Ratha’s Challenge (The Fourth Book of The Named)

by Clare Bell

  “No. If you choose escape, no matter what way, she will always have the Dreambiter.”

  “But if all I can do is hate the Dreambiter and that doesn’t work, what else is there?”

  “I think you have to remember who the Dreambiter is,” said Thakur.

  Feeling the bleakness in her belly, she said, “I know who it is.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  She craned her head around and stared at him, lost.

  “You think that it’s all of you. It is only a part of you. And not even the strongest part.”

  “No,” she cried, despairing. “You say that because you think I am like you. I’m not, Thakur. You are patient and wise and good and caring. I’m not.”

  “Well, I’ll admit you aren’t very patient and you are still learning. But you do care.”

  “The Dreambiter doesn’t care. The Dreambiter just ... bites.”

  “You are like me, Ratha. And because I know you are like me, I can say this. We all have a part that bites. Even me. You’ve seen it. You saw it just a while ago. But the other part, the part you call good and caring, is stronger.”

  “In you, maybe,” Ratha muttered.

  “No, in you. You have it. It won’t let the Dreambiter take over.”

  Ratha was silent, taking long breaths.

  “You have it,” Thakur said again. “Trust in it.”

  Somehow his words made her tight knot of misery ease. “Maybe...,” she said in a low voice.

  “Maybe what?”

  “Maybe you can get off me now. I don’t feel so much like ripping up things.”

  He eased himself off and let her groom her rumpled fur. “See? I trust your better self,” he said. “You should, too.”

  “Just for that, I should give you a swipe across the nose,” Ratha said, shaking herself. “But you’re bigger than I am. Is that what you call my better part?”

  “Somewhat. It’s also your common sense.”

  Ratha paused. “I need to think. Hard.”

  “Do you want me to leave you alone for a while?”

  “No, I want you to stay. Don’t say anything. Just sit by me.”

  And Thakur did.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “You will guide me?” Thistle stared at Ratha. The doubt in her eyes made Ratha want to squirm. Or change the decision she had made after thinking a long time. “You, not Thakur?”

  “He will help,” Ratha said, “but this time it has to be me.”

  Thistle looked away.

  “Please, Thistle. I think I understand more now.”

  “About you or me?”

  “Both,” said Ratha.

  “Then lie down around me,” Thistle answered, her voice trembling with a strange mixture of fear and anticipation.

  Ratha could not watch her daughter withdraw into herself. Instead she fixed her gaze on Thakur. He pressed one of his forefeet against hers in silent support.

  She waited, and at last it came—she heard the footsteps of the Dreambiter, echoing in Thistle’s voice. Again Ratha found herself bristling with anger against the unseen enemy, but she knew now that rage could not drive off the apparition.

  She knew that for Thistle, she existed in two parts: the flesh-and-blood mother with a tawny coat and an uncertain temperament, and the fire-eyed punisher that lurked in the caverns to ambush the wandering self. She was both and neither.

  As she wriggled close to her daughter, she could feel Thistle’s pounding heartbeat shaking her small frame. Thakur, on the other side, moved closer, too, helping to encase Thistle in a shield of warm fur and life. Yet the deadly thing—the deathly thing—was inside, beyond reach.

  Tell Thistle to flee? To fight? Ratha suddenly didn’t know. Her decision, her plans—all somehow crumbled when faced with the small figure who trembled and whose foreleg was starting to draw up against her chest.

  “Where are you, Thistle?”

  “In the caves. Hearing the footsteps. Want to run.”

  “No,” Ratha said. “Stay.”

  “Wait for attack.” Thistle’s voice was leaden with the inevitability of pain.

  Hearing it, Ratha rebelled. She would not let the drama end as it had already a hundred times before. But she had no plan. Just the feelings that twisted her belly and a stubbornness that refused to let her daughter suffer more.

  “No,” Ratha said, and then added softly, “Call the Dreambiter.”

  “Call ... But then it comes faster. Pain... sooner ...”

  “Call it,” Ratha said again. “Call ... her.”

