by Clare Bell
Ratha hitched herself up, trying to hold her daughter’s gaze. “You may hate me now, and you may hate me more after I’ve said this. You will never slay the Dreambiter, because you have become the Dreambiter.”
“No.”
“You would kill or cripple that cub if it meant you could take out your hate on me. It is the same thing. It was the same thing then.”
“No. He in the way,” Newt spluttered.
“You got in the way when I attacked Bonechewer,” Ratha said, her voice hard. “We are both Dreambiters and cub-maulers. We are both fighting for ourselves so hard that it is easy for us to wound others who get in the way.” She paused. “That is the truth, Thistle-chaser.”
Now Newt was taking hard, deep breaths. Ratha could see her daughter’s rib cage heave. Was it realization or rage that lit the depths of her eyes? Ratha couldn’t tell and braced herself for another blow.
With a despairing howl, Newt flung herself around. She seemed to go into a wild fit, slashing at empty air, raking her claws across rocks and opening her jaws in a raw-edged scream. Then she turned her wrath on herself, ripping her own fur with her claws and trying to stab herself with her teeth.
“Thistle-chaser!” Ratha howled, then shut her eyes, unable to bear the sight.
A deep roar drowned out Newt’s cries and then there was a booming crash as a storm-lashed breaker surged over the islet. Ratha was caught in a river of icy water that pulled her painfully against her trapped paw. Newt was a mass of soggy fur tumbling between wave crests. And Mishanti was nowhere in sight. Ratha strained as high as she could, trying to spot him. She saw Newt recover, fight her way to a boulder that rose above the water, and cling there, looking dazed.
There was a growing tightness in Ratha’s throat. Mishanti, the little warrior who had fought to protect her, had been swept away by the sea. Anxiously she scanned as much of the islet as she could see and then the heaving ocean. Rain began pelting down. Lightning jumped and flickered overhead, and thunder mixed with the roar of beating surf.
And then Ratha saw a tiny, dark shape on the outlying rocks at the far end of the islet. It moved.
“Thistle-chaser!” she called. Newt only stared back at her dumbly.
“The cub—he’s down on those rocks. I’m stuck. Please... ”
Newt seemed lost in a trance. Ratha turned her gaze back to the small form nearly lost against the foaming surf, wondering if he was really still there or whether her hope had deceived her. A movement at the edge of her vision startled her. It was Newt, leaving her refuge and half swimming, half sloshing through the water. She moved slowly, as if still dazed, but she was going in the right direction. Toward Mishanti.
She halted, stared at Ratha, her eyes smoky, unreadable.
“Get him,” Ratha said. “Not for my sake. For yours.”
Newt seemed to wake up. She took several splashing bounds across the nearly swamped islet, scrambling across the rocks. She had nearly reached Mishanti when another wave broke, sending torrents of water over the rocks. This time the cascade almost drowned Ratha. She fought to keep her nose above the water, pulling as hard as she could on her trapped forepaw. Fear stabbed when she saw foam covering the place where Newt and the cub had been. Neither one was visible.
Now Ratha was alone. Numbly she hoped the next wave would engulf her, filling her lungs with water and giving her a quick choking death. Otherwise she would hang here on the rocks, battered and soaked, until the cold killed her. Or grief.
To lose both her daughter and Fessran’s foster son to a single furious sweep of the sea, yet to be left living and conscious enough to know and feel the loss was cruelty beyond bearing. Ratha felt herself starting to retreat, to close down, turning inward to find shelter from the world around her. Her body was numbed past feeling. She hoped her mind would soon be the same.
A thin wail threaded itself through her dulled hearing. Not until it came again did she even think about lifting her head. It seemed too heavy, not worth the bother. Why the interruption now, when she was starting to feel comfortable? She no longer felt the wind. It was as if she were lying, warm and lazy, in a pool of sun near the entrance to her den.
And then more noises came. Splashes. Panting. Ragged grunts. Ratha forced her eyes open.
Newt struggled in the surf at the islet’s edge, holding the cub in her jaws. He looked like a limp fur mat, and when Newt hauled him out, brine streamed from him. Ratha could see that Newt too was nearly at the end of her strength. She shuddered and staggered. Her weak foreleg had taken more of a battering than it could stand and she was limping again.
