As Jack broke and shoveled earth in that old graveyard, he said his prayers. He said the Our Father and the Angelus and many Hail Marys, and sometimes when he worked near an old friend's grave, he prayed to the saints, asking them to pray for his old friends. Sometimes he considered if friends' spirits watched him work, and sometimes Jack decided they did and he talked to them.

"Are you thinking of the good old days?" he wondered aloud one evening, looking at the grave of his old friend Bill the butcher. "Or maybe you think these are the good days, eh?" He listened closely for an answer, but heard only the hiss of September wind snaking through leaves under foot and over head. He listened to the trees whisper. "Is that you, Wheeler?" he asked, standing beside the grave of his friend Dan Wheeler the blacksmith. Wheeler had died in the summer, and it would be the spring before grass grew on his bare earth.

Jack had raised his shovel to pat down the brown clods on Wheeler's grave when he felt something brush past his leg. He jumped sideways and raised his shovel higher - but didn't swing the tool. Maybe the touch had been from an old friend.

"That you, Dan Wheeler?"

Jack stood still as a graveyard angel, staring into the twilight. Again he felt the brush against his leg. Peering down through the fading light, he found himself staring into a bright yellow eye. He blinked and saw another eye, this one a bright green.

Trembling from boots to brow, Jack raised his shovel higher and bent lower to see, and that's when he heard the loud "Meeeooowwww."

Jack laughed aloud in the gathering gloom. "It's a cat," he announced to no one. The cat meow'd back. "You frightened me, ol' tom. I thought you was a spirit gettin' up for the night." Jack laughed again, shouldered his pick and shovel, and trudged home, his step sure and quick. Very quick.

"What's that?" asked his wife Elizabeth, pointing at the ground near Jack's feet. The yellow-eyed/green-eyed cat had followed Jack home.

"It's a cat, Lizzie. I thought it was Dan Wheeler." As they went into supper, Jack explained that to his wife. The cat followed the old couple into the house and made himself to home in front of the fire. It felt so natural to them, Jack and Elizabeth never discussed it. From that night on, the large black cat, patch of white on his chest, crooked tail from an old fight, one green eye and one yellow, lived in their cottage and was their cat. At least as much as any cat can be some one's. They called it Dan, as a tiny joke among themselves.

Just after sundown one All Hallows' Eve, what the old folks call Samhain and the children call Halloween, Jack leaned against the wrought iron graveyard fence and peered in at his work, the old and new graves bathed in cold argent light. A sliver of moon rode high in the early evening sky, making the few whisps of cloud glow.

Jack scraped the earth from his tools. "My friends," he said softly, "and spirits I never knew, ya'll be good tonight. I've got to get on home." He spoke in a whisper so no one would know he talked to the dead.

His whisper was answered by a sound that raised his hair, froze his breath, knotted his grip on the pick. It was a moan and a groan and a church organ wheeze, a sound no animal or machine should make. "That's no spirit," he said aloud to himself. "The dead make no noise like that." He gripped his pick with both hands.

He heard the moan again, this time answered by a long, powerful meow. No kitty-cat squeak, this meow came from a muscular throat, deep chest, mighty lungs. It stretched long and sounded like speech, and Jack called "Dan?" into the darkness. Dan did not like the dark, didn't like cool-damp night air when there was a fire to lazy beside. Dan shouldn't be out by the graveyard on an All Hallows' Eve, and nothing should make such a noise. "Dan?" he called again.

A third time the moan grumbled through the evening air. Raising the pick, Jack peered to his left, toward the sound that froze his feet in place as it rumbled the ground beneath him.

He saw something move. His heart stopped - then pounded. "I'm imagining things," he said aloud, but it didn't convince him.

Through the graveyard came a cat, a cat as huge and black as the first black cat ever birthed. It strode proudly between the tombstones, head, ears and tail held high. Behind this stately creature came nine cats more. Their step was measured and stately, and on their nine backs lay a tiny coffin draped in purple. Atop the coffin sat a gold and silver crown.

Jack could not move, so frightened was he. The cats marched toward him, and with each step they howled and moaned and meowed in agony. As they came closer, Jack saw their bright golden eyes shining in the fading light, and their moaning was the saddest sound he'd ever heard or imaged. Through chattering teeth, he muttered every prayer he could remember. He even tried the prayer of contrition. "Bless me Father, for I...am scared!" Every piece of him shook.

Then the cats stopped. They, too, froze in the moonlight, the coffin on their backs. The monstrous black cat who led the procession called out, "You there! Jack!"

Jack's knees failed him, and he collapsed to the graveyard turf.

"Jack," called the lead cat. "You must tell Tom Grimalkin. Tell him that Noir Grimalkin is dead. You must tell him, Jack."

Jack did not remember how he got to his feet, how he found the gate, how he got home that night, but he did reach his home. Dirty, sweating, breathless, pale, shaking, he had lost his tools and his ability to speak, and the sight of him horrified Elizabeth.

"What's happened, Jack? All you all right?"

Jack slammed home the bolt that locked the front door, stumbled across the room and collapsed in the corner furthest from the door and the graveyard beyond it.

"Jack? What's happened? Is some one after you? Have you killed a man?"

"Who is he?!" Jack yelled into Elizabeth's worried face. "Who is Tom Grimalkin, eh? That's what I want to know. Who is Tom Grimalkin?"

This frightened Elizabeth more than the sight of Jack's terror. If Jack was talking crazy, what else might happen?

"I've never heard of him, Jack," she said softly. She reached a roughened, comforting hand to her husband's forehead. He flinched away. "I don't know who he is. Tell me about him." She settled her hand on his knee. He shivered, but his knees were already pulled so close to his chest that he couldn't flinch away. "Tell me about Tom Grimalkin."

"Wah!" shrieked Jack when he heard the name. "Whaahhh!!" He screamed and tried to shrink further into the corner. He waved a quivering arm.

Green/yellow-eyed Dan was striding slow and slinky from under a chair, his two-colored eyes droopy and staring at the frightened Jack.

"It's just Dan," said Elizabeth gently. "It's just our cat. Jack, tell me about Tom Grimalkin."

"Where did you hear that name?" asked Dan.

Elizabeth showed her fear by mutely freezing and staring. Jack tried to shrink further.

"Please, Jack," said Dan the cat, quiet but insistent. "Where did you hear that name?"

"The graveyard," gasped Jack. "A cat told me. A cat said Noir Grimalkin is dead. A cat said tell Tom Grimalkin. A cat in the graveyard told me."

Dan nodded, and blinked very deliberately. Hooking his claws into the edge of the hearth stone, he slowly stretched in a feline way before the fire. As he stretched he grew longer and larger, his fur shone, the white on his chest shrunk to a pin prick in the black. The crook in his tail straightened - almost - a tiny bend remained. His purr grew lower and deeper, warmer and richer. He finished his stretch, now larger and more imposing than the cat that led the funeral procession. Looking from the hearth to the frightened couple, he tried to sound comforting.

"Rest easy, Jack," said the Cat, his voice deep and booming. "You delivered your message, and you'll not see those cats again. I am Tom Grimalkin. With the death of old Noir, I ascend as the new King of the Cats. You are kind and brave, Jack. You have a friend in the Kingdom of Cats. And we never forget."

With a silent cat step, King Tom turned from the frightened couple and sprang into the fireplace. Before the flame touched his fur, the giant dusky animal turned into a cat-shaped cloud of shimmering black smoke, and with a whiff, he disappeared up the chimney.

King Tom Grimalkin, unlike King Noir before him and King Merlin after him, was a rogue and a friend of humans. He helped and hindered many a man in his reign - but everyone knows those stories, right?