Oasis
Part Five: Decision
A month passed with no sign of the humans. Timmain remained eyes-high constantly, sometimes as a jackwolf, sometimes as a hawk. Yet the Sun Folk blithely returned to their old way of life. The training yard was abandoned, and the weavers brought their looms back into the sunshine. The Jackwolf Riders lolled about the village with their friends and lifemates, rising only to hunt for meat. Jarrah coaxed her lifemate Ekuar away from the rock wall, and even Ahdri was beginning to neglect her important task.
“This disgusts me!” Haken raged. “The humans are gone for now, true. But they’ll come back, either to worship us or make war. Yet they all return to their own little games – like children!”
“Have a little pity, Haken,” Venka said. “This is all new for them.”
“They’ve become withered, unable to cope with change.”
“As the Gliders were?” Venka countered smoothly.
He scowled. “Yes. And I will not see the past repeat itself with the Sun Folk.”
Haken called an assembly of all the Sun Folk to once again press them to reimagine their way of life. He paced under the lanterns as he regarded the tribe of farmers and hunters. “You cannot simply return to the old ways as though nothing has happened! Stagnation and complacency are eating away your defenses. Work on the defenses have scarcely progressed since the humans left. Should the savages return you will be just as defenseless as before.”
“We defended ourselves just fine!” Shushen called out from his mat. “And the humans ran like scared ravvits!”
“And now I see arrogance is rearing its head too,” Haken sneered.
“You would know something of that,” Tass hissed.
“Peace, my children,” Savah said from her throne. “And Grandfather–”
But Haken was giving full vent to his frustrations. “You all think your problems can be solved by others! First you all depended on Venka’s father to protect you. Then the Jackwolf Riders. Now you expect me and my family to magically shield you from all danger so you can continue your blind little existence! Would one of you – even a Jackwolf Rider – survive more than two nights if plucked from this village and thrown into the deep desert? You remind me of the Firstcomers, they who so cherished their delicate taste of experience, but had no skills to survive when their ‘paradise’ turned capricious and cruel. I’ve been among you for over two months and I’ve been sorely disappointed by my children!”
“Haken–” Chani counseled softly.
“Who among you longs for growth? You are so certain you have your ‘paradise’ that you think you need do nothing to sustain it. You think life means simply accepting what comes your way and going from day to day in simple pleasure and simple frustrations!”
Ahdri got to her feet. “That’s not fair. We Sun Folk have struggled in the past. We have overcome great hurdles and grown stronger because of them.”
“You mean when Smoking Mountain erupted so many years past? Or when a drought brought seasons of poor harvests? Or when a plague of insects destroyed your crops? Did those shake the very foundations of your society? No. Do you remember them now as anything more than pleasant tales to tell about the evening meal? Your world has remained unchanged since the Rootless Ones first settled here!”
“Our world has grown immeasurably,” Ahdri said. “When I was born we thought ourselves the only elves in the world. We thought magic was dead in the world. I have seen the arrival of new elves. I have watched the ancient powers return to our kin. I have kindled those powers in my own heart. The Palace has been restored and with it the power to unite all our minds as one – as you well know!”
“And has your village changed? Has your way of life?”
Leetah got to her feet. “High One or no, who are you to tell us we must change? You come here, not three months ago, and you tell us to move south and live under your watchful gaze. We tell you we are staying put, and you tell us all the different ways we don’t measure up to your ideal!”
Haken shook his head. “I want you to be mindful of the dangers that exist beyond this feeble wall of rock.”
“You speak of growth,” Scouter drawled. “Your other children, the Gliders – they didn’t grow. They withered away and died entombed in stone. I saw their sanctuary in rock myself!”
Haken clenched his fists tight and looked away. But there was sorrow in his eyes.
“Our children thought themselves above all change,” Chani said softly, yet her voice carried across the sandy square. “And they died because of it. We do not intend to repeat their mistakes.”
“You have no right to tell us how to live our lives!” Scouter said.
“Please, my children,” Savah said. “Our father speaks out of love and concern.”
Tass snorted audibly. Venka elbowed her hard in the ribs.
