“We will guard you as long as you have need,” Birch told the kitten, “and lay a spell upon you that will make all other spirits of grove and hill come to your aid.”
The little cat sat up on Elm’s palm and looked about her with bright-eyed interest, switching her tail. Then she stilled, eyes widening with surprise before she darted a quick glance at the twitching tip.
Smiling, Elm set her down on the ground. The tail twitched again; the kitten dove for it, and was instantly lost in the game of chasing her own tail-tip.
“She must have a name,” Birch said. “Was there nothing writ on the little chest that held her?”
“No” said Thorn, “but I remember a word embroidered on her coverlet, in the strange letters that the Greek priests brought.”
“I saw that, too,” Elm said.” ‘ Balkis,’ was it not?”
“Then let Balkis be her name,” Birch said, and so they called her from that day forth.
“We must teach her,” Oak reminded.
They taught. They scratched her paws in the dirt, and instinct took over; with no more teaching than that, she learned to cover her litter with earth. They showed her a mouse and taught her its scent, then forgot their own dignity long enough to stalk like a cat and pounce. She imitated them and caught a mouse of her own soon after, and they showed her crickets, locusts, june bugs, and all manner of kitten delicacies-but they did not teach her how to fish, indeed taught her not to, for the water-spirits had been her first friends.
When Balkis was nine months old, they cast a spell to keep her from going into heat until her human form was fourteen years of age. When she was ten months, a dryad at the fringe of the grove saw a caravan approaching. She told the others, and the word ran to Oak, who told the kitten, “We would dearly love to keep you by us always, but cruel men are riding through this land every day, and if they should see you in girl-form, they might kill you.”
The kitten had learned their language, and within the cat-sized head the human brain understood the gist of the words. Her eyes widened and she trembled.
“Better far for you to ride with the caravan.” Oak took her to the edge of the grove and pointed. “They will be glad to have a cat if they have none already. But you must make friends with them if you wish them to take you far to the west, where these horrible horsemen ride not.”
Balkis-kitten nodded, but a tear formed at the corner of her eye.
“I know. We will miss you, too, little one,” Oak said, “but your welfare is more important to us than your company. See, the merchants have stopped and are pitching their tents, for they wish the water in our grove for themselves and their horses! Go catch a mouse who seeks to nibble at their goods, and you will endear yourself to them forever! Or at least until they come to the lands of the Rus. Go now, make your way in the world!” She set the kitten down and gave it a push.
Hesitantly, and with many a backward glance, the kitten went to prowl around the caravan. Bravely, Oak and her fellow dryads gave her smiles of encouragement, for after all, she would still be near them for the evening.
● ● ●
The caravan drivers looked up at the sound of a sudden yowl. “What is that, so near our packs?” the master asked, frowning.
“A cat, by the sound of it,” one of the drivers answered.
“Let us be sure,” said the caravan-master. “Omar, go see!”
But Omar had scarcely come to his feet when a small golden cat came trotting from the huge panniers full of goods with a mouse in her mouth. She pranced straight up to Omar and dropped the little body at his feet, then looked up at him expectantly.
Omar stared down. “A mouse! By the stars, she has saved a bolt of cloth at least!”
“Perhaps even a pound of spices,” the master agreed.
“But why does she stare at me so, Master Ivan?” Omar asked, completely at a loss, for he was very young.
“Raised with dogs, were you?” Master Ivan grinned “Why, she seeks her pay, lad! Do you think one small mouse is enough dinner for her?”
“Oh, is that all!” Omar grinned, sitting down, and broke a piece of meat from his roast fowl to hold out to the kitten. She nipped it from his fingers and swallowed it in two bites, then ran back to the panniers.
“Well!” said Omar. “Not a thank you, not a backward glance—only gets what she came for and runs!”
“I’ve done that myself, on occasion,” one of the other drivers said.
“Yes, we’ve all spoken with your wife, Sandar,” a third driver said, and his fellows burst into ribald laughter, the more so because they knew Sandar had no wife. As the laughter was dying, the little yellow cat came trotting back to the campfire and dropped another mouse, this time at Sandar’s feet. She stood looking up expectantly.
“Well caught!” he cried, and tossed her a scrap of meat. She pounced on it, gulped it down, and trotted back to the panniers.
“Why doesn’t she just eat the mice?” the third driver asked.
“Would you, Menchin?” Master Ivan asked. “Especially if there is fowl to be nibbled?”
Another laugh answered him. As it lapsed, the cat came trotting back with a third mouse.
The drivers applauded, and Omar said, “She works as hard as any of us.”
“We should take her along,” Sandar said.
“We should indeed,” Master Ivan agreed, and so it was decided.
As the sun rose the next morning, the drivers finished their breakfasts, drowned their fires, loaded their mules, and drove them onto the road. The little yellow cat clung to the harness-pad on the last mule’s back. As they ambled away, she turned for a last look toward the grove, and the dryads. She gave a plaintive mew of farewell. Only her eyes could pick out the waving forms that were her friends and protectors.
Unseen by the men, the dryads raised hands in blessing as they chanted protective spells, tears trickling from their eyes—and that is why, if you look closely at the trees that grow in a grove about a pond, you will now and then see drops of water clinging to their trunks as dawn draws nigh.
Months later the caravan swayed into Novgorod, a city of timber surrounded by a sharpened-log palisade, the facades of its houses ornamented with fanciful carving, all wrought with no tool but an axe. The kitten looked about her wide-eyed, drinking in the wealth of strange sights and sounds and smells—then recoiled as a pack of dogs charged barking at the caravan. Balkis crouched hissing among the rolls of cloth in the pannier, ears laid flat and heart thumping wildly. What were these strange huge beasts with such loud voices and such huge teeth? She decided to stay with the caravan as long as she could.
As the drivers went to dine in a tavern, Omar held out his hands, clucking softly. Balkis jumped into them, and he tucked her away inside his tunic as he followed his companions into the inn. They called for ale and meat, and Balkis sniffed the air for the rank smell of those huge thunder-voiced beasts. Finding no trace of them, she dared to hop down from Omar’s tunic to scout for fallen morsels under the table.
As she worried a sliver of tough meat, she heard the merchant and his drivers talking with others of their kind, and her wakening human mind in a maturing kitten’s brain understood at least the gist of their words.
“Did you have trouble with Tartars, Ivan?” asked a strange voice.
“They gave us safe-conduct, Michael—for a tax,” Ivan answered, “one bolt of cloth out of every ten, and one pound of each spice out of each twenty.”
Dark mutterings greeted the news.
“Do you trust them?” another voice asked.
“Only so long as they do not ride to conquer Novgorod, Ilya. or any other of our Russian cities,” Ivan answered. “While we were on this journey, their warriors were besieging Tashkent. Their chieftain boasted that their khan has even sent a horde against China, riding into Sinkiang. He assured us that Novgorod’s hour has not come yet.”