The Named: The Complete Series

Chapter Seven

The fire was banked and burning low. Above its crackle Thistle could hear the sounds of breathing—Ratha, Bira, and Khushi were asleep nearby.

Thakur wasn’t asleep. Thistle could tell by the way he moved restlessly beside her. She wasn’t asleep either, and it was not just his squirming that was keeping her awake.

She was angry at Ratha. Khushi and Bira too, but mostly Ratha. Once again her mother had chosen to strike out at those she did not understand.

She did that to me and she is doing it again to this other clan. I thought she would have learned better by now.

Beside her, Thakur rolled over again, sighed, and started to get up.

“Thakur?” she said, not wanting his comforting warmth to be replaced by the cool night air.

“Sh, Thistle. Don’t wake the others. I can’t sleep, so I thought I’d go watch the stars for a while.”

“Can’t sleep either. Go with you?”

“All right, but be quiet.”

They left the campfire and the sleepers behind, Thakur moving noiselessly through the scrub. Thistle glanced back. The fire had become a dim glow in the distance between the trees. When the low boughs and brush overhead opened up to a clear night sky, Thakur sat down and lifted his chin. Thistle did too.

There was no moon that night. Each star was as sharp as the point of a claw. Across part of the sky there was a misty light wafting outward like a plume of smoke from the Red Tongue. To Thistle, the night had a stark, aching beauty.

“It makes me want… something I do not even know about,” she said, wriggling a little closer to Thakur’s warmth.

Thakur said, “It makes me want to lift my paw to the sky, even though I know I cannot reach the stars.”

“Night-flying birds,” Thistle said. “The mice with wings and big ears—could those creatures fly high enough?”

She felt him give a sigh again. “Somehow … I don’t think so.”

After a long silence, she asked, “Thakur, does… she… ever sit like this and look up? My mother, I mean.”

“I think she did when she was a cub. But that was a long time ago. She hasn’t done it for a while.”

“Being clan leader is hard. Too many things to think about,” Thistle said.

“Too many,” Thakur agreed.

Again the silence fell and covered them both. The stars seemed to shimmer against the night sky.

“You were right,” said Thistle abruptly. “What you said—to my mother and the rest—you were right. Don’t let anyone make you back away from what you said.”

“Why do you say that, Thistle?” Thakur asked in a mild voice. The herding teacher sounded slightly puzzled, as he often did when she took off on a different thought trail without letting him know where she was going.

“Because the other Named ones—they will try to make you say you are wrong about the hunters. And my mother—she will try the hardest of all.”

“She is clan leader, Thistle,” she heard him say gently. “She is doing what she thinks is best for all of us. She must, or we will not survive.”

“Not best for me,” she protested. “Not for you either, or for the hunting clan. You said, ‘Can’t there be room for Named and others as well?’ Think there can be.” She paused, feeling her whiskers tremble with the force of passion. “Don’t let them make you give that up, Thakur.”

There was bafflement in the herding teacher’s green eyes. “Thistle, what makes you feel so strongly?”

“Don’t you think you were right?” she asked, afraid that he was going to change his mind.

“Yes, and I’m glad you think so, too, but I’m just surprised. After all, these hunters have repeatedly attacked us.”

Thistle couldn’t answer. She wasn’t sure. When had this conviction come to her—that the strange clan were more than savage killers? She tried to cast her mind back, remembering. Yes, she had screamed and run away, but she was fleeing from the Dreambiter, not from the strangers. And before that had happened, there was something else, dim and weakly sensed, but powerful.

“They gave me something,” she said. “What they call… the song.” She had looked into a hunter’s eyes. She had breathed his breath, touched his whiskers, inhaled his smell. And in all of that was the knowledge of the song; that he heard it and that he knew that she also heard it, however briefly.

She struggled to explain this to Thakur, but the words she found were not the right ones, and her newly made hold on language began to slip.

“Arrr! How can I say it? How?” she blurted in frustration as Thakur tried to soothe her. “Something comes from them. From them into me. And I know that they know… Oh, arrr, that isn’t right either.” Her tail flipped irritably back and forth, but Thakur seemed to have infinite patience.

Finally she said, “I have heard my mother talk about a ‘gift’ that you Named ones have. That it shows in the eyes. These hunters have something like it, but instead of looking out, they look in. Instead of speaking, they listen. Instead of trying to make sense, they make dreams. Do you understand, Thakur?”

“Only a little.”

She stumbled on. “How do I know this? I can’t tell you. What they have … is like the sea when you swim in it. All around you. Moving into you. Making voices in you. Making you feel the same as when you look up to the sky. The fierce red thing …” She fell silent.

“The Red Tongue,” Thakur said.

“It would destroy all of that. Wish my mother would understand.”

“Perhaps you can help her understand.”

“And perhaps you can scratch the stars,” she said wryly.

“Thistle …”

“Oh, Thakur, how can I lead anyone on this path when I am so lost?” she burst out, feeling an anguish that made her want to cry aloud. She leaned her head against the fur on his breast. He was so gentle, so wise, so eloquent….

She sighed. “Wish I could talk better. But sometimes the words—they run away. Because I am not Named?”

“Thistle, you are Named.”

“Only through my mother.”

“Through your father as well. He was not a clan member, but he had the same gifts. Perhaps he was more gifted than any of us.” Thakur paused. “Ratha called him Bonechewer. He was my brother.”

Thistle listened to Thakur’s heart—strong, steady, and comforting. She had always sensed that he resembled her lost father. Now she knew why.

“If he was what you say, why didn’t he pass it to me? Why did my mother think we were all so stupid”—her voice caught—“and drive us away?”

“Thistle, he did pass his gift on to you, but it took a long time to show. I think that is the reason you were slow in growing up. Because you weren’t with us, you didn’t learn to speak as a cub. That is why you find it difficult now.”

“And … the driving us away?”

“Ratha told you once,” Thakur said softly. “Don’t you remember? She couldn’t bear the idea that you couldn’t be like other Named cubs. But it wasn’t your fault, and she told you she was wrong.”

“Yes, she did,” Thistle admitted. “But it is hard to make her words feel real.”

“You may need to hear them again. It may take you many seasons of hearing them.”

She let the silence stay for a little while before chasing it away with a question. “I had a brother, didn’t I?”

“Two. There were three of you in the litter.”

“Are my brothers like me?”

“We don’t know, Thistle. We never found them.”

“Does my mother… want to find them?”

There was a long pause before he answered. “I think you should ask her.”

“Maybe I will. But not here. For my mother—too many things to think about.”

“Too many,” Thakur agreed, yawning. “I feel I can fall asleep now.”

Thistle felt her own mouth stretch in a sleepy gape. She followed Thakur back to the campfire and curled up beside him.