The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-Volume Four

by Jonathan Strahan

  The stranger spun around. "Stop following me!" she said through a mouthful of mouse. Small Cat sat down instantly and looked off into the distance, as if she just happened to be traveling the same direction. The stranger glared and stalked off. Small Cat jumped up and followed. Every few steps the stranger whirled, and Small Cat pretended not to be there; but after a while, the stranger gave up and trotted to a tall bamboo fence, her tail bristling with annoyance. With a final hiss, she squeezed under the fence. Small Cat waited a moment before following.

  She was behind a tavern, in a small yard filled with barrels. And cats! There were six of them that she could see, and she knew others would be in their private ranges, prowling or sleeping. She meowed with excitement. She could teach them her fudoki and they would become her family. She would have a home again.

  Cats don't like new things much. The strangers all stared at her, every ear flattened, every tail bushy. "I don't know why she followed me," the striped cat said sullenly. "Go away!" The others hissed agreement: "No one wants you."

  Small Cat backed out under the bamboo fence, but she didn't leave. Every day she came to the tavern yard. At first the strange cats drove her off with scratches and hisses, but she always returned to try again, and each time she got closer before they attacked her. After a while they ignored her and she came closer still.

  One day the strange cats gathered beneath a little roof attached to the back of the tavern. It was raining, so when Small Cat jumped onto a stack of barrels under the roof, no one seemed to think it was worthwhile chasing her away.

  The oldest cat, a female with black fur growing thin, was teaching the kittens their fudoki. The stories were told in the correct way: The Cat Inside The Lute, The Cat Born With One Eye, The Cat Who Bargained With A Flea. But these strangers didn't know the right cats: The Cat From The North, or The Cat Who Chased Foxes, or any of the others. Small Cat jumped down, wanting to share.

  The oldest cat looked sidelong at her. "Are you ready to learn our stories?"

  Small Cat felt as though she'd been kicked. Her fudoki would never belong here! These strangers had their own stories, for different aunts and ancestors and for a different place. If she stayed, she would no longer be a garden cat, but a cat in the tavern yard's stories, The Cat After The Fire or The Burnt-Paw Cat. If she had kittens, they would learn about the aunts and ancestors of the tavern-yard cats. There would be no room for her own.

  She arched and backed away, tail shivering, teeth bared, and when she was far enough from the terrible stories, she turned and ran.

  Chapter 6

  The Rajo Gate

  Small Cat came to the Rajo Gate at sunset. Rain fell on her back, so light that it didn't soak through but just slid from her fur in drops. She inspected the weeds beside the street as she walked: she had eaten three mice for dinner but a fourth would make a nice snack.

  She looked up and saw a vast dark building looming ahead, a hundred feet wide and taller than the tallest tree she had ever seen, made of wood that had turned black with age. There were actually three gates in Rajo Gate. The smallest one was fifteen feet high and wide enough for ox-carts, and it was the only one still open.

  A guard stood by the door, holding a corner of a cape over his head against the rain. "Gate closes at sunset," he shouted. "No one wants to be wet all night. Hurry it up!" People crowded through. A man carrying geese tied together by their feet narrowly missed a fat woman carrying a bundle of blue fabric and dragging a goat on a rope.

  The guard bent down. "What about you, miss?" Small Cat pulled back. Usually no one noticed her, but he was talking to her, smiling and wiggling his fingers. Should she bite him? Run? Smell his hand? She leaned forward, trembling but curious.

  Through the gate behind him she saw a wide, busy road half-hidden by the rain. The guard pointed. "That's the Tokaido," he said, as if she had asked a question. "The Great North Road. It starts right here, and it goes all the way to the end of Japan." He shrugged. "Maybe farther. Who knows?"

  North! She had never thought about it before this, but The Cat From The North must have come from somewhere, before she became part of Small Cat's fudoki. And if she came from somewhere, Small Cat could go there. There would be cats, and they would have to accept her—and they would have to accept a fudoki that included one of their own.

  Unfortunately, The Cat From The North's story didn't say where the North was. Small Cat kneaded the ground, uncertain.

