by Clare Bell
Ratha knew what he said was true, and a part of her cried out in sorrow for him. He would never take a mate from among the Named and risk fathering young on a clan female.
Thakur, along with Bonechewer, who was his brother and had lived with the Un-Named, had been born from a mating between a clan female called Reshara and an Un-Named male. Both brothers possessed gifts, showing that such pairings could produce cubs with the light of intelligence in their eyes. But the results were too erratic to trust and too tragic to risk.
Though Thakur knew only that Ratha had birthed Bonechewer’s cubs and lost them, he did not know why. But he had witnessed the results of another mating between one of the Named and an Un-Named outsider.
Shongshar’s cubs by Bira had lacked the ability to speak and think that the Named so valued. Thakur knew that well, for he had helped Ratha carry both litterlings from clan ground.
Thakur nosed Ratha gently, mistaking the reason for her mood. “Don’t mourn because you have no young, clan leader. We, the Named, are your cubs. And I also have sons and daughters in the young ones who learn the ways of herding from me.”
The treeling on his shoulder chirred, as if to remind him that she too was part of his adopted kin. Ratha’s small companion, Ratharee, trilled back at her mother.
“When those who are to journey take their places, let me choose where I will stand,” Thakur asked. “And let me go by myself, as I always do.”
“Do you know where you want to go?”
“Yes. I will stand and lift my head to place the setting sun at my whisker-tips. It will lead me to a place I have seen only once, from a distance, to a body of water greater than any lake.”
“Then I will have the gathering at sunset, and you will choose your place,” Ratha answered, her head full of the pictures Thakur’s words conjured. She felt a prick of envy, wishing she could travel with him, leaving behind the burden of leadership. But he would return and perhaps take her with him to see what he had found, though not for a while. She watched him pad away with Aree on his back, his tail swinging. She wished he didn’t remind her so much of Bonechewer, the father of her own lost cubs.
In the midafternoon heat Ratha ambled instead of trotted as she made her rounds among the scattered beasts, herders, and Firekeepers. At the nearest guard-fire, she saw Fessran. A tickle of worry about her friend crept along her back. The Firekeeper leader had seemed subdued lately.
Ratha touched noses and rubbed the full length of her body against her friend, crooking her tail over Fessran’s back. She could tell by the warm tone in Fessran’s scent that the Firekeeper welcomed such open affection. But underneath, Fessran’s smell told Ratha her friend was troubled.
“Thakur says he heard you singing last night,” Ratha said, trying to tease. “It is known among the Named that when Fessran is in full voice, the mating season is not far behind.”
Fessran’s reply was flat. “Thakur must have his ears stuffed with herdbeast hair. That was Bira, not me.”
Ratha’s ears swiveled forward, and she tried to look into Fessran’s eyes as the Firekeeper asked, “No one’s been complaining about me, have they? I mean, I haven’t shirked my duties even while I’ve been looking for my treeling.”
“No,” Ratha answered. She felt her own companion on her shoulder. Fessran looked a bit scruffy. Ever since her Fessree had disappeared, she had to depend on her own tongue for grooming.
“Do you want to borrow Ratharee?” Ratha asked.
“No. I appreciate the offer, but grooming isn’t the same if another treeling does it.” Fessran let her forepaws slide out until her creamy belly fur flattened the grass. “Funny. I never thought I’d really get attached to the little flea-picker. You and Thakur are as soft as dung when it comes to treelings, but I thought I was being more practical about it. It’s not Fessree’s little hands I miss. It’s her sitting on my shoulder and making noises in my ear. I got used to it.”
Ratha saw her shift some of the weight off her left foreleg, rolling half onto her side.
“How is your leg?”
“Thanks to Shongshar, it’ll never be the same again, even though it’s had this long to heal. I should be grateful that it works at all. Shoulder’s just a bit stiff. Bites heal better when you’re younger.” She licked the two puckered scars on her upper foreleg. There was another set of scars on her ribs where Shongshar’s saber-teeth had emerged through the leg and into her chest. It was a near-fatal wound, and Ratha was amazed and grateful Fessran had healed this well. Although Bira was coming along as Fessran’s backup for Firekeeper leader, Ratha needed Fessran in that role.