She had to set the cub down to get her breath. He sprawled on his front, his rapid breathing the only indication to Ratha that he still lived.
“Bring him here,” she said to Newt, who gave one final deep breath and took the cub once again in her jaws. She made a quick feint toward Ratha, dropped Mishanti near her, and backed off, as if fearing retaliation. With her free paw, Ratha gathered the bedraggled little bundle to her chest, trying to press some of the seawater out of his coat. She curled around him to warm him with her body and her breath, but she knew she had barely enough warmth to stay alive.
Convulsive shudders went through him, and his eyes began to dull. Ratha knew he was dying of cold. However close she held him, he shuddered harder, and her own clammy coat wasn’t helping. She licked the top of his head, full of despair.
Then someone was standing over her. It was Newt. Newt’s gaze was uncertain, but there was something new flickering in her eyes that had never been there before.
“My coat thicker,” she said. With a clumsiness generated by self-consciousness, she took the shivering youngster from Ratha, shook herself as dry as she could, then curled around him. Ratha watched as Newt ruffed her fur and nestled him into it. After a while he stopped shivering.
“If we can wait out the storm and I can free my paw, we might be able to get to the next islet. I think there is a string of these islets that connects with the jetty where your seamares are.” Ratha lifted her head and peered at the sky. Thunder still rumbled overhead, but the rain had lightened to a drizzle, and waves no longer broke so high over their refuge.
She still felt cold outside, but the stabbing despair that was worse than ice around her heart had gone. She dared to hope that they might all get out of this alive and, even more, that things might change between herself and Thistle-chaser.
Waiting for the storm to abate and the seas to calm grew wearying, and Ratha felt the cold creep deeper into her. She had ceased to feel the pain in her trapped paw or the wound on her leg made by Thistle-chaser’s teeth. Gradually she slipped into a daze and thought she was again lying in a pool of sun by her den, the sun’s rays warm on her coat, sliding through drowsiness into deep sleep.
Chapter Fourteen
Thistle-chaser lay near Ratha, trying not to think of anything at all. The events just past were too painful to recall. Bite-and-scratch wounds throbbed and burned all over her body. Some had come from Ratha, others she had inflicted with her own teeth during the fit. She had a scratch on her nose from Mishanti. Though it hurt, she was glad she had saved him, although she still didn’t know why. She felt confused, but it was a new kind of confusion: one that promised rather than one that denied.
She wriggled closer to the cub, nestling him in the longer fur covering her belly. Ratha’s fur was starting to dry in the fitful wind. Mishanti might be warmer, Thistle-chaser thought, if she sheltered him between herself and Ratha. To get herself and the cub into the right position, she had to lay a paw over Ratha. She didn’t want to. It was still frightening to be near this stranger who had somehow given birth to her. She kept her paw in the air above Ratha until it ached with weariness. Gradually she let it sink until her pawpad rested on the fawn-colored fur over Ratha’s ribs.
I am touching my Dreambiter, she thought.
To her touch, Ratha felt cold, even colder than Mishanti. She lay stretched out by the pull on her imprisone
d forepaw, her head lolled to one side, her mouth half open, her tongue flopping out. It frightened Thistle-chaser.
She it so cold and she doesn’t shiver. Dreambiter, wake up. She pawed Ratha gently, then a little more roughly. There was no response.
Dreambiter, why am I afraid you will die? I wanted you to die.
Feeling as though someone else were using her body, she wriggled closer to Ratha, pulling her mother against her chest.
It hurt to hear what you said, but you are right: We are both the same.
Slowly, because she was so frightened, Thistle-chaser spread herself across Ratha as well as Mishanti, trying to warm both of them. She too was shivering, and she wondered if she would die out on this lonely rock. She felt a strange and painful mixture of hope and despair. Perhaps this one who had cast her into such a gray world would be the one to lead her out of it.
But not if you die, Dreambiter. For my sake, please live.
And at last, Thistle-chaser stopped shivering and fell asleep.
