“I know!” Sudden, vehement, Sivan shook off Maloh’s caress. “I know. But I also know there has been interference enough. I dare do nothing more until I have spoken to my brother. And”—with a heavy frown—“my father.”
AS THE t’rešalt lingered to a distant shadow within the massive hedge, Tokela expected—hoped—his overburdened senses would dull.
If anything, they heightened.
Amber light fingered across the darkness, giving plenty of light… too much. Tokela staggered down the hillock, came to the next copse of trees and stumbled to a halt, leaning against one of them. His hands rose, of their own accord, to press behind his ears… and that was where he felt it the most, a strange, hot, tight-stretched sensation of not-sound, of… pressure. Tighter. Harder. Pain…
“N’da.” Until he heard it, Tokela hadn’t realised he’d spoken aloud, and he nearly laughed… as if he could stop such a thing with a small, quavering voice?
But.
It stopped.
As if he’d finally pulled from River’s depths a too-full weir, with all the water pouring from the netting to leave trapped swimmingKin, glittering and gasping…
His own breath came just as thick and rasping. Any predator walking or flying would hear, take advantage. Tokela swallowed, clenched his fists. One step, unsure but steady. Then another. Several more. Each one grew stronger. Each one made the strange pressure/pain ebb. By the twentieth step, Tokela was able to walk with eyes high, hands once again swinging his strides.
But those hands were clenched, and it was not his normal, ground-eating tread. He couldn’t fully replace hesitancy, couldn’t fight the surety:
Things were different.
Every sound resonated, every shadow loomed large. Moss and bracken wafted up where he trod, an invasion of bruised green-wet. The surround cupped itself close and lingered, uncanny. Earth and Sky made Their Dance ever closer, pressing against his heart to set it wildly thumping, and They uttered sounds like… like… whispers.
Was this what his dam had felt? Was this what had taken her Spirit?
Tokela forced his heart calm, his gait steady. Again, to totter like a wounded buck—alone—was asking for more than a loss of Spirit. It was no more than the aura of the forbidden places, the Chepiś’s interference. It was what they did, twist Grandmother’s children into beasts. Like the beasts whose talons now lay in his pouch.
The latter trickled satisfaction through his being, and his senses, given something to do—namely avoid darkling predators and stay alive—set themselves to just that.
Tokela stopped at a small pond to wash away the oddling blood as best he could. It nevertheless hung in his nostrils past all reason. He avoided a pack of wolfKin by just knowing, somehow, where they were before he’d so much as noticed their passage; the same with a huge, dusky wildcat that crossed his trail and kept going. The predators knew, somehow: he was no longer so easy.
And so he passed, from deep woods into scattered settlements and small clearings, toward the glow that lit Sky above River.
Ai, how could he have forgotten? It was Silver Roe Moon, and his People were setting the greeting Fires of First Running in the Mound’s wide stone bowl. He’d likely been missed.
Growling to himself, Tokela slipped into the newer copse edging the crest of Talking Bluff. Sure enough, voices raised in song reached upward from the great bowl, underlain with the purling beat of the great drums. Fire lit thisdark all copper against pitch, crackling with the sweet-spice scent of gifted wood from other Lands, and hovering higher as Tokela approached the drumheights, larger sibling to the blaze flickering, small and cheerful, in the drumKeeper’s small kiln.
Thisdark’s drumKeeper was thankfully dozing, an elder with gnarled hands laced across his chest.
Tokela slung his discarded leggings and boots over his injured shoulder. It no longer gave pain, just a slight sting of reminder that he veered from. As he crept past the drums, bare feet silent against the cool, carven stones, he passed his fingers in quick, mute blessing over the glowing embers…
Jumped in his own skin as Fire leapt upward and licked, soft heat, at his palm.
Tokela scooted for the stair, descending it headlong to slip into the shadows of the outer bowl. Best that he avoid any festivities thisdark, take the back tunnels and head downRiver, stay in the wykhupeh ’til dawn.
The outlying places were dark, uninhabited, save for one where voices carried upon the mists. Only partially hewn into the cliff, remainder constructed of bark and withies, clay and living roof, the longhouse’s round windows betrayed the warming light of gleaming-stones. This particular common space was set apart, large enough to contain a literal pack of males, residents and guests alike.
Of course, the oških would have left after the stories, to prepare for the upcoming Suns and their own games, their own Dances.
It wasn’t the only time Tokela had passed the males’ den in his Moonslit wanderings, or paused to take in the flickers through the woven scrims. Particularly after the first time, when he’d received the wyrh tree, was tested—and failed. But it was the first time all the sounds tingled across his nerves like busy fingers: snores wafting outward as well as muted laughter and voices.
Perhaps his hearth-mother was right in this much: he should be here, regardless of what bodytalk he didn’t yet have, because of what whispered in his heart.
Perhaps the doing would undermine the tiny and strange voice that kept telling him: Wait, not yet. Not yet.
Another, very different voice registered—a mewl, almost. Tokela alerted, then smirked as he saw several figures huddling in the shadows of the overhanging trees next to the longholm. Ai, there was always that at festivals, too. Mere good manners to turn your eyes from partners rutting each other—whether adults in a family den or, like now, oških playing.
There were not merely two, but three of them, a tangle of dusky shadows, skin against skin beneath Moonslight. Tokela often passed by such things, aloof and unmoved more often than not. But thisnow,
