by Andre Norton
Rising, she heard a crackle from her pocket. She had forgotten the papercut. She took it out, crouched back down and carefully smoothed it out on her knee. A tear fell on it. Carefully, she wiped that away, too. It didn’t look that funny in the moonlight, she thought with a sigh. The white of the paper almost seemed to glow.
Standing up, she carried it forward and hung it over the door to the family quarters before she crept inside. Perhaps it would give her just a small bit of courage, enough to let her sleep in a quiet so lonely she could hear the stars.
That night, as the odors of jasmine and eucalyptus, bamboo groves and fish mingled with the smells from tens of thousands of braziers, and wafted onto the ship, Ling Mei woke to the feel of a footstep on the deck. She sat upright, her sudden movement rustling the straw in the sack she slept on.
She listened.
Whatever movement the foot had started was now lost in the ripples of the harbor. Ling Mei sat, barely breathing, and waited.
A soft pad, pad, pad started toward her. Ling Mei could feel her heart hammer a matching rhythm at the front of her chest.
A small form cast its shadow on the door matting. Ling Mei gave a choking laugh as she recognized what it was. A cat.
It poked its head under the edge of the matting and peered in at her.
“You silly cat!” Ling Mei said, too loud in her relief. “You’re lucky my honored mother isn’t here, or she’d throw you into the harbor. Good only for rats and stealing food from babies, she says. Get off, now. Shoo!”
Ling Mei whooshed her hands forward like small brooms.
The cat did not scurry away. It just stared at her, calm and silent.
Ling Mei got up and darted toward the cat, shooing more vigorously.
The cat did not budge. It… just stared, its eyes huge, as huge and mysterious as the moon.
Suddenly, it was Ling Mei who was frightened. Those eyes… they seemed to glow. And the cat was big, bigger than any scrawny pier cat she’d ever seen, almost… half a tiger.
Ling Mei sat down with a thump on oldest sister’s mat, her frightened breath whooshing out of her. The cat just lowered its gaze, and stared at her eye to eye.
His eyes did not glow green, or yellow, or night-red, like a normal cat’s. Their eerie shine was blue, with flecks of gold.
Ling Mei felt the small hairs on her arms lift, and her scalp tingle. This was no ordinary cat. Her eyes crept up to where she had hung the papercut cat on the other side of the door matting. They crept back down to the real cat. Perhaps…
With a masterful shrug, the cat pushed the matting aside, strode the rest of the way into the sleeping chamber and turned, looking back over its shoulder at Ling Mei. It meowed sharply, once.
Ling Mei got up. The cat walked out and strode toward the side of the junk nearest the dock. The tip of its tail glowed white in the moonlight. The rest of its body was a silvery gray. Poised on the edge of the junk, it looked back at her once more, its shining blue eyes commanding.
Ling Mei followed.
The cat led her on a twisting path through the streets, treading sure-footed between sleeping chickens and restless dogs, through circles of men engrossed in their play of liu-po, and the money that was changing hands. The cat’s passage disturbed no one, although eyes blinked at Ling Mei and disparaging comments about her ancestors were muttered. Ling Mei wondered if perhaps she was dreaming, but the ground was hard beneath her feet, with none of the give and sway of her beloved home, and the night air was cool on her skin. She shivered. The glowing tip of the cat’s tail beckoned her on.
The cat led her for many li. Ling Mei’s legs started to ache. She was not used to so much walking. The narrow breadth and cluttered length of a junk had been her home since birth. She had never set foot off it until she was five, and since then, the most she’d walked had been back and forth to the markets of the various towns on the river. Still, the silvery sheen of the cat no one but she noticed drew her on.
The cat turned another corner and wove its way down a twisty street so narrow the flapping laundry overhead nearly blocked the stars. As Ling Mei ducked beneath a pannier of chicken feathers, she thought she could hear shouting up ahead.
It was too far away to know for sure, or to make out any words. The cat led her on, down through more twists of the street. Ling Mei widened her nose, wrapped it around a familiar, comforting scent. Water.
The noise was clearly voices now.
