by Clare Bell
The next day, she helped him search for the treeling again, but they only saw wild ones who scrambled up to the tops of their trees and clung there in the swaying branches. There was a cull in the meadow that day and Ratha ate as if her belly would never be filled, but she saw that Thakur had no appetite and quickly gave up his place to the one behind him.
He went back to teaching the cubs, but his step was heavy and his scolding harsher than it had been. He closed himself off to all, even Ratha, and he rarely spoke or looked anyone in the face. He seemed to have lost his spirit along with the treeling and he faded day by day until he became like a shadow among the shadows of trees and bushes that fell across clan ground.
Ratha spent much of her time with the Firekeepers. Her major reason for doing so was to prevent gatherings of the sort that frightened cubs, but she also felt she had failed to give the Firekeepers proper guidance in their attitude toward the fire-creature. She did admit to herself that she was a little uncertain about what that attitude should be.
Fessran seemed to welcome this new attention, although Shongshar clearly did not like it. The Firekeeper leader often invited Ratha to come with her at night when she patrolled the ring of guard-fires around the meadow. They frequently had time to talk, and Ratha realized that her position as clan leader had distanced her from the one who had been her most loyal friend.
Summer had come and the warmth of the day stayed into late evening. Only in the hours before dawn did the night grow cold and dew settle on the grass. This was the time when the Firekeepers were weary, when the fires could sink low and the threat of attack was the greatest. Fessran chose this time to patrol, walking from one outpost to the next, seeing that each fire was properly tended and that there was enough wood. She offered encouragement and good spirits to those who stood the early morning guard. Ratha was heartened to see the weary Firekeepers grin at Fessran’s teasing. She noticed that her own presence also seemed to cheer some of them.
She was following Fessran across the moonlit grass and had stopped to shake the dew from her feet when a scream tore through the night’s silence. She knew in an instant that the cry had not come from any of the herd animals nor from raiders lurking nearby. It was a scream of pain and terror and it had come from the center of the meadow.
Ahead of her, she saw Fessran start and freeze as the cry began again. Then both of them were racing across the grass.
“The herders’ fire,” panted Fessran as Ratha caught up with her. “Over there by the old oak.”
The herders had begun to cluster about the fire that they used to warm themselves. In their midst lay an orange-lit form that jerked and writhed. The head stretched back, the mouth snarled open, and Ratha heard another terrible cry.
She sped past Fessran and skidded to a stop in the middle of the herders. Her belly gave a painful twist when she saw that the distorted face was Bundi’s. Cherfan pawed the shuddering young herder, looking frightened and lost.
“Turn him over,” Ratha ordered. “Quickly.”
As carefully as she could, she helped Cherfan roll Bundi over. As the side of his face and neck came into view, Ratha felt her lips draw back from her teeth. From his cheek to his neck and shoulder, his flesh was hlistered and glistening, with ash clinging to charred fur. Even as she watched, the skin of his face began to pucker, drawing the corner of his mouth back.
His eye was swollen shut and both his nose and eyebrow whiskers on that side were gone.
“Take him to the stream,” said Fessran, pushing her way through the crowd of herders. “Water can ease the Red Tongue’s hurt. Hurry!”
Half-dragging and half-carrying Bundi, Ratha and Cherfan lugged him to the little creek near the trailhead.
“Lay him here, where there is no mud on the bottom,” Fessran directed, wading in. “Easy. Hold his nose out of the water.”
Ratha bent her head down, trying to see Bundi’s face. She felt his breath on her whiskers as he panted rapidly and arched his back in a convulsive shudder. He opened his mouth for another scream, but could only gurgle and cough as water filled his throat.
Ratha caught his nape on the uninjured side and lifted him enough for the water to drain out. Cherfan helped her move him so that he was lying in the shallows with his muzzle on the bank. After a while his breathing became steadier and he managed to whisper that the pain was less.
“Can you take care of him?” she asked Cherfan and Fessran. “I want to go back and look at the fire.”