“You know, I wouldn’t feel so bad about Fessree,” Ratha said in an attempt to sound comforting. “Treelings sometimes wander off, but they come back. Aree did that to Thakur.”
“Well, I thought it might be because of the mating season. Everybody’s smell changing and all that. I notice it makes treelings nervous.” Fessran fell silent for a minute, but her scent told Ratha that she wasn’t in heat and probably wouldn’t be this season. After her wound and the long recovery that followed, she wasn’t yet in condition to bear a litter.
“You know why I’m so caught up with that miserable flea-picker?” Fessran asked suddenly, after a long silence. “It’s because of Nyang.”
Nyang. For a moment Ratha switched her tail, lost. Nyang was dead. He had been Fessran’s eldest cub from her last litter, one of those who went over to Shongshar when the clan split into two factions. He had been drowned when Ratha and Thakur managed to flood out the cave where Shongshar had hidden his worship-fire. In helping Ratha to dig the trench that diverted the stream from its banks, Fessran had helped in her son’s death.
“I don’t know why it’s bothering me. I still have Khushi and Chita, though they both are grown. I never felt I knew Nyang as well as I did the others. And then he was gone, and I lost my chance. Well, it’s foolish to mourn now.”
“No, it isn’t foolish at all,” said Ratha, thinking of her own daughter, Thistle-chaser.
Fessran stared at her paws. “After his death I kept thinking of Nyang until it hurt too much. And then Fessree started grooming me very gently and saying treeling nonsense in my ear, and it helped.”
“I know.”
Fessran lifted her muzzle abruptly, startling Ratha. “Do you really know, Ratha? Or would you like me to believe you know? Even though you are clan leader, you still seem so young to me. Have you ever felt the pain of losing a cub you birthed?”
Ratha closed her eyes, trying to keep Thistle-chaser’s story from rushing onto her tongue. No one knew about her lost litter except Thakur, and it was something best kept to herself. Besides, what good would it do to tell except to raise her own old pain again? Fessran didn’t need that. What she wanted was strength from her clan leader, not weakness.
Instead Ratha said, “If it will help, Thakur and I will search for Fessree.”
Fessran hauled herself to her feet, trying not to favor her shoulder. “I’ve been everywhere. It’s easier to see into the treetops now that the leaves are shriveling in the drought. No. You’re both busy. I’ll just leave Fessree to herself, the ungrateful bug-eater.”
She got up and walked off, swinging her tail. Ratha sat at the foot of the sunning rock, looking after her and wondering what else she could have said. Fessran’s change in mood had caught her by surprise, thrown her off balance. The accusation against her of immaturity and lack of understanding stung like a scratch. And even more so because it wasn’t true.
As she had promised, Ratha called the gathering on the following day just before sunset. The Named came to sit before the sunning rock in the old pasture, while the Firekeepers and their leader kindled the meeting fire from torches brought from the fire-den. Ratha noticed that the blaze was made large enough to serve as a beacon to those still coming in from distant corners of clan territory, but not so fierce as to serve as a hypnotic center for the gathering. That way lay danger, as she and Fessran had both learned
. Their experience with Shongshar and his fire-worship had taught them caution.
From the sunning rock, she looked down at her friend. Fessran stood to one side, sitting stiffly with a torch in her jaws, shadows dancing across her sand-colored fur. Though at first Fessran had been reluctant, she now allowed and encouraged her Firekeepers to make use of treeling skills. And the treelings had proven more useful to the Firekeepers than anyone could have foreseen. Only this morning, Fessran’s assistant, Bira, had showed Ratha a young student who had taught his treeling to twist grass and bark into a long tail strong enough to wrap about a bundle of sticks. With twigs bound together, a Firekeeper could drag much heavier loads.
Ratha had been intending to send the youngster and his treeling out on the search, but now, she decided, she would keep him here and have him teach his new art to others who might use it. The young male would be disappointed at being denied the adventure, but he would be proud to know he had developed a skill worth keeping.