  “Too frightened. Don’t want it.” Thistle’s voice was starting to become high and panicky.

  “What happens when the Dreambiter comes?” Ratha asked gently.

  “Hurts. Has to hurt.”

  “What if it didn’t hurt?”

  “Has to hurt. Is what Dreambiter is for. Has to hurt. If not me, then ...”

  “Then what, Thistle?”

  “Then ... others.”

  “Who?”

  “Mishanti. Thakur. Fessran.” Thistle paused. “You,” she whispered in a tight voice.

  “If the Dreambiter is inside, how can it come out and hurt others?” Ratha asked.

  “Takes my claws, my teeth. My ... cleverness too. Could kill,” Thistle added.

  The cold flatness of her voice made Ratha shiver. The implied threat was not empty. Ratha remembered her struggle with a maddened Thistle-chaser on the wave-washed rocks. Her daughter had come frighteningly close to killing her.

  Thistle moaned, and the green swirling in her eyes expanded. “It ... coming.” Her limbs started to jerk and twitch as if she were trying to run away.

  “Call to the Dreambiter,” Ratha urged, following an impulse she didn’t understand.

  “Coming anyway; why call?”

  “Call it to you. Call ... her.”

  “Might come out... try to hurt.”

  Ratha suppressed a shiver. “Call her anyway.”

  Thistle closed her eyes, lifted her muzzle, spoke in a quaver. “Dreambiter, come. Tired of waiting, tired of fearing.”

  “Good. More,” Ratha coaxed.

  “Come to me, fire-eyes. No more hiding. Biting... not the worst part.”

  “What is the worst part, Thistle?”

  “Knowing who you are, Dreambiter.”

  The answer startled Ratha. For an instant she thought her daughter was deliberately provoking her, then she realized that she had somehow become the apparition’s voice. Again she rebelled, angered and grieved that Thistle could not get beyond that image. But this time she refused to give in to the anger.

  Knowing who you are. Wandering alone in the caverns, fire blazing in my eyes. Oh, how I wanted to love you when you were young, Thistle, but I thought you would never speak, would never know me, would never be able to love in the way the Named do.

  “Call me, Thistle,” she whispered, her throat dry.

  “Call hurting part? Part that would bite and burn?”

  “Call me,” Ratha said. “And tame me.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Yes, you can. Tell me you are not afraid. Tell me you are stronger than I am.”

  Thistle had been starting to crumple again, curling inward. Now she shoved both forepaws ahead of her, as if propping herself up.

  “Am stronger than you, Dreambiter.”

  “You won’t let me out. You won’t let me hurt.”

  “No. Come, Dreambiter.”

  “I am coming,” Ratha said softly, watching Thistle. She could almost imagine herself in the shape and form of the dream image, pacing through the caverns toward a distant shape.

  I want... so much. That is why it hurts.

  Come to me, terrifying one, beloved one. I hear Thistle call. Come even if you rend me. You are a part of me even as I am of you. One flesh, one lineage ... one pain.

  The Dreambiter hurts, too.

  “I need you,” Thistle said.

  “I am coming. But I do not know what I will
do when I reach you.”

  In a dreamy but intense voice, Thistle spoke, her face rapt. “See you now. Your coat... black, eyes orange. You... more powerful than ever but now you are beautiful. You leap....”

  Thistle broke off with a gasp and a violent jerk. Ratha feared she was going into one of her fits, but she seemed to recover herself and went on.

  “Leaped right at me as if ... going to attack. Landed on me, but did not weigh me down. Instead... soaking into me ... like drop of water falling on my coat.”

  Thistle shook her head. She had lost the entranced look and had come outside herself. And she stared at Ratha in perplexity.

  “What happened?” Ratha asked.

  “Not know, exactly. Except that it ... wasn’t bad. Was afraid, then ... everything changed.”

  “You didn’t go into a fit this time. Does that mean that the Dreambiter is ... gone?” Ratha asked hopefully.

  “No, not gone,” Thistle said, looking thoughtful. “But somehow... changed.” Her jaws gaped in a sudden yawn.

