New World
“Teir? Teir! I need some help here!” Kirjan shouted. The huge ground sloth reared up on its hind legs, swatting its long talons at the panicking wolves and the lone elf who tried desperately to ward the wolves away.
Teir came racing in astride his largest wolf. He leapt off the wolf’s back and took up a position in front of Kirjan. He motioned Kirjan to withdraw as the ground sloth roared and bleated in rage.
“Back up, back up...”
“It’s got Snowruff pinned!” Kirjan motioned wildly towards the white-maned wolf who cowered in the long grass with her pups.
“Stay back!” Teir ordered Kirjan and the other wolves. “Back away, now!”
The wolves heeded their chief, slinking back in the grass. Still the sloth continued to posture aggressively. It looked over its shoulder at the she-wolf and her cubs and made a feint towards them.
“Stop!” Teir barked. The sloth turned its wrath back on the elf.
Teir studied the sloth in the few moments before the imminent attack. His eyes took in the sloth’s ponderous movements, the way the muscles in its shoulders tensed and rolled. He observed the wildness in the the sloth’s eyes, sensed the panic and rage that exuded from the beast. Teir reached into himself, drawing up his magic, envisioning himself as a raging ground sloth. He took a step towards the sloth, hunching his back and rolling his arms in the angry, dull motions. He felt his magic rise higher, become a cloak around him, as large and menacing as the largest ground sloth.
“Back away,” Teir commanded. “Back away... leave the wolf. It’s not worth it. Back away...”
The sloth growled and snuffled.
“The wolf won’t take the kill. That’s your kill now. Go. Back away. Let the wolf back away.”
The sloth sank back on its curved claws and lumbered away, snuffling. Teir immediately dropped his sloth-cloak and whistled for Snowruff. Her tail between her legs, her ears flattened back, she slung to her chief’s side, her four pups in tow.
The sloth ignored the wolves, resuming its feeding at the carcass. “Come on,” Teir whispered. “Let’s give it some space.”
“I... I didn’t know those shambling things ate meat.”
“When you’re that big, you can scavenge anything you want.”
“We’d better hunt again. That was a good deer we lost.” Frustration was thick in his voice.
Teir shrugged. “Our loss is another’s gain. Give and take, Kir. Give and take. Come on, let’s go take up the hunt again. Only this time, we won’t call Snowruff and the pups until we’re sure the kill’s secure.”
He whistled for the wolves again, and they fell into step alongside him as they hiked away from the treeline, back onto the open plains.
* * *
The lush rainforest was thinning, and the long grasses were slowly taking over the land. Yun frowned as she looked around to get her bearings. They had been hiking for the better part of a month. The familiar forests of the Great Holt had long since disappeared. The few humans they encountered were very different from the fishermen of the coast. The days were hotter and drier, and there never seemed to be enough water to quench their thirst.
“So? Which way?” Pike asked.
“I don’t know. Give me a few moments.”
Skot sniffed. “We’ve been chasing our tails forever. Come on, admit it, Yun. You don’t have any idea where we’re going.”
Yun glared at him. “It’s stronger here. I can feel it. Whatever we’re looking for is here... I just don’t know... where exactly.”
Skot sank down into the grass, grumbling. Vaya followed suit. Ember and Coppersky scanned the landscape dubiously. The transplants from Sorrow’s End were used to the heat and the bright sun, but they were no happier to be lost in it.
Yun had taken her group of five companions from the Great Holt on little more than a whim; a sense of some foreign presence calling her. She had no real magic, and her mother’s Go-Back blood clouded any insights her father’s “starsong” might have passed to her. She was hardly the elf to be chasing ghosts through the wilds of the New Land. But peace at the Great Holt bred boredom at times, and any chance for a new adventure was always seized upon. So with only the stars to guide her, and her motley assortment of hunters and naysayers in tow, Yun travelled north in search of the psychic call.
“We should have brought Savin with us,” Skot announced. “She knows this land better than any of us.”
“She travelled the coast,” Yun shot back. “She was never this far inland.”
“Why don’t you send for the Palace or something?” Skot asked wearily. “I bet the Scroll can find whatever this thing is in no time.”
Yun didn’t bother to tell him that she hadn’t the power to reach Suntop in the Palace. She had no doubt that if she sent hard enough, her sister’s mate would eventually hear her plaintive calls. But then he would be coming to her aid, rather than simply answering a sending. And Yun was determined not to be in Suntop’s debt.
“No Palace. No Scroll. No magic. Come on, Skot. Don’t tell you’re bored already. Where’s that Go-Back hunger for adventure in you?”
“Right now I’ve only got a hunger for feasting and joining, and then a good long sleep back in my tree.”
“Go-Backs living in trees,” Vaya sniffed at the notion. “We have let the forest change us, haven’t we?”
Coppersky stretched out in the grass. “Never catch me up a tree,” he said. “Give me a good rock ceiling over my head and solid ground under my feet.”
“Let’s camp here tonight,” Yun decided. “We’re all tired and snapping at each other. Tomorrow I’ll have found my bearings.”
“Whatever you say, chief,” Skot yawned.
They had no faith in her. Not even little Ember, barely two eights old, her wild red hair adorned with the feathers of rainforest birds. Oh, Ember had faith when Yun was on the run, when they could race through the forest with no second thoughts, no thoughts at all but how good the wind felt in their hair. But Ember was like a busy little hummingbird, and she could not abide any pause, any hesitation. If Yun let her off the leash, she would run wild over the grasslands until someone caught her and sat on her.
But now even Ember lay down in the soft grass and let her head rest against her huge jackwolf Choplicker. She was tired at last. Yun was glad for it. She was becoming annoyed with Ember’s endless chattering and wanderings.
Yun’s stomach hurt. She had had little appetite of late. Something was driving her forward. She felt bugs crawling under her skin. She had to slow down, had to think.
She growled under her breath, the wolf in her protesting. It could scent the prey on the wind... the wind that kept shifting, blurring all smells together.
“Come on, sit down and have something to eat,” Pike said. “You’re running yourself sick. Here, have some dreamberries.”
“I’ve had too many dreamberries,” Yun grumbled.
It was late afternoon when Yun finally stretched out in the shelter of a leafy tree’s shadow and let herself fall asleep. It seemed she had barely closed her eyes when she felt someone shaking her shoulder roughly.
“Mmmuhn,” she groaned.
**Shh,** Coppersky’s sending roused her. **Something’s coming. Intruders. Wolves... and elves.**
Yun was awake in an instant, and Coppersky hustled her to her feet. Ember, Vaya, Pike and Skot had already taken to the higher branches and a safer vantagepoint.
Yun followed Coppersky into the trees. For a Sun Villager who disdained the ways of his forest kin, he was amazingly adept in the branches. But then she imagined Coppersky was amazingly adept at anything he set his hand to. He was one of those insufferably arrogant types who thought they could do anything, and usually could. Yun would not miss him when he returned to Sorrow’s End. He seemed to her the worst combination of Rayek and Windkin’s more unappealing personality traits. Coppersky was adored and pampered in the Sun Village, Yun had learned, and countless maidens still hoped in vain that he might overcome his scorn for all things female. Yun couldn’t imagine why.
They settled in a fork in the branch and Coppersky directed her gaze over the grassy plain. Sure enough, several dark forms were crossing the field. The elves waited and watched as slowly the shadows resolved themselves into six large wolves - larger than the Wolfriders’ mounts – four yearling pups, and two male elves. They were talking loudly, and their slight accent struck Yun as that of Go-Backs. But she couldn’t be sure.
