by Claudia King
Netya shook her head rapidly, unable to speak. Her pulse only pounded harder, the rapidness of her breathing becoming too much for her to cope with. She felt like she was drowning again, and this time there was no way for her to come back up.
"Shh, shh," Adel said, taking her apprentice in her arms and clutching her by the hand. "Calm yourself. Breathe. Slowly. Your body will take care of itself if you let it."
Netya clung on to the den mother tight, staring at the far wall of the shelter as her chest rose and fell sharply, her painfully shallow jolts of breath making shrill noises as she struggled to do as Adel had instructed. Finally, her breathing began to ease. She closed her eyes, but the images of her dream were still fresh, and she focused on staring at the wall again.
Adel held her gently, stroking her hair until she had calmed herself. "Speak to me, Netya. I have seen this sickness in you before, but it is not one that can be cured by any medicine I know of."
"I am afraid," Netya whispered, swallowing the tearful pain in her throat. "But of what, I do not know. Sometimes I think it is the water, sometimes myself, and it is getting no better."
"What happened to you the night of the flood?"
"I ran. I was caught in the current."
"I know that, but why? You threw yourself in front of Khelt to save my life. You are no coward."
"Am I not?" Netya screwed her eyes shut, feeling nauseous as more tears rolled down her cheeks. "I thought of nothing. Of no one. Only myself. I left my sisters to drown, I left Caspian—"
"Was it you who did those thing?"
Netya paused, then shook her head. "It was my wolf. What does it matter? She is me and I am her. It makes no difference which one of us is at fault."
"I do not believe your wolf is a coward either," Adel said. "She was born of you, like a child to a mother. Any child of yours would be raised to have the same strength I have seen in your own heart."
"I do not know how. I have tried, but my wolf is so different. I cannot tame her or teach her like the rest of you can, and ever since the flood I am afraid to so much as wear her fur!"
Adel took a deep breath, holding her apprentice gently for a moment before responding. "One day your wolf charges you into danger to try and save the lives of strangers, the next she abandons her sisters at the first sign of trouble. She values her life too little, and then too much. She is a child, my girl. Confused and impulsive, and perhaps there is nothing that will mature her but time itself."
"Then what am I to do? I cannot bear to feel like this."
Adel picked up Netya's spear from where it lay beside her, and pressed the weapon into her apprentice's hands. "Perhaps it is best for you to hunt with this instead of your teeth and claws. Our wolves grow and mature within us for many years before they finally emerge, but yours has been thrust upon you, like a moth splitting its cocoon too early. Keep her subdued beneath your skin. I will not ask you to practise mastering your animal again until you feel ready."
"What if she comes of her own accord?"
"Then try to keep her under control. Perhaps by preventing her from taking hold she will learn the restraint she needs. I cannot pretend to know the troubles of your own mind, but this is my advice. I still believed you to be a fine young woman before you were one of the Moon People. You do not need a wolf to belong to my pack."
As frightened as she still was, the prospect of hunting without the aid of her wolf filled Netya with relief. She felt the teeth of her animal nipping impatiently at the back of her neck, but it was a feeling she could endure. It was better than revisiting her panic, and the guilt of having run while the others faced the flood without her.
"Thank you, Den Mother." She put her arms around Adel's neck and buried her face in her shoulder. For a brief moment, it almost felt like being held by another woman who had once offered her comfort.
Netya's dreams continued, and many mornings she awoke breathless and fearful. Sometimes she felt the panic returning even when she was awake, clawing at her throat and squeezing at her chest until she had to stop and be soothed for several minutes before it went away. It could be triggered by slipping into a drift of heavy snow, or by something as simple as swallowing a cup of water too quickly. It hung over her like a dark spirit, harrowing the young woman night and day.
By the grace of Adel's advice and the understanding of her friends, she coped. She did not take the form of her wolf again that season, and to her surprise the beast remained mercifully dormant. Perhaps she, too, was afraid of letting her fears come to the forefront, content instead to curl up and hibernate until they faded away.
