Unwanted
She stood in front of him on the snow-covered plain, her lips curved in the familiar snide smile. He advanced on her, fists clenched, head held high despite the blustery wind. “You tell me now, Mother!” Teir demanded. “Why did your heart never have room for me?”
“Paugh! Heart-talk – the only song you’ll sing. Why? The stag never pines for the doe that dropped him. I gave you life. I gave you a full belly and a strong roof over your head. I left you with fine caretakers when I went to the hunt or the battle. I even gave you a chance to make me proud. That’s more than many can say.”
“Why bear me at all if you could not love me? You’re Kahvi – you never breed unwittingly. I’ve heard the tales – you only drop the fawns you want! You must have wanted me once. So you tell me – what did I do? What made you abandon me before I’d seen my first crusting?”
“Because you were a boy!” Kahvi roared over the voice of the gathering storm. Her words struck him like icy shards.
“I wanted a daughter!” she went on. “A strong-hearted girl-fawn to take Vaya’s place. I lost her after the Palace War – as surely as if those trolls had butchered her. From the day we won the Palace, she never again shared my hearth, never again hunted at my side. I knew one day the Wolfriders would return to the south lands, and I knew she would follow them. But I needed a child – a chieftess to train up to follow me. Of course I tried again – and I tried with Vok again. He always been… unusually gifted for a male. Perhaps it was his blood that made Vaya so superior to every fawn I’d dropped and lost before. A storm can strike twice in one night. Why not try?”
He stared at her, utterly at a loss. “But instead I got you,” Kahvi continued, accusingly. “Only once before had I ever dropped a baby buck, and he’d been a sickly thing, marked for an early death. I did not waste my care on him – why bring up a child who had no intention of thriving? But you – you were a loud and lusty lad from the first. You mocked me with with your cries. And how Vok pestered me to tend to you. I swear, if he could have suckled you himself, he would have.”
“What are you saying? That you’d have cast me into the snow to die if it weren’t for Father?”
“The thought occurred to me. But no, I still had hopes you could be some use as a spear-bearer. But you defied me at every turn. You drained me of milk and howled for more, but you grew fat enough off Mardu’s teat. You refused to leave the hearthside, but you’d sulk and whimper when I went out into the snow. You spurned my offer of spear in order to play on your Father’s cursed woodwhistle! I offered you love, the only love I know, but you were too stubborn to take it!”
They had had this argument before. Teir was certain he had heard these words flung at him before. But before he had cowered, or withdrawn, or otherwise shielded himself against her cruel truth. But no longer.
“Your love is ice. It will kill an elf as surely as the frost’s bite.” The wind roared louder, but Teir raised his voice to match it. “You’ve killed or driven off everyone you’ve ever claimed to care for. Your children, your tribemates – how many of them died trying to earn your approval? You say Vaya was your finest child, but did you ever tell her that? Did you ever realize what you had in her until you lost her? Did it ever occur to you to earn her love instead of demanding her loyalty?”
“She abandoned me! She turned her back on all I tried to teach her–”
“She wanted to live for herself, not for you! And you can’t bear it! You could never stand to see one of your tribe choose their own path. And you could never see – even the Palacestone couldn’t show you–”
“Show me what?”
“That you’re to blame for all of it. Every failure, every heartbreak – every elf who has left you willingly or not – you’ve been the cause of it all! You – heartless, selfish, sick-headed –!” He advanced on her, fighting against the wind. “Your soul is rotten!”
Kahvi laughed scornfully. “That’s the way! Howl like the wind – that’s all you can do – huff and puff and burn yourself out–”
Teir’s raised his fist and drove it down hard into her jawbone. Kahvi staggered. She spat blood, crimson on the snow. “Challenge, infant?” she began to ask, but he silenced her with another savage blow.
He drove her to her knees. He pummeled her with his feets and his feet. Still she laughed, in between bloody coughs. “That’s the way!” she cackled again. “Fight me… kill me… stop talking my ear off and kill me!”
“Shut up!” Teir kicked her hard in the ribs, then in the belly. She fell onto her side as he continued to beat her.Her laughed grew weaker, her breathing grew ragged. Blood pooled on the snow under her lips.
She never made a move to defend herself. She lay there, taking the beating. **Yes… silence it…** her sending begged. **Please… Teir… make me proud for once and end it…**
When Teir’s arms and legs began to tire, Kahvi turned her swollen and battered head to one side. She convulsed and spat out a lump of bloody flesh. In the center of the sticky mass lay a piece of broken crystal, as luminous as starstone. Teir saw it and recoiled.
**Please, Teir,** she implored. **Please make it stop. I can’t bear it anymore.**
“Teir…”
**Please, Teir…**
Teir awoke to a racing heart and a cold sweat. Ember was shaking his shoulder gently.
“K’Chaiya,” he struggled to sit up. In the darkness of their cave-den, his eyes slowly focused on her pained expression, then on the great swell of her belly.
“I think it’s time,” Ember said.
* * *
The birth was long – longer than Halcyon’s had been, it seemed. Perhaps it was only his memory playing tricks on him – so many years had passed since his daughter’s birth. But that time, Ember had been eager to greet her cubling. Now she wanted more than anything to delay the inevitable. Her body would not relax, for all of Halcyon’s soothing songs and birthing teas. Her muscles fought the birth at every turn.
