“— coordinates,” Honor told the Sphinx Forestry Service ranger on the uni-link's display. “We're about a hundred and eighty meters north of the near-beaver dam below Jessica Falls on Rock Aspen Creek, and I need a ‘cat-certified vet out here bad. I've got one 'cat with a broken forelimb and ribs who's been unconscious for at least ten minutes, and another one with a smashed mid-pelvis. I think that one has some internal injuries, too, so please hurry. And I guess you'd better send someone along to collect the cubs, too.”
She realized her own voice sounded far too calm as she sat there between two dead adult peak bears with a pair of horribly injured treecats while a pair of orphaned peak bear cubs moaned disconsolately as they tried to understand what had happened.
“The vet's on her way,” Ranger McIntyre told her. She knew him vaguely and remembered him from her wilderness survival course. He'd always been friendly enough, but he was hardly someone she knew well, yet she'd been astonished by how happy she'd been to see him when he receipted her call.
“You ought to see her air car in the next fifteen minutes,” McIntyre continued. “But let me get this straight, Ms. Harrington. You're out there by yourself with two dead peak bears, is that right?”
“I know it's not peak bear season,” she replied a bit defensively. “But I didn't have much choice, you know. They were going to kill the 'cats, and then they decided they might as well kill me, too!”
“Oh, I understand that part,” he said. “What I don't understand is what you thought you were doing out there all alone in the first place. I don't suppose you happened to tell your parents where you were going, young lady?”
“Of course I did!” she said virtuously. “Sort of,” she added a bit more lamely when the ranger looked unimpressed. “I'd've been fine if the 'cats hadn't gotten into trouble!”
“I'm sure you would have,” McIntyre said in a voice which implied exactly the opposite. Then he inhaled deeply and shook his head. “Although, now that I think about it, I don't see why I should be particularly surprised by such a boneheaded, stubborn, impulsive antic—especially from you!”
Honor's eyes widened. She couldn't think of a single thing she'd done in her entire life—well, up until today—to deserve that resigned tone from Ranger McIntyre. She hugged the injured treecat in her lap very gently—the other 'cat was too badly hurt for her to risk moving any more than she'd had to after she'd used her bush knife to cut away the log under which he'd hidden himself and covered him with her jacket—and stared into the display in confusion.
“Oh, don't look so innocent at me, young lady!” McIntyre snorted. “This is a tradition in your family!”
Honor blinked, and then her eyes went wider than ever as she realized what he was talking about. But that was ridiculous! She hadn't been adopted by either treecat—she didn't want to be adopted by either treecat! She'd only been doing what needed to be done, and it was—
She made the mistake of looking down.
Two grass-green eyes looked back up at her, brighter and deeper and simultaneously darker than any sea she had ever seen. She fell into them, as if they had no bottom, no end. And as she fell, she felt something—someone—reaching back to her. It was as clear, as sharp, as any voice she had ever heard, and yet she couldn't hear it. It was there, and it wasn't there. Imagined, and yet more real than anything else she had ever experienced. It was nothing at all like Stephanie Harrington's description from her journal . . . yet it was simultaneously perfectly and exactly the same.
But I can't be adopted, a little voice in the back of her brain wailed. It'll mess up everything! All my plans. All my . . . .
That voice faded into silence, inconsequential beside that other voice, the one she heard without hearing. The dream was still there, the plans and hopes, the determination, but she was going to have to make a few changes, because now the dream had to include this, for it was unthinkable that it could not.
Ranger McIntyre was still saying something over the com, but she was no longer listening. She was listening to something else, and her hand was gentle as she touched the treecat's—her treecat's—silken, tufted ears as if they were what they had just become . . . the most precious thing in her universe.
* * *
<I thought you were certain you would never bond with a two-leg, Laughs Brightly,> Sharp Nose's mind voice was shadowed with pain and weaker than usual, yet amusement flickered in it. <Plans, I think you said you had?>
<One day you will be well again, Sharp Nose,> Laughs Brightly replied, <and on that day, you will pay for all of this.>
<It was not my idea!> Sharp Nose protested, his mind-glow as soft with unvoiced love for his brother as Laughs Brightly's was with love for him. <I told you you should not attack a snow hunter! You were the foolish one who would not take my advice! And it was not my fault the net-wood broke.>
<Perhaps not, but that will not save you in the end, little brother. I am the one who is supposed to play jokes on others; you and the world are not supposed to play jokes on me! And do not tell me that you are not already gloating over how you will describe this entire afternoon to Songstress!>
Sharp Nose bleeked a soft, pain-shadowed laugh and reached out to caress his brother's mind-glow gently. Laughs Brightly's mind-glow had always been strong; now it was brighter than sunlight on water, and it was growing stronger still by the moment.
<I am sorry your plans have been upset, elder brother,> he said softly, <but I also think you were right about Dances on Clouds. She is Death Fang's Bane's daughter . . . and you are Climbs Quickly's son. They flew high, Laughs Brightly, but you—you will fly higher yet.>
<I think you are right,> Laughs Brightly replied, ears twitching as he heard the whine of a rapidly approaching two-leg flying thing. He knew, without knowing exactly how he knew, that it was a healer, summoned by his person, yet that was unimportant, and he drew the bright, welcoming joy of her about him like a still softer and endlessly warmer blanket on a day of ice and snow.
<I think you are right,> he repeated, <for there are many worlds, and Dances on Clouds means to see them all. That may take a long, long time, but she will do it, for this is a two-leg who does not know how to fail. So she will see them, and I will see them with her, and ours will be a memory song the People will never forget.>