Midsummer's Hunt
Joyleaf slipped out of her den as the last rays of the sun disappeared in the growing shadows. Dusk had come to the forest, and the Wolfriders could now roam without fear of human attacks.
The weather was mild, as warm breezes gently blew in from the south, melting the last vestiges of frost. The past white-cold had been very harsh, and more than once Joyleaf had feared for her tribe’s safety. But they had weathered the storms, and now at last the newgreen was upon them.
The chieftess of the Wolfriders paused on the gnarled roots of Father Tree. The other elves were slower to rise, and all but young Skywise were still fast asleep. Joyleaf spotted the cub playing in the stream, his wolf-friend Starjumper watching from the riverbank.
“Hello, Skywise. Did you sleep well?”
The boy glanced over his shoulder. “Not really. Couldn’t sleep.” He waded through the stream, his pants rolled up around his knees. “I thought I’d go fishing.”
“Aren’t you cold?”
“Nope.”
Joyleaf smiled. Skywise was such a brave little cub. He had suffered through the white-cold without complaint with older, stronger Wolfriders shivered and moaned in misery. Grumbling had run perilously close to become genuine dissent, yet Skywise simply curled deeper into his fur blanket and cuddled close to his mother’s body for warmth.
What a fine Wolfrider he would become.
“Catch anything?”
“Nope. I guess I’m not as good as Rillfisher.”
“You’ll get the hang of it. But you remember not to go beyond the glade without one of your parents or Foxfur or Rainsong, hmm?”
Skywise bowed his head. “Yes, chieftess.”
She reached out and ruffled his white hair. “The last time you ran away from the Holt you found Starjumper, but I’d hate to see you try it again and find a human.”
Skywise nodded gravely. The six-year-old knew all about the threats that humans posed. He had grown up hearing the stories – how One-Eye had lost his eye to the human hunting party, how Crescent had been dragged from the water and murdered, how the old chief Bearclaw had threatened to bring down the wrath of the humans, and how Joyleaf had taken the chief’s lock from him.
Joyleaf stretched. “Where are the others, hmm? The white-cold is over. They should be springing from their dens.”
Even as she spoke, Pike stuck his head out of his den and stretched. The elf yawned, then seemed to melt back into his den. Skywise chuckled, then crawled out of the streambed. Joyleaf helped him climb up onto the soft grass. “Ooh, your hands are cold,” she laughed.
“Yep. I’m gonna get Pike right on the back of his neck.”
Joyleaf smiled and shook her head. Skywise was most certainly Pike’s little nephew. The chieftess fondly recalled the night their newest tribemate was born. It had seemed almost that fate decided to compensate the Wolfriders for the loss of Bearclaw, because on-again-off-again lovemates Eyes High and Shale had Recognized not two months after Bearclaw’s departure.
Why had she thought of him, just now?
She shook her head. No. She hadn’t seen Bearclaw for eight years. She wasn’t about to waste a thought on him now.
A yelp of surprise came from Pike’s den, followed by a flurry of laughter from Skywise.
The tribe came alive in the growing darkness, and the soft light of the two moons. Soon Rainsong and Moonshade were stringing together a long garland of white star-blooms, while Pike lounged sleepily on one of the branches outside his den. Skywise lay in the grass, pinned by a lazy Starjumper, who was demanding a good scratch on his muzzle.
Clearbrook and One-Eye set out to dig up some fresh roots, while Strongbow roused a still-sleepy Grayling and Redmark for a hunting party. Joyleaf smiled. Nothing warmed a chief’s heart so much as seeing the tribe united and thriving.
It wasn’t always so. She remembered the pain and frustration during the first months of her chieftainship. Bearclaw had been chief for hundreds over years, and the tribe had not adapted well to his departure, and Joyleaf’s new role. Strongbow and Moonshade had been the most vocal opponents – figuratively speaking in Strongbow’s case. And no small of amount of tension brewed between Strongbow and his half-brother Grayling. Strongbow had felt that as Bearclaw’s son, Grayling ought to have defended his father’s position. But Grayling was never a great admirer of the old chief – in no small part due to Bearclaw’s own ambivalence towards his son.