  “Well, I think we’ve gotten somewhere,” said Thakur. “I’m not sure exactly where, but perhaps things will sort themselves out.” He got up, stretched until his tail quivered.

  “So sleepy,” Thistle mumbled. “Don’t know why.”

  Ratha nudged Thistle so that her drooping head lay against Ratha’s belly. The rest of her curled up in the circle of Ratha’s limbs, and soon her sides began rising and falling in a long, regular rhythm.

  “I was going to ask you if you wanted to take a walk, clan leader,” Thakur said, “but I guess you won’t be able to.”

  “No,” said Ratha, gazing down at the sleeping Thistle and thinking of what she had looked like as a nursling. “I won’t be able to go. But I don’t mind. Even if she snores a little. Isn’t that funny?”

  “Dreambiters can be comfortable to sleep on,” said Thakur, and walked off, swinging his tail.

  * * *

  Ratha was surprised when Thakur told her later the same day that Thistle’s struggles with the Dreambiter were far from ended. Yes, they had made a beginning, and a good one, but nightmares that had been building for a lifetime would not be banished by a single healing encounter.

  She began to see the truth of his warning that evening as she watched Thistle make her strange inward journeys, her eyes lit by firelight, seeking a trancelike state that would let her “speak” to the hunters and hear their guiding song.

  Sometimes the inward path was clear; more often the Dreambiter lurked and Thistle had to fight her way past. The only evidence of the struggle was the language of Thistle’s body and the words she spoke. At times her speech was more eloquent than Ratha thought her capable of. At other times the words were so broken and tumbled that even Thakur, with all his patience and insight, could make little of them.

  Yet something had changed. No longer was Thistle a helpless victim, fleeing from the apparition every time it struck. Now the contest was more even, and an attempted trance did not have to end in a fit.

  Even so, Ratha did not expect to hear Thistle say that she was ready to try again to speak to the hunters. It was the following evening, and the Named crouched around the fire that Bira tended.

  “It has only been two days,” Ratha said, startled herself at how short the time had been. To try to talk to the hunters before the Dreambiter had been completely mastered seemed to be inviting disaster. “I know I am the impatient one,” she admitted. “But maybe it would be better to give yourself a few more days, Thistle. ”

  “Won’t help,” Thistle said bluntly. “Have gone as far as possible alone or with you and Thakur. Need the hunters. Before they and the face-tailed animals go away. ”

  “Go away?” Ratha asked, puzzled.

  “Sense a stirring. Hunters and prey. Moving. Long ways.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Feel it. In the song.”

  “I think she’s right, Ratha,” said Thakur, who was lying on the other side of her. He looked to Khushi. “You’ve been keeping watch on the face-tail herd. Didn’t you tell me that the beasts might be preparing to migrate?”

  “Yes. They seem restless,” the scout replied.

  “Hunters will follow,” Thistle added.

  “You are sure that it is not just the hunters who plan to go?” Ratha said, thinking that if the other group would disappear and leave the face-tail herd, the Named could take an animal without interference.

  “Would be happy thing for you if hunters just went away,” Thistle said, a little bitterly. “No. Both will go. Soon. Need to speak before then.”

  “All right.” Ratha sighed. “When?”

  “Morning. Tomorrow.”

  “Thakur?” Ratha looked to the herding teacher.

  “Thistle thinks she is ready. I agree,” he said softly.

  “Will you be going with her? Or do you want me?”

  “Neither.” It was Thistle who answered, not Thakur.

  Immediately Ratha began to bristle. “Now wait. No one said anything about you going by yourself.”

  “Have to,” Thistle replied calmly. “You and Thakur can’t think like hunters. Get chased away. Not me. Did it once before,” she added, with a trace of smugness that irritated Ratha.

  “Yes, you did. And if I’d known about it, I would have stopped you. It was just luck that you didn’t get killed the first time.”

  “Not luck,” retorted Thistle. “Quiet Hunter. Helped him. They knew.”

  “Thakur,” Ratha began, appealing to the herding teacher, but he only put his nose down on his paws, pointing toward Thistle.

