Star Bright

I am Vashti, of the Folk, and of the Clan of Cat. I was born to highest Royalty, in the Imperial Citadel of Ecbatana. From time beyond remembrance, my kind, the Cats, have served as guides and companions to the Kings, Emperors, and learned men of the East.

The Chaldeans of Ur knew us. Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon consulted the Cats of his city as oracles. Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes the Great, all have made companions and friends of us. Seti of Egypt granted our kind the same burial rites afforded his royal fathers, the mighty Pharaohs.

Wherever the Clan of Man built their cities, civilizations, and mighty monuments, Cat was there as well, as friend and partner.

We have always walked beside the humans, upon the earth that turns beneath the sun. They were meant to shape the world, and have dominion over it, but we are creatures made to comfort and give love, and own no other purpose in Creation.

It has been thus since the morning of the world, when the Spirit Above first breathed out His divine Universe. On that day He set the Clan of Man upon the good green earth that had formed from His living breath, and beside them, the Clan of Cat.

To Man He gave a single lifetime of many summers, but to Cat He said, “I give you fewer summers, but you will live nine times, and walk nine paths, in the world that I have made.

“With eyes that are bright, you will see many things which are hidden from all others, and you will know the secret hearts of your fellow creatures. You must walk with the humans, comfort them, and guide their steps, for they cannot see the world as you do, and know not the realm of the spirits.”

So it is remembered, and so it has been sung, upon the earth and under the sun.

I have loved and befriended many humans, along the life-paths I have walked. They have given me various affectionate names, and I cherish them all, but by my own kind I am always called “Star Bright,” since the events of which I now tell, which have so changed all our lives.

My existence in the world of men began in the mighty empire of Parthia, which stretches from the Euphrates to the River Indus, far away toward the rising of the sun. There I became friend and companion to Thea Musa, she who was Queen in Susa and in Ecbatana, the only woman ever to rule the Parthians, the Persians, and the Medes.

Musa had been born a slave in Rome. At the age of sixteen summers, Caesar Augustus gave her as a gift to Great Phra’ates, fourth of that name, and King of Kings of all the world east of the Euphrates. Wielding her formidable womanly wiles, she soon won the King’s heart, and took her seat beside him as his wife and consort.

I also, was a gift, the King’s wedding present to his young bride, a new-weaned kitten, of the kind called Persian by the humans, just beginning my first life-walk, upon the earth and under the sun. Smiling, she took me into her arms, and named me “Vashti,” which is to say, “The Peaceful One.”

Peace was to be short-lived in the royal household, however. Not content to be cherished as wife, lavished with silk and gold, Musa promptly bore Phra’ates’ son, and banishing his other offspring, had her child declared the sole heir.

Less than a week afterward, she coldly killed her husband, with a “gift” of her own in his cup of sweet wine.

I, Star Bright, called “Vashti” by my companion, was there. I witnessed the foul deed. I saw the look of anguish and betrayal in Phra’ates’ eyes, as he breathed his last.

I was horrified. The ways of humans are not our ways; they are beyond the comprehension of one such as me. We Cats do not kill, beyond the need to eat or protect our young, and certainly not for power, nor for personal gain.

I was also saddened, for a Cat desires no greater happiness than to love her human companion, and can know no deeper sorrow than the knowledge that she never shall. Thea Musa had, by her appalling actions, placed herself beyond the pale, and I mourned her, as if she had been dead.

That night the boy, Phra’ates, son of Phra’ates, was declared King of Kings upon his father’s high throne, with his mother Thea Musa as Regent-Ruler.

Thus did a lowly Roman slave girl become Queen in all but name, of the great eastern Empire of the Parthians. She had made herself the equal of Caesar, who had given her away as chattel.

The murder had also earned her a new name among the people, although she loathed it. She was forever more called “Musa the Poisoner,” in the streets of Ecbatana, and soon in the whole of the Empire.

There is a price to be paid for everything that is gained, in this life beneath the sun. Can anything good come of a kingdom founded on greed and murder?