“Poor clumsy cub,” she heard Cherfan moan as she climbed out of the stream and shook herself hard. “You shouldn’t have gone near the Red Tongue when there was no one there to protect you.”
Ratha laid back her ears as she trotted toward the fire. Bundi was awkward, but he wasn’t that clumsy, was he? She circled the firebed, examining the ground carefully. It was no use; the herder’s tracks and her own obliterated Bundi’s and those of anyone else who might have been there. Likewise, the scents of everyone who had been there were too thick for her to detect any suspicious smells.
She could see that the fire had definitely been disturbed. It was lopsided and there was a large imprint in the ash and crushed coals where a body had fallen. Now the question remained: had Bundi tripped over his own paws, or had someone pushed him?
Again, she circled, looking for tracks where the dirt met the grass. She found half of one pugmark and decided that it had been there before the herders had all crowded around Bundi. The print was too large to be Bundi’s. It would only belong to one of two males in the clan: Cherfan or Shongshar.
Cherfan had been there when she arrived, she reminded herself. But Bundi is his own son! I know Cherfan and he could never do such a thing to a cub he sired. That left only Shongshar.
But even if the print was his mark, when had he left it? He could have been one of those who helped build the herders’ fire earlier that evening. Or he could have pushed Bundi. But he seemed even fonder of Bundi than Cherfan was. Neither possibility made much sense.
Was the Red Tongue itself the malignant force? Could Fessran have been right when she suggested the fire-creature could lash out against those who displeased it? Could it have sensed the presence of an ignorant herder, lured him close and then pulled him in?
For a moment Ratha stared at the fire, which was burning steadily as if nothing had happened. This is a creature we do not understand, she said to herself, and the thought sent her tail creeping between her legs. Fear crawled through her fur and she suddenly wanted to flee from this alien thing before it reached out and took her in its fierce embrace.
She made her legs stop shaking and swallowed the lump in her throat. There were questions she had to ask and the answers to those would tell her whether to believe that the fire had needed any help to burn poor Bundi.
When she returned to the stream, Fessran was coaxing Bundi out of the water; she even got him to shake himself off a little. He crouched on the bank with Cherfan close against him on one side and Fessran on the other, trying to warm him. Fessran spoke softly, trying to cheer and reassure him. She was so honest in her concern and her eagerness to help that Ratha knew, whatever had happened, Fessran had taken no part in it. Now and then, Bundi burst into shivers, but he seemed to be in less pain. The three of them looked like an odd moonlit lump on the streambank.
Ratha shivered herself as the night wind touched the dampness in her fur. “Can you walk, Bundi?” she asked him. “You should be sheltered in a den. Fessran, will you take him to your lair?”
“Yes, I will, but there is something I want to do first.”
“What?”
“Post some Firekeepers at the herders’ fire.”
Ratha felt surprise and then a touch of annoyance, but she was too drained and a little too frightened to argue. If the Red Tongue was malevolent, she had a duty to guard her people from it.
“All right,” she agreed at last.
She knew Fessran sensed her reluctance, for the Firekeeper said, “I’ll give Bira
that duty. She gets along well with most of the herders. She can choose whom she wants to work with her.”
This cheered Ratha. Bira wasn’t likely to think herself above the herders or make arbitrary decisions about who could come near the fire and who couldn’t.
The young Firekeeper was summoned and soon took up her new post. Several herders eyed her suspiciously, for they were not accustomed to having a Firekeeper in constant attendance. But when the news of Bundi’s injury spread, they changed their minds and welcomed her protection.
Fessran took Bundi to her den and made him comfortable there. Ratha looked in on them just before weariness sent her to her own lair. She crawled into it just as dawn was beginning to color the sky, and she quickly fell into a deep and exhausted sleep.
