At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories

by Kij Johnson

  There was food everywhere, fat squirrels and absent-minded birds, mice and voles. She loved the tasty crunch of crickets and beetles which got easier to catch as the weather got colder. She stole food from storehouses and trash heaps and even learned to eat vegetables. There were many 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 grew 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 wanted to sleep near the big charcoal brazier at the house’s center but there was an old dog dozing there and Small Cat worried that he might wake up. It had seemed smarter to slip upstairs and sleep where the floor was warm above the fire.

  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, a gap 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 buckwheat ready to be harvested. Beyond everything the dim outlines of mountains were just beginning to appear as the light grew. 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 Fujisan, 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 by now but Fujisan was different: a perfect snow-covered cone with a thin line of smoke that rose straight into the sky. It 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 come from? The fudoki said that she had begin her wanderings beside a big hill. This was so much more than a hill but the Tokaido seemed to lead toward Fujisan. 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 for breakfast 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 Fujisan, 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, and 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 then they set their pigs loose in the fields to eat the stubble. Small Cat caught the sparrows that joined them. After the first time, she never forgot 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 and ran off screaming, “Demon! A demon!” Small Cat fled before his 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.

  Fujisan was 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 never saw 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 was 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 no longer the fudoki 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?

  Finally one day, 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. Fujisan seemed to fill the entire sky now, so high that she tipped her head to see the top. It was whiter that it had been, for the clouds that rained on the Tokaido had snowed on Fujisan. Small Cat would be able to see the entire world from a mountain that tall.

  Chapter 9

  Fujisan

  Fujisan 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. That was where 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. It was 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.

  She traveled as quickly as a small cat can when she is eager to get somewhere. The mountain towered over her, its white slopes leading into the sky. The bigger it got, the more certain she was that if she climbed to the top of Fujisan, she would see The Cat From The North’s home, and then everything would be perfect. She wanted this to be true so much that she ignored all the doubts that came to her. What if she couldn’t find them? What if she was already too far north, or not north enough? What if they didn’t want her?

  And because she was ignoring so many important things, she started ignoring other important things as well. She stopped being careful where she walked and she scraped her paws raw on the rough rock. She got careless about her grooming and her fur grew dirty and matted. She stopped repeating the stories of her fudoki and instead just told the fantasy-stories of how she wanted everything to be.

  The climb went on and on. She trudged through the forests. The narrow road she followed turned to a lane and then a path and started zigzagging through the rock outcroppings that were everywhere. The mountain was always visible because she was on it.

  There were only a few people, just hunters and once a small tired woman in a blue robe lined with feathers, with a bundle on her back. But she saw strange animals everywhere. There were deer almost small enough to catch and white goats with
long beards that stared down their noses at her, and once a troop of pink-faced monkeys that surprised her when they tore through the trees overhead.

  At last even the path ended, but Small Cat kept climbing through the trees until she saw daylight ahead. Maybe this was the top of Fujisan! She hurried forward. The trees ended abruptly. She staggered sideways, hit by a icy wind so strong that it threw her off her feet. There was nothing up here to stop the wind, because trees did not grow higher than this. She staggered to the sheltered side of a rock.

  This wasn’t the top. It was nowhere near the top. She was in a rounded basin cut into the mountain and she could see all the way to the peak itself. The slope above her grew still steeper and craggier. Above that it became a smooth glacier, and wind pulled snow from the peak in white streamers.

  She looked the way she had come. The whole world seemed made of mountains. Except for the plain she had come across, mountains and hills stretched as far as she could see. The villages she had passed were too far away to see, though in places wood smoke rose from the trees. She looked for the capital but it was hundreds of miles away, so far away that there was nothing to see, not even the Rajo Gate.

  She had never imagined that all those days and all those miles had added up to something so immense. She could never go back so far and she could never find anything as small as a single hill, a single family of cats.

  A flash of color caught her eye, a man huddled behind another rock just a few feet away. She had been so caught up in the mountain that she hadn’t even noticed him. Under a padded brown coat, he wore the red-and-yellow robes of a Buddhist monk, with thick straw sandals tied tightly to his feet. His face was red with cold.

  How had he gotten up here and why? He was staring up the mountain as though trying to see a path, but why was he doing that? He saw her and his mouth made a circle of surprise. He crawled toward her and ducked into the shelter of her rock. They looked up at the mountain. “I didn’t know it would be so far,” he said, as though they were in the middle of a conversation.

  She looked at him.

  “We can try,” he added. “I think we’ll die but sometimes pilgrimages are worth it.”

  They sat there for a while longer, as the sun grew lower and the wind grew colder. “But we don’t have to,” he said. “We can go back down and see what happens next.”

  They started off the mountain together.

  Chapter 10

  The Monk

  Small Cat and the monk stayed together for a long time. In many ways they were alike, both journeying without a goal, free to travel as fast or as slow as they liked. Small Cat continued north because she had started on the Tokaido, and she might as well see what lay at the end of it. The monk went north because he could beg for rice and talk about the Buddha anywhere, and he liked adventures.

  It was winter now, and a cold, snowy one. It seemed as though the sun barely rose before it set behind the mountains. The rivers they crossed were sluggish, and the lakes were covered with ice as smooth as the floorboards in a house. It seemed to snow every few days, sometimes in clumps heavy enough to splat when they landed, sometimes with tiny flakes so light they tickled her whiskers. Small Cat didn’t like snow. It looked like feathers, but it just turned into water when it fell on her.

