Ratha and Thistle-Chaser (The Third Book of the Named) (12 page)

It took him a little while to find his voice again, and it felt creaky from disuse. “Thank you,” he said softly in the words of gratitude used among the Named.

Her ears flicked back, but she wiggled herself a little closer to him on her side, her eyes expectant.

“Where do I start?” he asked her. Again she patted his jowls. “Anything?”

Anything. He talked to her, watching her ears. They would prick forward, then flatten abruptly, but then start to swivel forward once again. He told her stories about his life with the clan, his work teaching cubs, his adventures, how he had found his treeling. It didn’t matter that the words had no meaning to her; she just wanted to hear them. Thakur was reminded that clan cubs heard their parents speaking from the moment they were born.

And so from muteness he went to a flood of talk. There was an almost terrified eagerness in the young female’s face as she began trying to imitate him. But nothing came out. Thakur encouraged her attempts, but it did not increase their success. Nothing worked—simple words, phrases, his name: They elicited only a frenzied struggle and then a strange, sad subsidence.

Had those words that had come from her tongue during her fit been a product of his own imagination? Again he heard the hollow, breathy voice in his mind.
Stay away from them,
she had said.
Why did you do this to me? Why? I wish they had been born dead.... She’s witless.

Strange, disjointed phrases—yet they might hide a chilling history. And she had spoken them once. Perhaps she could speak the same words again. An uneasy feeling made him hesitate, but he could see no other way. He chose the most innocuous of her utterances. Settling close beside her, he caught her gaze and then slowly said,“Stay away from them. Stay away.” He repeated the phrase, making it rhythmic. She followed the pattern, bobbing her head slightly to the beat of his speech, as clan cubs did when trying to learn something difficult.

And then the first word came from her mouth. “Stay,” she blurted, and then, softer but clearer, “Stay.”

Thakur was lavish in his praise, trying to overcome the uncertainty that showed in her eyes at the sound of her own voice. “Stay,” he said, then got up and moved away. When she moved to follow, he pushed her back, making her sit where she was, hoping she would get the idea of what the word meant. It was an odd combination of teaching a clan cub, who could understand that words had meaning, and training a treeling, who understood them only as commands. After many repetitions, he could get her to remain in place with the one word and, after more work, could keep her from approaching him with the phrase “Stay away.”

The afternoon shadows grew longer across the rocks as Thakur drilled his new student. Abruptly, after he had given her the command one last time and she had obeyed it, she sat down with her brow furrowed.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, forgetting himself.

She looked at him blankly. “Away. Stay away. Stay away from them.” Panic rose like a storm in her eyes, and the words came quickly, hammered out as fast as she could say them. “Stay away from them, why did you do this to me, do you really want them, she’s witless... she’s witless... I wish they had been born dead... born dead... born dead ...”

Pupils enlarging, she backed away from Thakur, who was already regretting his choice of teaching methods. Somehow he had set her off again; she had gone into the terrifying world that only she could see.

He expected her to stiffen and topple as she had done in the first two incidents, but this time she lunged, screaming and swiping at an invisible enemy. Then she turned tail and fled, diving among the rocks, scrabbling as fast as she could go.

Thakur pursued her, grateful that she had chosen a path uphill instead of down into the midst of the seamares. But terror gave her speed, despite her three-legged run, and he caught up with her only when lack of breath slowed her headlong dash. Trying to be as gentle as he could, he knocked her sideways with his shoulder, then followed as she tumbled into a clump of weeds.

She lay on her side, her legs stiff, shuddering and trembling. He lay down with her, licking her behind the ears until she grew still. At last she lifted her head and stared at him, looking bewildered and lost. Her mouth opened.

“No,” he said softly. “Don’t try any more. It hurts you too much.”

A stubborn glint appeared behind the swirling fear and forced its way through into the colors of her eyes. She jerked her mouth open and almost in defiance said, “Stay!” She flinched as if someone might strike her and for an instant went rigid, making Thakur afraid she had fallen back into her illness. She drove her claws into the ground and bared her teeth.

Abruptly her eyes cleared. She turned to Thakur, who was starting to rise. “Stay,” she begged, convincing him now that she understood the meaning of the word.

“All right.” He sighed, flopped down, and offered her a shoulder on which to rest her drooping head. He felt her go limp, as if exhausted. He felt weary and emotionally battered himself. Was it worth trying to teach her speech if everything was going to be such a struggle?

As if in reply, her good forepaw came up and patted his jowls, as if to say
I will fight what scares me. I want to learn.

The barrier within her against learning to speak had weakened. Thakur used only the words in those few phrases she had spoken. Once she understood those, he was uncertain what to try next. Among the first things that clan cubs learned were their names. She didn’t have a name, as far as he knew. Or did she? Having proved herself much more self-aware than he had assumed, she might well have some image of herself or some sound that served the same purpose. But how to get it out of her?

He began the obvious way: by teaching her his own name. But here he ran into trouble. It was difficult to get across to her the idea that the sound
Thakur
meant himself. She didn’t understand any of the paw or tail gestures the Named would use to emphasize the idea of someone speaking about himself. And then the notion hit him. There were certain times when the Named felt most individual and personal. One of these was during mating, but Thakur decided that such an approach would have problems that he didn’t want to deal with. The other time was when someone was grooming, cleaning and smoothing their fur.

Despite the tang of seamare in his coat, he set about licking himself, trying not to be too thorough, for fear of having to roll in the creatures’ dung once again. She wandered up, sat down, and watched. Every few strokes, he paused and said his name. Her head cocked to one side. He smelled the fur along his back, taking a deep, noisy breath, and then said his name again. She sniffed him, then began to wash herself, but he quickly put a paw out to stop her. He didn’t want her to get the idea that
Thakur
meant the action of grooming oneself.