But the baby came all the same, into Halcyon’s practiced hands. She wiped him clean and lifted him onto Ember’s stomach as she attended to the birth-cord. Ember gazed on her newborn son with weary eyes. He had bronze skin, a shade or two fairer than Ember’s own, and a full head of sandy red hair. He snuffled and stretched his tiny limbs and mewled weakly, like a kitten.
“So… here it is,” Ember sighed. She touched the newborn’s damp head. “So little…”
“Perfectly healthy size, Mother,” Halcyon spoke up, with the easy confidence of one who had been birthing babies for centuries – including three of her own. She glanced at Teir uncertainly. **Shall we let Dart come in?** she asked in locksending. **He’s asking.**
**Not yet,** Teir answered. **Give her some time.**
Ember continued to study the infant with an ambivalent gaze. Her touch was tender as she inspected his little hands and pointed ears. But the sadness did not leave her eyes.
Later, once mother and child were both washed and tucked into bed, Teir nodded to Halcyon. She stepped outside and a few moments later, returned with Dart. Though it was summer at Howling Rock, and the heat lay like a blanket over the plains, Dart wore long leathers and a hood over his graying hair. He moved with the deliberation of advancing age, like a wolf with crumbling hipbones. Teir struggled to keep his face neutral. Two years had forged a tentative truce between the two males who knew Ember’s soulname, but the potential for conflict was always there: a slowly-festering wound no one wanted to acknowledge.
“We have a son, Dart,” Ember said dully.
“Yes, we!” Dart said. “Ember, Teir… and Dart.”
He stroked the child’s fist. He watched as four tiny fingers unclenched, then wrapped themselves around one of his.
“He’s me and you,” Dart said solemnly, “and the Wolfrider in us both. But in time, he’ll be you and Teir… and the Plainswaste.”
Teir could not fault his manners. He said all the right things, and he seemed to mean them. Deception was not a Wolfrider’s strength. Yet hadn’t Ember deceived him, the night she had snuck off to consummate Recognition while Teir hunted in the rainforest, blissfully oblivious?
She had felt the pull from half a land away, had insisted they leave the familiar plains for the rainforest. At the time she said she felt a sudden need to see her family. “I feel… like time is running out.”
He had thought she meant her cousin Kimo. Perhaps at the time, she had thought so too. But what good would a visit to Kimo do now? The selfshaper had been steadily growing frailer and more feeble-minded, until one day he’d forgotten how to transform back from wolf to elf. There was little he understood now, except the simple instincts that drove true wolves. What could Ember need from him?
But it wasn’t Kimo she needed, it was Dart. She’d known the moment she laid eyes on him. And she had kept it a secret from her own lifemate until the deed was done.
“I didn’t want you to know,” she’d confessed tearfully. “I didn’t want to think of you thinking about it – while I was–”
“But I’ll think about it now!” he’d snapped back. “I’ll think about it every time I look at you! Worse, I’ll think how you lied to me – how you closed me out!”
“I didn’t want to burden you. Isn’t it bad enough one of us had to suffer?”
**How can you say that? I thought our burdens were always shared. Serrin – I thought I was always with you! We are one – ** he tried to reach her in a deep sending then, but he’d found barriers in his way – a closed door he’d always thought would remain open to him.
“But we’re not,” she said. “Not anymore.”
“Do… do you want to leave me, lifemate? Is that what you’re saying?”
“High Ones – NO!” she wept. **I want us to be together, as it used to be. But it’s different now. He’s with me – Dart. He’s here.** She touched her forehead. **And… now a part of him is here.** Her hand drifted reluctantly to her stomach. **And I want to save all my love for you alone.**
“Could you not have waited? Could you not have shared with me – let me take on the pain? We could have found some way to fight it. Or… or some way to ease your way.”
“You have no idea, Teir. You’ve only known Recognition with love. When it happened with us, it was nothing but joy and delight. But with Dart… there was pain and there was… disgust… but there was something else too. And I didn’t want it – but I couldn’t help myself!”
She’d pulled away from him then, sobbing so loudly that she had to fight for breath. He did not need to press her for more – he understood.And High Ones help him, he shared her disgust.
They tried to keep it a secret. But news spread throughout the Holt like wildfire. Everyone’s thoughtless congratulations only made Ember feel sicker at heart, only made Teir smolder with rage.
Ember could not eat, could not sleep. She had surrendered to Recognition as the Way demanded, but her body seemed to still be fighting. After the third day of suffering, when she was faint from hunger, they went to see her great-grandfather Rain.
“Your body is fine, Ember. It is already preparing to host new life. It is your soul which is wounded. Recognition… it is meant to bring a soul completion–”
“My soul was complete already!”
Rain nodded. “And your soul is still fighting Recognition’s call. You feel… shame? Why, cub?”
Ember looked at Teir, then at the wooden floor of the healer’s den. Her hands twisted together. She would not speak, but not for nothing was Rain the finest healer in the world. He saw the truth soon enough.
“The… pleasure you felt was as natural and unbidden as Recognition itself,” he offered. “Even for those who can usually only find it with their chosen lifemate. I imagine it has been many years since you joined with anyone other than Teir–”
“I’ve never joined with anyone other than Teir!”
“Then you have every reason to feel frightened by what happened. But there is no blame here. Like birth and death, Recognition simply… is. And it is done now. You must look ahead to the coming child.”
**But… what if I don’t want this child?**
In sending there was only truth. Rain bowed his head. “Then… there are choices available to you,” he said. “But they will not be easy ones.”
