The Cry of the Wolf

by Melvin Burgess

  She heard the soft and violent thud ahead of her twice. She looked up and saw movement before her as two wolves ahead fell out of sight and with one bound she swung into the aspens again. The sound of another bolt in the air came in the same second and there was a sickening bloody thud on her own shoulder. She gasped and dropped the cub, and although her heart wrenched, her instincts took over and she stumbled back through the brambles and bare branches on three legs, her left front leg pinned by a short bolt to her ribs. The smell of her own wolf blood hot on the frozen ground filled her nostrils and she ran blindly, scentlessly on until the pain took away her strength and she sank to the earth in a ditch on the edge of the pasture. The blood from her wound flowed freely, melting the frozen leaves in the ditch beneath her. She closed her eyes and lost consciousness.

  She was awoken by pain moments later to find Conna above her, gnawing at the stubby bolt in her shoulder with his teeth, his muzzle bright red with her blood. A great bruise was spreading all around the wound. Conna did his best to remove the bolt, but it was not possible. Silver lay, whining under his efforts for a few minutes more. But then she climbed back onto her feet and staggered towards the scene of the ambush. Conna followed, frightened, whining at her. It was a cardinal rule never to return to the scene of a murder, when the murderer might still be there. But Silver knew her pack was finished. She had seen the two others fall. But her cubs were still alive. She was determined to rescue them.

  The Hunter was pleased with his handiwork. He jumped down from the tree and walked over to examine the wolves he had hit. The first animal, the young yellow-blonde female, was cleanly shot. He bent down to examine the skin and as he did so he heard a little cry from the grass around it. Bending down he found to his surprise a brand new wolf pup, still blind. At the noise, little Jenny, who had been hiding trembling in his pocket all the while, poked her head out to see, and sniffed towards it. She had once had puppies of her own. The Hunter gave the blind little thing his finger to suck and it squeaked crossly when no milk came. Then he wrung its neck, thinking to mount it in a family group for his study.

  The other wolf, struck through the abdomen, was lying in a great pool of blood, but still gasping, at the last edges of its life. The animal’s eyes rolled up at him as he stood there. Jenny yelped and ducked back down into his pocket as he finished the wolf off with his knife.

  A movement in the grass alerted him to the second cub, and now it occurred to him there might be more about. He strangled this one too, and began to walk over towards the aspens, where he had wounded Silver, to see what he could find there.

  He was no more than three metres away when the bloody head of the pack leader appeared suddenly from the aspens, seized another cub from the ground in its jaws and disappeared. With a curse the Hunter broke into a run. He saw the wolf on three legs between the trees, skidding and falling sideways, and he knew that she was badly wounded. Slashes of blood marked her way out of the woods and into the now frozen field above the farmhouse. The field had been roughly ploughed for the winter, and Silver stumbled over the ragged sods, slithered, almost on her belly, down the slope, leaving her blood smeared on the icy furrows. The Hunter let off a bolt at her but missed and ran on, reloading. He knew he could not lose her trail now.

  In the yard of High Pond Farm, a thirteen-year-old boy was fixing a puncture on his bicycle. The bicycle was old and not used much. But that weekend he and his friends planned a trip to the sea. It was the first long trip Ben had been allowed to make on his own and the condition was that he should make absolutely sure his bike was roadworthy. The poor old thing had been untouched for months. The tyres were both flat and it squeaked. Ben was covered in oil. He was clenching his teeth as he held the inner tube in a bowl of icy cold water, trying to find yet another leak. A thin stream of tiny bubbles crawled up his red fingers. Ben groaned.

  There was a noise behind him. The boy turned. To his amazement and horror a great animal was creeping on its belly across the farmyard. Its ears were laid flat on its skull, its eyes rolled so far back they were three quarters white. Its lips curled far up its black gums and teeth. Every hair on its body was standing on end and it looked enormous. It left a trail of blood behind it, practically brushing by his legs as it crawled into the barn, and it made the most fantastic noise as it went, moaning and growling deep in its throat at the same time. A small grey baby animal mewed in its bloody jaws.

