Ratha and Thistle-Chaser (The Third Book of the Named) (17 page)

Again she gathered sticks, bark, and brush. The task was easier this time, for she didn’t need to use thorn-wood. Ratharee was eager to show her skills once again, and soon the two were well launched on their project.

At the end of the day, Ratha hid her materials and the beginnings of her raft and returned to her clan-leader duties. But things seemed well enough settled that she could afford some time to herself, and she took advantage of the lull.

The following afternoon, Ratha crouched with her head bent over Ratharee’s back as the treeling wove the sticks and brush together with twisted bark cord. The raft was half-finished when she caught the scent of seamare mixed with that of the clan’s herding teacher.

She stood up as Thakur came forward with Aree on his back. Half-embarrassed, half-proud, she showed him what she and Ratharee had made. She couldn’t help a backward flick of her ears and hoped he wasn’t going to question her again about her lost cubs.

He said nothing about them. Instead, he circled the half-built raft, eying it judiciously.

“You might try adding some bundles of dry reeds near the water,” he suggested, and offered to go collect them. Ratha, suspecting that the offer was an apology of sorts for upsetting her, readily agreed, and after that the two spent all the time they could spare at the task. Sometimes, Ratha noticed, Thakur didn’t come, or he would arrive late from an unexpected direction, reeking of seamare. Not wanting to ask or answer any questions, she made him work downwind of her until finally the raft was finished.

Triumphantly she dragged it from the construction site to the brackish estuary. With Thakur and the treelings helping, she got the raft floating. As he steadied it, with Aree riding nervously on his shoulder just above the waterline, Ratha and her treeling clambered aboard.

The craft floated, but it rocked alarmingly, and she found herself shifting her feet continually to keep from tipping. When Thakur released the raft, it did tip, spilling both her and Ratharee off into the shallow water.

“It’s too narrow,” she said mournfully, after enduring an excited scolding from Ratharee. She licked herself and the treeling, trying to press the water from both soggy coats.

Widening the raft and giving it more support in the form of bundled-reed outriggers helped solve the tipping problem, but Ratha soon found there was something else she had overlooked: She had no way to control the thing, to make it go where she wanted.

After riding weak but malicious currents to disaster several times in a row, she hauled her drenched self and her recalcitrant boat ashore and glared at it. Ratharee, who had abandoned her for Thakur in the interests of staying dry, made an insincere attempt to comfort her and backed away from the water streaming from her coat.

Irritably, she shook herself, growling that she should have known better than to waste effort on such a useless thing.

“It isn’t that useless,” Thakur observed. “It does keep you out of the water when you walk on it.” He added that if she tethered her raft to shore at both ends in a narrow part of the river, the Named wouldn’t have to wade or swim to get across.

That idea mollified Ratha somewhat. Instead of wrathfully shredding her treacherous construction, she followed Thakur’s advice, tethering her raft among the reeds at a narrow spot, where it served as a floating footbridge.

 
Having satisfied her urge for raft building, Ratha devoted her attention once more to things that had begun to worry her. One of these was the Firekeeper leader.

Ratha thought at first that Fessran was keeping away from her and Thakur because of the seamare smell they wore. Fessran balked at taking on the same scent. She pointed out that her work ruined her odor enough with the harsh stink of ash. And, as Firekeeper, she didn’t have much to do with seamares once the herders had settled into their duties.

Ratha accepted that. Those of the Named who had adopted the practice of disguising their scents had done so willingly. They saw the advantage when Thakur showed that it made the wave-wallowers less restive. But she didn’t want to force anyone into it; scents were strongly personal issues among the Named, and some had more sensitive noses than others.

So Fessran remained free of the seamare stink and avoided those who had it. But Ratha noticed that she seemed to sit at a greater distance from her than from Thakur. And that whenever Ratha approached, she would stop grooming her belly and immediately switch to washing her face.

Ratha knew that not all of the Firekeeper’s coolness to her was due to her smell. The forced abandonment of the Un-Named litterling still rankled; there was resentment in Fessran’s eyes, even though the Firekeeper had said she didn’t care.

