Free The Fourth Circle by Zoran Zivkovic, Mary Popović

when they came down to the shore or when, during the short period of darkness between the setting of Tule and the rising of little Kilm, the first moon, they raised their ritual star chant, which they ended with a mighty yell to the spangled heavens, as a greeting to the new cycle.
    Song arose from this alien circle, too, but a song incomparably more delightful and more inspired than the monotonous howling of the pack; a song full of mighty ascent and high flights that branched out, sounding considerably more harmonious and perfect than their final shout in the darkness of the Plateau, a shout that terrified the small hamshees. The vital need to take part in that song pushed aside all the ancient instincts of the pack, forcing it to accept as its own the purpose suggested by the strange kindred who sacrificed themselves and journeyed to the shore from the unimaginable distances beyond the Big Water. So did the pack agree to the union.
    According to the Great Story, however, spun by the young females— each adding a hair to that luxuriant fur—the union could be accomplished only when three marked cubs entered the circle on the shore at the same time to serve as
three bases and movers of the union in which they themselves would not take part.
    And so the pack waited from generation to generation, as patient as their moons of many colors, which changed places in the heavens with faultless accuracy, commanding the rise and fall of the meager life on the world they illuminated: small, ruddy Kilm; yellow, pock-marked Borod; Morhad, enveloped in a dense green veil; dark Lopur, crisscrossed with fiery threads; and the greatest of them all, blue Tule.
    At last, without any hint of what was to come, just before one of the countless moonsets of Lopur, while the inhabitants of the Plateau were alleviating their hunger by contemplation of the forthcoming feast of Tule, the final yell of the star song sounded simultaneously before three different abodes, announcing that three cubs bearing the mark had entered the world.
    The slaughter of the hamshees, when the blue moon came up, was much more restrained than on any previous occasion. The pack caught only as many as were needed for the journey to the coast. In the place toward which they would set out from the edge of the Big Water, the tender meat of the mountain rodents would no longer be needed, although the Story said nothing about what they would eat when, united, they arrived at the circle of song. If hunger greater than the famine of Lopur were the price that had to be paid to achieve this, the pack was ready to accept it.
    On the shore, the marked cubs were positioned at three equally spaced points in the circle. The black sand was damper than usual, wetting the fur where their limbs were tucked under them, but this only stressed the glistening whiteness of the marks.
    The arrival of the presences this time was not slow and gradual. The moment Tule touched its zenith, the air in the circle began to sparkle and erupt, while the usual crackling rose to a deafening crash. At once, everybody's fur stood stiffly on end, giving off myriad blue lightning flashes in response to the fiery challenge from inside the circle.
    The white bands over the three fifth paws became spindles of blazing light, spinning the offspring of the two worlds into a single thread of fire, as they trembled from the violence of the forces that clashed above them. A series of ruddy flashes: then forms materialized in the circle, swiftly filling it and becoming as numerous as the members of the circle. Instantly the fireworks died down, and the thunderous crashing diminished to a muffled echo, which seemed to come from far out on the Big Water.
Each now leaving behind a double set of shallow footprints in the wet sand, the shapes of the kindred began to find places around the rim of the circle made by the pack, forming pairs with the members. Only the three marked cubs were left without mates. The three continued