It was more difficult to hunt without the aid of her wolf. She did not have the senses to track prey properly, and her spear was still an inelegant tool that she had yet to master. Fishing suited her better, though being so close to the icy water made her nervous.
The snows came down upon the forest in thick drifts, carpeting the roof of the shelter until it was half-buried, and every few days a new path had to be excavated around the entrance. When it became too cold to hunt regularly, the pack retreated back inside and huddled together around the fire, rationing out the dried meat and fish they had managed to collect while drinking from cups of melted snow.
It was impossible to find comfort, even close to the fire. Invisible tendrils of cold air crept into the shelter all day long, the freezing drafts dispelling their fantasies of warmth within moments of them manifesting. The days became darker, the world grew colder, and the pace of the pack slowed until they could do little but sit huddled together for hours on end, trying their best to sleep or tell stories that might rekindle their spirits.
All winter long Netya's life became a numb routine of dozing, staring at the fire, mumbling forgettable words to Caspian, and trying to ignore the ache of her empty stomach. She climbed the ridge to try and fish a few times, but it was rare she caught anything, and soon the trembling of her body and the bite of the cold forced her back to the others.
It was surviving, but it was not truly living, and day by day Netya felt a little more of the pack's strength slipping away. If the winter did not end soon, they would die. The meagre amount of hunting they could manage was not enough to replenish their supplies faster than they ate through them, even with Adel's stringent rationing.
Dark dreams visited Netya as the weeks went by, visions of waking to find the skinny bodies of her pack-sisters frozen in their sleep, leaving her alone and abandoned in a miserable land of ice and snow.
The thought of being one of the few who might survive was almost worse than the prospect of dying herself. How would they be able to go on with their spirits so broken, their meagre strength so diminished? She tried not to think about it. All she could do was face the cold day by day, clinging to the hope that soon the clouds would part and the sun would emerge from its long slumber.
"The moon hides her face, too," Caspian whispered to her as they huddled together amidst the sleeping bodies of their companions. Netya thought it was evening, or dawn, but the light outside was so dim she could not tell.
"What is the moon?" she said, staring up at the logs crisscrossing overhead. "My people told the story that it was a star. The greatest star, who gave birth to all the others."
"We say the moon is Syr, the mother of wolves. She who gave birth to the first of our people, and who blesses them with her light when the children of the sun are driven to sleep by the darkness. She knew her daughters were fewer than the Sun People, forced to hide in the night while their enemies claimed the day. So she made the night their refuge, and she gifted them with her light when all other lights were gone."
"Why then does she hide her face some nights? The sun shines bright every day, but the moon comes and goes."
"She the weaker of the two. Syr the wolf is the sister, and Ner is the brother. He is the horse spirit of the sun, the shaman, warrior, hunter, and father of the day. His sons were the first of your people."
"Syr does not sound nearly so grand."
/>
"Perhaps not," he said, "but she is powerful also. She is the seer, the trickster, the mother of the spirit world. It is from her gifts that women like you and Adel draw your power."
"Are the sun and moon spirits enemies, like their children?"
"Who can say." Caspian shrugged. "They are brother and sister, lovers, rivals. They fight for control of the sky, but when winter comes they diminish together. Ner may be stronger, but Syr is just as much a part of the world as he is. They were here before any of us, and they will remain long after we are gone."
Netya remained awake for a long while afterwards, still staring at the roof once Caspian began to doze. She tried to imagine the moon spirit Syr looking down on her. The wolf among the stars. Was she still watching over this struggling band of her wayward daughters? Or had winter hidden them from her sight completely?
—7—
Finding the Way
Netya's troubled spirit made winter a difficult time for Caspian. He was both afraid to leave her alone and desperate to go out hunting for her. Perhaps with a few more meals inside her, or another warm fur to wrap her body, she might not seem so fragile when she awoke in the early hours of the morning, shivering and clawing at him, eyes wide and breath shrill in the wake of her nightmares.
