When Goodtree and Lionleaper came into the clearing on the crest of the hill, those who had slept the day away were beginning to waken, wolves and elves emerging together from hollows beneath the great roots of the beech trees, or thickets where they had fashioned rough shelters. Goodtree staggered as a warm weight struck her from behind, and with a quick twist of her slender body, turned her fall into a grab for the brindled pelt of the great she-wolf who was pressing against her.
"Leafchaser! If you're too sleepy to walk straight, go back to your den!" Her words were harsh, but her arms were around the wolf's neck, her face buried in thick fur. From the wolf came a wordless amusement, and Goodtree had a momentary impression of herself as a cub to be knocked over in play until it had the wit to avoid or the strength to withstand it.
"Oh all right!" she answered, sitting back on her heels to stare into the wolf's yellow eyes. "I suppose it's my own fault for not sensing you were there." Leafchaser's eyes slanted as her jaws opened in an answering grin, then two pairs of pointed ears pricked at a long-drawn, distant howl.
**Good hunt, much meat,** came the wolf's images.
**Hunters coming back.** All around them wolves were answering in sweet harmony, and several of the elves had leaped to their friends' backs and sped down the slope to help the hunters bring home their kill. Goodtree could just remember a time when, for fear of the humans who roamed the plain, the elves had hunted only during the hours of darkness. But when the humans were not fighting elves, they fought each other, and for many seasons now their numbers had been too few for them to threaten the Wolfriders.
Goodtree stood up, tugging her close-fitting doeskin tunic back down over her leggings. She had eaten nothing since early that morning, and her belly was already rumbling in anticipation. Her anguish of the afternoon was forgotten. Joyously she cut a length of the clingsilver that twined up the trunk of the great beech tree and twisted it into a new wreath for her hair so that the little bell-shaped blossoms hung trembling over her cheeks and brow.
Soon new sounds heralded the hunters' arrival—Joygleam first, as befitted the senior huntress of the tribe, sitting her wolf-friend proudly despite her evident weariness, and then Brightlance and the others, each bearing a portion of what must have been a mighty beast indeed.
"The branch-horns are coming!" cried Brightlance. "Their forerunners are moving into the grasslands, and the main herd will be here soon. This bull was the first of them, but we were too clever for him. How I wish we could have brought his head too—his horns were like the limbs of this tree!" He gestured broadly, and the haunch he was carrying slipped to the grass.
Elves seized it eagerly and carried it into the clearing in the center of the hurst, and soon knives of flint and bone were stripping skin from flesh and carving the dripping muscle-meat into pieces so that everyone could share. They sat in a circle on the grass, and for a time the only sounds were of those strong jaws moving and an occasional growl as a wolf worried at a particularly resistant piece of flesh, followed by sighs of repletion as one by one, both wolves and elves were filled. Goodtree leaned back against a friendly trunk, at peace with the world. The sun had sought its den and the first stars were pricking holes in the mantle that evening had drawn across the sky. Elfin eyes grew larger and more luminous as the darkness deepened. Then the child moon lifted above the trees, and one of the wolves lifted his pointed muzzle and sang out in greeting. One by one the others echoed him, and the elves joined them, their howling shifting imperceptibly into song.
"Two moons in the sky— High the way they go ... To their hidden hall. Well the way they know ..."
The final vowel sounds were drawn out and held, providing a soft background as Acorn Songshaper continued. Goodtree could just glimpse his soft brown hair against the darker tree trunk, his thin body no broader than it was. He was gentle, as her father had been, and as she knew well, lying with him on the grass in the moonlight was like being part of a song.
"Wander ers are we, Free, we find our way Through forest, over hill, Still we cannot stay ..."
Goodtree felt her spirit shaken by a longing for something she could not name, and, opened to the emotions of the others by the sweetness of the music, knew that they felt it too.
"Forever must we roam, Homeless here below? Oh, are we all alone? Only the high ones know!''
The Wolfriders had hunted through Everwood since before her birth, and yet, singing this song, Goodtree felt as if she had lost a place and a people that she had never known. For a moment she could almost see it, then the last echoes faded, and the image glimmered like a rainbow in the morning mist and was gone.
"Mold and mushrooms, Acorn, you'll dissolve us into puddles if you keep this on!" exclaimed Lionleaper, blinking rapidly. "Can't you find anything livelier to sing?"
"Oh, Lionleaper is a hero—" the Songshaper responded immediately. "With him around what shall we fear-oh? Oh, oh, oh, aoow!" Everyone began to laugh as the wolves provided the chorus, and as Acorn continued with verses describing Joygleam's success as a hunter, Chipper's expertise in working stone, and Freshet's ability to find dreamberries, someone began clicking out a rhythm on clapper stones. By the time they had surveyed the peculiarities of most of the tribe, someone else had added the twittering of a reed flute to the music, and Acorn was thrumming an accompaniment on the eight-stringed bow-harp he had made.
The music grew wilder, and elves sprang into the center of the ring to dance. The Mother moon trailed her offspring across the skyfields, and her leaf-filtered light dappled the soft grass. In that deceptive radiance the leaping figures of the dancers flickered in and out of vision. Goodtree rose to join them, then blinked, wondering if she had eaten too many dreamberries. But the music was headier than they. Forgetting everything, she danced, linked once more to the deep magic of the night.
Goodtree did not know how long it had been when she realized that the wordless song of the united tribe and pack had become a deep chanting—affirming their identity—
"From the frozen mountains to the pathless forest!"
"We are the Wolfriders, and the pack runs free!" came the full-throated reply.
"From the Muchcold Water to the Sea of Grass!" the chant went on, and the response was repeated. "Blood of the high ones, Timmorn's children!" "Led by chieftains' might and wisdom!" Unwilled, Goodtree was caught up in the litany.
"Rahnee the She-Wolf, Prey-Pacer, Two-Spear—" "Huntress Skyfire, Freefoot, Tanner!" Goodtree jolted to a halt like a fleeing doe who senses the cliff-edge before her, but the tribe's response vibrated through her.
"We are the Wolfriders, and the pack runs free!" "Goodtree, Goodtree, chiefs' blood, lead us!" They roared, and she stood trembling, mouthing denials that no one could hear. Exultant faces glimmered mockingly in the moonlight; her head was pounding and the meat she had eaten lay in her belly like a stone.
**No!** she sent finally, with a violence that flared like lightning through their ecstasy. **The tribe is safe here— what do you need a chief for? Choose someone else if you have to—but not me, not me!** Sobbing, Goodtree found the power of motion finally and dashed from the circle into the sheltering shadows of the trees.
Instinct urged her to run like a stampeded branch-horn. But the log that tripped her brought Goodtree partway to her senses—she sought escape, not death, and she must not go weaponless. Hastily she ducked into her shelter and slung bow and quiver across her back, wrapped the longtooth pelt that Lionleaper had given her around her shoulders, and picked up her bone-tipped lance. Then she was out again, a shadow among shadows, slipping silently through the trees.