  Small Cat liked traveling with the monk. When she had trouble wading through the snow, he let her hop onto the big straw basket he carried on his back. When he begged for rice, he shared whatever he got with her. She learned to eat bits of food from his fingers and would stick her head into his bowl if he set it down. One day she brought him a bird she had caught as a gift. He didn’t eat the bird, just looked sad and prayed for its fate, so after that she killed and ate her meals out of his sight.

  The monk told stories as they walked. She lay comfortably on the basket and watched the road unroll slowly under his feet as she listened to stories about the Buddha’s life and his search for wisdom and enlightenment. She didn’t understand what enlightenment was exactly, but it seemed very important, for the monk said he also was looking for it. Sometimes on nights where they didn’t find anywhere to stay and had to shelter under the heavy branches of a pine tree, he told stories about himself as well, from when he was a child.

  And then the Tokaido ended.

  It was a day that Small Cat could tell was about to finish in a storm. The first flakes of snow whirled down from low dark clouds that promised more to come. Small Cat huddled atop the basket on the monk’s back, her face pressed into the space between her front paws. She didn’t look up until the monk said, “There! We can sleep warm tonight.”

  There was a village at the bottom of the hill they were descending. The Tokaido led through a double handful of buildings scattered along the shore of a storm-tossed lake, but it ended at the water’s edge. The opposite shore—if there was one!—was hidden by snow and the gathering dusk. Now what? She mewed.

  “Worried, little one?” the monk said over his shoulder. “You’ll get there! Just be patient.”

  One big house rented rooms as though it were an inn. When the monk called outside its door, a small woman with short black hair emerged and bowed many times. “Come in, come in! Get out of the weather.” The monk took off his straw sandals and put down his basket with a sigh of relief. Small Cat leapt down and stretched.

  The innkeeper screeched and snatched up a hoe to jab at Small Cat, who leapt behind the basket.

  “Wait!” The monk put his hands out. “She’s traveling with me.”

  The innkeeper lowered the hoe a bit. “Well, she’s small at least. What is she then?”

  The monk looked at Small Cat. “I’m not sure. She was on a pilgrimage when I found her on Fujisan.”

  “Hmm,” the woman said, but she put down the hoe. “Well, if she’s with you …”

  The wind drove through every crack and gap in the house, so that everyone gathered around a big brazier set into the floor of the centermost room, surrounded by screens and shutters to keep out the cold. Besides the monk and Small Cat and the members of the household, there were two farmers—a young husband and wife—on their way north.

  “Well, you’re here for a while,” the innkeeper said as she poured hot broth for everyone. “The ferry won’t run for a day or two, until the storm’s over.”

  Small Cat stretched out so close to the hot coals that her whiskers sizzled, but she was the only one who was warm enough. Everyone else huddled inside the screens. They drank tea, wrapping their hands around their cups to warm their fingers; and they ate rice and barley and dried fish cooked in pots that hung over the brazier

  She hunted for her own meals. The mice had gnawed a secret hole into a barrel of rice flour, so there were a lot of them. Whenever she killed one she brought it back to the brazier’s warmth where she could listen to the people.

  There was not much for them to do but talk and sing, so they talked and sang a lot. They shared fairy tales and ghost stories. They told funny stories about themselves or the people they knew. People had their own fudoki, Small Cat realized, though there seemed to be no order to the stories and she didn’t see yet how they made a place home. They sang love songs and songs about foolish adventurers. Songs were stories, as well.

  At first the servants in the house kicked at Small Cat whenever she was close, but the monk stopped them.

  “But she’s a demon!” the young wife said.

  “If she is,” the monk said, “she means no harm. She has her own destiny. She deserves to be left in peace to fulfill it.”

  “What destiny is that?” the innkeeper asked.

  “Do you know your destiny?” the monk asked. She shook her head and slowly all the others shook theirs as well. The monk said, “Well, then. Why should she know hers?”

  The young husband watched her eat her third mouse in as many hours. “Maybe catching mice is her destiny. Does she always do that? Catch mice?”

  “Anything small,” the monk said, “but mice are her favorite.”

&
nbsp; “That would be a useful animal for a farmer,” the husband said. “Would you sell her?”

  The monk frowned. “No one owns her. It’s her choice where she goes.”

  The wife scratched at the floor, trying to coax Small Cat into playing. “Maybe she would come with us! She’s so pretty.” Small Cat batted at her fingers for a while before she curled up beside the brazier again. But the husband looked at Small Cat thoughtfully.

  Chapter 11

  The Abduction

  It was two days before the snowstorm stopped, and another day before the weather cleared enough for them to leave. Small Cat hopped onto the monk’s straw basket and they left the inn, blinking in the daylight after so many days lit only by dim lamps and the brazier.

  Sparkling new snow hid everything and made it strange and beautiful. Waves rippled the lake, though the frothing whitecaps whipped up by the storm were gone. The Tokaido, now no more than a broad flat place in the snow, ended at a dock on the lake. A big man wearing a brown padded jacket and leggings made of fur took boxes from a boat tied up there. Two other men carried them into a covered shelter close by.

  The Tokaido only went south from here, back the way she had come. A smaller road, still buried under the snow, followed the shoreline to the east and west but she couldn’t see where the lake ended. The road might go on forever and never turn north! Small Cat mewed anxiously.

  The monk turned his head a little. “Still eager to travel?” He pointed to the opposite shore. “They tell me the road starts again on the other side. The boat’s how we can get there.”

  Small Cat growled.

  The farmers tramped down to the boat with their packs and four shaggy goats that were tugging and bleating and cursing as goats do. The boatman accepted their fare, counted out in old-fashioned coins. He offered to take the monk for free. He frowned at Small Cat and said, “That thing too, whatever it is.”