Bundi grimaced, making his tear-lines crumple. “Thakur has been running us around until our pads are sore. We came down here to get away from him. Yes, we’re ready.”
Mishanti chimed in with a high-pitched, “We very ready.”
“Just be grateful I don’t ask you to show me right now,” Ratha said, trying to make herself sound stern but knowing she was failing. The sight and scent of Bundi, crestfallen and dung-caked, made her want to loll her tongue out again.
“Come on, Mishanti,” Bundi said impatiently. “I don’t usually mind getting herdbeast dung on me, but this stuff is really gooey and stinky … .” He glowered at Grunt.
“I hope you get clean before the herding display,” Ratha called after him. “I don’t want to have to wash you myself.” Two tails disappeared down the path before she could finish.
Satisfied, Ratha continued her stroll until she reached an area where the forest opened, giving way to brush and meadow. Here the creek ran with its waters dappled by sun and shade.
She caught the rainy freshness of flowing water and passed a small pond that bloomed from the creek side like a flower from a stem. She knew this was not a natural part of the creek. Thakur and Thistle-chaser had dug it.
She circled the pond, trying to see into the water without being dazzled by reflections. The pool was crowded with both free-swimming fish and limp dead ones that were tethered to a sunken log. The pool’s connection with the creek had been cleverly made so that stream water could flow in but the live fish couldn’t get out.
The tethered fish were Thistle-chaser’s, brought from her seaside home and placed in this specially dug pond to stay cool and appetizing. Her daughter’s attempts to add seafood to the Named diet was having somewhat mixed results. The ocean fish grew larger and meatier than freshwater fish, but their smell and taste were stronger.
Both Thistle and Bira had caught the live free-swimmers, spotted silvery trout, and whiskered mud-grubbers. This pond kept them fresh, and easily available.
Wherever Thistle-chaser goes, she changes things, Ratha thought, recollecting. Thistle had helped rescue True-of-voice, the leader of the face-tail hunting clan. The event was many full season-turns past, but it still remained sharp in Ratha’s memory.
She thought about her daughter, the image of the stubborn, pointed little face with sea-green eyes coming into her mind along with the smells of waves, kelp, and gulls. The eyes in that face had once looked cloudy and dull, lacking the Named depth and clarity. Now Thistle-chaser’s gaze was sharp and her wit, if not her words, was the equal of any in the clan. Only her slight foreleg limp remained to remind Ratha that she had once bitten, crippled, and abandoned this cub in a frenzy of disappointed rage. It was Thakur who had found Thistle, taught her speech, and then brought her back to the clan.
Ratha sometimes wondered how such a tough and intense spirit as Thistle’s could inhabit such a funny, odd-colored little body. Only in her facial markings and lighter underside did Thistle resemble the Named. The rest was a patchwork of rust, tan, and black that made Ratha understand why Thistle had once called herself Newt, after the slow-moving salamander.
Thistle was growing, but her early exile and struggle for survival had stunted her. The crippled leg, however, was healing, along with other, more invisible wounds.
Not wanting to think about the past, Ratha turned her attention back to the pond. Crayfish crawled over the graveled bottom, feeding with their claws, climbing over one another, getting into quick fights, and shooting away with sudden flaps of their tails.
She knew that the crayfish were Thakur’s doing. He liked to feast on river crawlers and he preferred them fresh. Whenever he caught a few, he put them in this holding pond.
Thistle’s fish-storing idea was generally a success, although sometimes Thakur’s crayfish decided to help themselves to an ocean fish snack. He could solve the problem by giving the clan a crayfish banquet. She remembered the exotic sweet taste of the meat as she delicately teased it out of the shell with her front teeth and tongue. Her mouth started watering just from the memory. Ratha eyed the swarm of river-crawlers and licked her jowls.
A little farther, at the meadow’s edge, the creek ran wide and shallow, making a convenient ford. Ratha crossed, feeling chilled water surge over her front toes up to her dewclaws. Gravel rolled under her pads and stuck between her toes so that she had to pause and clean her feet.
The meadow was so lush with high-sprouting grass that Ratha had to crane her neck to see above it. A crowd of butterflies surrounded her nose. Their fluttering tickled her whiskers, making them twitch.
Her ears pricked to the distant voices of Thakur and his herding students. She also caught the high but still brassy bellows of young face-tails and saw a spray of wet grass and dirt.
Ratha bounded through the high grass until she reached a place where the exuberant spring growth had been grazed down. Now she could see Thakur and his students ringing a young face-tail. An older cub was attempting to back the little elephant using the Named stare-down, but the creature wouldn’t let the herding student lock its gaze. It danced, surprisingly agile on its tree-trunk legs, bobbing its head, swishing its trunk, and tusking up more dirt and grass to throw. The young student, his spots fading into blue-gray with a darker stripe along his back, was getting splattered with mud-brown and green. Judging by the little elephant’s aim, the cub would be mostly mud-colored by the time he either gave up or got control of the face-tail.
Getting absolutely filthy seemed to be one of the drawbacks of Named life, Ratha thought in amusement, remembering Bundi’s recent plunge.
Above the racket, she could hear Thakur’s yowling.
“You have a strong will, cub. Use it; let it out through your eyes. Don’t let the creature even think that it can escape you.”
The fray became even thicker, the face-tail and its would-be master hidden by flying dirt and debris. The heavy mud smell of the face-tail permeated the air.
Ratha altered her path to avoid the two, homing in on Thakur. She gave a little sideways jump to evade a dirt clod that smacked into the ground ahead of her.
The cub-student, oblivious to everything except the rebellious face-tail, bored in through the flying dirt, growling with determination. The young tusker lunged, clubbed with its trunk, its short pigtail stuck straight up. The blue-gray cub ducked and flattened but kept his stare fixed on his quarry. He was completely covered with clots of mud and grass.
Both adversaries came to a halt, the young face-tail with one heavy forefoot raised to trample its tormentor, trunk curled up over its head. The cub crouched, frozen, tail held rigid, gaze still piercing that of the prey.
Ratha sensed the critical moment, the instant when a good herder was made or lost. She felt her heart pound and her breath deepen. The two antagonists held, as if in balance.
Then the tusker slowly raised one rear foot, easing backward. The student stalked ahead a pace, his green-gold eyes intense. The face-tail planted the foot, shifting its weight, then was forced to lower the front leg in order to continue.
Abruptly the face-tail wheeled, ducking its head and lashing its trunk. With the young herder behind it, the face-tail run-walked away while squalling cheers erupted from Thakur and the others. Ratha joined in.
When the beast halted, the youngster confronted it again, forcing it back. This time the creature didn’t even try to escape. It lowered its head, dragging the tip of its trunk on the ground, flapping its ears.
The student, although bedraggled and spent, approached the young tusker again, making it turn one way, then the other. As a final gesture, he shook himself hard, spraying the face-tail’s hide with the dirt it had thrown at him.
“Enough, Ashon!” called Thakur, and the student strutted back to him, head and tail up, his aroma rich with triumph.