“She doesn’t speak. I’m sure of that,” he said over his shoulder to the treeling. “And her eyes are those of a witless Un-Named one.” He stopped, remembering the swirling milky-green irises. Were those eyes indeed empty, or did the opacity hide the spark of intelligence that the Named valued? What about her led him to brood this way? Her companionship with the sea-beasts, part of him answered, but another, more honest part said no, that is not all.
He needed to find forage and a steady supply of good, fresh water for the clan and its herds. He had already noticed several estuaries and inlets that cut into the coast-line, but most that he sampled were too salty or brackish, even when he moved upstream. Sparse rainfall had dried up the rivers that fed the bays and inlets, allowing seawater to intrude.
Finally he found a creek that fed a lagoon. Though the lagoon water was briny and mixed with the sea, the stream itself, when he tasted it, was fresh. He followed the creek inland until he came to its source. At the base of a second tier of cliffs set far back from the ocean, a spring ran steadily from a cleft in blue-gray stone, collecting in a pool beneath. Shaded by the rock walls and watered by the spring, trees grew at the base of the cliffs with an open meadow beyond. Seepage from the spring moistened the ground, and fresh grass sprouted amid the dappled patterns of sun and shade.
Here, near the sea coast, morning and evening fogs muted the heat that blistered areas farther inland. Thakur drank from the pool, then stood on its margin, letting the feel of the place seep into him.
Several small pawprints in the moist earth near the pool told him that the stranger too knew of this spring. And seeing her prints made Thakur wonder what would happen if the Named did choose to come. She could always drink from the creek that spilled out of the overflow from the spring-fed pool instead of from the pool itself.
His belly gave a twinge: not true hunger, but a warning that he should eat within the next day or so. His time here was drawing to an end; the other scouts that Ratha had sent out would be returning with descriptions of their discoveries. He too would tell his story to those assembled before the sunning rock. This place, with its oasis of fresh growth and unfailing water, appeared ideal for the clan and their herd animals. In addition, the sea-beasts might be the answer to Ratha’s quest for another source of meat. If a lame Un-Named one had formed a protective relationship with one of them, surely the herders of the Named could do more.
Yet even as he thought this he had misgivings. He sensed that the relationship of the stranger to the sea-beasts was different from that of the clan herders to their animals. The creatures’ reactions as she walked among them told Thakur that she had blended herself into their community. She lived with them rather than managing them to serve her needs, as the Named did with their animals.
But she was alone and weak as well. This was the only way she could live, by disturbing the sea-beasts as little as possible. Perhaps she was only a scavenger after all, he thought, but the idea saddened him.
Could she perhaps find a place among the Named? And if the clan came, with their herds and their ways, could she live a better life than one of scratching and scrounging among middens left by these wave-wallowers?
No. She was not like his people. He doubted if she could accept clan ways even if the Named chose to share them. A promise lay behind her shuttered eyes, but not one the Named could easily trust. Could it be that hers was a different sort of intelligence, one that might show not in mastery of words or brightness of eyes, but in another way?
Thakur knew that he could determine whether that intelligence—that light—would be given a chance to develop or not. If he returned and stood before the sunning rock to say that nothing here would be of value to the Named, this stranger could continue to live her life among the seamares without interference.
He sighed deeply, knowing this path was not open to him. He could not lie to his clan leader or betray his people for the sake of some odd castoff. He would speak, and herders from the clan would come, for the spring-watered trees and meadow offered the Named refuge from the worsening drought. And the wave-wallowing animals might well become an unusual, though successful, addition to the beasts the Named now tended. Their meat might taste a bit odd, but in times of need, the Named couldn’t be particular about taste.
He knew where his loyalties lay, and it saddened him. The stranger would be pushed out, tossed aside, and no one would think anything of it because she had no light in her eyes. But that would be wrong, because we can learn from her. Even if she can’t speak, she teaches us by what she does. Ratha must be made to understand.
With that thought, Thakur got to his feet, coaxed Aree to his shoulder, and set off on his return journey.
Newt spent the rest of that day, after the confrontation with Thakur, hiding in the deepest sandstone hollow she could find. Panic closed around her, making her want to run blindly away from this place and the stranger whose sudden arrival and smell woke the old terrors.
His smell. Her nose had not lied to her. Yes, he had his own scent, but mixed in with it she had caught the hated stink of the Dreambiter. But the Dreambiter was not real, could not leave a true scent except in memory. Newt had thought the Dreambiter’s scent was as unreal as the apparition itself, until the newcomer’s odor-mark sent its shock through her and brought the nightmare down to rend her. Now she shuddered at the recollection and thought only of fleeing.
But a part of her fought against deserting the beach and the seamares. That she might be forced to abandon this new life she had built for herself was a bitterness she couldn’t swallow. Why had he come? What did he want?
She remembered other encounters with those of her kind, of snarls and sneers and the coldness of hate. She had left all that behind. Would she have to return to it once again?
But worst of all was knowing that the newcomer could wake the Dreambiter. Was he the source of the apparition in her dreams that slashed and crippled her? She bared her teeth at the thought but knew that he was not. Though his smell carried enough traces of the Dreambiter’s to trigger the onrush of the hallucination, his scent itself was not the cause.
Newt’s smell-memories of that maiming attack were stronger than the sight-images. The odor of the one whose teeth had torn her flesh was seared into the center of her being. The smell betrayed one thing: that the Dreambiter was female. Whatever dangers this invading male brought were his own. He might wake her apparition, but he wasn’t the source of it.
If she ever found the one who was, she promised herself there would blood and fur scattered until she took the hated one’s life in payment for her pain or gave up her own.
She crouched in her cave, thinking about the strange male and shivering. Slowly she realized that he himself had done nothing to threaten or harm her. His voice and his tail gestures were not those of one who wished her ill. His manner was careful, gentle, with a quality she was slowly starting to recognize, for she had known it once long ago.
A picture formed in her mind of the copper-furred, amber-eyed face of the one who had loved her and tried so hard to teach her. And then came an image of the intruder, who also seemed to want her to respond. The two faces were strangely alike, even though one had green eyes and the other amber.
A forgotten part of Newt cried out for more of what she had once known. She wanted kindness and the friendly sound of a purr, the sight of a tail lifted in greeting. When had she heard, felt, and seen those things? So long ago that she could barely remember... or was it the mist drifting through her mind that made it all seem so distant?
The Dreambiter had taken it all away.
As Newt lay in her cave, she felt her anger and confusion harden into stubbornness. She would stay here. If she had to face the strange male, she would. The life she was starting to build among the seamares was too precious to yield. No one would drive her away. Not even the Dreambiter.