The Leave-taking of Ælfred the Cat
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At noontide, when the sun stood high and warm above the little village, Ælfred the cat lay sleeping upon the stone wall by the garden. He was a small brown beast, sleek of coat and wary of eye, and he loved well the heat of fair days and the ease of idle hours.
Now, after midday meals most folk had withdrawn themselves withindoors, and the lanes were empty of all save stillness.
Yet not wholly empty. For as Ælfred lay drowsing, he beheld, with one half-open eye, a man coming softly along the road; before him he pushed a barrow shrouded with a linen cloth.
At this, Ælfred roused himself, for cats are of a curious mind, and this seemed to him a thing not to be passed over.
So he sprang from the wall into the lane and sat himself down full in the path of the barrow. There he fell to washing a paw, as though he had no care in the world and had not placed himself there for hindrance.
The young man came to a halt and waited upon him. But Ælfred, feigning great busyness, would not stir.
At the last the man turned a little aside, thinking to pass. Then swiftly Ælfred leapt up atop the covered burden.
First, he sniffed the cloth and found in it the smell of dust, and linen, and grass newly cut. But then there came upon him a strange fear. For the cloth was warm beneath his feet. Not with the sun’s warmth only, but with an inward warmth, such as flesh hath.
Then Ælfred crouched low, sniffed again, and what he discerned made his heart fail him. Beneath the linen was the scent of a cat.
Not of some other cat, but that of his own self.
Thereupon he tore at the cloth with claw and tooth until he made an opening and thrust in his head beneath it. And there he saw a dreadful thing; it was himself lying there. Indeed, he saw his own brown flank, and the rent in his left ear, and the white tuft beneath his chin. Still this creature lay, with one forepaw drawn inward, and no breath stirred in him.
Ælfred then sprang back in terror, and all his fur stood on end, and from him came a thin and grievous cry.
At that the man stayed his going and looked fully upon the greatly mazed cat.
“There thou art,” said he softly. Ælfred shrank away, and at that same moment all the world seemed altered. The sunlight cooled. The lane lay in a hush deeper than any common silence. No wind moved in the herb patch. No bird flew beneath the eaves. And though the sun was full out, neither man nor barrow cast any shadow.
Then the man set down the barrow handles and said, “Thou shouldst not have followed,” and his voice was no longer like the voice of living men, but low and strange, as though it were spoken near at hand and yet from very far off.
Again, Ælfred looked beneath the cloth, and still the body lay there with eyes not wholly shut.
Then said the man, “Upon yon wall thou didst die, in thy sleep, ere the noon bell was rung.”
At that, Ælfred turned back and beheld there upon the garden wall, plain in the clear light, his own body yet lying where he had slept, small and stiff and empty as a cast-off glove.
When his gaze returned, the barrow was gone.
The cloth was gone.
The dead thing was gone.
Only the man remained standing, full in the lane, and his face wavered like summer heat above the fields. He put forth his hand and said, “Come now, little one. There is yet another village beyond this one, where no dogs give chase, and winter enters not.”
But Ælfred would not come.
In great distress he fled through every way and turning known to him: past the well, under the yew tree by the church, past garden and gate and byre. Yet however he ran, ever the man was before him, standing quiet in the way.
At last, come eventide, the villagers found Ælfred’s body upon the garden wall, cold in the day’s last light.
Old wives say that still, in the heavy hush of noon, when good folk do take their rest and the lanes lie bare beneath the sun, there may sometimes be heard the rumble of a barrow upon the cobblestones, and the thin, wrathful crying of a cat that will not be led away.
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