It was late in the summer and a hot day, even on the sea coast. The herdbeasts sought shade in the forest, and the seamares wallowed in the shallows enclosed by part of their corral. With heat making the animals lazy, the herders too could relax. Ratha decided to take a break from overseeing the seamare herders and went to drink from the pool beneath the spring.

Coolness from the spring seemed to blow away the heavy, hot air surrounding her as she came down the deeply shaded path. Spray-moistened moss cushioned her feet when she crouched to drink. She lapped her fill, then laid first one side of her face, then the other, in the pool, letting the chill seep through her fur. As she dangled a forepaw in the water, she glanced up to the rock ledges above, wondering which one would be best for a nap.

One ledge was already taken. Sandy fur showed against blue-tinted stone. Fessran was there, relaxing and starting to groom herself. One rear leg stuck stiffly over her head as she began licking the creamy fur on her belly.

The soft chuckle of the stream had covered Ratha’s footsteps, and the wind blew her scent away. Fessran didn’t know she was here. The idea of spying on the Firekeeper made Ratha uncomfortable, and she was about to announce herself when something disquieting about Fessran’s grooming caught her attention.

Slowly she backed under a hanging bunch of ferns, shielding herself from Fessran’s view. Absently she licked the back of her own forepaw and began to scrub her cheek, wondering what it was about Fessran’s grooming that disturbed her. And then, aware of the motion of her own forepaw over her face, she froze, knowing she had found her answer.

When Ratha groomed, she always started by scrubbing her cheek with the side of her forepaw. So did the others of the Named. Only if a Named female was pregnant or nursing did she break the inborn pattern and start by grooming her stomach. Ratha peeked out from beneath the ferns. Fessran wasn’t carrying cubs. She hadn’t come into heat this year. But she could be nursing.

A Named female could give milk without birthing a litter. If a female took in a motherless orphan, the cub’s suckling could make her produce milk in a matter of days—even sooner if she badly wanted to feed the litterling. And Fessran had wanted to.

Ratha watched Fessran lick and nibble, taking great care over her belly. She felt a slow anger start to burn away the refreshing coolness from the pool. Yes, Fessran must be nursing. She had kept the cub, despite the orders to Khushi that the litterling be returned. Ratha crouched beneath the ferns, feeling hot-and-cold surges of anger and betrayal. What a fool she had been!

Her first mistake had been letting Fessran go with Khushi. She imagined how the Firekeeper must have persuaded the young herder not to obey the clan leader’s orders and instead to turn the cub over to her. And then the two had stayed away to make it look as though they had made the journey. It must have been then that Fessran found she could suckle the orphan.

Ratha ground her back teeth. She could see them now in her imagination, Fessran lying in the shade, nursing the Un-Named cub. Such a sweet maternal scene it must have been! And Khushi, sitting by, looking torn and bewildered because he had not wanted to disobey Ratha’s orders.

But well-chosen words from his mother about the value of a cub’s life and the sorry blindness of a clan leader might well have swayed him. Fessran, she remembered, was very good at choosing words.

So they had kept the Un-Named orphan, the two conspirators, and even brought him along when the herds moved from the old clan territory to the coast. No wonder Fessran had been so itchy to return from the first expedition.

And I saw all of that, but I chose to look the other way. Now they’re shoving my nose in it.

She repressed an urge to bound up from ledge to ledge until she reached the one where Fessran sat. That would do no good and might lead to embarrassment or worse, should her sense of balance be overwhelmed by her sense of outrage. Instead she came out from beneath the ferns and called Fessran down. After a few grumbles, the Firekeeper came.

Ratha sat, looking at the ripples that spread from the cascading of the falls into the pool. Fessran sat down a short distance away from her. Deliberately, Ratha said nothing until the Firekeeper started to fidget.

“Am I keeping you from your grooming?” Ratha asked. “Please continue. I’m just nursing my thoughts.”

With a sidelong look at her, Fessran wet a paw and slowly started massaging her cheek.

“Shouldn’t you start with the fur on your belly?” Ratha made her tone more pointed.