**He is your sire!** Strongbow had raged.
“And well I know you would rather he were yours.”
**Where is your loyalty?**
“Joyleaf is my chief now. Where is your loyalty to her?”
**She has not earned it.**
“And when did Bearclaw ever earn yours?”
**How dare you say that? What gives you the right?**
“Because he’s my sire!”
That same argument had played on many different forms for moon-dances. Meanwhile, Moonshade, Foxfur, and even Eyes High found little moments to display a petty insolence. They performed their duties poorly. They forced Joyleaf to correct them, and thus seem like an overbearing tyrant. Treestump gave Joyleaf a cold shoulder – no, not cold, just... bewildered. He looked to her with a strange sort of half-resentful, half-mournful look, as though his sister was dead, and a stranger had taken her place.
Those first few months had been hard. More than once Joyleaf had hoped Bearclaw would stagger back from the woods and take back his chief’s lock. Turning against her lovemate – her lifemate – had nearly broken her heart.
And yet... what she saw in his mind when their souls battled for supremacy...
She still shuddered, to think of the Wolf inside him.
It was... a mad... raving beast – an overwhelming force of rage and reckless passion.
He was not fit to lead. He was sick in his very soul.
And yet, sometimes, when she fast asleep in the late afternoon, she thought she heard something in her dreams. A strange concept-image-sound that clawed at her defences.
Grrrrr...
It frightened her. And yet... she almost longed to hear the word clearly.
Joyleaf shook her head. No. Bearclaw was gone. He had left the forest long ago. He might even be dead by now. Either way he was gone.
She would not think of him. She would forget. She would move on.
But she had long since lost the gift of the Now of Wolf-thought.
It had been dying within her for years, but she lost it forever the day she defeated Bearclaw.
The newgreen faded into a warm, golden summer. The hunting was excellent, and it seemed that every day, a new hunting party returned with more meat. “Stroke the fires,” Joyleaf commanded. “Whatever we can’t eat, we will smoke and store for the white-cold.”
**And what if the humans see our smoke?** Strongbow asked.
“Foxfur and Brownberry are eyes-high – they will tell us if the humans are showing too much of an interest. I don’t think we need to worry – they would need to climb a very tall tree – or a small mountain – to be able to see our smoke.
“Ah – I hate this work,” Treestump grunted, as he and Pike stirred the ashes over to wooden racks of meat. “I hate the smoke, I hate the taste of burned meat.”
“I rather like it,” Pike shrugged. “Of course, I wish we could eat it now, instead of letting it harden as stiff as bark. But it’s sure better in the white-cold than a single snow-starved ravvit.”
Nearby, Moonshade and Woodlock were scraping hides, while Moonsbreath and Rainsong stirred the fermenting vat of tannins that softened the hides for scraping.
Redmark and Grayling returned astride their wolves. Behind them they dragged a large rectangular travois, over which was draped a young buck.
“Hey, Moonshade!” Redmark laughed. “How’s this?”
“More than enough, Redmark,” she grinned.
“Leave the best hair on the hides, Moonshade,” Joyleaf said as she helped them unload the deer. “I want thick new leathers for everyone. My heart tells me the next white-cold will be even worse than the last. And if we can help it, I’d like new thick hide curtains on all our dens, to seal out the wind. We won’t shiver in the cold like last year.”
Skywise ran up to her, and Joyleaf lifted him high in air. “Isn’t that right, Skywise? Ahh – you’re so heavy already. Better make three sets of leathers for him, Moonshade - this wolf cub is growing fast.”
Rillfisher raced up to them. **There are some fine fern-fish lurking near Goodtree’s Glen. Who will fish with me?**
**I will,** Grayling sent – for Rillfisher had long be rendered deaf by a severe fever.
“Oh, you have done enough for now, Grayling,” Joyleaf began. But the young archer – his face a soft mirror of his elder brother Strongbow’s – shrugged.
