Ratha's Courage

by Clare Bell

  Bundi grimaced, making his tear-lines crumple. “Thakur has been running us around until our pads are sore. We came down here to get away from him. Yes, we’re ready.”

  Mishanti chimed in with a high-pitched, “We very ready.”

  “Just be grateful I don’t ask you to show me right now,” Ratha said, trying to make herself sound stern but knowing she was failing. The sight and scent of Bundi, crestfallen and dung-caked, made her want to loll her tongue out again.

  “Come on, Mishanti,” Bundi said impatiently. “I don’t usually mind getting herdbeast dung on me, but this stuff is really gooey and stinky . . . .” He glowered at Grunt.

  “I hope you get clean before the herding display,” Ratha called after him. “I don’t want to have to wash you myself.” Two tails disappeared down the path before she could finish.

  Satisfied, Ratha continued her stroll until she reached an area where the forest opened, giving way to brush and meadow. Here the creek ran with its waters dappled by sun and shade.

  She caught the rainy freshness of flowing water and passed a small pond that bloomed from the creek side like a flower from a stem. She knew this was not a natural part of the creek. Thakur and Thistle-chaser had dug it.

  She circled the pond, trying to see into the water without being dazzled by reflections. The pool was crowded with both free-swimming fish and limp dead ones that were tethered to a sunken log. The pool’s connection with the creek had been cleverly made so that stream water could flow in but the live fish couldn’t get out.

  The tethered fish were Thistle-chaser’s, brought from her seaside home and placed in this specially dug pond to stay cool and appetizing. Her daughter’s attempts to add seafood to the Named diet was having somewhat mixed results. The ocean fish grew larger and meatier than freshwater fish, but their smell and taste were stronger.

  Both Thistle and Bira had caught the live free-swimmers, spotted silvery trout, and whiskered mud-grubbers. This pond kept them fresh, and easily available.

  Wherever Thistle-chaser goes, she changes things, Ratha thought, recollecting. Thistle had helped rescue True-of-voice, the leader of the face-tail hunting clan. The event was many full season-turns past, but it still remained sharp in Ratha’s memory.

  She thought about her daughter, the image of the stubborn, pointed little face with sea-green eyes coming into her mind along with the smells of waves, kelp, and gulls. The eyes in that face had once looked cloudy and dull, lacking the Named depth and clarity. Now Thistle-chaser’s gaze was sharp and her wit, if not her words, was the equal of any in the clan. Only her slight foreleg limp remained to remind Ratha that she had once bitten, crippled, and abandoned this cub in a frenzy of disappointed rage. It was Thakur who had found Thistle, taught her speech, and then brought her back to the clan.

  Ratha sometimes wondered how such a tough and intense spirit as Thistle’s could inhabit such a funny, odd-colored little body. Only in her facial markings and lighter underside did Thistle resemble the Named. The rest was a patchwork of rust, tan, and black that made Ratha understand why Thistle had once called herself Newt, after the slow-moving salamander.

  Thistle was growing, but her early exile and struggle for survival had stunted her. The crippled leg, however, was healing, along with other, more invisible wounds.

  Not wanting to think about the past, Ratha turned her attention back to the pond. Crayfish crawled over the graveled bottom, feeding with their claws, climbing over one another, getting into quick fights, and shooting away with sudden flaps of their tails.

  She knew that the crayfish were Thakur’s doing. He liked to feast on river crawlers and he preferred them fresh. Whenever he caught a few, he put them in this holding pond.

  Thistle’s fish-storing idea was generally a success, although sometimes Thakur’s crayfish decided to help themselves to an ocean fish snack. He could solve the problem by giving the clan a crayfish banquet. She remembered the exotic sweet taste of the meat as she delicately teased it out of the shell with her front teeth and tongue. Her mouth started watering just from the memory. Ratha eyed the swarm of river-crawlers and licked her jowls.

  A little farther, at the meadow’s edge, the creek ran wide and shallow, making a convenient ford. Ratha crossed, feeling chilled water surge over her front toes up to her dewclaws. Gravel rolled under her pads and stuck between her toes so that she had to pause and clean her feet.

