I do not understand what I am. When I was old enough to leave my mother and find my own territory, I was bigger than all the other cougars I had met — even the big male that was probably my father. Besides my size, I wasn’t like my mother, brother, or sister. I don’t know how I knew this, but they were simple. The only things in their world were hunting, eating, and sleeping, but I wanted more than that.
The origin of my longing was a mystery to me. I wanted conversation, poetry, music, and companionship. As I grew from a kitten to an adult cougar, more strange knowledge blossomed in my mind. I became aware that the things I wanted were all two-footed things. They were the inexplicable creations of the creatures called humans.
At first, I couldn’t understand what purpose these things served. The noise they called singing did not attract any prey. Instead, it caused most birds and four-footed creatures to flee. I couldn’t make any sense of it at all. And this thing called dancing: was it some kind of mating ritual? If it was, why did they do it all the time but only birth their young one to two years apart?
It bothered me that I knew these names when cougars have no speech. I even knew that speech was the name the two-footed ones gave to the noise they used to pass information, similar to how cougars use mews, meows, purrs, screams, and caterwauls to pass information.
I found a village at the foot of the escarpment between the two-footed kingdom of Nordvek and the territory of the Green Elf tribes, and there I settled down. The sign over the gate on the main road read Herman’s Close, even though I knew that no cougar could read. My life was full of questions about myself I couldn’t answer, and it bothered me.
I was not bothered enough that it stopped me from the primary purpose of all cougars: hunting, eating, and sleeping. The area around Herman’s Close was full of game, especially deer and elk. There were no other cougars in the immediate vicinity. The only problems were the bears and the wolves, but it was easy to avoid them.
Then I found the boy. He was a pathetic thing. Looking at him made me sad, which is a human emotion, not a cougar one. I discovered him in the walled garden of the local lord’s manor. He looked like he was maybe ten human years of age. He sat in a chair with wheels with a blanket over his legs, reading a book. His left hand was in a glove, and he couldn’t use it much. He wore a mask on the left side of his face, with no hole for his left eye. He wore his copper-red hair long over his ears. Was he perhaps hiding a scarred left ear?
On days when I had nothing to do, I started watching him every afternoon. He first noticed me on my usual tree branch after spring became summer. I heard his gasp. Then, he sat very still. Well, it wasn’t as if he could get up and run away since he was missing his left foot.
His notice scared me. We cougars are solitary creatures and seldom move openly in the daylight. We travel by stealth and hunt by ambush. Being seen is not a good thing. He noticed me and I ran away.
I stayed away for many days. Then I came back. Watching the boy felt right to me. It was as if I was meant to be there. I changed trees often and never used the same branch twice. After a few days, he began to spot me again. This time I did not run away. I just relaxed and watched him. Sometimes I even fell asleep. Well, cougars do tend to sleep during the day.
It was past midsummer’s day when I noticed someone else was watching the boy. Looking through the second-floor window, a man or a woman in expensive robes or houpelandes watched the boy every day. After a while, they were watching me too. I thought it suspicious that no one came out to remove the boy from the garden when they knew a predator like me was stalking him. The disregard for this lonely boy with no friends bothered me. I don’t know why I found it offensive, but I did.
I decided to force the issue. One afternoon I jumped from my branch into the garden. I heard the boy’s gasp as I landed without a sound and started walking toward his wheelchair. The lady watching today left her post when she saw me in the garden. I half expected human guards or hunters to appear to protect the boy, but I was disappointed. The lady reappeared in the window with the well-dressed man. They took up their station at the window to watch what came next.
I got close enough to see that his one eye was a beautiful deep green. I could smell the fear on him, yet he made no defensive or offensive moves. He sat without moving. I circled his chair, noting that the couple watching from the second-story windows made no moves. What was this boy to them? A prisoner? An imposition? A burden? If they were his parents, then they did not deserve to be called moral.
I could only conclude that they wanted him conveniently dead at the claws of a wild beast. I resolved to disappoint them. I came up from behind the boy, rubbing my snout along the right-side armrest of the wheelchair. I wiggled my nose under his right hand and started purring. He didn’t move. The smell of fear was still strong on him.
In a tiny voice, he squeaked, “is it permissible to pet you?”
In answer, I planted my chin on the armrest, licked his hand, and continued to purr. He slowly moved his hand to my head and started to scratch.
Oh! The Bliss! Mere words can not express the glorious feeling of having someone scratch my head and behind my ears. I never imagined how wonderful a simple scratch could be. When I cracked open an eye to check on the watching couple, I was pleased to see their jaws gaping wide enough for a moth to fly in.