**I’m not tired. I’ll go with Rillfisher.**
The blond fisher grinned. **Then let’s go.**
Joyleaf sat down on a rock, and watched her tribe hurry about the business of stocking up for the white-cold. Skywise sat down next to his grandmother Moonsbreath, and asked if he could help with the tanning. Moonsbreath smiled, and let him stir the fermenting brew.
Joyleaf remembered Skywise’s tears, only a few years ago. His mother’s wolf had had a litter, and none of the cubs were destined to be his wolf-friend. He was heartbroken, and he wept miserably.
But Joyleaf knew what he really wanted – another elf-cub to play with. An agemate.
No cubs had been born in the tribe since Crescent. The closest in age to Skywise was his own father, Shale.
They needed cubs. Despite Rain’s attempts to force Recognition, both with Moonsbreath and with other elf couples, only Pike had ever been conceived. One-Eye and Clearbrook in particular wanted a new child, and Rain had been working hard to create something – some sort of spark inside either of them – that might one day bloom into full Recognition.
Joyleaf herself had Recognized once before... long ago. How she had hoped she and Bearclaw might one day–
No. She would not think of it.
As dawn neared the Holt, Joyleaf paced around the borders of their territory, the gnarled brambles and the distinctive scent marks of their wolfpack. She was tired, yet the air was still so crisp and moist that she did not yet feel like retiring.
She heard a mournful howl in the air. She recognized it instantly.
Bearclaw...
She had never so much as scented him on the air for eight years.
He was still alive...
She wasn’t certain whether she was relieved or terrified.
Two days later, Joyleaf was carefully sharpening one of her arrowheads when Shale and Woodlock came rushing into the Holt, their clothing torn and their weapons missing. Joyleaf leapt to her feet.
Humans? Have they at last returned for us, after leaving us in relative peace for eight turns of the seasons?
“What happened?” Rainsong raced up to her lovemate and hugged him fiercely. “Oh, Woodlock... you look like you were mauled by a troll!”
“Bear...” Woodlock gasped.
“Old Toothless,” Shale said. He ran a hand through his mussed hair, then bent down to pick up his son.
“Father! Father! What happened to you? Are you all right?”
“Shh... cubling,” he soothed. “We just had a little run-in with a very cranky old grizzly bear. He took our bows and our spears – well, actually we gave them to him as we raced for the trees. Whew – it’s a good thing that old bear is just too big and too cranky to bother climbing after us.”
“He was too busy claiming our kill,” Woodlock said. “We lost a good tusk-hog to him.”
“So we took a little short-cut home through the trees, hey?” Shale gave Skywise a hug, then swung him up over his shoulders.
Eyes High and Treestump jogged up to the scouts. Eyes High gave her lifemate a hug, while her father hung back to cast a cagey look at his chief-sister. “An old cranky bear is a dangerous thing, sister. But then I think you’re skilled at dealing with them, hey?”
Joyleaf blinked at him. Had he actually told a joke about her challenge with Bearclaw? Never had she imagined he could mention that unfortunate incident so playfully. Treestump had always been the strongest advocate of reconciliation between the two warring lovemates, and he had always seem believe it was up to Joyleaf – the patient nurturer – to heal the rift. Was he now treating her as the warrior she had unwillingly become?
**Brother?**
**Nevermind.** And his smiled softened. **Go deal with Old Toothless. It’s a chief’s right – and a chief’s duty.**
Joyleaf stretched, raising her arms high over her head. **Strongbow,** she sent. **Time to hunt bear. Get your spear.**
Strongbow hastened to her side, already armed with a long pike. If there was any hesitation at going on his first bear hunt without Bearclaw, the archer did not show it. Silently the two elves hiked into the growing darkness, leaving their wolf-friends behind.
“Old Toothless has led a good life...” Joyleaf said, almost to herself. “Sired at least three litters of cubs... seen his mates and children spread out through the forest. Let’s give him one last fight, and a better death than a lingering starvation.”
Strongbow did not reply.
“We’ll use the nets. I left them up in the trees near Goodtree’s Glen. We’ll go there first.”
