Josie and Abacus: A Renaissance Journey

Josie watched her mother and father argue for what seemed like ages. Her younger sister was asleep in the corner, stirring every now and then, but still not waking. Josie had never heard her parents argue so much.

She looked at her father's face, red with anger and frustration, and she knew how he felt. He was a proud man, who worked hard to provide for his family, and they'd been living with his sister all summer because the crops hadn't been good enough.

Josie knew that she was a burden on them. She wanted to be stronger, but she was always sickly and weak. She couldn't work in the field with her father or brother. And they didn't have the money to pay a doctor to make her better. So Josie had to find food on her own while they tried their best to keep up appearances.

Josie often wondered why it was that she couldn't be as strong as them. Maybe it was because she was born a girl. Maybe it was because she'd been sickly from birth. But whatever it was, Josie couldn't help but feel that there were things she didn't deserve to have; things she didn't deserve to enjoy when others were struggling just as hard as she was. The only thing that made things bearable for her were her dreams of Abacus, the wise old cat who visited her from time to time in the forest near their house.

But then something changed this summer. When Josie went into the forest to find food for dinner--their mother's turnip stew--she found an injured pigeon caught in some thorns near a stream in the woods. She took pity on it, cut it free with one of their old butter knives, and brought it home so they could feed it soup until its wing healed well enough that it could fly away again.

The next day, Josie returned to the forest with one of the pigeons they'd been feeding in hopes of finding another one who needed help getting back to its flock. Instead though, she found a little brown tabby cat sleeping on a leafy bush by a stream deep in the forest near where they kept their chickens overnight before taking them to market each morning.

His fur was matted and dirty, and he looked like he wasn't well cared for at all--much like herself--and so Josie sat on the grass next to him and began stroking him gently with one hand while holding out the pigeon in front of him with the other. After a few moments, Abacus opened his eyes slowly and gave Josie a long look before licking his lips hungrily at the sight of his favorite snack: pigeon feet!

After he ate every last bone off of every last foot, Abacus smiled up at her (at least she thought he did) before jumping down off of his leafy bed under the bush and rubbing himself against her leg affectionately before disappearing into the thick shrubbery along side of the riverbed until next time...