by Bryce THOMAS
‘Zelda has been thinking about you,’ Silvah said as she joined them from the back of cave where she had been busy washing herself at the water hole. ‘She says that you are troubled.’
‘Troubled?’ He thought for a moment. ‘Yes, you might say that. Troubled with what has happened to Rhamin and Yeltsa; troubled by opening my big mouth and saying I was leading the pack. Yes, troubled is perhaps about right, considering I am not too tired and not too hungry.’ He paused again.
‘Perhaps it is slightly understating the fact, however,’ he suddenly snapped, ‘considering that I can’t sleep properly; I keep dreaming things that I don’t understand; I’m already worried that I am useless as a leader and on top of that, I keep worrying about getting the feeling that I haven’t begun to get seriously worried yet.’ He calmed himself down a little and thought introspectively. ‘But worried about what, I haven’t got the faintest idea?’ he added quietly, this time, more to himself than to the others.
‘I have been feeling things too,’ Zelda said reassuringly.
‘Oh, well at last!’
‘Now don’t be cheeky. I’m only trying to help you
here.’
‘Well I wish you could do all the worrying and foretelling and whatever else we have relied on you for, for the past umpteen years, because, honestly Gran, I don’t think I’m cut out for this seeing lark any more than I’m suited to leading a pack.’
‘It all depends what you are seeing.’
‘Not what you used to say you were seeing, that’s for sure. I don’t see anything that is going to happen. I see things in my dreams that we have done in the past, only with so much more clarity that I feel I am back there again reliving the experience for the benefit of getting it right this time.’
‘That is normal,’ Silvah came in. ‘Everybody has dreams about things that have already happened. We even have dreams about what we would like to happen.’
‘But I also get the feeling that what I see in my dreams at the moment is happening right now, at the very present, and somehow I am there watching. I am not really there, nor have I been there, but my dreams are taking me there. I’m for ever dreaming about that farmer and his young ones. There’s no way I could have been there with them. Yet it is as if I can project my mind to another place. I can see the people, I can listen to them, I can walk right up to them without them seeing me, and it matters not one jot where I am.’
‘Then you certainly have a gift, my young wolf,’ said Zelda.
‘A gift? It’s a curse Gran. I don’t want to be around men and their offspring. I just want to be a wolf.’
‘You are a wolf,’ came a voice from behind him as two wings paddled at the rapidly darkening night air. ‘Mind if I stay the night?’
‘Corvak!’ Rasci gasped as the bird alighted on a bendy branch of the nearby scrub bush. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Oh, here and there,’ the old raven said dismissively, as he folded his wings and checked for something up the feathers on the front of his chest. All three wolves waited for him to speak again. Eventually, lifting his head, he looked along the line of expectant faces and said, ‘What?’
Silvah couldn’t mask her delight. She chuckled. ‘You just don’t get it, do you?’
Corvak looked around as if to see if she was talking to some other bird behind him. Then, swivelling his head back to his wolf friend, he said, ‘You haven’t missed me have you?’
‘Pah!’ said Rasci.
Silvah gave Rasci a withering glance. ‘Of course we’ve missed you. For goodness sake, Corvak, we were beginning to think you had died on us or something.’
‘Yes,’ Rasci nodded. ‘We are always concerned about having somebody to clean up the carcasses after us.’
‘Died?’ Corvak replied to Silvah, ignoring his friend. ‘No, no. I’ve been away.’
‘Away?’ asked Rasci. ‘That’s why we haven’t seen you then!’
‘Let’s say having a little break from the daily routine.’
‘Break!’ exclaimed Rasci. ‘Daily routine?’ His eyes bored into Corvak. ‘Wolves don’t take breaks. Daily routine is our life! We hunt, we sleep, we wake up and we hunt again.’
‘Or get hunted,’ added Corvak. ‘You missed that one.’
‘That’s not routine,’ Rasci stated, as he recalled how Silvah had returned without their leader. ‘That was a one off.’
‘Was it?’ Corvak shook his head.
‘Well, wasn’t it?’
‘I think not.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Zelda, speaking for all, for none truly understood what the old raven was getting at.
