At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories (28 page)

There was a village at the bottom of the hill they were descending. The Tokaido led through a double handful of buildings scattered along the shore of a storm-tossed lake, but it ended at the water’s edge. The opposite shore—if there was one!—was hidden by snow and the gathering dusk. Now what? She mewed.

“Worried, little one?” the monk said over his shoulder. “You’ll get there! Just be patient.”

One big house rented rooms as though it were an inn. When the monk called outside its door, a small woman with short black hair emerged and bowed many times. “Come in, come in! Get out of the weather.” The monk took off his straw sandals and put down his basket with a sigh of relief. Small Cat leapt down and stretched.

The innkeeper screeched and snatched up a hoe to jab at Small Cat, who leapt behind the basket.

“Wait!” The monk put his hands out. “She’s traveling with me.”

The innkeeper lowered the hoe a bit. “Well, she’s small at least. What is she then?”

The monk looked at Small Cat. “I’m not sure. She was on a pilgrimage when I found her on Fujisan.”

“Hmm,” the woman said, but she put down the hoe. “Well, if she’s with you …”

The wind drove through every crack and gap in the house, so that everyone gathered around a big brazier set into the floor of the centermost room, surrounded by screens and shutters to keep out the cold. Besides the monk and Small Cat and the members of the household, there were two farmers—a young husband and wife—on their way north.

“Well, you’re here for a while,” the innkeeper said as she poured hot broth for everyone. “The ferry won’t run for a day or two, until the storm’s over.”

Small Cat stretched out so close to the hot coals that her whiskers sizzled, but she was the only one who was warm enough. Everyone else huddled inside the screens. They drank tea, wrapping their hands around their cups to warm their fingers; and they ate rice and barley and dried fish cooked in pots that hung over the brazier

She hunted for her own meals. The mice had gnawed a secret hole into a barrel of rice flour, so there were a lot of them. Whenever she killed one she brought it back to the brazier’s warmth where she could listen to the people.

There was not much for them to do but talk and sing, so they talked and sang a lot. They shared fairy tales and ghost stories. They told funny stories about themselves or the people they knew. People had their own fudoki, Small Cat realized, though there seemed to be no order to the stories and she didn’t see yet how they made a place home. They sang love songs and songs about foolish adventurers. Songs were stories, as well.

At first the servants in the house kicked at Small Cat whenever she was close, but the monk stopped them.

“But she’s a demon!” the young wife said.

“If she is,” the monk said, “she means no harm. She has her own destiny. She deserves to be left in peace to fulfill it.”

“What destiny is that?” the innkeeper asked.

“Do you know
your
destiny?” the monk asked. She shook her head and slowly all the others shook theirs as well. The monk said, “Well, then. Why should she know hers?”

The young husband watched her eat her third mouse in as many hours. “Maybe catching mice is her destiny. Does she always do that? Catch mice?”

“Anything small,” the monk said, “but mice are her favorite.”

“That would be a useful animal for a farmer,” the husband said. “Would you sell her?”

The monk frowned. “No one owns her. It’s her choice where she goes.”

The wife scratched at the floor, trying to coax Small Cat into playing. “Maybe she would come with us! She’s so pretty.” Small Cat batted at her fingers for a while before she curled up beside the brazier again. But the husband looked at Small Cat thoughtfully.

Chapter 11

The Abduction

It was two days before the snowstorm stopped, and another day before the weather cleared enough for them to leave. Small Cat hopped onto the monk’s straw basket and they left the inn, blinking in the daylight after so many days lit only by dim lamps and the brazier.

Sparkling new snow hid everything and made it strange and beautiful. Waves rippled the lake, though the frothing whitecaps whipped up by the storm were gone. The Tokaido, now no more than a broad flat place in the snow, ended at a dock on the lake. A big man wearing a brown padded jacket and leggings made of fur took boxes from a boat tied up there. Two other men carried them into a covered shelter close by.

The Tokaido only went south from here, back the way she had come. A smaller road, still buried under the snow, followed the shoreline to the east and west but she couldn’t see where the lake ended. The road might go on forever and
never
turn north! Small Cat mewed anxiously.

The monk turned his head a little. “Still eager to travel?” He pointed to the opposite shore. “They tell me the road starts again on the other side. The boat’s how we can get there.”

Small Cat growled.

The farmers tramped down to the boat with their packs and four shaggy goats that were tugging and bleating and cursing as goats do. The boatman accepted their fare, counted out in old-fashioned coins. He offered to take the monk for free. He frowned at Small Cat and said, “That thing too, whatever it is.”

The boat was the most horrible thing that had ever happened to Small Cat, worse than the earthquake, worse than the fire. It heaved and rocked, tipping this way and that. She crouched on top of a bundle with her claws sunk deep, drooling with nausea and meowing with panic. Equally unhappy, the goats jostled against one another.

She would run if she could, but there was nowhere to go. They were surrounded by water in every direction and too far from the shore to swim. The monk offered to hold her but she hissed and tried to scratch him. She kept her eyes fixed on the hills to the north.

The moment the boat bumped against the dock, she streaked ashore and crawled as far into a little roadside shrine as she could get.

“Sir!” A boy stood by the dock, hopping from foot to foot. He bobbed a bow at the monk. “My mother isn’t well. I saw you coming and was so happy! Could you please come see her and pray for her?” The monk bowed in return and the boy ran down the lane.

The monk knelt beside Small Cat’s hiding place. “Do you want to come with me?” he asked. She stayed where she was, trembling. He looked a little sad. “All right, then.”

“Oh sir, please hurry!” the boy shouted from down the lane.