After that, I visited as often as possible if I was not hunting.
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Late one afternoon, as I took my shortcut through the sheep pastures, I saw one of the village shepherds backed into the corner of the stone fence by a small pack of wolves. His sheepdog was already dead at his feet. The man swung his staff before him to keep the wolves at a distance. His arms were already trembling from fatigue. He wouldn’t be able to do that for much longer.
I almost walked away to leave the shepherd to his fate. Cougars have nothing to do with the unending war between wolves and humans. But if the wolves always won, it could make them bolder and increase the number of attacks they made locally. That outcome was undesirable because the humans would increase the number of hunters. More hunters would be a danger not only to the wolves but also to every other predator in the northern forest - including me.
No wolf is a match for a cougar, but a lone cougar is seldom a match for a pack of wolves. It was a small pack of just one family, so I would have a chance if I approached an attack with the right tactics. There were six wolves: two parents, two adolescents, and two pups. With that much inexperience in the pack, dropping the alpha male would disorganize the rest. I crouched low and quietly moved through the tall grass of the pasture. I would only have one chance for a surprise attack, so the preparation had to be perfect.
Cougars dislike fights. We like to sneak up on our prey and then leap on them so we can use our powerful jaws to kill them with one swift bite through the back of the neck. Our hind legs are the most powerful part of any cougar, giving us incredible jumping ability. For example, I can jump more than twice the height of a draft horse. I was confident I could jump on the alpha male and kill him with a neck bite from thirty feet away.
My jump was a work of art, and my killing bite was perfect. The problem was the other wolves. One of the adolescents was closing and snapping at the legs of the shepherd while the mother wolf had turned on me. Worse yet, she was on my back, clawing my chest for balance and biting my neck. She tried her best, but her jaws were too weak, and my neck muscles were too thick. Still, it hurt. Oh boy, did it hurt. It hurt a lot.
I ran straight for the stone fence and ducked my head to roll forward. The maneuver worked, and the mother wolf was slammed into the stone fence and squished by my greater mass. She let go of my neck and slumped to the ground. As she tried to regain her footing, I had time to dispatch her to wherever wolves go in the afterlife.
The shepherd was trying his best to fend off the two adolescents. They were doing a decent job of nipping at his legs and forearms. I saw blood seeping from several wounds through his torn trews and shirt. I walked up to the first adolescent, who was too intent on attacking the human to notice me. One quick bite was all it took. The other adolescent stopped attacking, appraised the threat I represented, turned tail, and ran. The pups followed. I hurt in several places and felt disinclined to chase.
The shepherd sat on the ground. His legs were a shredded mess. I wondered if he could walk on his own back to Herman’s Close.
The man laughed with bitterness, “I guess now that I’m helpless, I’m next on your menu of victims this evening.”
From what he was saying, he appeared too wounded to walk. I couldn’t speak like a two-footed, so there wasn’t a way to invite him to sit on my back and let me carry him. The problem then became how to get him help without getting myself killed by the villagers.
The man eyed me warily as I laid down to take a rest. I had bites on my neck, chest, and forepaws. None of the wounds were deep, but they stung and ached at the same time. I cleaned up and groomed the bites as best I could, unable to reach the ones on the back of my neck. The man watched me as I groomed, puzzled as to why I wasn’t making a snack out of him.
I had a plan by the time I finished cleaning the wounds I could reach. I got up, stretched, and walked up to the shepherd. He picked up his shepherd’s staff which had a crook at the end for catching sheep, and tried to prod me away from him. It was good of him to make it easy to grab his staff, which I did. My jaw and neck muscles trumped his feeble human strength in our tug-of-war. Of course, I won and jumped over the stone fence with his staff.
“Hey, that’s my staff! Where are you going with my staff?” he shouted after me.
It was dinnertime in the village. No one was out on the streets, but I could hear voices and the clatter of dishes through windows cracked open to catch the evening breeze after a warm day. I sat down with the staff in my teeth, debating which door to knock on. I picked a house where many voices were talking and laughing.
Stepping up onto the front stoop, I used the end of the staff to knock on the door. Then I backed up and sat down. A short, plump middle-aged woman in a blue dress and white apron opened the door. She stared at me for a moment as if she could not believe what she was seeing.