“–Should have made camp back at that watering hole,” one said.
“Quit your whining, Kir. We’ll make camp in these trees here. Will that make you happy?”
“Light a big fire, will you? I don’t trust the beasts around here.”
“It’s still daylight!”
“Well, I want it roaring by the time the sun sets.”
“Ha. You’re still sore I didn’t let you spear that bobtailed cat.”
“Halt!” Ember’s voice called from the trees. Yun winced inwardly. What was the girl playing at?
The two males below immediately hefted their spears, and the wolves accompanying them began to growl. In response the hidden mounts of the Wolfrider party began to growl in, and the two jackwolves set up a whooping warning howl.
“Who are you?” Ember shouted, trying to make her reed-like voice sound deep and menacing. “Who enters the forest of the Wolfriders?”
“Oh, shut it, Ember,” Coppersky moaned.
Yun bounded down from the trees, and the others followed her. Soon they were on the ground, facing down the ten northern wolves and the two male elves.
One of them looked like a Go-Back, with his strong features, compact musculature and fur-trimmed leathers – though he had slashed the legs and sleeves to give him some respite from the heat. The other was taller, almost too graceful to be a Go-Back, with fair olive skin badly burned in places from the heat, and simple deerskin leathers. His gray eyes seemed somehow familiar, but Yun couldn’t place the memory. Memory for Go-Backs was never very reliable.
“Are you Wolfriders?” the taller one asked, his voice melodic, his peculiar inflection unsettlingly familiar, but still unidentifiable.
“We are!” Ember said, stepping forward authoritatively.
“Speak for yourself, cousin,” Coppersky quipped.
“Shut it, both of you,” Yun snapped. She walked up to Ember and gave her a brusque shove out of the way. “Aye, we’re Wolfriders, by birth or otherwise. I’m Yun, daughter of Skywise, Master of the Palace. And you’re Go-Backs, by the look of you, yes?”
But the taller one’s eyes had widened at the mention of her name, and it was clear he hadn’t heard a word after it. “Yun? Mardu’s fawn? By the Great Ice Wall! Yun, it’s me, Teir.”
“Teir?” Yun frowned, trying to see the boy she had played with as a fawn in the strange face before her. At length she grinned and ran forward to embrace him. “Teir! Look at you! You’ve grown as tall as Kahvi - taller!”
Skot and Vaya watched the reunion skeptically. Skot became aware of the stare of the other Go-Back, and he met it with a certain hesitation.
“I know it’s been ages, rock-skull,” the Go-Back taunted. “But don’t tell me you’ve forgotten me completely.”
“Kir? Kirjan? Ha!” Skot ran to thump his half-brother hard on the back. “You ol’ son of a she-bear!”
“Better not let Mother hear you call her that.” Kirjan thumped Skot back in greeting. “So this is where you’ve been hiding all these years. How can you stand this heat?”
Skot gestured to his scanty costume – threadbare leather trousers and nothing else. “You get used to it. It’s the rain I can’t stand.”
“Rain? What rain? I’d murder someone for some rain.”
“Oh, give it another month. You’ll be wrinkled and waterlogged once the storms start, I can tell you. Come on over here, Vaya, Pike! Hey, Kirjan, you remember these ol’ fleas, don’t you?”
But Vaya was looking at Teir, and Teir in turn stepped back from Yun’s embrace to regard his sister. Vaya smiled slightly. “I don’t suppose you remember me. I haven’t seen you since you were a baby.”
“Mother speaks of you often.”
Vaya laughed. “Nothing good, I hope.”
“She misses you.”
Vaya looked uncomfortable. “Where is she? Is she around here somewhere?”
“No. She’s still in the Frozen Mountains... not quite where you last left her. It’s a long story.”
“Well, you’ll have to tell it to us,” Skot said. “Come on, let’s get some wood and get a good bonfire going. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do!”
It did not take long for a haunch of roasted meat to loosen the Go-Backs’ tongues. Soon the Wolfriders and the two Sun Folk learned the truth of the long silence that had shrouded the Frozen Mountains.
“So we camped at Passage Point for a year,” Kirjan continued while Teir silently scratched the head of one of his wolves. There had been a momentary tension between the two packs of wolves, but a simple command from Teir had been enough to quiet both northern wolves and their southern kin. The soft-spoken son of Kahvi clearly possessed some communion with animals, though the Wolfriders could not quite decide whether it was magic or not.
Ember leaned forward almost unconsciously, to better study the quiet elf. Teir looked up at her through the stray locks of hair that fell over his forehead, and Ember felt her cheeks flush suddenly. There was such intensity in even the most innocent glance from the Go-Back mystic.
“And a lot of us loved it by the sea,” Kirjan continued. “But for Teir and me, and for Mardu and Vok and the others... well, that big fat ice bridge over the water kept singing to us. And we wanted to find out what was on the other side.
“So we parted ways with Kahvi and her troop. And we set out on the ice. It wasn’t easy, even in the winter when the ice was hard as rock. These pits kept opening in the ice. And there was nothing to eat on the ice. But we made it. It was the beginning of the melting season when we struck solid land at Snowmelt. I tell you, I never thought I’d be so happy to see cold gray rock. So we made camp at Snowmelt – we were all skin and bones by then, and we spent the whole high-sun season hunting birds and little rodents to fatten ourselves up again. But the winds were too cold on the coast, and Mardu had her heart set on seeing open plains. So we went south again.
“We wandered through these mountains... steep, bare sheets of rock – a maze of mountain peaks and glaciers. We found this... this arch–” he tried to conjure an image with his hands, “weathered out of the rock by wind and rain. We called it Mardu’s Arch, and we made our winter camp there. So we spent the crusting there, then headed south again when the snows in the passes eased. And we went towards sun-goes-down until we found the Plainswaste.” Kirjan pulled a face. “Empty, flat wasteland of grasses. No trees anywhere... no mountains, no real snow. But it was just what Mardu wanted. She loves the flat land, that chief of ours. She loves being able to see for days’ travel in all four ways. Well, we didn’t have any stags with us, but we found these new beasts – like stags, but smaller, no antlers, with larger heads and long tails of hair on their necks. Mardu’s little boy Manx called one a ‘po-nee’ and the name stuck. Good meat, and strong legs, and easily trained for riding. And you know... I guess the plains are nice when you get used to them. So we built lodges of reeds and animal bones and set up a nice summer camp. But Teir and I... we wanted to keep going, to see if we could find you lot. So we’ve been travelling since last summer. And now we’ve finally found you. It was Teir’s idea, really. I used to think he was crazy to try to walk over the ice and find our cousins in the New Land.” He gave Teir’s shoulder a playful punch.
Teir, whose eyes had hardly left Ember during the entire narration, flinched suddenly at the blow. “Hmm? What?”
Kirjan laughed and thumped Teir again. “Head in the clouds as usual. Hard to believe this is the same elf who challenged Kahvi for her braids and won!”
“What?” Vaya demanded. “You didn’t tell us that!”
“W-e-ell,” Kirjan shrugged. “Kahvi didn’t want to leave the mountains without a fight. Teir... well, he convinced her it was best for the tribe.”
“I gave her her braids back,” Teir said. “I never wanted to be chief.”
“And now your mother’s chief of our band,” Kirjan told Yun. “They’ll be calling themselves Plainsrunners or Pony-riders or something by the time Teir and I make it back there.”