Silently, after the way of my kind, I pondered all that had happened, and was greatly troubled in my heart. Cat was created to give comfort and love, but how could I do that now for Thea Musa? Yet how could I fail to give them, and remain true to the ways of my Clan and my kind?

My companion had come into her one and only Life-Walk owning nothing, not even a name that was her own, for a slave in Rome must answer to whatever her master chooses to call her.

Now her coldness and cunning had made her mistress of everything that lay about her. Wherever her eyes fell, what she saw was hers; even the human beings were her possessions, for that is the ancient law of the Persians and the Medes.

It was said that Musa was “ambitious,” and so she was, as any drowning creature will climb over others to reach the air. Hers was the overpowering greed of one who has begun with nothing, and desires everything.

She has been called “ruthless,” and was certainly that, as well. She allowed neither law, nor moral creed, nor personal scruple to hinder her climb from the low estate into which she had been born.

She was a schemer, a usurper, a dissembler, and ultimately a murderess, and yet I clung to her. I am as I was created to be; I can do nothing else.

Being what I am, having no other choice, I poured my love into my human companion, despite the repugnance I felt at what she had done.

I was a single firefly, trying in vain to light a moonless night. My love for Thea Musa was water, poured out on hot, dry sand, only to vanish without a trace. Still I continued, with all the tenacity of my kind. There was simply nothing else I could do.

And then my companion, Thea Musa, changed. Perhaps my love for this seemingly heartless young woman had somehow taken root within her and grown; I know not. I hope it was me. I’d like to think I had some part in what happened.

I do know that one day, suddenly, everything was different. As the brightening dawn transforms the darkest night into golden day, her heart changed within her, and a new being emerged into the light.

It is often said among my kind that the Clan of Man are the most inconsistent and unpredictable of all the creatures the Spirit Above set upon His good green earth. The only dependable quality they possess, is that they change.

And so it was with Thea Musa. Standing upon the very pinnacle of the mountain she had set herself to climb, my young companion discarded herself, as a jeweled butterfly will leave behind the silken shell in which she has slept the winter away.

I will say this for Musa: she knew how to grasp the moment of time in which she lived. Many are those who lament, when the years have fled, and they behold their lives utterly spent, even as they waited for them to begin. But not so Thea Musa, Queen of the Parthians.

It was a new woman who spread her bright wings before the sun, and began to live again. With some of her old ruthlessness, she winnowed the leavings of her former self; that which pleased her she kept, and that which did not she cast aside without regret.

Standing beside her as she changed and grew, I began to feel a brightening hope for my companion. She was already very far from what she had been.

Thea Musa had owned nothing, and now was wealthy beyond imagining. Therefore she sent servants into the poorest sections of the city with laden carts and wains. There they distributed bread and clothing, and sometimes even silver, until no one in the Capital was starving, or wore ragged attire.

She said, “The old King possessed more gold than seven like him could spend. Why then, should my people starve, or go barefoot?”

She had never received medical attention of any kind while still in Rome, it being considerably cheaper to replace a simple slave than to pay a doctor to treat her ailments.

Now she had booths set up throughout the city of Ecbatana. There the sick from everywhere in the city might be examined and prescribed for, by physicians she hired in their hundreds with the dead King’s gold.

“People who perish from illness pay no tribute to the Empire,” the Queen said, “But those who have been healed will be my most loyal servants.”

Those who were dragged before her for judgement now received justice instead. All were encouraged to speak in their own behalf, and their new Queen ruled in favor of the lowly goatherd as often as she did the wealthy nobleman.

“Those who deal honorably need never fear my judgements,” said my young companion, “But let the merchant whose bag is full of false weights beware!”

A maidservant in Rome is almost never given an education, her body being deemed sufficient for the purposes to which she is put. Now Thea Musa craved to know everything that could be learned. She greedily filled her unformed mind with all the knowledge she could grasp, and then searched for even more.