  The guard straightened and shouted, "Last warning!" Looking down, he added in a softer voice, "That means you, too. Stay or go?"

  Suddenly deciding, she dashed through the gate, into the path of an ox cart. A wheel rolled by her head, close enough to bend her whiskers back. She scrambled out of the way—and tumbled in front of a man on horseback. The horse shied as Small Cat leapt aside. She felt a hoof brush her whiskers. Small Cat streaked into the nearest yard and crouched beneath a wagon, panting.

  The gate shut with a great crash. She was outside.

  The rain got harder as the sky dimmed. She needed a place to rest and think, out from underfoot until morning. She explored warily, avoiding a team of steaming oxen that entered the yard. She was in an inn yard full of wagons. Light shone from the inn's paper windows, and the sound of laughter and voices poured out. Too busy. The back of the building was quiet and unlit, with a single window cracked open to let in the night air. Perfect. She jumped onto the sill.

  A voice screeched inside the room, and a heavy object hurtled past her head. Small Cat fell from the sill and bolted back to the wagon. Maybe not so perfect.

  But where else could she go? She couldn't stay here because someone would step on her. Everything she might climb onto was wet. And she didn't much want to hide in the forest behind the inn: it smelled strange and deep and frightening, and night is not the best time for adventures. But there was a promising square shape in a corner of the yard.

  It was a small shed with a shingled roof, knee high to a person and open in front: a roadside shrine to a kami. Kami are the spirits and gods that exist everywhere in Japan, and their shrines can be as large as palaces or as small as a doll's house. She pushed her head into the shed. Inside was an even smaller building, barely bigger than she was. This was the shrine itself, and its doors were shut tight. Two stone foxes stood on either side of a ledge with little bowls and pots. She smelled cooked rice.

  "Are you worshipping the kami?" a voice said behind her. She whirled, backed into the shed, and knocked over the rice.

  A Buddhist monk stood in the yard. He was very tall and thin and wore a straw cape over his red and yellow robes, and a pointed straw hat on his head. He looked like a pile of wet hay, except for his smiling face.

  "Are you catching mice, or just praying to catch some?"

  The monk worshipped Buddha, who had been a very wise man who taught people how to live properly. But the monk also respected Shinto, which is the religion of the kami. Shinto and Buddhism did not war between themselves, and many Buddhist temples had Shinto shrines on their grounds. And so the monk was happy to see a cat do something so wise.

  Small Cat had no idea of any of this. She watched suspiciously as he put down his basket to place his hands together and murmur for a moment. "There," he said, "I have told the Buddha about you. I am sure he will help you find what you seek." And he bowed and took his basket and left her alone, her whiskers twitching in puzzlement.

  She fell asleep curled against the shrine in the shed, still thinking about the monk. And in the morning, she headed north along the Tokaido.

  Chapter 7

  The Tokaido

  At first the Tokaido looked a lot like the streets within the city. It was packed earth just as the streets had been, fringed with buildings, and overshadowed by trees so close that they dropped needles onto the road. She recognized most of the sorts of buildings, but some she had never seen before, houses like barns where people and animals lived under a single high thatched roof.

  At first she stayed
in the brush beside the road and hid whenever anything approached—and there was always something. People crowded the Tokaido: peasants and carpenters and charcoal-sellers, monks and nurses. There were carts and wagons, honking geese and quacking ducks. She saw a man on horseback, and a very small boy leading a giant black ox by a ring through its nose. Everyone (except the ox) seemed in a hurry to get somewhere else, and then to get back from there, just as fast as they could.

  She stayed out of their way until she realized that no one had paid any attention to her since the guard and the monk, back at the Rajo Gate. Even if they did notice her, everyone was too busy to bother with her. Well, everyone except dogs, anyway, and she knew what to do about dogs: make herself look large and then get out of reach.

  The Tokaido followed a broad valley divided into fields and dotted with trees and farmhouses. The mountains beyond that were dark with pine and cedar trees, with bright larches and birch trees among them. As she traveled, the road left the valley and crossed hills and other valleys. There were fewer buildings and more fields and forests and lakes. The Tokaido grew narrower and other roads and lanes left it, but she always knew where to go. North.

