Kanagawa Prefecture - 1877
Keijō believed that his responsibilities encompassed much more than simply keeping the temple free of mice, moles and other vermin. Whenever any weary travelers along the Tōkaidō highway sought refuge at the lonely Temple of the Snows—which was little more than four simple walls, a peaked roof and a door set on a steep wooded hill outside the little town of Gora—Keijō adopted the role of host, making sure those who stayed under its humble roof were well cared and provided for, and did not lack for attention.
He was a well-built feline in his prime years, dusky in color and able to take care of himself without need of any human assistance. Rodents and other sources of food were plentiful this far away from human habitation, and the trickling spring which flowed through the tiny temple’s center provided ample water to drink.
Keijō had still been a kitten when he’d succeeded an aged orange cat named Shinko as temple watcher. He’d followed Shinko around as the older cat showed him where the water ran through a narrow channel in the center of the floor, where the rice bags were stored (and therefore where the mice liked to snack), as well as several nearby bird and rodent nests. Then Shinko had wandered off into the forest without a look back. Keijō had never seen him again.
That was several years ago, and in the time since Keijō had played host to many travelers. Sea salt merchants from Odawara passed by nearly every spring and always remembered to bring him delectable dried fish morsels. Occasionally a monk on a pilgrimage would stay for a period, burning incense and blessing the place with his chants.
As a rule, Keijō did not let travelers pet him—guests of the Temple of the Snows came and went, and he preferred to keep their relationship professional. But once during a ferocious thunderstorm, a mother and her infant child had taken refuge inside the temple: they’d been unable to get a fire lit on that wet night, so Keijō had slept next to them, keeping the little girl warm with his furry body.
The summer was near its end, and the green leaves of the surrounding pine trees were beginning to fade, when the Stranger came to stay at the Temple of the Snows. He was in his middle years—small for a man, but compact and strong. He wore the remnants of armor, and carried the long shining stick that Keijō had seen enough times to understand that this man was of the order of the ones who fought. He was a cat, and understood little of Bushido, or politics. He did not understand the word ronin, nor could his cat mind conceive of what that meant.
The Stranger had arrived just before dawn. Nobody had stayed at the Temple for several months, and it had begun to fall into disrepair. The roof leaked in one corner, and the trickling stream had become clogged with leaves, and now barely flowed through its channel in the center of the tatami mat-covered floor. So the first thing the Stranger did was to clear the leaves which had choked off the water, so it once more ran clear, singing its happy bubbly tune. He then tied his blouse around his waist, and clambered up to the roof with some bamboo branches to seal up the hole—at least temporarily.
Over the course of his tenure, Keijō had been privy to many people’s conversations, but he had also learned that many humans, even when alone, spoke aloud to themselves with regularity—some quite loudly in fact, especially when they were drinking the sour drink they often carried with them: the one that smelled like spoiled rice. The temple’s feline guardian found both the odor of that drink and their noise annoying, so he was happy to find that this current guest indulged in neither. In fact, the Stranger was utterly silent; never making so much as a grunt—and he ate very little: cooking small pots of the stored rice, and drinking straight from the brook. The Stranger was watchful as well, always keeping the door slightly open—and always his shining stick was near-at-hand.
Keijō himself was a natural-born predator, so he natively understood the Stranger’s behavior. He’d seen it in his own prey: voles and hares and the small grey squirrels who lived in the nearby trees.
This human was being hunted.
It went like this for several days and several nights. Sitting cross-legged in the center of the Temple floor, the Stranger would doze lightly through the night, leaning on his sheathed weapon. He would rise early with the sun, bathe himself in the water, and then pray for a while at the Temple’s small altar. Afterwards he’d make and eat some rice, and would then go about busying himself for the day—making small repairs to the Temple, or gathering firewood in the forest nearby—but never straying too far from the building. He also practiced every day, standing still for long minutes before pulling out his shining stick very rapidly—he’d do this over and over, again and again, for hours at a time.
For his part, Keijō minded his own business during this time. Cats and people had different needs, and unlike the Stranger, Keijō needed many hours of sleep during both night and day. His furry coat needed grooming as well, and that took up a good deal of time. There was a noisy bird who had taken to sitting on the branch of a tree nearby the front door of the Temple, and Keijō devoted much of his waking attention to keeping a careful eye on it—just in case.