It took a little time, but gradually she understood what he was trying to get across.

“Thakur,” she said shyly, then sniffed his coat and touched him with a paw. Again he praised her, then sniffed her coat and stroked her with his pad.

“What is your name?” he asked.

She opened her mouth, closed it again, looked down in confusion. The fur between her eyes furrowed. He could see she knew what he wanted but was at a loss to express it.

“Stay,” she said, and then bounded away. He checked his impulse to go after her. This departure was different from the last. She wasn’t fleeing in terror; she had some purpose, though what, he had no idea. After she had been gone for what seemed a long while, he decided to go after her.

But no sooner had he gotten to his feet than she reappeared, carrying something limp in her mouth. When she put the thing down, it wriggled, throwing its body into sinuous curves. Thakur blinked and stared. She’d brought him a live newt.

He sat down, baffled, wondering what this action had to do with the lesson he’d been trying to teach. Was this supposed to be a reward because he’d done something that pleased her? He leaned over, sniffing the moist creature and grimacing with disgust. He wondered if he would offend her if he didn’t eat it. Perhaps he should at least try.

Her good forepaw batted him away. He sat up, cocking his head to one side. If the newt wasn’t meant as food, why did she bring it?

She pawed herself, then poked the creature with her toe, making it thrash. It writhed on the dry rock, covering itself with sand, but not before Thakur saw that the rust-black and orange markings on its moist skin approximated the color of his friend’s fur. He thought about her eagerness for words, for names. And that was what he had asked her.

By showing him the newt, she was telling him her name in the only way she knew.

“Newt?” he said, touching her with his forefoot. She pawed her evident namesake once again and danced around so excitedly that he had to intercede to keep her from accidentally squashing the it. Newt. She certainly hadn’t flattered herself by the choice.

She imitated the sound of her name, attached it to the creature. Again Thakur praised her, which resulted in more repetitions, more dancing, and the near trampling of the poor newt.

“All right. Why don’t you take that animal back where you found it, since I’m not hungry right now.” Thakur jerked his muzzle in the direction from which she had brought it.

She looked at him wide eyed. “Thakur stay,” she said, then scooped the sand-covered newt up in her jaws and dashed off on three legs.

Grinning, he sat where he was until she returned. He hoped the creature had survived the teaching session. He didn’t like to see things killed unless he was ready to eat them.

It was midmorning on the next day, and the two sat together near her cave. Thakur cocked his head at Newt and switched his tail in bafflement. He had risen feeling self-satisfied by what he had taught her the previous day, but now he was reconsidering.

“Thakur, stay,” Newt said. When he did as she asked, a mournful look came into her eyes, and she stamped a rear foot on the ground. Clearly, she wanted him to follow, but she was stuck with only one phrase.

“No, it’s
Thakur come,
” he corrected.

“Thakur stay,” Newt said again, with a stamp and an impatient grimace.

“I’m not coming until you figure out what the difference is and use the right word.”

“Yarrr,” was Newt’s response. “Yarrr, yourself. The word is
come
. I’ve told you that more times than I have hairs.”

She turned her back on him and stalked off, but she didn’t stay away for long. He could see by the little flickers in her eyes that she had something she wanted to show him.

She came back and tried, “Come stay.”

Thakur grinned. “Can’t do both.”

“Thakur... Thakur... ” Newt faltered, lost. Her ears twitched back. With a quick pounce, she seized his tail, pulled it, then made a three-legged pirouette in front of him, swatted him across the muzzle with her tail, and took off.

Thakur was several steps after her before he realized he’d been tricked. “You won’t learn to talk if you keep distracting me!” he yowled after her, but she was beyond earshot. He sighed and kept trotting.

Coming over a dune, he spotted her on the shore of the shallow lagoon that lay south of the beach. The early morning fog had lifted, letting sunlight spill onto the sand and across the wavelets.

As he came down the sandy slope, Newt bounded over to him. “Thakur, come,” she said triumphantly, then limped vigorously into the water. Welcoming a chance to cool himself, he followed, wading into the shallows until the wavelets lapped his belly. His casual glance at Newt sharpened as he realized that she was not just playing cub-games in the lagoon, as he had first thought.

He watched with growing interest as she spread herself out in the water. Using her hind feet and tail in a sculling motion that reminded him of how river otters swam, she glided forward, the waves forming a V-shaped wake in front of her ears. Her waterborne grace and agility surprised him. And then he saw that she no longer held her crippled foreleg tightly against her chest. The push and swell of the water drew the limb gently outward, and she moved it slightly to counteract each stroke of her good forepaw.

Thakur felt his eyes opening wider. He knew that water could be healing, for he had learned that the best treatment for bruises and sprains was to lie and let the limb dangle in the cold, running flow of a stream. The pain and swelling would fade much faster. If it could heal small hurts, he thought, perhaps it might give strength back to a withered forelimb.

Newt made a few lazy turns, then surfaced near him, her whiskers dripping. “Thakur come,” she chirped, then swam away. He followed, suddenly self-conscious about his clumsy paddling as compared to her elegant glide. Again she slid by in front of his nose like a fish. Her tail tip lifted, flipped a sprinkle of water into his face, and he spluttered, putting his feet down on the bottom.

“I swim about as well as you talk,” he said, as her head lifted again. “How do you do that?” He tried to float with his head down but immediately got a noseful of brackish seawater. He grimaced, coughing and drawing back his whiskers. Newt floated near him, swishing her tail lazily, her head up. She blew at him through her mouth and nose with a breathy, hissing sound. Still blowing, she ducked under again. A welter of bubbles boiled around her muzzle and ears.