At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories (29 page)

She found somewhere to sleep each night by following the smell of smoke. She had to be careful, but even the simplest huts had corners and cubbyholes where a small dark cat could sleep in peace—provided no dogs smelled her and sounded the alarm. But there were fewer leftover scraps of food to find. There was no time or energy to play.

The mice had their own paths under the snow. On still days she could hear them creeping through their tunnels, too deep for her to catch, and she had to wait until she came to shallower places under the trees. At least she could find and eat the dormice that hibernated in tight little balls just under the surface of the snow, and the frozen sparrows that dropped from the bushes on the coldest nights.

One night it was very cold. She was looking for somewhere to stay but she hadn’t smelled smoke or heard anything promising.

There was a sudden rush from the snow-heaped bushes beside the road. She tore across the snow and scrambled high into a tree before turning to see what had chased her. It was bigger than the biggest dog she had ever seen, with a thick ruff and flat gold eyes. A wolf! It was a hard winter for wolves, and they were coming down from the mountains and eating whatever they could find.

This wolf glared and then sat on its haunches and tipped its head to one side, looking confused. It gave a puzzled yip. Soon a second wolf appeared from the darkening forest. It was much larger and she knew that the first one was young.

They looked thin and hungry. The two wolves touched noses for a moment and the older one called up, “Come down, little one. We wish to find out what sort of animal you are.”

She shivered. It was bitterly cold this high in the tree but she couldn’t trust them. She looked around for a way to escape. The tree was isolated. There was nowhere to jump to.

“We can wait,” the older wolf said, and settled onto its haunches.

She huddled against the tree’s trunk. The wind shook ice crystals from the branches overhead. If the wolves waited long enough she would freeze to death, or her paws would go numb and she would fall. The sun dipped below the mountains and it grew much colder.

The icy air hurt her throat so she pressed her face against her leg to breathe through her fur. It reminded her of the fire so long ago back in the capital, the fire that had destroyed her garden and her family. Had she come so far just to freeze to death and be eaten by wolves?

The stars were bright in the clear night. The younger wolf was curled up tight in a furry ball, but the old wolf sat looking up, its eyes shining in the darkness. It said, “Come down and be eaten.”

Her fur rose on her neck. She dug her claws deep into the branch. She couldn’t feel her paws anymore.

The wolf growled softly, “I have a pack, a family. This one is my son and he is hungry. Let me feed him. You have no one.”

The wolf was right. She had no one.

It sensed her grief and said, “I understand. Come down. We will make it quick.”

Small Cat shook her head. She would not give up, even if she did die like this. If they were going to eat her, at least there was no reason to make it easy for them. She clung as hard as she could.

Chapter 14

The Bear Hunter

In the distance, a dog barked and a second dog joined the first, their sharp voices carrying through the still air. Small Cat was shivering so hard that her teeth chattered and she couldn’t tell how far they were, down the valley or even miles away.

The wolves pricked their ears. The barking stopped for a moment and then began again, each bark closer. Two dogs hurtled into sight at the bottom of the valley. The wolves vanished into the forest without a sound.

The dogs were still barking as they raced up to the tree. They were a big male and a smaller female, with thick golden fur that covered them from their toes to the tips of their round ears and their high, curling tails. The female ran a few steps after the wolves and returned to sniff the tree. “What’s that smell?”

They peered up at her. She tried to climb higher and loose bark fell into their surprised faces.

“I better get the man,” the female said and ran off, again barking.

The male sat just where the big wolf had sat. “What are you, up there?”

Small Cat ignored him. She didn’t feel so cold now, just very drowsy. She didn’t even notice when she fell from the tree.

Small Cat woke up slowly. She was warm, curled up on something dark and furry, and for a moment she imagined she was home, dozing with her aunts and cousins in the garden, light filtering through the trees to heat her whiskers.

She heard a heavy sigh, a dog’s sigh. This wasn’t the garden! She was somewhere indoors and everything smelled of fur. She leapt to her feet.

She stood on a thick pile of bear hides in a small hut, dark except for the tiny flames in a brazier set into the floor. The two dogs from the forest slept in a pile beside it.

“You’re awake then,” a man said. She hadn’t seen him, for he had wrapped himself in a bear skin. Well, he hadn’t tried to harm her. Wary but reassured, she drank from a bowl on the floor, and cleaned her paws and face. He still watched her.

“What are you? Not a dog or a fox. A
tanuki
?” Tanuki were little red and white striped animals that could climb trees and ate almost anything. The hunter lived a long way from where cats lived, so how would he know better? She mewed. “Out there is no place for a whatever-you-are, at least until spring,” he added. “You’re welcome to stay until then, if the dogs let you.”

The dogs didn’t seem to mind though she kept out of reach at first. She found plenty to do. An entire village of mice lived in the hut, helping themselves to the hunter’s rice and having babies as fast as they could. Small Cat caught so many at first that she didn’t bother eating them all and just left them on the floor for the dogs to crunch up when they came in from outdoors. Within a very few days the man and the dogs accepted her as part of the household, even though the dogs still pestered her to find out what she was.

The man and the dogs were gone a lot. They hunted bears in the forest, dragging them from their caves while they were sluggish from hibernation. The man skinned them and planned to sell their hides when summer came. If they were gone for a day or two the hut got cold for there was no one to keep the charcoal fire burning, but Small Cat didn’t mind. She grew fat on all the mice and her fur got thick and glossy.

The hut stood in a meadow with trees and mountains on either side. A narrow stream cut through the meadow. It moved too fast to freeze, and the only crossing was a single fallen log that shook from the strength of the water rushing beneath it. The forest crowded close to the stream on the other side.