One bright morning, she called for all her viziers, scribes and scholars. They gathered before her, as she sat upon the carven ivory throne of her departed husband. Uninformed as to what fate they had been summoned, they stood for some time and quaked beneath her scrutiny.

I, Vashti, Cat companion to the Queen, lay watchful in my proper place upon her lap, and with the senses given to my kind, judged each one as he approached. None escaped my gaze. Very little can be hidden from the eyes of Cat, and we are not easily deceived.

Most were honest and straightforward creatures, but a few had hearts that wriggled and evaded like serpents. One owned a heart as dark as night, and as hard as flint. Humans are not all creatures of the Light, but must be individually perceived, each in view of his own merit.

Each of the academics was in his turn compelled to kneel, recite his scholarly accomplishments into the silence of the royal audience chamber, then touch his forehead to the marble floor three times and withdraw.

Three were chosen, the rest dismissed, each considering himself fortunate indeed, having survived the interview.

He of the black and stony heart was not selected, and nor were those shifting evaders I had noted. Thea Musa would likely never know it, but I had subtly guided her away from those men, by methods known only to the Clan of Cat.

I sighed with relief. Those who remained before her were at least satisfactory men, though whether I would ever really trust them near my beloved companion remained to be seen. Perhaps I never would, but protective vigilance is part of what makes my kind what we are.

For I had indeed come to love the new butterfly Thea Musa, as I never could the ugly worm she had left behind her, discarded and forgotten. She had become utterly beautiful to my eyes, and I loved her with all of my being.

Now I could, after the ancient way of my Clan and my Kind, wholeheartedly pledge myself to my human companion. All that I was, or ever could be, I now placed at her feet in joy, and without regret.

Now my world was as it always should have been. Now I could be as I had been created to be.

One of the chosen sages, a scribe, was given the task of instructing Thea Musa and her maidservants in the art of reading and writing the Cuneiform script that was used throughout her Empire. Then she and they could shed forever the stigma of the illiterate and ignorant slave.

“No Satrap or Governor can lie to me now, for I will read his scrolls myself, and know the truth. Then if lies be on his tongue, he shall lose it forthwith!” she said in satisfaction.

The second, a mathematician, would teach Musa her sums, not in the blocky markings used by the despised Romans, but in the beautiful, flowing Arabic numerals of the eastern world. Then the secret world of numbers would be open to her eager eyes.

“No foreign merchant will ever cheat me again,” she said to this tutor. “For I shall add up the columns on his slate, and know the proper weight of silver to be paid, before he does himself.”

That left but one vizier to be assigned his work, a wrinkled and bearded ancient who yet stood as straight as a young tree, and regarded his Queen with clear and twinkling eyes. His name was Melchior the Persian, and when it was called, he bowed low.

I, with the eyes of Cat, saw in this human, a rarity seldom encountered among the Clan of Man: one whose inmost heart was identical to the person he showed openly to the world. Impertinence was in him, and a joyful spirit, but no dark guile at all.

“What can you teach me, old one?” asked the young Queen upon her ivory throne, as she softly stroked my fur.

“Everything, Exalted Queen,” replied the snowy-bearded savant. “For the stars see all, upon the earth that turns beneath their crystal gaze.”

“You then, are an Astrologer.”

“I am,” said Melchior, and bowed again. “I can teach you the names of all the stars, their meanings, and where each dwells in the vault of heaven.

“By them one may read the march of the seasons, and find his way when lost in desert places, or upon the sea. They can show you happenings far away, and even those which have not yet come to pass.”

“We have crystals and scrying stones in Parthia, oh learned one,” she replied, “And seers in plenty, to being forth the secrets within them.”

“Can your seers show you the ways of the gods themselves? For these too, are told by the stars, for those with eyes to see and the wisdom to interpret what is written there.”

I pricked my ears as the old one began to speak thus. I know the stars, as do all the Clan of Cat, and we know the Spirit Above as well. He does not dwell among the stars, but they are His possession, and He can speak by them, if that is His will.

“What gods?” scoffed Thea Musa. “Zarathustra? Mithra? Ormuzd? One of the Greek pretenders?” asked the girl in whose royal lap I lay.

