by Bryce THOMAS
‘But we don’t kill for fun,’ Rasci said, saddened by the implication.
‘Huh, you forget your half brother,’ said Zelda.
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Zelda had suggested that if Safari parks were as big as Rasci had surmised, as big as the sprawling farms that men fenced in, then the wily raven might be able to spot one easily from the air. Corvak was willing to help them find it, but he told them he didn’t hold out too much hope. Even from the sky, the world as he and the wolves knew it was a vast place. Unless he flew in the right direction, then no matter how long he looked, he would never find the safari park. But he told them he would see what he could do. He had relatives down in the region to the south, who might be able to help, but the area bordered on a large man made forest of tall buildings and there was nobody he knew in the area that lay beyond that. However, he assured the wolves he would make some enquiries, and after stretching his wings and inspecting and admiring them from every angle, using the branch of the bush as a spring board, he eventually set out to the far south east to see if he could find out what exactly a safari park looked like.
After seeing off his friend, Rasci returned to where Silvah and Zelda lay just outside the entrance to the cave. He still needed to discuss what he had seen in his head. Somehow, it just seemed too true to be anything but real. But he couldn’t understand how it could be real. He was in one place. At the same time, his mind and even his body appeared in another place, but wasn’t really there. He was discovering something about an unknown world. He was discovering something about himself, and it just didn’t seem to fit in with being a wolf.
‘Do you know if Ben was dreaming like yourself?’ Silvah asked him as he sat beside them.
‘I have a feeling that Ben wasn’t dreaming,’ said Rasci pensively. ‘It’s as if I am seeing him in real life. And I saw the farmer as well, remember. They can’t all be dreaming. It’s me that is travelling to them in my dream.’
‘There is one way to find out if your meeting with the boy was real,’ Zelda suggested.
Rasci knew what she meant. Zelda was thinking that if Ben was so friendly in a dream then he might be friendly with the real live wolf.
‘No,’ Silvah interrupted, also understanding what Zelda was going to say. ‘It’s far too dangerous.’
‘Not at all,’ Zelda insisted. ‘What you need to do the next time you visit Ben in your dream is to tell him you intend to visit him in real life, fur and all!’
‘No, it’s still too dangerous,’ Silvah argued. ‘Even Ben will know a real wolf from a vision of one. He is bound to be frightened.’
‘But Zelda’s right, Silvah,’ Rasci said. He paused while he formed in his mind what he wanted to say. ‘If Rhamin is still alive,’ he continued, ‘then he is likely to be a prisoner of that man. And if he’s a prisoner, then I can’t see any way another wolf will be able to free him. Except…’ He paused again. ‘Silvah, do you remember what Solin did?’
‘That desert rat did more than I like to recall. He’s the lowest of the low,’ Silvah stated intractably. ‘There’s nothing but a scheming rat inside that wolf fur of his.’
‘Well, scheming, perhaps. But he was clever. He used the man to try and get what he wanted.’
‘Hmm,’ Zelda grunted. ‘I see what you are getting at. You reckon that we can get the farmer to find Rhamin?’
‘Right!’
‘But only if your dreams are true.’ Silvah shook her head. ‘On the basis of that, are you prepared to risk your life? You have dreamt that he is upset about Rhamin being struck down by that man. You have dreamt that Ben, as you call him, has told you that Rhamin is alive. You have even dreamt that Ben tells his mother you are his friend, but we just don’t know if any of it is really true. I saw Rhamin being struck down by that evil man, the friend of the farmer, remember. He looked dead to me. We have lost one leader. We can’t afford to lose another.’
‘As I am feeling at the moment,’ argued Rasci, ‘I don’t think that would be any great loss.’
‘Oh, for goodness sake!’ Zelda interjected. ‘Will you two stop it?’ Her hips were aching. She shuffled to make herself more comfortable. ‘I think Rasci is right about Rhamin. We have to try and do something. And I think Rasci was right about Solin.’
‘Puh,’ Silvah whispered angrily for them both to hear, as she got up and walked away to the cave. It was time for her morning wash.
While they were alone, Rasci broached another question that had been on his mind.
‘Hmm, how old are you Gran?’ he asked.
‘What on earth do you want to know that for?’ she gasped, giving Rasci a strange look.
‘I don’t know really, but I seem to have some sort of mental ability and I can’t work out if it’s just wishful thinking.
‘And?’
‘Well, I was just wondering what relation am I to you. Are you really my grandmother or is it just an affectionate title? I’ve grown up calling you Gran, but perhaps if I knew you really were, then it would be easier to believe I can do some of the things you can do.’