“I promise you, K’Chaiya,” Teir told her when they were back in their den, “I will love this child as my own, because it is a part of you.”
“And if I can’t love it?” Ember asked. “What will you think of me then?” When he hesitated, she answered for him. “I’ll be no better than Kahvi.”
“You will be a good mother,” he insisted. “Look what a fine job you did raising Halcyon.”
“But I wanted Halcyon.”
Once, long ago, he had compared Ember to a colt shying from a bridle. So it was with this Recognition. She refused to alter her life to suit an unwanted pregnancy; she hunted when she willed, and ran herself to exhaustion when she could not sleep. Though she could have passed her two years in comfort in the Great Holt – or with her parents at the Evertree – she insisted they return to the plains. The hectannual Gathering was due to take place at Howling Rock, and Ember never missed it.
Dart asked to accompany them, at least until the child was born. But his presence – and that of Kimo – did little to bring Ember to heel. She took risks as she always had, and she chewed a strip off anyone who dared bid her to “think of the cub.” Even heavily pregnant, she spurred her wolf to a sprint, darting among the hooves of stampeding cuphorns as she took aim with her spear. Once, when Kimo fell to nipping at her heels, trying to keep her in camp, she seized him by the scruff of the neck and wrestled him onto his back and into submission.
“She was like this with Halcyon, too,” Teir told Dart when he fretted.
“She ought to be denning now.”
**She’s Serrin,** he sent, with no small amount of bitterness. **You ought to be know she can’t be penned up.**
Dart bore Teir’s cold scorn with admirable patience. Teir found himself wishing Dart would make more of a pest of himself. It was hard to keep hating someone who worked so hard not to give offense.
Ember felt the same. “Sometimes I wish he wasn’t so… such a good soul,” she said. “If he was jealous… or cruel or oafish, I could more easily deny him.”
“But… you do deny him?”
“Great Sun, Teir! How many times do I have to say it? He’s not my lifemate! I don’t want him in my furs again. But I can’t pretend he’s not here!” she beat at her breast angrily. “Don’t you think it kills me, when I see what it’s doing to you? Don’t you think I’d… I’d vomit him out of my soul if I could?”
He rushed to comfort her, fearful of what her temper would do to her health. But as always, the small seed of doubt lingered deep inside his heart: the suspicion that she felt more for Dart than she’d ever admit. And hard on one fear came another: what if he couldn’t love this child of theirs?
Dart had offered to raise the child himself. He could find an elf-woman to suckle the infant, or else a nursing wolf. He could bring the child up in the Great Holt, surrounding by its Wolfrider kin. Ember did not need to meet it again until it was grown, if then.
Ember wouldn’t hear of it. “Ask Teir how it feels, to be abandoned by the one who bore you.” As the birth drew nearer, she grew more determined to mother her unlooked-for offspring, and more beset by doubts that she was unequal to the task.
**What are you thinking?** Teir asked her now silently, as she contemplated her newborn.
**I’m frightened,** she admitted. **It was so easy with Halcyon… I was just a cubling myself – I didn’t know enough to be afraid. What would be asked of me… now I know what it takes to raise a cub… what if it’s more than I can give?**
“He’s very quiet,” Dart fretted, oblivious to their locksending. “Is he all right?”
“He’s just weary,” Halcyon said. “It was a long birth. But he has a good color and strong heartbeat. You needn’t fear.”
As if to concur, the baby let out another kittenish cry and turned his head towards the warmth of his mother’s skin. Dart chuckled. “He sounds like a baby tuftcat.”
“A dunecat,” Ember corrected. “Do you remember them, lifemate?” she looked at Teir. “They kept in them in Sorrow’s End, to chase the mice away. He even has the right coloring.”
“Let’s call him Dunecat, then. Until he can choose a name for himself.”
To Teir’s annoyance, she looked to Dart for confirmation.
“You’ll have to take him to Oasis one day,” Dart said. “To meet his namesake.”
“Do they have them in Oasis?” her voice was dulled with weariness. “I can’t remember...”
“She should rest,” Halcyon said, gently by firmly.
“Yes…” Ember agreed. “I think… I’d… like a little time alone.”
“Of course,” Dart agreed. He began to reach for his son. “Shall I?”
But Ember would not relinquish Dunecat. Teir glared at Dart until the aging Wolfrider reluctantly got to his feet.
“You too, lifemate,” Ember said. When Teir began to protest, she sent **Please. I just want to be alone with him.**
Still Teir hesitated. Halcyon took his arm and gently helped him up. “We’ll be right outside if you need us,” she told her mother.
Teir cast a last glance back into the birthing den. Ember lay her head back against the furs, eyes closed, as little Dunecat began to squirm and root for her breast.
The sunlight stung his eyes as he stepped outside. Wispy, high-altitude clouds drifted across a blue sky of almost painful intensity. Beyond the rolling hills surrounding Howling Rock, the Plainswaste gradually flattened into a broad expanse of long grass. Far in the distance, Teir could see Halcyon’s daughters tracking prey astride their wolves. When he turned and looked over his shoulder, he caught sight of Kirjan standing eyes-high on the shoulder of the Rock.
Kimo padded up the slope to greet Dart with a lick to the hand. Teir kept a few paces back, bt he could still hear Dart murmur, “I have a son,” to the wolf in a voice filled with pride. So much for “we.”