I found her lack of panic encouraging. I carefully put the staff down, put my paw on it, and then tilted my head at her. She promptly screamed with impressive intensity. Well, maybe that wasn’t so encouraging. I picked up the staff and strolled down the street, looking for another house. I picked one two doors down from all the dinner noise I could hear inside.
I noticed several men with swords and spears erupt from the first house where I knocked on the door. They stopped rushing and stood still while they watched my approach to the second house.
“What’s that mountain cat doing?” I heard one of the villagers say.
I admit to feeling a little nervous by now, but no one had shown up yet with a bow or a crossbow, the only weapons I couldn’t outrun at short distances. I forced myself to walk up to the door, knock on it with the staff and then retreat and sit while waiting for someone to answer.
The door opened, and a young fellow in the deerskin jacket of a professional hunter looked out. He blinked at the sight of me. I repeated my routine of putting the staff down, putting my paw on it, and tilting my head.
“Well, Merciful Matadee, that’s a cougar,” he said to no one in particular. “Honey, bring me my crossbow and quiver, please. We got wildlife in our front yard.”
Crossbow? He was getting a crossbow? In that case, I was getting out of there. The problem now was to exit so they could all follow me. I picked up the shepherd staff and leapt onto the roof over the hunter’s front stoop.
“The cat’s on the roof!” someone in the growing crowd yelled. I jumped onto the roof next door.
“Dang, that pussy cat can jump.”
“Don’t let him get away. They’re the most dangerous when they’re not afraid of people.”
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I made sure I didn’t cross roofs so fast that the crowd couldn’t keep up with me. At the last house, I jumped into the lane and trotted up the road to the sheep pastures. I frequently stopped so the party of men and boys following me could catch up.
“Why do I get the feeling he wants us to follow him?” someone asked.
“Sure seems like it, don’t it?”
“What I want to know is where he got that shepherd’s staff?” said the voice I had identified as the hunter. By now, he indeed had a loaded crossbow.
It only took a few minutes to get to the sheep pasture. I leapt over the wall and padded up to the shepherd. The man’s eyes were closed. I put his staff down and licked his face. That woke him up.
“Gah!” he shouted, startled that I was so close to him. I licked him again.
“Uhg! Yuck! Will you stop that, you weird beast!”
Just for saying that, I licked him one last time with as slobbery a tongue as I could manage.
“I don’t believe what I’m seeing,” I heard the hunter say behind me. The small crowd that followed me stopped about twenty yards away, with swords out and spears pointed my way. The hunter had his crossbow pointed up, which was reassuring.
“Are you alright, Fredders?” someone called out. “You don’t look like you’re alright? What’s with all the dead wolves?”
“I’m not alright,” the shepherd answered. Then he coughed a few times as if loudly speaking was difficult. “This strange mountain cat showed up out of nowhere and drove off a pack of wolves attacking me. The wolves killed my herd dog. I thought I was a dead man, but for this cat.”
“Well, heck, Fredders, that cougar there walked up to a couple of houses in town and used your staff to knock on doors politely. I have never seen a cougar do anything like that before. They usually don’t like people,” someone else said.
While they were all having this shouted conversation back and forth, I was planning my exit so the two-footed ones would take the injured shepherd to a healer, and I could get on with my evening. I figured I’d jump over the injured shepherd and then run for the forest as fast as I could sprint. In case you’re not up on your cougar lore, we can run as fast as a horse.
I made my jump and started running up the slope of the pasture, scaring all those silly sheep.
“Stop! Cougar!” a deep male voice called out after me, “there’s a reward for killing wolves.”
What?
I stopped and turned around, confident that I could dodge any crossbow bolt aimed at me from that distance. A tall, balding man with grey hair strode out of the crowd and walked toward me. He was wearing the midnight blue robes of the clergy. He had to be the priest of the village temple.
He may have been getting up in years, but he still had some hefty muscles on his arms and shoulders. He made a show of giving his spear to the man next to him, “Hold this, please.” Then he took out his eating dagger and melodramatically dropped it on the ground. He made the gesture for the spell of holy light, and his hand lit up like a lantern, dispelling the long shadows created by the evening sun as it sank behind the ridge. He then started walking toward me at a slow and steady pace.
“Father Garshom, wait,” the hunter called after him. “What are you doing? That mountain cat’s a wild animal, even if it did save Fredders.”
“For someone as observant as you are, Dekker,” the priest said, “I’m surprised you didn’t look at this cougar’s eyes. I’ll be fine. She won’t hurt me.”
“She?” Dekker the hunter queried. Typical human, he assumed I had to be male because I was a big unafraid predator.
