by Claudia King
The alpha sighed, resigning himself to the worries of how to deal with Vaya when she returned. And deal with her he would, he thought grimly. It was not a simple matter of one pack member disciplining another, and it was his duty to resolve these disputes so that people like Netya did not have to.
Still, he mused, as he ran his fingers through the tall grass around him, he sometimes wished he could run until he finally discovered what lay atop those mountain peaks.
* * *
Vaya decided it was time to return home the very morning after their departure. They had tracked down the herd and the scouts who had been sent to watch it before sunset, miles away from where Brae's vision had told her they would be. It would have been an easy hunt to bring down a few of the beasts during the night, but a pointless and unworthy one. There was no glory to be found in picking off a few tired animals when the camp stores were already well-stocked. The herd was in no danger of straying beyond their reach any time soon, and instead seemed to be moving even further into the open plains, where tracking them would become easier than ever.
The apprentices were disappointed as always, but she justified her decision by reminding them that it did no good to thin out a fresh herd too quickly and without need. They would continue tracking the animals and return again a week from now, when she had time to organise a hunt on her own terms.
Rolan, a boy on the cusp of manhood, and one of her long-term chasers, approached her the next morning to ask whether he would be included when they returned to hunt properly. Vaya cared little for children, and certainly had no intention of mothering any of her own, but she had warmed to Rolan in the years he had been hunting with her. He was not the fastest chaser, and he was too small to ever become an especially powerful warrior, but she admired the boy's dogged determination regardless of his handicaps. She saw something of herself in him, and he had always treated her with the same respect he showed to the male hunters.
"I was hoping to make my first kill," he confided to her as the others said their farewells to the scouts who would remain behind. "The other hunt leaders will not allow me to try. They think I lack the strength."
"Not all kills are secured through strength," Vaya said. "You have always been a reliable hunter, Rolan. I will make sure you are given your chance next time." The boy beamed at her, and she snorted in amusement, turning him back in the direction of the camp. "Few men make their first kill before coming of age. Once you do, every hunter will want you in their party."
It was not in Vaya's character to make false assurances, and she meant every word. The boy really would become an asset to the high hunters, who were always on the lookout for fresh young apprentices to take under their wing, forging early alliances with the young wolves who might one day take their place. If, of course, Rolan could succeed in proving his worthiness.
She would give him his chance. Succeed or fail, he would bear it on his own shoulders.
They returned to the camp in the afternoon, Vaya along with several of the others arriving first after running ahead as their wolves. The bearers would catch up later that evening, but there was no need to wait for the slower members of the hunt when there was no ceremony to be observed. It would have been easy to bring at least a single animal home to sweeten their arrival, but it satisfied Vaya more not to dignify Brae's visions with a kill. She was confident enough in her tracking of the herd that she did not need to exert unnecessary effort based on Brae's hunches, and she wanted the rest of the pack to know it.
The focus of the hunt had taken her mind off the incident with Netya, and so it was with surprise that she looked up to see the alpha approaching her shortly after she had sat down at the fire with the others.
"Vaya," he barked, eyeing her with a look that held even more weight than his heavy tone. "To your feet when your alpha addresses you."
She dipped her head in deference, standing up as instructed. "There was no need for us to bring back fresh kill, alpha. The herd is safe and w —"
"This is not about your hunt, though it does not please me to hear you spilled a fellow pack member's blood over a fruitless endeavour."
"I did not."
Khelt took a step closer to her. "Netya is a member of my pack. You will show her the same respect due to any of your sisters."
"She is one of the Sun People," Vaya replied, indignity swelling within her. She feared the alpha's judgement, and rightfully so, but she refused to believe she had acted out of accord.
"Where she came from does not matter. She is one of us now, and you have hurt her badly," Khelt growled.
"I gave her no more than I would have given any disobedient apprentice! None of my hunters would disagree." She was pleased to hear murmurs of assent from those who had been present at the time. The huntress stood firm, lifting her chin as she matched the alpha's gaze. Khelt could be a hard man, but he was fair, and she was clearly in the right.
"You will lead no more hunts for the rest of the season. Tal will have first pick in your place once more."
Vaya stared at him, fists clenching by her sides as her jaw opened in incredulity. "I have earned the right—!"
"Vaya!" he barked, her name snapping from his throat like a crack of thunder. "Know your place. You may begin leading again once the summer ends. I will not stand for this behaviour again. You may have thought you acted justly, but Netya comes from a fragile people. The seers say she will take many weeks to heal from what you did to her."
Vaya could not believe the alpha would side with one of their enemies over her. Must she suffer now because the Sun girl was as weak as a leaf in the breeze? Her chest heaved with anger. It was only Khelt's uncompromising glare that forced her to remain silent. She knew anything she said now would only make her position worse, regardless of how many curses she wanted to scream at the girl who had brought this upon her. She dropped her eyes to the ground, staring at a rock as she quivered with frustration.
