Emerging Legacy

EMERGING LEGACY

A Story of the Wolverine's Daughter

Doranna Durgin

Blue Hound Visions
Tijeras, NM

EMERGING LEGACY

Copyright © 2005 by Doranna Durgin

ISBN: 978-1-61138-538-0

Published by Blue Hound Visions, Tijeras NM, an affiliate
of Book View Café

Cover: Doranna Durgin

First published in 2005 by Random House in
Young Warriors

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or,
if real, used fictitiously — and any resemblance to actual persons, business
establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

License Notes:

This efiction is licensed for your personal
enjoyment only. This efiction may not be re-sold or given to others. If you
would like to share, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If
you’re reading this efiction and it was not purchased for your use, then you
should purchase your own copy. Thank you for helping the ereading community to
grow!

~~~~~

Author Note:

This short story is a glimpse into Kelyn's life before the events of
Wolverine's Daughter
. It was so much fun to go poking around in the world that formed her, and to meet her friends and an earlier version of Kelyn herself! If you haven't read Wolverine's Daughter, no fears — the story stands on its own, and was featured as such in the anthology
Young Warriors.
If you've read
Wolverine's Daughter
, then welcome back to Kelyn! I hope you have as much fun as I did with this peek into her earlier days!
Without readers like you, I wouldn't be able to write these books. I appreciate your letters, emails, blog comments, and Facebook posts more than I can ever express, and I love your reviews. It's amazing to be a part of such a large circle of friends through a mutual love of books!

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Kelyn knew she was the clumsy one.

Even if she hadn’t noticed it herself — with all the tripping,
stumbling, dropping things and running into overhangs and low branches she’d
done — the others in her hunting pack weren’t about to let her forget. How
unfortunate that the words “Clumsy Kelyn” rolled off their tongues so easily.

All the same, she was still alive. They couldn’t say that
about Sigre, whose favorite craggy perch Kelyn now occupied, her feet dangling
comfortably over the edge of a drop so far that she found herself looking down
on the distant treetops below. She took a generous bite of the dried plum she’d
brought with her to this quiet moment, and spat the pit out into the misty
morning air.

She lost sight of it long before it reached the trees — though
last week, she’d had no problem watching Sigre all the way down. Or hearing
her, a fading scream that turned to echoes before Sigre disappeared into the
pines below.

There were some who said it should have been Kelyn. Sigre
had always been light of foot, always graceful on the ledges and narrow,
dangerous trails of these high, craggy mountains. She’d always been their
trailblazer, taking them to new places in the thin air, finding them new
hunting grounds.

Kelyn missed her — but the scattered community at the base of
the mountain range would miss her more. Until now, their pack had brought
in the most meat from this summer hunting, providing the old and the young with
plenty. Young adults in training under the harshest of teachers, the
high Keturan wilderness, the pack provided for their own families and more, and at the
end of each summer they descended to the harsh rolling terrain a little more
seasoned, a little more capable. A little more prepared to survive this
difficult climate with its lushly coated rock cats and other predatory dangers.

Or crumbling rock edges.
Kelyn stood, as careful as
she ever was, intensely aware of her awkward nature and her need to counteract
it. When she kept her wits about her, she seldom had trouble. It was only
when she let her mind wander...

She stepped back from the edge to join the others. Even so,
had she not heard her packmate Mungo’s approach, his “Kelyn! Be careful!”
might just have startled her into a scary step or two. She turned on him with
a glare, but wiry Iden came up from behind to put himself between them. Behind
Iden came the others. Trailing Gwawl — as usual — came little Frykla, still
uncertain in her first year with the pack.

Though not so uncertain that she didn’t give Mungo a good
hard glare. “Kelyn saw nightfox sign this morning,” she told Mungo, who
scowled under all the scrutiny, tugging his rough-edged leather vest as though
it had twisted out of place. “It would make me proud to bring down nightfox
pelts for trading in my first year. But I don’t suppose it’ll happen if you
make her so mad she doesn’t show us the spot!”

“I can find my own nightfox dens.” Mungo tried for dignity,
but it was hard to carry off. He looked to be growing into a stout frame, but
for now he was the only one of them left with the precious fat of a well-fed
child and it made him appear even younger than Frykla. “You fuss over
nothing. Kelyn’s father is the great Thainn, remember? Surely with such a
mighty hunter’s blood in her veins, she heard me coming.”

“I did hear you coming,” Kelyn said coldly, picking up her
staff — Reman ironwood, bound with leather, weighted on both ends; it had come
from her mother and served her well as a defensive weapon, especially as she
was not allowed a long blade. “I begin to understand why my father always
hunted alone. And maybe even why he left.”

He’d left Ketura
before
she was born — before she was
even conceived. Kelyn’s mother had met him in Rema, and never expected him to
stay with her. At Kelyn’s conception her mother had traveled to Ketura to
raise her child in her father’s lands.

Any child of Thainn’s, her mother had reasoned, was bound to
get into more than her fair share of trouble. She wanted Kelyn hardened by
this harsh land...trained by it. Challenged by it.

Of course, her mother had never had any reason to expect
Thainn’s child to be a clumsy one. Or an awkward one, with features that
fought each other for attention. Or the one whose opinion faced casual
dismissal as the pack equated clumsy with incapable.

Just because she didn’t like the direction her thoughts had
taken, Kelyn gave the pack a good hard glare. And then, with some assurance,
she stepped off in the direction of the nightfox den.

Whereupon she stumbled over nothing, twisted around her own
leg, and hit the rocky ground hard.

Stupid!
she chided herself, wrapping her arms around
the wrenched leg. If there was one thing she’d learned, it was that she among
them all could never
not pay attention.
Never be distracted, by
emotions or events or daydreams.

“Kelyn!” Frykla crouched by her side. “That looked bad.”

“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone fly in so many
directions at once,” Iden observed, but unlike Mungo there was kindness in his
voice.

Kelyn untangled herself, pushed herself to her feet with
help from the staff, and tested the leg. She’d given it a good twist, all
right — but she thought she could walk out of it in a few days. And besides, she
had the staff. “It’ll heal,” she told Frykla, who still hesitated by her
side. “I don’t know if I can get up to the dens...but I can take you close
enough.” More than once Kelyn had admired the nightfoxes’ ability to nimbly
ascend the sheer rock faces to their precariously placed dens. Today she
wouldn’t even try to emulate them.

Not that it mattered. This one was for Frykla.