Strongbow nodded mutely.
It’s hard for him... Joyleaf thought, though he would never admit it.
It was for her as well, to contemplate a hunt for bear without her former lovemate.
They retrieved the heavy net woven of thick fibers and glued together with sap. Several heavy stones at the edges of the net provided the weight needed to ensnare the old grizzly.
Following the game trail, the two elves set the net high in above the crossroads of several scent paths. Sure enough, within an hour of watching, the old grizzly lumbered up over the crest of the hillside, following the scents of deer and squirrels in search of fresh carrion. The bear was huge, a grand old boar of a grizzly. Gray hair streaked his muzzle and shoulder hump, and around his eyes the hair was balding, revealing wrinkled flesh. One of his canines was broken off at the edge of his gums, and his shearing teeth were badly eroded. But his claws were still sharp and wickedly curved.
**He’s looking for elves,** Joyleaf sent. **He’s already learned that he can just drive us away from our kills and feast on the meat himself. Be on guard, Strongbow. We may call him Old Toothless, but he still has some bit left.**
**Aye,** Strongbow sent.
They waited as the bear paced under their tree, sniffing the air in an attempt to identify the fleeting scent above him.
“NOW!” Joyleaf cried. She and Strongbow dropped in unison, pulling the net with them. They flanked bear, and the net fell soundly over his shoulders. Joyleaf sprang in front of the rearing grizzly and thrust with her spear. But her aim was off, and the spear point glanced off the bear’s breastbone.
“Strongbow!” she called as she ducked a swing of Toothless’ paw.
Strongbow sunk his spear point into the beast’s breast, but the point missed the heart. Toothless swung at Strongbow and caught the archer with the pads of his paw. Strongbow went flying, and the spear snapped in two. Almost free of the net now, Toothless charged the archer.
“No! Over here!” Joyleaf jabbed the bear in its flanks. “Here, bear!”
She sprang over the rootlets that littered the forest floor, as the bear turned on her. She stood her ground in front of an old fir tree and dared the bear to charge her. As the bear bore down on her, Joyleaf hefted her lance high and aimed the point directly at his heart. Old Toothless fell on her, and Joyleaf braced the butt of her spear against the tree trunk, the rolled out of the way.
But the spear did not take. The bear was more agile and more quick-witted than she had thought, and he twisted out of the way. The spear sunk deep into the bear’s shoulder, and probably grazed a lung, for Old Toothless began to cough blood and froth at the mouth. But he was still standing. And Joyleaf was now without her spear.
She drew New Moon from its sheath and danced nimbly on the ground, ducking out of the enraged paw-swipes. “Strongbow!”
Strongbow raced forward, brandishing the broken spear shaft. It had a wicked wooden point to it, but no more. And the archer had no other weapon.
**Do we take to the trees?**
**No! We finish what we started.**
Old Toothless lunged between them, and with one sound pivot on his hind legs, checked Strongbow against a tree with his massive flanks. But his bloodshot gaze was fixed on Joyleaf. He caught her in a swipe of his paw and lifted the elf off the ground, pressing her to his chest in a death grip. His maw opened wide to rip her head from her shoulders.
Joyleaf plunged New Moon deep in the bear’s breast, and Toothless threw his head back, spitting blood. His claws dug painfully into the back of Joyleaf’s tunic, and she cried out in agony.
Suddenly a blur dropped from the trees and drove a long spike deep into the back of the bear’s neck, skewering the brainstem. Old Toothless froze, then wobbled and finally fell onto his back, blood pouring from between his now-clenched jaws. Joyleaf struggled to pull herself free of the heavy paws. Had Strongbow recovered?
A hand caught her wrist and pulled her up atop the body of the dear bear. A strong, scarred arm wrapped around her waist. And Joyleaf, Blood of Nine Chiefs, found herself staring deep into the gray eyes of her once-lovemate.
“Bearclaw...?”