“Can we ask you some questions now?” Teir asked. “You say the Great Holt is still a moon’s journey away–”
“At least,” Ember replied before Yun could.
“Then, what are you doing up here? Building a new holt?”
“Naw,” Ember shrugged. “Ask Yun. She’s the one whose got us chasing our tails.”
Yun grew defensive. “I’m tracking... a presence. Something... in these woods... it’s calling to me.”
Kirjan looked dubious. Teir nodded seriously.
“Well, that was it, then,” Ember said cheerfully. “You felt your kin calling you, and you found them.”
Yun bit her lip. “I... I’m glad to see you again, Teir, and you, Kirjan. But... but you’re not it... you’re not what’s calling me – I’d know if it was you. No... it’s something else... someone else. The feeling... the presence... it’s stronger than ever... but it’s not here.”
“Are you sure?” Ember asked. “Are you sure it’s not just Teir’s magic –”
“I know what I sense!” Yun snapped, irritable once more.
“Oh, buckwads!” Skot dismissed. “We found ourselves a good howl here! Why do you have to keep sniffing around, Yun?”
Yun raised a hand to her forehead. “It’s still here. Whatever it is...”
“Whatever it is. Wherever it is. Whenever it will show itself. You can’t sense your nose in front of your face, Yun, and you know it.”
Yun rose and stalked away from the campsite. Pike punched Skot’s shoulder hard.
Yun ignored the shouts of her tribemates as she stalked deeper into the woods. When a clipped pace frustrated her, she ran faster. She plunged through briars and weeds as she raced far from the meadow and the mocking of her kin. What did Skot know of premonitions? And what did a chit like Ember know of quests?
She ran on, until she lost her way completely in the groves of trees. She was all alone in the twilight now, standing on the banks of an idle river that had not dried up despite the heat. She stood and waited for her pulse to slow, and slowly she became aware of the stunning beauty all around her. Fireflies danced over the water, and it almost seemed as if the water itself was aglow with an inner light. Soft mosses dripped from the trees, and the song of nocturnal birds and crickets filled the air. Under the shade of the thick canopy, the air was cool and moist.
Yun paced along the banks of the river, until she came to a deep pool overshadowed by some exotic kin of willow trees. She sat down on the grassy bank of the pool and gazed into her reflection. She smiled sadly at the dark circles that were growing under her eyes. She had been acting like a whitestripe with foaming sickness lately. And now that she was alone in the quiet of the forest, she couldn’t imagine why.
She picked up a little twig and stirred at the water idly, watching her reflection distort and then reform. She let the twig sink to the bottom of the pool and continued to stare at herself mirrored on the pool’s surface. Perhaps if she stared long enough, she would see what it was inside herself that was troubling her.
The water seemed to shiver slightly, as if a wind were drifting over the surface. Yun blinked at her reflection, and it blinked back. Strange, it seemed... different, somehow. Her eyes were a richer colour, a stormy blue-gray instead of shiny silver... the planes of her face seemed leaner, stronger... her white-blond hair seemed darker, longer as it swirled about her face. The rippling of the pool’s surface was playing tricks on her.
She looked again at the features slowly gathering definition in her reflection, and belatedly realized her face had changed into that of a young male elf.
The face broken the surface of the water, shattering Yun’s reflection. Yun caught her breath as she locked eyes with the beautiful elf. She heard a splash nearby and she gasped again, for when she looked up she saw a large silvery-blue tail idly beating just under the surface of the pool.
Yun tensed, ready to bolt. But she couldn’t move.
**Yun,** the water-elf sent.
How could her plain, ordinary name suddenly have such resonance?
“Sharn...” she whispered the name that had appeared on her tongue.
She was sinking – the grassy bank was giving way. Yun leaned forward and held out her hands helplessly, and the elf caught her up as she tumbled into the water. Her arms locked about his shoulders and she wrapped her long legs about his hips. At first she felt the slick scales of a fish against her skin, but then she felt a sudden burst of heat, and the scales became warm elfin flesh.
“So... it was you I was looking for...” Yun murmured as she pressed her forehead to his. She raised her hand to brush a lock of wet hair back from his eyes, and her fingers traced the planes of his face, features so much like hers.
“Oh, I’ve waited so long... for anyone... and now I find you...” he whispered, and kissed her fiercely.
Yun laughed against his mouth in gratitude as she clung to him more tightly.
“Should we send someone looking for Yun?” Kirjan asked as the last light faded from the evening sky and still the huntress did not return.
“Naw, she’ll be all right,” Skot dismissed. “She knows how to take care of herself.”
A distance away from the others, Teir and Ember sat together to watch the moons rise.
“I thought Sun Folk never left their village,” Teir said.
“Oh, I’m a Wolfrider too,” Ember said a little too quickly. “Half Wolfrider. My father is Wing... grandson of Rain the Healer – you might have heard of him–”
“The healer of the Palace War?” Teir smiled. “He saved so many Go-Backs, Kahvi still complains about him.” At Ember’s quizzical glance, his smile grew shyly. “A magic-user is doing his duty well when Kahvi complains.”
“Surely she doesn’t complain about your animal-magic.”
“Oh, she does. She’s happiest when she’s finding fault with something. Besides... it’s not really magic. Animals just… like me. They always have. I... I can think like them. Act like them. Until they accept me as one of them. For me... they are no different from any other tribe. They don’t like strangers. But if you learn their ways... respect their customs – they will welcome you.”
“It must make hunting easy.”
“No!” he grew stern. “Never kill the trusting ones. Would you kill a wolf who shared your fire if you needed a warm coat? Never the trusting ones.” He bowed his head. “Kahvi... never understood that. Thought I was... selfish, never sharing my powers with others. I told her – I’d hunt alongside my wolves. But I’d never trick an animal into laying its life down for me.”
“Where did you learn to do that?”
“Nowhere, really. My father taught me how to play the woodwhistle... how to walk quietly through the woods without leaving prints in the snow... how to... think softly, so that the animals don’t flee when you pass by. And somehow... I took it one step further. My wolves... they came down from the hills one day to see me. I guess I called them. I’m not sure some days. But they’re my friends, and they and their children have been with me... more than half my life. They’ve followed my from the Frozen Mountains here to the southern plains. But we were talking about you, firehair. Your parents.”
Ember flushed at the nickname. “My parents... my father is the second chief of the Jackwolf Riders in Sorrow’s End – he rides with Chief Swift’s brother Grayling. And he Recognized my mother Behtia. She’s... a miller – she mills grain,” she added at Teir’s confused expression. Still he didn’t understand, and Ember reached for a piece of long grass that was going to seed.
“Uh... you grow plants like these... and you collect the seeds and grind them on a flat rock until you get a powder.”
“And what do you do with it?”
“Eat it.”
“The powder?”
“Oh, you mix it with water and you can eat it just like that, like a stew without meat. Or you shape the mixture into loaves and bake it as bread, or spread it out flat into a sheet you wrap around meat or greens. But it takes a long time to mill the grain down. We used to just do it with two stones. But Mother is building this mill – it’s really just two stones too, but it has wooden supports, and a little crank you can turn,” Ember mimed the action. “It’s supposed to grind the rocks together when you turn the crank. I don’t know if it’ll work. I... I never really pay attention to things like that. I know Mother’s really proud of it. But... but I like the open air. I like riding. I’m one of the hunters in the Jackwolf Riders,” she said proudly. “Choplicker and I have taken down a young zwoot all by ourselves, you know.”
