by Clare Bell
“Settle down, both of you,” Ratha said. “Let the cubs sleep.” Both males complied and soon joined the litterlings in slumber. Ratha moved herself and the others away in order not to disturb them.
“Well, I never thought I’d see that,” said Khushi, settling down beside Thakur. “A big bruiser like him trying to play mother.” He cut himself off, was silent, and then said, “I wish we had my mother with us.”
“I miss Fessran, too,” Ratha said softly. “And Thistle and Bira and Drani and all the others. If I hadn’t . . . ”
Ratha felt Thakur press against her as if saying, Don’t tear yourself up, yearling. We need you.
She pressed back in acknowledgment, more than grateful for his silent support.
“Never mind that,” she said, her voice still slightly rough. “We have to take stock. What we have and what we don’t have. It’s hard for me to say this, but we have lost a lot. In the confusion of the fight, we lost the Red Tongue and the treelings. I think the treelings will be all right—I felt Ratharee jump from my back into a tree when things got wild.”
“I tucked Aree into a safe place,” Thakur answered. “She’ll stay there until I get her, hopefully soon.”
“Cherfaree and Biaree got away when the renegades took Thistle and Bira,” Khushi added, then stopped himself again. “Ooops, I’m sorry, clan leader. . . . ’
The stab into Ratha’s belly had only begun, but she endured the pang of grief and said, “I’m not going to say that I don’t miss Thistle and that it doesn’t hurt. I do and it does. Badly. But I’m not going to ask anyone to spare me. I think and I hope that Thakur is right—that my daughter and the others are still alive.”
Thakur raised his head. “I can tell you why I think so.”
“I’ll welcome it, herding teacher, but later. First we’ve got to get meat to feed the cubs, and that means Thakur and I will have to hunt.”
“It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? Since you’ve hunted? Do you remember how?” This was from Khushi.
“I’ll have to,” she replied shortly. She went to the snoozing Cherfan, told him what she was going to do and then let him sleep again. Designating Mondir to be in charge while she was gone, she left the shelter through a crevice. Thakur followed.
He said that he was better at fishing than hunting and that the tumbling brook held trout. Ratha said she would go after grouse, although she wasn’t as good at stalking them as Bira. If she found lizards, she would take them, too.
She found that although her conscious self might have forgotten the techniques of hunting birds and other small prey, her body remembered. Her ears trembled to hear the betraying rustles in the brush, and when she heard them, her body dropped into a stalking crouch, leaving part of her mind to watch.
She was thankful, for she drew no enjoyment from this hunt other than the knowledge that it would put food in the cubs’ bellies.
In her hurry, she badly mauled her catches when she made them, but between her and Thakur, she had enough to feed the cubs and enough left over to provide for herself and the others.
“I miss Bira. I hope I don’t have to teach Cherfan how to hunt,” she said while she and Thakur were defeathering and descaling their prizes. “He’d be crashing through the bushes scaring everything away. But we couldn’t have saved the cubs without him.”
When they brought the food back, the widened eyes, lifted whiskers, and sharpened scents told her everyone was hungry. They all backed away and waited while she and Thakur fed the two cub-nurses all that they could hold.
She told them they didn’t have to regurgitate everything they ate for cub-feeding—they should keep some down, since they would need it later.
While Cherfan and Mondir did the messy job, she shared the rest out with the others.
“Come on, Ashon, eat,” she heard Khushi say.
“The fish is good,” the cub replied, “but this bird-stuff . . . it doesn’t taste bad, but it feels funny in my mouth.”
“Well, get used to it, stripling, or you’ll lose it to Mishanti.”
“Or me,” grunted Cherfan, wiping his jowls with the back of his paw and raising his head from the cubs. “This bunch is insatiable.”
Chapter Seventeen
Ratha thought she would have no appetite, but the exercise of hunting brought it back, at least a little. And maybe the courageous banter among the Named helped to lift her spirits.
