Клэр Белл - The Named - The Complete Series

Though Newt remained wary of the tailed sea lions that had attacked the seamare’s young, she had no idea that a bird might try to take a seafoal. At first she didn’t look up from her early morning prowling when the raptor’s shadow crossed her path. She often saw sea eagles among the birds overhead, but they had never proved a threat.

The whistling of air through feathers made her stare skyward as a huge black-and-white-crested sea eagle dived at the seamare. It dropped swiftly toward Splayfoot’s surviving seafoal, Guzzler, who was sleeping apart from his mother in a sun-warmed hollow of rock. A feeling of guardianship and responsibility as well as the urge to defend her territory sent Newt sprinting to meet the diving bird. The power of her hindquarters drove her so hard and fast thather good foreleg nearly collapsed under the strain.

She charged straight into the mass of feathers and flapping pinions that filled her vision. Talons struck down at Guzzler, but Newt hit first. Leaping high with her good foreleg stiffly extended, she punched the big bird out of the air. The crested eagle flopped to one side, beating its great wings and screaming its wrath. It righted itself on its curved talons and mantled its wings at Newt, turning its head quickly from side to side as if assessing this new threat.

With a defiant scream, it hopped toward the squirming seafoal. Newt dug her nose under Guzzler, shoved him up and over a lip of rock to get him quickly out of the way.

Lowering her head and hunching her shoulders, she stalked toward the raptor, feeling her frustrations bubble up into a gleeful rage.

With a flap that sounded like a crack, the sea eagle spread its huge, white-tipped wings, startling Newt. Behind her, Splayfoot trumpeted indignantly, but the noise faltered, as if the seamare were having second thoughts about tackling such an unfamiliar enemy as this. Newt couldn’t spare a glance at the seamare; the bird flattened its feathered crest and hopped at her, beak open and hissing.

Without a free forepaw to clout the bird, Newt was at a disadvantage. As if it sensed this, the eagle sidled toward its foe. Newt remembered how she had knocked it from the air, centered her weight on her rear legs, and launched herself. Again she hit the big bird, raking loose a cluster of black feathers from its breast. Its beak sliced down, grazing the side of Newt’s head. Dancing on her hind legs, Newt made a wide slap with her good paw that connected with the sea eagle’s neck. It returned a bruising blow with one wing, then lurched around and tumbled into a flopping, flapping run that finally lifted it off the beach. Gaining altitude over the heads of the seamares, the beaten raptor made one last overhead circle, raining excrement on Newt.

She shook herself, snarled at the retreating bird, then turned, panting, to face Splayfoot. There was a certain spark in the seamare’s eyes that made Newt fear the seamare’s protective anger over the threat to Guzzler might spill over onto her. She saw Splayfoot make a sudden movement, as if she were about to charge, but something in her eyes changed, and she only grunted and tilted her head to one side, uncertain. Then sheswung around and left with Guzzler.

So intent was Newt on Splayfoot that she neither saw nor smelled the stranger who had crept up on the bluff above and crouched, watching.

Thakur’s way of reckoning direction by the sun held true and brought him to the shore he’d seen only from a distant peak. Taking Aree on the journey slowed him down, but he wasn’t going to part with his treeling, even for this. Although he had eaten enough at the clan kill to sustain him for several days, he made stops to hone his hunting skills, long left unused by his life in the clan. He also halted to sleep, relieve himself, or let Aree forage for berries and beetles.

They reached the sea coast just before sunset several days after departing from the sunning rock. Thakur had begun to think he had gone astray, for the way led him through a forest of great pines whose fibrous red bark and enormous girth were new to him. But when he kept to the deer trail that wound through these hills and brush canyons, the redwood forest gave way to a lighter growth of strong-smelling bay laurel. It ended abruptly at a meadow.

The grass was high and whipped by a salty breeze. Walking slowly, Thakur left the trees, turning his head to catch the sights, smells, and sounds of this new country. Ahead he heard the muffled crash and sigh of breaking waves. The sound reminded him of some great creature breathing. A bird sailed above him, its underside a dazzling white against the dark-blue sky, its wings constantly shifting to ride the wind that sent it slipping sideways. As the gull winged overhead, Thakur felt Aree flatten against his neck. With a quick nuzzle, he reassured the treeling.

He walked until the wind was strong in his face and the grass thinning beneath his feet. The meadow ended, tumbling away into sheer cliffs with waves pounding at their base. At first, Thakur thought he should taste the water, but night was coming and he could see no way to climb down. Thakur looked down into the frothing surf until he grew dizzy, then gazed outward.

Before him lay a shimmering expanse of silver, where the setting sun’s light danced in colors like light from the Red Tongue. At first it appeared to be another land, a vast plain spreading toward the horizon with sunlight painting new trails to lead him onward. The shimmer became the ripple of water, of traveling wave crests that swept toward him.

The first time he’d seen this great water from a distance, he had thought it must be an enormous lake. But now, standing on the cliff and sweeping the horizon for some glimpse of a distant shore, he sensed that even if he journeyed for a lifetime, he would never be able to travel around it. Many a closed circle of pawprints had he left about the lakes near his home ground, but a circle of pawprints about this expanse of water would always remain open.

He gazed out over the water, watching its hues and texture change with the sinking sun. He felt the same awe that touched him when he sat gazing into the heart of a flame. Both were things he knew he would never understand, but he sensed they came from the same source and had the same underlying power. It was a feeling that made him want to stay quiet while evening came to this new and almost sacred place. Even Aree remained still, containing her usual tendency to fidget.

At last the feeling faded into simple loneliness, and the wind began to bite. Thakur got up from the place where he had settled and stretched himself. He padded back through the grass to the edge of the forest and found shelter in a niche between two logs that had fallen across each other. There he and the treeling passed the night.

When Thakur awoke at dawn, the sound of breakers was fresh in his ears and the sunlight brilliant. The shoreline country now had an exuberant quality that infected both travelers. Frolicking and scratching with energy, Aree pounced aboard Thakur’s back, and they set off.

With a flick of his tail, he turned from the westward path he’d been on to a northward course that led him up the coast. He hoped to find a way down to the water’s edge, but the cliffs remained too forbidding. He trotted along windblown scarps with Aree munching berries and dribbling the juice on his fur. He crossed wild clifftop meadows and paced over the flanks of hills whose slopes were cut off by the sheer drop of the sea cliffs. He paused to rest in groves of coast pine where the trees leaned the way of the prevailing wind, their shapes stunted and twisted by spray and storm.

The variety and abundance of birds amazed him. They wheeled about him in raucous flocks or glided silently overhead. Fork-tails hovered in midair by beating their pointed wings into a blur and shifting their tails to balance the wind. Sea gulls swooped so low over him that he had to fight his instinct to spring up and bat one out of the air. Though he forced himself to ignore the birds, his tail twitched, and he could not keep his teeth from chattering in excitement as he trotted along.