Ratha and Thistle-Chaser (The Third Book of the Named)

by Clare Bell

  Ratha let her leg dangle in the pool, overhanging ferns and branches sheltering her. She smelled the storm, the cool, wet air, and the rain. This looked like a big storm: one that might move far enough inland to break the drought.

  Before long Thakur arrived, bringing both treelings. Ratharee chirred with delight and took up her customary place on Ratha’s shoulder.

  “Listen,” Ratha said, pricking her ears to the soft hiss of rain falling through the trees.

  Thakur sat in the open, letting the downpour rinse sea salt from his coat. At last he shook himself off and lay down near Ratha. “If that keeps up, the streams will soon be running again on our old home ground,” he said. “Are you thinking we might be able to return?”

  “Not for a while. And I don’t want to leave Thistlechaser chaser all alone again.” Ratha laid her nose on one paw, extending the other to Thakur to have it skillfully licked and massaged.

  “You were disappointed when she said she didn’t want to join the clan.”

  Ratha grunted. “I was surprised. I thought she’d jump at the chance. Instead she turned her tail on it.”

  “She’s impetuous, stubborn, and wants to do things her way. I’d be surprised if she wasn’t. After all, she is your daughter.” Thakur nibbled a toe-claw.

  She is your daughter. The phrase whispered gently in her mind, blending with the sigh of the falling rain. My daughter. One who is stubborn, willful, strong, self-reliant, and resourceful—and one to take pride in.

  It occurred to her that Thistle-chaser had changed something else as well. Bonechewer, her Un-Named father, had been Thakur’s brother. If, as Thakur said, cubs from such matings had the same potential as those whose parents both came from the clan, even if their development was not as rapid, then perhaps such pairings might not be as risky as Ratha had once thought. She had already learned that there were individuals with worthy qualities among the Un-Named.

  She closed her eyes, feeling Thakur’s tongue soothe the ache from her leg. “Herding teacher, perhaps you won’t need to go away when the next mating season comes.”

  He lay down next to her. “Would you be willing to accept another cub like Thistle-chaser?”

  “What she might have been like if I hadn’t turned on Bonechewer and bitten her... ” Ratha sighed.

  “She still has that chance,” Thakur answered. “You know, Ratha, I sensed something about her that I don’t understand. To us she seems slow, but I think she understands certain things in a way we don’t. It’s not just cleverness; it’s something else. You know that our cubs take longer to grow up than the young of those creatures who don’t think or speak. If Thistle-chaser and cubs like her grow even more slowly, perhaps it is not because they are less than we, but more.”

  Ratha rolled on her back, letting Ratharee scramble onto her chest. “That is an uncomfortable thought, Thakur.”

  “That seems to be the way of the Named, to think uncomfortable thoughts, to do uncomfortable things,” said Thakur slowly. “But our feet are set on this path, and we can’t turn aside. Nor would I want to.” He stretched himself, groomed his back.

  Ratha lay with her treeling on her chest between her raised forepaws. There had been two other cubs in the same litter that produced Thistle-chaser. Could either one of the siblings have survived? If so, what would they be like? Perhaps one day she would search for them and find out. It would be, as Thakur said, a difficult thing to do. But such an effort could bring its own reward, such as the quiet joy she felt now.

  At last the old memories and pains could gradually be put to rest. The Dreambiter would fade away, for both Thistle-chaser and herself. A part of her life was passing behind now. She felt as though she had finished shedding an old coat and now wore clean, new fur. The weight of guilt from her past had slipped from her, making her feel airy and light.

  The Named now had two homes: their old territory and this new place by the sea. And though their efforts to keep and tend the seamares had not turned out as well as they’d hoped, still the experience had enlarged their skills, allowing more choices. When the drought broke, some of the Named might return to clan ground, others might stay.

  She thought about the future, what might happen with Thistle-chaser and Mishanti. Would the cub grow up as Fessran’s vision had foreseen, to carry a torch burning brightly in his jaws and be a leader of the Named? Or would it be Thistle-chaser, scarred, but strangely gifted, who took over leadership when Ratha grew too feeble to guide the clan’s way?

  All this didn’t matter now. What mattered was that she had found both a daughter and a wiser, better part of herself. The times to come might not be certain, but neither would they be shadowed with pain and guilt. She lay on her side, listening to the promise in the pattering rain. It was enough.

  Clare Bell says:

  “Thistle-chaser. Stubborn, scrappy, mentally and physically crippled, sullen, prickly, can barely speak, not pretty, hot tempered, yet she rivals Ratha in the affections of readers. Thistle originated in Ratha’s Creature, as the cub Ratha rejected and injured. Her appearance came from a portrait of my mother’s calico cat, Jenny. Into crippled and abandoned Newt, I poured feelings from a time when despair tore my life. The cloud around her mind comes from the slowed thinking of clinical depression. Her rage at the Dreambiter is my rage at the “blaming the victim’ attitude before people recognized depression as a treatable illness.

  “Throughout the series, Thistle’s limitations and suffering bring her unexpected gifts of insight and empathy. Her fits and visions of the Dreambiter prepare her to understand the strange mental ‘Song’ of the menacing face-tail (mammoth) hunting tribe in Ratha’s Challenge. Reconciling with Thistle may be the real ‘Challenge’ for Ratha, but in that book Thistle also becomes Ratha’s conscience, asking the Named to look beyond the harm done to them by others: to reach out in friendship rather than strike back in fear.”

  About the Author

  Clare Bell is a scientist, engineer, and author whose work has taken her to Norway to build electric cars, to Tahiti for research, to Marine World/Africa USA to meet a cheetah, and into the depths of prehistory to develop the Ratha series. She is the author of four other books about Ratha and the Named: Ratha’s Creature, Clan Ground, Ratha’s Challenge and Ratha’s Courage, as well as several standalone novels. Bell and her husband live in the hills west of Patterson, California, where they have their own solar and wind systems.

  Visit her Web site at www.RathasCourage.com or Facebook page at facebook.com/rathaseries