To Visit the Queen by Diane Duane

Yafh said. "What wizards do is important, regardless of what some People think." He picked up the rat one more time, dangled it from a razory claw, flipped it in the air and caught it expertly. "And at least from what you tell me you have it better than the poor ehhif wizards do: your own kind at least know about you. But Rhi, it's just that you never seem to have much time to yourself. When do you lie around and just be People?"
    "I get some time off, every now and then...."
    "Uh huh," Yafh said, and smiled slightly: that scarred, beat-up, amiable look that had fooled various of the other cats (and some dogs) in the neighborhood into thinking he was no particular threat. "Not enough, I think. And things have been tough for you lately."
    "Yes," Rhiow said, and sighed. "Well, we all have bad times occasionally: not even wizardry can stop that."
    "It stops other people's bad times, maybe," Yafh said, "but not your own.... It just seems hard, that's all."
    "It is," Rhiow said after a moment, gazing up toward her ehhif 's apartment building near the corner. Sometimes lately she had dreaded going home to the familiar den that suddenly had gone unfamiliar without Hhuha in it. But Iaehh was still there, and he expected her to be there on a regular basis. As far as he knew, she was only able to get out onto the apartment's terrace and from there to the roof of the building next door, from which Iaehh supposed there was no way down... and if she didn't come in every day or so, he worried.
    "You sure you don't want the rest of this rat?" Yafh said quietly.
    Rhiow turned toward him, apologetic. "Oh, Yafh, I appreciate it, but food won't help. Work will... though I hate to admit it. You go ahead and have that, now. Look at the size of it! It's a meal by itself."
    "They're getting bigger all the time," Yafh said, lifting the headless rat delicately on one claw again and examining it with a more clinical look. "Saw one the other night that was half your size."
    Rhiow's jaw chattered in relish and disgust at the thought of dancing in the moonlight with such a partner. The dance would be brief: Rhiow prided herself on her skill in the hunt. At the same time, it was disturbing, for the rats did keep getting bigger. "The rate they're going," she said as she got up, "we're going to start needing bigger People."
    Yafh gave her an amused look. "I've done my part," he said, and Rhiow put her whiskers forward, knowing he had sired at least fifty kittens in this area alone before he was untommed.
    "You've done more than that," she said. "Hunt's luck, Yafh.... I'll see you in a few days. Can I bring you something from Hlon'hohn?"
    "How are the rats?" he said.
    "Oh please," Rhiow said, laughing, and trotted down the steps toward home.

    For the last part of the run, she sidled, since the building next to her ehhif 's apartment house had windows that were not blind. Down by the locked steel door that separated the alley beside the building from the street, Rhiow looked up and down to make sure no one was looking directly at her, and then stepped sideways without moving. Whiskers and ear-tips and Rhiow's tail-tip sizzled slightly as she sidled, making the shift into the alternate universe where the hyperstrings that stitched empty space and solid matter together were clearly visible, even in the afternoon light. They surrounded her now, a jangle and jumble of hair-thin harp strings of multicolored light, running up toward vanishing points up in space and down to other vanishing points in the Earth's core or beyond it. Rhiow threaded her way among them, and slipped under the gate and into the alleyway.
    The garbage was piling up again. She paused to listen for any telltale rustling among the black plastic bags: nothing. No rats today. But then for all I know, Yafh's been here already. Rhiow stalked past the bags, looked up toward the roof of the building whose left-paw wall partly defined the alleyway, and said several words under her breath in the