“All of them,” solemnly intoned the ancient star gazer. “And also ‘Yah,’ he who is worshiped by the Jews beyond Jordan. All are written in the starry vault, some more brightly than others.”

Now Melchior had my full attention. What could a mere human know of these things? Such awareness could come only from the Spirit Above, and that was never given lightly.

“You shall teach me of the stars, Melchior of Persia,” said Thea Musa, Queen of the Parthians. “And I will come to know them all. Come to me again tonight, and we shall begin.”

And I would be present as well, I decided. If the Persian owned true wisdom, well and good. But if he sought to mislead or manipulate my Queen to his own advantage, then let him beware the claws of Vashti!

I had not come easily to the love I now bore for my young companion, but I would defend it and her with my life. The Clan of Cat are not betrayers, and nor do we fail of our vows. These are the ancient ways of my Clan and my Kind. By them I live, and by them I shall certainly die.

Late that night, just as the flickering lamps of the city began to go out, Melchior sent word to the Queen in her private chambers, announcing his presence.

She dressed quickly against the night air, and with a maidservant bearing a clay lamp, we emerged into the dark courtyard where the tall Astrologer waited.

Melchior was clad in robes of midnight blue, worked with sparkling stars in silver thread. In his hand was a gilded chain, from which depended an arcane device of golden disks and toothed wheels, which swung gently as he stood before us.

“Walk with me, Exalted Queen,” he invited.

“With no bodyguard, through the streets of Ecbatana by night? And were I to permit it, where would you convey me thus unaccompanied, oh learned one?” asked my companion.

“Only to my tower, there upon the Palace wall, Highness. I would never ask my Queen to fare abroad in the city after dark.

And you shall not be unaccompanied, for your Cat friend will guard you well, and your maid will light our way with her lamp.”

“Lead us then,” said Thea Musa. “Come, Vashti,” she said, beckoning to me, and I leapt into her arms.

The walk was as short as the Persian had promised, only across an outer courtyard, with its tinkling fountains and fragrant beds of flowers. The light of the maidservant’s lamp puddled on the flagstones at the humans’ feet, as we made our way through a darkness now pleasantly cool, after the day’s baking heat.

The Tower of Melchior was built as a part of the courtyard wall, and not of bricks but of quarried stone, dressed and laid by master masons. Its lentil and doorposts were marble and porphyry, and it rose some thirty cubits above the gardens. Beyond the door lay an interior stair, by which we soon reached the high vantage of the rooftop.

Upon this high aerie, and encircled by its low parapet, were many mechanisms and instruments, some small and displayed upon a table, others larger, and solidly mounted to the polished floor.

One such was a complex and heavy contrivance, as broad as a human is tall, in the form of a great polished wheel of bronze. It lay on its side in the very center of the open space, supported a couple of cubits above the rooftop by a pillar or plinth of stone. Its projecting rim was engraved with signs and symbols, and a silvered rail, hinged at one end, reached across its breadth. I saw that the whole could be turned upon its axis.

I hopped down as Thea Musa went to examine the mysterious device, while Melchior lit lamps all about the circle of the rooftop.

Returning to her side, he said softly, “It is called an ‘astrolabe,’ Great Queen. The word is Greek, and means ‘wheel of stars,’”

“It greatly resembles the small one you carry on your chain,” she answered.

“It is identical in purpose,” he said, presenting to her the device he had carried.

As Thea Musa took it from him, I sprang up lightly to the face of the great wheel. My kind love to watch from high places, and I stood now upon the highest pinnacle of the city, which was itself built upon a hill. The soft night breeze ruffled my fur as I gazed out.

From here I could see the entirety of the Created Heavens above us, and the vast city the humans had built below. The works of the Spirit Above are beautiful; what others build beneath them is but a pale reflection of the original glory. Reluctantly I turned my attention back to what Melchior was saying to my companion.

