Packright
Part Three
One-Eye retired to his own cave, while Kit and Littlefire slept in a little cave next to his. It was small, womb-like, barely big enough to sit up in. Littlefire liked it.
Kit sat up in bed, scratching a series of symbols into the wall. “What are you saying?” Littlefire asked.
She pointed to the three symbols in turn. “ ‘Kit’ ‘slept’ ‘here.’” She settled back down next to him. “A little something to confuse whoever sleeps here next.” She began to take down her braided hair, and Littlefire hastened to help her. As always, her hair never so much came down as it twisted about his fingers.
“Littlefire?”
“Hm?”
“When are you going to teach me your language?”
He frowned. “What–”
Kit turned to face him. “Locksend with me.”
“What?”
“Locksend with me. Let me see the world through your eyes.”
Fear seized his eyes. “No. No. Too sharp. Too much. Strongbow–”
“Strongbow provoked you.”
“No. No.” He shook his head. “No one can hear my sending. Only... only Father or the High One. I’d hurt you.”
“No, you won’t.”
“You don’t–”
Kit took his hand and pressed it to her cheek. **Littlefire...**
Slowly he met her gaze. At first she heard nothing in reply. Then she felt a strange sensation against her left hand. Though it lay in her lap, against cold leather, she could swear she felt the warmth of another’s skin under her palm. And then a moment later she felt another layer of warmth over the back of her hand. Simply heat at first, then as the sensation became more defined – the touch of four fingers.
“What...?”
It was her skin she felt, and her fingers, she realized. She was feeling what he felt.
Her mind was flooded with sensation now. The almost painful scratching of a fur collar at her throat, the rhythmic throbbing of a heartbeat in her ears, the static wreathing her head as the dry snowstorm made her hair rise – his hair.
Suddenly it was so bright.
“Littlefire?” she asked, and she heard an echo, disorienting, but not entirely unpleasant.
All her senses were heightened, yet blurred at once, as though she had eaten some unripe dreamberries. How could every sensation be bewildering intense and indistinct at the same time? Her eyes slid closed against the bright light. She heard a soft noise in the distance, someone shouting over a winter gale.
“Kit...” the voice repeated.
It was Littlefire’s voice.
She found herself staring into his eyes. They were so deep, so rich with emotion, they seemed to emit a light of their own, almost blinding her, let drawing her gaze, like a flame drawing in a moth. She blinked and suddenly they were her own eyes, wide and dark brown, but charged with skyfire.
She swooned forward, and suddenly she was enveloped by a crushing weight. And yet the intense pressure did not feel uncomfortable in the least.
**Kit?**
Slowly the sensations faded and Kit lift her head. Littlefire was holding her tight.
Her stomach was knotted with terror. She realized it was his own fear for her welfare.
No wonder Strongbow had been overwhelmed, having suddenly felt Littlefire’s own fears.
She smiled raggedly and the pain abated. “I’m fine,” she managed to whisper, and now she felt waves of delight and contentment wash over her. She caught snatches of words, whispers and distant shouts overlapping with emotions and blurred imagery, like a string of her symbols smudged while the paint was still fresh. Concern turning to relief, fear turning to joy...
**Yes,** she replied, grinning now. **I understand!** Tears welled in her eyes – or were they his eyes? She could no longer see his face; she was lost in the world of sendings and sensory overload. She laughed – it was clearly her voice now. **I understand!** she repeated, overjoyed.
His arms had slackened about her shoulders, but now he gripped her even tighter as his mouth crushed against hers. Their lips burned in the combined vision of locksending, and Kit clung to him as skyfire raced along their skin. Now the world seemed to shrink around her, until she heard nothing but their racing pulses and saw nothing but the sparks of light that seemed to dance around them.
Nearly an eight-of-days later Kit and One-Eye assembled the Thorny Mountain Wolfriders around the snow-covered meadow just beyond the Holt for a demonstration. Kit set two long sheaves of bark in the snow just out of reach of the standard arrow and sent Spar to stand next to them to observe theresults. Another twenty paces beyond the targets the forest began, and the wolfpack lounged in the snow under the shade. The gray winter sun stung Strongbow’s eyes, and he shaded his gaze with a gloved hand. **Why couldn’t this have waited until nightfall?** he grumbled.