The cat melted close to the side of a building. Ling Mei did likewise. Softly the cat padded forward, then stopped, near a corner. Ling Mei peered around it.
The side street and docks before her were filled with the figures of men, running, jostling each other, carrying huge bundles bound with hemp, then running back for more. Before her, bright from the light of a hundred torches, lay the Imperial Ship. On either side of it was docked an entire fleet of fast, sleek junks: the boats of every Sung noble who had managed to flee to Canton.
They were being provisioned: loaded with food, clothing and luxuries. Chang Shih-chieh, defender of the Sung dynasty, and protector of the emperor’s brother and heir, was preparing to flee Canton. The rumor must have been right; the Mongols are at the gates, thought Ling Mei.
She felt something brush against her leg. The cat was moving again, backward. Yes! thought Ling Mei. Let’s get away from any soldiers and servants to nobles and find our way back home! Quickly she followed it back up the twisting, narrow path.
But the cat turned again, and plunged down a path that led them right back toward the docks again, toward the nobles, toward the soldiers who would have scant mercy for a peasant girl watching what they did on this moonlit night. A peasant girl whose family had already been taken for supposedly aiding the enemy.
Ling Mei stopped.
The cat turned, stared at her with glowing eyes. The tips of its silvery hairs caught the moonlight in a way that made its outline glow against the dark of the building behind it. The way it was standing, its outline exactly matched the silhouette cut into paper that Ling Mei had hung on her family’s junk. The outline of a small tiger, a large cat. Courage.
Reluctantly, Ling Mei put one foot in front of another again, and followed the cat toward the sound, toward the lights, toward the soldiers. Her hands were shaking, but her heart felt full. The two, cat and girl, crept almost to the feet of the sweating workers.
Why was she doing this? Ling Mei wondered.
The cat turned, slipped behind a building. Gratefully, Ling Mei followed it into the darkness. But her relief was short-lived. A few steps beyond, a wall blocked their path. Ling Mei cast a look back toward the light and danger they’d just left. She didn’t want to go back, but there was no way past the wall, and it was too high to climb.
When she looked forward again, the cat was walking through the wall. Through until only the glowing tip of its tail was visible. Then that, too, vanished. Ling Mei stared at the spot where it had disappeared.
A sharp meow commanded her from the other side of the wall. Ling Mei slithered back a step. She stopped again, stared in dismay at the wall.
The meow commanded again. Soldiers behind her and a wall in front. Courage can make luck, the voice whispered in her memory.
Ling Mei crouched down and stretched her hand forward, slowly, toward the spot where the cat had gone through. Instead of stopping at the edge of the wall, her hand slid into it.
Ling Mei snatched her hand back. Her feet ran backward, crabwise, and she fought to keep her balance. Just as she was about to turn and flee, the face of the cat shimmered, a living picture on the wall. The eyes stared at her, commanded her.
Reluctantly, Ling Mei slid her feet forward. The cat still stared. Ling Mei thought she could see its tail now, swishing, dim though the darkness of the wall. She shut her eyes, thought courage, and plunged in… to… it… The wall felt like breath crushed out of her, like grit carried on the bosom of a typhoon, like the scrape of a thousand barnacles.
She was thr
ough.
The cat meowed its pleasure, an astonishingly normal meow, and rubbed its silvery fur against her legs. Then, all business again, it trotted forward.
The next wall was easier.
The third wall took her inside a building. A red-shaded lantern glowed, dimly lighting the darkness. Crouched in the corner of the small room were her grandmother, her honored parents, oldest brother and oldest sister… her whole family! With a cry, Ling Mei ran toward them.
“Hush,” the cat seemed to sigh, its breath soughing through the entire room.
With tiny gasps and whispers, Ling Mei hugged each one of the family.
“Where did you come from?”
“You’ve been arrested, too?”
Ling Mei tried to answer.
“Quickly, quickly!” the cat meowed.
“Yes, yes,” Ling Mei answered, turning to face its silveriness.
“Who are you talking to, third daughter?” her mother asked.
