Witches I have served, seven times seven; and six mages, and twice the High Priest in the temple of St. Bast, wherein I lay upon pillows of hummingbird feathers. Servants brought me fish upon platters, silver scales agleam. And when I rose, and stretched, and chose to stride? They rushed to open the sacred doors for me, close the sacred doors for me, open the sacred doors for me, close the sacred doors for me.
And once did I serve a fat wealthy merchant in a cobbled city to the South. At his demand I told dark tales of war and hunger, sorrow and loss. I spoke of mothers feeding hungry babes upon their own heart's blood, and villages plagued by drought till the house dogs turned wolves and devoured all. Stories I purred of city streets where children and rats played chase, winners devouring losers. Grim things I told, and dark; till the man's mind grew disturbed with visions of hard lives and winter winds. He ordered me from his golden house. Ah, but as he lay in his soft warm bed I perched upon the window ledge, staring in, staring in, staring in. At length he went mad; hanging himself in the golden gleam of his treasure vault.
And oft have I attended convocations of devils beneath the earth, prowling beneath tables of dragon bone and onyx, rubbing against the feet of princes of Hell seated on their thrones of fire. At times they gravely consult me, inquiring my opinion concerning the strength of Heaven's troops and the weakness of human souls. In answer, I only blink my eyes, my beautiful eyes, to say that what I know, I would never share.
In gay revels of forest Fae and woodland spirits I have sat, watching silent, entranced by their mad faery japes and near cat-like grace. But never dancing, never taking part. Kings, priests, faeries, devils, and all manner of witch and wizard have I served. But they knew me not, for I give myself not.
But never and never and never have I served a farmland fool wandering the world's roads innocent as some duckling out from a mill pond. A tasty succulent tempting duckling, hopping and peeping up to wolves who stare astonished. While I watch, equally astonished.
I creep and spy at the boy's heels. He knows I follow; but he knows me not. I watch him greet crooked tinkers and bloody soldiers, a band of thieves he takes for acrobats, and once a mad dog. He wishes to all that the sun shine bright upon them, the wind blow cool. And they smile, and wish him the same. Even the mad dog, the stinking piddling drooling fool of a cur. They return his smile, and pass on hoping to find for themselves the joy that he holds in his idiot empty head, his sad empty pockets, his rumbling empty stomach.
Oft I return to the moon, where I curl in the crater that is my crater and no other cat's crater for it is my crater. And there I gaze at the unmoving earth, the evermoving stars. And I consider my time upon it, and my new binding to the idiot boy. To teach; but not to aid. Surely this is the strangest service that ever a witch's cat was summoned to.
YOU ARE READING
Barnaby the Wanderer
FantasyBeing the astonishing adventures of a widow's son journeying the Land of Saints, with a magic cat, a dark ghost and the map of a cursed tower; and what became thereof.
