Ratha’s Creature - 1983

Ratha and her people (the Named) are a clan of a sentient self-aware cougar-like big cats. They have laws, languages and traditions and live by herding the creatures they once hunted. Surrounding the Named are the more numerous non-sentient UnNamed, who prey on the clan’s herds. Mating between Named and UnNamed is forbidden, since the clan believes that the resulting young will be non-sentient animals.  

Ratha, a young female, bucks the clan tradition of male dominance by training with the herding teacher, Thakur, to become a herder. All the herders are male except for Fessran, a strong-willed female who became a herder before Meoran took over leadership. Attacks by the UnNamed are driving her clan close to the edge of survival. Only Ratha’s discovery and use of fire (“The Red Tongue” and the “Creature” of the title) offers the clan a chance to survive. Meoran, the tyrannical male clan leader, opposes Ratha and drives her out of the clan. 

In exile among the UnNamed, Ratha meets the lone male Bone-chewer and discovers that the clan is wrong about some of the UnNamed - Bone-chewer speaks very well and is as bright as any clan member. He teaches her to hunt, the two mate and she has his young. When the cubs don’t develop according to her expectations, she realizes that they are probably non-sentient. She flies into a rage, attacking Bone-chewer, biting and crippling the female cub, Thistle-chaser and abandoning her mate and the litter.

Returning to the clan at Thakur‘s bidding, Ratha re-acquires “her creature”, the Red Tongue. With it, she overthrows and kills Meoran. When the UnNamed attack again, she, Thakur and Fessran lead the clan in striking back with a new weapon, fire. The enemy flees in terror.  

After the battle, Ratha emerges as clan leader. She makes Fessran chief of the Firekeepers, those who build and tend fire for the clan. The Firekeepers also wield torches in battle. Ratha’s victory is bittersweet, however. Her mate Bone-chewer was fatally injured in the fight and Ratha finds him dying. Despite everything, she still loves him and is wounded by his death. She is also troubled by the changes  Red Tongue has made in her people. However, she knows that with the Red Tongue, the Named will survive. 

Clan Ground - 1984 

As leader of the Named, Ratha is bothered by the changes that “her creature” has caused in her people, especially Fessran. It is not easy to deal with the Red Tongue with only clumsy paws and teeth. To do so requires not only manipulative skill, but strength and courage. In selecting future Firekeepers, Fessran emphasizes fierceness and strength, believing that the Red Tongue demands those qualities.  

This need makes Ratha accept a stranger, Orange-Eyes, into the clan. Though half-dead from starvation, he braves the savagery of the “fire-dance”, a re-enactment of the clan’s victory over their enemies. Not realizing how politically astute the newcomer is, Ratha re-names him Shongshar and gives him to Fessran to be a Firekeeper. 

For Ratha, the Red Tongue is a domesticated though still powerful “creature” that can warm and protect the clan. Shongshar, however, sees how fire terrifies intimidates others. To many in the clan, the Red-Tongue is like a primitive god, to be feared and worshiped. Shongshar knows he who rules fire rules the Named. Content with his present life in the clan, he doesn’t challenge Ratha. 

Ratha has decreed that Shongshar can mate within the clan if he promises to let her inspect his progeny to ensure they have “the light in the eyes” (self-aware sapient intelligence). If they don’t, she will take the cubs and abandon them. Thinking that he won’t really care that much about cubs, Shongshar agrees. 

However, when he and Bira, his mate, have the cubs, Shongshar finds that he does love them. The feared tragedy happens. Bira, knowing that the cubs are non-sentient animals, abandons the litter. Ratha, finding no “Named light” in the cubs, must exile and abandon them. With Thakur’s help, she does, although she leaves the cubs in a place where they might survive. She does not tell Shongshar for fear he will rescue them. 

This sours Shongshar toward Ratha. He uses his insight about fire to gain power in the Firekeepers, seducing Fessran into his vision.  

During the clan’s mating season, Thakur, the herding teacher, voluntarily exiles himself. He is half UnNamed and fears he might sire non-sentient cubs on a clan female. While Thakur is away from the clan, he tames a lemur-like female creature. This “treeling” he names “Aree” and the two become inseparable. Aree is not just a pet. The treeling’s dexterous hands can easily perform tasks that are nearly impossible for clan-cat paws and teeth. 

