scarlet silk, a color her mother would never have worn.
"You must come with me," the woman said, calmly but with great urgency. As Ukon began to stammer a question, she raised a hand, its palm smudged as black as Ukon's own. "There is no time—come!"
Ukon got to her feet. Her ears rang from the blows her stepfather had given her, and she thought she could hear another sound, oddly familiar, but the strange woman did not give her the opportunity to look around the shop for its source.
"This way!" she hissed; grabbing Ukon's wrist, she dragged her out to the street. They began running along the narrow way, their wooden shoes sliding in the sleet and dirty snow. As they ran, Ukon began to hear agitated voices behind her, and then a sudden shout.
"Fire! The inkmaker's shop is on fire!"
"Aiie!" With a cry, Ukon stopped and looked back. From the alley behind her stepfather's shop rose a plume of smoke. Abruptly the wind shifted, carrying the smell of burning pine. "He must have overfilled the stove in the shed! I must go—"
"No." This time the woman's voice was a command. Her hold on Ukon's wrist tightened. Her breath as she pulled the girl to her smelled of rotting fish. "Your life there is over. You will come with me now. Do not look back again."
In a daze, Ukon turned and let herself be led along twisting alleys, away from the inkmaker's shop. A great clamor of gongs and bells now arose from the streets, as people signaled that the quarter was in danger of burning; as dozens of men raced toward the shop carrying wooden buckets of water and sand, few noted the inkmaker's stepdaughter hurrying in the opposite direction, a small red cat at her side. Afterward, those who had seen her running displayed neither recrimination nor much remorse for her leaving her stepfather to perish in the flames. His cruelty and drunkenness were well-known; the fire, which had indeed started in the shed, was contained to his quarters, and no one else was harmed.
Ukon followed the strange woman to a narrow street where she had never been.
"Here," the woman said, bowing as she gestured at the door. "Here you will find safety."
And before Ukon could protest, or give voice to her questions, the woman was gone. The poor girl stood shivering in the snow, tears once more springing to her eyes, when suddenly the little door slid open, and who should be standing there, yawning and rubbing his face, but the young poet, Ga-sho.
"Why . . . ?" He stared at her in disbelief. Ukon dropped her head, abashed and ashamed, and had begun to turn away when he grabbed her hand. "Don't go! Please, come in. You look half frozen, and"—his voice dropped, and he chuckled—"and look who you've found! Kury-ri, you naughty creature..."
He bent to pick up the red cat, which had appeared out of nowhere to rub against the filthy hem of Ukon's kimono. "Where have you been?"
He held the cat to his breast and looked at Ukon. "She ran off after I saw you—she's been out all night! But please, come in."
And he stood aside so that Ukon could enter.
They did not marry immediately, and for a while there was some mild scandal over the fact that the inkmaker's stepdaughter had found a home in the poor poet's rooms. But the tongues of that quarter soon enough found other tales to wag about, and by the time Ukon and Ga-sho were wed and had a baby due, the red cat had given birth to a litter of kittens of her own.
And, while the strange woman who had saved Ukon was never seen again in that district, for years afterward the descendants of the cat called Cleanears—red-furred, black-pawed, gray-eyed like their mother—were said to be lucky. Because how otherwise to account for the success the poet had, and the long and happy marriage he and Ukon endured? Such things did not come often to the poor people of that time, any more than they do to us today!
In medieval Japan, red bobtailed cats were known as Kinkwa-neko, "Golden Flower." They were thought to assume the forms of beautiful young women, and to help young girls in distress.
The Night of the Tiger
Stephen King
Stephen King needs little introduction. Since the publication of his first novel, Carrie, King has been entertaining readers by writing exactly what he wants to write, when he wants to write it. And this