observed in a dust-dry mind voice, and it was Golden Voice’s turn to bleek in laughter, for she was very young. Less than half Laughs Brightly’s age, Branch Leaper estimated, though it was hard to be certain. Like all females, she was much smaller than the average male, and her dappled brown and gray pelt did not boast the tail rings which indicated a male’s age. Both of those things made estimating her age difficult, and the fact that she was so… different from any other female he had ever met only complicated matters still further.
<I am not yet ancient, Senior Singer,> Golden Voice admitted, <yet I do not regret my choices. And Sun Leaf Clan had a full two hands of well-trained memory singers. It was not as though they truly needed yet another, and the hunger for the human mind glow was upon me.> She gave another ear flick, meeting Wind of Memory’s gaze squarely. <We do not deny the need to taste the human mind glow to our hunters, or our scouts, or to any other male. And other females have bonded with the humans, if not a great many. It would have been wrong and unjust of my elders to deny me the right to bond simply because I had the potential of a memory singer.>
<You did not have “the potential,” sister-of-choice,> Songstress said, speaking up for the first time. <You are a memory singer, whether you have claimed or accepted the duties of one or not, and this is something you know as well as I. If it would have been wrong or unjust of Sun Leaf Clan’s elders and memory singers to deny you the right to bond with a human, was it not also wrong of you to refuse the responsibility to your clan which comes with the mind voice and the depth of memory you own?>
A mental hush hovered at the memory singer’s forthright demand. Among humans, Branch Leaper had been told, such a query would have been considered an insult, or at least insufferably rude, but that was something he had never truly understood. Among the People, there was no real point in not asking it, or in trying to conceal the emotions which went with it, for there was no way one of the People could not know that another harbored that question or those feelings. There were questions the People simply did not ask of one another, but they were few and fell into areas which had been considered deeply private in even the oldest of memory songs. Personally, Branch Leaper had always assumed that that was because the People’s ancestors had learned the hard way that those areas—like the reasons a couple chose to mate—were the most likely to provoke conflict. A people who heard one another’s thoughts and tasted one another’s mind glows could not possibly have put all potential areas of conflict off limits, however, and outside those which had been sanctified by iron custom, the People addressed one another with a frankness which would have been devastating in any mind-blind society.
Yet for all that, the challenge and disapproval of Bright Water’s second ranking memory singer hung before Golden Voice like a set of bared fangs. The younger female turned her calm regard on Songstress for several long breaths, then flicked the tip of her tail in acknowledgment.
<I am what—and who—I am, Memory Singer,> she said then. <I did not choose the strength of voice or mind glow or memory I possess, just as I did not choose the need to taste the human mind glow. And I have paid for my choices with sorrow as well as joy.>
A stab of grief ripped through her mind glow, the subtle sorrow Branch Leaper had tasted from the first exploding to the surface. It was only for an instant, yet all who tasted it flinched before it. It was a memory singer’s grief, with all the vibrant power of a memory singer’s mind behind it, and in that searing instant all within the reach of her mind voice were one with her, sharing the agony of loss and bereavement as her adopted human died and the bitter knife of death slashed the delicate binding and interweaving which had made Golden Voice and her human both individuals and one being. It was as if the very sun above them had exploded, destroying all the world—not in fire, but in freezing cold and utter desolation, and Branch Leaper cowered down on all six limbs, pressing his belly to the branch beneath him as the perfect reproduction of that moment of loss and torment took him by the throat. He tasted Golden Voice’s need to follow her person into darkness, the need to cling to his mind glow’s glory wherever it went… and the desperate need to escape the dreadful emptiness his death had left in her soul and mind.
Yet there was more than simple despair in that shared moment. There was another mind glow, one which clung to her even more desperately than she had hungered for the peace of nonbeing. It had gripped her fiercely, refusing to release her and blazing against the darkness. It was not like her human’s mind glow had been. For all its power, it was weaker, almost muted—a subtler beauty, in more delicately blended colors, without the unbridled strength of the human mind glows. Yet also unlike the human mind glows, it engaged hers on all levels, merging with it, anchoring itself within her even as she had anchored herself within it.
It had been Laughs Brightly, Branch Leaper realized, and turned his awed gaze upon the older male. Weaker than a human mind glow though it might have been, still the sheer, raw power of his demand for Golden Voice to live had dwarfed anything a male should have been able to produce. Yet even as that sense of awe touched him, Branch Leaper wondered why he felt it. So far as he knew, never in all the history of People and humans had both halves of a mated pair also adopted humans… and never before had a female with the mind voice and mind glow of a memory singer bonded with any human. Laughs Brightly and Golden Voice had passed into territory none of the People had ever explored. No doubt it was only natural for them to discover things there which the People had never expected.
<Yes, you have paid,> Songstress agreed after a moment, but if her mind voice was a bit more subdued, there was no less disapproval in it. <Yet had you remained with Sun Leaf Clan as you ought to have, that price would never have been demanded of you.>
<No doubt that is true, Memory Singer. Yet the only way to avoid the price would have been to deny the joy from whence it sprang, and it is the decisions I have made—and the prices I have paid—which make me what I am today. You say that I am a memory singer, and perhaps there is truth in that. Yet I have also bonded with a human and tasted the beauty and power of his mind glow… and the anguish of its loss. And I have mated with Laughs Brightly and known the joy and the glory of becoming one with another who can taste and be tasted in return. And I have borne our kittens and tasted the soft magic of their mind glows in my womb and welcomed them into the world as they opened their eyes upon its sunlight for the very first time. I have known and done these things, Memory Singer. Not simply in the memory songs I have tasted and made my own and sung for others.>
<And those of us who have not done those things, who can know them “simply” in the songs we taste and sing, are somehow less than you who have done them?> Songstress demanded.
<I did not say that, Memory Singer,> Golden Voice replied calmly, <nor do I think it.> Songstress glared at her for a moment, but then her tail flicked in acknowledgment. Golden Voice’s mind glow was clear and bright, and Songstress tasted her sincerity as clearly as any other person present.
<I say only that I have known and done them myself,> Golden Voice continued. <It was by my own choice and will, yet I ask you this, Memory Singer. You have sung the songs of all of those who have bonded with humans, beginning with your own clan’s Climbs Quickly and Death Fang’s Bane. More of Bright Water Clan’s scouts and hunters have bonded with humans than any other clan’s, and you know the mind taste of Death Fang’s Bane Clan, the bright light and power that beckons to People from all over this world. Had you been born with that same need, that same hunger to embrace the human mind glow, would you have refused it?>