Realizing this, Thakur shows Aree to Ratha upon his return. With her support, he trains Aree how to help a Firekeeper set up and light a fire. He works with the young Firekeeper Bira. Ratha encourages him because his approach offers a more sane, effective and gentle way to deal with the Red Tongue.  

Fessran and Shongshar hate the idea. Shongshar, especially, since he knows it challenges his power. Defying Ratha, the pair set up a fire-temple in a huge cave. 

 They build a huge bonfire, stockpile wood and hold savage worship dances around the flames. They turn the Firekeepers into a tyrannical theocracy, with Shongshar as “high priest”  Fessran becomes a paralyzed figurehead, ensnared by Shongshar’s powerful will. 

Ratha realizes too late that she can’t eradicate the growing fire-religion. It appeals to a need in her people. When she  outlaws the fire-temple worship dances, the herders attend in secret, even giving pieces of meat for the privilege. 

Ratha turns to Thakur and Aree, demonstrating their skill to the Firekeepers. Aree is pregnant, so that more young treelings can partner with individual Firekeepers. 

Their hopes are dashed when Shongshar’s minions secretly chase the treeling away. Thakur falls into an angry funk while Shongshar‘s power grows. 

Ratha recovers Aree and restores her to an overjoyed Thakur. Marshalling the herders to attack the fire-temple, she intends to destroy it. The attempt fails when some herders, awed by the fire-temple and its guardians, desert to the enemy. 

Shongshar attacks Ratha, intent on killing her. Shocked into reality, Fessran intervenes, taking Shongshar’s killing strike. This gives Ratha a chance to escape, taking Thakur and Bira with her. They build an encampment by a mountain stream, just over the borders of clan ground. Ratha teaches Bira to hunt and Thakur catches fish. Ratha thinks that Fessran is dead. 

Shongshar extends and intensifies his power, becoming a bloated, oppressive tyrant, growing fat on meat from the clan herds. Ratha can only watch and seethe.  

Ratha, Bira and Thakur find a very sick and wounded Fessran, who has been dragged out and left to die. They take her to their refuge, heal her and forgive her. She regrets her blind foolishness and joins them.

While Shongshar and the Firekeepers tighten their control over the clan, the outcasts plot against him. They secretly dig a diversion channel to redirect the stream flow into a crack in the roof of Shongshar’s fire-temple cave. When they dig through the final barrier, the rain-swollen torrent pours through the crack and floods the cave, destroying the fire, drowning some Firekeepers and washing others out, leaving them drenched and gasping. 

Ratha and her allies find Shongshar, nearly drowned. Despite being nearly dead, he attacks Ratha, forcing her to kill him. 

Regaining her leadership, Ratha re-unites the divided clan. She once again entrusts the guidance of the Firekeepers to Fessran, knowing that her friend is now wiser. Thakur gives young treelings out to Ratha, Bira and others, so that the Firekeepers can learn a gentler and easier way to manage the Red Tongue. Fessran says she will take one later, but not just yet. 

Ratha calls her treeling “Ratha’s Aree”, but the name soon gets shortened to Ratharee. Bira’s companion becomes “Biaree” and this becomes the pattern for treeling names. 

Acknowledging her people’s need to worship, Ratha adopts less harmful pieces of the fire-cult. She creates a joyful open-air ring dance around a bonfire and involving treelings, who leap in a counter-circle atop the feline dancers. 

Though traumatized by the entire episode, Ratha realizes that she has learned and grown as a leader.

Ratha and Thistle-chaser - 1990 

Challenged by a severe drought, the Named seek different kinds of animals to add to their herds. During Thakur’s yearly exile, he and Aree go to the coast and find water-dwelling horse-like creatures called “sea-mares” (based on fossil desmostylians.)  He also discovers Newt, an odd little scavenger-cat who lives on the beach and is friends with the sea-mares. She has taught herself to swim in the ocean despite a badly crippled front leg. She doesn’t speak, has a dulled, fogged mind and has fits, falling on her side and fighting with an imaginary tormentor. During one such fit, she astonishes Thakur by saying a few words in the Named language. From what she says, Thakur suspects that she is Thistle-chaser, Ratha’s daughter by Bone-chewer. While teaching Thistle to speak (when she isn’t in a fit), Thakur learns the name of Thistle’s imaginary opponent, The Dreambiter.  