  She did leave the road a few times, when curiosity drove her.

  In one place, where the road clung to the side of a wooded valley, a rough stone staircase climbed up into the forest. She glimpsed the flicker of a red flag. It was a hot day, maybe the last hot day before autumn and then winter settled in. She might not have investigated, except that the stairs looked cool and shady.

  She padded into a graveled yard surrounded by red flags. There was a large Shinto shrine and many smaller shrines and buildings. She walked through the grounds, sniffing statues and checking offering bowls to see if they were empty. Acolytes washed the floor of the biggest shrine. She made a face—too much water for her—and returned to the road.

  Another time, she heard a crowd of people approaching, and she hid herself in a bush. It was a row of sedan chairs, which looked exactly like people-sized boxes carried on poles by two strong men each. Other servants tramped along. The chairs smelled of sandalwood perfume.

  The chairs and servants turned onto a narrow lane. Small Cat followed them to a Buddhist monastery with many gardens, where monks and other people could worship the Buddha and his servants. The sedan chairs stopped in front of a building, and then nothing happened.

  Small Cat prowled around inside, but no one did much in there either, mostly just knelt and chanted. There were many monks, but none of them was the monk who had spoken to her beside the tiny shrine. She was coming to realize that there were many monks in the world.

  To sleep, she hid in storehouses, boxes, barns, the attics where people kept silkworms in the spring—any place that would keep the rain off and some of her warmth in. But sometimes it was hard to find safe places to sleep: one afternoon, she was almost caught by a fox, who had found her half-buried inside a loose pile of straw.

  And there was one gray, windy day when she napped in a barn, in a coil of rope beside the oxen. She awoke when a huge black cat leapt on her and scratched her face.

  "Leave or I will kill you," the black cat snarled. "I am The Cat Who Killed A Hawk!"

  Small Cat ran. She knew The Cat From The North could not have been family to so savage a cat. After The Cat Who Killed A Hawk, she saw no more cats.

  She got used to her wandering life. At first she did not travel far each day, but she soon learned that a resourceful cat could hop into the back of a cart just setting off northward, and get many miles along her way without lifting a paw.

  There was food everywhere, fat squirrels and absent-minded birds, mice and voles. She loved the tasty crunch of crickets and beetles, easy to catch as the weather got colder. She stole food from storehouses and trash heaps, and even learned to eat vegetables. There were lots of things to play with, as well. She didn't have other cats to wrestle, but mice were a constant amusement, as was teasing dogs.

  "North" was turning out to be a long way away. Day followed day and still the Tokaido went on. She did not notice how long she had been traveling. There was always another town or village or farmhouse, always something else to eat or look at or play with. The leaves on the trees turned red and orange and yellow, and fell to crackle under Small Cat's feet. Evenings were colder. Her fur got thicker.

  She recited the stories of her fudoki as she walked. Someday, she would get to wherever The Cat From The North came from, and she wanted to have them right.

  Chapter 8

  The Approach

  One morning a month into her journey, Small Cat awoke in the attic of an old farmhouse. When she had stopped the night before, it was foggy and cold, as more and more nights were lately. She had wanted to sleep near the big charcoal brazier at the house's center, but an old dog dozed there and Small Cat worried that he might wake up. It had seemed smarter to slip upstairs and sleep there, where the floor was warm above the brazier.

  Small Cat stretched and scrubbed her whiskers with a paw. What sort of day was it? She saw a triangular opening in the thatched roof overhead, where smoke could leave. It was easy enough to climb up and peek out.

  It would be a beautiful day. The fog was thinning, and the sky glowed pale pink with dawn. The farmhouse was on a plain near a broad river, with fields of wheat ready to be harvested, and beyond everything the dim outlines of mountains, just beginning to appear as the light grew. She could see that the Tokaido meandered across the plain, narrow because there was not very much traffic here.

