Wide-Eyes hunched in the corner of the chamber, turning the seeing glass over with trembling fingers. His claws kept creeping out and clinking against the copper tube, and he took deep breaths, calmed himself and waited for them to retract and nestle back under the skin. He’d been a fool to steal the seeing glass from Father Stargazer. He’d been more foolish still to lose it in one of the upper tunnels. When the human visitor returned it to him, in front of the rest of the pack, his foolishness had been exposed for all to see.

  Another line of thought queued for attention behind the concerns about his own future:

  The human who had known the language of his pack. The human wrote symbols in the letters of the People. What does it mean?

  A shadow moved in the darkness of the entrance on the far side of the cavern. Down here, even deeper than the star chamber, only the People of the Night could see, and even they could not see clearly. But sound and smell defined form as much as sight did. He knew who approached. Mother of Moonlight. He squeezed deeper into the corner.

  Her hands and feet padded on the ground, crunching more loudly than they should have done across the coarser rocks that had been exposed. She stopped an arm's length away from him. He felt her looking but did not look up to meet her eyes.

  “Child Wide-Eyes,” she said. “Foolish child.”

  “I’m sorry, Mother of Moonlight,” he answered. “I should not have disobeyed you.”

  “I do not accept your apology. I have heard it too many times.”

  He shivered. He waited.

  “You stole from the Father. You left his property lying around. You drew humans into our home.”

  Wide-Eyes remained silent.

  “Go up to Father Stargazer. He will tell you our decision.”

  “I am to be banished, aren’t I, Mother?”

  He looked up, steeling himself, and then blinked in surprise. She did not appear angry. His stomach sank. They had gone beyond it. He had provoked her ire too many times and now they had entered the realm of sadness.

  She closed the gap between them. The fresh wounds on her flank were healing, but the scars would never leave. He shuddered to see them. Had he brought these new injuries upon her? He was not so sure. He thought the human was coming for their home long before he found the seeing glass. He was drawn to it like a moth to a flame. It was same for the metal-clad humans that followed.

  He felt Mother of Moonlight’s tongue on the top of his head and the warmth of her breath. Suddenly, he was a young cub again, basking in her attention while the grown males looked on and waited for a chance to prove themselves. He allowed her to clean his head and neck, purring softly as he drank up the affection, not knowing when he would feel it again. The People of the Night were so few, now. They could not afford such mistakes as his. They could not afford to keep amongst them those who risked the safety of the pack.

  When she had finished grooming him, she turned and left. There was nothing more to be said, after a gesture like that.

  Wide-Eyes stood and left the chamber. At the exit, he turned and looked. The human gods swam in the ceiling above him. They shone in their glory, just as they shone in the glory of heaven. A reminder that magic had come to their world – and it had chosen to favour another people. He looked lower, at the ground in the middle of the chamber, from where the metal-clad humans had scoured the floor for the sacred powder.

  That was where the strange human had stood. He had fought for them, even though the mother had cut his side.

  Wide-Eyes passed his peers and the older ones in the pack as he climbed the tunnels. Disapproving clicks and hushed gossip quietened upon his approach and resumed after he had passed, so that he seemed to walk in a bubble of his own silence, with the whispers of the pack pressing in around it.

  At last, he left the last of them behind and smelled the clean, night air in the higher tunnels. He crawled through narrow cracks and crevices, then scrambled up to the open space. He felt the absence of earth and rock above him like the release of a constant pressure; something noticed by its absence. He remembered what Father Stargazer once told him.

  Our people belong in the treetops, under the open sky. We live in the tunnels by necessity, not by nature.

  Between humans and the under-people, their mountain home was the safest place. But it was not their true home.

  The old father sat ahead of him, in his usual spot. High and inaccessible to humans, so that he could lose himself in the vigil with no fear of disturbance. His body defined a shadow against the starlight, from the end of the high ridge.

  Up here, the wind whipped against Wide-Eyes' side and his fur stood on end in the chill. He took in the outline of the father’s form. The old, broad shoulders hunched over the end of the huge seeing glass. He held his limbs relaxed and still, as though every ounce of strength were being absorbed in the act of watching. The copper tube of the great seeing glass caught the starlight.

  Father Stargazer’s tail twitched; the only sign that he had noticed Wide-Eyes approach.

  “How goes the vigil?” Wide-Eyes asked. It was the customary greeting when interrupting a patriarch during their watch.

  “We wait,” Stargazer replied. It was the customary response.

  Wide-Eyes sat on his haunches and the father drew his head back from the narrow end of the tube. He turned to face him. The fur around his eyes was thinning, and a grey streak shot across his forehead like the trail of a comet.

  “The king of their summer gods has appeared. But you don’t need a seeing glass to recognise that.”

  The one the humans called Hurean shone brightly in the Western sky. It had grown nearer every day and night since it appeared.