Capsian had never been mated before, not had he been with any one woman long enough to fall into the routines that seemed to come naturally to men like Rokan and Hari. He was used to the simple, satisfying pleasures of taking a girl to his bed every few months when the need took him, sharing an intense and fulfilling experience with her, and then allowing the feelings to subside in favour of friendship. Netya was the first person to have kept those feelings alive in him for so long, and it was as taxing as it was wonderful. Now that he had someone to care for so fiercely, he could not sit back and endure the winter without worrying over her.
When the weather was at its coldest, he told her to stay inside, refusing her offers to go out fishing or hunting with him. He made sure he was curled up close to her every night when they slept, ready to hold her when she awoke from her troubled dreams. The driving focus of his winter became to tend to his female, blotting out all other concerns until she was the only thing he could think of. His body was weak from hunger, but the wolf within him kept him strong, standing up proud and content in the knowledge that he was dedicating himself to the duties of a male.
He lost count of the weeks as they passed by. At first he had made marks on one of the logs supporting the roof of the shelter, one for each day after the snow began in earnest, but morning and night became a blur in the hours he dozed, and the tally soon lost its meaning. The winter seemed endless, and he felt hunger slowly thinning his muscles as the long cold sapped the pack's collective spirit week after week.
"Hunt for yourself," Adel told him as she brewed a bitter tea of strange plant leaves that held no flavour or medicinal properties. She brewed anything she could find these days, trying to seek out uses for the plants of this land, but mostly just to occupy her mind as she fought off the malaise that had afflicted the rest of her pack.
"I can make do without," he replied huskily, trying not to think of the taste of food.
"Who will bring us back scraps when you are too weak to rise from your furs?" The den mother gave him a cold look. "There is a reason hunters feed their strongest first."
She persuaded him to venture outside. Giving Netya's sleeping form an anxious glance, he took the shape of his wolf and nosed past the edge of the hide awning. The stark white of the landscape stung his eyes. It was brighter than he remembered it being in a long time, and the air was free of falling snow. He waded through the deep drifts around the shelter until he reached the thicker area of trees nearby, where the covering of snow was shallow and he could start sniffing out the scents of potential prey.
The forest carried him along its quiet paths for an hour or more, but the cold did not drive him back as early as it usually did. Had it grown warmer since the last time he ventured out, or was it just the stillness of the air?
At last he came across a smattering of small footprints in the snow, following the scent of a hare back to its empty nest, and then off into the trees again. When he tracked down the creature its scent stirred the hunger in his belly, sharpening his focus as the hunting instincts of his wolf crept in to take hold. He stalked his prey patiently, creeping up on it without giving the critter reason to bolt. In a single lunge he had the hare in his teeth, breaking its neck with merciful swiftness before the creature even had time to realise what had happened.
The taste of warm blood reinvigorated him, making his mouth water as he dropped his catch and gazed down at it, eager to gorge himself on a meal well-earned. Adel's advice came back to him, urging him on. He needed to eat. Barely a mouthful of food had passed his lips in the last two days. Now that the focus of the hunt had passed, he already felt weary. What good was he to Netya if he grew exhausted from tracking down a single hare?
A growl rumbled up from deep within his chest. He grit his teeth, licked the blood from his muzzle, and reverted from the shape of his wolf. Feeling the pinch of hunger more deeply than ever, he picked up the dead animal by the rear legs and slung it over his shoulder. He could manage another day without eating.
The successful kill bolstered Caspian's spirits on his journey back to the shelter. Hunting had not been his calling in life, and so it always pleased him when he succeeded in a task to which he was not naturally inclined.