**She wanted to keep the cub with her,** Dart’s thoughts pushed into his mind. **That’s a good start. I only wish… I thought she would be happier… once she met him.**
**She’s tired. Two years of carrying him, a long morning of birthing him – I defy you to be giggly as a Preserver after that.**
**Was she like that with Halcyon?** Dart pressed.
**I don’t remember – it was long ago! Before you grew your first face-fur.** But he did remember, vaguely. They had wintered at the Great Holt that year. Shenshen had delivered the babe into Ember’s eager arms. She had been tired, yes, but quietly jubilant.
Teir glanced back at his daughter now. In her long career as a traveling healer, she had ministered to countless Plainsrunners, and seen many wounds, both in body and spirit. She had no special powers to aid her, only keen instincts and centuries of acquired skills. But true to the Go-Back blood in her veins, she could accomplish marvels without magic.
**What do you think?** he locksent.
**I think the signs are promising. But we must tread lightly. The bond is tenuous – she has spent the last two years resisting it. And she will lash out, if anyone tries to push her. Even you, Father.**
It wasn’t the answer he wanted. But he trusted her. She understood Ember’s heart, perhaps even a little better than he did. Mother and daughter had always been close.
Did mothers always favor their daughters, he wondered?
The whole family gathered in the shadow of Howling Rock, awaiting Ember’s emergence from the birthing den. Teir’s watched his grandchildren pass the pouch of smoked venison chips between themselves, arguing good-naturedly about who would get the choisest pieces. Haxhi was a fine-bodied maiden, with black hair and olive skin. Her green eyes and apple-cheeks always made Teir think of Ember’s mother, Behtia. Bruma was shorter, stocky with muscle: a prize Go-Back doe. In her features and her coloring she favored her father Kirjan so much, she might as well have been his female twin. Teir imagined had Kahvi lived to meet Bruma, she would have thumped her back and called her to come hunt snowbear.
Kaldan bore little resemblance to the rest of the family. Teir could see nothing of Halcyon or Kirjan in the lines of his face. His gold-auburn hair came perhaps through Ember’s blood – but more likely it came from the redheaded Plainsrunner buck Halycon had danced with, at a Gathering many eights before. Kirjan had been off on a moon-long hunt, stalking a rare mastadon across the northern Plainswaste. He came home to Howling Rock to find Halcyon already with cub. As far as Teir could tell, they never spoke of elf who had sired Kaldan, and Kirjan has raised the boy with no less love than he’d shown the girls.
But it was different with them. They had always shared openly. And though the Go-Backs were gone now – transformed in Plainsrunners or absorbed into the Wolfriders at the Evertree – Kirjan still held to the old ways. “It’s the raising that makes a father, not the siring,” was all he would say on the matter of his son.
Kaldan held out a gloved hand and whistled. His golden-feathered hawk swooped down from the Rock to perch on his fist. The lad smiled and offered the bird a piece of meat. The beast-magic ran through his veins, but where Teir bonded most easily with wolves, Kaldan’s special gift was for birds. He could call even the meanest eagle down from the skies, and he’d been bonding with the same family of golden hawks for nearly a hundred years.
“Careful,” Haxhi teased. “Longshot’s looking a little plump lately.”
“She’s right,” Bruma said. “You keep pampering that old bird, she’ll be too heavy to fly.”
“Don’t you listen to them,” Kaldan counseled the hawk. “They’re just jealous. They know you’re my favorite sister.”
At length, Ember emerged from the birthing den, clad in a rumpled deerskin shift and bearing her swaddled infant. Haxhi and Bruma rushed over to meet the new baby, and Ember willingly offered him up.
“How are you feeling?” Haxhi asked.
“Tired. Sore. In need of a long soak in the spring.”
“Go on, then. We’ll look after him.” Haxhi peered into Dunecat’s sleeping face. “Doesn’t look like he’ll give us much trouble.”
Dart held out his arms when Haxhi approached, but she looked to her grandfather first. Teir averted his eyes and gave a terse nod. Might as well get this over with, he thought bitterly.
Dart was all gentleness as he cradled the newborn in his arms. “Hello, little son,” he whispered. “I’ve waited so long to meet you.”
Teir watched Ember’s face carefully. He noted the warring emotions, jealous disgust and an unwilling tenderness. He wished he knew what she was thinking. He always used to know what she was thinking.
Kimo drew up alongside his lifemate. The black wolf sniffed Dart’s hair, then the infant’s damp scalp. “Does he understand?” Haxhi asked, genuinely curious.
“Scents never lie,” Dart said. He looked up at Teir. “I know we never spoke of what would happen after the birth…”
“Not now,” Teir growled.
Dart went on as if he hadn’t heard. “I know I have no right to ask it. But I would like to stay here… and share what time I have left with my son.”
Again Teir looked to Ember. She seemed torn. Her lips moved silently for several moments before she found her voice.
“This is your tribe, Wolf-father,” she said at last. “It’s your say-so.” With that she turned and limped away towards the spring.
Everyone was watching him, with expressions ranging from curious to skeptical to imploring. Teir scowled at Dart. Curse him for bringing this up in front of everyone, for forcing the only honorable answer Teir could give. At that moment, he found it very easy to hate the Wolfrider.
“You can stay. As long as you remember what pack-right means. You heed my word, you follow my lead, and you don’t forget: he is not ‘your’ son alone.”
Kimo growled low under his breath. But Dart put a hand on the wolf’s ruff and silently bowed his head. The perfect submission. Teir knew he ought to be feel pleased by his victory. He didn’t, though.