  “He’s coming east, isn’t he? He’s coming to the forest.”

  The father moved his shoulders in a gesture that might have been a shrug. He loped down from the rock and came to sit in front of Wide-Eyes.

  “The coming and going of their gods does not concern me as it used to.” He held out his hand. “You recovered it, I see.”

  Wide-Eyes pulled the smaller seeing glass from under his arm and passed it with a shy, apologetic smile to the father. He had snuck the little artefact from the old patriarch’s collection and used it on his escapades to spy on humans, and even under-people. Right after he lost it in one of the outer tunnels, Father Stargazer announced that it had gone missing.

  “The human returned it to me,” Wide-Eyes told him. “The one who came into the caves to read. The one who learned some of our words.”

  The father nodded almost imperceptibly.

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  “I know.”

  He turned and pointed to his huge seeing glass, pointing upwards on its spidery legs.

  “My teacher handed that down to me. His teacher made it with his own hands. When I was your age, I wanted nothing more than to become the patriarch of the pack. The Father Stargazer. I wanted to look through the great seeing glass at the night sky and be the one to catch the first glimpse of our people’s gods.”

  Wide-Eyes remained silent. He knew from the father’s tone and manner that he was about to tell him something important. And from the way he turned away and hesitated, he feared that he would lose the will to say it. He remained still, as though he were hunting and waiting for the prey to come closer. Father Stargazer continued:

  “How many generations of patriarchs have sat on this hill, or some other, watching the night sky?” he asked the question of himself. “First, we tried to understand their gods. To understand why they came to this world and ignored us. Why they chose a people who eked a living from dirt and caves, barely able to speak, and raised them up to be greater than we were. We watched them move across the heavens, and waited for them to bless us, too, as they had blessed the humans.”

  The wind whistled across the mountaintop, but Wide-Eyes no longer felt the cold. Father Stargazer spoke fluently now and looked up at the heavens, speaking to himself as though Wide-Eyes were not there.

  “Then we began to watch other stars, hoping one of them would start to move in a new way. If gods came for humans, then at length, we said, other gods would come for us. We yielded our forests to the humans, and they cut them down. We retreated before the sprawling cities and spreading roads. Our time would come, we said. We only had to wait. We thought highly of ourselves and called our waiting wisdom. But perhaps, truly, it was fear.”

  Wide-Eyes began to feel afraid, too. Father Stargazer was the patriarch. While Mother of Moonlight led the pack, he bolstered its spirit. He told the old stories. He reassured them that their gods would come – that their time would come. To hear him speak like this was like the ground of one of their mountain halls giving way. It was upon this faith that all was based. What else was there, but the long wait?

  “Father Stargazer,” he ventured. “Won’t they come? Surely, they must come... One day?”

  The father looked down at him. His round eyes were sad.

  “Do you know how few of the People remain?”

  Wide-Eyes shook his head.

  “Ours is one of three packs.”

  Wide-Eyes blinked.

  “We stand upon a crumbling precipice.” He pointed down at the world below them, shrouded in the darkness of night. “We peep about between the shadows of their cities, scratching a living in a miserable corner of the world which was once ours.”

  “Stop, Father!” Wide-Eyes cried out suddenly. “You’re scaring me! What’s the meaning of this?” Then he recalled the little seeing glass which he had stolen and only earlier returned. A hope flickered in his chest. “I’m sorry for taking something from you. But please tell me the truth. Don’t punish me. Tell me there is still some future for us!”

  The old codger is telling me a horror story to teach me a lesson. Yes, there is a lesson of some sort coming from this. Instead of sending me away, they are just going to scare me.

  But Father Stargazer was silent. He held up the little seeing glass and inspected the sides, then passed it back to Wide-Eyes.

  “It’s yours. I’m glad you took it. I am telling you these things because I have something to ask of you. Something you must keep a secret between us.”

  Wide-Eyes' heart thumped behind his rib cage like the heavy feet of the metal-clad humans when they had entered the tunnels. Father Stargazer lowered himself to meet his eye level and spoke quietly and urgently:

  “When the humans began to fight amongst themselves, it gave our people some respite. But we did not use it as we should have done. Now they prepare to draw claws again. You spied on humans of the forest with that glass, didn’t you?”

  Wide-Eyes nodded meekly.

  “What did you see?”

  “Fighting. Running. Hiding. They hunt for one another like we hunt for prey. But they protect each other, too. They are not all bad. They are enemies of She Who Thirsts and her under-people, just as we are.”

  The father nodded.

  “There are many who believe you led them here. That you stumbled in your spying, and they followed you.”

  “It’s not true, Father Stargazer!” Wide-Eyes insisted. “The humans were looking for this place. And the first ones who came did not come to steal. They came to talk.”

  The father paused and breathed in deeply.

  “Is it true that the dying human knew our words?” he asked.

  “He knew some. He wanted to speak with me.”

