New Beginnings
Swift’s eyes wandered over the familiar rockforms of Sorrow’s End as Nightrunner slowly went his way back towards their home. She carried a fat rabbit in her hand, food for her aging mount. Steam from the hot springs hung in the cool night air, and Mother Moon and Daughter Moon hung full and bright in the sky. After seven years spent in Sorrow’s End every rock and plant was as well-known and well-loved as the memories of the long-dead Father Tree Holt.
“Mother, Mother!” a piping voice called. Swift saw a pair of glowing blue eyes staring at her from the shadows. A heart-faced wide-eyed boy with hair the golden of the noonday sun appeared from around the rocks.
“Hello Suntop,” Swift smiled down at the little boy dressed in his patchwork vest. “What’s the matter, little cub? Couldn’t sleep?” She held out her hand for him and the boy eagerly climbed into her lap.
“It’s hard to sleep at night,” he confided in a soft voice.
Swift met his azure eyes. “I know,” she whispered, a secret smile on her lips. She saw Suntop’s eyes flicker up towards the rocky overhang. “Where’s your sister?”
“Here I am!” a clear voice chirped as a little bundle of limbs crashed atop Swift’s shoulders. Slender arms locked about the wolf-chieftess’s neck as golden eyes peered around Swift’s disordered mane of blond hair. “Did I really surprise you?” the little girl asked hopefully.
“You’ll be a great hunter someday, Venka,” Swift chuckled. “But get down now, both of you. Nightrunner can’t carry us all the way he used to.”
The twins slipped down to the ground, and Swift joined them on the sand, while Nightrunner stretched out alongside the family. Venka gave her mother’s wolf a generous scratch behind his ear, then ran her brown hand down the thick fur of his back.
“Listen,” she whispered. “The wolves!” The wolfpack was howling, its song echoing off the rocks.
“They’ve made a kill up there,” Swift smiled. “Probably some fat bristle-boar that wandered too far from its burrow.”
Suntop bit his lip. “Why doesn’t Nightrunner lead the pack anymore?”
Swift’s smile faded. “He’s getting too old. Briersting and the young wolves drove him away.”
“But Briersting isn’t the chief wolf now,” Suntop frowned. “Starjumper challenged him right after he drove Nightrunner out. Starjumper likes Nightrunner. Why doesn’t he go back?”
“I don’t know,” Swift looked over at her aging wolf. “Maybe he’s just stubborn. Maybe he’s afraid the younger wolves will still try to kill him if he tries to come back.”
“That’s cruel!” Suntop growled.
“Yes, it is,” Swift nodded soberly. “And I wish I could force them to take him back. But it’s their way, I cannot change that. Nightrunner understands... even if I do not. Besides,” she cheered. “He has me to care for him now, as long as he lives.”
Venka hugged her arms, and a smile broke out on her face. “I can’t wait to have a wolf friend of my own,” she declared. She tossed her head, sending her waist-length mane of ink-black hair dancing on the night breeze. “And if any of the other wolves didn’t like him, I’d make them like him!”
Swift laughed. Venka had all her father’s defiance, his cheerful contempt for the laws of nature. Suddenly Swift's demeanor turned deadly serious as she drew New Moon from its scabbard. “Hsst,” she whispered. “Venka, don’t move.”
Instantly Venka obeyed, freezing motionless as she watched the poisonous stingtail climbed up onto her little leather boot. Her amber eyes betrayed no fear as she waited for her mother’s swift blade to fell the creature. Swift hesitated, watching the angles of attack carefully. One quick slice and she could kill the stingtail before it struck the five-year-old. But one equally quick sting and Venka would die before Healer Rain could lay his hands on her.
Swift took a step forward, ready to strike.
A dagger sliced through the air, impaling the stingtail cleanly. Venka looked down at the crumpled creature, then turned, glancing in the direction of the knife-caster. “Thank you, Father,” she grinned.
Rayek merely raised an eyebrow, infinitely pleased with his work. Resheathing New Moon, Swift bent down to retrieve the dagger. She smirked as she handed the knife back to her lifemate, not at all surprised by his flawless aim. In their seven years together Rayek had demonstrated tricks of the blade that amazed even the most hardened Wolfriders.