Savah rose. “He speaks of fears I have often struggled with in my darker hours. The world is changing so quickly – much more quickly than I might have imagined. The humans I remember only dimly as beasts no more cunning than bears now create villages of their own, now cross this world of ours in great migratory herds, trading in goods they themselves have created. So much has changed, yet we remain changeless. This state cannot endure. No, we are not wilted, my children. We are a carefully tended plot of earth that bears fruit which blooms and fades with each passing year. But I would see us become a wild patch of greenery that overflows the bounds of its garden. The Wolfriders shattered our way of life all those years ago. I would see our lives shattered once more, and reborn anew.
“I could never leave Sorrow’s End. This is my home, as surely as if I had been born here. Yet the humans may return. Smoking Mountain may reawaken. The days of simply tending our gardens and living from moment to moment must pass. We must all dedicate ourselves to becoming more than we are today.”
“How?” Alekah asked. “By becoming warriors – Wolfriders? Or by becoming Gliders?”
Scouter made a growling sound low in the back of his throat. Haken heaved a frustrated sign and collapsed on his stone seat.
Zhantee sheepishly raised his hand. “Can I... speak?”
Savah bade him rise. Zhantee rubbed the back of his neck in embarassment. “I... I’ve lived with the Wolfrider for an elder’s age, fathered a Wolfrider... but I’d never think to call myself one. But... the Wolfriders... they make things happen. Things that make me stretch. And... I like facing all the tests my chief throws at me. When I was young,” he glanced over at his parents, Thamia and Moren, “I was always safe. Too safe. I can still remember what all the ruling voices of his childhood would warn. ‘Musn’t take risks, little one. Musn’t try to touch the sky.’ And I always believed that. But when the Wolfriders came here... I learned to take risk. I learned to... to stretch. And if I hadn’t... I never would have found my shielding powers, I never would have found my new tribe and I never would have found my lifemate.” Now he smiled at Venka and she gave his hand an affectionate squeeze. Zhantee glanced around the village square. “Coming back here... it always feels so safe. But you know... it isn’t always good to be safe. And... I think... in this new world... with these humans spreading faster than we ever thought they could... I think we all need to stretch a little more.”
Savah smiled. “Well spoken, Zhantee.”
Rayek’s mother Jarrah sighed a little sadly. “We’re not all magic-users.”
“Everyone has hidden strengths to find,” Weatherbird said. “Even strengths that don’t seem little they matter much.”
“I know I used to think ‘Oh, I’m nothing special,’” Zhantee added. “‘I’m just ordinary.’ But... and I know this sounds silly, but I don’t think any of us is ordinary.”
“Doesn’t sound silly at all, lifemate,” Venka whispered fondly.
“I can help you all discover new strengths,” Savah offered. “As can Haken and Chani. A rebirth is long overdue.”
“The coming storm is almost upon us,” Sun-Toucher said cryptically. “We have a choice, to burrow into the sand and hope for some miracle, or to stand up and face the winds bravely. To welcome the challenges that come our way.”
“We won’t leave Sorrow’s End!” Leetah snapped abruptly.
“Then we must work doubly hard to make Sorrow’s End safe,” Haken said. “We sent these humans fleeing like the beasts they are. But we’ve no guarantee the next ones who come sniffing by will be such easy prey.”
“Elves and humans can live side by side,” Venka said. “The Islanders of the New Land have done so for millennia. The Great Holt is little more than two days’ journey from the nearest human encampment, yet they give us no trouble.”
“Door and I have had less success in the Forevergreen,” Spar said.
“Yes,” Windkin nodded. “We can’t assume that what works with one human tribe will work with another.”
“We must resume work on the defenses,” Haken said. “And we must prepare a plan for the next time humans come sculking about. No more Now of Wolf-thought. No more acting on the whim of the moment. We are between harvests, yes? Then the farmers have no need to toil in the fields.”
“Would you have us shape rock?” Jari demanded.
“You can move rock by other means than magic. You can plough up the ground to make it look far less hospitable. You can uproot the prickle-plants to disguise the presense of underground water.”
“And you can build another mill to aid Behtia in her work,” Chani added. “You have stockpiles of grain waiting to be milled. I find it amazing you never built another one.”
Behtia shrugged. “Mine already does the work of three grinding stones,” she spoke up.
