The Wolf's Boy

by Susan Williams Beckhorn

  Rhar spread his arms wide. “The bull shook his horns. He thrashed while the lifeblood foamed from his nose!”

  I could see it all as if I had been there. It was no soft-eyed ibex or saiga Sen had killed, but an aurochs bull—perhaps the most dangerous beast to hunt except for the great mammut. My brother, a blood-hunter.

  Then Rhar marked Sen’s forehead with the blood of the bull. Apa was stiff with pride. Ama wiped tears from her eyes. My throat hurt so that it was hard to breathe. I knew that I too could hurl a keerta straight into the heart of death, if someone would just let me try. Still, I smiled for my brother. I was glad for him. He could not help it if he was favored by the spirit of Tal any more than I could help being cursed.

  Mir glowed that night like a star in the sky. It was almost as if Sen’s honor belonged to her. For the rest of the evening, she hung on his arm the way flower petals cling in the long grasses. The elders, full of feasting and good humor, saw them and smiled.

  I looked over at Vida where she stood with some other girls, and we made crossed eyes at each other. She did an imitation of Mir, tossing her hair back.

  That night, Moc-Atu, our shaman, came to our takka for the final ceremony. He mixed burnt bone, ground bloodstone, and icestone with fat to make his colors. I crouched in the shadows, watching each thing he did.

  “Go away, tabat one!” my brother hissed at me. “This is a thing only for a blood-hunter.”

  But Moc-Atu shook his head. “The wolfboy stays. It hurts nothing to watch.” My brother was silent then. One did not speak against Moc-Atu. Then the shaman made the great aurochs bull on the hide wall. He made running legs and white spots and a mist of red spurting from its nostrils. It seemed alive in the flickering light of the stone lamp. I watched. My eyes never left his hands. Others crowded in behind us to see.

  Then, at a word from the shaman, Sen pressed his hand against the wall of the takka and Moc-Atu blew a mouthful of red color over it so that when my brother took his hand away, the ghost of it was still there. The hand that killed the bull.

  “You tempt the big cats, coming in so late,” Apa growled as I approached. His eyes were the color of blue ice. I looked at him and shrugged as if I did not care. He stared at me a moment, then shook his head and went back to his work. Sen did not look up, but Suli ran to me, hugging my legs, making me stumble. “Get off me, Bramble,” I said, smiling.

  Ama shifted Bu, who was fussing himself to sleep on her shoulder. She nodded toward the hearth. I ate the last of the soup and gnawed some deer ribs they had saved for me. Darkness fell, and with it, the air grew cold. The tops of the willows began to stir. It would rain before morning. We moved inside for the night.

  Nearby, a wolf howled. I turned my head, listening. It was Shine. There was something in his voice like cold fingers at the back of my neck. I went to the opening of our takka and looked out. After a time, Shine’s voice was joined by others from the pack.

  I did not hear Torn Ear.

  Shine howled again. Where are you? The sound filled the grassland where the horse herds stamped and drowsed. It swelled over the patches of forest where the bands of aurochs lay. It rose over the cliffs of the river gorge, even above the rushing of the river.

  I sat down again. Suli scuttled over to me clutching the pinecones she had been playing with. She settled herself bottom-first into my lap.

  “Tell it, Kai. What are they saying?”

  I could not tell her that Shine was calling for his mate.

  I took a breath. “That deep voice, like Moc-Atu, is Shine telling the lupta that the imnos are very strong this year. The high voice—the one like wind whistling over snow—that is one of the younger females. I call her Mist because her fur is almost white. She sings that there are pups in the den and the grays must stay away. And all the yipping is the yearling wolves saying they are big and part of the pack now.”

  Suli nodded. In the firelight her eyes were those of a small owl.

  “How can you know that, Kai?” my father asked roughly.

  “Kai is talking about his real family,” Sen sneered. “They’re calling him to come live with them again.”

  “Hush, Sen.” Ama stirred the fire and added a chunk of dried dung. The flames danced high. On the walls of our takka, the painted beasts seemed to leap and rear. The hand shadows marking my father’s blood kills and the new one that belonged to Sen waved eerily.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but Sen cut in. “Maybe I will get myself a good new wolf pelt tomorrow.” He knotted the sinew holding his point in place and trimmed the ends close. Then he twirled the keerta slowly in his hands. The flint was killing-sharp. Sen lifted this new keerta and sighted along the shaft—at me. It shone, deadly and beautiful, in the flickering light.