Corvak shook his feathers into a fluffy cushion and settled onto his heels. ‘Well, it came to me at first from my two young ones, Crufus and Betrix. They were out exploring for new territory.’ Then he added, ‘besides scouting for potential partners.’
‘And?’ asked Rasci impatiently.
‘And it seems like hunting wolves from the air is becoming commonplace.’ He moved sideways along the flexi branch and resettled on a spot where it was a bit firmer, springing it a little with his weight to test for optimum weight-resistance- to-spring-take-off ratio.
‘Go on,’ Rasci urged, now suddenly more serious.
‘Well,’ Corvak replied when he had settled again. ‘I saw what happened to Rhamin and Yeltsa. I was there, Silvah, remember?’
Silvah nodded silently.
‘And I flew off, if you recall.’
‘Yes.’
‘And when I saw my youngsters a few days later and told them what had happened to Rhamin, Crufus said he had seen the men’s giant bird doing the same thing in the territory of the Pagin Pack.’
Rasci suddenly felt a surge of adrenalin. It was as if he was about to start a chase or get ready to attack. It was a feeling of expectancy as his senses suddenly peaked. There was something in what Corvak had just said that, in his mind, suddenly, somehow, began to form a bigger picture. ‘Is… that… so…’ he said slowly, and then, ‘The Pagin
Pack heh?’
‘That’s right,’ Corvak confirmed, ‘The Pagin Pack.’
‘And just how many of them did the men in the bird kill and take away that time?’
‘Kill? Did I say kill?’
‘You said “doing the same thing,”’ Zelda remarked.
‘Right. That’s what I thought I’d said. For a moment I thought I had said something else. It’s old age you know.’
‘Corvak!’ Rasci’s surge of adrenalin was turning to anger. There was nowhere else to channel it. He needed answers. He needed the fuller picture. He began to tremble a little, impatient to hear Corvak’s news. He just wanted him to get on with his report while his mind was in the right frame to analyse it.
‘Calm down now Mr. Wolf,’ Corvak said, soothingly. The raven seemed to be jesting the jester.
‘Just what are you saying here?’ Silvah broke in to calm down the mounting tension. Corvak cleared his throat. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘what I am saying is that the men’s big bird has been around a bit. It’s been here and it’s been there.’ He cleared his throat again, this time for effect. ‘And it might well have been elsewhere.’
‘Elsewhere?’ the three wolves parroted. Rasci fidgeted. He was wondering if he leapt up as high as he could, whether he could swipe Corvak.
‘In other wolf territories.’
‘Killing wolves?’ asked Rasci.
‘Well, no, that’s the point. Not killing.’
‘No?’ Three voices said, again in unison.
‘No. The wolves were knocked unconscious somehow, but they weren’t dead.’
‘Not dead?’ Three voices again.
‘No. The men fired at them with the hollow stick things they use as weapons, but they didn’t kill the wolves they took from the Pagin pack.’
‘And Crufus saw this?’ asked Rasci.
‘Crufus tells me he didn’t fly away. The men were only interested in the wolves. And anyway, Crufus is a brave young
bird,’ Corvak stated proudly. ‘He just hung around and watched. After all, dead is dead. He thought perhaps there was a meal in it for him.’
Rasci gave a little shiver, knowing that his friends would eat wolf meat if it was available. But then wolves will do the same. If their young pups die, then the mother will eat them.
‘And what did he see exactly?’ Rasci urged, desperately trying not to think about ravens eating dead wolves.
‘He saw the men hit four wolves in total with their invisible claws. Each one fell over and looked dead. But as the bird landed by each one, he saw the men get out of the bird and lift the wolves back into the creature. And each time, before the bird took to flight again, one of the men poked each wolf with something and almost immediately, as if it had been asleep, the wolf came back to life. Each one was still limp, but they were alive. Crufus would swear to it.’
‘And then what?’
‘And then, each one was placed in a cage inside the bird.’
‘For what purpose?’ asked Rasci.
Corvak shrugged.
Rasci thought for a while and then said, ‘Perhaps I know why, my weightless friend. Perhaps I know why!’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
‘My dream about the farmer and his son seems to make sense now,’ said Rasci.
