[This post is the first installment of a three-part short story. Download the full story as a PDF under the “Short Stories” tab.]

Mother had never felt so far away. All Solstice could feel was the stony path under her feet. All she could hear were crows in branches overhead. All she could smell was the stifling perfume from tangles of honeysuckle that walled both sides of her narrow way. All she could see, and then only in brief glimpses, was the nimble, darting form of a white cat. But she was following Black Cat—or so she had been told. 

Only Black Cat knew the way to the place of no harm. Black Cat could be snared by no danger; following Black Cat meant you couldn’t be, either. Wherever a paw of Black Cat’s set itself, harm was not.  

Black Cat sat in the parts of fires that didn’t burn, pranced on the rare tongues of rivers that could hold a person, stood in the only midst of the darkness where the light wasn’t swallowed. 

Many feet chanced upon the same treads that Black Cat had printed, and their owners found themselves living to tell lucky tales. Some found salvation in seeking to follow a form they thought they saw—a cat dark as shadow—the pursuit of which found them narrowly evading some dreadful accident or unhappy chance, while of course never finding the cat. Others claimed that it was not a black cat but a white one—bright as a star and quick as a shooting star—who’s path it was that led them to safety, out of the woods and onto a path, out from a cave and into open air, out of confusion and into clarity.  

“You will see a white cat,” the Starling had told Solstice, “and you will follow as it itself is following.”

“What does the white cat follow, Starling?” she asked. 

And he told her, “A black cat whose name I do not know. But you will follow as the white cat itself follows, and no harm shall befall you. On your way, you will not see the white cat unless Black Cat is near. You may not ever see Black Cat yourself, but you must follow him every step.”

And so, Solstice followed Black Cat, and she saw the white cat. 

Now Solstice’s mother loved all of the lights of the world, and she saw many lights. But of them all she loved the lights of the night sky most, for they were lights amidst darkness. In stars and moon she saw light that grew in brightness and in beauty because these were lights in the darkness; even the darkness was light to her, for her love of the stars could not be separated from the night in which they swam. 

And so it was that Solstice’s mother had shown her tenderly how to love. When some thorn or briar had torn one of Solstice’s garments, her mother would mend it for her with a bit of fabric from one of her own and would wear the tattered garment alongside her daughter with her mended one, and she would say, “My daughter, before this tear we had two dresses between us, and now, each still having one, yet we wear the same dress at once! How marvelous it is to love; how beautiful it is to be clothed by love!” And if Solstice woke from a bad dream, her mother would stay by her side and not let her own eyes take rest till the eye’s of her daughter’s mind were resting on beautiful sights in calmer dreams.

In many such ways her mother loved her, and in all things she praised the beauty of love and the love of beauty.  And of the beauties of the night sky which she loved, she loved most the Star Curtains, which are also called the aurora.  She used to tell Solstice how in her youth, she had taken a starling bird one night up a mountain and, reaching the summit of the hill, the bird had joined itself in a cloud of many other starlings, becoming a great light and shimmering green and purple over all the land until daybreak. And Solstice’s mother had watched as a youth all night with tears for joy and for beauty, and from that day into her womanhood she could see no parting without some beauty, and few beauties without some parting. 

Such it was that when the little girl Solstice woke this night from a bad dream, her mother not being there to comfort her, a Starling alighted upon her window. And Solstice said to him, “Dear Starling bird, if I can comfort you at this late hour, will you show to me some kindness in this dark night for the sake of my mother who loved every bird that was like you, and will you but show me a dream of those things like what my mother saw? For I am afraid and feel I am alone, and I do not wish to close my eyes in this darkness.”

But the Starling said to her, “I will not show you a dream. You will see your mother’s Star Curtains for yourself; even now they color the sky above the hill. Look!” And Solstice looked out her window—and behold!—the aurora shone brightly over all the land from the top of a hill. And even from a distance it was the most beautiful sight which Solstice had ever seen in the night sky. And she thought of her mother, and she cried for love. 

“Starling,” she said, “I do not any longer want to see the Star Curtains from a distance, nor do I want to go back to sleep. I want to stand beneath their light and look up and see nothing but their light.” And the Starling told her the way by which she would have to go to stand beneath the lights. The way led through the woods, the darkest of woods which wrapped the hill whose top was a field. 

“Look full on the beauty of the lights now,” he said to Solstice. “For when you stand at the base of the hill, and especially as you walk against its woods, you will see the light no longer. And though it will only be for a time that you will thus not see them, it may be that you come to doubt that you have ever seen them at all. So, see beauty and take courage, for you will not be alone on your way.” And in this way the Starling told her of Black Cat and of the white cat as well.