Bastien's Blessings

The coming of the seven-day night, as they called it, was a warning they all took seriously. The news that there would be no daylight for one whole week troubled the people of the small town of Cairns greatly, but not as much as when they learned that the gods would come down from the skies during this darkness. As to why this particular time, the book of knowledge was silent.

"They are gods," the people said in defeat. "There is no need for them to make sense."

It was to start on the night that any one of their roosters died, so when old Charles Chickens clucked his last the townsfolk braced themselves.

The people of Cairns, both young and old, stood outside on the dirt roads facing west as they bade goodbye to the sun. To fight their growing fears and, perhaps, to try to smother the violent waves of disquiet, they decided to throw a feast when the darkness fell. Everyone was invited—from the McGonnellys to the Bielbears, from the farthest house up the hill to the smallest hut at the center of the market—everybody heard the word. There was dancing and singing. There were tables set up on the main road. Here and there, mugs of beer were passed around. The smell of roasting beef and pork permeated the air, while the women went around the tables carrying trays with bowls of potatoes, bread, and gravy.

Late into the night, torches were lit. Soft circles of light bathed the merrymakers who were already red in the cheeks and full to bursting. Their mayor, a plump man named Federick Humblesby, raised a glass that was already half empty.

"To the people of Cairns and the seven-day night!" He said. "May all of our woes be as short-lived as this darkness. Blessed us be!"

The townsfolk raised their glasses and drank deeply, knowing their fears were kept at bay by the beer. They have just finished their last beer barrel.

"Say," one of the town's loudmouths said. "Weren't the gods s'pposed to come down?"

They exchanged uneasy looks, having completely forgotten that. One woman gasped when they realized they had not prepared for it at all.

"What are we to do?"

They turned to one another, breath smelling like pork fat and gravy, repeating the same question.

"We make offerings?"

"With what? We just slaughtered Moo's cow."

Heads turned towards a fire pit where there was a boney carcass still roasting on the dying embers. Its underside as black as coal.

"A pig then?"

Everyone looked at the plates they left on the table, each one had a bone from a rib, a foot, a leg. There was even a discarded ear near the foot of one farmer.

"Surely, one of us can afford to slaughter one more?"

No one made eye contact. All of a sudden, the starless night sky became an interesting thing to inspect.

"Maybe, they're alright with some vegetables?" A woman said.

The older woman beside her frowned. "Well then, you go on ahead and give them the wilted ones since that was all you left back home."

A man in ragged clothes raised his hand. "Mayhap some bread? I have got more at home."

The people who were standing next to him, his neighbors all, scratched their head in uneasiness. The man was the poorest in all of Cairns and would accept the lowliest of jobs to get by. They knew his bread would be moldy and, to be honest, probably the only food he had.

"You need not worry about it." One of them said to him. "You keep the bread and be full."

"We've got carrots," a man said from the other side of the crowd.

"What you feedin' Paddy then? Your shoes?" His wife replied.

"Why don't we just go to the next town and buy carrots there?"

"In this darkness, friend? Not one of your brightest ideas that."

"I think we've got some more fruits in the basket at home?"

"Those fruits I told you to throw in the bin yesterday because they were starting to smell like death. Those fruits, you mean?"

"Alright, enough!" The mayor shouted to be heard. "We have no more left to give, or so it appears. But we must never anger the gods. So, what we must do then is simple: since we have nothing to feed the fires of the ritual cauldron, we give what we can to any visitor who arrives."

A young man's brow furrowed in confusion. "A visitor?"

The mayor nodded. "Any visitor. Stories of old have often described the gods as coming down in disguises, mostly in forms we often find rather... repugnant, to test our mettle."

The crowd groaned. Already, they were thinking of a man covered in a thick crust of his own sweat and dirt, his hair matted and his clothes stiff from the perpetual wear. The idea of allowing such a man into their homes made them wrinkle their nose.

"And now, ladies and gentlemen, it is late. Return to your homes, please. Bring the torches with you. There should be no one left out on the roads when we're all home. Tomorrow, we reconvene at the plaza to discuss this matter when our words aren't slurring and our heads are clear."

The mayor waved at everyone goodbye, his assistant on his tail with their own torch. The crowd slowly dispersed as their feasting finally ended. Walking in tight groups, every single one was immediately sobered by the reminder that they would not be waking up to sunlight pouring in from their windows.

And when all of Cairns was fast asleep in their beds, with their heads throbbing and their bellies bloated, a strange fog crept forth from the shadows, wrapping the small town in a white, cool mist. Emerging from its center and leaping towards what remained of the feast was a rather large black cat. Tied around its neck was a collar with a golden pendant that had the name "Bastien".