Thakur embarks on an attempt to restore and reclaim Thistle, teaching her how to stretch and heal her crippled foreleg. He continues teaching her speech, which she learns surprisingly rapidly.  

His goal, however, conflicts with Ratha‘s, who wants the Named to capture and domesticate sea-mares, with the idea of adding these beasts to their food supply. She envisions having a small sub-group of herders stationed at the coast, “farming” the sea-mares. Thistle, who wants the sea-mares to remain free, does everything she can to disrupt Ratha’s project.  

Thakur, who continues working with Thistle, suspects that the nightmarish Dreambiter that attacks Thistle during her episodes is a memory of Ratha turning on her and biting her when she was a small cub. He wonders what will happen if Thistle ever learns that Ratha is her mother.  

More of the Named, including Fessran and her grown son, Khushi, move from clan ground to the coast in order to catch and tame sea-mares. During the journey, the Named accidentally flush out an UnNamed female who is carrying a cub in her jaws. The UnNamed one drops the cub and flees.

Khushi, feeling sorry for the litterling, brings the cub to Fessran, who adopts him. Ratha, after inspecting the litterling, sees none of the “light in the eyes” that the Named so value. She tells Fessran to get rid of the cub, but the Firekeeper disobeys. She hides him from Ratha, nurses him and names him Mishanti.  

Things come to a climax when the Named pen sea-mares in a muddy estuary. Unused to the surroundings and longing for their open beach and the surf, the beasts languish. Thistle, realizing that her sea-mare friends will die if imprisoned here, raids the pen, tears one side down and frees her friends in a joyful escape back to their beloved beach.  

Thistle’s interference angers Ratha. Thakur, afraid that the Named might kill or capture Thistle, tries to protect her, but he slips and accidentally tells Ratha who Thistle is. Ratha has to contend with the fact that Thistle’s tormenting Dreambiter is a transformed memory of her mother’s attack on the cub.  

Ratha discovers that Fessran has disobeyed her, keeping the UnNamed cub. Angrily she confronts the Firekeeper, demanding that she get rid of Mishanti or else.  

The thing that Thakur dreaded happens. Thistle-chaser learns who Ratha is. Her knowledge inflames her rage against the Named. She decides to kill Ratha and sets up a trap that will wash Ratha out to sea, where Thistle has the advantage.  

When Ratha discovers that Fessran is still keeping Mishanti, she confronts the Firekeeper. Having learned that Thistle is Ratha’s daughter, Fessran taunts Ratha with it.

Ratha takes Mishanti from a still-defiant Fessran and leaves, having to do the heart-breaking job of abandoning another cub. She still remembers having to exile Shongshar’s young.  

Ratha is crossing a floating bridge the Named and their treelings have built over an estuary with Mishanti in her jaws when Thistle appears in the water and cuts the bridge free. With Ratha and Mishanti trapped on it, the bridge-raft is swept out to sea. Thistle stays in the water, clinging to the raft. Deliberately she starts ripping the raft apart beneath Ratha.  

Still carrying Mishanti, Ratha escapes to a low rocky wave-washed jetty. Thistle follows and attacks Ratha, who knows this could be a fight to the death. Tiny Mishanti tries to intervene, biting Thistle’s tail. Furious, Thistle strikes and wounds Mishanti.  

In a last-ditch attempt to reach her rage-maddened daughter, Ratha screams that Thistle is a Dreambiter, that Thistle is wounding Mishanti as Ratha wounded her. Thistle-chaser might seek to kill the Dreambiter, but she can’t, since she has become the Dreambiter. Her words penetrate, stopping Thistle’s attack on the cub.  

Ratha slips on the rocks, catching one foreleg in a crevice. Trapped and unable to protect Mishanti from the crashing waves around them, Ratha sees Mishanti swept away. She begs Thistle to save Mishanti, since she can’t.  