  The meadow was so lush with high-sprouting grass that Ratha had to crane her neck to see above it. A crowd of butterflies surrounded her nose. Their fluttering tickled her whiskers, making them twitch.

  Her ears pricked to the distant voices of Thakur and his herding students. She also caught the high but still brassy bellows of young face-tails and saw a spray of wet grass and dirt.

  Ratha bounded through the high grass until she reached a place where the exuberant spring growth had been grazed down. Now she could see Thakur and his students ringing a young face-tail. An older cub was attempting to back the little elephant using the Named stare-down, but the creature wouldn’t let the herding student lock its gaze. It danced, surprisingly agile on its tree-trunk legs, bobbing its head, swishing its trunk, and tusking up more dirt and grass to throw. The young student, his spots fading into blue-gray with a darker stripe along his back, was getting splattered with mud-brown and green. Judging by the little elephant’s aim, the cub would be mostly mud-colored by the time he either gave up or got control of the face-tail.

  Getting absolutely filthy seemed to be one of the drawbacks of Named life, Ratha thought in amusement, remembering Bundi’s recent plunge.

  Above the racket, she could hear Thakur’s yowling.

  “You have a strong will, cub. Use it; let it out through your eyes. Don’t let the creature even think that it can escape you.”

  The fray became even thicker, the face-tail and its would-be master hidden by flying dirt and debris. The heavy mud smell of the face-tail permeated the air.

  Ratha altered her path to avoid the two, homing in on Thakur. She gave a little sideways jump to evade a dirt clod that smacked into the ground ahead of her.

  The cub-student, oblivious to everything except the rebellious face-tail, bored in through the flying dirt, growling with determination. The young tusker lunged, clubbed with its trunk, its short pigtail stuck straight up. The blue-gray cub ducked and flattened but kept his stare fixed on his quarry. He was completely covered with clots of mud and grass.

  Both adversaries came to a halt, the young face-tail with one heavy forefoot raised to trample its tormentor, trunk curled up over its head. The cub crouched, frozen, tail held rigid, gaze still piercing that of the prey.

  Ratha sensed the critical moment, the instant when a good herder was made or lost. She felt her heart pound and her breath deepen. The two antagonists held, as if in balance.

  Then the tusker slowly raised one rear foot, easing backward. The student stalked ahead a pace, his green-gold eyes intense. The face-tail planted the foot, shifting its weight, then was forced to lower the front leg in order to continue.

  Abruptly the face-tail wheeled, ducking its head and lashing its trunk. With the young herder behind it, the face-tail run-walked away while squalling cheers erupted from Thakur and the others. Ratha joined in.

  When the beast halted, the youngster confronted it again, forcing it back. This time the creature didn’t even try to escape. It lowered its head, dragging the tip of its trunk on the ground, flapping its ears.

  The student, although bedraggled and spent, approached the young tusker again, making it turn one way, then the other. As a final gesture, he shook himself hard, spraying the face-tail’s hide with the dirt it had thrown at him.

  “Enough, Ashon!” called Thakur, and the student strutted back to him, head and tail up, his aroma rich with triumph.

  As Ratha came alongside the herding teacher, she saw another cub preparing for a turn with the beast.

  “No, let the face-tail rest,” Thakur said
to his class, and added, “I need to speak to Ratha. We’ll practice again later. Go and lie down in the shade.”

  To the mud-drenched Ashon, he said, “Very good. Keep working on the stare. You must seize the creature’s gaze the moment you decide to approach it. Now go rinse off in the creek before that stuff hardens.”

  When the students had trotted away, their tails swinging, Ratha touched noses with Thakur. She breathed in the musky honey of his scent and rubbed along his side from shoulder to tailbase, arching her own tail up and flopping it lazily over his back.

  “The Named are gifted with the best herding teacher ever,” she purred.

  “It helps when you have good students,” Thakur purred back, flopping his longer tail across hers.

  Ratha stretched, sliding her forepaws out while her back bowed. “I thought Ashon would be too timid to herd face-tails.”