‘Oh, you can do them, Rasci, believe me. And more! You have abilities that even I don’t have. It’s all about bringing you up to believe in them. We are all born with some degree of psychic ability but it fades as realities of living and surviving take over. So many youngsters nowadays are steered away from using these natural and inbred gifts. The problem is none of the pack ever had their abilities nurtured beyond the ability to hunt. It’s so wrong.’ She looked at Rasci with her sightless eyes. ‘When your mother died, you were reared by Silvah and me.’
Rasci considered what Zelda had said. ‘So I didn’t inherit any of this dream stuff from you then.’ He gave out a sigh.
Zelda could tell he was a little saddened. ‘Well, that’s not exactly the case,’ she consoled. ‘You could well have inherited some of your ability from me. But who you get the rest from, I’m not so sure.’
‘So you are my Gran?’ Rasci said excitedly.
‘Not exactly.’
‘Not exactly? What do you mean?’
‘Well, I’m older than your Gran,’ Zelda admitted.
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that I am your great, great Gran.’
‘Well I know you’re great Gran.’
‘No! Great, great Gran,’ she corrected as Rasci lifted one eyebrow sceptically. ‘It means I am the Gran of your Gran.’
‘Right,’ said Rasci, not sure if he should have broached the subject at all. She would always be great to him.
‘Let me explain,’ Zelda said patiently. ‘Generations are often attributed to different litters of pups from the same parents in successive years. But that is wrong; that is not a generation gap. That is simply a sibling gap. Pups born the year after or the year before are simply brothers and sisters.’
‘And?’
‘And a generation is where one family is born from the last family. A son or daughter is born from a son or daughter. That is a generation.
‘Right, got it,’ said Rasci patiently.
‘And Anval was your father and Celion was your mother.’
‘Yes, I know that.’
‘Well Celion was a cub whose mother, Eva, joined from another pack from the far west.’
‘So Eva was my Gran?’
‘That’s right,’ said Zelda, with a fond smile. ‘And her father was a wolf called Rufus.’
‘And just who was Rufus then?’
‘Rufus,’ Zelda said with a fond smile, ‘was my first born male cub,’
Rasci studied the picture that had been drawn in his mind. ‘So how come you are in Rhamin’s pack?’
‘Well I joined at the same time as Eva. We were two of six survivors from a pack that was hunted down by the same men that killed Dori, Rhamin’s mother, only that time they not only had horses to carry them along, they had a pack of big dogs that seemed to be trained just for hunting wolves.’ There was more to that story, of course, but, feeling tired Zelda d
idn’t want to go into that at this time.
But it pleased Rasci that she had explained, and it delighted him that he was actually related to her, somehow. It gave some kind of authenticity to the feelings and experiences he had been going through. His gift had been inherited from Zelda. It gave him a reason for being there; not just because he had been raised by her, but because he was carrying on her psychic gift. And now he really could call her Gran, and that suddenly meant something completely different. Before their discussion, he had called her Gran through a mixture of affection and fun. Now his affection was given a seal of approval, like a certificate of authenticity gives a human a proof of identity, a proof of provenance, something substantial that gives owning something or belonging to something a completely different meaning.
‘I might be right, then’ Rasci said quietly to himself after deliberating. But Zelda heard it and smiled to herself.
‘I think so,’ she said proudly.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The next day, as golden fingers lifted the black clouds off the mountains to the east, Rasci set off alone in the direction of Raymond Rozalski’s farm. He was impatient for news of Rhamin and he had decided that the quickest way to find out was to see Ben, to confirm that his dreams and visions were taking him into reality and not to some place in his mind; a place he was inventing to prevent the pain of certain truth.
The trip was a relief in some ways. Alone, he felt no pressure to either lead the pack or report to his Gran or Silvah what he was thinking or dreaming. In fact, he had purposely withheld information from them. He had dreams but he sometimes felt it better not to speak of them. In particular, he kept having a recurring dream that he and Rhamin were fighting some strange wolf pack. But that was too unsettling to discuss at this time. He knew for a fact that if it were a dream of the future then Rhamin must be alive, but how could Rasci be with his great leader unless he, too, had been shot and taken to the giant prison camp called a safari park? Or was there a possibility that Rhamin was to escape and Rasci was seeing events that followed? Either way, he didn’t feel that upsetting his companions would help matters. They certainly would have tried to insist that he stay in the cave if they thought there was any chance of their new leader following the first.
So he loped along, almost care free, for hour after hour, day dreaming, with hardly a care in the world. This was how he liked his life; uncomplicated. First he thought of the hunt upon which they would all be soon embarking as the great herds of buffalo migrated in the autumn months. That would give weeks of easy living for the whole pack and an excellent training period for the young cubs.
