A few days later, Thistle was walking on her beloved beach at low tide, her treeling, Biaree, on her shoulder. Behind her paced her chosen partner, Quiet Hunter. She had longed to show him this place, since it had been, and still was, a treasured part of her life. Ratha had told her that things were quiet and that she should take this opportunity to go before the chaos of the mating season entered clan life. She planned to be back just before it started.
Ahead of her, in the scrub brush that lay high above the dunes, she heard the neigh of a dappleback. The little horses didn’t live near the seacoast; she had brought this dappleback with her from clan land.
Biaree, on her back, scratched his side with the flurry of a rear foot, and then lifted whiskers, sampling the strong, salty sea breeze. He blinked, not sure if he liked it.
His clever paws and his growing ability to tie things together under her guidance would make this trip to the beach even more fruitful than before. Biaree, with the help of some other treelings, managed to make some baggy nets that would hold fish and other seafood. The things were a bit of a mess, but they were a first effort, and they worked when Thistle tried them out on the stored fish in her creek-side pool. With some help from Thakur, she managed to tie these basket nets onto an older, placid dappleback in a similar manner to the beast-riding pads they had made for the cubs. Then she had to have something to lead the horse. She had tried her new herding skills, and they worked, but it was hard making the animal go any real distance without herder and herd-eel becoming exhausted. A treeling-knotted vine rope around the animal’s neck was far easier, both for her and the horse.
Once she was sure that the animal wouldn’t bolt or stray, she put a few fish in the net bags and walked around clan ground with her fish-carrying horse. She did get a few puzzled looks from both herders and Firekeepers, but she was used to that.
The dappleback didn’t seem to mind. She was the same animal that Quiet Hunter had used to exhibit his beginning skills. The mare probably found this duty less onerous than being chased and mauled by Thakur’s introductory herding class, Thistle decided. The horse hadn’t objected strenuously to anything yet, though she neighed a bit when Thistle rolled a heavy rock onto the end of the lead rope and left the dappleback to browse.
Now she was returning to get her packhorse and load the net bags with fish, clams, and other dainty morsels. She had recently discovered that the big sea snails were succulent and tasty when you clawed them out of the shell and bit any bad-tasting parts out. Now her catch was waiting on the beach, buried in wet sand to keep it fresh and safe from other fish-eaters.
When she and Quiet Hunter reached the sea grass and brush where she had left the dappleback mare, she pushed the anchoring rock aside with Quiet Hunter’s help. Taking the lead rope in her jaws, she made a clicking sound with her teeth and pulled gently.
At first, leading the dappleback hadn’t been that pleasant. The beast had a rocking walk and its head bobbed up and down with each steps, sometimes jerking the line. Once the rope had stuck on Thistle’s fangs. That hurt, but the dappleback didn’t mean it. The horse’s small hoofed toes clicked and scraped on rock, unlike the silent fall of feline pads. That had annoyed Thistle too, but she was getting used to the sound and had even started to like it.
The dappleback went willingly, letting Thistle lead her through a tumble of rocks, then across the sand of the back beach. She floundered a bit in the loose sand but fared better on the wet foreshore.
Quiet Hunter was living up to his name, but the silence around him was full, not empty. She knew he had enjoyed and appreciated being shown her world, paddling with her in the nearby lagoon where she had taught herself to swim, dipping paws into the tide pools with her and grimacing with surprise at the teeming life there: tentacle-bearing sea-flowers that sucked themselves into rubbery lumps when a paw came near: tiny pugnacious crabs that did battle with anything, including Quiet Hunter’s toes; and breathtakingly colored miniature creatures with filmy or feathered gills who drifted elegantly through the water and didn’t deserve to be called just sea-slugs. The pair looked as often as caught, for Quiet Hunter was developing a lively curiosity about the kind of life that lived in various places, and he wasn’t always interested in eating it.
Thistle agreed with her mother that it was amazing that Quiet Hunter had learned to live without the song, considering how dependent the other hunters were on it. She knew he still needed to go back to True-of-voice every so often, to refresh himself in the fountain of its flow. So, for that matter, did she, although the urge was more want than need. She suspected that, as long as the Named lived near the hunters, he would periodically return to his old tribe and she along with him.
She also used her voice, her scent along with movement in attempts to re-create the feeling of the song for him. Every so often she managed to do it, but capturing its essence and flavor remained difficult.
“What you can do is good enough for this one,” said Quiet Hunter, coming alongside her. He shared one trick of her speech in that neither tended to use the words “I” or “me,” except when they were with the Named.
“Can do better,” Thistle mumbled through the lead rope in her mouth. “Want to, for both of us. Want to find song for outer ears as well as inner ones.”
“This one remembers that part of it is this,” her mate said, and swung away from her to walk slowly on the wet sand, slapping his paws down so that they made sounds in a repeating cadence. Step, pause, step, pause, step, pause, step, pause.
Thistle matched his pace, listening to the sound they made together. When the dappleback’s footfalls interrupted their pace, they changed it, walking in step with the horse. Doing so was a bit difficult, but once all three sets of feet fell together, the effect was pleasing, almost hypnotic. After a while, though, it became a bit boring, and Thistle said so.
“Then there is this,” Quiet Hunter said, and varied his stride so that the slap of his paws on sand went step, step, pause, step, step, pause.
Thistle’s ears pricked forward. She found a rock for the dappleback’s lead rope, then went to Quiet Hunter and imitated what he was doing. Together they tried various gaits, listening to the sounds their feet made while walking on wet sand and while trotting, cantering, bounding, and galloping. Biaree objected to being bounced around on her back, so she stopped and let the treeling off to play in the sand.
“Funny, never listened to feet before,” Thistle panted, jogging to a stop. “Does True-of-voice use feet-sounds?”
“No, but he makes it feel as though he does.”
“Can do the same with voice, maybe? Arr, arr-arr. Arr, arr-arr,” Thistle tried, then grimaced. “Sounds silly.”
“Only a little,” her mate answered.
She went back to the horse, rolled the rock aside, and picked up the lead. Again she and Quiet Hunter walked together, matching pace.
“Listen again,” he said softly.
Thistle turned her head, looked at him.
“Not to us, or the dappleback, but to the sea.”
Thistle stopped, swiveled her ears.
“Keep walking with this one and listen.”
Puzzled, she did as he asked, and then she heard it: the inward rush and crash of the waves as a long, slow counterpoint to their footfalls. She remembered hearing this as she padded along the beach long ago, but it had meant nothing to her then. She knew that her mind had been sleeping, waking partially and only for the necessities such as sleep, food, and shelter. The Named had woken it fully, sharpened it, taught her to delight not only in her sensations but also in the growing agility of her thought.
She, in turn, had helped wake Quiet Hunter, and he was learning the excitement of experiment and discovery. In some things, he was better and he led, as he was doing now.