Spirit of the Wolves

by Dorothy Hearst

  “Stop that!” MikLan said. He scowled at Ázzuen, pushing the skins away. The rain had flattened the boy’s headfur, making him look smaller than usual. There was no way for Ázzuen to tell MikLan that it was the raven who had made the shelter collapse. Tlitoo chuckled, pleased with himself, and strode a few paces away.

  “If you could talk to your humans, you could tell them what happened,” he said. “It is too bad you never learned.” TaLi’s grandmother was the only human I’d ever met who could understand us.

  Ázzuen snapped at the raven. Tlitoo leapt just out of reach, quorking happily.

  The humans shoved the walking sticks back into the ground and crawled into their clever shelter. The skins repelled the rain, and, though I was impatient to leave the valley, I was also exhausted, and the humans’ cozy den tempted me.

  Pell jumped up onto one of the rocks. I couldn’t help but notice the strong muscles moving under his wet fur.

  “I’ll keep watch, Kaala,” he said. “You need to rest.” He’d chosen a rock as far from the human shelter as he could get. Pell didn’t trust humans, and he’d once told me he had no desire to hunt with them. As we’d walked, I’d caught him watching MikLan suspiciously more than once, and he startled easily when he was around them.

  Ázzuen claimed another rock and Marra the third. I wanted to keep watch with them, but it had been two frenzied, panicked days of running and fighting for my life since I’d had a good rest. My eyes were closing as I stood.

  MikLan sat cross-legged at the shelter’s entrance, his spear across his lap, his face serious. He was younger than TaLi. It was hard to trust him to watch over us, but he wanted to take on adult responsibilities, just like I did, and I admired him for it. As I stumbled toward the shelter, he smiled at me. MikLan had always been easy with us, even more so than TaLi. From the first time we met him, he had treated us just as he would his own kind. Marra thought that it was because he was still fully a child. I hoped he wouldn’t lose that easy trust now that he was leaving childhood behind.

  I left my packmates on guard and crept into the shelter. TaLi was already asleep, and I settled down next to her. I listened to her even breathing and waited for sleep to come. But as tired as I was, my eyes would not stay closed. I wriggled closer to TaLi. I needed rest, but there was something I needed more.

  “Tlitoo!” I whispered. He didn’t answer. I called again, a little louder. I was about to call a third time, when he stalked into the shelter.

  “I am not an owl, wolf. I am not a bat. I have been up too much of this night already.”

  “I want to see what she’s dreaming,” I said.

  He clacked his beak in annoyance. I lowered my ears.

  “All right, wolflet,” he grumbled. “If you look at me like a hungry pup, I have no choice. But next time you are most in need of a nap, I will wake you up.”

  Still grumbling, he pushed in between me and the sleeping girl. I had told no one, not even Ázzuen, what Tlitoo and I could do together. I didn’t want my friends to know how different I really was.

  Tlitoo and I had gone into the minds of Greatwolf and ordinary wolf alike, but it was entering TaLi’s thoughts that most fascinated me. I wanted more than anything to be able to talk to her. When Tlitoo took me into TaLi’s mind, I felt as close to her as to another wolf, and I craved that closeness now.

  Tlitoo quorked softly and lay against me, so that he was touching both me and the girl. He needed contact with both of us to make the journey.

  I readied myself for the lack of sound and smell that always accompanied me into the mind of another, and for the sudden feeling of falling that still made me gasp. I couldn’t prepare for the confusion and dizziness that followed me into TaLi’s mind. Entering into the thoughts of another wolf was less jolting. The strangeness of the way humans saw their world—through vibrant colors and soft edges—was especially disorienting.

  I waited until my nausea receded, then sank into TaLi’s thoughts.

  I saw the old woman’s face and cringed away, remembering how I’d helped cause her death. Then I took a deep breath. If this day in the old woman’s shelter was important enough for TaLi to dream of it, I could have the courage to see it. I allowed myself to relax into her thoughts.