  “Sen, that is enough!” Apa snapped. I glanced back at my brother. He was a black silhouette now, face turned, shoulders a stony ridge, as he hunched over his work. The keerta was finished. Now he was carving his sacred sign in it. He was stiff with resentment. But he held his tongue. He would not go against our father.

  “More, Kai?” Suli begged. She loved to hear about the yellow wolf pack.

  In a low voice, I continued. “Shine is the big father. He is the headman. His teeth are white as ice, and long as Apa’s gutting blade. He can run faster than any of his family. But he is gentle with his pups. He lets them climb over him and chew his ears and tail. He slides out his great tongue to pant, half-closes his eyes, and seems to smile. I think he is very proud of his children.”

  Suli had two big pinecones that she pretended were Shine and Torn Ear. Three little ones were the pups. “What about Torn Ear?” she demanded.

  “Torn Ear is brave and strong,” I whispered. My voice cracked. I swallowed, hoping Suli wouldn’t notice. “Once she fought a band of hyenas to protect her litter, and one bit her so that half her ear is gone now. But she is still beautiful.”

  Suli touched one of the big pinecones gently. Her hands were very sure for a four-year-old. Already she could hold a bone needle and sew a bit if the holes were punched for her. She murmured, “Poor Torn Ear.” Then she nestled the three little pinecones close to the side of her mother wolf.

  I slid my eyes sideways to see if Sen was hearing all this, but he was lost in his work. Apa’s eyes were closed. I didn’t know if he was listening or not. Bu slept soundly at last, in his basket of furs, and Ama was busy at the hearth. I let my thoughts slip back to the times I had watched Torn Ear with last season’s pups outside her den.

  Yellow Mother taught Torn Ear to trust me. She let me come very near. But once I crept too close, and hardly knowing what I did, my hand moved toward the pups. Torn Ear stiffened. There was a low rumble in her throat. I scuttled back a respectful distance.

  Now, for Suli, I made pup sounds, “Unhh unhh unhh,” and pushed the tiny pinecones at their mother. Ama turned, and I saw the worry in her eyes, so when Suli said, “Do it again, Kai,” I shook my head.

  “You should go to sleep now,” I told her. “I will take you out to make your water.”

  “Thank you, Kai,” Ama said. I picked up my stick and got to my feet. Outside, the stars danced to the singing of the wolves. I wanted to throw back my head and answer them, but I did not dare.

  Back inside, Suli was not sleepy. She tugged at my stick. “Draw horses, Kai.”

  Even then, I could draw many animals. I did not know what magic in my hand made lines that became a thundering horse or a snorting rhino. Sen used to watch, but now he scuffed his feet across my pictures. When Ama saw my drawings, her eyes shone. Sometimes she turned her head, squinting, and pointed to where a tail was too long or an eye not right. Even Apa thought they were good. I could tell by how he studied them. But he worried. “Do not let others see, Kai. It may be unlucky for one who is tabat to make pictures.”

  But Moc-Atu had said it did no harm for me to watch him draw.

  Once when I was small, I tried to make a person with my lines, but my father put out a hand to stop me
. “Nah, Kai.” His voice was suddenly tight. “It is forbidden. We draw only the beasts that feed us. To draw a man is tabat.”

  Now Suli tugged again at my stick. “Make it be a snake, Kai!”

  I shook my head.

  Stubborn, she tucked the handle of it under her arm and hobbled a few steps.

  I smiled, but in my heart, I did not smile. The stick I used for walking could never be far from me. Everything Apa made was beautiful, and my stick was as well. He had searched long for a hornbeam sapling that bent at the root. That part went under my armpit. A branch had to grow sideways as well, on the same side. That, cut short, was for my hand. The distance between root and branch must be just right. He measured the space between my armpit and hand carefully with a thong, marking it with knots.

  Hornbeam is very strong. He cured it by the fire and whittled it smooth. Night after night, he rubbed it with sand until it was as soft as one of Bu’s cheeks. Then he worked tallow into the wood so that the grain showed. It was like a mysterious world that you could touch the surface of but not enter. Lastly, he wrapped the head of it with layers of fur to cushion my armpit.