Teir became aware of eyes on him, and he glanced over his shoulder. Coppersky was pacing by the campfire, watching Teir and Ember. When he saw he had been found out, he turned and sat himself down next to Kirjan.
Ember giggled softly. “My protector. He’s my cousin,” she explained. “And my father’s best friend. He was so... uncomfortable, when Father Recognized his aunt Behtia. But he thinks he has to look out for me. That’s why he’s here. He never would have left Sorrow’s End if I hadn’t wanted to see the New Land and my family here. He doesn’t have a drop of Wolfrider in him – but he can still ride better than Scouter,” she laughed softly. “Ah...” she craned her neck to look over the long grass. “He’s looking to Kirjan. Does your friend fancy lads?”
Teir held back a laugh. “No, no,” he added soberly. “No, he most certainly does not.”
“Coppersky will be disappointed.” Ember stretched back out on the grass. “He’s getting bored with the boys in Sorrow’s End.”
Teir hesitated a moment, then lay down in the grass next to Ember.
“The stars are so different here,” Teir said.
“I know. The patterns are all different from the one’s in Sorrow’s End. I used to be able to track anything, anywhere, at night, just by looking at the stars. Now... I feel like a little cub, having to tag along after Yun and Skot just so I know where to put my two feet. What was it like for you and Kirjan... crossing this land all by yourselves? It must have been... so lonely.”
Teir shrugged. “I don’t mind being by myself. And Kirjan’s good company. Between him and the wolves... we kept ourselves safe. But it was hard sometimes. The Plainswaste is so... empty. Kirjan never liked it when we ran into animals – the animals are so strange to us. But for me... when it was just us... and the grass, and not a living thing bigger than a mouse. I think... if I didn’t have Kirjan to keep me company... but that doesn’t matter. We’re here now. And we found the Wolfriders.” He smiled fondly. “Though you’re not all what I expected.”
“I hope that’s a good thing,” Ember asked.
“A very good thing.”
They heard a commotion in the distance and they sat up from the grass. Yun had re-emerged from the forest. But she was not alone.
Her companion was tall, not Glider height by any means, but taller than any of the Wolfriders assembled. His only clothing was a leather loincloth that bared his long torso and longer legs. Silver-blue fins on his wrists and ankles seemed like jewellry from a distance, but as they rejoined the others, the elves saw they were in fact shape-changed membranes drawn from his own flesh. But his face was what caught their attention. His complexion, his cheekbones, the way his blond hair parted on his forehead – side by side with Yun he could almost have been her twin.
They were both drenched to the skin, and Yun’s sopping wet leathers seemed to hang poorly on her frame, as though they had been hastily refastened.
“Hah!” Yun shouted at Skot’s bewildered expression. “And you said I was chasing my tail! And you said I wouldn’t find anything! Well, I found him, rockskull! By the Ice Wall, I found him!” She looped her arm through the stranger’s possessively. “This is–” and she faltered.
“Wavecatcher,” he introduced himself.
“Wavecatcher!” Yun added triumphantly, ignoring the knowing smiles that were spreading over the faces of his tribemates.
Skot laughed. “Tumble an elf without knowing his name first – there’s a first even for you, Yun!”
“I knew his name!” Yun shot back. “Just...” her gaze drifted back to Wavecatcher lovingly, “not the name he uses with everyone else.”
It took Skot a moment to decipher her cryptic speech. Not so Pike.
“You Recognized? Hah! So that was the burr in your boot!”
At Yun’s urging, Wavecatcher sat down at the campfire and warmed his hands over the flames. “Oh, that feels nice. I’m always so cold when I’m out of the water at night.”
“Hey, throw me a fur, will you? I’ve got to get out of these wet clothes!” Yun called to Ember.
“What did you do, fall into his river or something?” Coppersky asked.
“Something like that.” Yun wrapped the fur about her body and began to remove her clothing under it.
Teir and Kirjan could only stare agape at his fins. Even Ember and Coppersky were a little unnerved. But Pike, Skot and Vaya remained nonplussed.
“So, you must be an Islander, huh?” Pike asked. “One of the Cove Folk?”
“I always wondered why they called your lot ‘fin-wrists,’” Skot remarked.
Wavecatcher grew icy at the phrase. “Ah. You’ve been to Green Moon Bay, have you?”
“So what are you doing up here if you’re from the Islands?” Pike jumped back in.
Wavecatcher shrugged. “I wanted to explore. See what was hiding up the jungle rivers. It... well, it didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped.”
At their urging, Wavecatcher explained in as few words as possible. His tale of exploring closely paralleled Teir and Kirjan’s. Yet unlike them, he had been completely alone for over a hundred years.
Wavecatcher took to twining a strand of Yun’s still-wet hair about his finger. “I suppose I could have gone back. I had plenty of time, no matter how many times I got lost. But... well, it’s easier said than done. Finally... it seemed better to stay put. After awhile... I didn’t mind being alone. Then... I don’t know... maybe some moons ago... maybe as far as a year back... I started to have this... this hunch that I would come across some other elves if I was just patient enough.” He hugged Yun’s fur-swaddled form. “Thought I’d find other Islanders... boat-folk or selfshapers who came up the rivers in search of adventure. Didn’t think I’d find this pretty lander, though.”
“You must have struck out for the north long before the Palace arrived in the New Land,” Pike said. “Otherwise you would have heard of us. Didn’t you hear the Cry from Beyond? I thought everyone in the New Land heard it.”
“Cry? No. I didn’t hear anything. Maybe I had water in my ears. It’s always harder to hear sendings under the water. Slows everything down. So who are you that I would have heard of you? Are you all Go-Backs like Yun?”
Ember chuckled softly. Coppersky snorted under his breath. “Maybe we’d better start up a new howl,” Pike said. “It’ll take a while to explain this all.”
Over the next eight-of-days, the makeshift tribe hunted and built a small camp. Wavecatcher did not join in any strenuous activity, preferring to keep to the shade as he practiced walking in elf form. “The longer you stay in one form, the more painful to go back to the other,” he explained. “I haven’t walked in... ages, it seems.”
Yun was all smiles for the first few days, looking forward to the child that always accompanied Recognition. As five days passed, however, she was beginning to grow worried.
“Why can’t I sense the fawn? Aren’t you supposed to be able to feel the baby inside you?”
“My mother never could,” Vaya said. “Don’t worry about it, Yun.”
“I don’t know... I don’t like it.”
Teir and Kirjan joined the Wolfrider hunters, and Teir impressed his distant kin with his skill at marshalling his wolves. Together he, Ember, Coppersky and Kirjan took down six cuphorns. But Ember was not satisfied with such an easy kill.
“I want the big one!” she insisted, turning Choplicker towards a huge male with broad antlers and a thick dewlap under his chin. Before Coppersky or Teir could stop her, she vaulted from the back of her jackwolf and tried to land on the cuphorn’s back. But her jump was off, and her dagger only grazed the beast’s shoulder before she collapsed to the ground.
“By the Great Ice Wall!” Teir exclaimed as he and his wolves reached her. He swept her up into his arms and the wolves drove the enraged cuphorn off before it could charge her. Ember was bruised and bleeding from a small cut to her forehead.
“What were you thinking?” he demanded harshly.
Ember threw him a careless grin. “Sorry...”
“Sorry? Ember, you could have killed yourself!”