Bastien sniffed at the greasy plates and the upended glasses, finding nothing for him. He flipped some bowls over to see anything interesting at the bottom. Then, he spied the cow on the spit and slunk towards it.

There was almost nothing left of the cow save for its charred bones. Bastien clawed at it, shaking its form until it fell to the ground. The cat licked its paw and then tapped the cow's bones as if to awaken the dead animal. When the bones started to move on their own—rocking from a side to side like a boat caught in a storm—Bastien moved on and visited his first house.

There, in the backyard with the flies hovering over them, was a mound of rotten fruit that stank to the heavens. Bastien paid the stench no mind and, like with the cow, inspected the refuse thoroughly. Finding only mushed and discolored fruits, he again tapped it with his paws and when the fruits started to take on a color as if they were freshly picked, Bastien was long gone.

He found the smallest hut in the marketplace next. It was barely big enough to house the lonely man curled up on a cot in a corner, his entire possessions stashed inside a cloth bag that he used as a pillow. At his feet was a small box that Bastien opened to find three small pieces of bread that were bluish-green. The black cat retched before he tapped the moldy slices and then went on his merry way.

The last house that he visited was the mayor's. Bastien climbed up through a window left open near the kitchen and what he saw surprised him as much as any black cat, whether godlike or otherwise, could be surprised. There was an entire shelf full of food and drinks to fill the bellies of at least thirty people. Bastien saw a huge roll of cheese, a row of jams and sugared plums, five stacks of sour dough bread, and so on. There was a hatch on the floor left open and the curious Bastien went down to have a look. He found the mayor's assistant splayed like a doll on a chair, mouth hanging wide open, and snoring. His fingers were loosely curled around the neck of a wine bottle that he held to his chest. Next to him was an oaken rack that contained many more bottles like the one in his hand. Bastien saw nothing to do there and went back the way he came.

He eventually found the mayor sleeping in his room right in the middle of his plush bed, covered to the neck with a soft, velvety blanket. Bastien was at a loss. This man appeared to be wanting for nothing. What was there to do here? Bastien sat in the darkness for a while, contemplating. And then, unable to resist the call of the fluffy bed jumped right into it and stretched. Before he left, he sharpened his claws on one of the bed posts.

Bastien made sure that he visited all of the houses in this small town and giving away what magic he could. Being that his mistress was rather busy elsewhere, he figured it would be alright to go on an excursion of his own. As long as he made it back home before his mistress, he wasn't going to be in any trouble. Besides, his mistress did say that she was getting tired of people asking for so much, so when Bastien saw with his own eyes that there was such shortage in food in that small town, he resorted to solving this problem himself. His mistress would be proud.

All of this work tired Bastien to his bones. Before the first person had even opened their eyes to start their first day in the darkness, the black cat had gone back from where he came.

There was a commotion that woke everyone. Ammie Fugle, the mother who was tired of rotting fruits in her house, had awakened to a bountiful harvest of bananas, mangoes, and apples just sitting outside her backdoor.

The McGonnelly family, living two houses down, saw that their entire kitchen floor was covered in huge, juicy carrots.

Benny "Moo" Moones, the farmer who volunteered to have one of his cows slaughtered nearly fainted in shock to find the same cow back in his farm, grazing. He even inspected every inch of its body to confirm that, yes, it was the same animal they ate last night. He thought he was going crazy, but then his eyes chanced upon a pig walking on the road that let itself into the front yard of Felmer Bielbears—the man who sold the very same sow to the crowd before the feast.

"This is the gods' work," Moo said, in a sudden wave of enlightenment, but with that burst of wisdom came another realization: Now they had no more excuse not to make their offerings.

Unbeknownst to Moo, everyone else who woke up in that strange Cairns darkness was having the same epiphany. The gods had given them a gift, and now they must give in return.

But of course, nobody wanted to.

When the mayor woke up, he was alarmed to find splinters everywhere on his bed sheet. When he slid his legs over to the side to get up, so many of it embedded in his skin. His assistant was woken up by his scream. Try as they might, they were impossible to pull out, not in that darkness when they could barely see a thing. He dressed up and went to the town plaza getting increasingly annoyed as the splinters felt like small wooden knives stabbing him everywhere on his legs.

The mayor stood upon the dais at the plaza with a scowl on his face. There was no warmth in the crowd that gathered to see him, and this made him all the more irritable. Instead, everybody had a peculiar look on their face that Mayor Humblesby couldn't place.

