Tags:
Fiction,
General,
sf_fantasy,
Fantasy,
Short Stories (Single Author),
Comics & Graphic Novels,
Anthologies (Multiple Authors),
Elves,
Fantastic fiction; American,
wolves,
World of Two Moons (Imaginary place)
were catching up to each other again but she had yet to tell anyone else. Each day that she delayed their departure was another day of slowly ebbing strength; the knowledge that she was weakening the tribe rasped painfully within her. Each day she contrived to steal into the forest alone to send a plea to her father, whose death she had not felt, and the hunt, which surely must have survived the winter. There was never any answer.
She could not leave so long as Timmorn lingered in her perceptions of the wolf-song and they needed the hunt as they had never needed them before.
Selnac's time had come. Swollen and irritable, Timmorn's last favorite among the elves was ready to deliver herself of his cub. The young She-Wolf ached with inadequacy: Timmorn had always judged his cubs. He'd taken each newborn into his arms and known its nature. He knew if it was hunt or first-born—or if it could survive at all. It was a judgment the She-Wolf knew she could not make. Her forest sendings approached the intensity of a prayer and the desperation of a curse.
The moment came on a day when the She-Wolf could not escape the cave. The rain had gone cold and hard, covering everything with a treacherous glaze of ice. Trees rattled with the wind and painfully shed their branches while, as deep in the cave as possible, Selnac whimpered and called Timmorn's name.
Hidden within dreamberry languor or the recollections of the eldest, who had known Timmain before she became a wolf, lay the knowledge that she had been something else before the high ones had been stranded on this magic-desert world. Something that never worried about strength, stamina, death or the agonies of giving birth for the beautiful shape they had chosen—and were forced to pass along to their unexpected children—was poorly adapted to the rigors of ordinary life.
The She-Wolf felt the newborn's first gasp, as did everyone in the cave. They were so few in number, so bound by blood that they could not help but be aware of each other. Holding her breath, the She-Wolf approached the fur-mound on legs that seemed no longer her own.
How would she know? What should she look for? What if the cub was hunt—now that the hunt was gone?
They cleared a path for their chieftess, letting her watch as Murrel gently wrapped the newborn in a patch of the softest suede the elves' art could create. Its hair was a soft nut brown and was already drying into a lavish halo around its face—but, then, it was Timmorn's child and that, at least, was always his legacy. The child twisted its dark pink face into a burping little cry and thrust a tiny fist beyond the suede. Life—and time—stood still as the fingers uncurled, one by one.
Four or five? Elf or Wolf? Life or death? One, two, three ... four—and the last stuck out at an arrogant angle to the rest.
The She-Wolf went dizzy with relief as pent-up air and anxiety escaped her. Something—her father, or maybe the part in her that might yet become a mother—suggested she take the infant in her hands and raise it high over her head for all to see, as Timmorn had done; but she fought that impulse and watched in silence as Selnac was propped up with fragrant pillows.
Selnac radiated more fear than love as she took her child in her arms for the first time. She offered it to her breast and curled around it, her midnight black hair hiding her own face and the child from view. When she uncurled there were tears in her eyes.
"She has no name," the mother said in a strangled voice. "Empty. Empty. Empty!"
Murrel fell to her knees, embracing them both, absorbing whatever other words and despair Selnac needed to share. The other elves, even Zarhan, pressed tight together, closing out the first-born and emanating a sense of pure mourning.
**What?** Treewalker asked the rest of Timmorn's children.
**No name,** the She-Wolf repeated. **We aren't born with our names—they are.**
It was just as well they were sending not talking. She couldn't
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