The priest got within spitting distance and then sat cross-legged in the grass. “Well, my lady cougar, I see you have wounds from your battle with the wolves. If you would permit, can I heal those for you? I won’t even ask you to join my congregation for the favor.” He smiled as if he was sure I would appreciate his humor.
I started to approach him but stopped when I saw Dekker walking towards us with his crossbow ready.
The priest turned and saw Dekker. “Put that cursed thing down right now, Dekker. I want to talk with this spirit beast, and you aren’t helping by spooking her with your crossbow.”
“Spirit beast?” the hunter gaped. I don’t blame him for being surprised. I was too.
I was a spirit beast? That possibility had never occurred to me. It would explain all my confusion about myself and why I knew so much beyond the ken of cougars. But how did the priest know this?
Dekker put the crossbow on the ground. Then he cautiously walked up and sat down next to the priest. “Oh my,” he said, with amazement falling off of every word, “will you look at those eyes.”
“Yes, they are something else,” the priest said. “It’s one thing to read about it in a book and an entirely different thing to see it in real life, not more than five yards in front of me.” He straightened up, “I was in earnest, my lady, about healing those wounds.”
I walked the rest of the way to where the two men sat. The priest held out a hand, which I sniffed. Yep, he smelled like a priest, right down to the scent of beeswax candles and frankincense. I lay down to hear what he had to say.
“Pardon me if I offend, my lady. Could you nod twice to indicate that you do understand me?”
I nodded twice.
“How about shaking your head no?”
I shook my head no.
“Good enough,” he smiled. “Might I see your right foreleg? I think I want to start by healing that nasty bite mark above your paw.”
I had to stand up to give him my paw. It startled him.
“What?”
“Father Garshom,” Dekker explained what I could not, “when a four-footed animal is lying down in the couchant position, the animal’s weight is distributed across the paws. She can’t pick up a paw when couchant.”
“Oh.” The priest looked surprised. “I didn’t know that. Now then,” he held up two fingers and began chanting the old language under his breath. His fingers lit up with a greenish glow, and the marred and painful cuts healed and stopped hurting.
“Now, what should I heal up next?” the priest pondered. I made it easy for him by lying down and rolling over. “Mercy!” he exclaimed. “That has got to hurt,” he got his first look at where the mother wolf had scraped several claw marks across my chest.
When he finished, he wanted to talk some more, but by now, the sun was down, and the sky was getting dark. I didn’t have problems seeing in low light. I lost my daylight sense of color, but I could see just fine. I knew it was different for the two-footed ones. They were essentially blind once the sun went down, poor things.
I stood up and lipped his sleeve, dragging him around so he could see the shepherd. The villagers had made a crude stretcher with shepherd staves and blankets. They picked the wounded man up and were just starting to carry him back to the village.
“What?” the priest asked. I pointed my paw, and he followed the line I was pointing along. “Oh, I see. You want me to attend to Fredders.”
I looked up at him and nodded twice.
“I was serious about the bounty on wolves, my lady,” Father Garshom stated. “Please come by the village temple, and we can discuss this.”
I had to think about that for a moment. The thought of a cougar traipsing through the middle of a human village in daylight could be a suicidal proposition.
Almost as if he had read my mind, the priest suggested an alternative, “Why don’t I meet you where the Western Highway passes the first house on the west side of the village? When the sun is between the horizon and its zenith?”
That was a better plan. Someone would be much less inclined to shoot me full of arrows if I was walking through the village with the priest. I nodded twice to indicate my agreement.
I still didn’t know how he could tell I was a spirit beast.
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Father Garshom pulled down a book so old that its covers creaked when he opened it. He flipped through it quickly until he found the section he sought.
“A spirit beast is a supernatural existence where a sapient soul occupies the body of some wild creature. Spirit beasts usually are under a geas, act as someone’s guardian, or have a specific mission to perform for the gods. Spirit beasts can understand human language, either spoken or written down. In some circumstances, a spirit beast may have the ability to write. Physically, spirit beasts tend to be larger than their wild counterparts and will have a lifespan of 80 to 100 years. Without exception, a spirit beast will have celestial blue eyes.”
Father Garshom nodded to himself, closed the book, and put it away. He left his study, which was at the back of the sanctuary, made a reverence to the statue of the Mother Goddess on his way out, put on his straw sun hat, and left the temple for the western edge of the village.