“This small instrument is a gift for you, Exalted Queen,” said the astrologist. “It may be used anywhere, and can aid you in finding any star you desire to look upon.”

“I will learn the use of it,” declared Thea Musa. “In days to come, my other teachers will also instruct me. Then I will know the script and numerals with which it is engraved, and you shall show me the use of these wheels. I will know all that this gift can tell me.”

“You shall indeed, Exalted One,” murmured the Persian. “All knowledge is there for the taking, for one who would reach out his hand and own it.”

“Teach me then, learned Melchior, for I do so reach out.”

“Very well,” said he, and bowed yet again. “Do you see yonder cluster of bright blue stars, Exalted One?” he replied, extending his finger. “There in the east, a hand’s breadth above the horizon.” My companion nodded, and he continued “How many can you distinguish?”

“I see ten,” said Musa, squinting and counting on her fingers.

“You have excellent eyesight, my Queen. Most can discern only seven.”

I could in fact see fourteen stars in the sky picture we Cats call “The Birds,” but the eyes of Cat are very much superior to those of the humans. We hunt by night, and our sight is so attuned as to detect the faintest glow. The night sky I saw was very much more crowded than the one perceived by human eyes.

“What is the meaning of these stars?” my companion asked.

“Their meaning differs, Exalted One, depending upon culture and belief,” Melchior continued. “The Greeks call these stars the ‘Pleiades,’ which is to say, Seven Sisters. We scholars of your great empire say ‘Parveen Etsaami,’ or Daughters of the Night. With their bright lamps held aloft, they await the coming of their father, Sirius.

“Now see the brightest of them. Her name in the Persian tongue is ‘Alcyone,’ and she is the eldest of the daughters.”

Then Melchior bent, and with a crank began to turn a wheel beneath the edge of the great brazen instrument. The whole mechanism slowly revolved, until the silvered rail that stretched across it indicated a point on the horizon directly beneath the bright star he had named.

Now he turned another wheel, and the free end of the rail began slowly to rise, and finally pointed directly to the star itself. Thea Musa watched him closely, as he thus aligned the entire instrument to the star “Alcyone.”

Then the Persian took a waxen tablet, and with an ivory stylus, quickly drew three symbols upon it. He handed it to his Queen with a small bow.

“This first sign, Exalted One, is the exact bearing to which my instrument is now directed. The second gives the precise angle to which the sighting rail is raised. The last is just the time, being the sixth hour of the night, upon the thirtieth day of the month of Amur’dad.”

My young friend stared at him curiously for the space of a few moments, then with a dawning expression, looked down at the small device she held in her hand.

“Yes, my Queen,” the scholar said with a nod and a broad smile. “You may, with these signs, manipulate your own small Star Wheel in the same way, and it will show you Alcyone, the eldest daughter and brightest star.

Thea Musa swiftly set the wheels as Melchior had instructed, and then held the device to her eye. The look on the face of my beloved companion was purest joy.

From that moment in her eighteenth summer, until the day she passed from this life, Thea Musa, Queen of the Parthians, was a learning machine. Her greatest pleasure became the knowledge she could now gather for her own.

Her mornings, after a visit to her little son with his nursemaids, were spent in ruling her kingdom, in hearing petitions, rendering judgements, and planning for the future with her advisors.

She was attentive to her responsibilities as mother and Queen, but I could feel the impatience within her, the eagerness to begin the most important part of her day.

After a light luncheon she then summoned her tutors, and passed the afternoon with reading, writing, and mathematics. The harried teachers reminded me of sweating laborers, striving to stoke the fires of a great refining furnace. No matter how much they shoveled in, it was instantly consumed by the greedy flame of her curiosity.

If Musa’s days were a frantic pursuit of knowledge, her nights were a time filled with wonder. At sunset she would send for Melchior, and we three would ascend the tower. Not until long after midnight did we return to her chambers for a brief period of sleep. Sometimes she would arise before the dawn, and go upon her roof, there to use her own small disk of the heavens.

