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?”
The other flicked her tail in answer and the two set off across the burn, Fessran in the lead, Ratha following, bearing the torch.
As the two traveled, the grass grew thicker underfoot, hiding the burn beneath a new carpet of green. Wild wheat stems stroked their bellies and flanks as they passed through, and Ratha had to hold her torch aloft to avoid setting the new growth alight. A sea of waving grasses covered what had been forest floor, swirling around the fire-blighted stands of pine and fir. Only the great red-woods still shaded the land, their heartwood still living, their fibrous bark only scarred by the Red Tongue’s passing. The wild grasses grew thin in their shadow and the torch seemed to burn brighter in the cool, still air beneath their boughs.
But the trees were few and the grass triumphant as it spread far in the open sunlight. Ratha walked behind Fessran, watching her tail swing back and forth in time to her pace, listening to the fire snap and hiss. The only other sounds were of grass swishing past legs and the muted hammer of a woodpecker from its faraway perch.
The sun reached its zenith and began to fall again. Fessran had replaced Ratha’s torch as many times as there were blackened stubs left along the trail. Ratha could hear Fessran’s stomach growl and her own, she was sure, would meet her backbone by the time they arrived on clan ground.
Ratha slowly became aware that the continuous low gurgle in the background was not coming from her stomach or Fessran’s. It was the sound of running water. She tried to scent the stream, but the acrid tang of torch smoke made her nose useless. She could only follow Fessran’s lead.
Soon they were walking along a grassy stream bank. Fessran found a ford where the stream ran shallow over gravel. They began to wade across, Fessran still leading, Ratha behind.
Fessran reached the other side and scrambled up the steep bank, shaking mud and pebbles from her feet. “Here is where we swam with the deer away from the Red Tongue,” she called back to Ratha, who still stood in midstream.
Ratha remained where she was, letting the water flow over her paws. The creek looked different in the open sun with grass instead of trees on its banks. But there, upstream, were the potholes she’d swum across and above them the waterfall she’d tumbled down. Her flank ached momentarily at the memory.
“I know your feet are weary, Ratha”—Fessran’s voice cut into her thoughts—“but we have only a little farther to go.”
Ratha’s jaws loosened in dismay and she almost dropped the torch in the water. Only at little farther to go? She wished that she was back on the burn, still traveling; the goal of her journey too far ahead to have to worry or think about. Now, suddenly, she had arrived. Ratha looked up the bank to where her companion was standing. Clan ground. And she wasn’t ready.
“Are you going to let your tail drag in the water all day?” Fessran sounded annoyed.
Ratha glanced down at her reflection. Herder of the Red Tongue, she thought wryly. A thin forlorn face stared back at her, holding the torch in its jaws. An echo of her own voice rang in her ears. Clan leader, hah! Who is he compared to….
“Ratha, hurry.” Fessran leaned down the bank. Ratha jerked her head up and sprang, dripping, onto the slope. Her paws slid on the muddy bank but Fessran seized her ruff and hauled her up.
Ratha paced back and forth on the stream bank while Fessran shook herself off. This was home ground, but very much changed. The forest no longer reached the stream and the meadow had altered shape and grown larger. The grass felt new and crisp underfoot. Ratha looked across the open land and remembered the cool dimness of the old forest.
The meadow stood empty. No beasts grazed; no herdfolk stood guard. Ratha shivered. Where are they…?
“Fessran, could the clan have gone somewhere else?” she asked, turning to her companion and speaking awkwardly around the branch.
“The meadow grass is not thick enough for beasts to graze,” Fessran said. “And the dapplebacks like to browse in thickets. Our folk may have taken the animals further away to graze, but I am sure they will return to the dens at sunfall.”
Fessran found the overgrown trail that led to the clan dens.
“The grass is bent here,” she said, nosing about, “and here are the marks of large pads. Meoran and the others came this way not long before.”
Ratha stood on the stream bank, her soggy coat still dripping. She stared across the meadow. She thought it was empty, but what had caused that patch of weeds to wave when the rest was still? The motion died out and though Ratha searched intently she could see nothing else. Her wet coat made her shiver again.
“Someone is stalking us,” she muttered in response to Fessran’s questioning look.
“Some clan cub out hunting grasshoppers.” Fessran wrinkled her nose. “Come out of the weeds, weanling, and give greeting to your betters,” she called. The meadow remained still.
“That isn’t a cub,” Ratha said.
“How do you know? I thought you couldn’t smell anything with the Red Tongue’s breath in your face.”
“My nose isn’t telling me. I just know,” she growled.
Fessran lifted her tail and waved the white spot at the end of it. No cub in the clan, Ratha knew, would disobey that signal. No one came, however, and Fessran lowered her tail. “Shake yourself dry,” she said irritably to Ratha, “and leave whoever it is to their games.”