  TaLi knew that her grandmother would not be with her much longer. The old woman had told her that her lungs had weakened, that she would not live out another winter, and that TaLi would have to be ready to take over as krianan.

  “You have the wolves,” NiaLi said. “You are the first to run with them in many years. That will help you.” TaLi looked over her shoulder. A young wolf slept heavily against the mud-rock wall of the shelter, snoring a little and moving her paws in her sleep.

  TaLi walked over to the wolf and sat beside her.

  “I can’t talk to her,” TaLi said. “Not the way you do.” She had spoken to the animals when she was little. She’d talked to rabbits and ravens who told her she smelled bad, and even to rock lions. She had understood the giant wolves her grandmother had taken her to see when she still stumbled on her feet like a colt. But now she could not. Often she thought she saw meaning in Silvermoon’s eyes, but she could never be sure.

  “You will have to find another way,” NiaLi said.

  TaLi lay down next to the wolf and inhaled the rich forest smell of her. When she was four, her grandmother had begun training her to become the next krianan for the village, and from then on she had been alone. So many of the village did not want the krianans telling them what to do and what they must and must not hunt. They laughed when TaLi told them they were just as much a part of the forests as the animals they hunted and the plants they ate, and they had shunned her. She’d felt as if she no longer had a family.

  Until the day she had fallen in the river.

  She had struggled for life, but part of her had wondered what would happen if she let herself float down the river and over the distant falls. When the wolf splashed into the water and swam toward her, she thought it must be coming to kill her, for she’d been told since she could walk that wolves lived to kill humans. But the wolf bobbed near her and TaLi grabbed its fur. It swam with her to shore, saving her life.

  Then it stood over her, panting, and she could see huge teeth. She waited for it to kill her then, but it did not. It helped her home.

  She rested her back against the warmth of the wolf and looked up at her grandmother.

  “They might not let me be krianan,” she said.

  “I know, child,” her grandmother said. “If they do not, you must leave the valley. You are a krianan whether they accept you as one or not. You must find the krianans who live in the forest surrounding the village of Kaar. They know that we must be part of the natural world. They know that if those like DavRian prevail we are all lost, and they are fighting for our cause. You must go to them and help them. You and your wolves.”

  TaLi stared at the old woman. It was enough that she was supposed to convince her own village to keep the natural way. She couldn’t possibly do so among strangers.

  “You must,” the old woman said, as if she could read TaLi’s thoughts. “What happens in Kaar will influence what happens throughout much of the land. They are a village larger than any you have ever seen, and they are deciding whether to go the way of the krianans or the way of those who believe that humankind must rule all other creatures. I am too old to make the journey and I trust no one else. It must be you.”

  “What if the wolves won’t come with me?”

  “It is their task, too.” The old woman’s voice grew sharp. “You have not been listening. The wolves and the krianans share this task. Your wolves are discovering it, they have told me so. If you can’t find a way to talk to them, you will have to find other ways to keep your tasks aligned.”

  The old woman struggled to her feet and limped toward TaLi.

  “You have the strength to do whatever you choose. You and your wolves. It is your duty, and I know you can do it.”

  “
I will,” TaLi whispered.

  The old woman looked down at the girl and the wolf, and an expression so complex passed over her face that TaLi could not catch exactly what it was.

  “Her name is Kaala, you know,” NiaLi said, smiling down at the snoring wolf. “And her friends are Ázzuen and Marra. You are all lucky to have found one another.” She rose slowly and returned to her seat by the fire, wincing as she sat and pulled her furs around her.

  TaLi buried her face in the wolf’s thick fur. “I love you, Silvermoon. Kaala.” She whispered the words she had never said aloud to anyone, not even BreLan. “I can do this if you help me.”