“I just wanted the big one...”
“She’s only two eights, you know,” Coppersky told Teir that evening. “So don’t you try taking her anywhere she doesn’t want to go.”
“I can promise you, I would never–”
“And don’t you let her kill herself trying to impress you!”
Teir took Ember out to watch the moons rise after they all ate together around the campfire. “I know you’re a good hunter, Ember. You don’t have to risk your safety to prove it to Kirjan and me.”
Ember bristled. “Coppersky chewed a strip of you, didn’t he? He’s always hovering around me, like I’m a cub or something.”
“You are–”
“Don’t say it! So maybe I’m still a bit of a stripling. So I’m still a little... little. Coppersky’s littler than me and he’s over five times my age! I...” she scowled. “I just wanted to do my part. I wanted to show you... two that I could hunt just as well as you.”
“Have you considered a spear?” Teir asked.
“Huh?”
“A spear. Rather than a dagger when you’re hunting from wolfback. A spear would give you that extra little reach, and you wouldn’t have to come in so close.”
“Coppersky uses a dagger.”
“But he throws his. Yours is a close-in stabbing dagger.”
Ember considered it. “We use these spear-thrower things in Sorrow’s End – atlatls. Chief Grayling uses one, anyway. But I like to get in closer to the prey.”
“Your jackwolf’s getting old. It’s not very fair to him to be pressing so close. I... I have an extra spear you could practice with.”
Ember nodded thoughtfully. “Yun uses a spear. I bet I could spar with her a little.”
“I could teach you a few tricks too, if you like. With a spear,” he added quickly, when he saw Ember’s eyes light up.
“There’s no baby,” Yun sighed miserably.
“Don’t say that,” Vaya said. “It’s only been a few days...”
“No. No, I... I can’t explain why I know it. But... I do. I can feel it, as sure as I felt there was something calling me.” She leaned back against Wavecatcher’s chest miserably. “There’s no fawn.”
Vaya left the two lovers alone in the shade. Wavecatcher rubbed her shoulders tenderly. **It’s all right, Yun. Maybe... Recognition didn’t take the first time. Maybe even with Recognition you don’t... always get it right the first time.**
**No...** Yun sighed. **I don’t feel the... the need for a child... the emptiness that needs to be filled, the way it’s supposed to be – the way my father’s lifemate said it’s like.**
**No, neither do I. The... urgency is gone. The intensity’s still here,** he added as he nuzzled her hair fondly. **But... that... madness isn’t there anymore.**
**So... we were wrong.**
**Are we still lifemates?** he asked pleadingly.
“Oh, High Ones!” Yun twisted around in his arms. **Sharn... I can't lose you.** Suddenly Yun’s eyes lit up. “I know what this it!” she exclaimed. “This happened to my father and my Aunt Swift! And to my sister and her lifemate! It’s – it’s–” she grinned at his confused expression. “It’s Recognition but it’s not. You suddenly know each other’s souls, but there’s no cubs. My father and Swift had it happen to them and they became brother and sister, but they never joined – not even once. And my sister and her lifemate – they became lifemates, but they still haven’t had a fawn!”
“So, we’re still lifemates?” Wavecatcher asked.
“We’d better be!” she exclaimed, embracing him tightly.
Slowly the band of elves assembled their belongings and turned back for the Great Holt. Coppersky, weary of quests, suggested they just call the Palace. But Teir and Kirjan insisted on walking the last distance to the holt themselves. “We started this quest three turns ago. We’re going to see it through.”
So they turned south and began to return march along Wavecatcher’s river, one of the many tributaries of the Green River. Ember killed a large rodent and used its soft hide to make moccassins for Wavecatcher. It was hot enough that he had no need for other clothes, but his legs were sore and his feet far too sensitive for walking on anything firmer than wet mud.
“You’ve got a fawn’s soft little hooves,” Skot teased.
“Most of the time they make my tail. Except for the occasional catch on a river plant, they don’t get a lot of wear.”
“Is that where you got this scar?” Yun traced her fingertip over a pale line that crossed the instep of his left foot.
“We have a saying in the Islands. ‘There’s always a bigger fish.’ Well, I forgot that one day. Won’t ever forget it again after that.” He pulled the moccassins over his foot. “I was just lucky I was wearing my tail then. Fins heal faster than feet.”
“You’ve got a skill with the needle,” Teir told Ember.
“Oh, my uncle Ahnshen taught me.” She shrugged. “I was always wearing my shoes out – so he showed me how I could make shoes real quick – he and the other Sun Folk all use cloth, of course. I go through a lot of little desert creatures to keep myself in good shoes.” She shrugged again. “It’s nothing, really.”
“Yes it is. I doubt there’s a single Go-Back who can stitch leather together so well. I tell you, we could have used your skill more than once on the journey from Passage Point. Poorly tanned and poorly sewn boots crippled more elves than frost’s bite.”
Ember looked away. “What I want to be is a hunter. The best hunter. I... I want to lead the hunt one day.”
“Life in your sun village doesn’t suit you?”
“I know my mother hopes this time I spend in the New Land will cure me of any... quest-hunger. But...” she smiled, “I’m a Wolfrider. So maybe I don’t have much wolf-blood in me. Maybe I don’t have anything beyond a drop or two. But the chief of the Wolfriders doesn’t have any wolf-blood in her either. And maybe I grew up in sand and sun. But... but my blood calls for the forests, and the grassy plains... and... and green-growing places! Coppersky doesn’t understand. I don’t think my parents do either. Father was only a baby when he came to Sorrow’s End. He doesn’t know anything else. But I wanted to. I’m going to be a real huntress one day, Teir. Chief huntress.”
Teir smiled softly. “I’ve no doubt, firehair. If you can keep from tripping over yourself in the meantime.”
Ember scowled at him, but it was a playful scowl. “You’re as bad as Coppersky. He calls me a baby zwoot – all legs and knobby knees.”
“You’re a colt,” Teir amended. He hesitated a moment, then reached out and gently brushed his fingers against her thick puff of red hair. “You’re a little uncertain now. But in time, you’ll outrun half the ponies on the Plainswaste.”
The forest was growing lusher again as they continued south. Still, Yun found a clear break in the canopy every night so she and Wavecatcher could watch the stars come out.
“My very first memory was stargazing with my father,” Yun explained. “In the Frozen Mountains when I was just a fawn. He’d bundle me up in his best furs and take me to the top of the Palace of the High Ones where we could see the entire mountain range, and the stars overhead...”
Wavecatcher wound his arms about her shoulders. “When we get back to Crest Point and the sea I’ll have to show you what’s under the water. I’ll teach you how to swim so quietly that the fish will swim right up to you. I’ve missed all the reefs and caves up here in the wilderness. A river can’t compare to a warm cove on a clear day.”
“Yun and Wavecatcher doesn’t seem too troubled that there’s no cub,” Ember said as she and Teir sat some distance from the rest of camp.
“They’re both still young,” Teir said. “I suppose they’re just as happy not to have to worry about a cub yet.”
“Worry? Why would a cub ever be worry?”
“Maybe not in Sorrow’s End. It’s different with Go-Backs. Many things are. I... I wonder sometimes what sort of a father I would be. My family... my mother... her father... they were not the sort of parents who inspire love and devotion in their offspring.”
“But.. but lifemating... Recognition... isn’t it all about two elves coming together, so they can raise their cub?”