Littlefire hovered in the air nearby, but just out of reach. The Wolfriders clustered around Kit in anticipation. They had all noticed One-Eye’s newly upbeat mood and they could only hope the riddle of the blackstone had been solved. But One-Eye only smiled shrewdly and kept Kit’s quiver of arrows covered with a spare ravvit-skin.
“May I?” Kit took one of the few metal-tipped arrows from Nightfall’s quiver. “Watch, Wolfriders. This is our usual arrow design, with a brightmetal arrowhead.” She nocked it in her bow. **Spar? Are you watching?**
**Fire away,** Spar sent back. **But you won’t make this target.**
Kit took aim at the left target and fired. The arrow whistled in the crisp air, and sailed cleanly for the target. It began to lose altitude as it neared the bark sheaf, and when it reached the target it ricocheted off and dropped to the ground.
**Well?**
Spar leaned in. **You nicked it. A blackfly bite on a deer, nothing more.**
“Your targets are too distant, daughter,” Moonshade said. She squinted at the distant bark sheaves. “Not even your father can kill a buck at that range.”
“She’s right,” Nightfall said. “Eventually, arrows simply cannot fight the pull of the earth, no matter how well they are crafted or how well they are shot.”
Kit nodded. “One-Eye.”
One-Eye drew out a single arrow, fletched with the stabilizing vanes and tipped with a glistening obsidian arrowhead. The elves leaned in for a closer look,and Woodlock whistled appreciatively. “Blackstone?”
“What did you do to the feathers?” Nightfall asked. “Those are fletched wrong.”
**Spar?** Kit sent as she nocked the arrow.
**I’m ready.**
Kit shot the arrow. It flew clear across the meadow, its feathers catching the air and holding it aloft. It struck the target with nearly no diminishment in speed, and the obsidian head cleaved the bark clean in two. The arrow continued on, until it struck the trunk of a distant tree at the far edge of the meadow.
Kit turned to the elves, all standing agape save for One-Eye and Littlefire.
Silence reigned as Spar jogged off in search of the arrow. **It’s here!** she sent back at length. **Sunk deep. That’s a kill if I ever saw one.**
**Bring it in,** Kit sent. **I think the demonstration’s over.**
Now One-Eye let the elves examine the dozen arrows in Kit’s quiver, and each packmember took up an arrow, admiring the new heads and novel tail designs.
“How did you get that distance?” Woodlock asked.
“Look at the edge of these points,” Nightfall breathed.
“Sharper than brightmetal... and when fired with that power...” Clearbrook said.
Strongbow examined an arrow in silence, wonder written across his face.
“We’ll howl for you and One-Eye, Kit,” Redlance announced. “We knew you’d crack the riddle of the blackstone – and with this new fletching we’ll never know empty bellies again.”
“I wish we could take the praise for ourselves, my chief,” One-Eye said. “But it wasn’t my doing, nor was it Kit’s.”
“Then who?”
“Yes, who?” Clearbrook asked.
One-Eye and Kit looked up at Littlefire, who sheepishly floated down to the ground.
Strongbow stared. **Him?**
“I’ve never seen such a sight,” One-Eye said proudly. “Watched me knap one piece of flint and he knew how to do it. And he had blackstone mastered before I could even finish telling him how cursed impossible it was to work with the stone.”
“Littlefire?” Redlance asked.
Littlefire shrugged. “I... just...” he shrugged again, at a loss to explain.
“And the fletching?”
“He watched me prepare two arrows, then make his own that outshot mine by half again the distance,” Kit said.
“Littlefire?” Moonshade looked from Glider to Wolfriders and back again, still unconvinced.
“I... I... made a spearhead too,” Littlefire said, almost in apology. “And a knife for scraping hides... I... I think they’ll work.”
“Aye, they’ll work, all right,” One-Eye laughed. “This Glider just took the title of ‘stoneworker’ right out from under me. Doesn’t surprise me, though. He might not have all of his father’s rockshaping gift, but he knows how to listen to the stone, all right.”
