* * *
For an eternity, the darkness had rocked the kitten in its sticky wetness. Now its walls squeezed her, pushing her into another darkness that was much bigger. Rough touch, then, a feeling that made all of her tingle, and a sliding off of something that had surrounded her, leaving her cold and exposed. Then she was guided into a new, encircling warmth. After a while, another small body crowded next to her and another, until they were all pressed against the big warm. And so it went on for another eternity of sweet-smelling darkness.
“The kitten with the white paws is the one.”
“Are you sure?”
“Would you stop asking me if I’m sure? You asked that about Emerald, and now you’re asking about the Chosen. It’s my job to know. She was the first-born. That’s how eager she was to get out of the womb and on the job. Look, she’s opening her eyes, and they’re the exact color of mine.”
The sunlight would have been blinding if the three huge faces staring down at her hadn’t blocked it. “The Chosen,” they all said, showering her with wet.
She returned to the serious business of filling herself with better-tasting wet.
“We’ll name her Tara.”
“Don’t I have any say in the matter?” the body who was the source of warmth and food demanded.
“You can name the other three. Isn’t that fair?”
“You cats don’t know the meaning of fair.”
She was Tara. She didn’t know what a name meant, anyway, although it helped to sort the other cats out. Emerald was the milk source, she of the delicious rough tongue, and Misha had the soft voice and old eyes that lit up when she saw the kittens. Tara’s littermates got names, too: gray Cloud, another girl, and Oak and Chestnut, males striped like her, but without her white face and paws.
The sun blockers were Orion, Sekhmet, and Bast.
Except for them, seeing was exciting. It gave purpose to her movement, and she saw so many things that made her want to move faster. At first she was awkward and fell a lot, but she got the leg business sorted out. She developed speed.
“Time for your education to begin,” Bast said one day when Tara was busy pawing at a worm.
“She’s four weeks old. She’s still learning how to walk. Let her play,” Emerald said.
“Don’t you want to learn, Tara?” Orion asked.
“I’d rather play.”
“It’s easy to see where her attitude came from,” Sekhmet said.
Emerald arched her back, and her stripes rippled. “Yeah, smart-assed cat, she’s like her mama. You know, you all slink around like you’re so important, guidance moving you here, moving you there, like you get special messages no one else can hear. I have my doubts about that, but if you’re tuned in, so is a kitten of destiny. And if she hasn’t gotten that tap on the shoulder saying, ‘You’re the one,’ maybe she isn’t. Or maybe the Cosmic Cat isn’t in the same kind of rush you are. The earth has been turning a good long time, and it’ll keep on turning without your help. Why do you want to push to make it go faster?”
The Big Three all turned their backs on her, and began grooming themselves furiously. Tara wobbled after a butterfly.
For a few weeks, she hoped that was the end of the talk about Education because anything involving Bast and Sekhmet was bound to be a huge yawn. Tara was growing to like Orion better than his sisters. At first, all his talk about being her “father” had meant nothing to her, since it didn’t involve milk. She’d since learned that Orion’s tongue could groom her almost as nicely as Emerald’s and that to lean against his massive body and be surrounded by his purr comforted her almost as much as cuddling against her mother’s warm belly.
And Orion knew how to play, rolling over when the kittens hurled themselves at him, batting them softly, leaping high into the air and soaring like a bird.
Orion was all right, even if the word that meant the most to Tara was “Mother.”
Emerald began to teach the kittens to hunt, bringing them live mice to kill. Even then, the Grumps had to sneak in a lesson.
“There’s a proper way to kill,” Sekhmet said.
“Sure is,” Emerald said. “Breaking the neck is best.”
“No, I mean attitude.”
“Oh, that thing you say I have too much of?”
“Reverence for life!” Sekhmet screeched. “Thanking the animal for offering its body as food.”
Emerald nodded. “Got it. This is a mouse; I’m a cat. I’m hungry; he’s food. Thanks.”
