night, do you know where he sleeps? With Dashti the mucker. The only cats I've known were so mangy their fur was half gone and they wheezed like startled snakes. But My Lord is gentry among beasts, a khan of cats.
And he always knows when it's day. Times there are when I wake thinking that it's morning, only to peer out the flap and see darkness thick as stew. Time makes no sense in a dark prison. But My Lord the cat knows the time. As soon as it's morning, he stands on my chest, touches his cold nose to mine, and breathes on my lips.
I'd ask my lady if she'd prefer My Lord to sleep with her, but Titor, god of animals, himself can't force a cat to change his mind. Besides, it might not be proper to share a bed with a cat, she being an honored lady and all.
[Image: Drawing of Two Cats Sleeping]
Day 48
Two weeks since her khan left. I asked my lady how far to his home in Song for Evela, and she thinks it'd take about two weeks, so perhaps he's already home.
Today I find myself remembering one night as a little girl, when our gher was still full of family, and a traveling shaman stayed the night. It's good luck to offer any stranger one night under your felt roof, but doubly so for a shaman. How excited we were! I remember watching the shaman with wide eyes and doing my best to blink as little as possible. If he turned into a fox, as I'd always heard shamans can, I was determined not to miss the sight. The shaman didn't transform that night, but he told us stories of the Ancestors and what they willed us to do in order to enter their Realm one day. And he told us how gentry were the children of the Ancestors, how it was a commoner's privilege to serve them. It was the first I'd ever heard of gentry.
Many times after that night I liked to lie back and imagine what the gentry might be like--skin that glows like a candle, eyes shining with the wisdom of the Ancestors. Sometimes I actually thought they might have tails like foxes or butterfly wings. Then meeting Lady Saren and her father...
But now I've spoken with Khan Tegus, and though his hand didn't glow or anything, there was something in his voice, in his words, that was different than anyone I've ever known. The mark of the Ancestors must be in him, stronger than in some gentry. Maybe that's why his title is khan instead of just lord. I'll ask my lady.
Later
Lady Saren told me a story tonight while she petted My Lord the cat. How many things she must know!
She said that the Eight Realms were once united under a Great Khan, and the seat of his power was Song for Evela. Now all the realms have their own lord or lady rulers, but in memory of the Great Khan, the ruler of Song for Evela still carries the title of khan. I asked her how she knew, and she said all gentry families keep the history of wars and marriages and so on. Such a thing as history never occurred to me before.
Day 73
It's fully winter now. There's a rim of ice on our well that I have to crack with the bucket. Each time I open the metal flap to the outside, I get blasted by cold. The wash water freezes as I pour it on the ground, and afterward I spend several minutes before the fire just to get color back in my hands. This time of year, it's too cold to snow. High winter out-of-doors is death as sure as a knife in the chest, and a winter's funeral brings bad luck to the whole clan.
I'm a mucker, so I thought I knew winter, but from inside this tower I've learned something new--the winter wind has its own voice. Autumn wind has a gusty warmth to it and a lower tone as though it sings from deep in the belly. The winter wind screeches around the tower, singing the high harmony, its voice sharp with ice. My lady isn't fond of that sound.
A few days ago, I carried her mattress down to the main floor and shut the door in the ceiling so we keep in more of the fire's heat. I think even the Ancestors understand that in winter, a mucker maid and a lady must sleep side by side.
Surely her khan won't return until after winter. Spring seems as far off as the Ancestors' Realm.
Day 92
Yesterday smoke was filling our room something awful, and in a locked tower, air filled with smoke would kill us right quick. I rolled up my lady in all our blankets before I smothered our fire. In the time it took me to clean out the blocked chimney, my jaw was hammering and my fingertips turned blue. I relit the fire and shivered on my mattress until the room warmed again, there being not a spare blanket for my shoulders.
This winter, Goda, goddess of sleep, must have made Evela, goddess of sunlight, awfully drowsy. No memory of sunshine hangs in the air. Everything feels gray and hard and dark. I guess that might make me bitterly sad, but right now, My Lord is asleep on my lap.
Day 98
The guards only bring our daily milk every two days now, sometimes three. In the cold, they must stay in their tents, keeping the fire going nice and toasty, venturing out only to milk their animals and make yellow ice.
To help our milk last three days, I add water. It wouldn't be proper for my lady to drink plain water, as if she were poorer than poor. Even Mama and I always had milk to drink.
Day 122
Little to record. I wash, I cook. I stoke the fire. Whenever the wind moans, my lady shivers as though she feels it on her skin. She's refused to bathe for weeks, but this morning I insisted. When I dunked her hair into a bucket of water, there was a powerful scent, reminding me of the time my brothers' reindeer fell into a stream.
Today, for the first time, I couldn't enjoy the spices in the food. It was as though I couldn't taste them. I can't say why that was.
Still, My Lord the cat is so beautiful.
Day 141
The middle night. I just woke after a dream, though it was the kind of dream that's more memory than imagination. I saw again the last night her khan was here, the sight of his hand lifting up the cat. And then I saw what I gave him in return. I hadn't thought of it again since that night. The memory jolted me awake.
