Клэр Белл - The Named - The Complete Series

“Belch is the female,” Bundi called down. “The other is a male. I call him Grunt.”

Ratha skittered to the side as a large mass of Grunt’s manure plopped down, just missing her.

“Our first choice was ‘Dung-Dumper’ but that lacked something.” Bundi’s eyes were half-closed, his whiskers fanning out from his nose. His facial markings enhanced the slight cat-grin on his face. The scent wafting from him had a trace of smugness.

That wretched half-grown runt is enjoying this, Ratha thought indignantly. She lifted a hind foot and shook it as if she had stepped in the stuff, although she hadn’t.

“Come down,” she yowled. “I need to talk to both of you.”

Mishanti started to scramble down the tree. Bundi, however, climbed onto the branch that Belch was munching, sauntered fearlessly to the huge nose, and hopped up on it. Tail waving, he strolled along the top of the rumbler’s muzzle above the eyes, then made his way between the ears. He padded down the back of the neck while Belch kept browsing as if this was nothing strange at all. When he came down the back and reached the base of the tail, Belch spoiled his show by sitting abruptly, making the ground under Ratha’s paws shake. Bundi plunged nose-down into Grunt’s deposit. As he got himself out and shook off, Ratha lolled her tongue at him. Mishanti arrived tail-first down the trunk, looking and smelling pleased with himself.

“You both can go wash off in the creek, but first listen to me,” Ratha said.

“Yes, clan leader,” they both answered together.

“You know that I want the herding meet for True-of-voice to go well. Are you two ready?”

Bundi grimaced, making his tear-lines crumple.“Thakur has been running us around until our pads are sore. We came down here to get away from him. Yes, we’re ready.”

Mishanti chimed in with a high-pitched,“We very ready.”

“Just be grateful I don’t ask you to show me right now,” Ratha said, trying to make herself sound stern but knowing she was failing. The sight and scent of Bundi, crestfallen and dung-caked, made her want to loll her tongue out again.

“Come on, Mishanti,” Bundi said impatiently. “I don’t usually mind getting herdbeast dung on me, but this stuff is really gooey and stinky ….” He glowered at Grunt.

“I hope you get clean before the herding display,” Ratha called after him. “I don’t want to have to wash you myself.” Two tails disappeared down the path before she could finish.

Satisfied, Ratha continued her stroll until she reached an area where the forest opened, giving way to brush and meadow. Here the creek ran with its waters dappled by sun and shade.

She caught the rainy freshness of flowing water and passed a small pond that bloomed from the creek side like a flower from a stem. She knew this was not a natural part of the creek. Thakur and Thistle-chaser had dug it.

She circled the pond, trying to see into the water without being dazzled by reflections. The pool was crowded with both free-swimming fish and limp dead ones that were tethered to a sunken log. The pool’s connection with the creek had been cleverly made so that stream water could flow in but the live fish couldn’t get out.

The tethered fish were Thistle-chaser’s, brought from her seaside home and placed in this specially dug pond to stay cool and appetizing. Her daughter’s attempts to add seafood to the Named diet was having somewhat mixed results. The ocean fish grew larger and meatier than freshwater fish, but their smell and taste were stronger.

Both Thistle and Bira had caught the live free-swimmers, spotted silvery trout, and whiskered mud-grubbers. This pond kept them fresh, and easily available.

Wherever Thistle-chaser goes, she changes things, Ratha thought, recollecting. Thistle had helped rescue True-of-voice, the leader of the face-tail hunting clan. The event was many full season-turns past, but it still remained sharp in Ratha’s memory.

She thought about her daughter, the image of the stubborn, pointed little face with sea-green eyes coming into her mind along with the smells of waves, kelp, and gulls. The eyes in that face had once looked cloudy and dull, lacking the Named depth and clarity. Now Thistle-chaser’s gaze was sharp and her wit, if not her words, was the equal of any in the clan. Only her slight foreleg limp remained to remind Ratha that she had once bitten, crippled, and abandoned this cub in a frenzy of disappointed rage. It was Thakur who had found Thistle, taught her speech, and then brought her back to the clan.

Ratha sometimes wondered how such a tough and intense spirit as Thistle’s could inhabit such a funny, odd-colored little body. Only in her facial markings and lighter underside did Thistle resemble the Named. The rest was a patchwork of rust, tan, and black that made Ratha understand why Thistle had once called herself Newt, after the slow-moving salamander.

Thistle was growing, but her early exile and struggle for survival had stunted her. The crippled leg, however, was healing, along with other, more invisible wounds.

Not wanting to think about the past, Ratha turned her attention back to the pond. Crayfish crawled over the graveled bottom, feeding with their claws, climbing over one another, getting into quick fights, and shooting away with sudden flaps of their tails.

She knew that the crayfish were Thakur’s doing. He liked to feast on river crawlers and he preferred them fresh. Whenever he caught a few, he put them in this holding pond.

Thistle’s fish-storing idea was generally a success, although sometimes Thakur’s crayfish decided to help themselves to an ocean fish snack. He could solve the problem by giving the clan a crayfish banquet. She remembered the exotic sweet taste of the meat as she delicately teased it out of the shell with her front teeth and tongue. Her mouth started watering just from the memory. Ratha eyed the swarm of river-crawlers and licked her jowls.

A little farther, at the meadow’s edge, the creek ran wide and shallow, making a convenient ford. Ratha crossed, feeling chilled water surge over her front toes up to her dewclaws. Gravel rolled under her pads and stuck between her toes so that she had to pause and clean her feet.

The meadow was so lush with high-sprouting grass that Ratha had to crane her neck to see above it. A crowd of butterflies surrounded her nose. Their fluttering tickled her whiskers, making them twitch.

Her ears pricked to the distant voices of Thakur and his herding students. She also caught the high but still brassy bellows of young face-tails and saw a spray of wet grass and dirt.

Ratha bounded through the high grass until she reached a place where the exuberant spring growth had been grazed down. Now she could see Thakur and his students ringing a young face-tail. An older cub was attempting to back the little elephant using the Named stare-down, but the creature wouldn’t let the herding student lock its gaze. It danced, surprisingly agile on its tree-trunk legs, bobbing its head, swishing its trunk, and tusking up more dirt and grass to throw. The young student, his spots fading into blue-gray with a darker stripe along his back, was getting splattered with mud-brown and green. Judging by the little elephant’s aim, the cub would be mostly mud-colored by the time he either gave up or got control of the face-tail.

Getting absolutely filthy seemed to be one of the drawbacks of Named life, Ratha thought in amusement, remembering Bundi’s recent plunge.

Above the racket, she could hear Thakur’s yowling.

“You have a strong will, cub. Use it; let it out through your eyes. Don’t let the creature even think that it can escape you.”

The fray became even thicker, the face-tail and its would-be master hidden by flying dirt and debris. The heavy mud smell of the face-tail permeated the air.