Kings Redux: Part Two

Sunstream rolled over in the furs of his den, suddenly awake. He lay there for a moment, trying to discover what exactly had awakened him in the middle of the morning. Granted, he had more problems than some sleeping while the sun was awake, and granted that Tyleet had been active the last couple of days as well. Still, something had awakened him, that much he knew.

Then he felt a . . . pull, and he knew that it was what had awakened him. Tyleet needed him and she was approaching the Holt. He was up and dressed quickly enough, running through the treetops until he met up with his lovemate and her wolf, and a strange bundle in her arms that was making faint unhappy sounds.

Lovemate? Sunstream was confused and it colored the sending, even as his love of her did the same.

Tyleet looked up at him and lifted the edge of her draping top to show him the round-eared bundle. I couldn't leave him. His parents tied him to a tree. I tried to give him back yesterday. I was sure it was a mistake. I couldn't just let him die.

Sunstream enfolded her and the cub in his arms, breathing in the scent of her hair. It's alright, lovemate. I'll stand with you. Let's show our new cub to my father. She looked up at him and the expression of joy on her face made all the trials that were to come worth it. Not for nothing did Pike tease them all with his songs. It did no good to tell her "No", so why bother?

****
Back at the Holt, the first one to spot the three of them coming in was, not surprisingly, little Whisperling. The small girl-cub looked at them and her eyes grew round. "Mother! Mother! Tyleet's got something in her arms! What is it?"

From the den she shared with Treestump, Clearbrook looked out at the cub she'd thought was beyond her ability to have. That theirs was the first cub to renew the tribe after Cutter's healing was a shock to everyone, including themselves.

Quickly the tribe gathered and Clearbrook put her hands on Whisperling's shoulders. "It's a human cub, little one."

Tyleet knealt and showed the tiny face to Whisperling, who looked close into the sleepy, hungry eyes. "Humans have cubs? What's it doing here?" Now that she didn't need to get anyone's attention, Whisperling dropped into the hoarse, cubling almost-whisper that was her customary mode of speech. There was already a running bet that when she learned to Send she'd be as quiet as Strongbow.

Cutter stood before them. "What's going on?"

Sunstream faced his father. "Tyleet found a human cub, abandoned, even after an attempt was made to return him to his people. They don't want him. He's our cub now."

Pike choked on a snicker and then began softly whistling the tune to his song about Tyleet. Cutter sighed. He'd lost this fight before it even began. "Very well."

Later, they named their son Little Patch.

****
Little Patch had been with them almost eight turns when the proverbial lightning struck the tribe. Pike was telling stories of the old times during a Howl, and really got into the emotion of a long-ago hunt. His retelling took on a strength that awakened his listeners to the feelings of hunter and hunted and then he looked across into Aroree's eyes, and Recognition hit them.

After the shock came joy, Pike's joy at Recognizing, his lifemates' joy that he was going to be a father, Aroree's joy at knowing that she would carry life within her. What did not follow was a lifemating. Aroree didn't need one, not at that time, and Pike already had lifemates. She was content with that.

Later, Little Patch tugged on Sunstream's sleeve to get his attention. "Father? What's going on?"

Sunstream smiled at the boy-cub who was like him in preferring cooked meat, like him in needing extra care and warmth in the cold of winter. "It is Recognition. Sometimes an elf maiden and an elf lad will meet eyes, and they know each other in that instant. It means new life, Little Patch. There will be another cub for you to play with soon."

Little Patch thought carefully about the matter. "Will it ever happen to me?"

Sunstream felt his heart squeeze with future grief. "I don't know, my son. You are human. Humans bring life into the world differently than elves do."

"But I want to be an elf. I want to be like you."

Sunstream smiled and held the boy-cub close. "I know. It is enough. You will be who and what you are, and I would ask nothing else of you." He squeezed the child close, the son he would lose all too soon. "I love you, Little Patch. Your mother loves you. Don't ever forget that."

Boy-children, though, like Little Patch, are not patient with hugs and holdings, and soon enough he wriggled away to play games with Skot and Krim, and learn how to make beautiful and useful things from Moonshade and Whisperling, who was becoming quite a maker herself. Beads of wood, and beads of stone, and tiny seeds were starting to embellish almost every article of clothing that Whisperling touched, and Little Patch loved to watch the transformations.

All too soon, Sunstream knew, he and Tyleet would lose their son. But oh, they had him now, and they loved him dearly.

****

Sunstream had felt it all day. A lingering sense of impending doom. It was no less unnerving than when he had been a cub and had carried a warning he could not understand to his father, who had chosen to walk into the snake's den anyway.