Duncat began to whimper. The infant fussed in his leather swaddling, then clenched a fist and let out a cry. “I think someone’s getting hungry,” Halcyon said.
Haxhi got to her feet. “I’ll go see to the goat,” she said.
“Goat?” Dart frowned. He looked at Halcyon in confusion. “Surely Ember–”
“Leave it,” Teir growled.
“She won’t nurse him?” Dart stammered, incredulous. “But… it’s not right! How does she expect to bond with him–”
So much for submission, Teir thought bleakly.
“I imagine she’ll find a way,” Halcyon said, with only a hint of ice in her voice. “She couldn’t nurse me either, and we get on just fine.”
* * *
Summer turned to autumn, then to winter and spring. Seasons passed, tempers cooled, and slowly – awkwardly – some manner of peace was restored to Howling Rock. By the time Dunecat learned to walk, Dart had learned to stop meddling at every turn. By the time the child could speak in simple phrases, Teir could look his rival in the eye without wanting to kill him.
Looking back, the fight over feeding had been one of the most easily resolved. Dart snapped and growled about Ember’s refusal to even attempt nursing: “You were still a stripling when you had Halycon, things might have changed! And why wouldn’t you see a healer? There’s no good reason a mother shouldn’t nurse her own offspring!” But when Ember snarled back that Dart could very well have a healer try to bring in his milk if he was so determined, Dart decided goat’s milk wasn’t so bad. And the old Wolfrider enjoyed being able to feeding his son, so much so that the others often had to fight for their chance to hold Dunecat.
Once the family returned from a hunt to find Howling Rock deserted and Dart not answering their sendings. Teir had been terrified that Dart had decided to run off with the child. Instead they found the pair napping together by the brook, Kimo sitting guard.
He would banished Dart after that, had Ember only said the word. But she wouldn’t. She tolerated Dart with a bleak sort of pity. When Teir would ask “How long must we endure him, K’Chaiya?” she would merely look at him sadly, and he felt shame for his lack of patience. For it was becoming clearer with each day that Dart would not live to see his son grow up.
The Plainswaste winters were not kind to the aged and infirm. Each cough took longer to shake off. Each ache became harder to ignore. His joints swelled until he could not longer ride, or even climb the shoulder of Howling Rock unaided. He spent his days sitting in the sun, wrapped in furs no matter the weather, eyes on the passing clouds. Sometimes Dunecat would toddle over to join him, but only after he had exhausted himself scampering about the holt with his maternal kin. The very old held little appeal to the very young.
**Riders!** Haxhi sent one afternoon, from her lookout on the Rock. **Kaldan, can you go eyes-high?**
Kaldan left off his work on the tanning rack and whistled for Longshot. The hawk took off and circled once over Howling Rock before flying due north, towards the blur of dust on the distant horizon. Kaldan closed his eyes and linked minds with the hawk. As the rest of the family began to gather under the Rock, Kaldan reported what the hawk saw, a half-day’s ride to the north.
“Elves,” he announced. “About two-eights of riders. And twice as many pack horses.”
“Can you see the banners?” Haxhi asked. “What herd are they?”
“Hold on… I’m still too far away….” But a few minutes later, he smiled. “Red banners. Horse’s head with three bars. It’s Manx!”
Dusk was beginning to fall by the time the herd reached them. Kaldan and Bruma lit a bonfire in the Plainsrunner tradition, to welcome the riders. Sunburned elves in travel-worn leathers turned their ponies loose to graze, while they unpacked gifts of mare’s cheese and exotic furs. Halcyon and Ember mingled with Manx’s clan, greeting old faces and meeting new ones. Clinging to his mother’s hand, Dunecat stared around wide-eyed, occasionally hopping awkwardly to keep up with his mother’s long-legged stride.
Teir went straight for his younger brother and engulfed him in a bear hug. “If you’re here for the Gathering you’re four years late,” he chided affectionately.
“Ah, but I’m four years early for the next one,” Manx shot back.
“VEX!” Bruma and Haxhi cried in unison as they spotted a handsome elf lad weaving his way between the horses. The sisters tackled their cousin hard enough to knock him off his feet. Manx laughed.
“That’s my boy. His bedroll won’t go cold tonight.”
“Does it ever?” Teir asked archly. “I hope he’s still in fighting form. The girls have been very lonely lately.”
“Oh, he’s up to the challenge, I think,” Manx chuckled. He looked around. “Now, where’s that new foal of yours? You think the news wouldn’t have reached me.”
A thin wail rose up among the horses. Teir hastened over to find Ember scooping Dunecat off the ground. The two-year-old whimpered and buried his face in his mother’s neck rather than face the offending animal.
“It’s just a pony,” she chided gently. “Tanner’s needles, if you can wrestle with Kimo, I don’t know why a humpless-zwoot would give you a fright.”
“Here, let me take him,” Teir offered, but Dunecat clung to Ember tightly.
“I’ve got him.”
“It’s no bother, lifemate.”
“Teir. I’ve got him.” She jiggled Dunecat on her arm. “You wanna stay with mama, don’t you?”
“Mama,” Dunecat confirmed.
“Don’t look so broken up about it,” Manx laughed at Teir’s wounded expression. “Hey there, little foal. Give a smile for your uncle?”
But Dunecat kept his face hidden in Ember’s shoulder at first, fearful of more strangers crowding around him. Ember smiled wearily. “Maybe in the morning. He’s pretty tired. I think I’ll go put him down for the night.”