The turning point is that Thistle realizes what she is doing, stops fighting Ratha and rescues Mishanti. The cub is close to dying of cold. Ratha tries to warm him, but Thistle, saying her fur is thicker, takes on the task while  Ratha, exhausted, falls asleep. Thistle watches her, remembering her words and understanding that she and Ratha are the same, both Dreambiters, cub-maulers.  

 Thakur and Fessran, who have been searching for Ratha, arrive on the jetty. They find Thistle-chaser lying on top of Ratha with Mishanti nestled between the two. Ratha’s foreleg is still trapped and Thakur fears that he might have to bite the leg off in order to free her. It is only when Thistle-chaser uses her smaller once-crippled forepaw, to worm into the crevice and get her claws into Ratha’s trapped foot that they are able to free Ratha, get her off the jetty and back to land.  

Ratha and Thistle begin to reconcile, though the past that they share is a difficult. Ratha admits that she made a hasty judgment of the infant Thistle-chaser. She promises that she will give little Mishanti time to show his gifts. She tells Thistle that the sea-mares won’t work as herdbeasts, so they can stay free. Ratha also wants Thistle to come back into the clan.  

Thistle says that Mishanti is too different from clan cubs. He is like her. She doesn’t want to leave her beach and live on clan ground. She isn’t ready yet. Instead, she wants to take Mishanti and raise him. Ratha agrees. Fessran, although it is difficult, relinquishes Mishanti to Thistle.  

As Ratha reflects on what has happened, she knows that the image of the Dreambiter will slowly fade for both herself and Thistle. She has regained a daughter who is strong-willed, self-reliant and resourceful. She has also found a wiser, better part of herself. 

 Ratha's Challenge - 1994

The Named, having given up trying to domesticate sea-mares, turn to capturing young mammoths, who they call “face-tails” because of the trunk. The creatures are hard to deal with, since they use their trunks to throw rocks and grab herders, hurling the luckless clan-cats into thorn-bushes.  

In addition, the Named have competition for this new and tasty prey.  It comes from another cat-clan. Ratha hopes that these newcomers might become an allied or sister clan to the Named. As she learns more about the face-tail hunters and their ways, she loses that hope. To the individualistic and self-valuing Named, the other group seem very alien. Tightly controlled by their ruler, called “True-of-voice” by a mysterious influence known as “the song”, these hunters have only the rudiments of a self. Instead of making conscious decisions, communicating them and acting upon them, the hunters have internalized the commands from their leader as a voice that sings in one part of their minds and tells the other part what to do. This is not telepathy, but an influence spread primarily by scent.  

Constantly listening to True-of-voice’s internal song, the hunters seem to wander around in a dreamlike state, earning them the name of Dream-stalkers. However their ability to hear True-of-voice through the song enables them to co-ordinate much faster and more effectively than the Named. They are fearsome hunters -- their prey stands no chance.  

They do speak the Named language, but they only use it for very basic and concrete communication, as Thakur learns when he tries to talk with them. As he studies the hunters, he decides that they are as intelligent as the Named, however the intelligence has taken a very different form.  

The dream-like look in their eyes reminds him of the look in Thistle-chaser’s eyes when he first met her. He knows that Thistle can also hear voices in her head, the growl of the Dreambiter when she falls into a fit. He wonders if she might be better able to communicate with the face-tail hunters than he or any of the Named.  

Ratha and Fessran are on Thistle’s beach. Fessran is looking after Mishanti, giving Thistle a break from the active and demanding cub. Ratha and Thistle are still struggling to come to terms with the past and each other. Thistle is still battling the Dreambiter. When the fits start, Ratha can only witness them, feeling helpless.  

Khushi arrives on the beach with a message for Thistle. Thakur is asking for her help. She doesn’t have to respond, since she is not yet a member of the clan. Overcoming her reluctance to leave the beach, she decides to aid Thakur.  

It takes two tries before Thistle manages to “hear” the hunters’ song. She gets chased away if she loses it, but keeping hold of it is a struggle.  

The hunting tribe’s strange “bicameral” minds work well in familiar situations, such as hunting face-tails. However in new situations, they can become strangely inflexible, repeating the same thing, not understanding that it isn’t working.  

