Khushi agreed with Bira. If anything, he was more vehement. “When this enemy leader dies, the hunter tribe will fall apart. There’s nothing wrong in letting that happen. Maybe it’ll stop them from hurting us. If it doesn’t, I’m all for using the Red Tongue.” He paused and added, “Why make a weak enemy strong again? It is stupid.”
Well-spoken, Fessran’s son, thought Ratha, but she felt a twinge of sadness.
And why does Thakur have this strange expression on his face, as if he’s been eating rotted fruit?
“Herding teacher, have you thought of something interesting?” she asked mildly.
“Thistle,” he said, his voice almost dreamy. “I thought I knew her all the way through. But she’s surprised me. She’s followed trails that even I have not dared to run.”
“None of us can follow you, respected Thakur,” said Bira. “Please, can you tell us what you mean?”
Thakur sat up a bit straighter and gathered himself together. “I have asked us not to harm these people. But Thistle has gone far beyond me. She has asked us to help them!”
Khushi grimaced. “You think it’s wonderful? I think it’s crazy! I like her, too, but sometimes I get the feeling that not everything is working between her ears.”
“I wouldn’t say it quite that strongly,” Bira interjected, “but I have to point out that Thistle is asking us to take this risk, not her. She is not a clan member; she chose not to be. By that choice, she gave away any right to influence what we do.”
“Everything Bira says is true,” Thakur said after the Firekeeper had finished speaking. “Remember, though, Thistle came because I asked for her help.”
“We can be grateful without doing something that would not be good for us,” Bira argued.
Ratha held up a paw for silence. “So it is clear how you all feel. Khushi, you are in favor of using the Red Tongue and not helping the hunters. Bira agrees?”
“Yes, clan leader,” said the young Firekeeper. “My loyalty is to you and the rest of us.”
“I know how Thakur feels,” Ratha said. “All right. I appreciate what you all had to say.”
“What about you, Ratha?” Thakur asked.
“I can only tell you how I feel, which won’t help. I can’t tell you what I will decide.”
And the Named left their leader alone, knowing that she needed time to think.
Chapter Twenty-One
Thistle went back to Quiet Hunter, wishing she could do something more for him. He was in a dazed, half-awake state since he had not been able to sleep.
When he lifted his head to touch noses with her, his nose leather was cold, even though he lay in a patch of sun.
For him, everything is icy water, she thought.
She curled around him, trying to drive away the frozen despair.
“Any better?” she asked. “Or everything still cold?”
“Thistle is warm,” he said, and his whiskers lifted a little. “But Quiet Hunter is too weary to come out to where Thistle is.”
She gave an unhappy sigh. There had to be a way to help him. There had to.
But the only thing that could help him was True-of-voice’s song. She wished she could become like True-of-voice so that she could help Quiet Hunter.
She grimaced scornfully at herself. She could not begin to do what True-of-voice had done. Wishing was useless. But she still desperately wanted to help Quiet Hunter.
If she tried hard, she could remember how True-of-voice’s song sounded and felt, but she couldn’t give it to Quiet Hunter. She couldn’t reach his “inside ears.” Not the way True-of-voice had.
But you have outside ears too, and I have a voice, even if it is a small one, she thought.
“Listen, Quiet Hunter,” she said, and let her memory lift her voice as she began to sing softly to him.
* * *
Ratha did not stay by herself for long. Hard thinking had dug up a possible solution. It was crazy, but it might work. It might accomplish both objectives without harm to anyone except True-of-voice, and nothing would save him anyway.
To try her idea, she would have to convince Thistle. She felt as though her heart would hammer right through her ribs as she went looking for her daughter.
She didn’t find Thistle until she went to the place where she had last seen Quiet Hunter. Her daughter was there. And she was doing something that raised Ratha’s hopes even further. Thistle was singing to Quiet Hunter. As she said that True-of-voice had done. Except that Thistle was using her real voice. And the song was no longer without words.
Ratha saw the tortured look in Quiet Hunter’s eyes fade. They closed, his head sank down onto his paws, and his sides rose and fell in the rhythm of sleep.
She listened, entranced. Thistle sang more eloquently than she could speak, of the pain and struggle and grief and then of the greening of hope, a slender thread that could bind back together the most broken of spirits. Or lives.
She sang as none of the Named had sung before, blending gifts from both peoples whose trails she had run. Ratha heard it with a shiver that ran down her back and an ache in her belly that could have been grief or joy.
The song was not the strong, certain river that Thistle had described as flowing from True-of-voice. It keened with questions. It wavered with fear. It was the trickle of the spring, not the flow of the river. It was at the same time uplifting and heartbreaking.
And as Ratha watched and listened, she felt that something sacred was happening that she dare not disturb.
Who is she, this one who came from my blood, from my belly? My daughter, chaser of thistles, wayfarer on strange trails.
Who is she?
I know, and yet I do not.
As if sensing the presence of her mother, Thistle, without looking up, brought her song to an end. She crouched down, licked the sleeping Quiet Hunter, and walked forward to greet her mother.
Ratha felt the distance, almost the remoteness of the nose-touch, the whisker-brush. She found it hard to begin speaking, feeling that her words were crude and clumsy after the soaring beauty of Thistle’s song.
Yet she had to.
She let Thistle lead her away so that their voices would not wake Quiet Hunter.
“Thistle, I—I think there may be a way out of this. A way to not hurt anyone. A way to help everyone. Will you listen?”
“Will hear.”
“It needs you.”
Thistle only cocked her head and widened her eyes in the same way as Ratha knew that she herself did. It was unsettling to see herself reflected in her daughter.
Never had Ratha struggled so to speak, and she felt for an instant a deeper sympathy for Thistle’s struggle with language than she had ever felt before.
Finally she said, “It needs you to sing to the hunters. The same way you did to your friend. To keep them from going wild and attacking us.”
Thistle’s eyes only grew a little wider.
“Thistle, I’m asking you to go back to the hunters. Make it easier for them to accept True-of-voice’s death. I know that it is dangerous, but if you give them what they need, they won’t hurt you.”
Her daughter’s words came slowly. “Asking me … to replace True-of-voice?”
Ratha was about to protest that the two things were not the same, but the look in her daughter’s eyes kept her silent. “Yes,” she admitted. “I guess that is what I am asking.”
“You want … me … to lead the hunters. To keep them happy so that you Named … can take face-tails … without fighting.”
“Yes.” Ratha watched for the first sign of outrage or anger, but Thistle remained calm. “It is the only way to keep either side from suffering. Can’t you see?”
Thistle gave a strange snort and then started shaking all over, her mouth open, as if yawning. “You Named ones. You are so arrogant … that it’s … funny. You really think … me being a True-of-voice … makes all problems go away?”