Ratha caught movement flickering at the edge of one eyes. Turning her head, she saw Thistle padding toward her. Her daughter nose-touched, then said, “True-of-voice glad you came. Me, too. Places there for you, see? Wants you all here to share song for dead ones.”
Ratha looked. Thistle was right. The hunters had left places for Ratha and the Named. They took them, slowly and silently. Thistle sat across from Fessran, on Ratha’s other flank.
“What now?” asked Fessran softly.
“Shhh. We wait,” Ratha answered.
From her position, she looked up at the upthrust ridge that formed one side of the table. It blocked her view of the top, although, if she strained her neck, she could catch a glimpse of it.
What are we waiting for? Ratha wondered. Are we just going to sit here while the dead ones rot and dry under the sun? Is that what they mean by “giving them to the air?”
The answer came in the form of heavy wing-flaps overhead. A large hawk, its eyes fierce and beady, swooped over the table, landing on the outcrop. It stared down at the table, moving its feathered head around in a quick series of jerks. Another followed, also landing on the outcrop. Then a third.
More were gathering overhead, gliding down in an open spiral as Thakur and Cherfan returned from the table and took places near Ratha. The hawks on the outcrop bobbed their heads, cleaned their beaks against their talons, and mantled their wings at one another. One sailed down and landed.
Ratha felt herself grimacing in disgust. Then, as the hawk hopped and landed again on something higher so that Ratha could see its head and opening beak, the grimace turned into a snarl. Wretched carrion-birds, violating the stillness of the dead, she thought, wanting someone to chase them away, but neither True-of-voice nor any of his tribe made a move. Her muscles tensed and she was just about to launch herself up on the table when a heavy foot slapped onto her tail and pinned it.
“No, yearling!” a voice hissed in her ear. For an instant she wanted to leap, and struggled briefly against him. Then she became still, not wanting to interrupt the hunters’ vigil. Baffled, she turned her head to Thakur, whispering, “I was just trying to help. Those carrion-eaters are going to ruin whatever True-of-voice has planned.”
In a softer whisper, Thakur replied, “Ratha, they are part of what he has planned. The dead are being given to the air. The birds of the air.”
At first Ratha refused to believe him. Instinct made her want to lunge at the raptors, driving them away as she would chase them from a kill. It went against her grain to let them land and feed on a herdbeast kill. To allow or even encourage carrion-feeders to alight on the dead of one’s own tribe was unthinkable, yet True-of-voice seemed to be doing that. It was all she could do not to whip her tail out from beneath Thakur’s paw. She felt the muscles in her haunches tremble and twitch with the instinct to attack.
Her ears twitched back, wanted to flatten. This has hideous, revolting, alien. How could True-of-voice … and how could Thakur understand?
“Yearling, they are doing the same as we do when we bury the ones whose spirit has left them. In some ways it is better, quicker, and the bones are left clean.”
Ratha still wasn’t convinced, but she was willing to sit still. More hawks were alighting, joined now by eagles and condors. The edge of the table hid everything but the tops of their bobbing heads from view. As for smell, the wind was at her back, bringing her only the scents of the mountain: warm rock, earth mixed with pine needles, tree bark, and leaves. The wind spared her the sounds as well, and she did not strain to see anything more of what was happening on the granite table. What she could see was enough.
To distract herself, she looked over at the hunters. They all had their heads raised, eyes closed, and noses up. Their ears pricked forward, trembling with the effort to hear, but no sound came to Ratha except those of the wind and the mountain. She looked to Thistle-chaser, who was also sitting nose-up, eyes closed.
It’s that strange “song” of theirs again, Ratha thought. From the solemn expression on Thistle’s face, she knew it was a song of mourning. Unwanted envy crept over her. Why were she and the other clan members being excluded from this? They had played a part in it. True-of-voice had asked them to come. Why did the hunters now mourn in silence, allowing the Named no part? Why, among all the clan-born, did only Thistle-chaser have the ability to hear it?
She looked at her people. They answered her gaze with expressions of puzzlement, even irritation. Only Thakur looked calm, and even his eyes questioned.
And then, faintly, Ratha did hear something. A faint note that made her ears quiver, swiveling to catch it. So soft, but inexplicably powerful. It was coming … yes, from True-of-voice. The sound was not a howl, a screech, a growl, or any of the other cat-noises her kind made. It was a pure tone—low, resonating, growing. It began to waver, then to soar. It swelled with grief and then plunged to a depth almost below Ratha’s hearing. When it faded, Ratha found herself wanting it to grow again. Even when its power nearly hurt her ears, she desired only to hear more. She didn’t know whether it was mourning, raging, rejoicing, or somber, and she guessed it was all of these, or none, or more.
She was barely able to tear herself free of it for an instant, to glance at her people. Even such a brief look told her that they were as caught up in this as she was. And Thistle, eyes now wide open in amazement, was hearing both the inner and the outer manifestations of the song.
Then she heard another voice—a higher, different tone—and then a third. Other hunters opened their mouths, their voices joining. But the strange thing to Ratha was that none of the voices clashed with the leaders. All seemed to harmonize, supporting and strengthening the central theme of the song. As she listened, Ratha got the feeling that there were things missing, gaps that had opened, voices that had fallen silent. How she could tell, she didn’t know, but a part of her whispered that it was the voices of the fire-slain dead that would have filled the emptiness.
This was the way the hunters mourned the passing of their own.
A new voice entered the song, weaving its own way among the interlacing lines and subsidiary themes, but never crossing, never challenging. It was Thistle, singing as Ratha had never heard her, high, clear, with almost a piercing purity.
Even so, Ratha knew that what she could hear was only a small part of the entity that enveloped the group and now her as well. The intoxication might be coming from scent as well, and as Ratha chased that thought briefly, a flood of odors, as complex as the vocal chorus, shifting, ever-changing, but somehow unified, created a scent-song in her nose and a taste-song on her tongue. The fur on her body lifted in response to a touch-song on her skin. Colors and shapes swirled before her eyes as vision found its song as well.
In each of these sense-songs, there were gaps, voids, empty spaces, missing voices, and echoes of loss that spoke of passing, grief, and a profound wish that the song would once again be whole. But it remained flawed, the needed voices, themes, counterpoints still absent, and in that Ratha found a kind of acceptance of change, of loss, of death, of finality, that made the song even more beautiful and compelling.
The song pervaded all her senses, increasing in intensity until she thought she could no longer stand it, yet her hunger only deepened.