She learned to find all the brightest stars, with their beautiful Arabic names, Arcturus and Rigel, Deneb and Betelgeuse, and many more. She became aware of the glowing pictures they made across the sky, as well. The Bear, the Lion, and the Hunter, all became her friends.

As the great sphere of the sky revolved above her, and summer became winter, all of them took their places in the exquisite library that was the Queen’s young and uncluttered mind.

My beautiful friend was now as different from the slave she had been as is a rose from a stone. For what was surely the first time in her life, she was truly happy.

I sighed in relief, for just as an unhappy ruler means a dark and fearful land, a joyful one brightens the whole of her realm. Musa’s joy soon spread from the palace grounds to the rest of Ecbatana, and eventually the whole of her vast empire.

I shared in her pleasure, for sharing is why a Cat was created, and my love for Thea Musa grew ever greater.

I too, was happy and contented, curling at her feet or sleeping at the foot of her bed. I had no desire to take anything more from Creation than the things I now possessed: food, drink, and a good and loving mistress, whom I could love in return with all my heart.

That our lives together would change yet again was, I suppose, inevitable. Life is a single leaf, afloat on the surface of the rushing river that is time. It cannot stop for our joys, nor even perceive them; it carries us where it wills.

Musa and Melchior both made the discovery that brought such change to all our lives, and indeed to all the world, almost together. Looking back to those days, I believe that this was inevitable, as well.

One evening, as the sky was fading from glorious blue to deepest indigo, my beloved friend Thea Musa rushed breathlessly up the staircase of the Astrologer’s tower, with her small star wheel in her hands, and me, scampering along behind. Reaching the roof, I sprang up to my usual perch upon the great wheel, as my beautiful young friend confronted the aged scholar.

“Melchior! I have somewhat to show you!” she panted. “I have seen a new star in the heavens!”

“Tell me what you have seen, my Queen,” said the old one, with a small bow.

“My new star is quite unlike any of the others we have observed together, good Scholar,” she went on, after a moment in which to catch her breath.

“This star does not move in the sky, neither as do the stars which travel together, nor as those that wander among the others. It simply hangs suspended, as does a lamp to light a room. For seven days I have observed it before dawn, so that I might be certain before I spoke to you.”

With an air of triumph she handed him a tablet, on which she had each day marked the position of the celestial body she had seen.

“See, the settings of my star wheel are these! They do not change with the hours or the days, but are the same every night. If you sight with these you will see it!”

“Your coordinates are identical with my own,” said Melchior, indicating with a wave his own much larger instrument. “I too have seen your new star, Exalted Queen.”

And I had seen it, too. I knew what my companion Thea Musa had discovered. All the Clan of Cat know the heavens, the diamond dusted bowl of night, at the center of which hangs the good green earth, upon which we live out our lives. Nothing may be added to them or taken away, without our knowledge.

I knew what was shining there, a hand-span above the western horizon, bright, and utterly new. I marveled, that it was fulfilled during my time upon the earth. I gazed upon it now, from my place upon the great star wheel atop Melchior’s tower.

“What can it be, learned one?” asked Musa. “What is its name, and the meaning of its unmoving light? What is the message it has brought? How may I read it, and know that which it portends?”

“So many questions, my exalted young Queen!” Melchior gently laughed, but at her sudden look of pique, he quickly continued, “and I shall attempt to answer them all.

“I believe the light we see before us is the Star of Stars, upon which the universe itself must turn and change. It is the fulfillment of a prophecy that was given long ago, in another time.

“If I am correct in my conclusions, fortune has indeed smiled upon us, for what we behold with our eyes is nothing less than the long foretold ‘Scepter of Yah’.”

The old scholar then took up a parchment scroll, undid its ribbon fastenings, and unrolling it before the Queen, intoned. “Hear the words of the Hebrew holy man Moshe, written an age ago: ‘I shall see him, but not now; I shall behold him, but not nigh. There shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Scepter shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab’.”

My companion blinked slowly, and then answered bemusedly, “Yah is the Creator God, worshipped by the people of Judaea, who say that they are his only children. What then has his “Scepter” to do with us?”

