Newt made a few lazy turns, then surfaced near him, her whiskers dripping. “Thakur come,” she chirped, then swam away. He followed, suddenly self-conscious about his clumsy paddling as compared to her elegant glide. Again she slid by in front of his nose like a fish. Her tail tip lifted, flipped a sprinkle of water into his face, and he spluttered, putting his feet down on the bottom.
“I swim about as well as you talk,” he said, as her head lifted again. “How do you do that?” He tried to float with his head down but immediately got a noseful of brackish seawater. He grimaced, coughing and drawing back his whiskers. Newt floated near him, swishing her tail lazily, her head up. She blew at him through her mouth and nose with a breathy, hissing sound. Still blowing, she ducked under again. A welter of bubbles boiled around her muzzle and ears.
Thakur watched. When she surfaced, he blew back at her. She grinned, slapped her good forepaw on top of his head, dunked him under, and held him. For one confused moment, he struggled, wondering why she was trying to drown him. Then he knew that she had decided to teach him in her own fashion. With a strong breath, he blew out the water flooding his mouth and nose. She let him up.
He dunked Newt in turn, watching her breath surface as bubbles. Moving away from her, he tried putting his face in the water. The first few times he ended up with brine in his throat, but he began to master the trick of controlling his breathing to overcome the feeling of suffocation and keep water out of his mouth and nose.
Thakur opened his eyes in the clear water of the lagoon. He could see somewhat blurrily, but he could make out objects. There was Newt, hanging in the water nearby, her fur forming a soft halo about her as currents teased it away from her body. He felt the water push against his face, tug unpleasantly at his sensitive nose and brow whiskers, and seep over his jowls into his mouth. Lifting his head, he shook the water out of his ears. This was interesting, but it would take some getting used to.
Newt drifted into the shallows near him. She looked up at him, then pawed the water with her forefeet in imitation of his paddling. Both forefeet. He stared at her two paws, the good one splashing vigorously, the other feeble but moving. It hadn’t been just his imagination or wishful thinking. Her leg wasn’t as useless as it appeared.
“Newt,” he said softly, nudging her. “Look.” She stared down, following the odd jerks of her crippled forelimb through the water. With a self-conscious grimace, she tugged the leg to her chest and held it there.
“No. What you were doing before; that was good.” Gently, Thakur pawed her foot away from her chest, coaxing her to let the forelimb drift free. He batted her limb back and forth in a small arc beneath the water, then took her foot in his mouth, trying to see how far the tightened muscles would stretch. This time she did not jerk away.
With his nose underwater, Thakur moved the shrunken limb back and forth until Newt caught on to the idea. “Good,” he said, sneezing brine out of his whiskers. “You do it now.”
She managed several short, jerky sweeps. He saw it was harder for her to move the leg intentionally than it had been when she was just swimming. She persisted, even when the leg began trembling. He made her stop, then encouraged her to swim again by making a few clumsy paddle-strokes. She glided around him, then looked up. Again she pawed the water. “Newt... ?”
Thakur grinned. She was so good at this water play that of course she would want to know the word for it. “Swim,” Thakur told her.
“Newt swim,” she said. “Thakur swim.” She glided around him, twisting and turning.
“Good.” He purred and gave her a soggy nuzzle.
“Good,” Newt echoed.
He licked her behind the ears, then ducked to avoid another splash.
Later he had her do more exercise with the leg, sweeping it back and forth as far as it would go against the resistance of the water. He felt he had found something important, although he was not exactly sure how it might work.
Chapter Eight
Fessran and Khushi were gone from clan ground for many days. For Ratha, those days dragged like the weary herders’ feet, as the weather grew hotter and the trails dustier.
She lay in late-afternoon shade that felt as hot as open sun. She panted, feeling worn out and worried. She wished she had delayed Thakur from returning to the lake-of-waves and its odd inhabitant. The task of controlling herdbeasts made restive by thirst and flies was a wearying one, in addition to her other duties as leader. And the new water source she thought would last had begun to fail.
Both Thakur and Fessran were gone. She let her jaw sag as she panted. Letting them both go had been a bad decision. But how was she to know that Khushi would turn up with a stolen cub from the ranks of the Un-Named, who might well have sprung from the loins of her bitterest enemy? Could anyone blame her if she wanted that litterling off clan ground as fast as possible and shred the consequences!
Letting Fessran go with Khushi was only a quicker way to speed him off with his unwanted burden. Ratha sighed. Not a good decision. Even if all Fessran wanted was her lost treeling—but Ratha couldn’t bring herself to believe that.
She lay with her tail flicking, thinking about the good and bad parts of what Thakur had told her before he left. The good part was the spring. Thakur had described how underground water flowed from a series of cracks in a cliff that lay just behind the beach where he had found the duck-footed dapplebacks. With its source deep in the earth, the spring would run even when everything else went dry. The spring watered thickets where three-horns could browse and patches of meadow that would do for the dapplebacks.
The bad part was that the Named would have to leave clan ground for as long as the drought lasted. Ratha laid her chin down on grass that once would have cooled but now crackled. The journey there would be exhausting. She thought of the river drives and the prospect of increasing the tumult, dust, and weariness over days of traveling.
Before she uprooted the clan, she must see the spring for herself, to be absolutely sure it would support the needs of the Named and their herds through the drought. She wanted to study the wave-wallowers themselves, along with the Un-Named one who lived among them.
Soon she would follow Thakur’s tracks to this great, brine-filled lake. She itched to be gone. But she meant to take Fessran with her, and the Firekeeper had not yet returned. She sighed and laid her nose on her paws instead of the scratchy grass.
Though the clan would be losing its leader and chief Firekeeper for a short time, Ratha felt that this journey was essential, and she needed Fessran’s opinion as much as her own. She had already spoken to the older herder, Cherfan, about taking over clan leadership while she was gone. And Bira, Fessran’s second-in-command among the Firekeepers, had overcome much of her shyness and had grown skilled in the management of the Red Tongue and those who kept it.
Fessran’s absence would give Bira a chance to emerge from the chief Firekeeper’s shadow and show her abilities. Cherfan was a strong, experienced herder and respected by all. Ratha did not think her own and Fessran’s absence would be long enough to cause difficulty; at the slow rate the river was dropping, things would remain stable enough until she had found a place for the clan.
Fessran and Khushi surprised her by arriving later that same afternoon. A herder ran ahead, bringing the news to her and waking her from her sleep in the shade. As soon as the two travelers came into sight, Ratha saw Fessran was still missing her treeling. Khushi’s jaws, thankfully, were empty. With a rising purr, she invited them to stretch out beside her.