The Wolfrider grinned. He had changed much in the eight years since she had last seen him. His left ear was now cut like his right, and many white scars laced across his bared shoulders. But his toothy smile was triumphant as he clasped her to him. The wolfshead pendant still shone against his chest.
The Wolf growled at Joyleaf. He lashed out at her soul with claws and fangs, forcing his will against hers...
**Bearclaw!** Strongbow gasped as he slowly raised his head from the half-conscious sprawl under the tree.
“Are you hurt, beloved?” Bearclaw asked her.
The fire burned her, threatened to extinguish her...
Somehow, Joyleaf realized that her own arm was around Bearclaw’s neck, clutching at his wolfshead pendant.
Grrrr...
**Grrrenn – Grenn!** she gasped as his soulname appeared to her at last.
**Dehl!**
**No – this can’t be! Not now! Not after... after everything!**
**Dehl...**
“Bearclaw...” Strongbow whispered hoarsely as he staggered up to the two elves perched on the body of Old Toothless. He saw the strange looks that passed between the former lovemates and his own brown eyes lit up in comprehension.
“You...”
**Strongbow – go back to the Holt!** Joyleaf sent.
**But–**
**Now! I order you – back to the Holt!**
**I hear my chieftess,** he sent. He turned and jogged out of the clearing, hesitating only once to cast one final glance at Bearclaw.
“You wear the chief’s lock well, beloved,” Bearclaw said.
“Don’t call me that.”
**Dehl...** he leaned in to nuzzle her golden hair.
“I can’t be yours. Not like that. Not.... like...” Her voice trailed off. She heard the Wolf howling in her mind. No – it was something more than a wolf – it was a primal ancestral beast, greater and wilder than any living creature.
Grenn... the name she had feared – yet longed – to hear for eight years.
“I cannot be your lifemate!” she cried.
Bearclaw blinked. The bloodsong seemed to ebb from his eyes. “And I cannot be a Wolfrider.”
Joyleaf disentangled herself from the embrace and stepped back, appraising his new figure. He had lost some weight, and was wirier than ever. He wore no vest or tunic, and his bared torso was streaked with assorted scars and scratches. His trousers were tattered but still reasonably serviceable, and he wore the same fur-lined boots. His spear, she noticed more, was made of fire-hardened wood.
“How... how have you fared?”
“There is.. a wolf that tends to me. A loner, like me. We find enough to keep us alive. Occasionally I take a little extra from the human camp. But never enough that they notice me. I... I would not endanger your tribe, Dehl.”
He acknowledged her leadership. She had not expected it.
The fire burned her, threatened to extinguish her.
“What are we to do?”
“Do?”
“How can I bear your cub, Grenn?” Even speaking his soulname brought back sharp painful memories of the spiritual duel. Grenn was wild and feral, at its heart far too alien, too primal to ever be a fully elfin Wolfrider. Grenn was something else, something that had slumbered on this earth long before the Firstcomers.
And yet Grenn was now a part of her
“No!” Joyleaf cried. She clenched her fists. “No! I cannot!”
Bearclaw watched her uncertainly. He did not need to say that no one could refuse Recognition.
Blood and fire and wardrums. More death, more war.
And at the heart of it all, a screaming child.
**I cannot bear your child!** Joyleaf cried. **I cannot! It will destroy me.**
“Dehl...” Bearclaw reached out and took her hand with a touch that was surprisingly gentle, despite the heavy calluses on his palm. “How long we have waited for this.”
“We ended it! Eight turns ago!”
“Recognition does not care. Recognition is blind to thought and emotion. It is instinct, Dehl.” Now his eyes gleamed with predatory hunger.
Instinct... just like Grenn.
Mad, overwhelming instinct.
“You... you sicken me,” Joyleaf choked out.
Bearclaw climbed down from the bear’s carcass and drew her anew into his arms. “Yet you long for me...”
“I don’t. I don’t. I loathe you. You destroyed our love.”
“But tonight... Dehl. Tonight...”
“And tomorrow? And the day after that?”
“Tomorrow is nothing! What of Now, Joyleaf? Taste the sweetness of Now.”
