The Big Meow

“Hearing that, Aaurh and the Whisperer growled low in their throats. But the Queen stretched and said, ‘Daughter of mine, if you think I will let you play this play with the fabric of reality, you think wrongly. If Life is the throatball you gag at, then Life will be what bears your enmity: some small corner of it, as you say. But do not be too sure the play will go your way.’

“’And You will not interfere?’ said sa’Rraah.

“’I am in Life and cannot be separated from it,’ said the Queen. ‘But I will of Myself not act… any more than usual.’

“With this the Shadowed One had to be satisfied. Yet she growled and licked her chops. ‘And what Life shall I test?’ said sa’Rraah. ‘There is no joy in the wager unless You run some risk.’

“Risk there shall be, for you shall test People who are dearest to me,’ said the Queen. ‘And in this time that will be Sehau and Aifheh, whose time it is to be born now, and for whom I have waited long.’ And She purred so that all Heaven heard it. ‘I have wrought and intended them for each other since the deeps of time: they will express love as it will ever be best expressed among my People, and as it ought to have been before the ways were darkened and love’s time became brief.’ And just for that moment Iau opened one Eye, and its terrible light rested on sa’Rraah.

“All the Queen’s other children held utterly still, and even sa’Rraah crouched down, all dismayed: for her own work it had been that the ways of the worlds were darkened by her invention, death. Yet after a moment the Shadowed one looked up again, emboldened to spite by Iau’s forbearance. ’Queen and Mother,’ said sa’Rraah, ‘there is nothing You can make that I cannot mar.’

“The Queen merely closed her Eye again, and said, ‘That the event shall prove. Go your ways, my daughter, and do your devoir.’

“So sa’Rraah rose and stretched and padded away from the Hearth of Heaven. And in the outer circles of reality, in the world where the People dwell, Sehau was born outside a city of ehhif; and far from him, in a wild place into which her dam had been cast, Aifheh was littered.”

The Silent Man glanced up from the pad on which he’d been scribbling. What city? he said.

Rhiow looked at Hwaith, for this was a part of the story that she’d never given the slightest thought to. Hwaith shrugged his tail.

“Pittsburgh,” Urruah said.

Hwaith stared at him. Rhiow rolled her eyes. Urruah immediately tucked himself up into a more compact shape, suitable for running away suddenly if he had to: but the look in his eyes was still full of mischief.

Rhiow let out a breath. “Anyway! Sehau was a tom: Aifheh was a queen – “

But not God, said the Silent Man.

“Not God,” Rhiow said, realizing that no matter what she did, with this audience there was no hope that the telling would go smoothly. “Sehau was a brindle kitten, and Aifheh white with a black-patched pelt. Each one grew quickly, and when their kittening days were done, each did as many People do: began to roam the world, departing territories that were too full of their own kin to search for places where they could become part of new prides, and their own kits would prosper when the time came. And it was in woodland between the city and the wild that they met for the first time. Each was hungry, for they were very young, and neither was expert in the hunt as yet. Sehau had found a place in the woods where inside a little bank he could hear the fieldmice moving and speaking to each other. He meant to wait till night to catch them, when he would have the advantage: and from a hidden place in the brush he watched them go in and out of their den. But the longer he watched the less his stomach could bear it any more, nor could he wait till night. When the next fieldmouse came rustling out, he jumped on it. And from the brush behind the little bank, where Sehau could not see, Aifheh jumped on it at the same moment.

“In their shock and surprise, they fought over the mouse, and it got away. They were angry with each other: but they were so young that they soon forgot their anger, and looked at each other curiously, and exchanged names. They met again in the days that passed, and shortly they began to hunt together, because they had each been alone for so long and each missed the sound and smell and touch of other People. Soon they were friends. And before much longer Aifheh came into heat, and Sehau was ready for her; and then they were not just friends, but lovers.

“Now the Shadowed One had been watching for this; for if the loves of these two were what the Queen Herself had been awaiting them, then surely they were worth thwarting. Aifheh kindled from that first joining, and grew great with her litter: but sa’Rraah so twisted the kindling of the new life in her that the kittens all died in her womb, and their death poisoned her, so that she too was soon to die.