Kit walked over to Littlefire and took his hand in hers. He glanced at the still bewildered faces of Clearbrook and Nightfall, and the lingering suspicion in the eyes of Strongbow and Moonshade. “Did... is it good?” he whispered under his breath.
Kit laughed aloud. “It’s perfect, lovemate,” she whispered back.
He gave her hand a furtive squeeze.
“We need to test these in the hunt,” Nightfall said.
“Yes,” Redlance nodded. He turned to Littlefire. “How soon can you make more of these?”
Littlefire blinked. “I... uh... how many?”
“Three eights?” Redlance asked. “That won’t be too much at once, will–”
“Tomorrow!” Littlefire blurted.
“Well... maybe the day after,” Kit corrected gently. “We’ll set you to work right away, won’t we, Littlefire?”
Two days later Littlefire’s arrows brought down a large buck who had made the mistake of wandering too far from the safety of the wintering herd. The deer was quickly butchered with a blackstone blade, and the hide cleaned with a smaller flake expertly knapped. One-Eye and Redlance were already hard at work devising wooden handles for the knife-blades Littlefire had prepared.
The majority of the tribe feasted on fresh meat, still steaming from the fresh kill. Spar, Kit and Littlefire ate their roasted portions on a branch above, upwind of the offending odours. When the last of the wolves was gorged and all the Wolfriders sated, Redlance called Littlefire down to join the others. He went cautiously, Kit at his side.
“Littlefire, we were all a little worried about you when you first came here,” Redlance said. “And we did not always handle our worries well, I admit it. But you’ve earned your packright beyond all doubt. And if you still wish it, we’d like to howl for you as our new stoneworker.”
“Don’t howl!” Littlefire said sharply. “Too loud. But... thank you,” he finished clumsily.
Moonshade gathered up the deer hide. “This hide is yours by packright,” she said simply, a hesitant smile on her face. “It’s a fine one, ready to yield enough leathers to clothe two elves.”
Littlefire took it. “What do I do?”
“With the hide?” Redlance asked. “That’s for you to decide.”
Littlefire handed it to Kit. “Oh, no, Littlefire,” she protested. “It’s yours. I’ll have enough hides once the snows melt.”
“No,” he insisted, offering it to her again. When she accepted it, he tapped the folded leather. “You can howl there,” he said. “It makes more sense to me that way.”
One-Eye laughed. Rainsong and Woodlock exchanged grins. Strongbow and Moonshade exchanged bewildered scowls.
Kit let the hide soak in the tanner’s pool for two turns of Mother Moons, then stretched and scraped it until it was as soft as mouse’s fur. When it was prepared she began to tell her new howl, not with paint this time, but with cords of dyed sinew and porcupine quills. Slowly words, then sentences began to bloom across the leather.
“Looks... complicated,” Littlefire pronounced thoughtfully.
Kit smiled. “You mean complex?”
He nodded, a touch of bewilderment on his face. There was no difference between the concepts to his mind.
“Will you teach me read it?” he asked.
“When it’s finished,” she said, abandoning her canvas to sit next to him on the sleeping furs. She reached underneath the basket of weaving materials and pulled out a large piece of treated bark. A small howl was painted on the page of bark.
“Until then,” she casually slipped into his lap. Littlefire obligingly wrapped his arms about her waist and set his chin on her shoulder as she began to read the symbols aloud, unlining each pictograph with a dye-stained finger.
“‘When smallest son of Vaya born, sired by Aurek Eggmaster, child possessed eyes of skyfire clouds – dark blue and gray. Pike Howlkeeper saw the child’s eyes and said “He has eyes of skyfire clouds – thunderstorm eyes this child has.” And Skot saw the child’s eyes and said “This child is the smallest son – he is too small to be a child of skyfire. He is a little fire.” And Vaya looked at her smallest son and named him. She named him, saying “This child is a Littlefire.”’”
**Wesh.**
The sound washed over her, like the distant cascade of rolling thunder, just over the horizon. Kit’s breath caught in her throat as she twisted around to look at her lovemate.
“W-what?”
“My name,” Littlefire murmured. “She named me Wesh.”
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