She sat up and spoke of the purpose for this gathering and of the searchers she was sending out to seek new sources of game, pasturage, and water. She was careful to say she would choose only those who could be spared from their duties, so as not to leave the herds vulnerable or the fires unguarded. And when she had finished, she called Thakur and let him take the place of his choosing, facing into the setting sun.
The other searchers, chosen from among both herders and Firekeepers, stood in pairs with their whiskers facing outward. Thakur stood alone. He was used to being by himself with just Aree for company, and he was experienced in fending for himself away from the clan.
“You who will journey have been first to eat from the kill,” said Ratha. “Your bellies are full, your legs strong, and the hope of the Named goes with you.”
At her word, the scouts started on their search. Thakur glanced back as he took his first steps from the sunning rock. The glow in his eyes and the sheen on his fur told her of his eagerness. The treeling on his back fluffed her fur petulantly, as if saying she was getting too settled for traveling, but she gave her tail a jaunty wave in parting.
Ratha watched the scouts as they left, but her gaze lingered longest on one copper coat.
Though you are not taking the Red Tongue itself, Thakur, she thought, may the power of its spirit guard you.
Chapter Three
Newt’s ears swiveled forward as she woke, crawled from her sandstone cave, and limped onto the beach. Her pricked foot was tender but no longer painful, and she soon forgot about it. She tested the wind, finding the smells of creatures she had already encountered, such as the short-tusked walrus, but there was an unfamiliar scent among them. Through the background of wind and waves, she heard a distant clamor with odd hooting sounds breaking through.
Warily she hunched down in the sand, all senses extended for danger. She wondered if she should retreat from the beach and was surprised by a possessive anger that welled up inside her. No. This was her place. She had claimed it, left her footprints here, laid down her scent.
She circled downwind, guided by the strange smell. It had a strong seaweed-and-fish tang, resembling the scent of the blubber-tusker, but it differed enough from that animal’s smell for her to identify it as new. Peering up the beach, she saw a natural jetty of gray sandstone thrusting out to sea beneath a cliff. On the promontory, gray and black shapes sprawled in the sun.
At first she thought these animals resembled the blubber-tusker, but their broad bodies were less blubbery and more compact, slate colored on top and cream below. Chunky fore- and hindlimbs folded back against sleek sides as the creatures lay on their bellies. Their heads were long and tapered, reminding Newt of the muzzle of a forest dappleback rather than the snout of a blubber-tusker. They also had leaf-shaped ears that swiveled and twitched.
Newt narrowed her eyes against the morning sea glare. She felt the sun heat her back while her shadow inched along the sand. The wind gusted, bringing her the briny food-scent of shellfish. She remembered how she had plundered the blubber-tusker’s leavings.
As she came around the foot of the steep bluff, she saw a small cove that was sheltered from the wind by sandstone cliffs jutting up on either side. Within that refuge she saw another sea-beast and two smaller companions that resembled it. The large beast wallowed in the surf, while the small ones lay higher on the beach. Newt hid behind the rocks and crept closer for a better look.
The animal lifted its head and pricked its ears, then settled back complacently, chin resting on a short, fat neck. It grunted to itself as the waves washed its sides. Again Newt saw the elongated muzzle, resembling that of a dappleback, but instead of a rounded nose and chin, the creature had a tapered snout with a pronounced overbite. It yawned, revealing downward-pointing incisors in the upper jaw and a cluster of tusks thrusting from the lower.
The sight made Newt uneasy and she hid, but soon the sound of splashing coaxed her to peer out again from her hiding place. The glistening form of the sea-beast slapped against wet sand. With splay-toed webbed forefeet, the creature hauled itself onto the beach, jaws wedged wide open by a huge, muck-covered shell.
The beast seemed to ignore its hind legs, letting them drag behind while it humped and heaved along on belly and stout forelegs. As it crushed the clamshell in its jaws, seawater spurted from the clam’s leathery siphon.
Waves of tantalizing scent reached Newt. She licked her chops but forced herself to remain still, waiting. She listened to the scraping and grinding sounds while the shellfish smell made her drool.