Chani smiled. “All the more reason to make another. There is no reason anyone should be milling their grain by hand.”
“The weapons’ training must continue,” Haken insisted. “Every adult elf should know how to defend themselves.”
“You’re not our lord,” Shushen grumbled.
“You cannot order us about as if we were the Chosen Eight,” Scouter added.
“And if I suggest that Haken’s ideas have merit, and ought to be explored?” Savah asked gently.
Scouter tried to look graceful. “Well, that’s different.”
Grayling rose. “We’ll resuming training. And we’d... be glad of any guidance you have to offer us, Haken. But–”
“But you are Sun Folk, not Gliders,” Chani finished smoothly.
The meeting ended on an oddly optimism note, yet more than one Sun Villager left the square pondering just what the “rebirth” Savah spoke of entailed. The Jackwolf Riders clustered about their chief, seeking reassurances.
“I don’t like it,” Wing muttered. “Why are we suddenly supposed to turn ourselves inside out? Why the urgency?”
“I understand well,” Ahdri said as she and Windkin joined the Riders. “Sometimes the greatest transformations must take place suddenly, without warning.”
“I remember when Dart and I first looked for volunteers to become hunters,” Grayling mused. “Shushen, I remember how you fretted about it. You didn’t like change anymore then than you do now.”
“I don’t trust Haken,” Shushen said simply. Several others nodded.
“And what does Savah mean about discovering new strengths and powers?” Mahree asked. “Do they intend to turn us all into magic-users?”
“Now, that stinks of Blue Mountain,” Scouter growled.
“You need a new song, Scouter,” Windkin quipped.
“Oh, we all know you’re bending to Haken’s words. Your loyalties are always to your father’s kin!”
Windkin clenched his fists. “Don’t you bring my father into this, Wolfrider, unless you’re ready to see this through.”
“Oh, enough!” Grayling ordered. “Nearly six hundred years and I thought you two would have given up that old feud. Look, do you all trust that I’m keeping eyes-high? Then don’t worry about Haken or what was said tonight. We’re not going to become something we’re not. We’re not going to abandon Sorrow’s End to build a new Blue Mountain. All we have to worry about is tightening our defenses for when the next band of humans decide to come sniffing around. Agreed?”
The Jackwolf Riders nodded. And the meeting dispersed. Grayling looped an arm about his lifemate’s shoulder. “Let’s go home, Hansha,” he sighed wearily. “This night’s taken a lot out of me.”
Hansha gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. **You’re a good leader, Kel. Everything will work out, you’ll see.**
Another month slowly passed and Hansha’s prediction seemed to be bearing out. Timmain found no more signs of humans, yet no one could convince her to return to the village. Instead she remained on patrol a day’s ride out, keeping her eyes ever fixed on the western desert.
The farmers and potters abandoned their idle summer days and set to work in the needle-mound patches, uprooting squat-needles and sticker-plants, then ploughing the sandy soil in uneven mounds to disguise the area. Haken carefully shaped the rocks where the humans had been ambushed, changing the contours of the land. The Jackwolf Riders hunted and stockpiled meat to be smoked and set aside, in case of den-hides. The ruling council met often to discuss strategies for dealing with future human intruders. Grayling and Venka maintained that den-hide was preferrable, but failing that, some manner of peaceful co-existence as was practiced in the Great Holt should be attempted. War was the final option, despite Haken’s frequent arguments that humans only worshipped and respected that which they feared.
Somehow, overnight it seemed, the Firstcomer had gone from a semi-exile under close watch to Savah’s equal and an active member in the council. Little wonder Timmain remained outside the village bounds.
Chani continued instructing the younger elves in the uses of the sling, and to Grayling’s amazement even confirmed pacifists like Vurdah and Ruffel took up the weapon, though it was clear they considered it little more than an amusing toy. Leetah pointedly refused any weapon’s training, insisting that the moment she learned to hurt another living thing, she ceased to be a true healer. Even good natured attempts from Scouter and Shushen to failed to coax her to the training yard.
“What about my sister’s mate Rain?” Scouter teased. “He knows how to hunt as well as heal?”
“Perhaps a Wolfrider sees no conflict, but I do,” she insisted.
