“Kitty.” It was the only word the child would speak, though it was in perfect Swedish, utterly without accent.
Even that little took a truly herculean effort to get out of her; the child had obviously grown accustomed both to not speaking and to the lack of anyone to whom she could speak. She was almost as silent as the animal whose name she spoke, and often off in a world of her own, absently batting at little balls of crumpled paper with a wistful look on her face.
Eventually, they gave up and started calling her “Kitty”; she paid them slightly better heed than an actual cat would have, but it was obvious that she hadn’t meant to name herself thus. Still, the child only ever said, “Kitty”; she gave no hint of what her birth name was, or anything else about herself.
Despite her preferred utterance, she could have been of any nationality, because her orange-ish hair (Mikkel told them that the white streaks were almost certainly due to stress) and blue eyes were not uncommon sights in any of the five nations in the Known World; the vague heart shape of her face wasn’t so uncommon, either. The “clothes” she’d had on when Emil found her were tattered rags in such horrible condition that Mikkel didn’t even bother trying to check them for clues; he just incinerated them, to the relief of all of the others.
Even her age was in question, as she was small and malnourished; though he knew it was a theoretical possibility, Mikkel’s knowledge did not extend to allowing for him to investigate any physiological signs that would set her age range more definitely than the rest of them could guess at, even if his somewhat skewed spatial perception would have allowed for it. “I can only tell someone’s age by autopsy,” was how he put it to Sigrun, who agreed that none of them wanted to know that badly.
Tuuri’s report of their discovery of “Kitty” had been prompt and proper, and everyone (especially Emil) would have given their eyeteeth to have been in the room with their four backers when they’d heard the news, but there was really nothing more the backers could do than what they’d already done when Reynir had blundered into their company, so the little band had to take care of “Kitty” as best they could with what they had on hand. Fortunately, they had enough spare clothes (among other things) to outfit “Kitty”; there was also (just) enough food to stretch to feeding another mouth (though Lalli started bringing back small prey he’d taken from his scouting runs).
The radio had startled “Kitty” badly the first time she’d heard it crackle to life, sending her scurrying into a pile of dirty bedding Mikkel had gathered for the wash, but her scare was not enough that she said anything then. Eventually, Tuuri coaxed her into saying “Kitty” into the microphone, but that took weeks and weeks.
A child had no business going along on forays into potentially lethal spots for books, however long she’d been forced to live in similar potentially lethal surroundings; thus, her care fell mostly upon Mikkel, Tuuri, and Reynir, though Emil was most unexpectedly helpful when he was around. Of course, it had been Emil who found her in the first place, half-starved and more than half-frozen in the sodden remnants of what had once been a place where children gathered to be taught, surrounded by the drowned bodies of a family of cats; whether she was taking care of the Blessed Felines or being cared for by them was open to question, though it was probably some of both.
In those early days, “Kitty” was still small enough to ride any of their legs, and every so often, she would wrap herself around the nearest such leg (unless it happened to be Lalli’s; the two of them had an uneasy truce, but…) and the person so afflicted would go into a whole pantomime routine about how they were being attacked by a horrible monster and needed help; it was the only time “Kitty” would ever giggle like a normal child.
Each member of their little band dealt with “Kitty” in their own ways, of course. It was only Tuuri who could coax “Kitty” into taking a bath, and only after considerable wheedling. It was only Mikkel who could feed “Kitty”, though that was not nearly so difficult. It was only Emil for whom “Kitty” would pull in her tongue, the tip of which she usually left sticking out between her lips in what Sigrun called a “blep” and Mikkel called a “derp”. It was only Lalli who could get “Kitty” to come out from her favorite hiding places, though he always wore an expression even more sour than his usual dour mien as he did so. It was only Sigrun who was fast enough to catch “Kitty” when she tried to make a break out of the open door of the Cat-Tank when Sigrun and Emil returned from one of their book raids.
It was only Reynir who noticed that “Kitty” was almost as sensitive to grosslings as a real kitten would have been, and Reynir who found her in the Dreamworld one fateful night…