What was his new role to be in Adel's pack? He could hunt, craft, carry, and fight, but none of those things truly took advantage of his skills. He had been Khelt's advisor. The leader who was not a leader. Adel would listen to his advice too, of course, but he was not as close to her as he had been with his old friend. He would never have the same intimate bond of understanding with the den mother that would draw her to seek out his counsel when she needed it. Adel kept her innermost concerns to herself, and Caspian could only guess at the plans she had for the future.
He let his thoughts wander, distracted from one worry by another as his feet absently traced the path home. It was not until he was almost back at the shelter that he caught a glimpse of something green tucked away between the trees. Not the dark, rich green of the pine trees, but something lighter, fresher.
Eyes fixed on the tiny stem, he dared to allow a spark of hope to come to life inside him. He had still not grown cold. The energy of the hunt had long since left his body, but winter's chill had yet to seep all the way into his bones.
Crouching down, he brushed the snow away from the tiny sprig and plucked it from the soil. Spring's first flower. The warm season was coming. They had braved the long winter, and they had survived it. A grin spread across Caspian's face, chasing away his morose mood as he looked up to the sky. White clouds still blocked out its blueness, but they were thin and bright. He fancied he could almost see the sun already.
He ignored Adel's reproachful look when he ducked back into the shelter and dropped the hare at her feet, heading straight to Netya's side with the green sprig in his hand. Resting it on the furs beside her, he shook the girl's shoulder gently, whispering her name until she awoke. She blinked the sleep from her eyes, frowning at the small plant at it drifted into view before her. When the moment of realisation struck, she gripped his arm in excitement.
"Is that from outside?" she whispered.
"It is. And I brought back this morning's meal for you as well. It won't be long before the sun comes out."
The smile that lit up Netya's expression was more warming than a thousand sunrises. The wolf within him stood up straight and tall, muzzle lifted in victory as he basked in the satisfaction of his female. He embraced her, unable to resist, and kissed her lips. A twinge of the heat that had been dulled by winter returned, and a deep surge tugged at his loins in anticipation of revisiting it.
"What is the matter with you two?" Adel said as she began to skin Caspian's catch. "This hare will barely make for a mouthf
ul each."
Extracting herself from Caspian's embrace, Netya showed her the green shoot. The corners of the den mother's eyes creased, and she too allowed herself to share in her apprentice's smile. She pulled the two of them over to sit beside her, and laid the sprig down next to the fire for the others to see when they awoke.
"I knew these months would test us," she said, "but by the grace of the spirits we have endured."
"Perhaps Syr has not forgotten us," Netya said.
Adel gave her a quizzical look. "Do not tell me you have taken to looking to moon spirits for your guidance."
"Caspian told me the story. I like the thought that she is there, watching over us in the night."
"The moon spirit is not knowable in the manner of the others. It is rare she will approach one of her daughters in the spirit world." The den mother paused. "But, if she gives you comfort, then I will not stop you from listening for her voice."
Despite the chill that still crept in from outside, Caspian felt more content than he had in weeks. The green sprig had not filled his belly or melted the snow outside, but it had dispelled the curse of lethargy that ate at their spirits. They had hope that the warm season was coming, and with hope came the promise that life's pleasures would return once more.
* * *
As the snows began to melt, the pack gradually came back to life. The ice on the pool and the rivers that fed it thinned, allowing them to fish again. With the thaw came another flood down the side of the ridge, not as sudden as the first, but enough to swamp the empty cave all over again and confirm Adel's suspicions. They could not make their permanent home in such a place, and as soon as they were ready they would need to begin travelling again.
The improving weather helped to ease Netya's moments of panic, and most nights she managed to sleep without the recurring nightmare of the water coming back to awaken her. Still, she did not take the form of her wolf again. She had grown used to ignoring the niggle at the back of her neck, and winter had numbed it till it was little more than a dull distraction. It had been so long that she was almost afraid to acknowledge it again, fearful of what she might do the next time she allowed the impulses of her wolf to rule her mind.