“Ah, leave her be, Scouter,” Shushen lay back, his head in Leetah’s lap. “She’s too pampered, our little lovemate. With two strong lads to look after her, what does she need a weapon for?”
Leetah laughed then, the first real laugh she had uttered in eights-of-days. “When have you ever looked after me, Shushen? I might as well call you my son for all I have to mother you.”
“A fine mother you’d make if you’d treat your son as you do me,” Shushen teased back.
Hansha continued to manufacture new iron spearheads and short-sword for the elves. It was no brightmetal, but it was more than a match for the stone used by the humans. Still, he overcame his shyness to ask Haken and Chani if they could one day help him find a combination of metals to make an approximation of the tougher brightmetal.
“I don’t think these mountains will give you what you need,” Haken said bluntly. “Bone and blackstone may be best for arrowheads and spears.” At Hansha’s disappointed expression he softened. “But there’s no reason why we cannot experiment.”
“Your determination is most admirable,” Chani added diplomatically. “And I’ve no doubt you and your workers will succeed at anything you attempt.”
Hansha took some time away from his production of iron weapons to take some of the soft gold he had saved and temper it with silver. Curious passerbys came to examine the creation of what appeared to be a golden skullcap, but Hansha gently refused to answer their many queries. The bulk of his work on the cap was performed inside the hut, out of sight. Only when he was completely finished did he unveil his creation.
“It’s for you,” he blurted out as he presented it to Chani. The simple skullcap design had become an elaborate lion’s-head headdress. Into the golden cap were moulded empty eyes and a lion’s nose, the tip coloured with a more silver-rich alloy. Below the nose dropped two strings of gold chains designed to mimic a muzzle and whiskers. Two golden spires framed the wearer’s face and served as cheek guards. Behind the cap he had painstakingly attached golden hawk’s feathers, strengthened with invisible gold wires. A carefully woven band of leather secured the headdress in place behind the wearer’s head.
Chani looked at the headdress in wonder. “Why?” she stammered at length.
“Because the Lady of the Gliders deserves nothing less,” Hansha answered promptly.
Chani slipped the headdress on. It fit her face perfectly, the two strings of gold chain framing her leonine eyes.
“Pull it down,” Hansha prompted. “I think it should fit that way too.”
Chani looked at him, quizzically. Then she slid the headdress down. The countours of the cap fit her face as well, and suddenly the headdress became a mask. Her eyes peered out from within the lion’s empty sockets. The golden whisker-chains tinkled softly against her jawline.
“A mask. Whatever led to think of it?”
“Oh... I thought about what Haken being saying about humans believing in spirits and demons and gods and how we and even our jackwolves can pass ourselves off as things we’re not, and I got to thinking about masks... and becoming something we’re not – except that you can become a lioness, Lady Chani.”
“Ah, but that’s just a more complicated sort of mask.” She pushed the headdress back on the crown of her head and flashed Hansha a wink and a grin.
As the Sun Folk used their zwoots to plough up the sandy earth and scattered rocks across the old needle-mound field, so the rockshapers maintained constant shifts working on the defensive walls. Already the walls encircled all the way around the Bridge of Destiny, though in many places the wall was no larger than a jackwolf’s shoulder.
After a hard morning’s work, Ahdri collapsed on the woven mats outside the weaver’s hut. Ahnshen was kneeling as he finished the fitting on Spar’s new cotton gown. Dyed in vibrant blues and greens that recalled a rainforest bird’s plumage, it hung loosely over her body, and Spar resisted Ahnshen’s constant efforts to tighten it.
“No, leave it baggy. My skin’s tight enough without my dress too.”
Ahnshen scowled, his sense of aesthetics wounded. “It’s just that... it’s... rather ugly just hanging like that. Let me at least stitch a little darts under the bust–”
“No. Let it hang. I want to be able to move in it – run in it – without worrying that I’m going to pop one of your seams.”
Ahnshen sighed and muttered something about dressing her hair to lift the eye above the waistline.
“Look at you,” Ahdri teased. “A grain sack stuffed to filling.”
“Mm, another four moons, Leetah thinks.” Spar shifted on her feet, trying to keep her balance.
“You must be eager to get him out of there and hold him for the first time.”
