Клэр Белл - The Named - The Complete Series

Triumphantly she dragged it from the construction site to the brackish estuary. With Thakur and the treelings helping, she got the raft floating. As he steadied it, with Aree riding nervously on his shoulder just above the waterline, Ratha and her treeling clambered aboard.

The craft floated, but it rocked alarmingly, and she found herself shifting her feet continually to keep from tipping. When Thakur released the raft, it did tip, spilling both her and Ratharee off into the shallow water.

“It’s too narrow,” she said mournfully, after enduring an excited scolding from Ratharee. She licked herself and the treeling, trying to press the water from both soggy coats.

Widening the raft and giving it more support in the form of bundled-reed outriggers helped solve the tipping problem, but Ratha soon found there was something else she had overlooked: She had no way to control the thing, to make it go where she wanted.

After riding weak but malicious currents to disaster several times in a row, she hauled her drenched self and her recalcitrant boat ashore and glared at it. Ratharee, who had abandoned her for Thakur in the interests of staying dry, made an insincere attempt to comfort her and backed away from the water streaming from her coat.

Irritably, she shook herself, growling that she should have known better than to waste effort on such a useless thing.

“It isn’t that useless,” Thakur observed. “It does keep you out of the water when you walk on it.” He added that if she tethered her raft to shore at both ends in a narrow part of the river, the Named wouldn’t have to wade or swim to get across.

That idea mollified Ratha somewhat. Instead of wrathfully shredding her treacherous construction, she followed Thakur’s advice, tethering her raft among the reeds at a narrow spot, where it served as a floating footbridge.

Having satisfied her urge for raft building, Ratha devoted her attention once more to things that had begun to worry her. One of these was the Firekeeper leader.

Ratha thought at first that Fessran was keeping away from her and Thakur because of the seamare smell they wore. Fessran balked at taking on the same scent. She pointed out that her work ruined her odor enough with the harsh stink of ash. And, as Firekeeper, she didn’t have much to do with seamares once the herders had settled into their duties.

Ratha accepted that. Those of the Named who had adopted the practice of disguising their scents had done so willingly. They saw the advantage when Thakur showed that it made the wave-wallowers less restive. But she didn’t want to force anyone into it; scents were strongly personal issues among the Named, and some had more sensitive noses than others.

So Fessran remained free of the seamare stink and avoided those who had it. But Ratha noticed that she seemed to sit at a greater distance from her than from Thakur. And that whenever Ratha approached, she would stop grooming her belly and immediately switch to washing her face.

Ratha knew that not all of the Firekeeper’s coolness to her was due to her smell. The forced abandonment of the Un-Named litterling still rankled; there was resentment in Fessran’s eyes, even though the Firekeeper had said she didn’t care.

It was late in the summer and a hot day, even on the sea coast. The herdbeasts sought shade in the forest, and the seamares wallowed in the shallows enclosed by part of their corral. With heat making the animals lazy, the herders too could relax. Ratha decided to take a break from overseeing the seamare herders and went to drink from the pool beneath the spring.

Coolness from the spring seemed to blow away the heavy, hot air surrounding her as she came down the deeply shaded path. Spray-moistened moss cushioned her feet when she crouched to drink. She lapped her fill, then laid first one side of her face, then the other, in the pool, letting the chill seep through her fur. As she dangled a forepaw in the water, she glanced up to the rock ledges above, wondering which one would be best for a nap.

One ledge was already taken. Sandy fur showed against blue-tinted stone. Fessran was there, relaxing and starting to groom herself. One rear leg stuck stiffly over her head as she began licking the creamy fur on her belly.

The soft chuckle of the stream had covered Ratha’s footsteps, and the wind blew her scent away. Fessran didn’t know she was here. The idea of spying on the Firekeeper made Ratha uncomfortable, and she was about to announce herself when something disquieting about Fessran’s grooming caught her attention.

Slowly she backed under a hanging bunch of ferns, shielding herself from Fessran’s view. Absently she licked the back of her own forepaw and began to scrub her cheek, wondering what it was about Fessran’s grooming that disturbed her. And then, aware of the motion of her own forepaw over her face, she froze, knowing she had found her answer.

When Ratha groomed, she always started by scrubbing her cheek with the side of her forepaw. So did the others of the Named. Only if a Named female was pregnant or nursing did she break the inborn pattern and start by grooming her stomach. Ratha peeked out from beneath the ferns. Fessran wasn’t carrying cubs. She hadn’t come into heat this year. But she could be nursing.

A Named female could give milk without birthing a litter. If a female took in a motherless orphan, the cub’s suckling could make her produce milk in a matter of days — even sooner if she badly wanted to feed the litterling. And Fessran had wanted to.

Ratha watched Fessran lick and nibble, taking great care over her belly. She felt a slow anger start to burn away the refreshing coolness from the pool. Yes, Fessran must be nursing. She had kept the cub, despite the orders to Khushi that the litterling be returned. Ratha crouched beneath the ferns, feeling hot-and-cold surges of anger and betrayal. What a fool she had been!

Her first mistake had been letting Fessran go with Khushi. She imagined how the Firekeeper must have persuaded the young herder not to obey the clan leader’s orders and instead to turn the cub over to her. And then the two had stayed away to make it look as though they had made the journey. It must have been then that Fessran found she could suckle the orphan.

Ratha ground her back teeth. She could see them now in her imagination, Fessran lying in the shade, nursing the Un-Named cub. Such a sweet maternal scene it must have been! And Khushi, sitting by, looking torn and bewildered because he had not wanted to disobey Ratha’s orders.

But well-chosen words from his mother about the value of a cub’s life and the sorry blindness of a clan leader might well have swayed him. Fessran, she remembered, was very good at choosing words.

So they had kept the Un-Named orphan, the two conspirators, and even brought him along when the herds moved from the old clan territory to the coast. No wonder Fessran had been so itchy to return from the first expedition.

And I saw all of that, but I chose to look the other way. Now they’re shoving my nose in it.

She repressed an urge to bound up from ledge to ledge until she reached the one where Fessran sat. That would do no good and might lead to embarrassment or worse, should her sense of balance be overwhelmed by her sense of outrage. Instead she came out from beneath the ferns and called Fessran down. After a few grumbles, the Firekeeper came.

Ratha sat, looking at the ripples that spread from the cascading of the falls into the pool. Fessran sat down a short distance away from her. Deliberately, Ratha said nothing until the Firekeeper started to fidget.

“Am I keeping you from your grooming?” Ratha asked. “Please continue. I’m just nursing my thoughts.”

With a sidelong look at her, Fessran wet a paw and slowly started massaging her cheek.