Silvah and Zelda listened patiently as he explained how he had seen the farmer in a wooden building in the town talking to men about a black wolf. It had to be Rhamin, and if it was, then he must still be alive. But then Rasci shook his head as he recalled what he had heard the men on the mountain say in the other dream. “What a magnificent trophy,” the man had said; “I don’t do trophies,” the farmer had said; “But nobody will believe me,” the other man had said; “You hang stuffed animals on a wall,” the farmer had said. The more he explained it, the more the conflict of information seemed to point to Rhamin’s demise. ‘Oh, I really don’t know,’ he said dejectedly. ‘Perhaps he is de…’ He stopped himself from saying it. Something in Silvah’s eyes seemed to warn him not to even go there. She thought she had seen Rhamin killed and now there was just the slightest chance he had survived, she didn’t want that tiny particle of hope dashed against the rocks.
‘I don’t know what to think either,’ Zelda said, closing her eyes. She fell silent and concentrated, watched expectantly by the other two. Eventually she spoke. ‘Do we know where they have taken the Pagin wolves?’
Rasci shook his head. It was beginning to ache. He looked over to where Corvak had perched. As darkness had finally closed in, the old raven had fallen asleep in the bush. The night was light to the keen eyes of the wolves, but they dare not wake Corvak in the darkness. The old raven would feel disorientated. Not until dawn, could they question him again.
‘I suggest we all do the same as Corvak,’ Rasci said, resigned to waiting. He was glad the others agreed. He found all this thinking very tiring. Running; chasing; loping along; sleeping; even fighting, that was wolf business. This leadership thing was something all together different. A pulse throbbed above his right eye sending a pain deep inside his head. With a sigh, he settled down where he was, folded his tail around his face, and fell into a deep sleep.
–––––––
‘Is he always like this?’ Rasci could hear Corvak’s voice in the background.
‘What?’ He struggled to pry his eyelids open, but his unconscious mind was still driving him to sleep on. He was sitting in front of Ben. Smokey had been with him, but she had barked at a shadow and then run off into the house. But this time, Ben was able to see Rasci properly. He had spotted him almost straight away, and now, somehow, they were talking. Ben was saying how his father had told him he was glad The Black Wolf hadn’t killed the dog pup that he had stolen that night the wolves raided the farm, and he was describing to Rasci how The Black Wolf had saved him and his little sister, Margo, from being attacked by the dark grey wolf that accompanied him.
‘That was Solin,’ Rasci had explained. ‘He’s a bad wolf. But Rhamin, The Black Wolf is a good wolf.’
‘I know,’ Ben replied. ‘The Black Wolf and his pack saved my daddy.’
‘Yes,’ Rasci said proudly as he recalled the fight with the bears. ‘I was there.’
‘Really!’
‘Yes, really. I was one of Rhamin’s pack.’
‘Aren’t you any more?’
‘Rhamin, is dead,’ Rasci was explaining, sadly.
Ben studied what Rasci had said. ‘Oh, Daddy doesn’t think so,’ he said, his little eyes suddenly wide with excitement as he realised he could help his wolf friend. ‘Daddy says that the man Petersen has got him.’
‘Is Petersen the one that we saved on the mountain with your father?’
‘Yes, he has been taking animals to his father’s safari park.’
‘What’s a safari park?’
Ben looked at Rasci, trying to read his face. ‘It’s a place where they keep animals as if they are in the wild. But they are not in the wild. Daddy says it’s like our farm, only it’s not for cattle and sheep.’
‘And just where would that be?’
Ben shrugged. ‘Daddy hasn’t said.’ Then he added. ‘He’s very angry. The men at the cattle market think he was the one who caught The Black Wolf for Petersen because Petersen had told everybody that Daddy had tracked the wolf for him, but it’s not true. He only tracks deer. Daddy says that The Black Wolf appeared when he was hunting deer and he came back and saved him when the bears attacked.’
‘But your father didn’t do any of the things that Petersen says he did?’
‘Oh no. He’s really angry about it!’
‘Can you find out…?’
Rasci stopped speaking. There was a voice behind him.