  Then there was a second noise. The boy turned again and now there was a man standing in front of him, panting. It was a man he had seen before. His teeth were bared, his face was red and he was crouched up as if ready to leap. Cradled in his arms was a crossbow. He straightened up when he saw Ben. For a second they looked at each other and then the Hunter said, ‘That’s my dog,’ and took a step forward. Ben moved in front of him. ‘It’s got my pup, didn’t you see?’ screamed the man. ‘It’s killing him!’

  For a second, Ben paused. The monster had got something in its jaws, and its jaws were covered with blood. The man jumped forward and pushed him aside. But Ben knew that man; he saw the crossbow.

  He grabbed at the man’s arm and pulled him back. ‘That’s no dog – Dad, Dad, come quick!’ he screamed at the top of his voice.

  The Hunter snarled. ‘Get away.’ He shoved the boy viciously off, but the farmer was already coming out of the door.

  ‘There’s a wolf in the barn, wounded,’ said Ben. ‘He’s hunting her. He’s the one I saw before. He killed the robin.’

  The crossbow in the Hunter’s hand told the farmer everything.

  ‘Get off my land!’

  The Hunter grimaced and stepped back. ‘I’ll have you!’ he growled, and ran out of the yard. John and Ben Tilley turned to look in the barn.

  4

  SILVER HAD NOT even managed to hide in the barn, but collapsed in front of a bale of straw, nosed the cub to her chest and could do nothing but wait and see. When the door opened she did not raise her head but rolled her eyes to the people coming towards her. She made no attempt to escape. Crossing the yard had spent her very last dregs of strength. Seeing Ben and his father instead of the Hunter, her tongue fell out and she closed her eyes, panting shallow, wheezing breaths that clouded the air.

  To Ben, this wolf was a different animal from the monster he had seen outside. Then she had stretched right across the yard like a demon and could have crushed him in her jaws. This creature was shrunken, collapsed, pitiful. The little bolt sticking out of her bloody hide was causing her agony. The fur all around the wound was sodden with blood.

  John Tilley motioned Ben to stay where he was while he went to examine the wound. The wolf growled weakly and tried to scoop her pup close to her, but then licked her lips and laid her head down. She made no further protest. The bolt was wedged between her ribs. John knew that bolt had to come out. The animal had already lost a lot of blood.

  ‘Ben, fetch me water and antiseptic. Tell your mother what’s happened. And bandages. Be quick!’

  With Ben gone, the farmer turned to the grim job of getting the bolt out.

  Half an hour later John Tilley came out of the barn and locked the door behind him. Mrs Tilley and Ben waited for him.

  ‘Is she going to be all right?’ Ben asked.

  ‘It’s a bad wound. The bolt didn’t pierce her lungs, that’s one thing. We’ll see.’ Catching his wife’s eye, he softly shook his head. He held out the bolt. ‘Crossbow,’ he said. ‘Makes no sound, you see, and it’s every bit as deadly as a gun. Vile.’

  While his parents talked Ben went to the door and bent on his knees to peer through a crack. He could see the wolf inside, breathing weakly.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered through the crack. The cub was crying, and Ben promised in his mind that if anything should happen to the mother he would look after her young one for her.

  Silver was fighting for her life. John Tilley called the vet in, a local man who knew the story of the wolves, and he treated her with antibiotics and bathed her wound. B
ut she was very weak and within a day had developed a raging fever. John and Margaret Tilley did not expect her to last the night, but the next morning she was still there, bright-eyed, blazing hot and dry. Her pup suckled empty teats.

  ‘He needs feeding with a dropper bottle every two hours, day and night. Even so he’ll probably die,’ said Mrs Tilley. ‘Any volunteers?’