  She stared again at her daughter, wondering how that scrawny, scruffy-coated little body could contain such a determined spirit.

  She knows full well that she doesn’t have to obey me since she isn’t a member of the clan.

  “Will be careful,” Thistle said. “Don’t want to get hurt.”

  “All right,” Ratha said at last. “But Bira and I are going to back you up with torches. We’ll stay out of sight, but if anything happens, you get your tail out of there and let us handle the fighting.”

  “Won’t be fighting,” Thistle said, sounding exasperated. She turned her intense gaze on Ratha, and the words she had spoken earlier seemed to sound again in Ratha’s mind. If you love, give trust too.

  The problem is, Ratha thought as she studied the expression on that stubborn little face, can I trust them?

  Chapter Sixteen

  Thistle wrinkled her nose as she stood by Thakur in the shelter of some low brush. Her mother and the Firekeeper Bira had insisted on bringing the smoke-breathing thing they called the Red Tongue. Luckily the wind was blowing the acrid scent away from the plain where the face-tails grazed.

  The hunters had taken and feasted on another animal. The meat smell was heavy in the wind.

  “There,” said Thakur quietly, staring toward a lone male who was walking stiffly across the open grass. “That’s Quiet Hunter, isn’t it?”

  Thistle looked eagerly in the same direction. She liked Quiet Hunter and had missed him, perhaps more than she’d realized. She wanted to bound out to meet him, but decided that a cautious approach was probably better.

  Glancing back she saw Bira tending a small fire in a cleared area while Khushi laid out sticks to serve as torches if the need arose. Ratha was overseeing the preparations.

  Thistle took in the scene with mixed feelings. It was good that her mother and the others wanted to protect her. But they could ruin everything if they ran out into the midst of Quiet Hunter’s people with torches.

  “Make sure... fire carriers stay here,” she said to Thakur. “Don’t want them... unless fighting happens. And it shouldn’t.”

  He promised that he would, and Thistle left the sheltering thicket and walked toward Quiet Hunter.

  Her heart felt as though it were slamming around inside her ribs, like a trapped creature seeking a way out. Would the others accept her again? Or would they remember that she ha
d behaved strangely the first time, falling into a fit and then fleeing. Would Quiet Hunter remember that she had cared for him, tried to heal him? Or would he sense her difference and turn on her, or worse yet, summon the others to drive her away?

  As she approached the young male, she saw others take notice. Heads turned and muzzles pointed in her direction, but no one rose to challenge. Without turning his gaze toward her, Quiet Hunter seemed to know she was there. He stopped walking and stood still, as if waiting.

  Almost shyly, she came up and touched noses with him. The coolness of his nose leather, the brush of his whiskers, the scent of his fur seemed to draw Thistle inward, away from her outside self. She did not have to initiate the journey into trance. It just seemed to happen.

  She knew an instant of fear, for she sensed that she was back in the depths where the Dreambiter prowled. But something coming from Quiet Hunter seemed to hold the apparition away, letting her move forward on the path toward a distant voice and a haunting song.

  At last he spoke to her. “There is rejoicing. One who gave care and healing has come back.”

  An upsurge of affection made Thistle rub her head against his, words spilling from her. “Didn’t want to run away. Fond of Quiet Hunter. Wanted to stay and help. Got afraid. Of things inside.”

  “Things inside can frighten and hurt most of all,” said Quiet Hunter. “But the song heals. Quiet Hunter likes ...” He faltered, puzzled. “The words that belong. They are not known.”

  “Thistle-chaser,” she said, knowing that in his strange way, he was asking for her name. “Easier to say just Thistle.”

  “Quiet Hunter likes Thistle,” he answered, his eyes glowing.

  “And Thistle likes Quiet Hunter,” she said, rubbing herself alongside him, her eyes closed in happiness. When she opened them again, she was startled to see that others had come up and were standing in a circle around her and Quiet Hunter.

  Again she felt a flash of panic and the distant thread of the song was interrupted by the echoing roar of the Dreambiter.