“Is Dart going to watch him?” Teir asked, trying his best to keep his voice level.
“At this time of night? I think Kimo will need to watch them both.”
Manx caught Teir’s gaze as Ember turned away. Who’s Dart? he mouthed.
**Long story,** Teir sent.
Manx flinched. “Ngh, Mardu’s bow! I forget how strong you send.”
“Father still hasn’t taught you to take it better than that?”
“Why bother? Banners and smoke signals are just as good.”
“Go-Back.”
“Hey, don’t you call me that! You actually were one!”
“So were you.”
“Only when I was still on the teat. It doesn’t count.”
* * *
The two tribes feasted together. The drummers beat out a rhythm on horsehide drums and anything else at hand. Elves came together in groups of two or more to dance or to seek a bedroll. And Teir led Manx away from the revels, to tell him the whole story of Dunecat.
“Phew,” Manx sighed when Teir had finished. “High Ones spare me from eyes meeting eyes.”
“Father always said there was more love in the world than Recognition,” Teir remarked.
“Snow’s truth! Seems like Recognition asks for a lot more than it gives.”
They passed under shadow. Teir looked up. The wolf silhouette of Howling Rock had blocked out the moons. Up on the flank of the Rock, he could just make out the glow of a solitary campfire, tucked inside Dart’s cave.
“You have no idea.”
“But you and Ember… you’re all right, aren’t you? You two… you’ve been a pair since I was an ankle-biter. Don’t tell me that toothless olf wolf has actually come between you.”
Teir sighed. “Sometimes I think he’ll always be between us. But we’ve learned how to reach around him.”
“And Dunecat? You say you’ve all found a way to raise him together, but I know you, brother. You weren’t made to share. Not lovemates, not foals.”
“Foals. I remember when we called them fawns.”
“Don’t change course.”
“I didn’t… I admit it: I didn’t know at first if I could ever truly love him like my own. I’m not Kirjan, and it wasn’t just some roll in the furs. I had to be strong for Ember’s sake. But deep down I feared the child would only remind me of… him. But then he was born, and I was ready to fight to the death for him.”
“Do you have to? Sounds like Dart isn’t staking any claim beyond blood.”
“Blood is bad enough. Dart is wasting away like yellow grass. Is Dunecat going to do the same thing one day? Is Dart going to teach him there’s something noble in that?” He felt a pain in his palms and he realized he was clenching his fists. “Every time I see the two of them together… I wonder. What is he teaching the cub? Is he muttered about the Way? Is he whispering tales of Father Tree and the wolf-bloods? I know it’s foolish – and I know Ember is sick of it. But… I can’t help it.”
“So why keep Dart around? To hear you tell, you had more than enough chances to send him packing.”
“Because Dunecat deserves to know his sire. Because a child can never be too loved.” He felt his throat tighten at his words; he heard the slight catch of his voice, and he tasted salt on his tongue. “I…” he looked away, embarrassed at the intensity of the pain, even after so many years.
“I still remember what it feels like, to be unwanted. I couldn’t bear for Dunecat to think Dart left because he didn’t love him. To wonder, deep down, what was so wrong with him that his own sire wouldn’t fight for him.”
“Oh Teir,” Manx said, and clapped him close in an awkward embrace.
“It’s all right. It’s an old scar. It only hurts when I worry at it.”
“And I’m about to tear it open again.”
Teir chuckled gently at Manx’s miserable expression. “Don’t worry, brother. There’s nothing you can say about this that hasn’t crossed my mind already.”
“No… not about this. I…” Manx scowled and looked away. “I meant to wait a day or two, get settled first… but now that I’m here in front of you, I can’t hold my tongue. The reason we’re here now – we weren’t just passing through. We’ve been riding hard from Mardu’s Arch since the snowmelt.”
“I don’t understand.”
Manx took a deep breath. “Teir… I don’ t know how to say it sweetly. So I’ll just say it: I saw Kahvi.”
“What?” It wasn’t possible. Kahvi had died in an avalanche, some three centuries years past. Her bones had long turned to dust. He stared at Manx hard, willing the elf to correct himself.
“Your mother,” Manx confirmed. “She’s alive.”
* * *
Teir took Manx to a quiet spot far away from the revels. He fed him three handfuls of ripe dreamberries. And he demanded to hear it all.
“It was last white-cold,” Manx explained. “Dunno what it was like for you this far south, but up on the High Plains it was the harshest one since… since I stood thigh-high to a treehorn. But I’d be thrice-cursed if I missed the yearly stag run. So I’d sent Vex with the main herd down to the coast while I stayed behind with a hunting party. Well, the stags never ran. And when the snow came, they pinned us down just south of Mardu’s Arch. The horses were starting to sicken. Well, none of us were very good senders, so calling for help wasn’t going to happen. So I told the other hunters, ‘You sit tight – eat your ponies if you have to, but stay alive. I’ll ride south, get to Vex. We’ll be back with fresh horses. Or we’ll eat our pride and summon the Palace. But we’ll get you out.’”
Teir nodded approvingly. “A wise choice.” Not all Plainsrunner chieftains would have made it. The Go-Back stubborness and mistrust of magic lived on in the New Land, and more than one elf had preferred to die unaided than seek help from the Palace.
“Not really. My horse barely got me a day’s ride towards the coast before it dropped. I ended up stumbling around, snow-blind, my gloves gone, my hands just… lumps of ice. Finally… I just couldn’t move anymore. I just… sank down in the snow and waited to die.”