The small sea-beasts wiggled on their bellies in the sand. They lurched up on thick legs and bumbled around until they fell against each other or the big one. From the forbearance the large beast showed the two, Newt sensed she was looking at a female and her young.
Newt marked the youngsters as prey, for they were small enough to kill easily. She would have to wait until their parent wasn’t paying attention. For the present she would settle for clam scraps.
Her hunger was no longer strong enough to blunt her curiosity, for she had eaten from the blubber-tusker’s leavings, and she was intrigued with this new creature. Though this beast ate shellfish, lived on the beach, and had tusks, its face, neck, and ears reminded her of a dappleback, and it was those attributes that made the strongest impression on her. Once she had seen a small mare with two spindly foals, and now this memory emerged as an image, coloring her feelings about the sea-beast family. She stared at the strange mare that swam in the sea.
This creature, whom Newt now thought of as a “seamare,” continued to wrench apart a huge shell with forefeet and tusks. The seamare’s black forepaws, with their wide tapering toes and the webbing between, were nothing like the flippers of the blubber-tusker or the hoofed toes of a dappleback.
The longer she watched the seamare, the more Newt focused on those odd, splay-toed feet. As she had once identified with an image of herself as the newt, so she identified the seamare with the image of those strange feet. To her, the creature became Splayfoot.
Newt stayed hidden until the seamare finished gorging on clams and fell asleep on a low sandstone shelf, with both seafoals sprawled nearby. Newt smelled a few savory bits remaining from the seamare’s feast of shellfish. Carefully she hobbled from her hideaway down through the rocks to the terrace where Splayfoot lay. She got so close she could smell the salty beast-scent and hear the seamare’s rumbling snore. Quickly she snatched up the nearest morsel and went for the next.
Suddenly the seamare’s neck muscles tightened as the beast lifted her head, her tapered muzzle pointing at Newt. With an ungainly heave, the beast swept both chunky forelegs around and heaved up her forequarters. From her open mouth came a booming roar that echoed between the rocks of the cove and made Newt skitter back with flattened ears.
For an instant the two confronted each other. With surprising speed, Splayfoot humped herself toward Newt, swinging her tusks. The seamare’s anger propelled her up onto her rear legs, and Newt discovered
that they weren’t as useless as they had first appeared.
Newt hadn’t expected the seamare’s sudden transformation from belly-dragger to walker. Splayfoot had a clumsy gait, with out-thrust elbows and turned-in feet, but it served well enough. Now the seamare was a four-footed behemoth lumbering toward the enemy that threatened herself and her young.
With a mouth full of sandy clamshells and meat, Newt couldn’t use her teeth, but she wasn’t about to drop her takings. Gathering her hind feet beneath her, she leaped as high as she could, clinging and scrabbling at the rocks above.
Once she had gained a secure perch, she started to eat, looking down at the seamare. Unable to hold the shell down with both forepaws, she wedged one side of it under a boulder and held it there with her good leg while she worried the meat away with her side teeth.
Splayfoot strained her head back as far as her thick neck would allow and gave a bellow that almost made Newt choke on the rubbery clam flesh she was gulping. The agile youngsters scrambled back to their mother’s side as the seamare pointed her muzzle in the air and sniffed suspiciously. Splayfoot lumbered along on her belly, probing the way ahead with the long bristles on her muzzle and stabbing the sand with her tusks, as if she thought the menace might still be lurking there.
She snuffled among the scattered shells, putting back her ears and rolling her eyes. But instead of retreating from the place, as prey animals would when they caught the smell of meat eaters, the seamare gave a bubbling roar and knocked all the remaining shell fragments away with a powerful sweep of her foreleg. She opened her jaws and waggled her head, giving the lurking meat eater a good look at her tusks and teeth.
Newt decided that she’d had her fill of clam scraps. She smelled other things that might be edible, such as carrion and seabird eggs. But first she wanted to rest. She retreated as fast as she could limp back to her refuge at the foot of the weathered sandstone cliff.