  Each beat of the wolf’s strong heart, each steady breath it took, relaxed her and at the same time gave her strength. She didn’t know when she fell asleep, but when she awoke the wolf was gone and her face was wet and sticky. She smiled. Silvermoon—Kaala—always licked her when she left. TaLi stood, kissed her sleeping grandmother on the cheek, and slipped out into the cool morning air.

  “Wake up, wolflet,” Tlitoo rasped. “Daylight comes.”

  I blinked up into Tlitoo’s beady gaze and forced myself the rest of the way awake. Going into the mind of another creature always made me tired, but I wanted to howl with exhilaration. I had learned something important from my journey into TaLi’s memory: our tasks were one and the same.

  I should have known as much, for the krianans were responsible for keeping other humans in touch with the Balance. The Balance was what kept the world whole. Every creature strove to live, and to have as much food and territory as it possibly could. But if one creature grew too strong or took too much, the Balance would collapse and many creatures would die. The humans upset the Balance, which is why the Promise came to be. The human krianans reminded their people of their place in the world.

  I remembered that day in NiaLi’s shelter. I’d arrived weary from a failed hunt and had paid no attention to what the old woman said to the girl. Now that I had, it made my heart race. I already knew that both wolves and krianans were sworn to keep the humans in touch with the natural world, and I knew that TaLi had to leave the valley. Now I knew that her task and mine were the same and that the krianans she was looking for might be able to help us achieve it.

  I also saw something TaLi had not. She had not understood the expression on the old woman’s face, but I did. The humans relied so much on their words that they were not as skilled at reading expressions as we were, even among their own kind. The old woman’s face when she looked at us was full of fear and worry. But there was more. There was hope. The old woman was not naive. If she had hope, then so did I.

  I licked TaLi’s face until she awoke. She wiped her face with the back of her hand.

  “That’s disgusting, Silvermoon,” she said. “Grandmother said your name is Kaala.”

  I licked her again, from chin to forehead. Then I stood and went to the opening of the shelter to let TaLi know it was time to go. When she blinked sleepily at me, I leaned toward her, tongue out.

  “All right!” She held up her hands in front of her face. “I’m awake.”

  She got to her feet and pushed her way out of the preyskin shelter. MikLan had fallen asleep, but my packmates were still on guard. I followed TaLi as she disappeared behind a rock. The scent of slightly bitter spruce made my nose twitch.

  “You don’t have to watch me, Kaala,” she said as she squatted behind the rock. Yes, I did. I couldn’t lose track of her again.

  Leaves crackled behind me and I turned, expecting to see Ázzuen or Marra. Instead I saw a flash of gray fur disappearing through the bush.

  “Did you see that?” Ázzuen asked, his eyes wide as he leapt down from his watch spot above me.

  I lowered my nose to the ground, following the scent of spruce, dry and sharp with a bitter undertone.

  Ázzuen was the one who found the paw print, clearly defined in the mud. Just one, but so distinct I couldn’t believe it hadn’t been left deliberately. I placed my own paw next to it. It was half the size.

  “Greatwolf,” Ázzuen said.

  Not just any Greatwolf, I realized, burying my nose in the print. It was Milsindra. She hadn’t even tried to hide her scent as the Greatwolves could. She was following us and she wanted me to know it.

  The fur on my back prickled. I didn’t know what Milsindra was up to, but I knew her well enough to know that it wouldn’t be good. She’d been forced to let me leave the valley, but I knew she thought that doing so was a mistake. And I knew, as certainly as I knew the moon would rise, that she would do anything she could to make me fail.

  4

  I stood atop the mountain pass that would lead us from the Wide Valley and looked back at what had been my home. I could see the long, snaking path of the Swift River and the outline of Wolf Killer Hill, but everything else looked small and unfamiliar in the afternoon light, as if the Wide Valley were already a strange place to me. Ázzuen looked back, too, but Marra and Pell gazed only forward. Tlitoo spiraled overhead, dipping and soaring on the updrafts. Another raven flew beside him. I recognized Jlela, a female raven who often flew with him.