A growl rumbled in Khelt's throat, and she quickly remembered her place, cowed by the dominant wolf's primal power over her. She shrank away from him in submission, muttering a quiet "yes alpha" under her breath. He left her to face the silence of her fellow hunters alone.
As she stared into the fire, imagining each crackling stick was another bone in the Sun girl's body, she caught sight of Rolan watching her anxiously from the other side of the blaze.
His coming of age would have been and gone by the time she was permitted to lead a hunt again.
—15—
The Summer Fires
Netya's broken nose took longer to heal than she would have liked, and she quickly grew restless. Adel's herbs were very strong, and they turned her waking moments into a hazy experience that left her tired and confused. After a few days she stopped taking them, finding that the pain and swelling had subsided enough for her to cope with it on her own. Once her woman's time had ended for the month she was eager to return to her duties in the alpha's bed, but much to her disappointment he insisted that she rest and recover properly.
"Is it my face?" she asked Fern as they bathed together one morning, touching her bruised eye gingerly as she examined her reflection in the water. "I cannot look very pleasing to him right now."
"You will heal soon. The alpha is only worried about you, I am sure. He must have been, to punish Vaya as he did."
Netya cringed. "I did not want to cause such trouble."
"Oh, Vaya deserved it! She is too proud for her own good."
"I suppose so," Netya conceded. She had to admit, it did bring her a pinch of satisfaction to know that the huntress had been disciplined for hitting her, but at the same time she had not failed to notice the venomous glances Vaya sent her way every time she was within spitting distance.
Thankfully she did not have long to wait before Khelt began calling her back to his den in the evenings. He was far gentler with her, making sure she was never in any discomfort while her injury continued to heal, but she was glad just to be sharing such pleasures with
him again.
Fern continued to fret over her like a mother hen, frequently staying close by and deigning to remain in the tent rather than joining the others at night, but Netya did not mind her company. It gave her ample time to continue learning the language of the Moon People, sometimes sitting awake for hours with her friend as they practiced small, simple conversations in the exotic tongue.
Netya liked the way she had to change the cadence of her voice to make the words sound out correctly. At first she often attempted to replicate Fern's examples in her natural manner of speaking, only to be scolded that her enunciation conveyed quite the wrong tone she was aiming for. As the weeks passed she became more adept in changing her voice to match the language of the Moon People, often practicing their accent alone as she held one-sided conversations with herself while she bathed or went out to forage. She still had a long way to go before she became as adept at understanding the language as she needed to be, but the pieces gradually came together until she was confident in making simple requests or greetings to the other pack members, often accompanied by a heavy amount of hand gesturing to convey the details.
By all accounts the hunting was still not as good as the Moon People were used to at this time of year, but thanks to the restless tracking of Vaya's herd they were able to bring back enough meat to keep the pack well fed, and the preserved stocks of food were soon ample enough that there was little worry of going hungry that winter.
The weeks of summer crept by, reached their peak, and then trailed off as cooler weather and the rumble of distant thunderstorms arrived. Netya had been with the pack for almost an entire season, and still her fascination with them had yet to ebb. Everything about their way of life spoke to her in a way she had never felt living back in the village. Even her altercation with Vaya could not dampen her spirits, and she had started to notice that, while she was unlikely to ever be on good terms with Adel, the den mother was at least absent enough from daily pack life that their paths did not cross often. She could endure the handful of enemies she had made as long as she had the days with Fern and the nights with Khelt to look forward to.
Even some of the other young people began to engage with her once she started using their language. They would invite her and Fern to sit with them at meal times or social gatherings, and while Netya was still unable to engage in their conversations properly, she at least began to feel less like an outsider among the pack. She even noticed some of the males looking at her in the way Fern had described, and their attention never failed to bring a flush to her cheeks.
It was nice to feel desired, and she did not begrudge the young men for it, particularly now that she had started allowing her eyes to wander in the same way. But their looks did not stir the same excitement in her that she felt whenever Caspian or Khelt were nearby. The alpha's gaze always held a spark of the side of him he revealed in private, both gentler and yet more wild than the one he showed to the pack. Caspian, by comparison, seemed no more enthralled by her than he had been the day they met. His lack of attention was almost frustrating, until Netya realised she did not even know what she had to feel frustrated about. She tried to catch his eye, hoping to recapture another hint of the moment they'd shared together in the tent, but it stubbornly refused to come.
Once it became clear that the final weeks of summer were approaching, Oke, the old man with the single lick of white hair, announced that the time for the celebration of the summer fires had come. Netya could not guess how he kept track of it, but he seemed certain of the precise time, down to the very day, that it would fall each year. It was an important celebration for the Moon People, and was all the more popular among the young wolves for the opportunity it gave them to seek out their future mates, or at the very least to indulge in their youthful cravings freely for one evening.