  “I thought so, too, but he’s surprised me.”

  “Speaking of training herders, Bundi and Mishanti are in the forest with their rumbler-things, if you want either of them today.”

  “No, I’ve drilled them enough. Anyway, they don’t have that big a part in tomorrow’s gathering.” He paused, lifted his whiskers. “I assume True-of-voice and his people will come?”

  “Thistle-chaser said they would.”

  “Good.”

  After another pause, Ratha said, “Thakur, do you think they’ll understand what we are doing?”

  She had good reasons to wonder. True-of-voice was a huge male who led his tribe in hunting face-tails. Though the light in hunters’ eyes was as strong as that of the Named, it was turned strangely inward. True-of-voice’s people seemed to move in a trance that Thistle-chaser had called “dream-stalking.”

  Instead of the obedience and loyalty that held the Named to one another and their leader, the hunters were bound to one another and True-of-voice by a strange emanation that arose from him. They called it “the song,” although it seemed to be transmitted by scent as much as hearing. It pervaded every part of face-tail hunter life, controlling each hunter so that they no longer had the ability or the freedom to make conscious choices.

  After befriending a young hunter male, Thistle had brought him into the clan and helped him survive the tremendous change from dream-stalking hunter to self-aware clan member that was forced upon him with the near-death of True-of-voice. The male, named Quiet Hunter, was now Thistle’s intended mate.

  Thakur’s voice brought Ratha back from the quick flight of her thoughts. “With Thistle and Quiet Hunter there to interpret, I think True will catch the idea.”

  “I hope so. I want to help them get familiar with us so we can learn to trust one another.” Her ears twitched, and she stared moodily at the grass. “I wish I could speak to True-of-voice directly. Thistle and Quiet Hunter have done well, but hearing his words through them isn’t quite the same.”

  “Well, if you want to talk about the taste of meat or the sharpness of teeth, you could,” Thakur replied, and Ratha knew he was remembering his experience with True-of-voice’s tribe. He had been disappointed to learn that the hunters used language only for very basic things. “Anything more has to come through the song.”

  “And I’m deaf to it, even though I’ve tried to learn from Thistle.”

  “I have done the same with Quiet Hunter and Thistle, but I’m still as song-deaf as you.” Thakur paused to nibble on a claw. “Perhaps we just have to admit that there are paths we can’t follow.”

  “Why must True-of-voice be so . . . remote? Does he think he is so much greater than his people? Or so much greater than the Named?”

  Thakur peered into her face. “You smell as though you resent him, Ratha.”

  “I do. I know this doesn’t make sense, but I really do. I feel as though he is perched up on a high place looking down at us with a sneer. I’d feel better if I could just speak with him whiskers-to-whiskers. After all, our peoples both use the same basic language.”

  “Yes, but we use it very differently. Ratha, your feeling is honest. I must confess I have felt that way myself, since I’m a bit spoiled by having a clan leader who actually listens to me.” He paused. “Remember, though: we can’t make any assumptions about how True-of-voice feels or why he acts as he does.”

  “I just wish that he would at least try to come down to our limb on the tree,” Ratha grumbled.

  “Or up to it, or onto it from another at the same height.”

  Ratha looked up at Thakur, thanking the patience in his eyes. “Maybe I didn’t really learn from our experience last season. I just can’t get rid of the feeling that True-of-voice is isolating himself from us deliberately. Why can’t he even try to speak with me?”

  “Understanding this new tribe is hard to get a claw into,” the herding teacher answered. “I don’t know if True-of-voice or any of his people can understand what you want, Ratha.”

  She tried not to let her voice break as she said, “I really wanted to find another clan like us. Instead we got these strangers who seem to be dazed all the time and can’t even think for themselves.” She paused. “And I chose to help them . . . .”

  “And you chose to help them,” agreed Thakur. “So why can’t True-of-voice be a little more grateful?”

  “Yes. I know they have given us face-tail meat and a few young animals, but that doesn’t . . .”

  Thakur looked at her steadily. “You want them to give of themselves. You want True-of-voice to give of himself.”