He stood under a large elm tree past the last house, scanning the horizon for the shape of a cougar. He didn’t see anything that could come close to the lovely feline who visited the village last night. He waited several minutes and was disappointed. The spirit beast did not come.
Suddenly, his sun hat went flying. He ran after it and caught it. Then he heard a strange noise. It sounded like a giant cat purring. He turned to see the thick tail of the cougar dangling down from a tree branch at just the right height to knock his hat off his head.
So, he thought, this spirit beast was playful, and his hat was her cat toy.
“I was beginning to wonder if you were coming, but I see you were here the whole time,” he said to the cougar, placing his hat back on his head. The cougar yawned in reply. She slowly stretched out on the limb and then jumped to the ground.
Father Garshom took a long appraising look at the cougar. She was a big beast and probably outweighed him by a fair bit. If she stood up on her hind legs, she would be as tall as he was.
“So, my lady,” he addressed her as she soundlessly walked by his side, “have you visited our village before?” He was surprised when she nodded yes. “So, do you know where the temple is?” She nodded again. “And have you read the notices on the public news board on the front lawn?” She shook her head no.
“Well,” he concluded, “that would explain why you don’t know about the bounty on wolves. Several wolf packs live in the area, which have been taking a toll on our sheep flocks. Our wool is greatly prized throughout the kingdom, so losing any of our sheep to wolves affects our local economy. Lord Herman will pay ten silver schillings for every wolf killed. Since you eliminated three wolves yesterday, you are entitled to thirty silver schillings.”
Father Garshom enjoyed this stroll through the village with a docile and friendly cougar at his side. Despite all the tales circulating this morning about the cougar’s rescue of the shepherd, the shocked looks on his congregation’s faces were just too amusing. He had not had this much fun in quite a long time.
By the time they arrived at the temple, a small gathering of older children and loafers followed the priest and cougar at a safe distance. The priest turned around when he reached the temple’s front lawn and made shooing motions at the small crowd. He waited with his arms crossed and his face stern until the last of them had departed. Then he opened the gate on the walkway into the temple grounds.
He stopped in front of a large signboard covered with official notices. It had its own roof to keep its contents dry. “This is the public notice board where Lord Herman posted the bounty for wolves,” the priest explained to the spirit beast and pointed to one of the notices. “Can you read it?” She nodded.
“I am curious, my lady,” he sat down on the steps into the temple. “Are you even interested in the bounty on the wolves? Certainly, the village would welcome the addition of a good hunter like you to help manage our wolf problem. But payment in silver seems a bit problematic for someone like yourself.”
The cougar looked at him with a tilted head. Father Garshom had no idea what that meant.
“I spread some sand out over there,” he pointed to a flattened pile of sand by the corner of the temple building. “Do you think you share your thoughts on this matter by writing in the sand?”
The cougar padded over the sand. She extended one claw carefully and started to write. When she finished, he walked over and looked down. The letters were crude, but the message was clear.
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“So, you want to be paid in venison. Given who you are, it is a reasonable request,” the priest told the cougar. “I must consult the local merchants to determine a reasonable conversion rate between schillings and venison. Can you give me a few days to do that footwork, my lady?” The cougar nodded.
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The village priest struck me as a good fellow who wanted to see me receive the reward for hunting wolves. If I could find an easier way to write, I would suggest they pay me with venison in the winter, when hunting is much more difficult. That could help me get through the hardest time of the year. After I met with the priest, I visited my boy in his lonely and walled-off garden.
“How I wish you could understand me, Fuzzy,” my boy told me as he scratched that unreachable spot under my chin. He decided he would call me Fuzzy a while back. It wasn’t the greatest name. I would prefer a more sophisticated name like Aurelia, Veronica, or even Berergaria. Without speech, I couldn’t tell him that Fuzzy wasn’t the right name for a stately cougar like me.
Then he surprised me with some news, “My family is coming to visit soon to hunt the wolves attacking the local flocks of sheep. I want you to hide far away when they are here. If they see you, they will hunt you down like a wild beast.”
An irreverent voice in the back of my head protested that I was already a wild beast.
“I’m hoping all the travel carriages make enough noise when they arrive to scare you away. I would be inconsolable to lose your company at this loveless place.” My boy sounded sincerely worried.
For his sake, I would lay low and stay out of sight. I wished I could tell him that so he would worry less. Besides, I now had allies in the village. The local hunters would tell the visitors that the local cougar was a spirit beast, which gave me some protection under canon law.
It was tragic that the person in danger from the visitors wasn’t me; it was my boy.