Vellitt Boe and the black cat by Lindsay Gravina
Vellitt Boe is a former traveller and teacher at Ulthar's Women's College. She is a protagonist in Kij Johnson's "The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe" (2016). When one of her most gifted students, Clarie Jurat, runs off with a dreamer Stephan Heller from the waking world, Vellitt goes in search of her.
Biography[]
Vellitt had been born in the harbor town of Jaren by the Cerenerian Sea, in a family of sailors. In her 19th year she left, and for years after that she voyaged. During this time, she met Randolph Carter.
Vellitt travelled until she realized that this yearning life could not be sustained. A year or two after she had parted with Carter, she stopped her wayfaring and applied to the University of Celephaïs. She finally settled in Ulthar as the Professor of Mathematics at Women's College, a prestigious but precariously positioned school.
About twenty years later, Clarie Jurat, one of her students, disappeared. The practice of educating women was not well established in University of Ulthar, so it was a threat to the future of the college. Clarie, as it happened, was the grand-daughter of an unnamed Great Old One; when she ran away with a dreamer, she risked bringing his wrath down on Ulthar and everything bordering it. Someone needed to go after Clarie and fetch her back, and Vellit, at age 55, took on the duty, accompained with the little black cat from the University.
Vellitt crossed plains of the River Skai, stopped for a night in Nir, then visited Hatheg; she entered the Enchanted Wood and climbed Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber to the Temple of Flame to talk to Nasht and Kaman-Thah. It turned out that Clarie and Stephan passed through the gate to waking world, and to follow them she must obtain the Silver Key from Randolph Carter.
Vellitt then arrived to Sinara to follow downstream the river of Xari to Cydathria at the coast of Cerenerian Sea. She sailed to the Ilek-Vad to find out that Carter lost his Key. He suggested Vellitt to use instead one of the underground passways of ghouls. The nearest access to the Underworld from Ilek-Vad was through a cavern deep in a silver mine in the Perinth mountains behind the town of Eight Peaks, known also as Octavia. Vellitt descended the mine and got help from ghouls who guided her to a certain cellar in Sarkomand; there was a staircase only ghouls knew, which led up through the thick-walled chimney of an ancient inn and terminated in the waking world. Through that she was teleported to Shell Lake, Wisconsin.
In our world, Vellitt has become an ordinary woman, with a car and a mobile phone. She found Clarie Jurat in Miles City, Montana. Clarie didn't want to return to Ulthar because she liked the world without cruel gods, but Vellitt insisted, and Clarie decided to fight the evil to save Ulthar. Both fell asleep, and Clarie entered the Cavern of Flame. Vellitt Boe awoke, staying in the waking world, maybe permanently. Her further destiny is currently unknown.