Chapter 9 The Far Hill #5
She sighed and ran her tongue over the weathered nub of her last remaining fang.
“I think that the will of the Forest God has been done. It is not for us to guess at such things.” After a long pause, she added, “Not that we can help it, of course. Truth to tell, I often wish he was more forthcoming. I’ve built my life around clever guesses, but the taste of them is growing a bit sour. ”
“Mrrr,” Chester growled. “Then I will think no more on it. I have learned courage, but I fear wisdom will be forever beyond me. If the likes of you cannot guess at it, then the likes of me will never know.”
“Ahh, but wisdom is its own punishment,” she said.
Chester thought this very funny and laughed out loud. After a moment his pack joined in as well.
“You said there were two dreams,” she said when they were finished. “What of the other?”
“That,” the dog king said, “is why I no longer miss my friend.”
“Oh?” She meant him no harm, but she had never been known for her patience. She often found it difficult to keep the irritation from her voice. “Do go on?”
“Right!” Chester said quickly. “Some little time later I stood at the foot of a great hill, so great it might have been called a mountain. But the slope was gentle and covered in flowers, green grass, butterflies here and there—that sort of thing. Very pleasant. You know how it is in dreams, when you know you’re supposed to do something? ”
“Yes.” In the more recent centuries she’d had nothing but nightmares. “Generally speaking.”
“Well…I knew that I was supposed to approach, so I did. The hill was guarded by many hunters—dog and fox, owl and coyote. They were none of them large, in the way He was large, but I have had a few fights. You get to where you know the look. These were all fierce, and not to be crossed.
“I turned around and went to retreat. Then this little fox called out to me. ‘Wait—you are known to the lord of this place. Please, come. Be welcome.’ I had to think about it for a bit, but it’s not the sort of invitation one turns down.
“He led me up a long path. As we walked I saw all manner of beasts dwelling there, cat and hawk and wolf. Every thing that hunts in the field or in the air, from what I could see. All of them were—well, not fat, exactly—let’s say well fed.
When I asked the name of this place, no one would answer.
At some point the fox, I don’t know, either stopped following or disappeared.
Dreams, you know. And when I got to the top I saw—”
“You saw him,” the Old Kitty Mother said quietly.
“Yes. Him indeed. But he was different from the beast I saw at the gates. That was the fury of him. This was the joy. This was my friend. He had taken a mate, I think. There was a female there, at any rate, and a den, and puppies playing in the grass. When he saw me, he bounded over and gave me a nip on the shoulder, just the way he used to. ‘Welcome, Raze,’ he said.”
“He called you Raze?” asked the Old Kitty Mother.
“Yes.”
“Then that is your true name,” she said, “and I was wrong to speak otherwise. Continue, King Raze.”
“Very kind of you. But I try not to take offense at talk. He said that I had done well.” The old king’s tail rose up a bit as he said this. “He said that there was a place for me there, that I would always be welcome.”
The Old Kitty Mother’s brow furrowed. She was thinking, perhaps, of what lay in wait for her at end of her path. But all she said was “That is good. Very good indeed.”
“We chatted for a bit, catching up, you know. I think so, at least. I don’t remember very clearly. Dreams, you know. But at some point I asked him why he had called me there. He said I was to deliver a message.”
“Really?” asked the Old Kitty Mother. “For whom?”
“For you,” said the king. “He said that I was to tell you that the violets grow also on his Far Hill.”
“What?”
“Those words exactly. I am quite sure of it.”
“Was there anything else?” she whispered. Suddenly her legs felt weak, her vision dim.
“He said…he said that the eye of hell was closed to you. It will regard you no more. I’ll be honest, I couldn’t make sense of this.
I’ve never been, you know, smart. I asked him what it meant.
I asked him many times, but he wouldn’t answer.
He said the message was for you. Do you understand what he meant? ”
“Perhaps,” she whispered. “Yes. It is…I think it is a mercy.”
“I do not understand.”
“It’s ah…of little consequence.” No matter how he pried, she would say no more.
Raze had grown comfortable with mystery. After a little time, he and his pack walked on.
When they were gone, the Old Kitty Mother sat in the desert watching the night sky. She did not retreat to her field of violets. There was no longer any need.
What lay ahead was enough.
Just after sunrise, she rose and set out to finish the journey she had begun.
There is a little breath still in my chest, she thought, a little hunger still in my belly.
I think now is the time for food, and for naps in the warm sun and for scheming my little schemes.
More than a few questions remain unanswered, but perhaps now I have seen all I was meant to see, known all I was meant to know.