Клэр Белл - The Named - The Complete Series

He wasn’t sure how long the stranger lay curled up with her back against him. Aree had gotten over her fright and was starting to descend from the sapling when the lame female stirred, this time into full wakefulness. Again he nuzzled her behind the ears, purring to calm her. She gave a startled jerk but did not scramble away.

She lifted her head to look at him.

“You’re all right,” Thakur said softly. “I promise I won’t let anyone hurt you. Do you have a name?”

The swirling green in her eyes seemed to surround and engulf him with intensity. The fur on her brow rumpled, and he could see that his words only baffled her.

He repeated his soothing litany, seeing that the sound of his voice did calm her, but the words themselves meant nothing.

“You don’t understand me,” he said, dismayed. “You must. I heard you speak.” But the veil of muteness had dropped upon her once again, and only cloudiness moved in those eyes. “It doesn’t matter,” he said softly, feeling her start to tremble. “Just rest here with me.”

After a little while, she got up and shook herself, but she did not scamper away. She sat watching him while he indulged in a good stretch. Achirr overhead reminded him he still had a treeling to look after. Aree hung by her tail from a branch of the willowy sapling, looking doubtfully at Thakur’s new acquaintance.

“She’s not going to eat you,” Thakur said, cajoling the treeling, but as Aree started to climb down, the lame female took several eager steps toward the sapling. Gently, but firmly, Thakur blocked her with his body. “Oh no, my hungry friend. Aree’s not going to be your dinner.”

When the stranger was stubborn and persisted, Thakur put a paw against her breast and pushed her away.“No,” he hissed sharply, emphasizing it with a flash of teeth. She backed away, letting Aree climb nervously onto Thakur’s nape, lying so flat that it felt as though she were trying to bury herself in his fur.

Again the stranger sidled toward him, but another emphatic negative halted her.

He knew she didn’t understand him, but the sound of his voice seemed to calm her, so he rambled on. “Look, I came here to learn about you, but since you can’t or won’t talk, why don’t you just prowl around while I watch?”

She cocked her head at him, then limped a few steps away. He saw how she kept the crippled foreleg tucked underneath her chest.

“You should try to use that foot,” he said, speaking his thought aloud. He came alongside her and pawed at her foreleg, trying to get her to extend the shrunken limb. Gently he took her foot in his mouth and pulled, testing how far he could stretch the contracted muscles.

She gave a sharp yowl of pain, wrenched her paw away from him.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’ll be careful.” He coaxed her into offering her foot again, although she gave a warning growl. Again he took it, pulled gently.

She tugged back with surprising strength in the wasted limb.

Stubbornly but gently, Thakur held on, purring to reassure her.“Easy,” he said, talking around a mouthful of furred toes. “I just wanted to see how this has healed.”

He turned the limb from side to side, also studying the collar of roughened fur that overlay scars from the injury that had crippled her. The scarring ran right down her neck to her breast. It looked like a bad bite, perhaps done to her when she was small. If fangs had penetrated a young cub’s chest near the foreleg, they might have caused such a paralyzing injury.

But in her case, the part that gave the limb life and motion had somehow begun to heal. He could tell that by the way the leg jerked back against his jaws. The real problem was that her muscles had thinned and contracted while the leg was immobile.

The healer in Thakur wanted to tell the stranger that she might not have to spend the rest of her life hobbling about on three legs. The practical part of him knew he couldn’t get this across to her without the use of words. Maybe if he could just show her — get her to stretch the leg and try using it.

But she had already grown impatient. She tugged her paw from his jaws and stalked away.

Thakur waited before he went after her, fearing she might hiss or try to drive him away, but she didn’t. Considering the start of this encounter, it hadn’t turned out all that badly, he concluded as he followed her. Perhaps she might accept him enough to show him the sea-beasts she guarded.

Winding his way down through the thorny, scrubby brush of the slopes behind the bluff, Thakur kept to the lame female’s track. He could hear her moving ahead of him, stopping and starting nervously. When she halted, he stayed back, not wanting to alarm her by moving too close. He paced himself by the uneven rhythm of her three-legged gait, slowing his own.

When they emerged onto the beach, she seemed less certain about wanting him to follow. He hung back, showing that he was willing to respect her privacy. After several stops, tail flicks, and doubtful stares in his direction, she let him trail her to a terrace near the seamares’ jetty. She grimaced at him to stay there.

Obediently, he dropped down on his belly as she disappeared behind an outcrop of sandstone. He feared Aree might grow restive, but the treeling made herself a nest in the hollow between his nape and shoulder blades and was soon snoring lightly. Thoughts of the stranger chased themselves about in his mind. He remembered how her jaws had moved and her tongue formed speech while she lay in the grip of the fit that had seized her. Yet when she recovered, she was as mute as ever.

Thakur thought too of Ratha’s swift pace and the trails she would be traveling. She and Fessran would soon arrive on the coast, and then others would come, creating a further disruption to the fragile balance of the life his strange friend had made for herself.

While he was still puzzling over it, he heard her footsteps approaching. He stayed down until she approached, then rose slowly. Again that sea-green stare held him until she swung around and went ahead, letting him follow. He could catch the odor of seamare in the wind, teasing his whiskers, and wondered if the stranger would allow him near the wave-wallowers. To gain the trust he wanted, he had to show her that he would do nothing threatening.

As he trotted down onto the beach, he saw her rolling on her back in dung that smelled overwhelmingly of seamare. She wriggled around in the mess until she had worked it well into her coat, gave herself a shake, and stood up. He noticed that she had thoughtfully left a pile for him. Obviously this was a requirement for approaching her charges.

He could see at once that this made sense. The odoriferous stuff would obliterate any trace of his smell, making him seem harmless to the seamares. Some of Thakur’s own herders made a practice of rolling in the manure of animals they kept, claiming that made the creatures less difficult to manage. Thakur himself had never cared for the idea.

He didn’t much like the idea of it now either. The lame female gave an impatient flip of her tail. When he tried to walk around the dung, she showed her teeth. It was either roll or give up. Thakur decided to roll. But Aree certainly wouldn’t tolerate being smeared with the stuff. Treelings liked to keep themselves clean.

“If you don’t mind, I’d better find a safe place for my treeling first,” he said, hoping she might understand his intent if not his words. He nosed Aree, then flicked a whisker in the direction they had just come. Quickly he left the beach and backtracked up the trail until he found a gnarled cypress high enough to keep the treeling safe from any ground-prowling meat eaters. Aree clambered up, grumbling a little, and hid in a hollow several tail lengths overhead.