“Ratha, what are you talking about? If you have something to tell me, just say it and quit chasing your tail.” Fessran’s own tail switched irritably.

Ratha got up and paced toward her, keeping her eyes fixed on Fessran’s. “You know what I’m talking about: keeping your teats clean to nurse a cub. That Un-Named litterling I made Khushi return never was taken back to the place he was found, was he?” She felt the hackles on her neck rising. “You may be keeping your teats clean, Firekeeper, but the rest of you stinks, and the smell is worse than the seamare dung on me.”

Fessran’s face grew tight as her ears flattened. “All right. Yes, I kept Mishanti.”

“Mishanti? By the Red Tongue’s ashes, you’ve already given him a name?”

“Yes, because he deserves one. You are wrong about him, Ratha. As soon as Khushi stopped for a rest, I looked at that cub, and I knew that if we took him out and abandoned him, I would hate myself for the rest of my life. It would be like killing one of my own litter.”

Ratha closed her eyes. “We’ve trodden this path already, Fessran. You know where it leads. I thought when you turned from me to support Shongshar and his fire-dance, it was something that would happen only once. Now you have disobeyed me again, tricked me, lied to me. ”

Fessran swallowed and her laid-back ears began to droop, but the determined glitter stayed in her eyes. “The part of you I disobeyed and tricked and lied to,” she said slowly, “is not the part of Ratha that I know. The part I know would not have me kill or abandon this cub out of a fear of what he might become.”

Ratha gritted her teeth. “You forget too easily. Shongshar... ”

“Stop holding Shongshar over my head,” Fessran hissed. “This isn’t the same at all. A cub’s life is what I seek, not power over the Named.”

“What is the same is a headstrong Firekeeper who does what her belly tells her without regard for what anyone thinks, even me.”

This stung. Ratha could see Fessran flinch. “You don’t think I didn’t worry about your feelings? I’ll tell you, I spent a lot of time thinking.”

“With that misbegotten Un-Named suckling curled up next to you, kneading your belly,” Ratha sneered.

Fessran’s voice and eyes went cold, stabbing Ratha deeper than she expected. “You are wrong about Mishanti, clan leader. You don’t know how wrong.”

Ratha turned away from her, began to pace the banks of the pool. She stopped to look at herself, saw the bared teeth, the angry eyes that did not look quite like hers. Was Fessran right? What part of her was saying these ugly things? And was there something blinding her to what Fessran saw?

She made an angry turn, tore up moss with her claws as she pivoted. When she came back to Fessran, she had trodden down her doubts and felt as cold and determined as the Firekeeper looked.

“Fessran, I won’t exile you from the clan, as I have the right to. I need you too badly. I also know that you don’t have the skills to survive outside.”

At this, Fessran bridled, but Ratha could see she knew the truth of those words. Fessran had managed her own stays away from the clan only by depending on the hunting and fishing skills of others.

“I will, however, break you down in rank to the lowest wood-stacker and give you a few good swipes into the bargain if you don’t get rid of that cub. And if I come and find him in your den, I’m taking him. Is that clear?”

Fessran’s sides heaved. She looked at the ground. “It is, clan leader. And I am very sorry for you.”

“If you’re sorry for me, don’t hurt me any more. Do what I told you to in the first place.” Ratha turned and left, without waiting to see what Fessran’s reaction would be.

Thakur watched Newt’s foreleg sweep back and forth beneath the water of the lagoon. She could move it fast enough now to make a little wave curl over her paw.

“Stronger?” Newt asked.

“Much stronger,” Thakur answered. “Good. You’ve been working.”

“Swim. Out there.” Newt jerked her muzzle toward the ocean. “Helps.”

“Now let’s try stretching again,” Thakur said, wading out of the pool toward a heavy driftwood log. “See if you can keep your claws fastened in the wood and then pull so your muscles stretch.” He watched as Newt emerged, still limping, but no longer holding her foreleg against her chest. Now her foot brushed the ground, and Thakur hoped she might soon be able to put some weight on it.