“Too many,” Thakur agreed.
Again the silence fell and covered them both. The stars seemed to shimmer against the night sky.
“You were right,” said Thistle abruptly. “What you said—to my mother and the rest—you were right. Don’t let anyone make you back away from what you said.”
“Why do you say that, Thistle?” Thakur asked in a mild voice. The herding teacher sounded slightly puzzled, as he often did when she took off on a different thought trail without letting him know where she was going.
“Because the other Named ones—they will try to make you say you are wrong about the hunters. And my mother—she will try the hardest of all.”
“She is clan leader, Thistle,” she heard him say gently. “She is doing what she thinks is best for all of us. She must, or we will not survive.”
“Not best for me,” she protested. “Not for you either, or for the hunting clan. You said, ‘Can’t there be room for Named and others as well?’ Think there can be.” She paused, feeling her whiskers tremble with the force of passion. “Don’t let them make you give that up, Thakur.”
There was bafflement in the herding teacher’s green eyes. “Thistle, what makes you feel so strongly?”
“Don’t you think you were right?” she asked, afraid that he was going to change his mind.
“Yes, and I’m glad you think so, too, but I’m just surprised. After all, these hunters have repeatedly attacked us.”
Thistle couldn’t answer. She wasn’t sure. When had this conviction come to her—that the strange clan were more than savage killers? She tried to cast her mind back, remembering. Yes, she had screamed and run away, but she was fleeing from the Dreambiter, not from the strangers. And before that had happened, there was something else, dim and weakly sensed, but powerful.
“They gave me something,” she said. “What they call… the song.” She had looked into a hunter’s eyes. She had breathed his breath, touched his whiskers, inhaled his smell. And in all of that was the knowledge of the song; that he heard it and that he knew that she also heard it, however briefly.
She struggled to explain this to Thakur, but the words she found were not the right ones, and her newly made hold on language began to slip.
“Arrr! How can I say it? How?” she blurted in frustration as Thakur tried to soothe her. “Something comes from them. From them into me. And I know that they know… Oh, arrr, that isn’t right either.” Her tail flipped irritably back and forth, but Thakur seemed to have infinite patience.
Finally she said, “I have heard my mother talk about a ‘gift’ that you Named ones have. That it shows in the eyes. These hunters have something like it, but instead of looking out, they look in. Instead of speaking, they listen. Instead of trying to make sense, they make dreams. Do you understand, Thakur?”
“Only a little.”
She stumbled on. “How do I know this? I can’t tell you. What they have … is like the sea when you swim in it. All around you. Moving into you. Making voices in you. Making you feel the same as when you look up to the sky. The fierce red thing …” She fell silent.
“The Red Tongue,” Thakur said.
“It would destroy all of that. Wish my mother would understand.”
“Perhaps you can help her understand.”
“And perhaps you can scratch the stars,” she said wryly.
“Thistle …”
“Oh, Thakur, how can I lead anyone on this path when I am so lost?” she burst out, feeling an anguish that made her want to cry aloud. She leaned her head against the fur on his breast. He was so gentle, so wise, so eloquent….
She sighed. “Wish I could talk better. But sometimes the words—they run away. Because I am not Named?”
“Thistle, you are Named.”
“Only through my mother.”
“Through your father as well. He was not a clan member, but he had the same gifts. Perhaps he was more gifted than any of us.” Thakur paused. “Ratha called him Bonechewer. He was my brother.”
Thistle listened to Thakur’s heart—strong, steady, and comforting. She had always sensed that he resembled her lost father. Now she knew why.
“If he was what you say, why didn’t he pass it to me? Why did my mother think we were all so stupid”—her voice caught—“and drive us away?”
“Thistle, he did pass his gift on to you, but it took a long time to show. I think that is the reason you were slow in growing up. Because you weren’t with us, you didn’t learn to speak as a cub. That is why you find it difficult now.”
“And … the driving us away?”
“Ratha told you once,” Thakur said softly. “Don’t you remember? She couldn’t bear the idea that you couldn’t be like other Named cubs. But it wasn’t your fault, and she told you she was wrong.”
“Yes, she did,” Thistle admitted. “But it is hard to make her words feel real.”
“You may need to hear them again. It may take you many seasons of hearing them.”
She let the silence stay for a little while before chasing it away with a question. “I had a brother, didn’t I?”
“Two. There were three of you in the litter.”
“Are my brothers like me?”
“We don’t know, Thistle. We never found them.”
“Does my mother… want to find them?”
There was a long pause before he answered. “I think you should ask her.”
“Maybe I will. But not here. For my mother—too many things to think about.”
“Too many,” Thakur agreed, yawning. “I feel I can fall asleep now.”
Thistle felt her own mouth stretch in a sleepy gape. She followed Thakur back to the campfire and curled up beside him.
Chapter Eight
It was morning. Thistle no longer slept by Thakur. Instead, she had gone away quietly, without waking anyone. Now she crouched, alone in the brush, spying on a band of hunters as they stalked a face-tail. Her mottled coat might be ugly, she thought, but it made her blend in with the background when she didn’t want to be seen. She watched, quivering with fright and fascination.
This hunting party was a small group. Its members looked young, some of them perhaps just out of cub-hood. They didn’t seem as well organized as the larger hunting band that Thakur had described. Thistle also wondered about their judgment, for they had chosen an older female face-tail with a nursing calf. But perhaps the younger clan-cats did know what they were doing, for they had already managed to separate the pair from the main herd.
A ring of feline hunters now surrounded the beasts. Thistle could see that they were trying to maneuver their prey onto swampy ground, where mother and calf would bog down. But the mother face-tail seemed aware of the danger. Each time two or more of the attackers dashed in to drive her into the trap, the shaggy black-and-brown face-tail gave ground only briefly, then lunged at its tormentors, nearly breaking through their ring.
This is the wrong animal to try for, Thistle thought. This one has been hunted before and knows the tricks.
She watched the young hunters struggle with the wary old face-tail. They seemed unwilling to give up, as if something drove them to try again and again, despite knowing that this creature was the wrong prey.
Even Ratha, for all her stubbornness, would have surely given up by now, Thistle thought. The Named would have recognized they had met their match and chosen another beast.
The old female face-tail was tiring, but so, too, were the hunters. Thistle could see frustration and exhaustion in the rise and fall of their ribs beneath mud-streaked fur. Their feints were becoming slower, and each time one dodged the face-tail’s lunges, the tusks came closer.
Why do they keep choosing this animal? I am not a hunter, but even I can see…
One of the hunters turned, letting Thistle catch a glimpse of his eyes. Even from the distance, she could see that his gaze was still strangely turned inward, as if he was listening intently, even while he stalked.