The monk stood. “Be clever and brave, little one. And careful!” And he trotted after the boy.

From her hiding place, Small Cat watched the husband and the boatman wrestle the goats to shore. The wife walked to the roadside shrine and squatted in front of it, peering in.

“I saw you hide,” she said. “Were you frightened on the boat? I was. I have rice balls with meat. Would you like one?” She bowed to the kami of the shrine and pulled a packet from her bundle. She laid a bit of food in front of the shrine and bowed again. “There. Now some for you.”

Small Cat inched forward. She felt better now and it did smell nice.

“What did you find?” The farmer crouched behind his wife.

“The little demon,” she said. “See?”

“Lost the monk, did you? Hmm.” The farmer looked up and down the lane before he pulled an empty sack from his bundle. He bowed to the kami, reached in, and grabbed Small Cat by the scruff of her neck.

Nothing like this had ever happened to her! She yowled and scratched but the farmer kept his grip and managed to stuff her into the sack. He lifted it to his shoulder and started walking.

She swung and bumped for a long time.

Chapter 12

The Farmhouse

Small Cat gave up fighting after a while, for she was squeezed too tightly in the sack to do anything beyond make herself even more uncomfortable. It was cold in the sack. Light filtered in through the coarse weave, but she could see nothing. She could smell nothing but onions and goats. She meowed until she was hoarse.

Night fell before the jostling ended and she was carried indoors. Someone laid the sack on a flat surface and opened it. It was the farmer. Small Cat clawed him hard, as she emerged. She was in a small room with a brazier. With a quick glance she saw a hiding place and she stuffed herself into a corner where the roof and wall met.

The young husband and wife and two alarmed farmhands stood looking up at her, all wide eyes and opened mouths.

The husband sucked at the scratch marks on his hand. “She’s not dangerous,” he said, a little doubtfully. “I think she is a demon for mice, not for us. Well, except for this.”

Small Cat stayed in her high place for two days. The wife put scraps of chicken skin and water on top of a huge trunk, but the people mostly ignored her. Though they didn’t know it, this was the perfect way to treat a frightened cat in an unfamiliar place. Small Cat watched the activity of the farmhouse at first with suspicion and then with growing curiosity. At night, after everyone slept, she saw the mice sneak from their holes and her mouth watered.

By the third night her thirst overcame her nervousness. She slipped down to drink. She heard mice in another room and quickly caught two. She had just caught her third when she heard the husband rise.

“Demon?” he said softly. He came into the room. She backed into a corner with her mouse in her mouth. “There you are. I’m glad you caught your dinner.” He chuckled. “We have plenty more just like that. I hope you stay.”

Small Cat did stay though it was not home. She had never expected to travel with the monk forever but she missed him anyway: sharing the food in his bowl, sleeping on his basket as they hiked along. She missed his warm hand when he stroked her.

Still, this was a good place to be, with many mice to eat and only a small yellow dog to fight her for them. No one threw things or cursed her. The people still thought she was a demon but she was
their
demon now, as important a member of the household as the farmhands or the dog. And the farmhouse was large enough that she could get away from everyone when she wished.

In any case she didn’t know how to get back to the road. The path had vanished with the snowfall, so she had nowhere to go but the wintry fields and the forest.

Though she wouldn’t let the farmer touch her, she liked to follow him and watch as he tended the ox and goats or went to kill a goose for dinner. The husband talked to her just as the monk had, as though she understood him. Instead of the Buddha’s life, he told her what he was doing when he repaired harness or set tines in a new rake, or he talked about his brothers who lived not so very far away.

Small Cat liked the wife better than the husband.
She
wasn’t the one who had thrown Small Cat into a bag. She gave Small Cat bits of whatever she cooked. Sometimes, when she had a moment, she tossed a goose feather or a small knotted rag for her, but it was a working household and there were not many moments like that.

Busy as the wife’s hands might be, her mind and her voice were free. She talked about the baby she was hoping to have and her plans for the gardens as soon as the soil softened with springtime. When she didn’t talk, she sang in a voice as soft and pretty as a dove’s. One of her favorite songs was about Fujisan. This puzzled Small Cat. Why would anyone tell stories of a place so far away? With a shock, she realized her stories were about a place even more distant.

Small Cat started reciting her fudoki again, putting the stories back in their proper order: The Cat Who Ate Dirt, The Earless Cat, The Cat Under The Pavement. Even if there were no other cats to share it with,
she
was still here. For the first time, she realized that The Cat From The North might not have come from very far north at all. There hadn’t been any monks or boats or giant mountains in The Cat From The North’s story, just goats and dogs. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed likely that she’d spent all this time looking for something she left behind before she even left the capital.

The monk had told her that courage and persistence would bring her what she wanted, but was this it? The farm was a good place to be: safe, full of food. But North went on so much farther than The Cat From The North had imagined. If Small Cat could not return to the capital, she might as well find out where North really ended.

A few days later, a man hiked up the snow-covered path. It was one of the husband’s brothers come with news about their mother. Small Cat waited until everyone was inside and then trotted briskly down the way he had come.

Chapter 13

The Wolves

It was much less pleasant to travel alone in the coldest part of winter. The monk would have carried her or kicked the snow away so that she could walk more easily; they would have shared food; he would have found warm places to stay and talked the people they met into not hurting her. He would have spoken to her and tickled her ears when she wished.

Without him, the snow came to her shoulders. She had to stay on the road itself, which was slippery with packed ice and had deep slushy ruts that froze into slick flat ponds. Small Cat learned how to hop without being noticed onto the huge bundles of hay that oxen sometimes carried on their backs.