The mere thought of frightening Greta threw Balkis into a panic; she threw herself on her foster mother and wept bitterly, and when Greta stroked her hair and asked what had upset her so, Balkis only shook her head and wept harder. In the night, she dreamed of Greta and Ludwig staring at her in shock, then backing away, making signs to ward off evil and fleeing from the cottage. Balkis woke screaming, and it took Greta half an hour of rocking and murmuring before the child could sleep again.
So, though Balkis could not resist the temptation to go for a night’s prowl now and then, she was very careful never to change where anyone could see her.
Now and again one of the monks from the monastery came by—the abbot thought of the forest-dwellers as part of his flock, and wished to be sure their souls were healthy. Greta and Ludwig walked long miles to hear Mass every Sunday, so they thought it only fitting that one of the monks should walk long miles to visit them now and then. He would talk with them and tell them the news of the world, then read from the Bible—the Old Testament, which they rarely heard in church. When first he did, Balkis was curious, so he taught her how to make the sounds the letters showed. Instantly, she felt consumed by a veritable hunger for the Book herself, and the stories the monk never had time to read. Ludwig and Greta had an old family Bible, an heirloom they kept more as a charm than as a source of knowledge, since, being peasants, they had never learned to read. Balkis, though, pored over the pages in the evenings, sounding out the letters until the words began to make sense, and thus learned another sort of magic.
When she was fourteen, her body began to change in a different way, and Greta had to teach her how women cope with their monthly difficulties. Soon after, the full moon summoned Balkis to change into a cat and go for a night’s prowl—but she had no sooner leapt from the window when an unfamiliar sensation swept over her body, a prickling and tickling that nearly drove her crazy. She opened her mouth to mew in distress, but the sound that came out was loud and raucous, a yowling that she knew well from the cats in the barnyard. She sprang back through the window and changed to her human form, then sat on her bed, shaken and wary.
She had seen cats go into heat, of course, had heard them yowling for a tom to come and assuage their distress. She had watched them couple, but hadn’t thought much of it. The next time it happened, though, she watched quite closely, and came away shaken, bound and determined that no such thing would ever happen to her. She was very careful about her timing after that, and if by chance she mistook and felt the craving in her cat-body, she transformed herself back into a girl on the instant. The craving was still there, of course, but was only a shadow of a cat’s compulsion.
She kept studying the nearby cats though, and saw how having a litter too early stunted a cat’s growth, saw how too many litters too close together wore them out. In fact, Balkis saw one mother cat die when her kittens were only a few weeks old, and afterward she adopted them and cared for them with a fierce devotion. She knew what it was to be an orphan kitten herself, and dependent on the whims of strangers.
Greta and Ludwig were pleased to see her compassion, but Ludwig told her sadly, “We can’t afford to care for all the kittens in every litter every cat has, child. I can’t chop and sell enough wood, and your mother can’t raise enough vegetables in her little garden, even with all the help you give her.”
“Don’t worry, Papa. I shall tell the cats how to find their own homes and fend for themselves,” Balkis said.
Ludwig smiled indulgently, not to say adoringly, and left her to her kittens. He was quite surprised when the cats really did wander away as soon as they were grown, not to come back. He couldn’t know that a cat he had only rarely seen—and never the same color twice—had taught them at night how to hunt in the forest, then with more-than-feline intelligence had led them away to rich hunting grounds when they were grown. He would have been delighted, though, if he had known.
So Ludwig and Greta tolerated Balkis’ hobby of raising orphaned kittens, and their house was seldom without a litter somewhere about the yard, or even indoors in the cellar in winter. They took it as a sign of Balkis’ good heart-her positive passion for lost kittens, her untiring efforts to help the old couple in their chores, even chopping wood to lighten Ludwig’s labors. They only thanked Heaven for such a willing and devoted daughter to brighten their latter years-and never noticed that she was truly, genuinely beautiful, for she had always been beautiful to them.
For her part, Balkis too thanked Heaven every night for such loving and gentle foster parents, and whenever she went into the woods, she thanked the dryads for having led her to them.
The town of Qushan in northwestern Persia lay white in the simmering heat of early afternoon. All was quiet, for most of the people were indoors, dozing away the heat of the day. A few men sat in the shade by the pool in the garden by the mosque, discussing the Koran. All else lay quiet. The people would rise when the worst of the heat was over and work till the sun sank.
On this particular day, though, they would not have the chance.
There was no warning but the rumble of hooves, a rumble that grew into thunder. The men in the garden ran to the western edge of the town to see what was making the noise. They saw a long dark line of horsemen racing toward them.
They ran, shouting, to waken their fellow citizens and bid them hide or take up arms. Sleepy men came stumbling from their houses carrying scythes, flails, here and there a sword.
Then the horsemen fell upon them.
They galloped down every street of the town, screaming with blood lust and loosing a volley of arrows from their short recurved bows.
Half the townsmen fell, transfixed by arrows. The lucky ones died. The rest screamed as spears pierced their chests or bellies, or howled with rage as they swung their own weapons at the invaders—but the horsemen dropped their bows and drew broad-bladed, curved scimitars. They struck and struck again. The streets ran with blood.
When all the men had fallen, the invaders rode among them, seeking the wounded among the dead bodies. When they found one that still moved, they struck with lance or sword. Finally, sure that they had left none of the men of the town alive, they burst into the houses and dragged out the women and children. The barbarians set the townsfolk to digging graves as a way of learning what happened to those who dared defy them.
They didn’t notice the one body that wormed its way, little by little, back into a house. There the young man found cloth to bandage his shoulder, then stole out the back door and into the granary, where he lay buried in grain until nightfall. When all was dark, he crept out, steeled himself against the wails of mourning, tried to ignore the wreckage and the sounds of pillaging and revelry inside the mosque, and ran off into the night to bear warning to the next village, that they might warn all others, perhaps even send word to the Caliph in Baghdad.
The Caliph’s audience chamber was spacious, airy, and cool, while the land baked outside under the afternoon sun—but a fair quantity of its dust had come in with the messenger, who knelt at the foot of the Peacock Throne.
“Your pardon, O Shining One,” he said. “Your forgiveness for the vile news this lowly one—”
“Be done with your apologies!” the Caliph snapped. “It is not my custom to punish the messenger for the news he brings—but I will punish you sorely if you do not tell it forthwith!”
The messenger raised his head to speak. “O Sun of Wisdom, barbarians have ridden through the passes in the western mountains and fallen upon your village of Qushan, in the shadow of the foothills! They have slain all the men and enslaved the women and children, they have looted and defiled the mosque and set up an altar with two heathen idols that guard a pile of cinders! There they rest, turning their horses out to graze the crops that were ripening in the fields, while more and more of their kind come pouring through the passes! Those who have seen them fear that they will march against your cities, that they may even threaten Baghdad!”