Courageous because she sensed that everyone, even Bundi and Mishanti, knew at bottom how bad things really were. In one blow, the Named had been stripped of everything they valued and needed: their land, their herdbeasts, the Red Tongue—even all their females but one had been captured.
New Singer had taken the fire-den, the source for all the brands and campfires. In capturing Bira and Fessran along with other Firekeeper females, he had also taken the means to keep fire alive and use it, if he so chose. Why then had his gang seized Thistle, Drani, and the others who were not Firekeepers?
The answer emerged out of Ratha’s memories of the fight and what followed. Her fur stiffened as she realized what New Singer and his group wanted from the imprisoned females.
“I thought you’d catch that prey soon,” Thakur said.
“I’m so stupid . . . I never thought . . . All males, no females. Young toms, eager to mate. That’s it, isn’t it, Thakur?”
“I don’t believe it was stupidity that made you avoid the idea,” Thakur answered gently and added, “I have somewhat the same problem, which is why it took me so long to see the answer.”
For us, mating is more than just coupling. There is love, and in love there is pain. Not just the pain of losing the one you choose, but the pain of looking at the young you birth and seeing eyes that will never see the world as you do, tongues that will never speak, minds that can never understand. And that the one you chose brought this upon you, or could bring it upon you, through no fault of his own.
That is why neither Thakur nor I could understand this. Though I may take a male in the courting season while he exiles himself instead, neither of us dares to love.
We are so similar, so close. Is that why I want him? I cannot think of that now.
“Tell me what happened,” Ratha said. “Mating is part of it, but killing cubs?”
“This is how things went,” Thakur began as the others settled close by.
Ratha stopped him. “Wait, we must post a watch.” She assigned Khushi and Bundi the task.
“I’ll speak loud enough so that they can hear as well,” said Thakur, and started again.
At first Ratha didn’t understand why he was recounting episodes such as the escaping face-tails, the canyon fire that killed True-of-voice’s hunters, and the schism within the other leader’s ranks that ejected New Singer and the other young hunter males.
Then, gradually, she began to see the sinews that bound the parts together.
“The ones slain in the canyon fire were all female,” Thakur emphasized. “Many hunter females died. The few females left would have been torn to pieces by both the old and young males fighting for them. True-of-voice had no choice. He had to drive the younger males out.” Thakur paused. “I’m not saying that he consciously decided to do this. I’m saying that something in him or the song told him he had to.”
“So that is why the song turned ‘black’ for Quiet Hunter and those like him,” Ratha muttered.
“And when you have a bunch of randy young toms, as my sweet Fessran would say,” said Cherfan who had awakened and come over with Mondir, leaving the cubs sleeping in a big pile, “they’ll go to the nearest source. And they did. Us.”
“How can they do that?” Ashon wrinkled his young nose. “It sounds so strange. We don’t do these things.”
Thakur looked at the half-grown male. His voice deepened, urging Ratha to listen closely. “We don’t do these things now, Ashon. But we used to do them.”
A vibrating silence followed his words, then a babble of protest.
“Wh
at?”
“No, we’d never—”
“Where did you hear that, herding teacher?”
“Let Thakur speak,” Ratha commanded, although she wanted to object as well.
Thakur continued, “My mother, Reshara, told me. I believe her, because it all makes sense. Back before Meoran’s rule, back before Baire and many clan leaders before him, when the Named were so many that we had to form separate clans, our ways were different. Reshara learned this from her mother, who heard it from her own, and so on. We had learned to herd instead of stalking, and our kind were flourishing.”
“There was such a time?” Ashon asked, his eyes wide.
“Yes, there was,” Thakur answered. “Before the coming of the Un-Named. That is another story. For now, what matters is that, although our people spoke and thought, they were more like beasts than we are now.”
“How did the change happen?” asked Khushi. “I mean from being beasts to not being beasts?”
“It just did. No one really knows how.”
“We’re still beasts. Look at Cherfan.” This was from Mondir.