~~~~~

Kelyn waited at the bottom of the abruptly thrusting rock
face, pulling her fur-lined vest more closely around herself and applying
herself to scraping the generous cache of edible lichen from the base of the
rock.
Soup tonight!
Perfect to ward off the year-round chill of the
high air.

Her leg pained her, but not as much as it might have; she
favored it only because she knew better than to over-strain it. She’d likely
find it bruised and battered beneath the loose leather of her leggings and snug
loin cloth, and looked forward to the hot spring in their favorite camp spot.

When the sun reached midday, she heard the faint echoes of
victorious shouting, and she smiled to herself. They might mock her lack of
grace, they might ignore her concerns on the trail, but not one among them had
a better eye for nightfox sign. Not long afterward, the little hunting pack
made their way down the back side of the thrusting rock and surrounded Kelyn
with their ebullience and slightly breathless victory. They’d also discovered
valuable choi buttons, which they could leave to cure another month and then
harvest for sale to outsiders.

In quick order, they skinned the two nightfoxes they’d
snagged, and left the bodies arranged on a nearby outcrop, a tribute to the
rock cat that lived in this area. Kelyn joined them as they started down, a
descent of several hours to their closest established camp. They chattered
about their success as Frykla, flushed and happy, recounted the harrowing climb
to the den several times over. Satisfied enough with her part in the valuable
acquisition, Kelyn concentrated on navigating the rough terrain.

Perhaps that’s why she was the first to hesitate — the first
to think something wasn’t quite right. She held up a hand and the others
instantly stopped — but a moment of group inspection revealed no sound or sight
out of place. Mungo was the first to shift impatiently, and Kelyn knew why — just
around this stand of stunted trees, through the narrow opening in two looming
rocks, their favorite camp waited. The hot springs inside their low scoop of a
cave called to Kelyn and her aching leg, and her stomach hungered for the
gnarled tubers waiting to supplement the lichen. The others were no less
tired, no less ready to settle in for the evening.

So even though she didn’t yet know what little
wrongness
in their surroundings had caught her attention, the others gave a shrug and
moved onward. Their habitual dismissiveness of her skills took over, and one
by one, they slipped through the gap in the sentry rocks to throw themselves to
the ground around the banked coals of the fire.

Or so Kelyn thought, hearing the sounds within. Until she
actually took her turn through the sentry rocks and discovered her pack mates
sprawled on the hard-packed dirt and stone of the area, dazed and surrounded
and some of them even being sat upon — all by rough, dark men in unfamiliar
clothing. The discovery startled her so much that she stumbled and fell,
saving them the effort of taking her down.

Men, here? After
us
?
Shock and fear coursed
along her spine; her heart hammered in her chest, lending her a burst of energy
too late to do any good.

One of the four men gave a short laugh at Kelyn’s fall, and
said something to the others in a harsh, unfamiliar language. They all relaxed
slightly.
They know we’re all here.
And that they’d accomplished this
capture without a fight.