“No one knows, exalted Queen,” said Melchior, “but legend holds that a mighty King shall rise beneath it, and none will be able to stand before him.”

But I knew. Oh yes! The ancient stargazer might confess ignorance, my precious, beloved companion Thea Musa might shake her head, but I, her simple Cat companion, knew beyond doubt what, or rather who, was coming.

A promise had been given, long, long ago, in the morning of the universe. When the Spirit Above had set the Clans of the Folk upon His good green earth and given them life, He had also given them His solemn oath that He would return for them one day.

And the Spirit Above can never be foresworn.

He was coming. Perhaps He was already among us. The Spirit Above would descend and make His dwelling among us, for a little while.

He would reach out His arms and gather in all His lost human children. Not just the Judeans, as that people supposed, but all of them, all the lost and stumbling Clan of Man.

And we, all the other Clans of living creatures upon the earth, my kind and all the others, would see His face. The age old Promise was about to be redeemed!

I returned from my reverie, for my companion, the young Queen, was speaking again: “If a King has come, then an Embassy must be sent immediately,” she said. “Can you find it, Melchior? Can you go to the one place upon the earth, where the Star shines directly down?”

“I believe I can, my Queen.”

“Then prepare to set forth. Go and buy camels and donkeys, bread and skins for water, every provision needed for a long journey. Draw upon my royal treasury for all your purchases.”

“Yes, exalted Queen!” and bowing, Melchior the Astrologer turned to go, but my beautiful young Queen called him back once more.

“Do not undertake such a quest alone, Melchior. There must be witnesses to whatever has come to pass.

“Are there others among my scholars whom you would choose as fellow travelers? They must be well known as honest and trustworthy men, whose testimony will be believed.”

“I will take with me Caspar the Cushite, my Queen. And his friend, Balthasar the Chaldean. They possess the wisdom to comprehend whatever we find, and are men of high repute.”

“Go then and find them, and secure their agreement. Make everything ready. You shall set out at dawn, one day from now.”

And I, Vashti, would set out with them, I suddenly decided. I had the power to nudge the mind of my beautiful, beloved young Queen, so that she would send me, along with the three learned travelers. It would be but the work of a moment, and she would never know I had done it.

Though it would grieve me to leave my Thea Musa, I knew I would return. We of the Clan of Cat do not fail of our oaths, and I had made one to her, in love. The day of our reuniting would certainly come, when the quest was fulfilled and the journey complete.

But for now I could not remain idle at her side, no matter how I longed to do that and nothing more.

The Spirit Above had made His Promise to all the Clans of living creatures upon the earth: that when He came to reclaim His lost human children, we would all of us see His face.

From the fields and barnyards and wooded valleys, from the wilderness where Fox nursed her young, all those who had been created at the beginning were bidden to come. The Clans of the four-footed and those of the winged in the sky were all summoned together.

All would come to join the host of Witnesses, and I, Vashti, companion and friend to the great Queen Musa, would be there to represent my Clan and my kind among all the others.

And when it was accomplished, I would return to her, never more to leave my wonderful, beloved friend.

As I made my resolution she was speaking again to the aged astrologer: “And you must not go into the presence of the King who has come with nothing in your hands, good Melchior.

“I will have gifts prepared, three chests for three travelers. You shall carry gold from my treasury, and from my storehouses, the others shall bear the costliest frankincense and myrrh.”

Gently, gently, I touched the mind of my Thea Musa, and nodding, she added, as if speaking an afterthought, “And my gentle Cat companion, Vashti. She shall accompany you, and she will be my eyes, to see whatever may lie at the end of your quest. Then you shall, without fail, return her safely to me.”

And so it was, one day hence, as dawn was breaking in the east, we four departed from the citadel of Ecbatana, to find a star, and see the destiny of a whole world. Three humans, learned and wise, and I, Cat companion of my beloved Queen. I would see the face of the One who had come to fulfill His promise, and then I would return forever to her side.

END