Sekhmet shook her head. “Sometimes I wonder.”
“Well, I wonder about you all the time,” Emerald hissed. “I’m not ignorant; I know that’s a living thing, same as me, and same as the seeds he eats. The way I see it, we’re all in this together, except the humans don’t know they are. That’s why they’re dangerous.”
“I don’t think either of you could top that explanation.” Orion purred with a big rumble that seemed to make Emerald happy. The other two cats stalked off, their tails high.
Emerald also taught the kittens to become familiar with the forest. “Got to know your way around, and know which animals to avoid. First time Orion showed me a porcupine, I wanted to fall down laughing until I got a better look at those mean quills. You don’t want to wrestle with one of them.”
She went down a list of animals the kittens didn’t want to wrestle with. “But I don’t want to get you all scared. Unless an animal is hunting, you just need to leave it alone. But if a hunting animal is around, you need to know before you’re in the emergency zone.”
She pointed at some deer grazing in the field bordering the forest. “They’re eating, they’re flicking away the flies, but they keep looking around to check out the scene. They’re not afraid. They’re alert. Be alert.”
“Is that how you were in the city?” Tara asked. She couldn’t imagine the world her mother described, with few trees, tall caves, and bad-smelling animals who walked on two legs and didn’t cover their scat.
“I was more afraid,” Emerald said, “because you couldn’t predict what a human might do. A few were nice, but you couldn’t count on them all being that way. It was safer to count on them all wanting to hurt or kill you. If you think of them as the most dangerous animals alive, you’ll live longer. But I hope you never have to worry about that.”
Cloud shivered. “I’m glad to be here.”
“So am I,” Emerald said. “I never thought I’d say that.”
“What makes grass grow?”
“Why does the sun rise and set?”
“Why does a mouse offers herself to me when I’m hungry?”
Emerald batted Tara. “Why does a kitten ask so many questions? Go ask your father. He’s the cat with all the answers.”
Tara padded over to Orion and repeated her questions. Unlike her mother, he seemed interested and but puzzled.
“I could understand a city cat asking, but you were born into the harmony of the Green. Don’t you sense the rhythm of how it all fits together?”
She paused, looking up at the sky, seeing the approaching gray cloud that would soon water the earth and feed the grass. She pressed her paws against the earth, and they throbbed with the current of life flowing deep within it. An answering rhythm flowed through her.
“I do know, but I can’t explain it.”
“Why do you have to?”
“I don’t, not now. Everyone here knows, but an idea chases me, growling that someday I’ll have to explain all this to someone who doesn’t know.”
Orion’s eyes widened. “Slow down and let the idea catch you. Tell me if it has anything more to say.”
A few days later, Emerald took them to a waterfall deep in the woods. “I come here when I get tired of the other cats’ voices. That happens a lot. I lie on a rock in the sun and listen to the water and smell it and look at the rainbows in the mist, and all my bad feelings get washed away.”
Like the sound of the water, Emerald’s voice flowed through Tara.
&
nbsp; “This is the place where you all got your start in life. I saw tiny winking lights and thought it was just a hallucination, but it turned out to be you.”
Tara closed her eyes and breathed in the fragrance of water rushing over wet rocks. Light sparkled around her, dancing and whirling, whispering to her in a purr that rubbed against her skin like her mother’s rough tongue. It encircled her like Orion’s purrs and began to fill her, growing, getting brighter and brighter, turning into a pair of huge golden eyes like twin suns, the eyes of a giant cat, who purred and licked her.
With every stroke of the rough tongue, Tara began to feel less and less like a kitten and more like the waterfall, flowing through rocks, floating along with no place to go, no rush, like the earth turning, no need to push it.
Only to be one with it, the golden cat purred, only to listen to it, to listen to Me.
Are you the Big-pawed One?
At your service. Always. And are you the kitten of prophecy?
