Клэр Белл - The Named - The Complete Series

And then something odd happened that upset all his preconceptions. He was lying on his side on one of the upper terraces above the crowded mass of seamares. The lame female lay with him, stretched out in the warm sun. Thakur felt tired but tranquil. He had gained her trust and her friendship.

Gently his companion reached out with her good forepaw and patted his jowls. He thought for a moment that she was just playing, but she touched him again in the same place with a stroking motion of her paw. Her lower jaw trembled, opened.

The realization broke on him like a cold wave, leaving him trembling with chill and excitement. She didn’t want him to be silent. She wanted him to talk! And she was asking him to pull her from her own silence, even though it might force her to face something she greatly feared.

It took him a little while to find his voice again, and it felt creaky from disuse.“Thank you,” he said softly in the words of gratitude used among the Named.

Her ears flicked back, but she wiggled herself a little closer to him on her side, her eyes expectant.

“Where do I start?” he asked her. Again she patted his jowls. “Anything?”

Anything. He talked to her, watching her ears. They would prick forward, then flatten abruptly, but then start to swivel forward once again. He told her stories about his life with the clan, his work teaching cubs, his adventures, how he had found his treeling. It didn’t matter that the words had no meaning to her; she just wanted to hear them. Thakur was reminded that clan cubs heard their parents speaking from the moment they were born.

And so from muteness he went to a flood of talk. There was an almost terrified eagerness in the young female’s face as she began trying to imitate him. But nothing came out. Thakur encouraged her attempts, but it did not increase their success. Nothing worked — simple words, phrases, his name: They elicited only a frenzied struggle and then a strange, sad subsidence.

Had those words that had come from her tongue during her fit been a product of his own imagination? Again he heard the hollow, breathy voice in his mind.Stay away from them,she had said.Why did you do this to me? Why? I wish they had been born dead…. She’s witless.

Strange, disjointed phrases — yet they might hide a chilling history. And she had spoken them once. Perhaps she could speak the same words again. An uneasy feeling made him hesitate, but he could see no other way. He chose the most innocuous of her utterances. Settling close beside her, he caught her gaze and then slowly said,“Stay away from them. Stay away.” He repeated the phrase, making it rhythmic. She followed the pattern, bobbing her head slightly to the beat of his speech, as clan cubs did when trying to learn something difficult.

And then the first word came from her mouth.“Stay,” she blurted, and then, softer but clearer, “Stay.”

Thakur was lavish in his praise, trying to overcome the uncertainty that showed in her eyes at the sound of her own voice.“Stay,” he said, then got up and moved away. When she moved to follow, he pushed her back, making her sit where she was, hoping she would get the idea of what the word meant. It was an odd combination of teaching a clan cub, who could understand that words had meaning, and training a treeling, who understood them only as commands. After many repetitions, he could get her to remain in place with the one word and, after more work, could keep her from approaching him with the phrase “Stay away.”

The afternoon shadows grew longer across the rocks as Thakur drilled his new student. Abruptly, after he had given her the command one last time and she had obeyed it, she sat down with her brow furrowed.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, forgetting himself.

She looked at him blankly.“Away. Stay away. Stay away from them.” Panic rose like a storm in her eyes, and the words came quickly, hammered out as fast as she could say them. “Stay away from them, why did you do this to me, do you really want them, she’s witless… she’s witless… I wish they had been born dead… born dead… born dead…”

Pupils enlarging, she backed away from Thakur, who was already regretting his choice of teaching methods. Somehow he had set her off again; she had gone into the terrifying world that only she could see.

He expected her to stiffen and topple as she had done in the first two incidents, but this time she lunged, screaming and swiping at an invisible enemy. Then she turned tail and fled, diving among the rocks, scrabbling as fast as she could go.

Thakur pursued her, grateful that she had chosen a path uphill instead of down into the midst of the seamares. But terror gave her speed, despite her three-legged run, and he caught up with her only when lack of breath slowed her headlong dash. Trying to be as gentle as he could, he knocked her sideways with his shoulder, then followed as she tumbled into a clump of weeds.

She lay on her side, her legs stiff, shuddering and trembling. He lay down with her, licking her behind the ears until she grew still. At last she lifted her head and stared at him, looking bewildered and lost. Her mouth opened.

“No,” he said softly. “Don’t try any more. It hurts you too much.”

A stubborn glint appeared behind the swirling fear and forced its way through into the colors of her eyes. She jerked her mouth open and almost in defiance said,“Stay!” She flinched as if someone might strike her and for an instant went rigid, making Thakur afraid she had fallen back into her illness. She drove her claws into the ground and bared her teeth.

Abruptly her eyes cleared. She turned to Thakur, who was starting to rise.“Stay,” she begged, convincing him now that she understood the meaning of the word.

“All right.” He sighed, flopped down, and offered her a shoulder on which to rest her drooping head. He felt her go limp, as if exhausted. He felt weary and emotionally battered himself. Was it worth trying to teach her speech if everything was going to be such a struggle?

As if in reply, her good forepaw came up and patted his jowls, as if to sayI will fight what scares me. I want to learn.

The barrier within her against learning to speak had weakened. Thakur used only the words in those few phrases she had spoken. Once she understood those, he was uncertain what to try next. Among the first things that clan cubs learned were their names. She didn’t have a name, as far as he knew. Or did she? Having proved herself much more self-aware than he had assumed, she might well have some image of herself or some sound that served the same purpose. But how to get it out of her?

He began the obvious way: by teaching her his own name. But here he ran into trouble. It was difficult to get across to her the idea that the soundThakur meant himself. She didn’t understand any of the paw or tail gestures the Named would use to emphasize the idea of someone speaking about himself. And then the notion hit him. There were certain times when the Named felt most individual and personal. One of these was during mating, but Thakur decided that such an approach would have problems that he didn’t want to deal with. The other time was when someone was grooming, cleaning and smoothing their fur.

Despite the tang of seamare in his coat, he set about licking himself, trying not to be too thorough, for fear of having to roll in the creatures’ dung once again. She wandered up, sat down, and watched. Every few strokes, he paused and said his name. Her head cocked to one side. He smelled the fur along his back, taking a deep, noisy breath, and then said his name again. She sniffed him, then began to wash herself, but he quickly put a paw out to stop her. He didn’t want her to get the idea thatThakur meant the action of grooming oneself.