“You know, I think I’ll be sad to lose this.” Spar draped a hand over her belly. “He’s all snuggled up, his head just under my heart, fast asleep – ouch! – well, I thought he was sleeping. And sending now and then... these thoughtless bursts of sheer contentment, like a cat purring away. I don’t think anything can compare to this.”
“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Ahnshen muttered. “The minute they learn to walk, they want to go off and ride wolves.”
Ahdri rolled over on her back, throwing an arm over her head. “Ohh, on any other day I would be sick with jealousy, but today I don’t have the strength to long for a kitling. The rock is so brittle – no matter how Ekuar and I coax it, it simply doesn’t want to stretch. Door just took over for me, and I know I should go and take a rest, but I haven’t the strength to hike up to my hut.”
“Go downstairs,” Ahnshen offered. “Take our bed. Vurdah is off helping Behtia with the mill. We’ll tell Windkin if he comes looking for you.”
Ahdri pulled herself up. “Thank you, Ahnshen,” she mumbled gratefully as she stumbled inside the hut.
Spar sighed. “Wish I could help somehow. But we need an absence of plants outside the walls. Pity. You know,” she glanced over her shoulder as Ahnshen knelt at her feet to finish stitching the hem, “I can shape some very sick looking plants. All sorts of monstrous little weeds and thorns - that’s it!” she exclaimed, bouncing on the soles of her feet.
“Hey! Careful! Do you want a ragged hem?”
Spar laughed at the very Sun Folk-like preoccupation with smooth lines. She waited as patiently as she could until Ahnshen finished, then bolted from the mat to find Grayling.
“Strangleweed!” she announced, breathless with excitement.
“You think you can shape something like it?”
“Why not? There are all sorts of ugly weeds that line in the hills. And you all know I have a talent for ruining a good plant. Give me a month or two of trials and I bet I could make something so sticky and tight that my father would swear it was real strangleweed.”
Grayling smiled and clasped her shoulder.
Haken surveyed the bustling village from the Horn of the Bridge of Destiny, Flitrin quietly perched on his shoulder. Weatherbird calmly paced along the edge of the Bridge, her arms outstretched to hold her balance.
“Should you fall, your sire would undoubtedly kill me for allowing it,” Haken quipped. “And I have no intention of leaving this world while she lives on.”
“Then you’ll have to catch me if I fall,” she countered. Haken watched her steps carefully and noticed that for all her seeming recklessness, she never took more than three paces out onto the perilously slim rock bridge.
“My grandfather crossed this bridge once,” she announced.
“Before or after he learned to float?”
“After.”
“Mm. And unlike your namesake, you are a most earthbound creature.”
“I could steal your floating powers, you know,” she remarked cheerfully. Haken could not tell if she was bluffing, and he had no wish to find out.
“My words for aspiring to growth were wasted on you, I see. The powers of the Firstcomers are rekindled anew in your heart. Where even your sire had a coming of age, you were born to your gifts.”
Weatherbird laughed lightly. “So you think I never grew? Oh, Haken, you should talk to my parents!”
Haken smiled shrewdly. “Now, what could a child such as you need to out-grow? Hmm. The fault of arrogance?”
“Overconfidence,” Weatherbird amended. “Trying to run before I could walk. Ended myself rump-over-head more than once.”
“Ah. Another reason you were sent to pacify me, perhaps?” he drawled.
“Father thought we might see eye to eye a bit better than most.”
“Amusing choice of words.”
Weatherbird chuckled to herself. She turned about and took a few more steps back out onto the Bridge. “You know, Haken, we don’t all think you’re evil – or ill in spirit. You see the world a little... off-balance compared to the others. I see the world a little off-balance too. To us it’s right side up. But we have to make sure we don’t bump others off their balance just so they can see things like we do.”
“Were you not such a fascinating creature, I would take great exception to being tutored by a child.”
Weatherbird had stopped cold in her tracks, and her arms dropped to her sides.
“Weatherbird?” Haken called.
