Клэр Белл - The Named - The Complete Series

Newt drifted into the shallows near him. She looked up at him, then pawed the water with her forefeet in imitation of his paddling. Both forefeet. He stared at her two paws, the good one splashing vigorously, the other feeble but moving. It hadn’t been just his imagination or wishful thinking. Her leg wasn’t as useless as it appeared.

“Newt,” he said softly, nudging her. “Look.” She stared down, following the odd jerks of her crippled forelimb through the water. With a self-conscious grimace, she tugged the leg to her chest and held it there.

“No. What you were doing before; that was good.” Gently, Thakur pawed her foot away from her chest, coaxing her to let the forelimb drift free. He batted her limb back and forth in a small arc beneath the water, then took her foot in his mouth, trying to see how far the tightened muscles would stretch. This time she did not jerk away.

With his nose underwater, Thakur moved the shrunken limb back and forth until Newt caught on to the idea.“Good,” he said, sneezing brine out of his whiskers. “You do it now.”

She managed several short, jerky sweeps. He saw it was harder for her to move the leg intentionally than it had been when she was just swimming. She persisted, even when the leg began trembling. He made her stop, then encouraged her to swim again by making a few clumsy paddle-strokes. She glided around him, then looked up. Again she pawed the water.“Newt…?”

Thakur grinned. She was so good at this water play that of course she would want to know the word for it.“Swim,” Thakur told her.

“Newt swim,” she said. “Thakur swim.” She glided around him, twisting and turning.

“Good.” He purred and gave her a soggy nuzzle.

“Good,” Newt echoed.

He licked her behind the ears, then ducked to avoid another splash.

Later he had her do more exercise with the leg, sweeping it back and forth as far as it would go against the resistance of the water. He felt he had found something important, although he was not exactly sure how it might work.

Fessran and Khushi were gone from clan ground for many days. For Ratha, those days dragged like the weary herders’ feet, as the weather grew hotter and the trails dustier.

She lay in late-afternoon shade that felt as hot as open sun. She panted, feeling worn out and worried. She wished she had delayed Thakur from returning to the lake-of-waves and its odd inhabitant. The task of controlling herdbeasts made restive by thirst and flies was a wearying one, in addition to her other duties as leader. And the new water source she thought would last had begun to fail.

Both Thakur and Fessran were gone. She let her jaw sag as she panted. Letting them both go had been a bad decision. But how was she to know that Khushi would turn up with a stolen cub from the ranks of the Un-Named, who might well have sprung from the loins of her bitterest enemy? Could anyone blame her if she wanted that litterling off clan ground as fast as possible and shred the consequences!

Letting Fessran go with Khushi was only a quicker way to speed him off with his unwanted burden. Ratha sighed. Not a good decision. Even if all Fessran wanted was her lost treeling — but Ratha couldn’t bring herself to believe that.

She lay with her tail flicking, thinking about the good and bad parts of what Thakur had told her before he left. The good part was the spring. Thakur had described how underground water flowed from a series of cracks in a cliff that lay just behind the beach where he had found the duck-footed dapplebacks. With its source deep in the earth, the spring would run even when everything else went dry. The spring watered thickets where three-horns could browse and patches of meadow that would do for the dapplebacks.

The bad part was that the Named would have to leave clan ground for as long as the drought lasted. Ratha laid her chin down on grass that once would have cooled but now crackled. The journey there would be exhausting. She thought of the river drives and the prospect of increasing the tumult, dust, and weariness over days of traveling.

Before she uprooted the clan, she must see the spring for herself, to be absolutely sure it would support the needs of the Named and their herds through the drought. She wanted to study the wave-wallowers themselves, along with the Un-Named one who lived among them.

Soon she would follow Thakur’s tracks to this great, brine-filled lake. She itched to be gone. But she meant to take Fessran with her, and the Firekeeper had not yet returned. She sighed and laid her nose on her paws instead of the scratchy grass.

Though the clan would be losing its leader and chief Firekeeper for a short time, Ratha felt that this journey was essential, and she needed Fessran’s opinion as much as her own. She had already spoken to the older herder, Cherfan, about taking over clan leadership while she was gone. And Bira, Fessran’s second-in-command among the Firekeepers, had overcome much of her shyness and had grown skilled in the management of the Red Tongue and those who kept it.

Fessran’s absence would give Bira a chance to emerge from the chief Firekeeper’s shadow and show her abilities. Cherfan was a strong, experienced herder and respected by all. Ratha did not think her own and Fessran’s absence would be long enough to cause difficulty; at the slow rate the river was dropping, things would remain stable enough until she had found a place for the clan.

Fessran and Khushi surprised her by arriving later that same afternoon. A herder ran ahead, bringing the news to her and waking her from her sleep in the shade. As soon as the two travelers came into sight, Ratha saw Fessran was still missing her treeling. Khushi’s jaws, thankfully, were empty. With a rising purr, she invited them to stretch out beside her.

When both had rested and groomed, Ratha asked how they had fared on the journey. She noticed that Fessran let Khushi do most of the talking.

“We didn’t find the cub’s mother. I didn’t expect that we would,” Khushi said matter-of-factly. “We left him in a safe place. If she’s still in the area, she’ll find him.”

Ratha glanced at Fessran in surprise.“You agreed to let Khushi do that?”

Fessran seemed preoccupied. She was slow to respond, and her voice sounded distant.

“We couldn’t think of anything else,” she said. “The mother was gone, and we couldn’t find her. We would only have frightened her more if we had. And you would have chewed our ears to scraps if you saw us bringing the cub back.” Fessran stretched out in the shade and began grooming her belly. “Anyway, I did some thinking while I was on the trail and decided you were right. There was no use in making a fuss about this Un-Named cub when we will have our own.”

But you won’t be having cubs this season, Ratha thought.

She tongued her own fur, wondering where her feeling of uneasiness had suddenly come from. Nothing in Fessran’s smell or manner alarmed her, yet she had the sense that something wasn’t right. Well, it wasn’t like Fessran to give up fighting for something she cared about. Not so abruptly.

What are you complaining about? she asked herself crossly.I made Fessran obey me, which is something I’ve had trouble doing ever since I became leader.

Yet this time Fessran’s willfulness had seemed to echo her own conscience. She might just be wrong about this litterling. Her judgment might have been too hasty and too harsh. And not just with him…

She felt slightly dismayed, as if her conscience had given in too easily, just as Fessran had. As if the stronger and not so likable part of her had won out.

I don’t like it, but that’s what made me clan leader.

She decided to forget about the cub. There were other things to think about; new journeys to plan. Fessran would come with her, and perhaps the time together would allow her to mend the rift in their friendship. Warming to the idea, she laid out the prospect of the coastward journey to the Firekeeper.