As Thakur said, the paw prints were already on the trail. The only way lay ahead. If she moved with utmost care, taking all imaginable precautions, it might be enough.
Chapter Nine
Ratha could scarcely believe that, after many nights of sharing the campfire with True-of-voice’s tribe, nothing threatening had happened. Fessran and the Firekeepers soon asked for permission to build another campfire near the first. Keep it small at first, Ratha told them.
Visiting and inspecting both campfire sites, she found Fessran and Bira doing exactly as she asked. If anything, they were even more careful. The only change was that the hunters had started to bring face-tail meat as well as wood.
“I think True-of-voice realizes that building and tending the Red Tongue takes much effort,” Fessran said during one of the clan leader’s visits. “So far, sharing the Red Tongue with the hunters appears to be going very well.”
Ratha felt she could relax a little if adding a second campfire caused no problems. She waited before giving Fessran permission to enlarge this second fire.
Even if True-of-voice and his tribe didn’t express gratitude other than contributing food and fuel, Ratha accepted this limitation. The sight of cubs curled up together, comfortable and warm, felt better than words. Some cubs were from Named families, especially those of the Firekeepers.
Both Fessran and Bira encouraged Named youngsters to play and sleep among the hunter cubs. Ratha approved of this, agreeing that the two sets of cubs might understand one another better if they grew up together.
“Our hopes lie with them,” Ratha said to herself softly, as she watched one of Drani’s young sons sleepily patting a female hunter cub who licked him on the nose. Both looked so much alike in their cub-spots that Ratha had to study whisker patterns to tell them apart. Even their scents weren’t that different. This mingling of young convinced Ratha that she guided the Named along the right path.
It also helped Ratha to watch Thistle-chaser and Quiet Hunter affectionately grooming one another. They had opened that path, proving that two from very different worlds could meet and love. Their young would be a blending of herder and hunter; Named thinker and song-hearer. The thought helped ease the old pain of what had happened to Thistle-chaser herself and her lost siblings.
When True-of-voice asked, through Thistle and Quiet Hunter, for a fire on the hunters’ ground, Ratha thought long and hard before directing Fessran to go ahead with a small one. She asked Bira to take charge of this encampment, as Fessran was busy with the two on clan ground.
Among the first to approach the new flame was the black fawn-killer. When Ratha visited the site, with Ratharee on her back, she saw the black-coat as well as Bira, Quiet Hunter, and a scattering of others. Ratha felt alarm start up in her belly, making her ears twitch back and her nape fur ridge up. Ratharee, on her back, stiffened and crouched. Bira, her color deepened by the firelight, touched noses with Ratha and then spoke softly.
“Clan leader, the black one been coming here since we started this Red-Tongue-nest. He hasn’t done anything. He just sits and watches.”
Ratha greeted Quiet Hunter, who was minding various cubs. He seemed to enjoy them, for he was bathing one with his tongue. Another youngster wrestled with his foot while two others hunted his tail. Good preparation, Ratha thought, for having his own family.
She left him among the wiggling bodies, flailing paws, squeaks, and tiny growls. Settling beside Bira, Ratha felt the brush of the Firekeeper’s pelt against her own. Ratharee hopped from her back to Bira’s, chirring and starting to groom Cherfaree. Ratha’s gaze traveled, almost unwillingly, to the midnight shape that crouched apart.
“I thought about driving him off, but I really didn’t want to,” Bira said. Ratha felt the young Firekeeper’s whiskers tickling the inside of her ear as Bira spoke. “It wasn’t his fault that True-of-voice chose him to take down the fawn. These spring nights are still cold.” Ratha listened, trying hard not to flick her ear. “If you tell me to chase him off, clan leader, I will.”
“No,” Ratha answered, not wanting to dampen Bira’s generous spirit. “At least not yet.”
“He doesn’t talk. I haven’t heard him make any sound. I call him Night-who-eats-stars, because of the way his black fur swallows up the little white sparkles.”
Night-who-eats-stars, Ratha thought, looking across at the solitary form whose pale blue-green eyes stared into the fire’s heart. She found Bira’s made-up name strange, even silly, but in watching the black hunter, and seeing how ghostly specks appeared and vanished in his fur, she also found it appropriate.
“Of course, we don’t have to call him anything if we—”
“Shhh, Bira.” Ratha made her voice low. “Night can stay … for a while. I’m curious about him.”
She let her crouching hindquarters flop over so that she lay in a half-twist on one flank while Ratharee climbed over onto her ribs. Spreading her forelegs out, she crossed her rear paws and stretched, extending herself so that the fire warmed the length of her belly. Even though she had done this many times, she still marveled at her creature’s ability to breathe out heat.
Bira laid herself out in a similar way, keeping her head and forepaws toward Ratha. Bira’s treeling, Cherfaree slept beneath her chin. A cub bumbled its infant way from Quiet Hunter to Bira, seeking a full teat. Ratha watched as Bira curled around the litterling, as she herself had once curled around an infant Thistle-chaser and her brothers. Thistle had returned to her; would any of the others?
She listened to Bira’s purr and the soft gurgle-snort-smack of the cub suckling. Watching Bira made her remember how it felt, the tugging at her belly, the warm flow of milk through her teats into the mouths of those tiny furred bodies, the warmth and tingling that echoed the arousal of mating, but most of all the feeling, as she gazed down at her family, that she wanted to bathe them in endless, boundless love. Until they had been torn from her, not by a foe, but by her own blind devastating rage when she learned …
Ratha stiffened; eyes squeezed shut so hard that she felt eye fluid welling up beneath the lids and gathering in the corners to seep down the channels on each side of her nose. No, I will not think of that!
She opened her eyes, panting slightly at the rush of emotion. She had Thistle back and those once-clouded sea-green eyes were now alert and aware. It was enough. It had to be enough.
The weight of a small wiry body and a whiff of treeling scent told Ratha that Ratharee sensed her distress. Slender arms went around her neck, and she felt tufted treeling ears against her cheek, small careful hands stroking her face. She nuzzled Ratharee and then turned her head for a quick look at Bira. The young mother was so absorbed in nursing her cub that she hadn’t noticed Ratha’s reaction.
Why am I thinking of this? I thought the feelings were long dead, but they are wakening. Why?
Because it’s nearly mating season, dung-for-brains, she scolded herself.
But Thakur’s not even here. It doesn’t matter anyway. I can have any clan male; the matings have never taken. Not since Bone-chewer.
She shook out of her reverie and distracted herself by watching Night-who-eats-stars. Ratharee was curled up against Ratha’s chest fur, sleeping on her forepaws.
Night-who-eats-our-fawn, she thought, trying to take refuge in a bout of ill temper. It didn’t last, and she found herself watching him intensely.
Though Night shifted occasionally, the inky gloom of his coat creating and destroying the sparks of white, his gaze remained immobile, fixed on the fire. Within those eyes, something shifted, rising and falling like a restless sea. His eyes seemed as distant and dreamy as the eyes of other hunters, but every so often Ratha saw a pinpoint sharpness even more intense than the light in the eyes of the clan. It vanished instantly, like the white in his fur. Ratha blinked and wondered if both the stars in fur and eyes had existed only in her imagination.