Elvenbane

Whiskers twitched, and the head emerged as far as the eyes. There wasn't even a hint of breeze to bring their scent to him, so even though he was obviously timid, he had nothing to alarm him.

The squirrel peered around suspiciously. His whiskers twitched again as he eyed Shana and Keman, clearly mistrusting their presence despite their immobility.

More of the head emerged, hair by hair...then, suddenly, the ground squirrel was not only entirely out of his hole, but several arm-lengths away from the entrance to the burrow. Shana blinked in surprise; she hadn't even seen him begin to move. One moment he had been inside the crevice, all except for his head...the next, he'd been a blur of motion that had ended under the sajus-bush upwind of Keman.

She could hardly see him there, in the dappled and broken shade of the bush; his coloration of spots and lines on a fawn-brown background hid him perfectly. He looked just like a brown rock spattered with sunlight and shadow. Now I know why I never see them until they jump out from underfoot, she thought wonderingly. I thought those stripes would make him easy to see.

And it was obvious now why she could never catch one; as quickly as this squirrel had moved, from one spot of cover into another, only a very canny hunter would be able to intercept him.

The squirrel remained under the bush, completely motionless, until their continued immobility convinced him that they were no threat. Only then did he inch his way out into the sunlight and investigate the pile of pine nuts they'd put out as bait.

His stubby little tail went straight up as he sniffed and realized what bounty he had just found. He began stuffing them into his mouth as fast as his little paws could grab them, looking for all the world like Myre with a choice catch of fish. They had put out far more nuts than he could possibly carry; his cheek pouches were bulging so far that Shana could make out the individual nuts, and still he kept trying to fit one more in.

She couldn't help it; she giggled. And faster than a bolt of lightning, he was streaking across the yellow- brown, sunbaked earth, heading for the safety of his burrow. He actually ran over Keman's foot to get there, something he probably wouldn't have done if Shana hadn't frightened him.

:That will do, children,: Alara said clearly in Shana's mind. Shana leapt to her feet, glad to be moving again after her forced immobility. She truly hated having to sit still, even for lessons.

'I bet I beat you!' she shouted to her foster brother, and launched herself across the sand.

She raced Keman back to the lair, trying to use the advantages of her small size and speed to compensate for the fact that he could leap over obstacles she had to detour around. This time she beat him, though not by much; only the fact that she was able to squeeze between two boulders that he had to climb over gave her the extra edge she needed to defeat him.

Foster Mother was waiting for them in the shade of the stone gazebo. The lacy shadows cast by the intricate stonework looked very pretty on Alara's shining scales. Shana was glad Foster Mother had made the gazebo big enough for them all to sit in. She slid onto her own little bench. It had been fun watching her use magic to work the stone. Shana hoped she could do stone-shaping that pretty when she was bigger. She'd hate to be like Ahshlea; all he could make were ugly flat blocks. Ugh. No wonder he lives on a ledge.

Keman flopped down onto the cool floor beside her, panting. She nudged him with her foot, and he mock- snapped at it, grinning, before turning his attention to his mother.

'So,' Alara said gravely, as she fixed her enormous golden eyes on Shana until the girl stopped squirming in her seat. 'What was it that you saw?'

'The squirrel was very careful,' Shana replied promptly. 'He didn't come out until he was absolutely sure he was safe.'

'Yes,' Alara said, nodding. 'And what did he do to make sure he was safe?'

'He checked for scent first,' Keman answered, the end of his tail twitching a little. 'Even when he was down in the burrow, he was checking for scent. He didn't even start to look around until after he thought there was nothing close to him.'

'Then he stuck just his head out and looked all around,' Shana continued. 'Anything that was new he sat and watched to see if it was going to move at all. That was us; we didn't move, so he must have figured we weren't going to.' She thought for a moment, watching the bright spots of sunlight on the white stone of the gazebo making negative-lace patterns. 'Probably a hunter would have gotten tired of waiting and taken a chance on jumping on him once he got his whole head out of the burrow.'

'But if we had moved, he could have been right down the burrow before we could blink,' Keman finished, lifting his head from his foreclaws.

'Do you see why he is so hard to catch?' Alara asked. 'Even though he is not a terribly intelligent beast?'

Keman nodded; Shana pursed her lips in thought.

'He's not very smart,' she said at last, 'but he's really careful and he's fast. That makes up for smart, I guess.'

'It can,' Alara acknowledged. 'And the adult ground squirrel you've seen is a survivor...for every adult, there are ten little ones who never learned to be careful enough and became prey for other animals. You should both watch this particular squirrel, and see how he uses his speed and agility to protect himself...and try to think of ways in which his behavior could become a trap. Keman, you must learn how to imitate that behavior and avoid the traps; Shana, you must learn how he thinks so that you will be able to sense his tiny thoughts and become one with him.'

This time both Keman and Shana nodded. In order to learn to hear the squirrel's mind, she was going to have to learn to think like him. She hadn't known that.

'Now, you've had your lessons in languages, and you've had your lesson with the ground squirrel,' Alara said, smiling indulgently on both of them. 'Can either of you think of any questions for me, before I go scry for storms?'

Shana recalled, belatedly, the elven children's book she was supposed to have read. 'Why aren't there any human books?' Shana asked. 'I know as much human as elven, so why aren't there any books?'

A shadow passed behind her foster mother's eyes. 'It is said that the elven lords did not want their slaves to learn to read or write,' Alara told her, her smile fading. 'They felt that if their slaves could only pass things on by word of mouth, there was less chance of rebellion. So there are no books written in the human tongue, and in fact, it is also said that tongue died out. Most humans spoke a mixture of elven and human, and many spoke only pure elven.'

'Are there books from the Kin?' Keman wanted to know. 'I've seen the carvings, but do we have real books?'

'Yes,' Alara told him. 'A few, and all handwritten, done when the writers were in other forms. And most of them were written by shamans. I'll show you the written language later, when you've mastered written elven.'

Spoken human, elven-human, elven and Kin. Shana sighed. It seemed like an awful lot to learn. But if she was going to go out into the world like Foster Mother did, she'd need to know all of them. Keman was learning all of them too, and he was older than she was. She wondered what a human looked like, or an elven lord...were they like the Kin, only smaller, or maybe different colored?

She looked up from her musing to see that Alara was watching her thoughtfully. With a start of guilt, she wondered if Alara knew she hadn't done her reading lesson yet. Shana nodded, trying to hide her guilt. I'd better think of an excuse before she asks me...

But Alara did not ask if Shana had finished her lessons. Instead, she said, 'That will be all for today. We'll concentrate more on languages tomorrow. But in the meantime, both of you study the little ground squirrel, and bring what you learn to me tonight after dinner.'

Shana escaped the confines of the gazebo with a feeling of reprieve.

Alara watched her foster daughter scamper away across the hard-baked ground and experienced mingled emotions: pride, and guilt. The child grew more attractive with every passing day...a lithe, lean girt, surefooted and athletic, a remarkable combination of frailty and toughness. Her fine-textured skin had darkened to a warm brown from constant exposure to the sun, and her bright green eyes sparkled with humor more often than not. From her elven father, she inherited delicate bones and a beautifully sculpted face with high cheekbones and a determined chin. From her mother, she took her dark, deep-auburn hair that shone in the sun like old copper. Her little tunics of patchwork dragon-skin gleamed against her sun-gilded limbs as if she wore a corselette of enameled metalwork.

She had become indispensable to Alara, and even those of the Kin most opposed to her presence agreed