The fire burned her, threatened to extinguish her.
She could not deny the bloodsong roaring in her veins...
Recognition was overpowering, unstoppable.
Just like Grenn...
Neither word nor sending passed between them as the midsummer night wore on. They gave themselves up to the bloodsong, lost themselves in the Now of Wolf-thought. As the fireflies began to dance over the ferns and they sank down into the soft grass, all they could feel was the driving passion of Recognition realized.
**Grenn... Grenn...** his soulname echoed in Joyleaf’s mind, battering her senseless.
**Dehl... you finish me!** Bearclaw sent as he climaxed.
Never would either of them Recognize again. They knew it somehow, deep in their hearts. And it seemed indescribably perfect that both elves should finally come together – once lovers, once enemies, now somehow reconciled – for one final act of procreation.
Bearclaw sank onto his elbows, but resisted the urge to collapse in Joyleaf’s arms. He knew they were beyond that.
Joyleaf looked up at him with an expression somewhere between delight and apprehension. **We have made a cub, Grenn... who is all we are... and more.**
**A blood of chiefs...** Bearclaw glazed wistfully at her a moment longer, then eased his weight off her and rolled onto his back.
**Like Grayling,** Joyleaf reminded.
Bearclaw blinked. **Grayling... how is my son?**
**Well.**
**I could have been kinder to him...**
**Yes, you could have.**
They were silent a moment, staring up at the moons through the clearing in the canopy.
**It has come full circle...** Bearclaw sent. **And now it is complete.**
**You will not return to us...** she asked, though she knew the answer.
**My place is outside. I am a rogue wolf now. And perhaps... I was always meant to run wild.**
**I understand.**
He looked at her sadly. **You will tell our cub about me? That I was once... something different. Before the humans... before I lost track of the seasons?**
**I will.**
Bearclaw silently got to his feet and gathered his tattered clothes.
**Will you not be cold, come the death-sleep?** Joyleaf asked.
**I have enough.**
She sat up and drew her knees to her chest. **Then this is farewell, Grenn.**
He smiled bittersweet. **It was a good hunt... and a good end. Farewell, Dehl. I will always howl for you.**
Tears welled in her eyes, against her will, as she watched him leave.
It was approaching dawn with Joyleaf returned to the Holt. Everyone was assembled and eagerly awaiting her. Strongbow must have told them all what he had seen.
**Joyleaf! Where is Bearclaw?** he asked.
“Gone. Back to his wolves, to his shadows.”
“You mean... he is not returning?” Moonshade asked.
“But... you Recognized him,” Treestump stammered. “Strongbow told us everything. It happened at last, sister – what you always dreamed of. Aren’t you... are there no... no feelings between you?”
Joyleaf shook her head. “Recognition came, yes. But it came eight years too late for us to be lovemates.”
**But – it was Recognition!** Strongbow spat.
“Recognition does not always mean lifematings,” Rain said softly. “Bearclaw Recognized Trueflight to sire Grayling, but love never grew between them.”
Grayling nodded. He did not say that perhaps if Bearclaw had only cared for Trueflight more, he might have remembered his son more often.
Treestump scratched his beard and glanced over at his daughter Eyes High. “Aye... aye, you have a point.” Treestump had Recognized many times, and only Eyes High survived. Once, long ago, he had had another lifemate, but with Eyes High’s mother, the burning passion had not lasted much longer than that one joining.
“Sometimes what will be will be... and that’s that.”
“It was... appropriate,” Joyleaf touched her stomach. “We will have a blood of chiefs, born of both Bearclaw and me...”
**No child born of such a... a mockery could ever be chief!** Strongbow spat.
Joyleaf fixed her eyes on him. “Do you challenge?”
Strongbow growled audibly. Their eyes met and they stared each other down as the air crackled with static from their furious sending stars. Finally, Strongbow broke the stare, looking away submissively.
“Does anyone else challenge?” Joyleaf barked.
Understandably, there were no takers. The chieftess turned back on Strongbow and smiled approvingly of his obedient posture.