“Maybe so,” Thakur said, as the big herder yawned off the insult, “but there’s something else in us.”
“Go on,” Ratha said.
“More males were born among us than females. The older males got the females, but they had to fight the younger ones for that right. To keep mating fights from tearing up our tribes, clan leaders had to force the younger males out. These exiles from one tribe became invaders of another, driving that tribe’s elders off and mating with the females. The usurpers killed any cubs sired by the old males. The invaders didn’t want to waste effort raising them when they could have sons and daughters of their own.”
“It makes sense in a cruel way,” said Khushi.
“It did. In some ways we were crueler than we are now.”
“If it made sense,” Ratha asked, “why did we stop?”
“When the Un-Named began attacking us, our numbers fell. We couldn’t afford to kill or drive out any of our own kind. That, in part, explains why we are different now. Why we care more about one another and our young.”
“So we became kinder. In order to survive,” Ratha mused. “Bira would like to hear that.” She paused. “So True-of-voice and New Singer are doing as our clan used to.”
“Yes, because they are our kind, although they have taken a different trail.” Thakur looked around at his listeners. “So now do you understand what has happened?”
“The canyon fire killed too many hunter females,” Khushi said. “But we didn’t start the fire—it was that Night-who-eats-stars.”
“If we hadn’t kept and tamed the Red Tongue, the star-eater wouldn’t have been able to misuse it,” Ratha answered. “We do bear some of the responsibility.”
“To True-of-voice, it didn’t matter,” Thakur resumed. “To restore balance, he exiled the young males, including his own son, who became New Singer. That’s why there were no females in their group.”
“Yes, you were worried about that,” said Ratha.
“So now that we know, what do we do?” asked Cherfan.
“First,” said Thakur, “we plan. Then we sleep. Ratha?” He tilted his head up to her.
She agreed. With food in their bellies, the Named were better able to think. They formed an irregular circle around Ratha and Thakur, reminding her of the comforting panther-pile they had made around her while she was suffering from grief and shock after the canyon fire.
The first thing, she said, was to recover as many of the herdbeasts as they could and find a protected place to graze them. Hunting could feed the Named in an emergency, but Ratha didn’t want her people to lose their herding ways.
“Uh, clan leader,” said Khushi, “if New Singer’s bunch captured Fess and the others for mating, shouldn’t we try to rescue them first before . . . ?”
Ratha heard the other clan males growling agreement. The thought of outsiders coupling with their females raised the fur on their napes.
It raised Ratha’s hackles, too . . . the thought of Thistle being forced . . .
No, she couldn’t let emotion run away with her. She had to think. She got up.
“The renegades can’t mate with Fessran and the others until those females come into heat.”
“How do you know they aren’t?” Mondir asked.
She waved her tail. “Because I’m not. You’d certainly know if I were. We all come in season together.”
Close by, she felt Thakur shift, as if to say, you may not be now, but you’re close. Just the thought was enough to bring a warm prickle up her back from the base of her tail. The stress of the attack had driven away the onset of her heat, but it would return soon. When it did, she would be less than useless to the Named, at least as a leader. She had less time than she thought.
“All right, tomorrow we go after the herdbeasts,” she announced. “After that, our friends.”
Everyone agreed and made a panther-pile around the cubs to keep them snug. Ratha, close to the center, appreciated the support and affection, but she was feeling hot and itchy. Wiggling her way out, she left through a crevice, seeking the cool night air. She told Bundi and Khushi that she was taking over their watch and they could go and sleep. Gratefully they did, leaving Ratha alone with the cloudy night sky and the scent of pinecones drying amid granite pebbles.
Though she had put up a good front for her people, now she slumped. She felt ragged, empty, and most of all, guilty. Retracing the trail of events in her mind, she found mistake after mistake. The biggest one was the first—choosing to rescue True-of-voice and restoring him to his people. It had felt like the right thing to do, but the choice had hurt the Named badly.
