Tailchaser’s Song

Twenty suns had risen and set since he had left his friends when Tailchaser at last found himself approaching the far edge of the forest. The last two days' journeying had brought him to a place where the land began to slope gently downward, and the air beneath the great trees had a strange tang. Every breath was filled with moisture-not hot, like the great Flume, but cool as stone, salty as blood. He had never scented anything like it. Every inhalation quickened his heart.

Coming down the last highlands of Ratleaf one morning, Fritti became aware of a great, slow sound. Like the contented purring of the Allmother, it rose up through the vegetation below him, vast and dignified. As he paused for a moment along the spare trees of the Ratleaf fence, he could see something gleaming before him. A second sun, a twin to the herald of Smaller Shadows which hung low in the sky, seemed to shine up at him through a gap in the uneven tooth of the forest fringe.

Abandoning his grooming, Fritti climbed to his feet and padded farther down, tail waving in the slight breeze like a willow limb. As he neared the gap he saw that it was not another sun, but a reflection- impossibly huge. He stood between two ancient redwoods and gazed out across the swiftly dropping slope, across the begi

The Bigwater, burnished like wind-polished rock, stretched away to the horizon. Mighty Qu'cef, as red-golden as Fencewalker, held and returned the burning reflection of the sun like a glowing mote in the eye of the Harar. Qu'cef's sounding call-patient and hugely calm-floated up to the promontory where he stood transfixed.

He watched all morning as the eye of the sun rose into the sky, and the Bigwater became in turn golden, then green, and finally at Smaller Shadows took on the deep blue of a nighttime sky. Then, with Qu'cef s unanswerable voice still filling his ears and thoughts, he resumed his descent down into the marshes.

The Pawdab Marshes stretched from the shores of Qu'cef southward, flanking Ratleaf Forest on her Vez'an edge until they ended at last on the banks of the Caterwaul. The marshes were flat and chill, and the wet, spongy ground sank beneath Tailchaser's paws as he walked. Never, from the time that he entered Pawdab until he finally left it again, were his paws dry.

For days on end the salt-scent of the Bigwater was in his nose, and its voice in his ears. Like the sound of his mother's purr when he had been a nursling, the call of Qu'cef was the first thing he heard when he woke up; the roaring of the waves lulled him to sleep at night, coming to him across the great marsh as he lay curled in a bed of reeds.

The marshes, too, had sensed the loosening grip of winter. Fritti was able to make many a meal on marsh-mouse and mudrat, and other, stranger creatures that proved nonetheless good to eat. Often at his approach unfamiliar birds would start up screaming from their nests hidden in the weeds, but Fritti- hunger sated-would only stand and watch them fly, marveling at their bright colors.

At the end of a fading afternoon, a successful hunt behind him, Fritti found himself walking beside a large, still pond that lay in the midst of the marshland, hemmed all about by tall grasses and reeds. The failing sun had turned the Qu'cef golden in the distance, and the pond itself seemed a pool of still fire.

Crouching down, Tailchaser scented the water. It smelled of salt; he did not drink. Fresh water was scarce on the Pawdab. Although he was well fed, he was often thirsty.

Now, leaning over the pond, he saw a strange thing: a cat, dark-furred, but with a star-mark like his own, looked up at him from underneath the water. Surprised, he leaped back-as he did, the water-cat took fright also, and disappeared. When he moved slowly back, the other peered cautiously up at him through the still waters. His hackles standing, Tailchaser hissed at the stranger-who did likewise-but as he crouched, a rock, dislodged by his paw, fell into the pond. Where it struck, circular ripples marred the surface of the pondwater in an ever-widening ring. Before his eyes the water-cat fell to pieces, floating shards, and was gone. Only when the face of the stranger re-formed, wearing a look of astonishment matching his own, did Fritti realize that it was no real beast, but a spirit or watershadow that mimicked his every movement.

Is this what I look like, then? he wondered. This slender youngling is me?

He sat for a long while staring silently at the pond-Fritti, until the sun's final disappearance blackened the surface of the pool. Meerclar's Eye appeared above, and the air was filled with the busy chaos of flying insects.

As if he were dreaming, he heard a sound, a low sound, above the distant murmur of the Bigwater. A voice was raised in droning song-an odd voice, deep yet small; charged with odd dissonances.

"…Around it goes, then up and around around…, Bugs blackly, bleakly bring the blinded, sing the sound Hope, the heart's hearth, now harshly, hardly has heard How round it goes, goes round, goes round the word…"

Fritti stood wondering. Who could it be, singing such a song in the wilds of Pawdab? He walked quietly through the reeds circling the edge of the pond, following the voice to its source on the far side. As he crept through the waving stalks the song rose again:

"… Goggle, they goggle, glaring at the gleaming goad,

As wondering a-wander, they walk a-widdershins the winding road…

Now the nameless notice how, not knowing, they had never heard:

How round it goes, goes round, goes round, goes round the word…"

As the chugging voice failed again, Tailchaser approached the spot that seemed to be its source. He could smell no unusual scent, only the marsh salts and the reek of mud. He waved away a crowd of hovering water-flies with his tail and pushed through the weeds.

Crouched at the edge of the pool was a great, green frog-throat swelling and shrinking, belly mired in the mud. As Tailchaser approached slowly from behind, the frog did not turn, but only said: "Welcome, Tailchaser. Come to sit and talk."

Bemused, Fritti walked around and sat on a mat of broken stems on the muddy shoal. It seemed everybody knew his name and business.

"I heard your song," he said. "How do you know me? Who are you?"

"Mother Rebum am I. My people are old. I am the oldest." As she spoke she blinked her great eyes. "Here in the marsh we Jugurum know all. Blood and water, stone and bone. My grandmother sat by this pond eating flies when dogs flew and cats swam."

Without changing expression or moving from her crouch, Mother Rebum-as if in imitation of her ancestor-spat out a long gray tongue and-snip! -pulled in a gnat. Swallowing, she continued.

"Padding-paws, I have heard you in my marsh for five suns. The foolish seagulls have carried word of you as you walked up and down through the mud-fields. Flea and fly will bring back mention of you when you have passed. Nothing that treads the Burum-gurgun escapes the attention of old Mother Rebum."

Fritti stared at the immense frog. Silver Eye-light dappled her rough back. "What song were you singing?" he asked.

Mother Rebum croaked a laugh. Legs straining, she lifted herself. After turning sideways to eye Fritti, she settled back down heavily.

"Ah," she said. "A song of power, that was. After the Days of Fire, the Jugurum used such strong melodies to keep the ocean down in its depth and the sky hanging safely above. My song was but a small one, though, and not so ambitious. 'Twas meant only to bring you traveler's luck."

"Me?" Fritti asked. "Why me? What have I ever done for you?"

"Why, less than nothing, my furry polliwog!" chugged the frog, amused. "I did it as a service to another, to whom I owed a favor-one older even than Mother Rebum. He who asked me to aid you even walked the earth when Jargum the Great, father of my folk, strode the marshes of the elder world-or so I am told. A powerful protector you have, little cat."