“Sister...” Treestump touched her shoulders.
“You will not take his side again, Treestump.”
“I don’t intend to. You are our chief. You have been for eight turns of the seasons.”
“Aye,” One-Eye said.
“And your cub will be blood of chiefs,” Longbranch said. “Blood of... Blood of Eleven Chiefs, isn’t that right?”
“Ten chiefs,” Joyleaf corrected.
“Aye, chieftess. Ten chiefs.”
Joyleaf saw the uncertainty in her packmate’s eyes as she so casually cut Bearclaw’s name from the list of chiefs. She stood tall. “Bearclaw wished it as well. He is a rogue wolf now, he told me. He runs wild, as his soul has truly always wished. My cub will be Blood of Ten Chiefs.”
“Aye,” Longbranch nodded. The other elves gave similar gestures of acceptance.
Skywise had formerly hidden half behind his father, but now he stepped forward. “So we will have a new packmate two midsummers from now?”
“Yes, Skywise,” Joyleaf smiled.
The boy’s eyes lit up with delight. And Joyleaf felt the last vestiges of fear leave her.
A cub... a new cub to ease the distant pain of lost children past.
An agemate for Skywise, a sibling for Grayling.
Bearclaw’s cub...
Yes... what will be will be, Treestump, she thought. And that’s that.
The white-cold that followed that languid summer was as harsh as Joyleaf had feared, and the subsequent winter was even harsher. But her careful planning and smoking of meat kept the Wolfriders safe and warm throughout the blizzards. Now and then, one of the hunters returned with a small bit of fresh, steaming meat for their heavily pregnant chieftess, and for Brownberry, just beginning her two year pregnancy.
Joyleaf smiled as she hugged her fellow lifebearer close in the chilly air. Those months of flirtations between the howlkeeper and the young gatherer had been realized just as the first snow began to fall.
Shale parted the heavy hide curtain. He bore a scrawny ravvit. “Fresh meat for the lifebearers. My Eyes High’s two turns with cub trained me well to hunt extra food.”
“Eat, beloved, to the lifebearers,” Longbranch handed Brownberry a fresh piece of meat.
“Noble fool,” she laughed as she wiped a tear from her eye. “Make me blubber again and I’ll smack you.”
Joyleaf slipped her arm free of her comrade and began to attack her portion of meat with gusto. By the High Ones, smoked meat could not compare with this!
“How are the wolves holding up?” she asked.
“Well. They love the taste of smoked venison, and they’re as stronger as in summer.”
“Your foresight has served us all well, chieftess,” Longbranch said.
“Have Pike and Grayling and Strongbow returned from their scouting trip?”
Shale shook his head.
Joyleaf bit her lip. The humans were surely suffering in this white-cold. But come the newgreen... and then the summer, when her cub would born... what then? And yet she didn’t dare wage an all-out battle with the humans.
The curtain parted as Pike came barrelling into the main chamber of Father Tree. Frost was clinging to the long hairs on his parka. “The humans are gone, Joyleaf!”
“What do you mean?”
“Gone! They’ve all packed up and left. The scent is very old – they must have left shortly after the first snows. After so many turns... the bitter white-cold’s done the dirty work for us! There’s nothing but a few old bent willow branches and the tracks of ravvits and squirrels.”
“Truly?” Joyleaf sat up tall.
“Truly.”
“Then go back,” Joyleaf grinned. “Tear it down. Tear down all that remains. Bury the remains deep in the snow. Let no one – no thing – who might pass by ever realize that humans once camped there.”
“Aye, chieftess,” Pike grinned. And he raced back out into the snow.
Joyleaf sat back, cradling her swollen belly. The humans were gone... the forest was safe at last. Only a few more months before the newgreen... and then summer... and a new cub.
As the new cub’s closest agemate, Skywise was granted the rare honour of attending to Joyleaf during her labour. He handed her a small cup of cool water as she crouched on the little stool, attended by Rain, his daughter Rainsong, and the soon-to-be-brother Grayling.
“How much longer?” Skywise whined.