“Was the stingtail killed?” Suntop hurried to his sister’s side.
“Yep,” Venka grinned. “Father never misses.”
Rayek couldn’t help but glory in his daughter’s praise. He slipped the dagger back in its sheath then ruffled Venka’s hair protectively. “As usual they insisted on waiting up for you.”
“I’m glad you waited with them,” Swift said as she left the rabbit at Nightrunner’s feet.
“Would I ever do otherwise?” He slipped his arm around her waist with a casual posessiveness. They paced together towards their little hut on the fringes of the village as the twins raced ahead. They had lived in caves with the other Wolfriders for the first two years of their life together in Sorrow’s End, but as soon as the twins were due Rayek had become strangely insistent.
“No children of mine will live in a cave,” he had declared. Swift smiled fondly at the memory. Fatherhood had transformed the reclusive hunter.
Swift’s thoughts drifted back to that day, over five years before. The Wolfriders milled outside the midwife’s hut, placing bets as to the child’s gender, exchanging thoughts for names, recounting their own stories of famous birth-days: how Skywise had been born in a little nest on the highest branches of Father Tree Holt; how Moonsbreath had borne three children to her lifemate Rain within the span of a hundred years. The waiting seemed interminable. Then Shenshen appeared in the doorway, a sour expression on her face.
“Shenshen?” Rayek drew nearer. “Is it...?”
She sighed miserably. “I told her the very idea is improper! But...” another heavy sigh. “She is asking for you.”
Rayek blinked, at a loss. Shenshen had to practically shove him through the bead curtain. Teetering uncertainly on his sandaled feet, Rayek took a step deeper into the hut. “Swift?” **Tam?**
Swift was sitting up in bed, weighing New Moon in her hands. Despite surely being in the advanced stages of labour she seemed as smugly composed as ever. “I told her I’d slice her nose off if she wouldn’t get you.” She set New Moon down at the side of the bed and held out her hand. “We started this together, after all. I see no reason not to see it through together.”
Rayek laughed as he sank down at her side. “You are a barbarian!”
“Remember,” Pike grinned to Halek as the Wolfriders continued to wait with a growing impatience. “Two gourds full of dreamberries say it’s a girl.”
“I’ll take that bet and do you one better, Pike!” Skywise shouted back from the inner circle near the hut’s entrance where he stood alongside the Suntoucher and Rayek’s parents Jarrah and Ingen. “One more gourd says it’d be a boy, and one with Swift’s hair!”
“Can you believe she called him in there?” Leetah growled, blowing an impatient breath out between her lips.
“It’s our way,” Rain shrugged with an innocent smile. Leetah blew out another breath of air and stalked away in a huff.
The bead curtain rustled and every elf in attendance spun about as Rayek slowly emerged. The gathered elves were more than prepared for his smile of uncontained pride, but not for the two tiny bundles nestled in his arms.
“Ooohhh,” Pike raced up to the hunter. His sister Rainsong gasped aloud at the sight. Two tiny infants, both with Rayek’s golden brown skin, one with his jet-black hair, the other with a crown of golden curls.
“T-two?” Skywise stammered as Rayek handed the twins to Shenshen, as all the other elves crowded around for a closer look.
“Uh-huh,” Rayek flicked the lodestone aside with a cocky swagger. “Boy and girl!”
“Let me see, let me see,” Newstar pleaded.
“I think their mother might want to see them again now,” Shenshen said as the little girl began to fuss, her tiny fists clenching the soft cloth wrap. Despite the protests from the other elves, the midwife whisked the infants back inside, and Rayek followed.
“What are their names?” Rainsong called.
“Which one was first?” Skywise asked.
“Does that mean no one wins anything?” Pike wailed.
Inside the hut Swift cradled the little golden-haired boy in her arms as Rayek held the tiny girl. “And to think... I always feared any male cub of mine might take after Bearclaw...” She stroked a chubby golden cheek and the baby gurgled contentedly, before falling back into a light sleep.
“Sunny, sunny sun-top,” she cooed to her son. Her eyes lit up. “Suntop. What do you think, Rayek? Is that a respectable name for the great hunter’s son?”