  Next to us, TaLi and MikLan gasped for breath. Humans, even young ones, moved more slowly than we did. Though I had not caught Milsindra’s scent again, I kept imagining that I could feel her hot breath on my back, and Even Night was not much more than three-quarters of a moon away. We’d kept the humans moving quickly, tugging on their preyskin clothing when they slowed and nudging them with cold noses when they rested too long. Still, it had taken us a full day and half of another to reach the high pass that would lead us to the lands beyond the valley.

  I’d thought the Wide Valley was vast. Now I could see how small it really was. The land before us, grasslands mixed with forest, stretched so far that I couldn’t see the end of it. Large hills covered with dry, scrubby grass rose to our right, and to our left stood a forest of pines, cypress, and spruce. My stomach rumbled. That much land would hold enough prey for ten packs. It had been a long time since I’d eaten my fill.

  Just beyond a copse of cypress stood a rock the size of a hill. It had to be the place where I was to meet my mother, but the vastness of the land disoriented me, and I couldn’t judge how far away the rock was. I didn’t even know if she’d be there yet. It was still over a moon until I was supposed to meet her and she was hiding from Greatwolves. Yet my breath caught. For the first time since I was a smallpup, it seemed possible that I might really see my mother again. I remembered the scent of her milk, and the warmth of her belly, and most of all the sense of feeling safe and protected.

  When you are grown and accepted into the pack, you must come find me, she had told me before Ruuqo chased her away, and I had never forgotten it. I couldn’t believe that in as little as a day I could be with her.

  TaLi’s hoarse voice shook me from my thoughts. “We have to find a place where two fallen pines cross over one another at a stream,” she said to MikLan. Both she and the boy were swaying on their feet as they gazed across the grasslands. Dark clouds drifted over the plains, promising more rain.

  TaLi clutched a piece of deerskin. She looked at it and then toward the lake. “We go as far as that rock, then follow the map to the Crossed Pines.”

  Humans were limited to using their eyes to find places they’d never been. Their map, I guessed, was another clever way they’d found to compensate for their weak senses.

  We made our way down the mountain and to a small hill below. The rain found us then. It had taken the humans hours to walk down the mountain, and it was nearing dark. It was time for them to rest.

  They set up their shelter beside a large boulder. I had hunted many times in the rain and run across Swift River lands in a thunderstorm, but I preferred being dry. Ázzuen, Marra, and I crowded into the shelter. Pell, still suspicious of the humans, waited outside in the rain. TaLi and MikLan took firemeat out of one of their sacks. I knew I should let them save their food, but I was so hungry that I couldn’t help whining a little.
Firemeat was even better than ordinary food. It was rich and chewy, tasting of the smoke of the humans’ fires, and a mouthful of it was as satisfying as twice as much ordinary meat. Ázzuen and Marra were no better than I was. They watched the humans and their food unblinkingly. TaLi smiled and gave me a chunk of her firemeat and handed some to Ázzuen. MikLan did the same for Marra. Guiltily, I gulped down my share.

  “We’ll have to get more food soon,” TaLi said, as she watched their supplies go down our throats.

  That, at least, was something we could help with. The two young humans talked for a while, then lay down to sleep, curled up on a preyskin they had spread upon the ground.

  We waited until they were deep within their dreams, then Ázzuen, Marra, and I crawled from the shelter. The rain had stopped, leaving behind a night lit by a sliver of moon.

  When Pell saw us, he bent his forelegs and lifted his rump high.

  “I’m hungry,” he said.

  We had been running—eating what bits of food we could find and bolting what scraps the humans could spare for us—ever since we’d left Fallen Tree three nights before. A hunt was just what we all needed. I looked back to where the humans were sleeping.

  “We can’t leave them alone,” I said.

  “We will watch your humans.” Tlitoo bobbed in front of the shelter. Jlela perched atop it. “And we have found their Crossed Pines. They are just beyond the place where the spruce trees give way to pine.”