"Any new volunteers? Anything at all you could offer to give?" He cut to the chase.

The crowd exchanged uneasy looks, some even avoiding eye contact.

Mayor Humblesby winced, feeling a sharp pain between his toes that he wanted to scratch. In the awkward silence that stretched, only his labored breathing was heard.

"Let me be clear: there is absolutely no one who wants to offer anything to the gods you constantly pray to for blessings and such? No one at all?"

The sound of soft murmurs of protest undulated in the plaza. The mayor caught things like, "... but the horse..." and "... damned fruits no good like I told you before..." and "... we'd go hungry...". They were no closer to a solution.

But just before the mayor walked out in annoyance, a voice shouted from the back. It was coming from the marketplace. Heads turned to look at the poor man who was smiling from ear to ear. In his arm were loaves upon loaves of freshly baked bread that left everyone's mouths watering when he passed by. Without another word, he tossed the bread into the ceremonial cauldron along with the herbs for the ritual and then set it aflame with the torch he carried. He then knelt down and lifted his hands to the sky, completing the ritual of gratitude by exclaiming it loudly.

The crowd watched in awe. Felmer Bielbears, who was standing nearby, clutched his heart in joy and wept. "Those who have nothing be the first to share. I would have gladly given more had I more to give."

Moo's jaw dropped. "Had you more to give?" He shouted from the other side. "I saw your pig walk back to its pen."

This was met with a shocked gasp from everyone, but the look on Felmer's face was more than their surprise combined. "You accuse me of lying? If it were true, you would know this how?"

"Because his cow came back to him!" Arthre McGonnelly guessed, though the look on his eyes betrayed that he knew this to be the truth. "This is madness!"

And then the crowd erupted in a cacophony of accusations and defamation, hurling insults at each other that go much further than the night of the feast.

"SILENCE!" The Mayor stomped his foot on the wooden platform and immediately regretted it. He saw stars when he closed his eyes. "Cows and pigs coming back to life is the work of the gods. Have any of you received anyone into your homes? Anyone at all?"

The people of Cairns shook their heads, though they were feeling dread crawling up their spine. Surely the gods must ask for something in return?

Before the mayor could speak again, the burning cauldron spewed out white smoke as thick as a cloud before the rain.

"Was this where you've been, Bastien? Tell me." A female voice said from within.

When it dissipated, the townsfolk immediately fell to their knees in deference. Stepping out from the column of smoke was a tall woman with long, black hair to her feet and a golden dress that twinkled like stars. Atop her head was a crown of light that burned like the sun. In her arms was a black cat purring contentedly. Bastien the cat took one look at the people and then looked at his mistress to say that, yes, this was where he's been.

"To the good people of..." the goddess turned to the mayor who had his face pressed to the ground.

"Cairns, my goddess," he replied, his voice muffled.

The goddess cleared her throat and started over.

"To the good people of Cairns, let me apologize. My beloved Bastien wandered here into your town and gave you gifts. Unfortunately, he does not know well how to wield this power—he is a cat, as you can see. Whatever you received from him will decay soon and destroy everything it touches. Before that happens, I highly suggest you burn each and every thing."

"But my goddess, please. We would have nothing left to eat!"

Bastien meowed, prompting the goddess to put her ear next to the cat. "What's that you said? The fat man has enough food for all?"

The cat purred in response.

"Very well, then. You heard the cat."

"My goddess, please," the mayor said, trembling. "It will not be enough—"

"I will not hear any more." The goddess replied, and with a flick of her hand the cloud of smoke appeared once more wrapping itself around her, and when it faded, so did she.

The stunned crowd turned to look at each other, horrified and embarrassed of their greed. Without another word, they all rushed away from the plaza, panic surging through their veins as they gathered all that had mysteriously appeared in their home. The frenzied crowd tossed every piece of food into the fiery cauldron and kept the fire burning for a whole day. One child and his friends took pity upon the cow and the pig and set them free before their owners got to them. But just before everybody thought that the chaos was over, the crowd descended upon the mayor's house demanding for some food. Federick Humblesby was weeping as he gave hunks of cheese to his angry people.

Meanwhile, in the abode of the gods, a smiling goddess looked down upon the folks of Cairns as she caressed the equally happy cat in her arms.

Bastien was no inept cat—he did exactly what his mistress would have done and used his powers just as he was trained. He was generous to a fault, and that was his only shortcoming.

"Why don't you pay that poor man a visit again tonight, Bastien?" The goddess said.

The black cat purred.