The hunter smiled back. “Even if it wasn’t, I doubt anything I could say would change your mind.” He reached over and touched the infant’s light hair. At his father’s touch the baby’s eyes flickered open. “He has your eyes,” Rayek whispered, entranced by the infant’s stare. “Suntop,” he nodded thoughtfully.
“Suntop,” Swift pronounced. “What do you think of that, cubling?” Suntop was already starting to fall back asleep. His sister, by contrast, was wide awake, but oddly silently, gazing up at Rayek with what could only be described as a dreamy adoration. Swift smiled up at the picture father and daughter made. And Rayek had worried what kind of father he would make.
“Are you still convinced that we should move into the hut?”
“No child of mine is going to live in a cave, at the mercy of the winds,” Rayek insisted. His voice softened. “My parents drove me out of my house with their apathy. I intend our kitlings to have a better childhood.”
“The great mountain lion really is a kitten at heart,” Swift smirked.
He shot her a cold glare. “Repeat a word of this outside these walls and I’ll tear out your throat.”
“You sound like a Wolfrider, bead-rattler,” she shot back with a teasing smile. She looked up at their daughter. “She needs a name. Suntop needs to know what to call his big sister, and the Wolfriders need to know what to call their future chieftess.”
“You pick a name for her, Tam,” Rayek shook his head. “I can’t think of any Wolfrider names.”
“Then give her a Sun Folk name.”
“No dirt-digger name could suit her,” he said, his voice filled with pride. Swift smiled to herself. He was already smitten.
“Venka,” he decided at length.
“Venka,” Swift grinned delightedly. “Venka – that’s perfect. Suntop and Venka.”
Swift’s thoughts returned to the present – had it truly been five turns of the seasons already? Suntop and Venka now chased each other through the prickly sticker plants that Redlance had shaped into a fanciful maze, designed to mimic the tracings surrounding Savah’s hut. Suntop sang his own howl to Redlance’s plantshaping, while Venka giggled at the “magic-feeling” they both experienced when they stepped under the shadows of the curving branches.
“Will you be quiet?!” a roar from a nearby hut silenced the twins. “Thistles and prickle-pears, Swift!” Leetah snapped. “Don’t your children ever sleep?”
“Very little, my dear healer,” Swift smiled smugly. Seven years later and the animosity hung ever around the Sun Villager. “The night is in their blood.”
“Next thing you know you’l have them running on all fours and howling at the moons,” she snarled, turning back to her hut, the bead curtain rustling angrily.
“They... they won’t actually be running on all fours, will they?” Rayek asked, somewhat uncertainly, as they continued towards their own hut.
Swift flashed him an enigmatic grin.
The wolves began to howl, and Rayek smiled at the sound. Just as Swift had come to love the sun and rocks, so he had come to... tolerate... the nightly wolfsong. But as he listened more closely he detected a note of panic to their voices.
“Swift!” Skywise raced along the path towards them, but Swift had already spun about, her eyes wide with horror.
“I know!” she hissed. “Keep quiet. Let the Sun Folk sleep.”
“What’s wrong, Mother?” Suntop asked.
“Swift?” Rayek asked.
She seized his shoulders tightly. “Rayek, stay here. Guard the cubs. I don’t know how or why, but humans have come to Sorrow’s End.”
“Humans?”
But already Swift had turned, and now ran after Skywise. Rayek almost darted to follow her. He had already begun to draw his dagger, when he looked down at the fearful expressions of his children. Seven years ago he would have fought his way to the forefront of the elfin counterattack. He would have given anything to see his first human, and to cut the creature down for what its kind had done to Swift and her tribe. But now he was a father.
“Come,” he ushered the children towards their home.
“Where is Mother going?”
“Shh,” he hushed. “Inside.” He cast a final worried look back at Swift’s receeding form, then followed the twins into the darkened hut.
Elfquest copyright 2014 Warp Graphics, Inc. Elfquest, its logos, characters, situations, all related indicia, and their distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Some dialogue taken from Elfquest comics. All such dialogue copyright 2014 Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Alternaverse characters and insanity copyright 2014 Jane Senese and Erin Roberts.