At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories

by Kij Johnson

  She was very thirsty. She trotted to the stream, hopping from paw to paw on the hot ground. Chalky-white with ashes, the water tasted bitter but she drank until her stomach was full. She was hungry so she ate a dead bird she found beside the stream, burnt feathers and all.

  From the corner of her eye, she caught something stirring inside a storehouse. Maybe it was an aunt who had hidden during the fire or maybe The Painted Cat had come back to help her! She ran across the hot ground and into the storehouse but there was no cat. What had she seen? There, in a window, she saw the motion again. It was just an old bamboo curtain.

  She searched everywhere. The only living creature she saw was a soaked rat climbing from the stream. It shook itself and ran beneath a fallen beam, leaving nothing but tiny wet paw prints.

  She found no cats or any signs of what had happened to them.

  Chapter 4

  The Burnt Paws

  Cats groom themselves when they’re upset, so Small Cat sat down to clean her fur, making a face at the taste of the ashes. For comfort she recited the stories from the fudoki: The Cat Who Ate Roots, The Three-Legged Cat, The Cat Who Hid Things, every cat all the way down to The Cat Who Swam, her youngest aunt, who had just taken her place in the fudoki.

  The fudoki was more than just stories. The cats of the past had claimed the garden and made it home for those who lived there now. If the cats were gone, was this still home? Was it still her garden if nothing looked the same and it all smelled like smoke? Logs and broken roof tiles filled the courtyard. The house was a ruin. There were no frogs, no insects, no fat ducks, no mice. No cats.

  Small Cat cleaned her ear with a paw, thinking hard. No, she wasn’t alone. She didn’t know where the other cats had gone, but she had seen The Painted Cat run through a hole in the wall just before the fire, so if Small Cat could find her there would be two cats. That would be better than one. The Painted Cat would know what to do.

  A big fallen branch leaned against the wall just where the hole was. She inched carefully across the ground, still hot in places, twisting her face away from the fumes wherever something smoked. There was no way to follow The Painted Cat by pushing through the hole. Small Cat didn’t mind that: she had always liked sitting on top of the wall watching the outside world. She crawled up the branch.

  There were people on the street carrying bundles or boxes or crying babies. Many looked lost or frightened. A wagon pulled by a single ox passed, and a cart pushed by a man and two boys that had been heaped high with possessions. A stray flock of geese were eating the fallen rice from a tipped cart. Even the dogs looked weary.

  There was no sign of The Painted Cat. Small Cat climbed higher.

  The branch she stood on cracked in half. She crashed to the ground and landed on her side on a hot rock. She twisted upright and jumped away from the terrible pain, but when she landed, it was with all four paws on a smoldering beam. She howled and started running. Every time she put a foot down, the agony made her run faster. She ran across the broad street and through the next garden, and the next.

  Small Cat stopped running only when her exhaustion became stronger than her pain. She scarcely made it off the road before she slumped to the ground, and she was asleep immediately. People and carts and even dogs tramped past but no one bothered her, a small filthy cat lying in the open and looking dead.

  When Small Cat woke up, she was surrounded by noise and tumult. Wheels rolled past her head. She jumped up, her claws out. The searing pain in her paws made her almost forget herself again but she managed to limp into a clump of weeds.

  Where was she? Nothing looked or smelled familiar. She didn’t recognize the street or the buildings. She did not know that she had run nearly a mile in her panic, but she knew she would never find her way back.

  She had collapsed beside an open market. Even so soon after the earthquake and fire, merchants set up new booths to sell things, rice and squashes and tea and pots. Even after a great disaster people are hungry, and broken pots always need to be replaced.

  If there was food for people, there would be food for cats. Small Cat limped through the market, staying away from the big feet of the people. She stole a little silver fish from a stall and crept inside a broken basket to eat it. When she was done she licked her burnt paws clean.

  She had lost The Painted Cat and now she had lost the garden. The stories were all she had left. But the stories were not enough without the garden and the other cats; they were just a list. If everyone and everything was gone, did she even have a home? She could not help the cry of sadness that escaped her.

  It was her fudoki now, hers alone. She had to find a way to make it continue.

  Chapter 5

  The Strange Cats

  Small Cat was very careful to keep her paws clean as they healed. For the first few days she only left her basket when she was hungry or thirsty. It was hard to hunt mice yet, so she ate things she found on the ground: fish, rice, once even an entire goose wing. Sad as she was, she found interesting things to do as she got stronger. Fishtails were fun to bat at and she liked to crawl under tables of linen and hemp fabric, and tug the threads that hung over the edges.

  As she got better, she began to search for her garden. Since she didn’t know where she was going, she wandered, hoping that something would look familiar. Her nose didn’t help because for days she couldn’t smell anything but smoke. She was slow on her healing paws. She stayed close to trees and walls. She couldn’t run fast and she had to be careful about dogs.

  There was a day when Small Cat limped along an alley so narrow that the roofs on either side met overhead. She had seen a mouse run down the alley and vanish into a gap between two walls. She wasn’t going to catch it by chasing it, but she could always wait in the gap beside its hole until it emerged. Her mouth watered.

  Someone hissed. Another cat squeezed from the gap, a striped gray female with a mouse in her mouth. Her mouse! Small Cat couldn’t help but growl and flatten her ears. The stranger hissed, arched her back, and ran away.

  Small Cat trailed after the stranger with her heart beating so hard she could barely hear the street noises. She had not seen a single cat since the fire. One cat might mean many cats. Losing the mouse would be a small price to pay for that.

  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 though 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 very 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 to chase 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 fudoki, 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 instead slid off 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 climbed, made of wood that had turned black with age. There were actually three gates in the 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 by the door held 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 though 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 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, young lady. Stay or go?”

  Suddenly deciding, she dashed through the gate, right 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. Small Cat streaked into the nearest yard and crouched beneath a wagon.

  The Rajo 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 and carts. 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 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 shape in a corner of the yard. When she approached, it turned out to be a small shed with a shingled roof, knee-high to a person and open in front. It was a 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 doll houses. She pushed her head into the shed. Inside was an even smaller building, barely bigger than she was. This was the shrine itself. Its doors were shut tight. In front of the shed, 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, bumped 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. Except for his smiling face, he looked like a pile of wet hay,

  “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 inside the little 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 of 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 go somewhere 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, not since the guard and the monk back at 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, bright with larches and birch trees. 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. 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 stair looked cool and shady.

  She padded into a graveled yard surrounded by red flags. There was a large Shinto shrine and many smalle
r 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!—and returned to the road.

  Another time, she heard a crowd of people approaching and she hid in a bush to watch them pass. 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. 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.

  When it was time 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: 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 kin 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 in any day, but she soon learned that a resourceful cat could hop into the back of a cart just setting off and get many miles along her way without lifting a paw.