As They Rode Along the Edge
(inicio de la historia, con glosario)

Title of the book: THE SEVENTH HORSE Title of the story: As They Rode Along the Edge Publisher: Virago, Virago Modern Classics No. 326 More on Leonora...

As they rode along the edge, the brambles drew back their thorns like cats retracting their claws.

This was something to see: fifty black cats and as many yellow ones, and then her, and one couldn't really be altogether sure that she was a human being. Her smell alone threw doubt on it--a mixture of spices and game, the stables, fur and grasses.

Riding a wheel, she took the worst roads, between precipices, across trees. Someone who's never travelled on a wheel would think it difficult, but she was used to it.

Her name was Virginia Fur, she had a mane of hair yards long and enormous hands with dirty nails, yet the citizens of the mountain respected her and she too always showed a deference for their customs. True, the people up there were plants, animals, birds; otherwise things wouldn't have been the same. Of course, she had to put up with being insulted by the cats at times, but she insulted them back just as loudly and in the same language. She, Virginia Fur, lived in a village long abandoned by human beings. Her house had holes all over, holes she'd pierced for the fig tree that grew in the kitchen.

Apart from the garage for the wheel, all the rooms were occupied by cats; there were fourteen in all.

Every night she went out on her wheel to hunt; whatever their respect, the mountain beasts didn't let themselves be killed as easily as all that, so several days per week she was forced to live on lost sheepdog, and occasionally mutton or child, though this last was rare since no one ever came there.

It was one night in autumn when she found to her surprise that she was being followed by footsteps heavier than those of an animal; the footsteps came rapidly.

The sickening smell of a human entered her nostrils; she pushed her wheel as hard as she could, to no avail. She stopped when her pursuer was beside her.

"I am Saint Alexander," he said. "Get down, Virginia Fur, I want to talk to you."

brambles	zarzas
drew back	draw - drew - drawn: tirar como de un cajón -- de ahí, "drawer" para "cajón". Draw back: tirar para atrás. "Draw" es también "dibujar", sí.
thorns	espinas
claws	uñas (de animal); de persona, "nails"
game	caza. "Game" es también "juego" y "to play" es su verbo.
fur	pelo, piel (de animal); de persona, "hair", "skin".
mane of hair	melena
live on	vivir de, sobrevivir con, alimentarse de.
rare	"raro", en el sentido de "escaso", "poco común", "extraño"
to no avail	en vano
pursuer	perseguidor; to pursue: perseguir (lenguaje culto)