[Firebringer 02] - Dark Moon by Meredith Ann Pierce Page A

and he had done so. Perhaps now, presently, he would also discover his name.
    “Tai-shan,” the gentle two-foot crooned, stroking him. “Tai-shan.”

Tai-shan awoke to find the fog had lifted. Morning light streamed around him. The leader of the firekeepers sat beside him still. Her followers had returned during the night, he realized with a start. Still clearly in awe of him, they moved about their campsite furtively, keeping beyond the fire. Garlands of withered flowers and grass festooned him. He nosed them, puzzled. Those offerings that had formerly rested before the sky cinder now lay about him. The two-foot leader beckoned to one of her female companions. “Daïcha,” the other murmured, bowing, and hastily withdrew. She had placed something resembling a great bird’s nest on the sand before him. Tai-shan rolled to his knees and shook himself. The nest-thing was filled with nutpods, fruit, seaoats and dune grass, dried kelp and tender twigs. Once again he ate ravenously. The eldest male spoke respectfully to the two-foot leader. She answered, shaking her head. The dark unicorn listened carefully, but the only phrase he recognized was the one the other female had used: daïcha. He concluded that such must be his rescuer’s title or name.
    His own name, so it seemed, was to be Tai-shan, the name the daïcha had given him the night before. He felt stronger now, his fever diminished. His head was clearer, though he still remembered nothing of who or what he had been before emerging from the sea. The dark unicorn rose. Beyond the fire, two-foots froze in alarm, but their leader called to them in a calm, steady voice, and none bolted.
    Tai-shan turned and climbed to the top of the dunes bordering the pit. He gazed seaward, trying to gain his bearings. A great whale lay beached upon the strand, the largest he had ever seen. Some of the two-foot males milled about it. Abruptly, the dark unicorn realized what lay below was not a whale at all. Whale-shaped, aye—long and streamlined with a ribbed belly—but it smelled of waterlogged wood, not stinking whale.
    Curiosity roused, Tai-shan trotted toward it. The male twofoots on the strand cautiously drew back as he sniffed the thing’s wet, barnacle-encrusted underside. Other two-foots stood on the flat, canted back of the thing. One of them disappeared through a square hole into its depths, and the dark unicorn understood with a shock that the place was hollow, like a shell.
    This great wooden thing was a shelter, a kind of cave. Tai-shan marveled at the firekeepers’ ingenuity: wood crafted into shelter, seed fibers matted to make false skins, logs hollowed into water traps, strips of treebark laced into nestlike containers, delicious foods hoarded like the troves of treefoxes—and fire! Truly a strange and inventive people.
    He smelled rain presently. Glancing back toward the dunes, the dark unicorn caught sight of clouds blowing in. The breeze had picked up. Anxiously, he lashed his tail. Must he take to the woods again, trusting their thin cover to keep the worst of the wet off him? He shivered, still very weak. Away from the two-foots’ fire, he had already begun to feel chill.
    Topping the dune, he saw the two-foots in the pit below also gazing at the sky. The daïcha clapped the undersides of her forepaws together and spoke to her female companions. The eldest male barked orders at the rest. They began hastily to gather up all their strange belongings. Reverently, the daïcha carried the small, black figure up the crater’s slope, followed by her folk.
    The salt breeze stiffened, heavy with the scent of rain. Cresting the slope, the two-foots hurried past him, down toward the caveshell on the beach. The breeze began to whip, carrying spatters of moisture. The fire sizzled, crackling. Worried, Tai-shan watched its flames beaten down, growing smaller and smaller beneath the falling drops. Rainwater killed fire, he realized suddenly, and without fire, he could