He frowned as he struggled to resurrect the memory. “I remember the cold… so cold it burned… my whole body was on fire. The pain – it was so hot, it burned all the snow away. And then, the next thing I know I’m bundled in warm furs in front of a campfire. And I saw her leaning over me.”
“Show me,” Teir instructed. “Locksend with me.”
“Aw, Teir, you know I haven’t got the head for it.” But Manx tried. He let Teir’s sending into his mind as he tried to summon the image. Teir saw the memory gradually unfold behind his closed eyelids. A face, its lines shifting constantly, swimming in the fevered vision of an elf on the verge of death. One moment her jawline was smooth and oval, the next blunt and square-shaped. The cheeks were hollowed out by famine one moment, then full and flush the next. Her eyes were lost under the shadow of her bangs. The one constant was the pair of double braids that hung in front of her ears.
“You smell of Vok,” the phantom rasped, with a voice like gravel. Was that Kahvi’s voice? He couldn’t be certain. His own memories had faded to haze, and in his dreams her voice took on the timbre of all his fears: the howling wind one night, the snarling longtooth another.
“Who…?” The memory of Manx tried to speak, but his voice was almost lost.
“You’re Mardu’s boy, aren’t you? How many years since you lot disappeared over the ice? Thought you’d have the brains to leave the snow behind you.”
“Kahvi…?” he moaned weakly.
“You want to die. But you don’t get to. You don’t get to have it better than me.”
The face slowly resolved itself, and Teir made out a jagged scar splitting the skin over her jaw. A claw from a snowbear? A human’s daggerpoint? The firelight turned her skin all the shades of copper.
The world turned black as Manx began to lapse back into unconsciousness. But the figure shook him roughly, trying to bring him back. Teir felt the sharp sting of pain as a hand slapped Manx’s cheek. He heard his brother’s instinctive growl. The face returned, clearer now. Eyes like dark coals set deep in her skull… full lips drawn back in a mocking smile... the fraying chief’s braids close enough to touch. How many times had Kahvi slapped his hand for pulling on them?
“There you are. Some fight left in you after all. You remind me of my boy…”
Teir started at her words, the softness of her voice. Kahvi… sparing him a tender thought as she rescued an elf from death? No, it had to be a fever dream. Manx was thinking of Mardu – kind Mardu who had nursed them both through every childhood pain. Kahvi didn’t know the meaning of kindness.
A hissing whisper in Manx’s ear. “You’re going to live, and you’re going to see him again. And when you do, you’re going to tell him… tell him… from me…”
The face started to fade away. The voice grew fainter. Teir pushed deeper in the memory, unwilling to abandon it.
“Come and find me… come and free me,” the phantom beckoned. The memory was dispersing like blood in water. **No,** Teir begged. **Not yet.**
But Manx broke off the communion. “Sorry, Teir. That’s… that’s all I got. When I woke up again she was gone.”
“A death-dreaming…” Teir said. “Those on the edge of shedding their skins often see spirits.”
“Maybe. But when I woke up, the campfire was still burning, and I still had the fur wrapped around me. She’d even left me a mount – not a pony, but one of those big deer like Mother and Father used to ride.”
Teir sat back, frustrated. No, even he had to admit that spirits did not leave saddled stags.
“What happened then?”
“The storm was easing. The stag was in good shape. I made it to the coast in two days, and I brought the whole herd back to save my huntmates. Stopped by that campsite again, to look for signs. All we found was some fresh human spoor.”
“She never named herself,” Teir said at length.
“But that was Kahvi, wasn’t it? The braids…”
“Anyone can wear their hair in forebraids.”
“She knew who my parents were. She knew me! And the way she carried herself… shaming me as she saved me – it’s everything I remember from Mother’s stories.”
“It… felt like Kahvi,” Teir admitted grudgingly. Come and find me… she had whispered compellingly. Why? Why would she seek him out over three hundred years after she disappeared off the face of the world? Why him? She had always been closest to Vaya? Why not send Manx to track down their shared sister? Why bother with Manx at all – why not call the Palace with that cursed lump of crystal she had always brooded over?
But even as he spun excuses, he found he wanted to believe. Curse him, he wanted to think that she had learned to feel love after all these years. He pictured her alone and suffering in the cold, waiting for him to rescue her.
“I don’t understand it.”
“I wish I could give you more,” Manx said sadly. “But that’s it. Maybe I shouldn’t have… Vex – he told me I shouldn’t even have bothered to bring you the news. Said it would stir things up again. Was he right?”
Teir couldn’t begin to form an answer to that. His tongue felt too thick for his mouth.
“I thought about just keeping my mouth shut,” Manx offered. “I did. For a good season I was sure I wouldn’t say a word of it to you. Just a death-dreaming, like you said. But… it gnawed me. I kept hearing her… late at night when I’d be too beat from a long day in the saddle to get some proper sleep. I swear I could feel her eyes following me when I walked around camp. Those… glowing purple eyes.”
“Purple? Her eyes weren’t purple. They were green.”
Manx gave a start. “No… I swear, they were purple. Like…” he looked down at the dreamberry juice still streaking his hands. “Like dreamberries.”
“Show me again,” Teir asked.
