<Perhaps I will wait…But if I agree, then you must promise not to call out for help. I want you to come with me to see my clan. I want you to be able to testify how severe our need is. Thus far, you of Trees Enfolding have kept your distance. You have been able to consider our plight as if it was merely a question of your convenience. I want an end to such denial.>
Keen Eyes opened himself to the younger Person, letting him see without reserve that Keen Eyes meant him no harm, that he could be set free this moment—but that Keen Eyes was equally sincere about carrying out his threat.
Nimble Fingers did not offer an answering openness, but remained thoughtfully silent for a long moment. When his reply came, it was lit with sincerity.
<I will come with you, Keen Eyes of the Landless. I promise that I will take back to my clan what I learn about your own. In return, will you spare my uncle?>
<For now. I do not see how the truth can be withheld forever, but I also do not see how causing more conflict within your clan will help my own.>
<Fair enough. You may take this net off of me. I will run with you of my own free will.>
Keen Eyes accepted his promise. Mind-voices might be able to withhold some aspect of an event. In such a manner, Swimmer’s Scourge might have disguised his own emotional state as merely a reaction to the strain of current events. However, it was impossible for a Person to be dishonest to another Person when they stood close enough to read one another’s mind-glows. He saw no indication that Nimble Fingers was anything less than vibrantly interested in doing what he could to preserve his clan’s internal peace—and if that would also help the Landless Clan, then that was good, as well.
Keen Eyes spoke to Hard Claw and Firm Biter, sharing with them what had passed. Then he said, <I will take Nimble Fingers back to our clan’s current nesting place. You two should patrol this border and send warning if anyone misses Nimble Fingers and comes seeking him. Do not cause a confrontation. That might undo all we have managed to this point.>
The two hunters agreed. Reassured that their backs were being watched, Keen Eyes led Nimble Fingers toward a meeting that they both hoped would change the fates of their clans.
* * *
Keen Eyes called ahead to the members of his clan that he was bringing Nimble Fingers in with him.
<He is a young Person, still very much in shock over the news of what Swimmer’s Scourge has done. If you have it in you, be gentle with him. Even if you do not have much patience left, remember that our clan’s fate may rest on how this Person sees us.>
He wondered what Nimble Fingers would see. Even in its prime, Swaying Fronds had been only a moderate-sized clan, for the mountains were not hospitable to the largest sized clans. Yet they had also been prosperous and well-fed. The mountains gave them good stone for their tools. They had strong stands of green-needle and gray-bark from which they harvested the seeds. The females with small kittens tended stands of golden-ear and other such bark-growing plants. Both seeds and bark-growing plants were kept against the thin days of winter, when hunting and fishing became more difficult.
Now they were poor beyond measure. Even thickening coats could not hide that most of them were growing gaunt. Moreover, many members of the clan had perished in the fires, others soon after it, for it took great need and support from the clan for the survivor of a bonded pair to carry on once one of the pair had died.
To make matters worse, many of the survivors were the very old, the very young, and the infirm. Swaying Fronds Clan had started its evacuation with these. Younger, stronger members of the clan had remained behind to salvage what they could of the stored food and tools—a task that had been viewed as especially important because even then the clan’s elders could tell that the fires would destroy much of their territory and they would need every advantage if they were to make it through the winter.
It was a decision which had cost them dearly when the winds swirled suddenly, driving the flames before them like a tempest.
He was desperate to know how Nimble Fingers saw them. Would he see their need, or would he see a group of refugees—too many young, too many injured, too many elderly to be anything but a burden to Trees Enfolding clan? Keen Eyes was certain this was how Swimmer’s Scourge had viewed them. Was it too much to hope his nephew would be any different?
Silently, Nimble Fingers passed among the members of the Landless Clan. Very few spoke to him, but their mind-glows were eloquent of their hope and need. Only the kittens—who had only heard tales of winter—were less eloquent of their desperation, but even they were scarred with grief and loss.
Keen ears paced behind Nimble Fingers, ready to protect him if any of the Landless Clan forgot that he was there as a guest, not an enemy. He tasted Nimble Fingers’ mind-glow carefully, hoping for a clue as to how he would judge them. Surely there were the echoes of sympathy, of shared pain. Surely, Nimble Fingers was seeing them as they saw themselves—wounded but not beyond healing and growing strong again.
Hope was budding in Keen Eyes’ heart when a sudden loud cry reached his mind. It came from Long Voice, a scout who had stationed himself where he could relay messages from Hard Claw and Firm Biter.
<They come! They come! Trees Enfolding has tracked Nimble Fingers. They come to his rescue and intend our doom!>
* * *
Any Person old enough to be accepted as an adult by the clan had heard the memory songs that recalled those rare and horrible times when People fought each other. Such times were rare, and the memory songs preserved from them were old, faded, yet still dreadful in their intensity. But Keen Eyes soon discovered that even their savage intensity fell short of reality.
Fangs and claws were the least of the weapons brought to bear. For clan to fight clan, the empathy that connected even People of different clans must be washed away in a tide of emotion so strong and fierce that it eliminated the awareness of the others as People, transforming them into Enemies.
So it was among the members of Trees Enfolding who descended upon the temporary nesting place of the Landless Clan. Their mind-glows were one loop of fury, of rage that their kindness had been met with cruelty, of fear for Nimble Fingers, of visions that horrible torments had been visited upon him. The attacking mass of People were beyond reason, for if they had been capable of reason, they could have reached for Nimble Fingers’ mind, discovered that he lived, learn from him what had actually happened.
But reason was gone. All that remained were fangs and claws.
Already ravaged by their own many losses, by starvation, by dread of the coming winter, the Landless Clan rapidly mirrored Trees Enfolding in senseless rage. Elders swept panicked kittens into hiding, mated couples swept forth in terrible battle pairs, their linked mind-glows intensifying their shared fears into a berserker rage.
Caught as he was between these two emotional storms, Keen Eyes struggled to maintain some slim thread of reason. He felt Nimble Fingers striving to do the same. He heard as Nimble Fingers shouted at the top of his mind-voice that he was well, that there had been a mistake…that there was no need to fight.
But Trees Enfolding was deaf to reason. The tide of fear had risen beyond the triggering cause for this attack. As their grouped minds now perceived matters, the Landless Clan must be wiped out, eliminated before they could threaten Trees Enfolding further. Glimpses of the vision within their mind-glows showed Keen Eyes the Landless Clan not as it was, but as a combination of the cold, white power of winter and the cramping constriction of lands suddenly seen as too small to support them.