Andre Norton - The Gate of the Cat

“There is reason.” Yonan had been carrying one arm close to his chest, the bulk of a cloth wrapped loosely around it. Now he held it out to her and there sounded a thin mewling cry. The movement disturbed the wrapping of the cloth and she saw a small white furred head upheld, blind eyes fast shut, and a mouth open for another cry.

“The gray ones,” Yonan’s voice was harsh, “cornered a snow cat and had their pleasure with her and one cub. This one Tsali found and rescued. It will die if it cannot be fed.”

“But it is so big,” Kelsie was already reaching out for the well-wrapped cub. “It must be as big as both of the kittens—and the wildcat—”

“Swiftfoot,” he corrected her and she looked at him amazed.

“Have you already named her then?”

“She named herself to the Lady of Green Silences. All which run, fly or swim, and are not of the shadows, are friends to the Lady. But the cubling will die—”

“No!” The weaving of that blindly seeking head, the small wail of hunger and loneliness brought Kelsie out of the preoccupation with herself and the anger of the witch to the here and now. “She took her kittens to a place of her own yesterday. I have not seen her save when she came to feed.”

As he relinquished the weight of the cub into her arms she knew that she must indeed find her fellow wayfarer and see if Swiftfoot would accept a fosterling. Some cats did so readily as she well knew.

Surely the wildcat had found a lair somewhere along the gashed cliffs which sheltered the Valley. Their many shallow caves and cracks would attract her—and it could not be too far from the living houses as the cat had easily come morning and evening for her own nourishment.

Kelsie gathered the bundled creature to her and then looked to Yonan.

“What is this?”

“Snow cat,” he repeated shortly. “The mother must have been hunted well out of the mountains to come so far afield. The gray ones are roaming afar when they fasten on such prey.”

The cub was nuzzling her fingers, sucking hungrily, halting now and then to whimper its need. Resolutely Kelsie turned her back on the gathering of houses and the tents of the people who were not Valley born and headed for the cliff side. As she went she began to call—not the “kitty-kitty” of her own time and place but with her mind. Before that moment she had not thought of trying to do that. It was easy enough to picture the wildcat and her kittens, to hold to that picture and keep on summoning, in a way she could not have put words to, that unsought companion in her adventure.

She was aware that Yonan followed her, but some distance behind as if he feared in some way to confuse her searching. They scrambled over several falls of rock and past one stream which bored through the hills to find its path to the river. Then Kelsie stopped short.

It was as if a new sense had been added to the five she had carried so far through life. This was not scent, sight, nor hearing, but it was touch of a different kind. As she concentrated upon it the wildcat came into sight around the side of a large boulder, one of those on which ancient carvings had been so weathered that only traces of their pattern could be sighted. Kelsie took a step toward her and Swiftfoot’s lips drew back in a warning snarl. Though the girl had carried both the cat and her kittens on their journey to the Valley, Swiftfoot was announcing that this had been only a temporary measure and she would allow no more such liberties. What had they said back beyond the Gate, that no one could tame a true wildcat? It would seem that such warnings were right.

Kelsie went no farther. Instead she juggled the wrapped cub to one hip and braced herself against the ancient work to come to her knees at its foot. Then she settled the cloth on the ground before her and pulled away its folds so that the hungry and now continually wailing cub was wholly revealed.

She carefully kept her thoughts to herself. Even if she could think Swiftfoot into coming to examine this newcomer she would not dare to try. She knew too little about this new force she had tapped to try to use it further.

The cub continued to wail. Swiftfoot snarled and then her slitted eyes turned toward the youngling. Slowly, only an inch at a time as she might have advanced upon some prey, she came forward, belly low to the gravel, stopping now and again to eye Kelsie who held herself stiffly quiet, waiting.

Perhaps the cub scented something of its near kin for now its head swung toward the cat, though its eyes could not see, and its wail reached a higher pitch. The cat sprang and Kelsie flung out one arm fearing that death rather than life for the cub was the result of her experiment.

Swiftfoot crouched over the cub which was perhaps a fourth of her own size. Her tongue flicked forward and licked the blind head. Then she sought to grip the loose rolls of skin at its neck, to carry it as she might one of her own kittens. It was almost too great a task for her. The cub bumped along the ground, still wailing, as they disappeared from sight behind the rock. Kelsie turned and saw Yonan some distance from her watching intently.

“She will accept it, I think,” the girl said. “But whether it can survive—that no one can promise.”

For the first time she saw a shadow on his serious face—a shadow which might serve for a smile.

“It will be well,” he seemed very sure. “This is a place of life, not death.”

Kelsie thought of all she did not know about the Valley, about these people, of all which she must learn. Must learn? Again that thought thudded home. All Tregarth’s talk of gates and how one passed by a single way through them, how much was true? Perhaps all the asking in the world would not tell her that. But what she could learn—that she would.

“You are not of the Valley people,” she stated that as a fact not a question. There were truly two humanoid peoples within the Valley—to say nothing of those who were winged, pawed, hoofed, or scaled.

“No,” he dropped down facing her, sitting cross-legged, the rumpled cloth in which he had carried the cub lying in a heap between them. “I am of Karston kin—also of the Sulcar—”

He must have seen from her expression that neither word meant anything to her for he launched into more speech than she had heard since Simon Tregarth had ridden out a day earlier.

“We are of the Old Blood—from the south—or my mother was. And when they drove us out because we were what we were we came into the mountain borderlands and took service against the Kolder and those who put our kinsmen to the death. Then when the witches turned the mountain—”

“Turned the mountains!” Kelsie broke in. Maybe she could accept some things but the turning of mountains was not among them.

“All those who ruled in Estcarp,” he continued, “they gathered their power so it was as if it were wielded by one alone, and that they threw against the earth itself, so that the mountains tumbled and arose anew, and no man could recognize the border thereafter.”

It was perfectly plain that he believed every word he was saying no matter how impossible the feat he described.

“Then,” he was continuing, “we sought land of our own and Kyllan Tregarth came to lead us into the older homeland, even this Escore. But there was ancient evil here and it awoke at the coming of the Tregarths for their sister Kaththea is a notable witch, though she wears no jewel, and, what she did in ignorance troubled the land. So once more we war and against a host of Darkness which is more than men such as we faced before. Strange indeed are some of our battles—” He glanced down at his own hand where it rested upon the hilt of his sword. She remembered then that these men who went mail clad were different from the changeable people and seemed often to have hand close to some weapon or another as if they expected nothing but war and alarms as a way of life.