And I was stroking myself for being so farseeing and generous when I did it, she thought bitterly. If she had let True-of-voice die and the hunter tribe wither, the Named would still be on clan land, living in safety, herding, teaching cubs: all the things that meant the most to them. There would have been no fawn-killing, no canyon fire, no dead-gathering, no resulting imbalance, no rogue males, and no attack.
While trying to reach out to others, she had led the Named to disaster. Even her creature, the Red Tongue, couldn’t save them. It, too, was lost to her, along with her land, her daughter, and even her treeling.
And who as to blame? Night-who-eats stars, for stealing the Red Tongue and setting the canyon blaze? Perhaps a little. His crime was more ineptness than harmful intent. Not True-of-voice, for he bore no malice toward the Named. He was only acting out of necessity when he exiled the young males and unleashed New Singer on the clan. Not even New Singer himself, even though he had done so much damage to the clan that Ratha hated him. He was only following the age-old urge to breed.
A leader’s first duty was to her people. She had betrayed that duty. She no longer deserved to lead. Another could do better.
Like the clouds creeping across the sky, engulfing the stars, Ratha felt despair creeping over her, flattening her, dissolving her down until her drooping chin and whiskers sagged upon her paws, and her tail, limp, hung over the edge of the boulder where she crouched.
It wasn’t in her nature to be cruel or harsh. She had to force herself to be stern. Kindness came more easily. Had she indulged herself at the expense of her people by taking the easy trail? Had kindness and the wish to be thought of as such been just an illusion that enticed her and her people off a fatal hidden edge?
Inside, she cried at the unfairness of it all. What she had felt so strongly to be right—kindness, reaching out, looking beyond—they weren’t what made a leader. The tyrants Meoran, Shongshar—even they were better leaders than she. Cruel as they were, they would have led the Named to triumph rather than destruction.
It would be better for the clan if she just crept away. She felt mocked by the ghosts of the tyrants she thought she had defeated. Were they right after all in believing that a female didn’t have the strength to lead, that she would always be seduced by
gentleness, kindness?
She didn’t realize that she had let a despairing cry escape her until she felt a paw on her shoulder and the ends of whiskers brushing her cheek.
“What we are now,” Thakur’s voice said, “could not be ruled by the old ways of claws and teeth, or even the new way of the Red Tongue. Never mistake kindness for weakness, Ratha. Kindness takes far more strength than cruelty.”
There was more than understanding in his voice, or even affection. There was love.
It made her gulp and then choke out all the despairs that rent and tore her. He listened quietly.
“I’m no leader. I only became one by accident and then stayed when you placed the torch in my mouth,” she moaned. “Ever since then, all I’ve done is blunder. I misjudged Shongshar. I was blind about True-of-voice, and New Singer took me by surprise.” She took a sobbing breath. “I can’t even keep a proper watch without getting distracted by my feelings! If anyone came, they’d have easily gotten past me.”
In answer, Thakur turned his head one way, to where Ashon stood, looking silvery in a shaft of moonlight. When he turned his head the other way, she followed his head to Mondir, eyes gleaming, ears erect.
“They asked me if they could come out and take the watch. They wanted to. They know it is hard to keep alert when you suffer.”
“A leader shouldn’t go to mush like this,” Ratha growled. “If I suffer, I deserve it. Look at what I’ve done.”
“Yes, look at what you’ve done,” Thakur said, soft mockery lilting his voice. “Created a clan where all can speak without fear and know they will be heard. Where all feel safe; where they can use their talents without being squashed; where they can be safe, live, mate, raise cubs in freedom. Where I can teach and grow with my students, Fessran can rant, Mishanti can be a nuisance, Thistle-chaser can be stubborn, Bira can groom that tail of hers; most of all, you’ve created a clan where we can be ourselves.” He stopped for breath. “You know how precious that is, Ratha. I’ve seen you fight savagely for it.”
She felt her ribs heave in a deep sigh. “You shouldn’t trust something precious to someone who stumbles and loses it.”
