Aeliana picked up Queen Seraphina as she passed, from the stone basking in the sun. The Queen prowled up her shoulders and dug her claws deep into Aeliana’s skin. Aeliana scowled and stroked the Queen roughly, her fingernails digging into the cat’s fur.
Queen Seraphina was the cat that had come floating in on a raft of fish scales, mewing for its mother and for its milk. Aeliana had rescued her, and the Queen had immediately taken up residence among the hundreds of black cats on the island as the one who ruled. Her authority was not to be questioned.
Aeliana wasn’t sure how she felt about Queen Seraphina. The Queen was a strange creature who loved and hated Aeliana in equal measure. She would purr and rumble, rubbing against Aeliana’s ankles one day, and turn right around to bite and scratch her the next.
Aeliana couldn’t understand her. Aeliana herself was a strange soul, who loved and was submissive to the island one day, and fought and spat at it the next.
She had arrived on the island weeping, and the island had taken her in, cared for her, and kept her alive. Now, Aeliana was its Queen.
Queen Seraphina was a strange cat, a fighting, fierce cat, a cat that could not be tamed.
Aeliana was a strange soul, a fighting, fierce soul, a soul that could not be tamed.
She made her way toward her fishing spot, the Bluff of Alden, as she called it. She carried a simple canvas bag on her back.
There were no holidays for Aeliana, but the mountains had their seasons. It was later in the year, just when the white pumpkins were beginning to appear on the slick lime-green hillsides, the seasonal orange fish were appearing in Aeliana’s nets, and the black cats were beginning to reproduce, with new small mewling black kittens with red eyes joining the horde.
Samhain. The time of Samhain. That’s what the cats called it, among themselves.
The Bluff was a cliff, and Aeliana lowered her nets into the thrashing, struggling mass of trapped fish—fish caught in the little inlet because of the fickle tide and currents. Aeliana called it the sea’s gift, and she never hesitated to thank the sea gods she believed gave her the harvest.
The cliff was the island’s center, and far below, in its misty depths, the sea sliced through the heart of the island.
She cast her nets deep and tied them securely to the stakes on the cliff. The Queen wormed down her shoulders and yowled in her face. Aeliana swatted at her, and the Queen bit her.
Bleeding, Aeliana yelled, “Stupid cat! Stay away!”
She sucked her wrist and watched the drops of blood fall into the abyss below her.
Aeliana sat in the shade of the mountain and petted the Queen until the sun climbed high, making her hot, and the nets were pulling. She stood and untied one of the ropes.
The cats across the island heard the scratch and click that accompanied this action and came swarming.
Tens, hundreds, thousands. Black cats, black cats, black cats. Caesar, Othello, Lady Macbeth, Ophelia, and others. All with names, all with hearts, and all hungry for fish.
She counted them as they came. One, two, three… nine, ten… Aeliana loved her cats. She let ten—only ten—sleep in her house with her. Queen Seraphina, Tristan, Caliban, Banquo, Juliet, Iago, Desdemona, Rosalind, Tybalt, and Puck. They were the ones she loved, the only black cats she saw daily, the only ones she really called by name.
Aeliana pulled with all her strength until the veins stood out on her neck. The rope rose slowly, reluctantly, and it took almost an hour before the heavy nets reached the top of the cliff.
The fish inside were no longer struggling, lying limp in the net. Catfish, anglerfish, tuna, swordfish, lionfish, salmon, carp, breams, pikes, mahi-mahi, zander, mackerel, bass, and perch—all kinds of fish had come to the island and ended up in Aeliana’s nets.
She dug deep into the catch, pulling out the freshest ones and tossing them into the seething mass of black cats behind her. The Queen leaped high and caught a large, fat orange mackerel in her mouth. Aeliana laughed and let the bag strapped to her back drop to the ground.
She bent and pulled, bent and pulled, her back muscles straining as they had every day of her life, growing stronger with every pull.
Aeliana took the tuna and the Wishfish, native to the island’s waters, and tossed them into her bag. These were the fish she ate. Tuna on Sundays, Wishfish for the rest of the week. All the other fish were for the cats.
Aeliana brought the full canvas bag of fish back down the steps to her house. She steamed and dried the tuna and let the Wishfish bake in the oven, still warm from the fire of the night before.
“Seraphina, come,” she called to the Queen. She hoisted the Queen onto her shoulders again, and the cat settled around her neck as Aeliana walked back up to the Bluff.
Aeliana set the Queen down on the stone and took the nets in hand, dragging them down to the plateau where she would cook. There, Aeliana spent the rest of the day skinning and gutting the fish, tossing the limp silver bodies into bubbling cauldrons. She fed all the cats at high noon, flinging ladlefuls of fish stew into hungry mouths until her wrist ached and there were no more cats left to feed.
Afterward, Aeliana walked back to her stone house, tired and content, to count her black cats and feed them the leftover swordfish. Queen Seraphina sat on her lap, purring and receiving the choicest mouthfuls. As the sun set behind the checkerboard hills, Aeliana fell asleep with the Queen on her lap.