For the next few days the camp was abuzz with nothing but talk of the coming celebration. The preparations took precedence over everything else. The pack gathered wood to build a ring of large fires around the edge of the outcrop, each one carefully constructed in the shape of a conical pyre and shored up with heavy stones around the edge. Netya was tasked to assist the seer Brae in collecting the fronds of a specific type of bush that would be burned on each individual fire, releasing a sweet fragrance that would blanket the entire camp when the time of celebration came.
It was much more difficult work than foraging, given the scarcity of the special bushes, and Netya had to learn how to gently cut them with her flint knife in a way that would allow the leaves to grow back again in time for the next celebration. Brae was patient with her, though, and after two days combing the undergrowth together they had brought back a substantial heap of fronds ready to be burned. It brought Netya a hint of pride to look at the stack of foliage whenever she passed by, knowing that she had contributed just as much to the festival as those who had built the fires or gone out to hunt.
"Who do you hope will pick you?" Fern teased as they helped to unearth a cooking pit the day before the celebration.
Netya looked up, letting her eyes stray curiously over a group of young men who were making a contest out of hacking apart the last of the firewood nearby. "I have not thought about it," she lied, even as a tingle of excitement built in her belly. "Will the alpha be present?"
"You must be more adventurous than that, Netya! This is the one night you will be free to lie with whoever you wish." Fern pursed her lips. "Thankfully the alpha does not attend. It is tradition for him and the den mother to lie together in a private joining that night."
"And Khelt would rather mount a termite hive than that witch," one of the elders cackled.
Fern pressed a hand to her mouth to suppress a titter, but she frowned at the old woman. "You cannot say such things!"
"Nobody understands the Sun girl's tongue anyway." The elder waved a hand in dismissal. "I can curse in it all I like."
"You are terrible," Fern scolded, but all three of them were smiling. It was hard not to get caught up in the atmosphere of excitement that pervaded the camp.
"Will you be joining in with the festivities, Mother?" Netya asked respectfully.
"The summer fires is a time for young people, though perhaps my mate's spirit will send me sweet dreams while I sleep. He was always an impatient one."
"So?" Fern nudged Netya, refusing to let her be. "Is there nobody who has caught your eye at all? If not, I will force you to pick."
"She wants who all the young girls want," the elder said. "She's been batting her eyes at Caspian trying to make him notice her for weeks."
"I have not!" Netya protested, but her rising flush told a different story.
"If he picks you, even I will be jealous," Fern said. "Stealing the two most handsome males in the pack for yourself."
Netya put her face in her hands with a groan. "You make me feel like a lost pup so often. Am I really that obvious?"
"You may have the alpha's eye, girl," the elder said, "but you still have much to learn about the ways of love."
Fern squeezed her arm. "Well, I hope Caspian picks you all the same. So long as you promise not to be upset if he chooses me."
"And if he chooses neither of us we may be disappointed together," Netya said.
"I think we will forget our disappointment soon enough. It is hard to be upset on the night of the summer fires for long."
On the next day the final preparations were finished well in advance, and only those in charge of the food remained busy as they waited to unearth the banquet of vegetables and meats that had been sealed in the cooking pit overnight. The men went down to the plains to bathe and prepare themselves in private, while the women did the same further up the slope near the caves at the summit of the outcrop. When they came back together around the central fire that evening, it would be with an eye for partnership.
Fern and Netya donned their loose gowns of soft animal skin and each took turns making sure the other looked as appealing as possible. Netya was not certain how to best make her fr
iend seem more attractive, so she settled for braiding and ornamenting her hair in a way that made use of its fullness, securing Fern's thick locks atop her head with several pretty pins made of smoothed bone, and then braiding in half a dozen strings of wooden beads that hung down almost to her shoulders. She thought it made her friend's hair look like a pretty crown, and Fern seemed even more pleased by the elegant, striking look she had ended up with.
Netya's appearance, by comparison, was almost the exact opposite. While she had tried to tidy Fern's hair into something more neat and luxurious, Fern quickly did away with her friend's modest single plait and combed her hair out until it was loose and wispy. Netya thought it made her look quite like Adel, though rather than being put off she was instead awed at the thought of commanding an appearance anywhere near as striking as that of the den mother.
Fern kept Netya's hair loose, giving it only a single thin braid near the front that hung against her cheek, while the rest spilled freely over her shoulders and down her back.
"If only I had been blessed with dark hair like yours," the other girl sighed as she passed Netya a handful of woven bracelets for her arms and wrists. "They say the spirits gather all the wisdom of the night when they pour its blackness into the hair of a newborn child."
"You make it sound very mysterious," Netya replied. "And a little frightening."
"It is, and that is why it holds such power. Some have the spirits of the earth bless their hair with its colour, so that they may live well and always find their place in the world. Then on bright days the spirits of the sun put their golden light in the hair of others, bringing vigour and happiness to their lives."
Netya smiled at her. "You have a little of both."
"My mother always said the spirits could not decide what to do with me." Fern looked sad for a moment, and Netya realised that she had not once come across anyone her friend regarded as family during her time with the pack.