The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-Volume Four (94 page)

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 the 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.

It was much less pleasant to travel alone and 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 stroked 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.

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 easily find and eat the dormice that hibernated in tight little balls in 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 realized 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, but the tree was isolated.

"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. She had come so far, just to freeze to death or be eaten by wolves?

The first 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, and she dug her claws deep into the branch. She couldn't feel her paws any more.

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, trying not to let go.

A dog barked and a second dog joined the first, their deep 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: in the next valley or miles away.

The wolves pricked their ears and stood. 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 turned and 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 felt 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, and with a start she realized 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 meowed. "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 for the first few days. She found plenty to do. An entire village of mice lived in the hut, helping themselves to the hunter's buckwheat 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 would 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, too fast to freeze. The only crossing was a single fallen log that shook from the strength of the water 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, and 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, tied to a rope so she wouldn't follow. She barked and paced, but she didn't try to pull free, and after a while she didn't even bother to do that.

Small Cat was used to the way people told stories, and the bear hunter had his stories as well, about hunts with the dogs, and myths he had learned from the old man who had taught him to hunt, so long ago. Everyone had a fudoki, Small Cat knew now. 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.

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

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 put down over the mud for her. The male paced eagerly, his ears pricked and tail high. The bear hunter 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 have enough of our own to worry 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. Now she prowled the edges of the meadow, more for amusement than because she was hungry, and ended up at a large black rock next to the log across the stream. It was warmed and dried by the sun, and close enough to look down into the creamy, racing water: 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. She saw nothing, but the female sensed it too, for she 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, and 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. For an instant, she stared 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, then 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 slammed into her from the side, giving him time to run for the hut and the 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 as 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."

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 out of 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.