“Shh...” his aunt Rainsong whispered. “The cub will come when it’s ready, Skywise.”
“Sorry, Rainsong. I can’t wait to have a friend almost my age.”
“Thank you, Skywise,” Joyleaf said as she sipped the cool water. “Don’t worry. You’ll have a little agemate before dawn.”
She shifted on the stool, and Rain pressed a hand to the small of her back to relieve the ache.
“It’s... all right... right?” Skywise asked.
“There’s no pain at all, cubling,” she assured him. “Only the pleasure of guiding a new life into the world. You’ll see... ahh... now!”
Rainsong hastened to take her place and catch the baby with a clean deer hide. As she squeezed Rain’s and Grayling’s hands for support, Joyleaf bore down with the contraction, and after two strong pushes, the baby slipped into Rainsong’s waiting hands.
“A girl!” she cried. “A little girl!”
Joyleaf leaned forward and her eyes filled with tears as she beheld the slippery newborn gurgling on the hide. A chubby little girl-cub, with huge eyes that were already turning from a newborn’s gray to a bright blue, a round head topped with light blond fuzz.
“She looks just like her mother,” Rainsong smiled.
“A fine–” Rain began, then gasped aloud. “A spirit-maker!”
A jumping spider on the wall of the den sprang into the air, its trajectory already aimed towards the baby. If the spider was at all disturbed when it landed – say, by the stirring of the baby’s chest, the spider’s fangs would strike.
All this happened in less than a panicked heartbeat, for Skywise leapt forward, and clapped the two small water bowls together, trapping the spider inside the clay shell mere inches about the baby. A heavy kwolp! resonated in the den, and the baby wailed in terror.
“Whew,” Skywise sat back, holding the bowls tightly together.
“Well done,” Rain patted his back. “You may have just saved your future chief.”
Joyleaf gathered the fur-swaddled baby to her breast. “My little cub... oh, thank you Skywise. Hurry, drop both those bowls in the stream. Do not pull them apart before the spider is drowned.”
Skywise raced out to kill the spider while Joyleaf slowly got to her feet.
“Chieftess – you must rest,” Rain pleaded.
“No... first I must – ah, Rainsong, could you help me?”
Rainsong helped Joyleaf stand, and steadied her.
“I must... show my daughter to my tribe... it is the chief’s duty... and the chief’s privilege.”
Rain shook his head. Stubborn as her daughter’s sire.
Barefoot, her baby held tight in her arms, Joyleaf stepped down onto the grass outside Father Tree Holt. The tribe hurried to get a look of their new tribemember.
Grayling and Rainsong supported the chieftess as she cradled the baby, so all could see.
“This is the my daughter,” she said in a faltering voice. “She will be chief after me.”
Skywise jogged back up from the river, empty bowls in his hands. “The spirit-maker’s dead!”
“Good work, Skywise. My daughter could well have died were it not for this cub’s swift actions,” she told the tribe. “I can only hope my cub will grow up to be as fine a young Wolfrider as the boy who saved her life. And so... so I have decided that the tribe shall call her Swift.”
Skywise grinned ear-to-ear. Treestump laughed. “Well, I don’t know about swift reflexes, but the lass has a good set of lungs.”
Shadowsheen sniffed at her elf-friend and the newborn, wagging her tail eagerly.
“Want to inspect her, hmm, Shadowsheen? Sit now, don’t frighten her.”
Shadowsheen sat back, and Joyleaf held the cub to her nose. The infant’s cries soon turned to delighted gurgles, and Shadowsheen “buff”ed an enthusiastic approval.
Everyone laughed. Clearbrook bent down and gave Shadowsheen’s shoulder a massage. “Timmorn’s blood runs true. The wolves know she’s their cub too.”
All the wolves set into a lusty chorus of howls as the other elves cheered for their new tribemate.
Three hillsides over, Bearclaw heard the howls and knew the reason. He had a cub now.
No... Joyleaf had a cub.
Bearclaw added his own voice, scratchy from disuse, to the howl. Perhaps Dehl would hear him.
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.