“I don’t know much about Recognition. We haven’t had a Recognition in the Go-Backs for... generations on generation. Father says it’s easier when heart meets heart. You can’t choose your parents... or your children. You can’t always choose the manner of your death. But you can always choose to love, or not to love. ‘There’s more love in the world than Recognition,’ he said when he and Mardu decided to become lifemates... right after my little brother was born.”
“Cubs without Recognition. It seems...”
“Wrong?”
“Strange.”
Teir shrugged. “No stranger than seeing Yun change into another soul in front of my eyes. But I suppose you’re used to seeing those things happen.”
Ember was silent for a moment. “Teir...” she asked finally. “Do you have a lovemate?”
He shrugged. “No. Kirjan... keeps most of the maidens to himself.”
Ember said nothing, and Teir could sense she was hoping he would ask her the same question. But he held his tongue. Coppersky was right: she was too young, and they were two elves on different quests.
Strange. He had been around his share of maidens, and minded his share of young ones. But no one had ever touched his heart quite like Ember had.
“She’s... different,” he told Kirjan later that night as they bedded down with Teir’s wolves, a wary distance from the others. Old solitary habits were hard to break.
“She’s... so full of life... energy.”
“Our maidens aren’t wild enough for you, Wolf-father?”
**That’s not what I meant. She’s... a dreamer. Maybe not a dreamer like Yun or those Wolfriders we always heard about around the campfire – she doesn’t have her head in the clouds. But... there is this... fire in her – not that kind of fire, Kir, and don’t even start. I mean a hunger for... for discovery. She’s only two eights – at that age weren’t we all too busy looking out for our own skins and trying to trick each other out of the best cut of meat and the best dance? But she... she wants to take on the world. And I doubt she’s going to let anything stop her.**
“She’s got plenty of the other fire in her, and it’s aimed squarely at you. You know that.”
**She has her path and I have mine. Soon she’ll be going across the Vastdeep to her Sorrow’s End. And you and I will leave this heat and go back to the plains. It’s better... not to.**
“Dung to that! Why is joining always so pokin’ serious with you? Can’t you two have a little fun together?”
**She’s not like a Go-Back maiden, Kirjan. She’s young... full of fantasies. She... she might think there is more to it... than there could ever be. I wouldn’t want to hurt her.**
“Oh gutchucks! You’re muzzy-headed for her already!”
**Send, will you? I don’t want the others hearing!**
**Augh. I hate sending. Look, Teir. If you want her and she wants you, then what’s the problem? And if you both want something more than a quick tumble, then why don’t you sort it out, nice and out in the open the way any sensible elf would? Don’t tell me these brown-skinned maidens can’t do anything without double-talking it to death.** He chuckled in sending. **At least Coppersky has his head on right. Hah! What say we take him back to Passage Point and turn him loose on Kahvi? And she thought she couldn’t stand ol’ Rayek!**
Teir smiled softly as he stretched out on his fur and looked up at the moonlight shining through the transluscent canopy leaves, bathing the understory in ghostly green light.
“What is that?” Teir scowled at the strange animal bending down to drink from the little pool. It looked almost like a pony, but heavier, with little horns on its head and a white-and-black striped hide over his muscular frame.
**Stripehide,** Pike explained.
**That’s a hide, for sure,** Kirjan sent appreciatively.
**We’ll take it for you,** Ember decided. She sent to Kirjan but she was looking past him at Teir. **You can take the hide back to your kin and show them what strange beasts we have down here.**
**You don’t have to–** Teir began.
**The meat’s sweet,** Yun sent. **And it’ll save us having to hunt later.**
**Let me take it!** Ember insisted. But Yun shook her head.
**Coppersky, how about you?**
Ember sulked as Coppersky unsheathed his throwing dagger and slid down the embankment. Wavecatcher, Teir and Kirjan leaned forward to watch with great anticipation. Coppersky slid down to find cover behind a large log, then crept towards the water hole on his hands and knees, the muscles of his shoulderblades and legs flexing much like a predator cat’s. Slowly he stalked towards the stripehide, always mindful of the shifting breeze, acutely aware of his own movements. Ever Ember found herself entranced by her cousin’s progress towards the animal.
Suddenly Coppersky leapt out from behind his hiding place and rolled over on the ground, landing just in front of the stripehide. The creature whinied in panic and reared up on its hind legs, pawing the air in front of it. Coppersky threw his dagger with deadly precision, and it cut through the stripehide’s throat, piercing its spinal cord at the brain steam. The stripehide seemed to stay suspended on its back legs for a moment, then fell over to the side. Coppersky coolly plucked the knife free, wiped in on the grass, and resheathed it. If he expected praise for his daring hunt, he did not show it.
Pike bent down and placed his hands over the beast’s wound.
“Always thanking the kill for its meat,” Vaya sighed, shaking her head. “It can’t hear you, Pike.”
“Who knows? If a bear eats you, maybe he’ll thank you in his own way.”
“Or maybe he’ll just retch,” Skot chuckled. Pike wrinkled up his nose, and Skot gave it a playful tweak. “Fawnheart,” he teased fondly, and tapped Pike’s nose with his.
“It’s only another two eights-of-days to the Holt now,” Ember told Teir. The elves had camped by the sluggish-flowing Green River, and Teir and Ember had forded the river at dusk. No one said anything when they disappeared by themselves, as they had taken to doing every night on the return journey. Teir wondered what the others thought, but decided not to contradict what was probably a widely held belief.
“We’re almost back in the woods for good,” Ember explained to Teir. “The plains turn into little meadows, and then they turn into smaller meadows, and finally the only place where the canopy isn’t everywhere is along the riverbanks... and in the long grass along the coast. But we never go in the long grass unless we’re in a full hunting party. It’s... taller than an elf on another elf’s shoulders. And there are... things in the long grass. Stalking birds. I’ve never seen one yet – not a living one. Yun says that’s a good thing.” She shrugged. “I want to see one. I bet I could take one down.”
“You want to hunt the whole world down, don’t you?”
“I want to see the whole world. I want... I want to do everything there is to do.”
“There’s plenty of time for that.”
“I don’t want to go back to Sorrow’s End,” she said fiercely.
“Of course you do. You want to see your parents again.”
“I... I’m just afraid... afraid if I stay there too long... I might never...”
“Never leave again?”
Ember nodded.
“I don’t think you have to worry about that.”
“I feel... itchy sometimes. It’s hard to breathe. And I have to get out there and run... run until my heart is ready to burst. Sometimes... back at Sorrow’s End... I’d get out on the gravel flats, and I’d run. Run so hard my shoes would be in tatters and my feet would bleed. But it still wouldn’t be enough. It’s never enough.” Ember picked up a twig and snapped it between her fingers.
“Sometimes... I like to go off by myself...” Teir offered. “Away from Kirjan... or Jirda, or anyone else who’s around. Just... sit with my wolves, and play something on my wind-whistle... and sit back and listen to the world singing back. We all try to find ourselves, Ember. Just... each in different ways.”
“Have you found yourself?”
“I’ve found something I can be content with.”
“Teir...” Ember reached for his hand.
“Firehair... don’t...” he began, raising his hand to her cheek.
“When we get back to the Holt, we’ll be going our separate ways...”
“All the more reason,” he stammered as she pressed closer against him. “Ember... you’re not one for... fleeting things–”
“Can’t there something... just for us...?” She leaned in and brushed her lips against his. “I... want... I want it to be with you.”