The Shadow Men came on the forth day—just after nightfall. The Stranger had been sanding a new board for the floor to replace one that had become waterlogged and soft—he had been working on it all day out in the yard in front of the Temple. He was more relaxed than Keijō had yet seen him, and after making himself his usual dinner, he sat and sang a low tune to himself—the first noise the cat had heard him make. Overall it was not as annoying as many others’:
The leaves fall,
As does my soul;
To the ground that my love
Lies buried beneath.
Keijō didn’t understand the meaning of any of these words, of course: but his was an empathic spirit, and he could sense the sadness of the Stranger. This was someone who had lost something important, and was now lonely. Cats understood these feelings, and for the first time Keijō came close enough to the man to brush against him, and his soft grumbly purr rumbled. The Stranger’s hand absently reached down to stroke Keijō’s back, and scratch behind his ears, and Keijō permitted it.
It was at that moment the front door burst down, and two men leapt through: they were dressed all in black raiment, and their heads were hooded—even their faces and hands were painted black. They both held the sharp sticks like the Stranger’s, but theirs did not shine in the firelight.
Keijō was off in a flash. Instinct carried him across the floor and into his spot behind the piled rice bags in the wink of an eye. Crouching low there, he could hear feet moving on the wooden floors, grunts and yells coming from the three men, and the swish and clang of their weapons. He did not understand what was happening and was terrified. This type of conflict was not supposed to happen in his Temple. This was a sacred space.
After several moments the noises ceased, and all Keijō could hear was a low panting sound. When he peeked ‘round the rice bags, he saw the two Shadow Men lying on the floor, unmoving. The Stranger stood over them, catching his breath, his back to Keijō. Red liquid dripped off the end of his shining stick, and Keijō’s senses told him that these two men were dead.
The cat guardian stayed where he was, waiting to see what would happen next. After a moment, the Stranger wiped his weapon free of the red and put it back in its sheath. Laying the weapon on the tatami, he bent down and lifted the legs of one of his attackers, pulling him towards the door until he could roll the body down the steps and out of the Temple. He took a moment, and returned for the other one.
Even Keijō, with his sharp feline senses, hadn’t heard the third Shadow Man enter from the rear of the temple, behind the altar. But out of the corner of his yellow eye he caught the black-hooded figure moving utterly silently as he climbed over the rice bags and moved towards the Stranger—whose back was once again to the Temple’s rear. A black-painted hand dipped into a belt, and brought out a small flat piece of metal, cut with several points like a star. Its edges glinted. Keijō did not know what it was, but yet he understood the danger in the thing. The Stranger was saying a low prayer over the remaining body, and was unaware of the third would-be killer.
Keijō watched the man raise his hand to throw the weapon, and made a decision by instinct. These Shadow Men had come to do violence, and in doing that had violated the rules of his temple; small as he may be, that disrespect required a response from the temple’s guardian. The cat was a stealthy blur as he darted out from his safe place, lunging with his sharp front claws at the Shadow Man’s ankles.
The assassin gave a sharp cry of surprise and pain, and out of reflex hurtled the star down at the cat. Keijō moved lighting fast to dodge away, but the star still severed off a few of his whisker tips, before lodging with a thud in the floor.
Keijō had fled almost back to his hiding spot when the last Shadow Man let out another, louder cry—one which made him stop and turn:
The Stranger’s shining stick now protruded from the Shadow Man’s chest, and the Stranger stood behind him, gripping the weapon’s handle. His face was covered in sweat, and his expression was dark, until he glanced down to see the cat guardian watching him. Slowly the Shadow Man sank to the ground, and the Stranger pulled free his weapon. Man and cat stood there staring at one another, and after a moment, the Stranger bowed to Keijō.
It was over.
The Stranger stayed two more days at the Temple. He carried the bodies out into the woods far past where Keijō dared to venture. He cleaned the floors of the assassins’ blood, and the boards he couldn’t clean, he replaced. He prayed a good deal of the time. The second morning after the fight, he caught a fish upstream, and after cooking it over the coals, he shared the delicious meal with Keijō. The two slept very soundly that night.
The Stranger left the next morning. Keijō was awake to see him go, and the man waved to him as he walked off. He did not return to the Temple of the Snows after that.
Keijō hosted many more guests over the next few years: emissaries and wanderers, courtiers and pilgrims, nobles and refugees—all of their stays were thankfully peaceful. In time he came across a younger cat with black fur and green eyes named Yoshi. For a while he and Yoshi shared their duties at the temple, and when he believed him ready to take over the hosting responsibilities, Keijō left the temple and ventured off down the same road the Stranger had taken; ready for his next adventure.
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