as little better than slugs, to which both Fat and Thin Crowe bore a remarkable resemblance. So now, in the depths of the lighthouse in what had once been his and Mirano's cozy little sleeping cabin, Miarr knew that Fat Crowe was occupying what had once been his comfortable goose-down bunk. Miarr, who had not slept properly since Mirano's disappearance, growled unhappily. Like all Watchers he and Mirano had taken turns to sleep in the same bed, spending only a few hours each day together when they sat on the Watching platform eating their evening meal of fish before the Change of Watch. Now Miarr slept - or tried to - on a pile of sacks in a chamber at the foot of the lighthouse. He always barred the door, but the knowledge that a Crowe was loose in his beautiful lighthouse meant he could never relax.
Miarr shook himself to get rid of his miserable thoughts - it was no good brooding about the good old days when CattRokk Light was one of four Living Lights and Miarr had more cousins, brothers and sisters than he had fingers and toes to count them on. It was no good thinking about Mirano - he was gone forever. Miarr was not as stupid as the Crowes thought he was; he did not believe their story that Mirano had been sick of his company and had sneaked away on their boat for the bright lights of the Port. Miarr knew that his cousin was, as Watchers used to say, swimming with the fishes. Miarr crouched beside the thick, curved window, staring into the dark. Far below he saw the waves building, growing too high for their own strength and then breaking with a thunderous crash, sending great showers of spume high into the air, some even splattering the Watching glass. Miarr knew that the foot of the lighthouse was now under water - he could tell by the deep shudders and thuds that had begun reverberating up through the granite blocks below, thuds that traveled all the way up through the pads of his felt-booted feet to the tip of his sealskin-clad head. But at least they drowned out the snores of Fat Crowe, and the shrieks of the wind carried away all Miarr's thoughts of his lost cousin.