“The cat, honored mother,” Ling Mei replied.
“Cat? What cat?”
Her mother stared right at the spot where the silvery tail with the white-glow-end swished, back and forth, back and forth.
“Never mind,” Ling Mei whispered. “Just come. Quickly, quickly.”
As her family shuffled to their feet, Ling Mei heard the tramp of men approaching the door to the room.
“Soldiers!” whispered second oldest brother.
“Quickly!” Ling Mei gasped. She herded her family toward the wall. The cat walked ahead, disappearing through it. Second oldest brother gasped, and Ling Mei knew he had seen it. “Follow, follow!” she said. She grabbed grandmother’s arm and shoved her after second oldest brother. Father and oldest brother snatched up two of the younger children and plunged into the wall. Hurriedly, Ling Mei picked up youngest brother, thrust him into her mother’s arms, and pushed both through the wall. She was still herding her three sisters and two other brothers through, when soldiers burst into the room.
“Ai-yi!” the soldiers cried, and raced forward.
With a gasp, Ling Mei threw her arms around all the brothers and sisters she could reach, and they tumbled through the wall together, tripping over each other, landing in a heap on the packed dirt outside.
An arm started to come through the wall after them, a soldier’s arm. The cat’s tail swished, once. The night was pierced by a bloodcurdling scream, and the arm stopped, frozen in the hard, stone wall.
Shuddering, Ling Mei scrambled to her feet, and pulled oldest sister up with her. She was too rude for her sister’s liking.
“No time!” Ling Mei whispered softly back at her, while she pulled fourth younger brother to his feet and urged him forward. Second oldest brother was already leading the rest of her family down the path, following the cat. Ling Mei counted noses in the moonlight, and breathed a sigh of relief. None of them had been left with the soldiers.
A thud vibrated the wall of the building beside them. They are trying to break down the wall! thought Ling Mei. She hushed fourth younger sister’s tears, and scurried down the path.
The thuds against the wall ceased, and Ling Mei knew the soldiers had stopped trying to go through the wall. They would come after them in the streets. She trotted forward, urging her brothers and sisters faster, faster still.
With a deep breath, honored grandmother, second oldest brother and then mother carrying youngest brother plunged through the second wall. The rest of the family followed. Ling Mei could hear shouts on the streets. She knew the last wall would bring them out practically on top of the soldiers and the men loading the ships.
“No!” she hissed to second oldest brother. “We can’t go that way,” she apologized to the cat.
“Luck,” it wished, seeming to smile, then vanished.
“No! Come back!” she half-whispered, half-cried. But there was no swish of tail or glow of eyes. With a gulp, Ling Mei realized the cat had helped them all it would. Now the yoke rested on Ling Mei’s shoulders. Could she find her way back to their junk, through all the twisting streets, especially if she didn’t use the ones the cat had led her down, the ones that would lead them too close to the searching soldiers not once, but twice? “Courage,” she whimpered to herself, and plunged uphill, sideways to the last wall. Her family eddied, then hurried after her.
Ling Mei tried to remember what twists and turns the cat had led her through, so she could angle her way back through the city to bring them to their section of the harbor. At first they could hear the shouts and see the glimmer from the torches of the soldiers searching for them. Gradually, that was left behind.
“Third daughter, this makes no sense, her mother hissed. “The soldiers will just come to our junk, and arrest us again.”
“I don’t think you have to worry, honored mother,” Ling Mei whispered back. “The protectors of the Son of Heaven are busy fleeing the Mongols. They will not have too much time to waste, chasing after one small family of peasants.”
“Ah-yii, the barbarians,” her honored grandmother moaned.
“Yes, honored grandmother,” Ling Mei replied respectfully, but urged her on. Eventually the welcome scent of water and fish drew her, and gratefully they made their way down to a less exalted part of the harbor.
“I know where we are, now,” second oldest brother whispered. “This is where you sent me once to buy hemp, honored father.” He motioned. “Follow me.”