She was not often troubled by dreams, but the events of the night seemed to replay themselves in her mind in a way strangely altered from what she had seen. In her dream, she stood again before the Red Tongue and, as she watched, the fire-creature changed. The flames that licked up toward the sky seemed to bend down and separate, as if they were becoming legs, and their tips became rounded and solid as if they were turning into paws. The heart of the fire elongated into a body. Part of it drew into a ball and made a head with flame-licked ears and red coals for eyes.
She watched in terror as the rear legs formed and a plume of fire swept itself out into a long tail. The creature opened its mouth, showing teeth that had the impossible sharpness of a reaching flame. In its fur were streaks of blue, violet and yellow against a background of searing orange.
Slowly it began to move, and its flame-substance rippled as if it had muscles. It fixed its glowing eyes on her and she shook until her teeth chattered as she felt its endless devouring hunger. Her mind begged her legs to run, but she stayed, paralyzed by fright and a kind of horrified fascination.
The fire-creature lowered its head and placed one foot before the other. It was leaving the den of coals where it had grown and was coming toward her. Now it spoke and its voice had the soft hiss of the burning flame. “Bare your throat to me, clan leader,” it said. “Bare your throat to me, for I am the one who rules.”
She crouched, drawn and repelled by its terrible beauty. As if in worship, she lifted her chin, showing her throat. The creature that had sprung from the fire’s heart approached her and opened its mouth for the killing bite. She felt its breath on her and its whiskers, made of slender tongues of fire, touched her and left searing streaks on her skin beneath the fur. She felt the points of its fangs draw across her throat.
“No!” she screamed and lashed out with all her strength against it.
She awoke with her claws fastened in the wall of her den and her teeth bared. With a grateful sigh of deliverance, she sank down and lay limp until she was sure the horror of the dream had really passed. Her coat was rough and filled with dirt and she could see where she had writhed on the floor of her lair.
Unsteadily she got up and left the den, shaking the earth out of her fur and smoothing her pelt with her tongue. The early afternoon sun shone down through the scattered trees, comforting her with its warmth and golden light.
But she couldn’t forget those coal-red eyes that glowed with a hunger that would never be sated. She knew the creature was a dream, but she also knew that dreams often spoke truth. Although she had set herself to master the Red Tongue, she understood that a part of her mind would always look upon the fire-creature with a terror that could not be answered with reason.
When Fessran came to her that evening and asked that Bira be assigned to guard the herders’ fire again, it was easy for Ratha to agree. Soon the Firekeeper had that duty regularly. At Fessran’s urging, she forbade any of the herders to go near an unguarded flame.
Bundi recovered slowly. His wounds were less serious than Ratha had thought and she credited Fessran’s idea of bathing him in the stream. The swelling on his face diminished; the eye that had been forced shut opened again. He could walk, but he limped because the burn extended from his face down his neck to his shoulder and it hurt him to stretch the blistered skin.
He was soon back with the herders, doing what he could and trying to do more. Soon he had recovered full use of his shoulder, but he and everyone around him knew that he would always be disfigured.
Ratha continued to seek an answer to the mystery of Bundi’s accident. She questioned him carefully, but shock had driven the memory from his mind and he couldn’t recall exactly what had happened. He knew only that he had flung himself out of the firebed and rolled on the ground until someone came.
Shongshar remained politely evasive and Ratha did not want to alienate Fessran by pressing him harder. She was sure Fessran herself had nothing to do with it and if she suspected Shongshar at all, she would have spoken.
Chapter Thirteen
Ferns stroked Ratha’s side as she padded through them and along the mossy bed beside the streambank. She startled a frog and heard it plunk into the clear water. Above her, scattered trees spread their branches toward each other across the creek. When the breeze died, she could hear the soft splash of a waterfall that lay farther up the trail.
She was following the little creek up from the meadow to its source in the hills, something she often did when she wandered alone with no destination and a wish for only her own company. She thought wistfully that she would like to have taken Thakur along, but he was busy teaching this morning. His unhappiness over the loss of his treeling would have made him a poor companion anyhow. There was not much she could do to cheer him up; she had already tried. Eventually he would forget his grief, but it would take time.