  Apa had made many such sticks for me over the years. I had grown this past winter. Before much longer, I would need a new one. This stick that my father made for me was a thing I both loved and hated. Without it, I could not walk.

  Suli lost her balance, and Ama put out a hand to catch her. “Suli, that is enough,” she said. My little sister sat down by the fire, stroked the smooth wood of my stick, and hunted all over it. Then she looked up at me and asked, “Where is your sign, Kai? I can’t find your wolf.”

  “Kai means pup, not wolf,” I told her. “That is all I am.”

  Apa had not carved a sign into the stick for me as he did when he made things for the others. Each of them had a sign. Apa’s was the head of a bison. Ama’s was a singing blackbird. Sen had his aurochs’s horn now. Even Suli had a tiny owl carved on the bottom of the little das she ate and drank from. Every one of the People had a sign.

  Except for me. I was not a real person with a real name.

  “Bed, Suli,” said Apa firmly, but there was a smile in his voice.

  Far into the night I lay staring in the dark. Stars glittered between racing clouds in the smoke hole overhead. After a time, rain began to spit against the side of our takka. Where was Torn Ear? The embers of the fire glowed faintly. What would happen to the smallest wolf pup? The bigger ones could eat the food Shine brought for them, but the little one still cried for milk. I knew that if Torn Ear did not come back, it would die.

  At daybreak, Bu cried. I sat up. Was the little pup also waking now in Torn Ear’s den? Was it, too, whimpering with hunger? How long could it live without food?

  Ama took my baby brother outside to feed him. The rain had stopped. If Torn Ear had made it home, she should be warm and dry now. But then I remembered the mournful tone of Shine’s voice.

  My father and Sen still slept. Suli was curled in the warm spot Ama had left. I knew that my mother liked this quiet time. I heard a red-paint bird whistle see see see su. Ama whistled back to him.

  I dressed and went out. Ama turned to me. “The sunbirds are back,” she whispered. “I can hear them in the willows.” I nodded. Tal was strong on a spring morning like this. Everything was full of life. Then I said in a low voice, “I am going to see if Torn Ear returned in the night.”

  Ama put a hand on my arm. “It’s not full light yet. I don’t like you to go alone.”

  “I am not so slow as Apa and Sen think. I’ll be careful.”

  It wasn’t possible, but I was sure I could hear the pup calling to me.

  “If the mother wolf is dead, the little pup won’t live. There’s nothing you can do,” Ama said, gazing into my face.

  “I have to know.”

  My mother sighed, touched my forehead in the gesture of parting, and whispered, “Tal keep you.” She let me go, but not without another deer rib left from last night’s meal. I stripped the bone hungrily as I went, even though the fat was hardened to tallow.

  It was warm enough to be barefoot; still, I was glad for my anooka. Mist made a ghost lake in the valley. It clung like ibex wool to the trees on the hillsides. Bellowing and snarls echoed from upriver. A cave lion had ended the night’s hunt well.

  Before I reached the denning ground, I heard another sound—a long, low howl.

  Shine.

  I paused to listen—not a song, a moan. Cupping my hands around my mouth, I sent my own call back. Shine did not answer.

  I hobbled faster, cursing my lame leg, stumbling and bumping, picking my way over the rocky knoll. A branch slapped my face. Please let her be there, please. I tripped, scraped my knee, but did not feel it. Finally I came into view of Torn Ear’s den. I stopped, leaning on my stick. There.

  Torn Ear lay near the entrance, as she sometimes did. But not resting, nose on forepaws, one ear batting a fly, enjoying the sun. No. She was on her side, legs stiff. Her fur was rain-soaked and matted. I closed my eyes.

  Dead.

  She had dragged herself home sometime in the night. There was a trickle of blood at the corner of her jaw. I knew what that meant. It was an injury to her insides. Wolf or human, we sometimes give much for our meat.

  I fell to my knees beside Torn Ear and buried my face in her fur. Under the cold, clinging strands of outer fur, the soft under-fur was dry. It smelled of golden wolfness, sweet and sharp. I had seen many dead animals, but not often a wolf. She had let me come close, but seldom to touch her. A thought came—Torn Ear was my sister.