Relieved that she no longer had to guess her way through streets she’d never seen before, Ling Mei stepped back to let him lead. Soon they were in sight of their family’s junk. All was quiet. No soldiers, no torches: only the soft lap of the waters and the scrape of one junk against another.
“Is it safe, do you suppose?” Ling Mei asked second oldest brother. He shrugged.
Their honored father drew them down into the shadows of the buildings that lined the harbor. They nestled there until the sky blossomed into pale gray. Then, with still no appearance of the soldiers, they crept down the swaying dock, and boarded.
“What’s this?” asked Ling Mei’s mother, fingering the papercut of the cat hanging over their door to the sleeping quarters.
“That’s my luck,” Ling Mei replied.
Her honored mother took her hand away from it, and did not protest its presence. Luck was very important, even if it came in a distasteful shape. The family settled back onto their boat, murmuring with the comfort of being back on their home again.
Grandmother Guo’s head popped up on the deck of their junk and peered over at the Ling family. Her black eyes opened so far they grew round. Muttering, she dived back down under the matting again.
Ling Mei giggled, hiding her mouth behind her hand.
As the pearly sky brightened into the colors of full dawn, the waters of the harbor swished with the sound of prows cutting through the waves, and Ling Mei and her family watched as the Imperial fleet sailed out of the harbor. Honored grandmother wept in fear of the Mongols, but Ling Mei and her parents just watched carefully. What did it matter to peasants who ruled, as long as you brought no notice down upon yourselves?
With the dawn, a breeze sprang up and flapped the rust red sails of the junk.
“Oh, no!” Ling Mei cried, as her papercut tore loose and flew over the side of the junk. “My luck!” She ran over and peered down into the narrow strip of water that appeared and disappeared between the junks with every wave. But she could see no sign of the little papercut cat. “My luck,” she moaned.
The breeze, as usual, brought with it dust from the city. Ling Mei’s mother handed her a reed brush. With a sigh, Ling Mei bid the last wisps of her role as savior and leader good-bye, and settled back into her position of third daughter. She swept the deck.
Later that afternoon, while honored father and oldest brother were still discussing whether they should head up the river or stay put in the harbor awhile, as the fishing families had decided, a small, skinny kitten wandered down the dock toward their boat. Its meow was pi
tiful and its paws stumbled with the sway of the dock. It looked up at Ling Mei. Its small mouth opened, and the pinkness within was as delicate and needy as a baby’s.
“Oh!” Ling Mei cried, and clambered over the side of the boat. She dropped down and cradled the kitten.
“Third daughter! What are you thinking of! Put down that scrawny beggar at once. Good for rats and stealing food from a baby, that’s all. I won’t have one of those on my junk!” exclaimed her mother.
But Ling Mei had noticed its eyes were a pale blue.
“It’s payment, honored mother,” Ling Mei said respectfully, but more firmly than she ever would have dared before. “All of this most wonderful family would have been lost, and I would have been a beggar, without family and outcast, had the magic cat not led me to where the soldiers had taken you. Caring for this beggar, in turn, will bring us luck.”
Her mother’s mouth pursed as it had when she had seen the papercut, but she said, “For luck, I suppose I can spare some scraps. Very well, my third daughter who is not a beggar today. Bring this luck on board.”
Ling Mei tucked the kitten under her arm and climbed back into the junk.
Luck was the first of many cats to ride on the matting of the Ling family’s junk.
Shado by Marylois Dunn
Cat slipped under the castle gate and stood surveying the world outside. Fog softened the meadow shrouding the nearby forest with gray robes. There was no breath of breeze, but the cloud shifted, thickened, thinned, captured and released the objects outside the walls. To Cat’s disgust, it left a thick residue of moisture over everything. Small beads of water even formed on his whiskers, which he wiped away with an impatient swipe of his forepaw. It was a dreadful morning to hunt.
Cat, however, had learned that while his kind generally chose to remain indoors near the warmth of the kitchen fires, the field mice regarded a foggy day as a Mouse Holiday and ran about fearlessly, not expecting depredations from fox, hawk, or cat on such a day. Perfect weather for a fellow who did not mind getting his paws and tail wet.