  So Ben spent the next day sitting in the barn beside the two wolves with a blow-heater on a cable from the house, an alarm clock, a dropper bottle and an electric bottle warmer some friends of his parents had used for their new baby’s night-time feeds. He was worried that Silver would not like him handling her young one, but in her fever she knew nothing of what was happening. She lay all day with her muscles clenching into string chains, panting and groaning, opening her wound as she struggled in a bitter delirium. No one knew whether she was fleeing or fighting for her life in her dreams. Every hour they expected her to die, but somehow she held on, her tongue hanging out like dry leather, her sides shaking, her eyes sinking and burning blindly in her head.

  When evening came, though, and he tried to take the cub away to bed, she became distressed. Even in the violence of her fever she would not be separated from her last remaining cub and she dragged herself across the floor after Ben, staining the straw with her blood. He had to put the cub back at her side.

  It seemed Ben would have to spend the night in the barn if he was going to keep his promise to Silver. But there was more than one protective parent about. Ben’s father and mother would not leave their only son alone with the wolf.

  ‘She’s a mother, she’s trapped and wounded with her last cub, and she’s a wild animal, not a dog,’ said his mother. ‘She might not understand you’re only trying to help.’

  Ben said nothing. He knew his parents would not leave the cub to die, and he also knew Silver would not be separated from him. There was only one possible answer.

  In the end, the whole family had to sleep in the barn, buried under an enormous pile of quilts and sleeping bags. Outside, where the cold still held the country fast in ice, a small high white moon shone on the frozen concrete of the yard. Inside, the Tilley family and the wolves slept snug and warm, people and beasts together for once. Every two hours Ben turned on the heater and stretched his arm through the icy air to the crying cub. Silver, still ignorant of everything, panted hoarsely and whimpered. Ben watched her thin breath cloud the air, short clouds that dissolved at once, and that at any second might stop altogether.

  On one such occasion, Ben awoke to hear some beast sniffing around outside the barn door. He stirred and immediately the animal was gone. Evidently there was more than one wolf left. During the day, Mr Tilley left the barn door ajar in the hope this other one might run in where he could be trapped and kept in safety, but Conna was too wary and frightened of men to be tricked in that way, even though it meant being apart from his beloved Silver.

  Conna was not the only beast out and about in the Surrey countryside. Reports came from the village that the Hunter had been seen, asking questions in the village, hanging around the lanes near the farm. When he heard this, Mr Tilley tied up the two farm dogs at the entrance to the yard every night, and kept his shotgun and stick by his side as he slept.

  *

  The frost still held. Every day at one or two the sun in a cold blue sky melted the hoar frost on the yard, but as soon as it dipped everything re-froze at once. By the third day, Silver’s fever had still not passed. She was as thin as a stick, her condition seemed unchanged. Her breathing was as shallow and rapid as ever, her tongue as dry, her temperature as high. Only her wound changed, developing a crusty scab under the matted fur of her shoulder. She ate nothing. Occasionally she lapped a little water, but sometimes she could not do even that, and Mr Tilley had to pour it down her throat.

  Soon, Silver had either to die or the fever break. The Tilleys were scared of her. They prayed she would live, but if she won her fight and came to surrounded by people, cornered with her cub in their hands, would she understand? And if she did would she run – or would she attack?

  While Silver remained hovering between life and death, her son was growing like a balloon, almost visibly. The little thing was changing colour already. His eyes were smoky blue; only later would they change to the true wolfish amber. He was obviously going to be a handsome animal. He had his mother’s silver scattered over his flanks and gold blond mingled in with it. From a distance this mixture was a silver grey, although it became more rich close up, and Ben christened his adopted puppy Greycub. He felt he was doing something to make up for letting out the secret all those years ago.

  ‘Stupid little kid,’ he muttered to himself every night as he fed the precious cub. Ben knew that no wolves had been seen around the village for years – ever since he let the secret out, in fact. No one had ever accused him, but no one needed to. Ben guessed that the Hunter had been after the wolves all that time. How many had he slaughtered, unseen? Perhaps these were the last wolves left in England.