“Oohhh, I’m gonna have such a headache.” Reluctantly, Manx let him into his mind once more, and Teir saw the memory repeat itself. The face swimming just out of focus, the harsh voice like a raven’s caw. Only now he saw what he had not wanted to see before. The cheeks were too sunken, the braids too ragged. The face was that of a withered, half-starved elf, with skin like old leather. And the eyes… dark as coals when in shadow, but when the light caught them they weren’t the moss-green that haunted his nightmares, but a deep, oily purple.
“It’s not Kahvi,” Teir stated definitively.
“Are you sure?”
He nodded. “I see why you’d think it. But I know my mother. And those aren’t her eyes.”
“But… she spoke of Father. And Mother.”
“Your mother is Mother of Horses. What elf in the New Land doesn’t know of her?”
“Then who? Who was she?”
“A loner. Maybe one of Kahvi’s old band from Port Passage. Maybe from one of the splinter herds. Maybe it was all just a death-dreaming. But it wasn’t Kahvi.” The more often he said it, the closer he came to being certain of it. Strange, he didn’t feel disappointment at being cheated out of his mother once more.
He felt… relief.
He felt like a fire that had been burning deep inside him had finally been put out. He felt the ache around his heart ease. Of course his mother wouldn’t appear to Manx in a vision and beg for a reconciliation. They were well beyond that. And no elf who could spare a bedroll and a mount needed rescuing.
“Well… shit,” Manx pronounced. “All this time, all this fretting, and I ruined your night for nothing.”
“It’s not nothing if it got you down here to see us,” Teir assured him, clapping him on the shoulder. “And you were right – it was worth stirring up the old fires. Even if it came to nothing.”
“It was? Why?”
Teir looked over at Howling Rock. Dawn was fast approaching, and the eastern sky had turned violet beyond the monolith. “You helped me realize something. I’ve been so gloomy about Dart and Dunecat… fretting about futures that might not happen, dwelling over slights that weren’t ever meant. I’ve been… bracing for a fight over that boy. I’ve made it a war when it didn’t have to be.”
Manx blinked. Teir watched him slowly try to decipher the riddle. At length he gave up. “What… what’s that got to do with Kahvi?”
“She put a hole in my heart, and I’ve tried to fill it with the love of others. Father, Mardu… Ember – Ember most of all. I couldn’t bear to let her make room in her heart for Dart – I resented even the scraps of love she gave him. And I tried so hard to make Dunecat ours when I should have just let him be ours.”
He could tell Manx hadn’t the faintest notion what he meant. How could he? Manx was the child of doting parents, and the father of a son sired and raised in love.
“When you said you’d seen Kahvi… that she wanted to see me –needed me… oh, it was like dreamberry wine after a long drought. And I was ready to drink deep all over again. And for what? A headache and a sick stomach the next day. And I’m done with getting addled off her.”
Strong drink, Manx understood. He nodded hesitantly.
“I should have known, really,” Teir said. “Kahvi’s never needed me. And I… you know, I think I can learn not to need her anymore.”
Manx drew a hissing breath. “It’s a rough thing when a lad doesn’t need his mother.”
Teir smiled and squeezed his brother’s shoulder. “I have a mother. Your mother. She’s the only one who deserves the title.”
They walked back to the Rock together. The bonfire was a pile of glowing ashes. Elves lay where they had dropped sometime in the night, in various states of undress. Teir left Manx down on the flats and hiked up the hill to seek out his own den.
He found Ember fast asleep in their furs, with Dunecat snuggled beside her.
* * *
Manx and his riders stayed for a full turn of Mother Moon. Then they had set off for the west, to join with Mardu’s clan for the winter months. Bruma left with them - clearly hoping for time alone with her cousin Vex. They all promised to reunite in the spring.
The night after the riders left, Teir dreamed of Kahvi again.
Like every dream before, they met in a snowstorm. But this time the details were different. She did not stand tall and proud. Instead she crouched on the ground, dressed in scraps of furs seasons past their prime. Her bare hands were gnarled and frostbitten as she struggled to light a fire.
“I told you come and find me,” she spat at him.
“And here I am.”
“Then get down here and help me,” she grunted.
He began to crouch, then caught himself. “You’ll never light a fire in this weather,” he said, not unkindly. “And you’ll never see the winter through in those furs.”
“What would you know about it?”
“I know only a fool stands around in a snowstorm.”
“Then what are you doing here?” she shot back snidely.
“I’m leaving, Mother.”
She stared at him in disbelief. Her upper lip curled back in a sneer. “You–”
Teir turned his back and walked away.
“Teir! Don’t you show me your back, you insolent fawn!”
Once her anger might have stoked his own. But no longer. He took one step after another, and the wind began to drown out her voice.
“Teir!” her tone turned imploring. “My son! Don’t leave me!”
“I know you never say goodbye, Mother. But I do.”
“I saved him to bring you to me!”
Teir turned around. “You saved no one! You’re a dream – nothing more–”
His words died in his throat as he stared down at what had become of her. The wind had torn at her furs, exposed her arms, withered to skin and bone and laced with silvery scars. As she raised her chin to meet his gaze, she revealed the gash to her jaw, and the deep lines carved into the flesh of her throat. Against his will, he felt a stab of pity.
“Please… Teir …”
She opened her eyes wide, despite the wind blasting her face. They glowed purple, the color of a bruise. Tears like dreamberry juice tracked down the gaunt lines of her face.
“Please, Teir,” she implored. “Make it stop! I can’t bear it anymore. You have to…” she pressed her hands over her ears. “Make the singing stop!”
Teir awoke with a start.
Elfquest copyright 2015 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.