The sun stood at midpoint in the hazy sky and Thakur and Ratha were approaching another stand of gutted pines when they heard the sound of approaching feet.
Thakur lifted his muzzle and pricked his ears.
“Fessran?” he called.
“Ho, herder.” Fessran jogged around the far end of the smoking brush, keeping her distance from it.
“How far is the dan?” asked Ratha, coming alongside Thakur.
“Less than half a day’s run, if one could go straight through. Having to go around all the brush tangles and fallen trees makes the journey longer.” Fessran sat down and licked soot from her coat. “I’m surprised that you have come this far.”
“We went through,” Thakur said. “Ask Ratha.”
“You can crawl through, yes,” Fessran said doubtfully, “if you don’t mind the Red Tongue’s cubs licking at your coat.”
“I don’t worry about the Red Tongue’s cubs.” Ratha grinned. “Watch.”
Fessran came alongside Thakur and stood. Ratha trotted past them to the pile of downed trees, hopped up on a log and seized a branch with fire dancing at the tip. She bounced down with the twig in her mouth, threw it on the ground and kicked dirt on it. She grabbed the end and rubbed the glowing coals in the ash, which billowed up around her, making her sneeze. When the cloud settled, Ratha swaggered toward Fessran and Thakur, the burned stick still in her mouth. Fessran hunched her shoulders and retreated. Ratha stopped where she was.
“Come and sniff it, Fessran,” she coaxed. With a glance at Thakur, who hadn’t moved, Fessran approached Ratha, extended her neck and brushed the charcoaled bark with her whiskers. She grimaced at the smell and shied away as if she expected the fire-creature to revive and leap off the branch at her. Eyes fixed on the spot where the Red Tongue had been, Fessran crouched. Thakur nosed the branch.
“Yarr!” Fessran’s tail swept back and forth in the ash. “It is gone. You killed it!”
“I can only kill little ones,” Ratha said, still grinning around the branch end in her mouth.
“No one can do that,” Fessran said, straightening from her crouch, her belly smeared with ash. “Not even Meoran.”
Ratha strutted, her ruff and whiskers bristling. “Clan leader, ptah! Who is he compared to the slayer of the Red Tongue?”
“One who would rip you from throat to belly if he heard your words,” Thakur said, stopping her swagger with a penetrating look. Ratha wrinkled her nose at him, tossed the stick away and began scrambling across the fallen trees.
The three of them didn’t see the Red Tongue again until the sun had fallen halfway down the sky. Two saplings had fallen together, their sparse crowns interwoven. The Red Tongue crouched inside a nest of branches that sheltered it from the wind. Ratha stopped, shook the soot from between her pads and stared.
“That one isn’t in our way,” she heard Thakur say. “You don’t need to kill it.”
Ratha took a step forward. Thakur was right. She should go on and let the creature be. She lifted her muzzle and smelled. The odor was acrid, stinging her nose, burning her throat. The hated smell.
“Leave it, Ratha.”
She glanced at Thakur. He and Fessran were turning away. Another step toward the trees. Another. The fire’s rush and crackle filled her ears. The flames’ mocking dance drew her to the base of the trees and she stared up, awe and hatred mingling in a strange hunger.
She climbed onto one leaning tree, which shook and threatened to break under her weight. She balanced herself and crawled up the slender trunk, digging her claws into fire-brittled wood. She crept up until she reached the Red Tongue’s nest and began to snap away the dry twigs that guarded the flame. The creature seemed to shrink back as Ratha destroyed its nest. It withdrew to a single limb and clung there, as if daring her to reach in and pull it out. She shifted her weight and glanced down.
Fessran and Thakur stood near the tree, alternately staring up at her then at each other, brows wrinkled in dismay.
She cleared an opening large enough for her head, gulped a breath of air, tensed and lunged at the Red Tongue’s branch. Her teeth ground on wood. A branch broke beneath one of her paws, and she flailed wildly, bouncing in the treetop. The branch in her mouth splintered, with a crack that jarred her teeth. Her claws hooked, held, tore loose, and she slid. Her ears were bombarded by a volley of snapping limbs, and everything blurred, as the tree’s crown disintegrated. Black twigs, blue sky and the fire’s mocking orange tumbled together, whirled madly and crashed to a stop.
Ratha lay in the ash, her body one large ache. She opened one eye. Things were still moving. She sighed and shut it again.
Voices. Thakur’s. Fessran’s. A scuffing sound, someone kicking dirt. Ratha jumped up, shaking her ringing head. She staggered, squinting. Something moved. She planted all four paws and forced her eyes to focus on Thakur’s image, still blurred. Something was flickering between his legs as he jumped back and forth. Smoke boiled up behind him. Ratha heard the scuffing sound again and a thin, frightened yowl.
She pitched toward him, barely supporting herself on wobbly legs.
“Grab the end!” she heard Fessran call as Thakur made short useless rushes at the burning branch. “Take the end and rub it in the dirt as she did!”
But Thakur was too timid. Ratha saw him shy away again, his eyes wild with fright. Fessran blocked Ratha’s view as she charged the fire and frantically pawed dirt and ash into it. The Red Tongue paled under the gray cloud. It sputtered, choking. Ratha saw the muscles bunch in Fessran’s shoulders. The fire grew smaller; started to fade under her frenzied strokes.
Yet the fire-creature still lived and Ratha didn’t know what it might be able to do. Fessran was too close to the hail of sparks leaping from the flame.
“Fessran!” Ratha called and the other female paused in her stroking and glanced over her shoulder as Ratha stumbled toward her.
“So you live, young one. I thought you’d killed yourself with your foolishness.”
“Fessran, get away! You’re too close to it!”
Another shower of sparks went up and Fessran coughed in the thick smoke swirling around her. She sneezed and backed away. “Slay the creature, Ratha!” she hissed, squeezing her eyes shut.
Ratha jumped at the guttering fire and seized the end of the branch in her jaws. She threw it down, but the Red Tongue was stubborn and clung to the wood. She pawed the branch, rolling it over, yet still the creature peeked from between patches of curling bark. She crouched, watching, growing too fascinated with the creature to kill it. The fire crept out of its hiding place, as if it sensed that the initial assault was over. It burned cautiously along the top of the log. Ratha circled it.
“Look how it changes shape, Fessran,” she said.
“Don’t play with it,” Fessran snarled, her ears back. “Kill it.”
“Why? If we stay far enough away, it won’t hurt us. It is only a cub, Fessran.”
“It grows fast. Kill it.”
Ratha raised one paw, dipped it into the ash, stared at the fire curling around the branch. “No.” She put the paw down.
“Ratha, kill it!” Thakur cried. Fessran showed her teeth and crept toward the fire. Ratha blocked her. She tried to push past, but Ratha shoved her back. Fessran skidded in the ash and fell on her side. Ratha stood between her and the Red Tongue, her hackles up, her tail fluffed. Two pairs of slitted eyes met.
“This is my creature.”
“The Red Tongue is no one’s creature. Kill it.” Fessran scrambled in the ash, pulling her paws underneath her. Ratha tensed, feeling her eyes burn. “I will kill it or I will let it live, but it is my creature.” She leaned toward Fessran. The other’s eyes widened in dismay. She got up, shook the flaky ash from her coat.