“Oh no...” Weatherbird whispered. For the Bridge had fallen away from below her feet, and she saw the world as circling high in the air like a hawk. She no longer saw the comforting peaks that surrounded Sorrow’s End, but the vast desert far to the west. A great shapeless expanse of sand stood below us, and swarming upon it were hundreds of humans, travelling in one great caravan of no-humps and crude A-frames. The vision grew clearer and she could see that leading the caravan were the tallest and strongest of the males, decorated in red mud paint. And at the head of the great migration was a fat spirit-man, his face covered in a great tattooed mask.
**Can you see it, child?**
**I see it... oh, Timmain.**
**I am coming back.**
**Yes! Yes, come back at once. Oh... High Ones....**
“Weatherbird!” Haken caught her arm and yanked her back to the safety of the Horn. “What is it?”
“Chirp-much thing lost head,” Flitrin pronounced in judgment.
Weatherbird shuddered, and her rich brown skin turned an ashen gray. “They’re back.”
Weatherbird shared Timmain’s vision with the village, and by sunset Timmain herself flew into Sorrow’s End. She dropped down from the sky and seamlessly turned from hawk to feathered elf to tall silver-haired High One. No sooner did her toes touch the ground than she wilted, and the elves had to catch her before she fell and hurt herself. Weatherbird rushed to her side bearing a flagon of water, which Timmain downed in one long draught.
“Humans...” she gasped out. “At least two hundred. The ones the warriors frightened off have secured reinforcements. They’re marching at an even pace, but their numbers slow them down. They are mostly male warriors, with a few women in their midst to tend camp.”
“How long?” Grayling asked.
“Three days, perhaps. Perhaps more, if they linger. Less, if they hasten.”
“They’ve come to challenge us,” Haken growled.
“We’re not nearly ready for a siege,” said Grayling.
“Perhaps that will not be necessary,” Savah offered hopefully. “We have raised our defensive walls. The hillside they almost scaled two months past has become a sheer cliff. The landscape has been altered. And the humans do not know we live in a village.”
“We are now beyond ‘perhaps,’” Haken said.
“Then this is the end of our days here,” Sun-Toucher sighed.
“No!” Leetah cried. “Father! We cannot leave. We will not. Humans chased our ancestors across the Burning Waste. We will not let them chase us from our refuge.”
Several farmers added their own impassioned pleas. Scouter and Shushen glared at Grayling accusingly.
Weatherbird led Timmain away to rest in the wolf caves. There was no resolution in the village square, and the Sun Folk slowly drifted off to their own huts, uncertain what the next day would bring.
Night was falling, but Grayling did not return to his hut. Instead he lingered on the rocks near the wolf caves. The contours of the village had changed much over the last few months, but the caves and the nearby hotsprings remained the same. That small piece of familiarity was priceless now.
His jackwolf Haze came to his side and sniffed his bare legs curiously. Grayling looked up at the stars overhead and tried to remember the various starforms Skywise had named over the years. But he could find no patterns in the sky. The stars were too numerous to count and group and divide into the outlines of creatures.
How could the Gliders have survived inside Blue Mountain, locked away from the stars? How could the trolls build their great cities underground, never seeing a full night’s sky?
A sending broke his concentration. Alekah’s voice cried out into the night.
**KEL! Come quickly!**
“The cub,” Grayling gasped as he tore from his jackwolf’s side and sprinted up the rocks towards the village. He found the little path that led down the hillside and raced down into the valley, nearly stumbling and falling head over heels in the process.
**Where are you? What happened? Is it the cub?**
**My hut! Hurry!**
Grayling didn’t press further, but ran for Alekah and Jari’s hut. He broke through the curtained door, breaking several strings of beads. Alekah was sitting on a mat, flanked by Hansha and Jari. Her tunic was hiked up about her breasts and her hands were clasped tight over her abdomen, just now beginning to swell as she entered her sixth month of pregnancy.
“What is it? Alekah!” Grayling felt at her side. But while her face was screwed up into a grimace of intense concentration, Hansha and Jari was grinning.
“Shh!” Alekah took his hand and pressed it to her stomach. **Can you feel it?**
At first he felt nothing but the heat of her skin and the steady beat of her pulse as blood rushed to her womb and the fetus within. But then he felt something else, a sudden twitch of her muscles.
“What was that?”