  On the fourth night Ben awoke at the alarm that marked another feeding time. Full of sleep, he only vaguely noticed that something was different and was not aware that the short, jagged breath of the mother wolf was gone. Not until he reached out an arm for Greycub, and the air was cut by a low but very fierce warning growl, did he know that Silver was out of danger – and he was deeply in it.

  Immediately his mother and father were awake.

  ‘Don’t touch him, Ben,’ said his father.

  At the sound, the cub had fallen immediately still, and there was no noise but for that growl, that said plainly, ‘Don’t’ and seemed to come from all around them at the same time.

  Ben already had the bottle in his hand. He moved it very slowly over to the cub. At once the growling flared up, threatened. His father turned on the lamp and Ben could see that the wolf was gone from her place and there was no sign of her. He could not work out where the growling came from. But his hand completed its journey, and Greycub began to feed. The growl continued, and went on after the bottle was empty and the light was out. Silver spoke her warning, but made no move. She wanted them to know she was there, she was watching, she was prepared to fight if need be for her cub.

  It seemed as if she would never fall silent. No sleep was possible with that hair-raising threat all around them. But at last she stopped it and the occupants of the barn fell asleep. Greycub cried for her warmth, but Ben did not dare touch him and Silver remained in hiding.

  The whole performance was repeated again at the next feeding time, but when they all awoke in daylight, Silver was back in her place by her son, and had shown the first signs of trust. Mother and son would live after all.

  Silver began a slow recovery. She crouched all day, all bones among the straw, clearly uncomfortable at the human presence all around her, but accepting it as a necessary evil. Greycub had no such worries. He was fat and glossy and bursting with health and curiosity. He spent his first weeks sniffing everything, measuring smells and sticking his nose into the air as soon as the barn door was opened, and the world was wafted inside on the freezing air. With his newly opened eyes he discovered things had shapes as well as smells, he wanted to be everywhere. Silver had no strength to amuse her cub and Ben had to keep him off her back. At first she was reluctant, but Greycub needed the exercise and soon she was glad to let Ben take over. The day she let her son sit on his chest and lick his face was one of Ben’s proudest. As he got older, the cub developed the energy of a fireball, and just wanted to play all the time he wasn’t eating or sleeping. Ben always ran out of energy first, running the little thing in circles or playing tag or just letting him ferociously try to chew his leg off.

  Before long, Silver was able to trot around the barn. It was obvious from her sniffings at the door and scratching late at night, when she thought Ben was asleep, that she wanted to be off. Her milk had not returned, and if she did get away with her cub, Greycub would certainly die.

  Now t
hat Silver trusted Ben, and since no new sightings of the Hunter had been made for several weeks, Ben’s parents returned to their bedroom, with every sign of relief. Although at first they had slept well in the open air, the frequent feedings had at last worn them down, especially Ben’s father, who had to work long hours. So Ben was able to sleep on his own with the wolves.

  He lay every night in his sleeping bag among the straw and hay that made a bed for him and the two wolves. Silver had come to trust him so far as to lie against him, or even to rest her head on his legs as he slept, and Ben prized this trust more than anything.

  By his side he kept a quartz clock that woke him at feeding times. This clock bleeped and then was silent for a while before bleeping again, and this way you woke up gradually. One night about six weeks after the wolves had come back to High Pond Farm, Ben awoke in the silence, thinking it must be time for Greycub’s milk. He began to reach out for the bottle. But then he felt a breeze on his face.

  A pale light from a small crescent moon and the dull electric farmyard lamp showed through the open door. There was a figure hunched over, arms gathered up to its face. Then there was a whizzing noise and a hard thud and a thin scream cut short came from behind him among the straw bales. Ben shouted and reached for his torch. In the sudden beam he caught the Hunter, hunched over his crossbow, raising his hand to shield his eyes. Ben screamed for help and reached out to the wolves. Silver was gone, but his hand caught the cub and he snatched at him. Just as the Hunter moved towards him, something big ran in behind and jumped right up onto the man’s shoulders.