Thistle sees the result of this when she observes the hunters attacking a female face-tail that has been previously hunted and escaped. This beast knows how to effectively defend herself and the hunters should choose another. But they can’t or won’t.  

In the attempt, the animal gores a young hunter male. Thistle, feeling sorry for him, jumps into the fight, distracts the animal and it takes off after her. When she tries to escape it by jumping off a bluff, the face-tail follows but the fall cripples it. The hunters kill it and start feeding, ignoring the wounded male. Unknown to Thistle, the hunter leader True-of-voice, has seen, understood and intends to try this method of killing prey.

Thistle tries to help him, getting disgusted at the others, who are evidently ignoring them. She is thinking that this bunch doesn’t have the sensibilities to bother about the wounded one when one of his comrades brings him a piece of meat. Thistle’s eyes widen. The hunters do care about the wounded -- they are not just brainless automatons.  

Whenever Ratha and the Named try to take juvenile face-tails, the hunters interfere, driving her party off. She gets angry and wants to retaliate with the Red Tongue. In addition, she hates the way True-of-voice controls his people. To her, he is the ultimate tyrant -- his people cannot even imagine disobeying. Instead of being a possible sister-tribe, the face-tail hunters constitute a disturbing new threat.  

Despite her feelings, when Thakur and Thistle ask her to observe the hunter tribe, she goes and sees that the hunters do care about each other. This makes Ratha reconsider. She is also struggling with her shared past with Thistle. Thistle still falls into fits and fights the Dreambiter. Ratha is very much aware who the Dreambiter is. She also wrestles with her deep fear and hatred of the hunters’ nature as well as her need to protect her own people.  

Thistle, who is now acting as a liaison between the two tribes, is attracted to Quiet Hunter, the wounded male that she tried to help. Through him, she meets True-of-voice and learns the benevolent side of the guiding song.  

Ratha, working with Thistle and Thakur, is starting to confront her demons when an event happens that changes everything. True-of-voice, using the tactic learned by watching Thistle cripple a face-tail by leading it off a bluff, uses that in the next hunt. Thakur and Ratha realize that with this new technique, the hunters can easily slaughter more prey than they can possibly eat. What is worse, they learned it from the Named.  

As one face-tail after another plunges off the high cliff True-of-voice has chosen, the Named watch in horror at the overkill. Ratha and her people sense that they have disturbed the balance between predator and prey. The hunters were efficient. Now they are deadly.  

One female face-tail fights back. In an unexpected move, she manages to grab True-of-voice and drag him with her over the cliff. Ratha thinks the hunter leader has plunged to his death, but instead he has fallen, injured and unconscious, onto a ledge far below.  

The sudden loss of their leader and the sustaining song paralyzes the hunters. They act mindless and Thistle tells Ratha that without True-of-voice, they will gradually die.

This also affects Quiet Hunter. The one Thistle has begun to love will die as well.  

Now Ratha has a choice, which is a real challenge. Should she let True-of-voice perish along with his tribe? That would benefit the Named, removing the threat and letting them take face-tails without interference. Should she attempt to save True-of-voice, as Thistle asks, in order to do the right thing and to save Quiet Hunter.  

Thistle, with her ability to hear True-of-voice’s internal song, manages to translate it into an external vocal song, which can help prolong Quiet Hunter’s life, but can’t save him.  

In making the choice, Ratha must overcome her revulsion to the hunters and see beyond the immediate needs of the Named. She rejects the easy path and commits the Named to rescuing True-of-voice.  

The rescue involves vine ropes and treelings, but none of the Named can climb down to the ledge holding True-of-voice.

Only Thistle is small and light enough to make the descent. Borrowing a treeling, she manages to get the ropes onto True-of-voice, but when she tries to climb back up, she is taken by one of her fits and stricken by the Dreambiter.

Ratha, fearing that Thistle will fall, climbs down to her. Clinging to the cliff, both battle the shadows of their past cruelty to each other and forge a fragile trust that helps Thistle overcome the Dreambiter and climb with Ratha back up the cliff.  

The Named get True-of-voice down from the ledge, heal him and restore him to his people. Thistle chooses Quiet Hunter as her future mate and the two become “ambassadors” between the Named and the hunter tribe. The experience draws Ratha and her daughter closer.