  My face twisted. How far had Torn Ear crawled on her belly, across rocks, over rough ground, trying to reach her pups? I scanned the hillside. Shine had already left to hunt again. The pups must be fed. I spied Lan for a moment before the uncle wolf melted into the underbrush. Then I turned to the den.

  The opening was partly screened by a trailing vine. Warily, I crouched, pulled the tangle back, and looked inside. “Little wolves,” I called softly. Muffled yips. I listened, thought I could hear a weaker cry among the others. “You have to come out. I can’t help if you won’t come out.”

  But I could not coax them to me. Again, I looked over my shoulder. If Lan was watching, he gave no sign. Placing my hands on either side of the den opening, I peered into the tunnel. This was a much deeper den than most. Walls of sandy earth. Rocks jutting. A tangled net of roots. I made a whimpering sound in my throat, and once more the pups answered. So narrow. Sen could never have squeezed his shoulders through. But my shoulders were not big.

  My hand slipped, knocking loose dirt and pebbles. Fear gripped my belly. What if I got stuck or the tunnel caved in on me? How did the wolves know it was safe? But they must know. The walls of the tunnel were worn smooth. They went in and out of here often. Again, I called to the pups, and they whimpered back. Then my vision went dark. I was in a dream. Or was it memory? Shadows. Puppy cries. Warmth.

  The fear loosened its hold. I breathed. I could do this.

  I set down my stick and slithered in on my belly. The brightness of day was gone. Slowly, my eyes made out roots arching overhead. A slab of stone formed a sort of roof. Using my elbows, I pulled myself forward. I called to the pups. They answered me.

  The tunnel took a downward twist. I found handholds, dragged myself along, forcing my way into Earth Mother’s heart. My own heart pounded in my ears. Was I really doing this? Once my shoulder jammed against a root. I thought I could go no farther, but I clawed away enough dirt to slither forward again. Some of it rained on my head. Got into my eyes. Inside my clothing. I blinked hard. Rubbed it away.

  Small scraps of light glimmered from the tunnel opening behind me. Now I could make out a wider space ahead. The wolves had chosen well. The tunnel was dry. It smelled of earth and the muskiness of wolf fur.

  Dark bundles crowded together in the shadows. I heard them snuffling. Then suddenly, all went black and a trickle of earth fell on the sole of my good foot. I froze. Something
had come into the tunnel behind me. Lan. I was trapped. He would tear at my legs. I knew what wolf teeth could do. Once I had watched Shine open a reindeer’s belly with a single pass of his fangs, even as it lay, eyes wide, bleeding out from its throat.

  I tried to draw my legs away. Then something moist and cold touched my foot. Lan’s nose. I felt the wolf’s breath as he carefully smelled each of my feet, first the good one, then the twisted one. He licked it once.

  I will not harm them, I cried silently to the uncle wolf. I have only come for the small one who cannot eat meat yet.

  Almost as if Lan heard and understood, the nose went away. There was a slight scraping sound. Slivers of light again. I waited until my heart slowed once more.

  Then I reached into the warmth of the nest. There was a puppy snarl of terror. A fuzzy shape moved away from my hand. I tried to grasp a leg, but needle teeth sank into my fingers. I let go, fumbled for another pup, and was bitten again. I paused, leaving my hand in the nest. Waited. The air was thick, like being under heavy furs. I forced myself to breathe slow and deep. Tried not to think of being trapped under the ground.

  Then something touched my palm. A small nose sniffed my fingers. Licked them. Which pup was it? There was no way of knowing for sure in the darkness, but my heart said this was the one. Very gently I closed my fingers on the loose skin at the scruff of its neck. I pulled it toward me, away from the others, who kept snarling fiercely.

  I shuffled backward out of the tunnel, clutching the pup to me with one hand. I squeezed past the place where my shoulder jammed. Worked myself upward past the rock. All the time I murmured to the small handful of fur, holding it close to my face, smelling its sweet breath. “Hush, I will not hurt you,” I whispered.

  At last I was out again, squinting in the light. I crouched, holding the tiny wolf under my chin, and breathed. Then I lowered my arms to look at it. The pup wriggled onto its back. It blinked its eyes, nuzzling desperately for milk. A little female.