“The baby’s moving,” Alekah grinned. “Here,” she repositioned Grayling’s hand. “Listen. Listen with your heart.”
Grayling closed his eyes and struggled to extend his limited senses. Momentarily he cursed himself for giving up his wolf-blood. Had he the blood of Timmorn he might–
And then he felt it, not with his ears or his hand, but with his mind. Against Alekah’s slow and steady pulsebeat came another little rhythm, many times faster. Grayling willed his spirit-self to lean in towards the fluttering heartbeat, and he was rewarded with a faint sending star, a reply that carried no thoughts, no emotion, just an outpouring of instinctive psychic energy.
Grayling leapt back, his eyes wide. Hansha and Jari laughed.
“I didn’t want you to miss it,” Alekah smiled. “It’s the first time he’s sent.”
“He?” Grayling blinked. “He? I... I...” he stammered. Then he realized there were no words, and he lunged forward, enfolded Jari, Alekah and Hansha in one great hug.
**My family...* he sent. Tears welled in his eyes and he made no attempt to restrain them.
“We knew you’d want to be here,” Jari said, and Grayling felt a rush of gratitude for his new brother’s generosity.
“We–” his voice broke, but he recovered himself. “We will always be a family, the five of us. Two sets of lifemates, but four elves closer than kin, and one child binding us all together.”
“Three fathers and one very proud mama,” Alekah laughed, and she too was crying, “to have such devoted helpmates.”
Grayling placed his hand on her stomach again, and again he felt the raw sending-shout as the developing cub tested his newly emerging telepathy.
My cub... Grayling thought. Suddenly it seemed so very real.
My cub can’t grow up in a world where we are hunted into burrows like ravvits.
Grayling rose. “I... I have to go. I have something I need to do.”
Alekah nodded. Jari clutched her shoulders tightly. Hansha began to rise, but Grayling shook his head.
**Stay here. I’ll let you know what happens.**
**Kel...**
**Don’t worry. Our cub will be born into a world free of danger. I promise.**
Chani had already gone to sleep in Savah’s bed, but Grayling was not surprised to hear that Haken was not in the village. It did not take him long to find the High One. Half-hidden by the rocks, Haken sat on the Horn of the Bridge of Destiny, his eyes turned to the World’s Spine Mountains, and his distant Oasis.
Haken made no acknowledgement of Grayling’s presence, but continued to gaze south. Grayling stood next to him in silence for several long minutes.
“What do you see, when you look out there?” Grayling asked.
“Pleasant memories of times long past.”
Grayling nodded.
“What do you want?” Haken asked at length.
“Your guidance.”
Haken turned and looked at Grayling. Sitting as he did they were nearly of a height. “And what does the wolf-bitch say to that?”
“I don’t care what she may think. She may be my ancestor, but she is a stranger in Sorrow’s End.”
Haken chuckled low in his throat. “And...?”
“We will not keep this holt. No matter how we hide... no matter how we fight. Even if we kill every human in that war party, more will eventually come. And I will not have my cub born into a life of perpetual den-hides. But Sorrow’s End is all the Sun Folk have ever known. They will not abandon it until the moment the humans crest the cliffs. I need your help. I need them to understand. Sometimes... a wolf fights. Sometimes a wolf flees.”
“And you would come to Oasis... and live under the iron fist of the Black Snake’s cruel sire?” Haken chuckled.
“Don’t do that. We’re growing weary of it. You’ve been a fine warleader. You’ve forced, and taunted, and shamed the Sun Folk into standing up and doing something besides sitting down and hoping for the best. But now we need you to be a true Father to your tribe.”
Haken looked at him curiously. **No, I’m not playing games with you,** Grayling sent. **There’s no trap to avoid.**
“There’s always a trap. It’s simply a matter of looking in the right places.”
“Will you help us?”
Frustration tightened his voice. “I have been trying to do nothing less since I arrived here.”
Grayling held out his hand. Haken looked at it skeptically. He reached out and clasped it for a fleeting moment. Then he got to his feet. The cloak fell off his left shoulder, and for a moment, Grayling caught a glimpse of a badly scarred stump of flesh, no longer than a elf’s hand-span. Haken quickly rearranged his cloak.
“Let us be off,” Haken said. “We have much to do.”
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