It had been Laughs Brightly, Branch Leaper realized, and turned his awed gaze upon the older male. Weaker than a human mind glow though it might have been, still the sheer, raw power of his demand for Golden Voice to live had dwarfed anything a male should have been able to produce. Yet even as that sense of awe touched him, Branch Leaper wondered why he felt it. So far as he knew, never in all the history of People and humans had both halves of a mated pair also adopted humans… and never before had a female with the mind voice and mind glow of a memory singer bonded with any human. Laughs Brightly and Golden Voice had passed into territory none of the People had ever explored. No doubt it was only natural for them to discover things there which the People had never expected.
<Yes, you have paid,> Songstress agreed after a moment, but if her mind voice was a bit more subdued, there was no less disapproval in it. <Yet had you remained with Sun Leaf Clan as you ought to have, that price would never have been demanded of you.>
<No doubt that is true, Memory Singer. Yet the only way to avoid the price would have been to deny the joy from whence it sprang, and it is the decisions I have made—and the prices I have paid—which make me what I am today. You say that I am a memory singer, and perhaps there is truth in that. Yet I have also bonded with a human and tasted the beauty and power of his mind glow… and the anguish of its loss. And I have mated with Laughs Brightly and known the joy and the glory of becoming one with another who can taste and be tasted in return. And I have borne our kittens and tasted the soft magic of their mind glows in my womb and welcomed them into the world as they opened their eyes upon its sunlight for the very first time. I have known and done these things, Memory Singer. Not simply in the memory songs I have tasted and made my own and sung for others.>
<And those of us who have not done those things, who can know them “simply” in the songs we taste and sing, are somehow less than you who have done them?> Songstress demanded.
<I did not say that, Memory Singer,> Golden Voice replied calmly, <nor do I think it.> Songstress glared at her for a moment, but then her tail flicked in acknowledgment. Golden Voice’s mind glow was clear and bright, and Songstress tasted her sincerity as clearly as any other person present.
<I say only that I have known and done them myself,> Golden Voice continued. <It was by my own choice and will, yet I ask you this, Memory Singer. You have sung the songs of all of those who have bonded with humans, beginning with your own clan’s Climbs Quickly and Death Fang’s Bane. More of Bright Water Clan’s scouts and hunters have bonded with humans than any other clan’s, and you know the mind taste of Death Fang’s Bane Clan, the bright light and power that beckons to People from all over this world. Had you been born with that same need, that same hunger to embrace the human mind glow, would you have refused it?>
<I would have thought of my responsibility to my clan,> Songstress retorted, but her gaze fell once more as she tasted Golden Voice’s gentle rebuke. Songstress was hands of turnings older than Golden Voice, yet in that moment Golden Voice had somehow become by far the elder, and her mind voice was chiding.
<I, too, thought of my responsibilities, Memory Singer,> she said almost kindly. <Did you think I could not have done so? Yet that was not my question. I asked you if you would have refused the hunger for the human mind glow if it had come upon you.>
<I—> Songstress began, then hesitated. The moment of hesitation stretched out, and then it became something else. The memory singer met Golden Voice’s eyes once more, her very silence an admission of the younger female’s point, for she had tasted that hunger and need in the memory songs of others. As no one but a memory singer could, she had shared it and become one with it, and as such, she knew—as no one but a memory singer could—how impossible it was not to answer.
<I do not think I envy you, sister-of-choice,> Wind of Memory said into the silence. <Any memory singer knows the need to embrace the mind songs of the People, to hear and feel and taste all those who have come before us as they live again through us. And because we have sung the songs of those who bonded with humans, even in the days when the human life span was so short that to do so was to embrace death as well, any memory singer knows that hunger and need, as well. To choose between them…”
She shook her head slowly, in a gesture the People had borrowed from their human friends, but Golden Voice looked at her serenely.
<Life is choice, Memory Singer. The fact that no one of the People has ever made the choices I have made, or lived the life I have lived, cannot change that, and if there have been times of pain and loss, there has also been joy and love.> Her prehensile tail reached out, wrapping itself gently but tightly about Laughs Brightly. <I have Laughs Brightly, and our kittens—yes, and his human, as well, for Dances on Clouds has love enough for a hand of hands of People, and just as Laughs Brightly, she and the humans who follow her have become as much my clan as ever Sun Leaf Clan was. Perhaps that is the reason one who might have been a memory singer bonded with a human yet also mated.>
<What do you mean?> Wind of Memory asked intently, and Golden Voice regarded her levelly for several long breaths. Branch Leaper tensed and felt the same reactions from the other members of his clan—especially Songstress and Echo of Time—as they tasted her mind glow. There was deep serenity in it, despite her youth, but also an inflexible determination, unyielding as the duralloy of the metal knives and axes the humans had given the People. It was not challenge. It went beyond that, like some irresistible natural force—like the wind that toppled even the mightiest picketwood or crown oak. He had no idea what lay behind it, yet at that moment, he felt almost sorry for the elders and memory singers of Sun Leaf Clan who must have encountered something just like it when they tried to force her to become a memory singer herself.
<I mean that the time to end our great deception has come, Memory Singer,> Golden Voice said very quietly. <It is time and past time for us to reveal our full cleverness to the humans.>
<No!> It was not one of the memory singers, but rather Bark Master, second of Bright Water’s elders, whose mind voice shouted the instant denial. All eyes turned to him, but he did not retreat. <Sings Truly herself told us we must conceal our full cleverness, and she was right,> he said stubbornly. <It was the path of wisdom to hide it until we had learned more of the humans, and it is the path of wisdom now. We are protected by the human rangers. They aid us in the hard times of the cold turnings, their healers have conquered many of the illnesses which once came among us and killed, we have learned much from them yet remained always ourselves. We may no longer distrust them, yet we do not truly know how they will respond when they discover that we have deceived them for so long. And even if that were not true, it would be foolish to unsettle and change everything between our two peoples when we already have all that we might desire!>