“Ember...” Teir touched her shoulders, gently at first, but he found his fingers clenching against the soft deerskin of her tunic. She tried to kiss him again, fiercely, but he held her back, burying his face in her hair. “Heart and heart do not have to meet in an instant, Firehair.”
Gently, they sank back to the ground, the long grass hiding them from view of wolves or Wolfriders.
Teir and Kirjan stayed for a few days in the Great Holt before asking Suntop to take them back to the Plainswaste. The two Go-Backs stepped across the threshold of the Palace with no small amount of trepidation, but Suntop soon assuaged their fears.
“Just think of your kin in the north. Think of Mardu and your father, Teir. Picture them in your mind, and the Palace will take you there.”
And sure enough, the Palace trembled slightly underfoot and when the sudden wave of dizziness passed, Suntop told them to go to the door and look outside.
The Plainswaste spread out to the horizon, long golden grass broken only by hopdigger mounds and boulders left behind by the retreating glaciers. A single solitary tree stood over a mile distant. The closest rock formation, capped by twenty-foot tall boulder, was swarming with elves. Twenty dun-coloured horses with short, bushy manes idled inside a wood-fenced pen.
Teir and Kirjan bolted out the door to greet their kin, followed closely by Pike, Skot, Vaya, and the huge wolves. Yun and Wavecatcher lingered in the doorway with Ember, Suntop and Quicksilver. Wavecatcher shivered at the cold autumn breeze and fiddled with the collar of his ill-fitting fur coat. His cold-weather outfit had been hastily sewn together from scraps, his coat from one of Tyldak’s old wraps, his trousers hand-me-downs from a slightly-shorter Rayek. Yun buttoned up her coat and stepped out onto the plains, and Wavecatcher hesitated before following her.
“By the Great Ice Wall,” Mardu breathed as she stepped back from Teir’s embrace to regard the Palace. “I knew you’d do it, Teir. You brought the Palace back to us. Welcome – welcome to our High Camp.” She looked down at the four-year-old hiding behind her leg. “Manx, come here. You remember Teir, don’t you?”
“Manx,” Teir smiled. He bent down and ruffled Manx’s hair, and the child giggled. “Look how you’ve grown. You’re not a little egg anymore, are you?”
Mardu looked up, glanced at Teir, then gazed beyond him at the familiar figure making her way up the rocky steps. A look of wonder and amazement crossed her face, then a dazzling grin broke out, even as her eyes welled with tears.
“Yun!” she ran forward and tackled her daughter. “Yun – Yun! – my little starry-eyes! I knew you’d come home one day. You’ve grown your hair out,” she fingered Yun’s feathery mane. “Ohhh... come here, come here, come meet your little brother. Manx! Manx! This is your big sister Yun the Wolfrider.”
But Manx was frightened by the noise, and the child drew back, hiding behind Teir now.
“Oh, he’s going through a time, that one. No matter, he’ll be all smiles around the hearthfire later. Have you grown taller, daughter?”
Yun smiled and shook her head. “Not for over twelve eights, Mother.” She hugged Mardu. “It’s good to see you again. And I’ve brought someone I want you to meet.”
Wavecatcher slowly picked his way up the rocks to join them, still clutching the hood of his coat tight about his cheeks.
“This is my lifemate,” Yun introduced proudly, holding out her hand for Wavecatcher to take.
Ember surveyed the landscape of High Camp. The winds were colder even than the cold winter nights at Sorrow’s End. The landscape seemed as empty as the sand dunes beyond the village. But every now and then she saw signs of a land teeming with life – a bird flushed out of the grass, an abandoned burrow once dug by a fox.
“Brrr....” Coppersky wrapped his ugly coat about himself tightly. The matted old fur enveloped his lithe frame, and the hood hid all but his eyes. “How long are we going to stand around freezing our ears off in this gale?”
“I’d hardly call this a gale, Saen.”
Coppersky bristled at the use of his birthname; Ember only used it when she was annoyed with him.
“You can go back to the Palace if you like,” she added. “I don’t think a foam-mad bear is likely to carry me off here.”
Coppersky shoved the hood back, and the wind blew his auburn hair out of its loose tail and about his brown face. Grumbling, Coppersky began the walk back to the warmth of the Palace.
Three broad-shouldered Go-Back lads intercepted him before he made it over the first ridgeline.
“Well... so that’s what was hiding under all the old bearskin...” the first one said.
Coppersky gave them all an icy glare and tried to walk past them.
“What’s your hurry, little bird?” the second one said, blocking his past.
“I’m cold, that’s my hurry!”
“Well... we know the cure for that, don’t we, lads?” the third one clapped a firm hand on Coppersky’s shoulder. His tribesmates nodded, pure carnality in their mutal gaze.
Coppersky’s head snapped up, intrigued. Slowly he turned his gaze over the threesome skeptically. “What? All three of you?”
Again the eager nods as the other two pressed closer.
The faintest smile crossed Coppersky’s lips. He lifted his chin and released his tight grip on his collar, exposing his slender neck. “I might resist,” he remarked off-hand.
“We might insist,” the one at his shoulder growled back.
“Well... then I guess I have no choice,” he murmured softly as the threesome closed ranks around him.
Ember sat amid the soft sleepfurs in Teir’s little cave, listening to the early morning wind howling outside the deerhide door. Beyond the caves in the rocks, many of the other Plainsrunners were sleeping inside tents made of scraped hide erected over old mammoth bones. Ember couldn’t imagine how they could sleep through the gale winds, but the few Plainsrunners she had asked only shrugged and told her they got used to the nightly windstorms in autumn.
The heat of the little burrow was beginning to fade, and the fat-tallow candles were beginning to burn down to nubs. Ember wrapped the end of the fur over her shoulders.
“I don’t want to go,” she whispered at length.
Teir slid closer to her. “Firehair... your place... for now, is in Sorrow’s End. Your parents must miss you terribly. It’s the middle of the second harvest season, isn’t it? Your mother must need your help.”
Ember looked away. “I want to stay here. With you.”
“I know you do, K’chaiya.” He kissed her forehead. “Right now, you do. But if you stayed now, you’d miss your family... you’d miss your old life.”
“I won’t grow old in the Sun Village! I won’t!”
He rubbed her shoulders. “You’re a colt in fear of a pen. But no one will imprison you; you know that.” He gathered her up in his arms and flipped the edge of the fur up over her head like a hood. Ember smiled at his attempts to cheer her, and kissed him quickly on the lips.
“You could come to Sorrow’s End with me,” she tried.
“I will... one day. But the tribe needs Kirjan and me right now. The long winter nights are hard up here, and we’re still trying to tame this herd of ponies we’ve caught. In another year... when High Camp is better established. Then the tribe will be able to roam the plains in month-long hunts, and always be able to find safety here in storms and wintertime.”
Ember nodded. She started to look away, and Teir touched her chin so she would meet his eyes again.
“It’s best this way, firehair. This way... you’ll have time to find yourself... to slow down and find what you want from your life. And in another year or so... we can go hunting together and share all the tales gathered in our time apart.”
“You won’t forget me, will you? You won’t ever... think of me and only think of a little cub who can’t bring down a cuphorn by herself?”
Teir smiled fondly. “No, K’chaiya. That’s one thing I will never do.”
He kissed her, and Ember wrapped her arms about his shoulders as if she never wanted to let him go. “It’s not morning yet, Teir,” she murmured when they parted. “Can we just... just lie down together and forget that it’s going to come?”
