Ratha swallowed the rest of her anger. Fessran was going to stay. That was enough. She showed Fessran her bundle of twigs and how to poke them one at a time into the Red Tongue’s lair. When Fessran had mastered the task to her satisfaction, Ratha curled up in the ash, buried her nose in her tail and slept. The last sound she heard before she fell asleep was the soft crackle-purr of the fire burning.
CHAPTER SIX
When Ratha woke in her nest in the ash, morning had cleared the haze from the sky and deep blue arched over the burn. Slivers of green dotted the grounds; new shoots had come up overnight from fire-ripened seeds; each one so fragile that it bent beneath the weight of a single drop of dew.
Ratha sat up, yawned and brushed ash from her fur. She looked for Thakur before she remembered why he wasn’t there. Half the night spent tending the Red Tongue had made her peevish, and the hungry rumbles in her belly didn’t help her temper. A haunch of dappleback or some of those river-crawlers might be nice, she thought, feeling warm saliva filling her mouth. She swallowed and tried to turn her mind away from food. There was nothing to eat here. She would have to wait until she returned to clan ground.
“This place has food only for the Red Tongue.” Fessran’s voice came from behind her and the tang of smoke stung her nose. “And not enough, either. Your creature is a greedy thing; I grow weary of feeding it.”
Ratha stretched one leg at a time and arched her back to get the stiffness out of it. She groomed her belly, glancing now and then at Fessran, who was poking the last few sticks into the Red Tongue’s nest.
The morning breeze shifted, sending smoke into Fessran’s face and she shook her head, blinking, her eyes tearing. She backed away, grimacing. “Arr, you ungrateful creature!” she growled. “I feed you and feed you and then you make my eyes sting!”
“Stand on the other side.” Ratha yawned. “And you’re feeding it too much. Keep it small.”
“I will feed it no more; there is nothing left to feed it.” Fessran rubbed her face on the inside of her foreleg, leaving the fur damp and spiky. She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. “There. I can see again.”
“I can get food for it.” Ratha pointed her nose at the tree. “Up there.”
“Unless you can knock down the whole tree, you won’t get very much,” Fessran said, eyeing the stunted saplings dubiously. “Even if you can feed your creature for a while, we can’t stay here.”
“And if we go, what happens to my creature?”
“We’ll have to leave it, Ratha.”
“No!” Ratha planted her paws in the ash. “It kept me warm last night. It kept you warm too. It is a cub; it must be looked after and fed. If we go, it will die.”
“We can’t stay here,” Fessran repeated.
“Why did you keep it alive last night if now you say it must die?” Ratha wailed.
“I was cold last night and I’m not now. I don’t want your creature to die either, Ratha, but staying here isn’t going to fill our bellies.”
Ratha circled the fire, pacing frantically. An idea struck her. “I want the clan herders to see my creature,” she said, turning to Fessran who stood waiting, flicking her tail from side to side. “I can stay here with the Red Tongue while you bring them. Can you bring them, Fessran? I can stay.”
“And be meat for the first hungry beast that comes along?” Fessran snorted. “If I left you here, I’d find only your bones when I got back, even if the clan herders would believe my words. Arr! What are you doing?” she cried in alarm as Ratha tried to snap at the flame and was driven back by heat and pain.
“I can’t catch it. There is nothing to catch. I see it, but my teeth can’t feel it.”
“Do you think you can carry the Red Tongue by the scruff?” Fessran wrinkled her nose. “I may not know much about it, but I know it is not that kind of creature.”
Ratha glared at Fessran, winced and licked smarting jowls. She turned once again to the enigmatic thing still dancing over its breakfast of twigs. Fessran had placed several small branches awkwardly, leaving broken ends sticking out. Gingerly, Ratha took one of these into her mouth and drew the branch from the fire. It was shorter than she expected and she shifted it in her jaws, fighting the urge to fling the thing away as it burned close to her face. Out of the corner of one eye she saw Fessran raise a paw to bat the branch out of her mouth. Ratha held her torch as long as she could before having to drop it back in the fire.
“There!” she panted. “I can carry my creature.”
Fessran lowered her foot. “You wouldn’t go very far before you dropped it. The sun is high, Ratha. We don’t need the Red Tongue.”
“No! You are just like Thakur, telling me to leave my creature. I found it, I fed it, and I’m going to take it back with me.” Ratha flopped on her belly and stared into the fire.
There must be a way ... there must ... yes, there is.
Ratha caught Fessran peering into her face. She sat up abruptly, almost bumping the other’s chin. “I know, Fessran! Look at the Red Tongue. See how the creature crawls along the branch? Do you see how the Red Tongue’s passing turns the wood gray and feathery?” Ratha leaned over Fessran’s shoulder as she snagged a charred stick with one claw and pulled it out of the fire. “Once the wood turns to feathers, the Red Tongue won’t eat it. If I pick my branch up by this end,” she said, tapping the blackened bark, impatient for it to cool, “I can carry it.”
When the wood stopped glowing and smoking, Ratha got her jaws around it and lifted the branch out of the fire. She raised her head, holding the torch triumphantly. An instant later, the charcoaled end collapsed between her teeth and the lighted end fell on the ground. It flickered out. Ratha spat out a mouthful of embers, gagged and drooled on the ground, trying to cool the burning bitterness with saliva. Through pain-blurred eyes she glared at the Red Tongue, retching as fluid ran down her chin.
She panted rapidly and stuck her sore tongue out into the morning wind.
“Arr! I thought it would work,” she said when she could speak.
“You did better the first time,” Fessran answered. “Perhaps a longer branch not yet touched by the Red Tongue would serve you. Wait. I’ll climb up and break one off.”
Ratha stared, open-mouthed, as Fessran hitched herself up the sapling’s slanted trunk. “You’re helping me?”
“I prefer that to leaving you here.” Fessran’s head appeared in a crotch between two limbs. The tree’s crown swayed as she balanced herself. She seized a nearby branch in her jaws, cracked it loose and tossed it down to Ratha. Several more followed, the dry wood snapping cleanly away from the trunk.
“My teeth weren’t made for that.” Fessran landed beside Ratha, sending up a cloud of flaky ash.
“Why did you knock down all those?” Ratha asked. “I can carry only one with the Red Tongue at the end.”
“Yes, but I can carry the others. And when the Red Tongue creeps to the end of your branch, I will coax it into one of mine and give that one to you.”
“Ah, but you are clever, Fessran,” Ratha said.
“Not clever. Just hungry. Take the large branch for your creature.” Fessran waited as Ratha lit the stick. “What about the rest of your creature?” she asked, her voice indistinct through the stick she had picked up.
“We will leave it and it will die,” Ratha said. “But my creature has given birth and its nursling dances at the end of my branch. So will it always be with the Red Tongue.” She paused. “Are you ready, Fessran?”