‘Who are you talking to?’ Ben’s mother came over and gave her son a big hug.
He shrugged her off. ‘Not in front of my friend, Mummy!’
‘Oh, right.’ She smiled at him and patted him on the head. ‘Are you coming in for breakfast now?’
‘In a minute, Mummy.’
She walked away, completely oblivious to Rasci. It was as if he wasn’t there.
It seemed to puzzle Ben. ‘This is my friend, Rasci,’ he shouted after her.
‘Hello, Rasci,’ she said without turning to look as she marched on.
‘She can’t see me,’ said Rasci. He knew he was a ghost in the bright morning light. He realised he was invisible, except to Ben.
Ben scowled. ‘Why?’ he asked.
‘I’m not sure yet,’ Rasci replied honestly. ‘In fact I’m not sure why I am here at all.’
‘Was it to tell me about the puppy?’
‘What, Lexa, you mean?’
‘Lexa? Is that her name?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s a nice name.’
‘I’m glad you think so,’ Rasci was saying, when he began to feel something tugging at his coat. ‘But it’s Rhamin, The Black Wolf, I want to ask you about. Are you sure about the safari park?’
He turned but saw nothing behind him. He could feel his whole body now, being drawn away from the boy. He locked eyes with Ben and tried to resist the force that was becoming stronger every second, but a voice said, ‘Is he always like this?’
Ben waved. ‘Bye-bye,’ he shouted softly after him.
‘What?’ he shouted hearing the voice, and then, ‘Are you sure the men didn’t say that he had been skinned and stuffed to look like he was living,’ Rasci called desperately to Ben as his gaze snapped away from that of his young companion. Suddenly he felt his body dissolving. Frantically he called to Ben but the child began to disappear backwards into a hazy mist.
‘He dreams all the time now,’ said Silvah, as Rasci’s eyes burst open.
He blinked as the bright morning light danced upon his eyes.
‘Skinned and stuffed?’ asked Silvah.
‘What?’ Rasci lifted his head and looked at those around him.
‘You said that he might be skinned and stuffed.’
‘Er…’ Rasci thought for a moment. He thought about the bear that he had seen in Petersen’s house. He thought about Rhamin. Next to Yeltsa, Silvah was the closest to Rhamin. Like Rasci and the other wolves, she loved him. It was an emotion that flowed so deep within her, it was part of her soul. She had saved him as a pup when his mother had been killed, and lately she had seen her Rhamin shot and carried away in the helicopter. If there was a seed of hope, he didn’t want to crush it. ‘The man who took Rhamin,’ he said, trying to think. ‘He may have him in a prison.’
‘But you said…’
‘I was dreaming about the bear.’ He stood up and shook himself awake. He looked up at Corvak who hadn’t moved from where he was in the night. ‘What do you know about safari parks?’ he asked, looking at his friend intently.
Corvak tilted his head on one side, his eyes fixed on a butterfly that was fluttering across the mouth of the cave.
‘Never heard of them,’ he said eventually as the insect alighted on a warm rock. The wolves followed his line of vision and momentarily became entranced by the gossamer wings lifting and falling as they absorbed the warm rays of sunlight. ‘What are they?’ the raven eventually asked.
‘Yes, what are they?’ asked Silvah.
Rasci realised he was talking about things only described to him by Ben. He tried to explain the best he could, that just as the farmer enclosed his cattle inside large areas of fenced off pasture and scrubland, so he had been told by the little boy, some men, and he was referring to Petersen in particular, make similar enclosures to keep in naturally free and wild animals.
‘But why would they do that?’ asked Corvak.
‘I really don’t know,’ said Rasci. ‘But then,’ he said on reflection, ‘Why do they kill wolves and other creatures for fun?’
‘It wasn’t always so,’ Zelda stated, as the others listened and wondered how any of her knowledge had been acquired. ‘Men were once very much alike with wolves. They hunted for food like we do. But then, they changed.’ She shrugged. 'They began to kill with impunity. And they don’t just kill other creatures; they kill their own kind all the time.’ She thought back to when she had met her mate, Romax. ‘Some are bad, but some are good. Wolves are not so dissimilar, really.’