Something terrible was going to happen.

Tyleet watched Sunstream with worried eyes, reached out a hesitant hand to brush his. He grabbed hold of her hand and pulled her into his arms. He needed her warmth, her solidness, her reality to combat the ephemeral tragedy that hung over all their heads. She held him just as close, something itched in the back of her mind, too, and she didn't know what it was either.

A wolf cub was missing from one of the litters. The High One had wandered off in grief. The memory brought a spasm of pain as he sensed . . . something. The High One!

Just then the sending rang out from Cutter. Timmain was in trouble. Sunstream felt a surge of panic as he spotted his father's form receding quickly into the treetops with Zhantee falling behind him far too quickly.

Everything happened so fast!

Zhantee's shield wasn't quick enough. Timmain was unhurt, but Cutter . . . And now the tribe couldn't find him even as the human hunters ran off after their escaped prey.

The only thing the tribe could do was gather together and Send, and hope their love was enough to hold their chief to life, because Sunstream would never be chief in his place and Ember was still far too far away.

Sunstream retreated to his den, followed by Tyleet. He couldn't see the anxious faces of his tribe, and the children born since he'd carried his heart-truth to his father and healed him.

Whisperling was a beautiful maiden now, grown calm and patient as her mother, with a grin that could only come from her father, and not quite as silent as Strongbow, but almost.

Aroree had given Pike a floating son, and they called him Breeze. He had as many moods as the wind and a good heart. And for all his youth, he had a lifemate he adored in ShenShen.

It was another joining that surprised the tribe. And even more surprise when they had a cub outside of Recognition's power. Young Nutmash was almost the age that Suntop and Ember had been when Rayek . . . when his mother, his twin, and his Uncle Skywise . . . Sunstream held Tyleet as close as he could, burying his face in her hair, hiding his sobs of fear in her gentleness.

I can't lose Father, too. I only just found him.

Tyleet was silent, but she held him just as close. She shared his fear, his worry, his desperation.

Just then a Sending rushed through the tribe. Cutter was going to be fine. He was with the Trolls in their subterranean kingdom. A flint arrowhead was stuck in his rib, but he would survive.

Relief flooded through Sunstream, releasing the tears he hadn't shed. Oh High Ones! . . . He pulled back his face to look into Tyleet's eyes and saw tears shimmering there. Tears for Cutter, who had been like a father to her; tears for him. Her eyes had never looked so beautiful . . . or so deep.

Sohn?

Kyr?

For a silver moment they were still, stunned by the enormity of the gift they had been given. Then joy as painful as the fear followed swiftly. Tyleet's first thought was of the cub they would create, and how much it would mean to Cutter, to their chief, that his son would have a cub.

****
It took a while for the tribe to notice the change in Cutter. Everyone rejoiced for Sunstream and Tyleet, and teased the young father-to-be about how much he treasured his lifemate. But within a season the change had become too pronounced to ignore.

Cutter was exhausted.

He led the hunts. He kept order in the tribe. But the light was gone from his face and even his hair hung limply.

The flint chip still in his rib rubbed at him every day, a reminder of his mortality, a nagging voice that said that he would not survive, that he would not see his lifemate on this side of the Palace.

No one was surprised when he called the tribe together one evening. Tyleet's belly had only just begun to fill out into the curve of pregnancy, though it was well hidden by her poncho.

But no one knew what Cutter could do. No one else could lead them and Sunstream would never be chief.

They hadn't thought of wrapstuff, but it made sense. Better to sleep and know nothing than to wake to exhaustion and a burden he couldn't carry any longer.

Venka was the first to stand and offer to sleep with him. Sunstream and Tyleet the second. The tribe was surprised by Tyleet's decision, what with the cub and all. Her answer was a smile. Her cub could be born just as easily on the other side of the wait as on this side.

Then Nutmash stood and volunteered to be an agemate for the future chieftess he had never met, since her brother was now so much older than she.

It didn't take long after that for the rest of the tribe to agree to the long sleep.

Cutter tried to argue with them. He wanted them to be Wolfriders, not turn their back on the Way as he must. Sunstream merely placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled in a way that reminded Cutter strongly of his mother. Wolfriders follow their chief; that, too, is the Way.

Besides, Sunstream had promised him that they would stand together to see Rayek humbled. In the loss of his sister, Sunstream had learned the strength of his own Wolfrider blood.

So, in the end, they slept away the eons, until the night that a light shone out above the human city and a crystalline structure appeared on the top of a timeworn mountain.