Dripping and winded, Thakur scrambled up the crest of an island near the end of the chain that extended from the jetty. Fessran was right behind him, though she faltered, and he had to grab her scruff and haul her up. They had swum and scrabbled from island to island after spotting Ratha adrift on the escaped raft. During one channel crossing, Fessran had encountered a vicious fish with skin that grated like sand and an inclination to take a bite out of anything furry that swam its way.
“I’m sorry,” she growled. “You would think that losing my tail tip wouldn’t make any difference, but I feel as shaky as a newborn cub.” She swung her tail around, licked the torn end. “At least it’s stopped bleeding.”
“I don’t blame you for shaking. I’m a bit unsteady myself. That was just too close.”
“Well, I’ll remember that cursed fish the next time I’m tempted to dunk myself. It had more teeth than I do. Brrr!”
The two scrambled down over the rocks as seabirds swirled in flocks around them. “This is the last islet, Fessran,” Thakur said, not adding that if Ratha and Mishanti weren’t on this one, they had been taken by the sea.
They climbed over and around tumbled boulders that had sheared from the cliffs above. Thakur put Fessran in the lead, hoping that would help steady her. He saw her leap atop a flat-topped rock and then freeze where she stood. “They’re here,” she hissed.
Thakur hopped up beside her and looked out. There, on the last few rocks that met the sea, he saw a rust-and-black pelt sprawled atop a fawn one. His first glance sent a cold wash of dismay through him. Both looked still and stiff enough to be dead. Then he saw the twitch of a rust-and-black tail. Newt still lived. There wasn’t enough of Ratha visible to tell.
Beside him, he heard Fessran moan softly and then felt her tense to jump down.
“No, stay here.” Thakur put a paw on the Firekeeper’s flank.
“Ratha... and Mishanti,” Fessran choked out.
“I know. But Newt is there too. If she sees you, she may attack us. If I go alone, it will be easier.”
“You know my part in this, Thakur,” Fessran said in a low voice. “If I hadn’t been so angry at Ratha, you might have had a chance to bring the two together.”
“We’ll talk about that later,” Thakur said, his eyes on the two bedraggled forms lying together on the rocks below.
“Mishanti.” Fessran tried to keep her voice from shaking. Thakur knew how hard it was for her to wait here, not knowing. Quickly he leaped down off the boulder and scrambled over the rocks. As he approached, he saw Newt stir.
He came alongside her as quietly as he could, then nudged her. Her nose twitched in response to his scent. Her head lifted, wobbly and bleary eyed. As she raised herself, Thakur saw Mishanti curled up between Newt’s belly and Ratha’s back. His flank rose and fell in a comforting rhythm.
What Thakur could see of Ratha, however, did not look encouraging. Her salt-encrusted fur stood up in spikes, stiffened by bloodstains. Her head lolled to one side, her tongue spilling from slack jaws. Unsteadily Newt half rolled, half crawled to one side, still weak and groggy from exhaustion. “Dreambiter,” she hissed softly, stretching out a paw to touch the ragged fawn pelt. “Her foot... stuck... down between rocks... ”
Thakur could not see any movement in Ratha’s rib cage. His heart sinking, he licked the end of his muzzle and crouched at her head, trying to detect any breath on his dampened nose. He held his own breath until he was nearly dizzy, then let it out in a rush as he felt a tickle of air against his nose-leather.
Quickly he nuzzled Ratha, checking for injuries. He found one forepaw stuck directly down into a crevice, where jagged rock clamped the foot. Gently he nudged her all over, looking for broken bones, but found nothing. She was still breathing, but she was so cold, Thakur thought to himself.
“Tried... tried to warm her,” Newt said in a thin voice. “She said we both Dreambiters, and she is right, so want her to live.”
Thakur began to rub himself against Ratha to warm her and get her alert enough to start moving. He used his tongue on her face and ears, cleaning away salt crystals from the fur around her eyes.
“Come on, yearling,” he muttered as he scrubbed. “It would take more than a dunking to kill you. Fessran!” he called over his shoulder to the Firekeeper, who came flying out from behind the rocks. At the sight of Fessran, Newt flattened and retreated.
“She won’t hurt you, I promise,” said Thakur to Newt. He sent a warning look toward Fessran, but the Firekeeper was taken up with nuzzling Mishanti to make sure he was all right. Then she began licking and rubbing Ratha.
