At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories

by Kij Johnson

  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.

  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 c
ould 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.