There was plenty to do, trees to climb and birds to catch. Small Cat watched for wolves but daylight wasn’t their time and she was careful to be inside before dusk. She never saw another human.

Each day the sun got brighter and stayed up longer. It wasn’t spring yet but Small Cat could smell it. The snow got heavy and wet, and she heard it slide from the trees in the forest with thumps and crashes. The stream swelled with snowmelt.

The two dogs ran off for a few days. When they came back the female was pregnant. At first she acted restless and cranky and Small Cat kept away, but once her belly started to get round with puppies she calmed down. The hunter started leaving her behind. He would tie her with a rope to the hut; she barked and paced but she didn’t try to pull free, and after a while she didn’t bother to do even that.

Small Cat was used to the way people told stories. The bear hunter had his stories as well, about hunts with the dogs and legends he had learned from the old man who had taught him to hunt so long ago. Everyone had a fudoki. Everyone had their own stories and the stories of their families and ancestors. There were adventures and love stories, or tricks and jokes and funny things that had happened, or disasters.

Everyone wanted to tell their stories and to know where they fit in their own fudoki. She was not that different.

Chapter 15

The Bear

The last bear hunt of the season began on a morning that felt like the first day of spring, with a little breeze full of the smell of growing things. The snow had a dirty crust and it had melted away in places to leave mud and the first tiny green shoots pushing through the dead grass of the year before.

Fat with her puppies, the female lay on a straw mat the bear hunter had laid over the mud for her. The male paced eagerly, his ears pricked and tail high. The man sat on the hut’s stone stoop. He was sharpening the head of a long spear. Small Cat watched him from the doorway.

The man said, “Well, you’ve been lucky for us this year. Just one more good hunt, all right?” He looked along the spear’s sharp edge. “The bears are waking up and we don’t want any angry mothers worried about their cubs, we don’t. We have enough of our own to think about!” He patted the female dog, who woke up and heaved herself to her feet.

He stood. “Ready, boy?” The male barked happily. The bear hunter shouldered a small pack and picked up his throwing and stabbing spears. “Stay out of trouble, girls,” he said.

He and the male filed across the log. The female pulled at her rope but once they vanished into the forest she slumped to the ground again with a heavy sigh. They would not be back until evening or even the next day.

Small Cat had already eaten a mouse and a vole for her breakfast. She prowled the edges of the meadow more for amusement than because she was hungry. She ended up at a large black rock right next to the log across the stream. It was warmed and dried by the sun. She could look down from there into the creamy, racing water. It was a perfect place to spend the middle of the day. She settled down comfortably. The sun on her back was almost hot.

A sudden sense of danger made her muscles tense up. She lifted her head but she saw nothing. The female sensed it too, for she also was sitting up, intently staring toward the forest beyond the stream.

The bear hunter burst from the woods, running as fast as he could. He had lost his spear. The male dog wasn’t with him. Right behind him a giant black shape crashed from the forest—a black bear, bigger than he was! Small Cat could hear them splashing across the mud, and the female behind her barking hysterically.

It happened too fast to be afraid. The hunter bolted across the shaking log just as the bear ran onto the far end. The man slipped as he passed Small Cat and he fell to one side. Small Cat had been too surprised to move, but when he slipped she leapt out of his way sideways—onto the log!

The bear was a heavy black shape hurtling toward her. She could see the little white triangle of fur on its chest. A paw slammed into the log so close that she felt fur touch her whickers. With nowhere else to go, she jumped straight up and for an instant, she stared right into the bear’s red-rimmed eyes.

The bear reared up at Small Cat’s leap. It lost its balance, fell into the swollen stream and was carried away, roaring and thrashing. The bear had been swept nearly out of sight before it managed to pull itself from the water on the opposite bank. Droplets scattered as it shook itself. It swung its head from side to side looking for them, and finally shambled back into the trees far downstream. A moment later, the male dog limped from the trees and across the fallen log to them.

The male whined but sat quiet as the bear hunter cleaned out his foot. He had stepped on a stick and torn the pad. When the hunter was done, he leaned against the wall, the dogs and Small Cat tucked close.

They had found a bear sooner than expected, he told them: a female with her cub just a short walk into the forest. She saw them and attacked immediately. He used his throwing spears but they didn’t stick, and she broke his stabbing spear with a single blow of her big paw. The male dog slammed into her from the side, giving him time to run for the hut, where there was a rack of spears on the wall beside the door.

“I knew I wouldn’t make it,” the hunter said. His hand still shook a little when he finally took off his pack. “But at least I wasn’t going to die without trying.”

Small Cat meowed.

“Exactly,” the hunter said. “You don’t give up, ever.”

Chapter 16

The North

Small Cat left not so many days after the bear attacked. She pushed under the door flap while the hunter and the dogs dozed beside the fire. She stretched all the way from her toes to the tip of her tail, and she stood tall on the step, looking around.

It was just at sunset, the bright sky dimming to the west. To the east she saw the first bit of the full moon crawling from the trees. Even at dusk the forest looked different now, the bare branches softened with buds. The air smelled fresh with spring growth.

She paced the clearing looking for a sign of the way to the road. She hadn’t been conscious when the bear hunter had brought her. In any case it was a long time ago.

Someone snuffled behind her. The female stood blinking outside the hut. “Where are you?” she asked. “Are you gone already?”

Small Cat walked to her.

“I knew you would leave,” the dog said. “This is my home but you’re like the puppies will be when they’re born. We’re good hunters so the man will be able to trade the puppies for fabric or even spear heads.” She sounded proud. “They will go other places and have their own lives. You’re like that too. But you were very interesting to know, whatever you are.”