A sneeze was the first indication that Ratha was reviving, then a series of shivers and a moan. Thakur saw her gulp, blink, and open her eyes. Fessran was rubbing her so enthusiastically that the motion pulled Ratha against her trapped foreleg, and she winced with pain.
“Arr! Firekeeper, you always overdo things,” she growled. Her gaze turned to Thakur. “I don’t know how you got here, herding teacher, but I’m glad you did.” She tried to lift her head. strained, and sagged back.
Then her gaze traveled to Newt and rested on her daughter. “I wouldn’t have lasted this long if someone hadn’t given me some warmth. I thought you hated me, Thistle-chaser. Why did you save me?”
Newt hung her head, as if what she had done was shameful. “I don’t know, Dreambiter.”
Thakur interrupted. “Don’t question her now, Ratha. Save the questions for later. We have to get you off this rock.” He slid his foreleg under Ratha’s chest and tried to pry upward. Ratha clamped her teeth together and made no sound, but he could hear her breathing hard in pain. Her leg was locked fast.
He called Fessran over and both tugged, but with no greater success. Newt stood to one side, watching, then started forward to help.
Thakur stopped her. “No good,” he said. “All we’ll do is pull her leg off.”
He hopped down onto a lower rock, peered sideways through the crevice where Ratha’s paw was stuck. The cleft widened toward the front, where he was looking in.
“Ratha, if you could pull your leg sideways instead of straight up, you might have a chance.”
She tried, failed. Thakur and Fessran got their jaws around the upper part of her leg near her chest and tried to shove her forelimb toward the wider part of the crevice.
They strained and grunted while Newt watched. “No good,” Thakur groaned after several tries. “We’ll either snap our teeth or break her foreleg.”
Ratha lay back down. He could see by her panting and her glazing eyes that she was losing strength rapidly. “Maybe the leg will have to stay,” she whispered softly. “Thistle-chaser has shown me that you can get along without one paw.”
Thakur went cold at the idea of having to cripple Ratha to free her. He shot a glance toward Newt. What was she thinking? It would be suitable revenge on Ratha. And Newt’s foreleg was much stronger than it had been; she was no longer severely hampered by the old injury. It would be
as if the two had changed places.
He studied Ratha’s position, how deeply her foreleg extended into the crack and how much room there would be for the horrible task, if they were forced to do it.
“No,” he said roughly. “Your leg is in too far. We’d have to work above your elbow, near your chest.” He faltered. “You would bleed to death before... ” He broke off. “There must be another way. There must!”
Jumping down beside the crevice, he peered in once again. If he could somehow snag her stuck foot and yank it sideways, she might be able to get free. He tried to fit his paw in through the opening, but his toes were too large.
“Mishanti,” Ratha said, watching him. “A cub’s paws are smaller.”
“But his leg isn’t long enough,” Thakur said, still crouched down by the crevice, peering in from the side.
Fessran’s yowl interrupted him. “There’s a big wave coming. Get up high or hang on!” He saw the Firekeeper grab Mishanti by the scruff. Thakur leaped up beside Ratha, jerked and tugged at her furiously.
“Get the cub and Thistle-chaser to high ground,” Ratha growled. “Now!”
With grief tearing at him, Thakur made himself obey, shepherding a stunned Newt after Fessran, who had already climbed to the highest point on the tiny island. He was still scrabbling for a hold when gray water spilled across the islet. He strained to look back at Ratha. The frothing sea lashed her, robbing her of the last vestiges of warmth she had gained from her daughter and the others. Thakur knew that if they did not get her off the island soon, with or without her foreleg, she would die.
Even before the water drained away, the three were back beside Ratha. Mishanti was left clinging to his perch.
“Newt’s got small paws,” Fessran said. “And her lame leg is narrower than her good one.”
Thakur turned to Newt, but she was already peering into the crack. The thoughts raced in his head. Would she do it? Could she, even if she had the wish to try? Why was she hesitating? Was she judging the situation, or was she just stalling, hoping to force him to cripple Ratha? It would be a suitable revenge, he thought. If she wants it.