  “Only one other has ever tried to learn our words.”

  Father Stargazer turned away from him and looked over the blackness of the forest. He scratched his head and shuffled to the ridge, from where the North as well as the West and South were visible.

  “Come here,” he said.

  Wide-Eyes followed and sat beside him. The father draped one arm around him, shielding him beside his flanks from the wind. With his other hand he pointed North.

  “The metal-clad humans come from that city, beyond the forest’s edge. It has never concerned us before. But they have new weapons and new designs upon the wider world. They have drawn their claws against the humans of the forest, but they fare badly.”

  “Why?” asked Wide-Eyes. He shuddered to think of metal-clad that he had seen, and the destruction they had already wrought. He could not imagine the ragged, sparse clans of the forest posing much of an opposition.

  “The forest people have a new weapon, too. The very human who came into the tunnels and spoke with you. The one who was dying and now lives and fights with the power of a hundred.”

  “How do you know this?” Wide-Eyes asked.

  Father Stargazer did not respond in words. He reached out to the seeing glass that waited silently on its stands. With one hand, he tipped the end until it pointed down.

  “I gaze less at the stars these days, and more at the Earth. I watch the movement of humans. We have stayed aloof from their affairs.” He looked at Wide-Eyes intently. “But if we want to survive, we must enter the world. The time for waiting is over. Our gods have not come. The People of the Night must find allies among humans. We will use them to regain what’s ours.”

  They watched each other in silence.

  At length, Wide-Eyes looked away and surveyed the world below. The first light of dawn was beginning to spread up from the horizon. He saw the winding rivers, the little settlements of the forest people that moved from one place to another. He saw the great city in the North, with its burning tower. A trembling, new hope stirred in his heart. Father Stargazer had not given himself over to despair, after all. He had written a new story.

  “Why are you telling me, before you tell the others? What’s my part in this, Father?”

  “We called you Wide-Eyes for a reason. You were always interested in the world around. Always curious. You are ready, but the others are not. Mother of Moonlight and I have a task for you.”

  Father Stargazer moved closer and continued:

  “You will be banished. There must be a sentence for sneaking out and drawing the attention of humans to our home. But in truth, you will be our eyes. You will find the human that knows our words. You will teach him. You will bring him to us here in our halls of stone.”

  “What will you do with him?”

  “Talk. Negotiate.”

  “And if they refuse this alliance?”

  “There are others. There is a child who used to come and watch us, who walks now amongst the metal-clad humans.”

  After an embrace with Father Stargazer, perhaps the first in his life, Wide-Eyes clambered into the tunnels. A fearful excitement stirred in his heart and he held his head up high. In the eyes of his peers and all the People, he was to be banished. Mother of Moonlight would already have told them. And yet, in her eyes and those of the father, he was chosen. The first, tentative emissary from the dying packs to the thriving, fighting human tribes. After a lifetime of sneaking out and returning to harsh reprimands, he would sate his heart's desire for discovery.

  He reached the lower tunnels, near the entrance to the star chamber. He smelled the mass of bodies from afar.

  When he entered the chamber, they already lined each side in order of age. Mother of Moonlight stood like a black statue in the centre.

  Wide-Eyes stopped at the entrance.

  “I have spoken with Father Stargazer. I know the sentence.”

  Mother of Moonlight spoke. Her voice was like the icy wind atop the mountain. It betrayed none of the tenderness she had shown earlier.

  “When one, through selfish desires, endangers the pack, they must leave.”

  Wide-Eyes bowed his head. She continued.

  “But we are the People of the Night. We do not draw claws against one another. We do not wish each other ill. Go in peace, Child Wide-Eyes. Go in safety.”

  A susurration of agreement passed among the assembled pack. The higher pitched squeaks of young ones blended with the deeper reverberation of the adults off the chamber walls.

  “Go safely,” they intoned. “Go in peace.”

  Wide-Eyes pulled himself to his full height and walked slowly across the room. He held his mother’s eyes as he padded around her, two deep, inscrutable pools. Then he exited the chamber without looking back.

  He wondered if they marvelled at the courage he displayed, under the weight of so heavy a sentence. Of course, he bore it lightly because he knew the truth. He would return, and when he did so, he would herald a new age for the People.

  He left the odour and warmth of the pack behind and followed in the opposite direction of the human who had come. By the time he emerged onto the mountainside, the sickly glow of daylight was already spreading. He squinted while his round eyes narrowed into slits. Before him lay the welcoming embrace of the trees. He had been raised in caverns, but in his bones and marrow he longed for the feel of moss and bark beneath his claws. He knew the scent of fruit and prey. He knew the thrill of a hunt through boughs and leaves. He inhaled deeply. The blood of under-people hung in the air. Behind it, humans too.

  His fur stood on end and his tail twitched, and he plunged into the delicious darkness of the forest.

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