  The sun rose and daylight poured across the valley. And there, far in the distance, was a mountain bigger than anything Small Cat had ever seen, so big it dwarfed every other mountain. This was Mt. Fuji-san, the great mountain of Japan. It was still more than a hundred miles away, though she didn't know that.

  Small Cat had seen many mountains, but Fuji-san was different: a perfect snow-covered cone with a thin line of smoke that rose straight into the sky. Fuji-san was a volcano, though it had been many years since it had erupted. The ice on its peak never melted. Snow came halfway down its slopes.

  Could that be where The Cat From The North had begun? She had come from a big hill, the story said. This was so much more than a hill, but the Tokaido seemed to lead toward Fuji-san. Even if it weren't The Cat From The North's home, surely Small Cat would be able to see her hill from a mountain that high.

  That day Small Cat didn't linger over her morning grooming, and she ate a squirrel without playing with it. In no time at all, she trotted down the road. And even when the sky grew heavy the next day and she could no longer see Fuji-san, she kept going.

  It was fall now, so there was more rain and whole days of fog. In the mornings puddles had a skin of ice, but her thick fur kept her warm. She was too impatient to do all the traveling on her own paws, so she stole rides on wagons. The miles added up, eight or even ten in a day.

  The farmers finished gathering their buckwheat and rice and the root vegetables that would feed them for the winter, and set their pigs loose in the fields to eat the stubble. Small Cat caught the sparrows that joined them. After the first time, she always remembered to pull off the feathers before eating.

  But she was careful. The people here had never even heard of cats. She frightened a small boy so much that he fell from a fence, screaming, "Demon! A demon!" Small Cat fled before the parents arrived. Another night, a frightened grandfather threw hot coals at her. A spark caught in her fur, and Small Cat ran into the darkness in panic, remembering the fire that destroyed her home. She slept cold and wet that night under a pile of logs. After that, Small Cat made sure not to be seen again.

  Fuji-san was almost always hidden by something. Even when there was a break in the forests and the mountains, the low never-ending clouds concealed it. Then there was a long period when she saw no farther than the next turn of the road, everything gray in the pouring rain. She trudged on, cold and miserable. Water dribbled from her whiskers and drooping tail. She couldn't decide which w
as worse, walking down the middle of the road so that the trees overhead dropped cold water on her back, or brushing through the weeds beside the road and soaking her belly. She groomed herself whenever she could, but even so she was always muddy.

  The longer this went, the more she turned to stories. But these were not the stories of her aunts and ancestors, the stories that taught Small Cat what home was like. She made up her own stories, about The Cat From The North's home, and how well Small Cat would fit in there, how thrilled everyone would be to meet her.

  After many days of this, she was filthy and frustrated. She couldn't see anything but trees, and the fallen leaves underfoot were an awful-feeling slippery, sticky brown mass. The Tokaido seemed to go on forever.

  Had she lost the mountain?

  The sky cleared as she came up a long hill. She quickened her pace. Once she got to the top, she might see a village nearby. She was tired of mice and sparrows; cooked fish would taste good.

  She came to the top of the hill and sat down, hard. She hadn't lost the mountain. There was no way she could possibly lose the mountain. Fuji-san seemed to fill the entire sky, so high that she tipped her head to see the top. It was whiter now, for the clouds that rained on the Tokaido had snowed on Fuji-san. Small Cat would see the entire world from a mountain that tall.

  Chapter 9

  Mt. Fuji-san

  Fuji-san loomed to the north, closer and bigger each time Small Cat saw it. The Tokaido threaded through the forested hills and came to a river valley that ended on a large plain. She was only a short way across the plain when she had to leave the Tokaido, for the road skirted the mountain, going east instead of north.

  The plain was famous for its horses, which were praised even in the capital for their beauty and courage. Small Cat tried to stay far from the galloping hooves of the herds, but the horses were fast and she was not. She woke up one day to find herself less than a foot from a pair of nostrils bigger than her entire body—a red mare snuffling the weeds where she hid. Small Cat leapt in the air, the mare jumped back, and they pelted in opposite directions, tails streaming behind them. Horses and cats are both curious, but there is such a thing as too much adventure.