  “Why not? We’re willing to. I know you are, and I’ll try. I just want to be friends with him.”

  “Giving of one’s self means that one has a self to give,” the herding teacher answered. “True-of-voice and his people may not.”

  Ratha grimaced. “You’re right. I really can’t get my claws into this. I keep asking how they can walk and speak and eat and raise cubs and have a tribe and have light in their eyes and not have selves?”

  “Not as we do,” Thakur answered. “I think that their whole tribe together forms a very powerful ‘self’ of a sort.”

  Ratha paced restlessly, sweeping her tail along her flanks. “I want to do what is best, but I can’t if I don’t understand. How do I walk a path I can’t see or feel?”

  “Trust,” the herding teacher answered, and the growing warmth in his scent matched the increasing gold in his eyes. “In yourself, in what you sense is right. And in the two who carry your good words and wishes: Thistle-chaser and Quiet Hunter.”

  Ratha wanted to protest—why did things have to be so complex, so twisted around like a vine choking a tree? But instead, she lowered her gaze and said, “I will try hard to look at this without resentment, Thakur.”

  “That is already a long step on the path.”

  Except I feel as though I’ve been stumbling, Ratha thought.

  “Herding teacher, your words have helped. I feel better, so I won’t keep you from your herding students. Don’t work them too hard.”

  “I’ll be here if you need me,” Thakur replied.

  With a parting nose-touch and a flip of her tail, Ratha trotted on about her rounds.

  * * *

  In the afternoon, when the shadows grew and the sun sank, Ratha came back, looking for Thakur.

  In another corner of the meadow near the forested border, she stopped, her eyes widening in curiosity, her whiskers and tail lifting. A strange little scene lay before her. In the shade of a large live-oak tree, Thistle-chaser, Thakur, and their treelings were busily making something. As Ratha approached, she caught the dry-leather smell of three-horn, dappleback, and striper hides lying rumpled and stiff on the ground. Several cubs were cleaning and softening the skin sides with their tongues.

  Thistle and her treeling, Biaree, crouched over a deer hide, doing something that Ratha couldn’t see at first. When she moved closer, she saw that Biaree was using his finger to widen a hole someone had bitten in the hide. With prompting from Thistle, the treeling took a strip that had been bitten or torn from anoth
er hide, and poked one end through the hole.

  Staying quiet, Ratha watched. Biaree pulled at the poked-through end until he had enough length to twist and loop the strip back around itself. He did this several times and then pulled both ends so that the strip was securely attached to the hide.

  Nearby, Thakur and his treeling, Aree, were doing the same thing, although slower.

  “Ashon,” Thakur called, “come over here and bite some holes for me. Your fangs are sharper than mine.”

  The cub came over and did what Thakur asked, using a fang on one side to pierce the skin.

  “I can use my claws,” Thakur said, glancing up at Ratha, “but it takes longer. These hides are tough.”

  Ashon and several other cubs acted as hole punchers, moving around between the hide workers and biting wherever a claw pointed.

  For a moment Ratha was puzzled by what they were doing, then she remembered a previous discussion with Thakur.

  “Yes, we’re making the beast-riding hides we talked about,” he said. “We agreed that we couldn’t keep the older cubs from trying to stay on a bucking dappleback, so Thistle and I figured out how to make skins to wrap around the animals. The hides give the cubs a way to hang on without clawing the horses.”

  Ratha remembered the first time she had tried to climb onto a dappleback and the resulting frenzied plunging when the animal tried to throw her off.

  She also remembered Thakur’s scolding when he saw the bleeding claw marks along the horse’s side and flanks. He had tried to discourage the cubs’ sport by pointing out that it not only injured the herdbeasts and could harm the young riders, it undermined the training that he was trying to instill. He said that the riders became too excited and that the activity woke the killing urge that a good herder had to control.

  But Thakur faced a tradition of beast riding among the cubs. Everyone had done it when they were that age. The cubs had always done it and always would. Even Thakur finally had to make a compromise. This was it.

  “Finished this one,” said Thistle abruptly. “Biaree needs a rest. Paws are tired.”