Don’t you know? Tara asked, suddenly turning into a kitten again.
You may be, but nothing is foretold. How you place your paws on the path ahead will determine your journey.
But how? My paws don’t know where to go. Please, don’t leave.
“Tara!” Her mother shook her. “Are you all right? You were mewing and whimpering.”
She looked around the waterfall site. “She was here, a cat with eyes like the sun. She said I might be the one they say I am.”
Emerald raised her eyes to the passing clouds. “Some days I wish I’d never met that fast-talking Orion. We’d better go back and tell them.”
“Nothing is foretold; well, I suppose not.” Sekhmet sounded displeased.
“It’s down to how she places her paws on the path,” Emerald said, “and that means she has a choice.”
Bast hissed. “Of course she does. This is a choice-based universe.”
“Never mind the big words. It means she can say no.”
“But what am I saying no to?” Tara asked.
“That’s not foretold, either,” Sekhmet said, “except that it has something to do with bringing humans back to harmony.”
Emerald swiftly placed herself between Tara and the others. “Humans? Over my dead and bleeding body and maybe all of yours. I didn’t come here to the Green so I could send any kitten of mine back to the city.”
Orion’s golden eyes beamed reassurance. “We knew from the beginning that this was the place for her.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “She’s meant to be in the village. It’s nearby, and there are trees, grass, and other cats. I could settle there for protective purposes. Wouldn’t that make it all right?”
Emerald flicked her tail. “Settle down with some village cat, more likely.”
“More like a string of them,” Sekhmet said. “But at the moment you have no interest in him that way.”
“That is the blessed truth, even if it’s none of your business.”
“We’ll spend time there, too,” Bast said. “Those village cats need some educating.”
The spasm of sympathy Tara felt for the cats who would be educated by Bast drowned in a surge of terror. “Emerald,” she whimpered.
Her mother tucked Tara closer to her. “Just hold on. You’re all building a set of plans on nothing. The Big Paws said Tara might be this Chosen kitten. And might not. So you all need to chill. Better yet, why don’t all of you go to the village and rub up to the humans and she stays with me?”
Tara saw the flare of rage that erupted from Orion and heard his soft hiss. Then he seemed to go deep inside himself, looking for a place where he wouldn’t spit out an angry answer. Soft blues and greens surrounded him, as if he had drawn in sky and water to cool him.
This looked like more fun than hunting, and Tara paid close attention.
“That will be up to the kitten,” Orion finally said, his voice smooth as his fur. “And just to show you how true that is, Tara can change her direction any time. To make her choice even more clear, I’ll teach her about the humans’ history and habits, so she knows what to expect.”
Tara wanted to roll back time to before the waterfall experience. She didn’t want to learn anything about the most dangerous animals who lived.
But she would, because something inside her was stronger than fear. They could talk about choice, but it seemed that the delicious, floating feeling created by the golden-eyed cat’s purrs had ruined Tara for any life that didn’t include being close to Her.
The next day Orion taught the first lesson. “Humans, like cats, come in different colors. Some are lean and dark-skinned. They came from a hot and dry place called Etrenzia, with lots of sand for burying scat but not much water. Cats there eat bugs and lizards. Etrenzians are dry, too. In the desert, they say tears are a waste of water.”
“What are tears?”
“Drops of water that spill from humans’ eyes. This seems to relieve their pain, but for those whose ancestors came from this land, spilling water is considered the act of an inferior being.”
“But underneath, they’re like kittens who’ve lost their mother.” The words spilled out of Tara like human tears. She shook her head, as if the voice she’d heard were a tick she could dislodge. “I don’t want someone taking over like that.”
Orion had a goofy look of ecstasy on his face. “The Long-Whiskered One does not take over.”
“I know, choice-based universe.” Tara twitched her ears, trying to get the sound out.
“Did you object when Emerald taught you how to hunt? Of course not. Think of this as a greater Mother, a greater teaching.”