She felt a little angry with him for retreating into sorrow when she was most in need of his help and support. There was no one she could talk to now. She thought briefly of unburdening herself to Fessran, but their friendship had grown too uncertain. The Firekeeper leader had found a new loyalty, one that was pulling her away from her old ties.
Since the accident, the herders had shunned Bundi, for they viewed his scars as a mark of the Red Tongue’s displeasure. The cub, whose awkwardness had made him shy, was becoming bitter and lonely, and the look in his eyes was that of someone much older. The only herder who would work with him now was Shoman, whose leg also bore marks of the Red Tongue’s wrath and who suffered the same hostility as Bundi.
There was little Ratha could do about the herders’ rejection of the injured pair except to demand that it not be shown in her presence.
The trail began to slope upward and Ratha followed it, listening to the sound of the waterfall as it echoed through the trees. Something made her stop and look upward, and she felt suddenly as if she were being watched.
She looked back down the trail and sniffed the breeze that ruffled her fur. No one was behind her. After waiting for a moment, she lowered her head and went on.
A rustle in the branches overhead stopped her again and she peered suspiciously up into the canopy. A small brown head with a banded muzzle appeared through the leaves a short distance above her head. It stared at her with round black eyes.
“Aree?” it said.
Ratha stared back. Her mouth opened and her jaw sagged until she was gaping. “Aree? Have I really found you?”
The treeling yawned at her and scratched himself. He leaned down to peer at Ratha, extending his long ringed tail for balance. Then, as if satisfied, he ambled along the branch and climbed down into the crotch of the tree.
At first Ratha thought she had made a mistake. This creature was a bit larger and considerably rounder than Thakur’s treeling. Then she saw the crooked rear leg. Unless another treeling had also managed to break its leg in exactly the same place, this one had to be Aree.
Ratha talked softly to the treeling, trying to coax him down, but Aree seemed shy and unsure. He would start to climb down, then hesitate and scramble back up to his perch.
“Come on, Aree. You know who I am. You used to groom my fur. It needs grooming now,” she said and started to purr.
Aree was never afraid of me once he got used to me. He used to jump all over me. I wonder what has made him so shy.
The treeling started to groom himself, nuzzling the bulge of his belly. His? Aree was obviously a female and had found a mate.
“Thakur will have to get used to thinking of you as a she,” Ratha said, grinning. “He’ll also have to get used to all your little cubs, when you have them.”
Aree cocked her head and curled her tail at Ratha, but wouldn’t budge from the tree no matter how loud she purred. Ratha was starting to worry when she remembered the command Thakur had used to call the treeling to him.
She drew in her breath, gave a short hiss and clicked her teeth twice. Aree’s eyes brightened. The treeling launched herself from the tree, bounced to the ground and then up onto Ratha’s back. She rubbed her cheek against Ratha and was answered with nuzzles and licks. The creature took her place on Ratha’s shoulder and wound her tail around Ratha’s neck.
When she was sure Aree would stay on her back, she turned around and trotted down the trail to the meadow, eager to find Thakur.
As she drew close and heard the sound of cubs’ voices, she hesitated. Carrying Aree out into the open sun of the meadow might not be the best idea. If Thakur’s young pupils saw her with the treeling on her back, they would crowd around her with eager curiosity and might frighten Aree. If the treeling panicked and ran away, she would never be able to get her back again.
She left the trail before it led into the meadow and circled through the brush at the edge of the grass until she reached a leafy thicket. Here she was close enough to see and hear everything. The wind blew toward her and she caught the sweaty smell of dapplebacks and the eager nervous scents of the youngsters.
The cubs were watching as Thakur chased two dapplebacks across the meadow. The horses pounded in front of him, their manes flying. He raced after them, lithe and slim, yet powerful. With a sudden burst of speed, he caught up with the dapplebacks and dashed between them. It seemed as though he drove right under those flying heels, and Ratha forgot to breathe until she saw the horses separate with Thakur running between them.