Teir drew her back down to the furs and they lay in each others’ arms, neither speaking, until the wind finally died outside and the cold autumn sun rose.
The sun was already halfway to its zenith when Coppersky finally came staggering out one of the tents, his hair unbound and blowing wild about his face.
“You’re a rutting zwoot!” Ember addressed her cousin as he collapsed on the hard ground next to her. “Brainless, heat-crazed pound-anything-in-sight zwoot!”
“I love this place!” Coppersky exclaimed breathlessly.
Finally Yun and Mardu emerged from the chief’s cave, and Yun signalled with a nod that it was time to leave.
“You’ll come back to visit, won’t you?” Mardu asked Yun as they said their farewells in front of the Palace. “And if you’re wrong and it is Recognition and a fawn does come, even a little late, you’ll let us know so I can see my grandchild born, won’t you?”
Yun nodded. “I will, Mother. And you’ll send to me when you and Vok have another little ankle-biter, won’t you? You have no excuse now.”
Mardu looked down at the crystal flake in her hand. No bigger than a spearhead, Suntop had chipped it off a wall in the Palace for her. “I’m sorry we didn’t bring any rockshapers with us to shape a nice little trophy for you,” he had said. “But this is small enough to carry with you anywhere you roam, and it’ll make sure that even if I’m a little too lost in other sendings, I’ll always hear the Plainsrunners.”
“The world is so much smaller now,” Mardu murmured.
“Still big enough for more than our fair share of adventures,” Yun said.
A few paces away, Ember and Teir said their own goodbyes. “I’ll come back,” Ember insisted. “I will. Once I settle everything in Sorrow’s End. And you’ll be waiting for me?”
“Always, firehair. And don’t be in too much of a hurry to leave your home. Take as long as you need. I’ll still be here.” He hesitated a moment, then reached down and lifted one of his two cat’s-claw necklaces from around his neck. Carefully, he slipped it over Ember’s head and settled it against her collarbone.
Tears were welling in Ember’s eyes, and she rubbed at them helplessly. She looked down at the gift, at a loss for words. At length her eyes lit up, and she reached up to unfasten the little leather ornament in her hair. She placed it Teir’s hand, and carefully closed his fingers over the embroidered leather oval and the two bright feathers plucked from rainforest birds.
“So you don’t forget me,” she added.
“I could not forget you even for a moment, firehair.”
Ember hugged him fiercely, kissed his lips one last time, then turned and jogged towards the Palace door before she could change her mind.
The Plainsrunners, over twenty now with the new fawns who had joined the ranks, all assembled around the ridges of High Camp to wave farewell to the travellers. Without a sound, with a single blinding flash of light, the Palace was gone.
“Well, back to work,” Mardu commanded. “Come on, we’ve got caves to clear out before the snows come.”
“You going to be all right?” Kirjan looped an arm over his friend’s shoulder.
Teir nodded.
“You didn’t have to stay here, you know. You could have gone with her.”
“No. No... she needs a little time to learn more about herself... to be with her parents and her tribe.” Teir looked down at the ornament in his hand. “She needs to know her own heart... before she can offer it to another.”
Kirjan whistled. “You’re stronger than I would have been, old friend.”
Winter passed at High Camp. The snow covered the lower caves in the rocks, and the cold wind found ways to creep into the second story dens. The deerhide-and-bone lodges had to be fortified with stones and some of their precious store of wood. Vok suggested that come the thaw they dig into the ground and build earth lodges like those at Passage Point.
The food supply grew short, but as stomachs growled, Mardu refused to sacrifice the animals penned behind the rocky ridge. “No!” she snapped when young Jirda pleaded again. “No. The wild ones that run free – they are meat and hide for us. Not the trusting ones, penned and at our mercy. Not the ones who whinny with joy when they see Vok bringing them their ration of dried grasses. Those will be our mounts, our legs to take us across these plains. And one day soon, those ones will run free until one of us whistles, and then they’ll come running to us as gladly as Teir’s wolves come to him.”
The wolves were hungry too, but they obeyed Teir’s commands to stay clear of the pen. In time, he was confident that rider on horseback and wolf on four feet could hunt together without incident.
He tied Ember’s hair ornament to a staff and set it against the corner of his small cave. His wolves kept him company during the long nights. Kirjan preferred to den with the maidens now that they had rejoined their tribe. But Teir could only think of Ember: the warmth of her red-brown skin, the sharp scent of her hair, the bird-like melody of her voice. Every day he fought the impulse to take the Palaceshard from Mardu and summon the Palace for a flight to Sorrow’s End. Every day he reminded himself that it was best this way. He would not let Ember stumble in her path because of a lovemate’s infatuation. If it was true and meant to be, she would return when she was ready.
Spring came to the Plainswaste and the snow began to melt. Slower to thaw was the hard ground, and work on the winter earth lodge was slow. The hunters picked out the ponies that suited them, and rider and mount slowly began to bond. Several even found names for their ponies, something unheard of in the old days of Go-Backs and great stags.
The short summer was approaching as the wildflowers began to bloom. Now the plains were teeming with life – with ground sloths and helmeted shagbacks and fleet-footed tusked deer. A huge bonfire was always burning, smoking meat for the stockpile. It was never too early to plan for winter, Mardu said. That was the lesson she had learned from a lasting peace.
How was Ember faring? Teir wondered. Had she gone back to Sorrow’s End full of confidence at her recent initiation and picked herself a hot-blooded lovemate who suited her restlessness better?
The mares foaled in the late spring, and Mardu and Vok were helping the new colts to their feet. Teir’s pack had shrunk as two yearlings left to seek their own fate, and another died in the harsh winter. But a a litter of five new pups joined the pack, bringing its numbers back up to twelve. Teir sat whittling himself a new arrow with his hoof-handled dagger as the pups kept nibbling at his leathers and whining for attention and food.
He felt the arrival of the Palace an instant before the flash lit up the rocks.
He turned, dropping the arrow, and sheathed his dagger as he raced down to the field where the Palace came to rest. The great open doors came into view, and standing on the threshold was Ember.
She was changed: the gangly colt had matured into a tall graceful elf. The wild puff of red hair was now a silky mane reaching halfway down her back. But her eyes were the same, as was the smile that alighted on her face when she saw him. She was clad in cold weather leathers better tailored to her figure than the coat she had bundled in the previous autumn. On her shoulder she carried a heavy bedroll and a spear.
Teir stopped a few paces from her, letting her come to him. Ember hesitated, then strode confidently towards him.
“I... I claim pack-right in your tribe,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “Where I belong.”
He struggled to find his voice as well. “And... your tribe? Your family?”
“They know I’ll be by again one day... with you.”
He took a tentative step towards her, and then Ember rushed into his arms, laughing.
**Oh, firehair... I missed you,** he sent, hugging her fiercely.
From the top of the boulder, they could see out over the Plainswaste in all four horizons. “What happened to the tree?” Ember asked.
“We cut it down for the wood. We probably shouldn’t have.”
“You need a treeshaper.”
Teir smiled. “It would help. We have to burn grasses, bone chips and dried pony dung for the fires come winter. The smoke is horrible. But it keeps us warm.”
“It’s so empty here.”
“I like it here. It’s... peaceful. The plains have secrets they don’t give up all at once.”
Ember smiled. “You could run forever here... and never lose sight of the camp.”
Teir slipped an arm about her waist. “We can run wherever you like, lovemate.”
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