“I like to see someone who’s talking to me.”
“Then close your eyes, kitten.”
There she was, the Golden One, Big Cat in an imaginary sky, floating on a cloud that wept tears. Tara felt a shivering inside, like cold rain.
“I’m frightened, Orion.”
Her father licked her head with long, luxurious strokes until she stopped shaking. “You’re so small and so new in the world, and that’s more of an advantage than you may realize. You are fresh from Her womb and still close to Her. The stronger your connection remains, the safer you are.”
Orion had an answer for every question, but she was beginning to think he made some of them up on the spot—or maybe she was too tired to know the difference between truth and lies. “Could we have a nap?”
“Good idea. Here, sleep against my side.”
Tara leaned her head against Orion’s flank and let him purr her to sleep.
When she woke up, she felt much better. She and Orion groomed each other briefly.
“Let’s continue,” he said. “We left off with the Etrenzians, who don’t believe in tears. Very white people come from Dolocairn, a place with snow, which is frozen white water. The people are tall and get fat for the long winter months.”
“Do they cry?”
“In their native land they do. They love physical closeness. It protects them from the chill of winter. They find the Etrenzian ways difficult to follow.”
“So why do they follow them?”
“We’ll come to that in a minute. Let me finish with the races. The final ones are Tamarans, who are various shades of brown and gold. Their country is rich and lush, and so are their bodies. Tamarans are cat-like in their ways. They live for pleasure, and they always land on their feet. If the Etrenzians make a law, they will pretend to obey, but they do what they like.”
“Why do these Etrenzians run things? And don’t they ever breed with other humans?”
“Not as often as the other two races. They think they’re better than the others.”
“Like Bast and Sekhmet think they’re better than Emerald?”
Orion sounded as if he were trying to cough up a hairball. “Bast and Sekhmet don’t force Emerald to be like them.”
“Mouse shit. Emerald says they tried, but they had to give up.”
“At least they gave up. Etrenzians don’t, and they seem to hav
e forced the others to follow some idea of mind. We understand the use of reason and logic, but they seem to think these tools can only be employed if emotion is suppressed.”
That frightened Tara more than anything she’d heard.
Chapter 6
Druid looked out of his cave to see another rainy day. He didn’t mind rain. Probably water dragons never did, but how was he supposed to know that? It wasn’t as if he’d ever had the chance to take a survey. He was the loneliest dragon in the world.
Long ago his mother had groomed his emerald mane and held her close against her scaly chest. When she’d sung to him of the Mother of All Life and the glorious (though vaguely described) future that would one day be his, destiny had been a sweet melody in his ears.
Druid’s parents showed him how to narrow the water in his body into a jet suitable for putting out fires. They taught him how to scan the earth for trouble spots and demonstrated the art of transmitting terror.
“Why must I know that?” he asked.
“We don’t know,” Dragonlady said, “but we’re supposed to teach you. It’s a trick that’s bound to come in handy some day.”
They had been happy for fifty years or so while Druid grew to adolescence. Everything changed the day another dragon landed on their beach.
Dragonlord greeted him. “Raindancer, how is the flock?”
“In need of your leadership. We have a few younger dragons who are getting the idea that they could run things as well as you. I hurried here before things got messy. It’s time for you to return.”
Druid’s wings spread with joy. What greater destiny than to soar, to fly, and sing with dragons? He rose several feet in the air before his father caught him.
“Raindancer, would you mind leaving us alone for a short time?” Dragonlord asked.
“No problem. I only came to request your return. I’m going back now.”
Druid watched the dragon disappear. “Why can’t we go with him?”
“Small one, dragon infinitely dear to me, your moment to fly with us has not yet come. You will find your purpose here.”
“In the swamp? Alone?”
His father’s paws trembled as he held him more tightly. “Alone, bereft of the companionship of your kind. Our history says that this is the path of your destiny.”