Her jerks grew frantic, and the swirling sea green in her eyes grew stormy. Abruptly her pupils, expanded in rage, contracted to needle size. She fought him with a new and terrifying strength, but her efforts were unfocused, as if she no longer struggled against a flesh-and-blood enemy but against something within herself.
Thakur could only hold on as tightly as possible, keeping her rear legs pressed to the ground and her foreleg trapped in his mouth. He feared that if she did get free, she would attack him in a savage frenzy. Whatever he had wakened within her, he would have to contain it until the paroxysm passed.
At last her heaving became sporadic, and her struggles weakened. He loosened his grip, feeling her sag onto her side. He let her forepaw go and watched it flop. Panting, he sat and looked down at her. Once again she lay at his feet, defeated by the strange fit he had caused. This time, however, he didn’t feel as guilty, although he was surprised. He had never thought she would dare attack him, even with the temptation of the treeling on his back. Perhaps Aree’s smell proved too strong a lure. But the stranger was the one who had been caught.
Her lip twitched back, showing her upper fang. Her jaw trembled and her tongue moved. And then Thakur heard her voice.
“Stay away... from them....”
As she spoke the first few syllables, he leaned closer, wondering if he was imagining words in her inarticulate moans. Her voice was harsh and breathy.
“I won’t hurt you,” Thakur answered, puzzled as to whom she meant. “I held you off from my treeling, but I mean you no harm.”
She hadn’t heard him. She stared ahead, her gaze milky, shrouded, hissing words in strange disconnected clumps.
“... hwish they had been born dead... do you want her... she’s witless... why did you do this to me... why... ”
The sounds were indeed words in the speech of the Named, and he heard in them a pain and an eloquence that made him shiver. Yet the voice that said them was hollow and remote, as if she spoke without knowing what she said.
Her lips fell back over her fangs and she was silent, but her words still echoed in Thakur’s mind. He paced back and forth beside her in confusion. Who were those she warned him to stay away from? Cubs? He looked at her belly. No, she wasn’t nursing a litter. And what had she said about wishing “they” had been born dead? It made no sense to him.
But the agony had come through all too clearly. She whimpered deep in her throat, like a cub needing comfort. He lay down beside her, letting her feel his body warmth. Instinctively, she squirmed toward him. Though he wanted to move away because she was ungroomed and smelly, compassion overcame his disgust. He nuzzled her behind the ears. It soothed her, and she sank from confusion into sleep.
He wasn’t sure how long the stranger lay curled up with her back against him. Aree had gotten over her fright and was starting to descend from the sapling when the lame female stirred, this time into full wakefulness. Again he nuzzled her behind the ears, purring to calm her. She gave a startled jerk but did not scramble away.
She lifted her head to look at him.
“You’re all right,” Thakur said softly. “I promise I won’t let anyone hurt you. Do you have a name?”
The swirling green in her eyes seemed to surround and engulf him with intensity. The fur on her brow rumpled, and he could see that his words only baffled her.
He repeated his soothing litany, seeing that the sound of his voice did calm her, but the words themselves meant nothing.
“You don’t understand me,” he said, dismayed. “You must. I heard you speak.” But the veil of muteness had dropped upon her once again, and only cloudiness moved in those eyes. “It doesn’t matter,” he said softly, feeling her start to tremble. “Just rest here with me.”
After a little while, she got up and shook herself, but she did not scamper away. She sat watching him while he indulged in a good stretch. A chirr overhead reminded him he still had a treeling to look after. Aree hung by her tail from a branch of the willowy sapling, looking doubtfully at Thakur’s new acquaintance.
“She’s not going to eat you,” Thakur said, cajoling the treeling, but as Aree started to climb down, the lame female took several eager steps toward the sapling. Gently, but firmly, Thakur blocked her with his body. “Oh no, my hungry friend. Aree’s not going to be your dinner.”
When the stranger was stubborn and persisted, Thakur put a paw against her breast and pushed her away. “No,” he hissed sharply, emphasizing it with a flash of teeth. She backed away, letting Aree climb nervously onto Thakur’s nape, lying so flat that it felt as though she were trying to bury herself in his fur.
Again the stranger sidled toward him, but another emphatic negative halted her.
He knew she didn’t understand him, but the sound of his voice seemed to calm her, so he rambled on. “Look, I came here to learn about you, but since you can’t or won’t talk, why don’t you just prowl around while I watch?”
She cocked her head at him, then limped a few steps away. He saw how she kept the crippled foreleg tucked underneath her chest.
“You should try to use that foot,” he said, speaking his thought aloud. He came alongside her and pawed at her foreleg, trying to get her to extend the shrunken limb. Gently he took her foot in his mouth and pulled, testing how far he could stretch the contracted muscles.
She gave a sharp yowl of pain, wrenched her paw away from him.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’ll be careful.” He coaxed her into offering her foot again, although she gave a warning growl. Again he took it, pulled gently.
She tugged back with surprising strength in the wasted limb.
Stubbornly but gently, Thakur held on, purring to reassure her. “Easy,” he said, talking around a mouthful of furred toes. “I just wanted to see how this has healed.”
He turned the limb from side to side, also studying the collar of roughened fur that overlay scars from the injury that had crippled her. The scarring ran right down her neck to her breast. It looked like a bad bite, perhaps done to her when she was small. If fangs had penetrated a young cub’s chest near the foreleg, they might have caused such a paralyzing injury.
But in her case, the part that gave the limb life and motion had somehow begun to heal. He could tell that by the way the leg jerked back against his jaws. The real problem was that her muscles had thinned and contracted while the leg was immobile.
The healer in Thakur wanted to tell the stranger that she might not have to spend the rest of her life hobbling about on three legs. The practical part of him knew he couldn’t get this across to her without the use of words. Maybe if he could just show her—get her to stretch the leg and try using it.
But she had already grown impatient. She tugged her paw from his jaws and stalked away.
Thakur waited before he went after her, fearing she might hiss or try to drive him away, but she didn’t. Considering the start of this encounter, it hadn’t turned out all that badly, he concluded as he followed her. Perhaps she might accept him enough to show him the sea-beasts she guarded.
Winding his way down through the thorny, scrubby brush of the slopes behind the bluff, Thakur kept to the lame female’s track. He could hear her moving ahead of him, stopping and starting nervously. When she halted, he stayed back, not wanting to alarm her by moving too close. He paced himself by the uneven rhythm of her three-legged gait, slowing his own.
When they emerged onto the beach, she seemed less certain about wanting him to follow. He hung back, showing that he was willing to respect her privacy. After several stops, tail flicks, and doubtful stares in his direction, she let him trail her to a terrace near the seamares’ jetty. She grimaced at him to stay there.