The young cubs! He had hardly set eyes on them since the demise of his leader. Since Yeltsa’s death, they had been cared for by Lexa. They had hardly missed their mother and father, because they had been kept busy in their young lives, learning their hunting skills, play fighting, eating and sleeping. Rasci wondered if he shouldn’t have been with them. It sounded to be just his kind of life really. But perhaps it would have been another disruption to divert him from his appointed task. The pack had been good in that respect. They were so good that he wondered why they even needed a leader. They all got on together so well and they seemed to manage in their small groups whenever they were away from the Darin. So why did they need Rasci to tell them what to do? In fact, Rasci hadn’t told them what to do. They had just done what they usually do. And really, Rasci decided, that is also what they did when Rhamin was leader. Perhaps leadership was not what he had really expected. It seems the job of leading the pack was just a matter of being a necessary figure head for the other wolves. Yes, that was probably it. He was just a figure head, a uniting blob of sticky tar that held the pack together as a whole when unity was essential. His sticky tendrils of authority drew the individual wolves back to the centre of their universe. So this was what power was about, he thought. He wielded a gummy, rubbery gravity that tugged them from their distant wanderings, back into one congealed pack.
Comforted by his deliberations, he loped on. It was such a relief to be alone again and to have fathomed out his duties. He didn’t have any. All this leadership stuff! It was an image, a shadow of responsibility. It was just in the minds of the other wolves in the pack. When he got back, he was going to explain to them that his honorary position could be vacated with no ill effect on the functioning properties of his beloved friends or their kinship. He wasn’t necessary. He was just an easy going, simple living, hunting, eating, sleeping clown of a wolf. He would resign!
He skipped along, lighter than the dewy evening air. His excitement mounted as he anticipated his resignation. It gave him such a good feeling. He relaxed so much that, as night time closed in, he had forgotten just what it was he had in mind to do when he set off. But eventually, as his subconscious, automatic guidance system brought him upon the first of the outer fences of Raymond Rozalski’s farm, he was suddenly jerked back to reality. He stopped for a moment and regarded the fence. He had travelled sixty odd miles and couldn’t remember a single stride. For a moment, he had to think hard to get back into the picture that he had sketched in his mind on departure from the Darin. ‘Oh rats' paws!’ he grunted to himself as he remembered.
In the powdery earth, he dug himself a shallow hollow by the fence and then settled in it to rest. So now what? He sighed. He wasn’t sure if he had ever had any idea what he was going to do when he got here. He certainly didn’t have any idea now. He blew out a heavy breath and rested his head on his front feet, feeling tired and a little deflated. What was it he intended to do? He thought about Raymond Rozalski, wondering if that really was his name, or just what he had imagined in a dream in order to put a tag of identification on him. And what about Ben? Was that a proper name? It didn’t sound wolfish. In fact it didn’t sound any more wolfish than Raymond, although, the name Rozalski had a certain ring to it. And Smokey? Did that name have a meaning to it in human language? The word he was hearing in his language meant the colour of the air on top of the orange flames of bush fires that often ravished the dry plains. He shook his head. Already it was beginning to hurt and he hadn’t even started thinking hard yet. The pulse above his right eye began to throb. His eyes closed with the pain.
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The fight with the other wolves seemed so real. Both Rhamin and Yeltsa were thwarting attack after attack from at least ten other wolves. The other wolves were total strangers. He knew he had never seen them before. For a moment, Rasci couldn’t see himself there. He woofed to try and get them to see him. He thought he could distract some of them, but none of them took any notice. For some reason, he couldn’t get Rhamin to see him either. ‘Rhamin,’ he called out. ‘Rhamin! I’ll take this one!’ But it passed right through him.
Panting heavily, he jerked himself awake. He shook his head as he stood up, making the wave of the shaking action, ripple through his body right to the end of his tale. ‘Phew! Another damned dream,’ he muttered. He was beginning to hate the dreams; in fact he was beginning to hate sleeping. He had always loved sleeping, but now all he wanted to do was keep awake as long as possible to put off the inevitable.
He began to contemplate what he was going to do. He couldn’t go to the farm during the night. Humans sleep at night. Wolves sleep at night also, but not all the time. Sometimes, in really hot weather, they hunt at night when the air is cooler, and then they sleep during the day. But, at the moment, it wasn’t that kind of weather. The problem was, during the day, the farmer and Ben would be with their dog, Smokey. And Smokey hated wolves. Rasci wasn’t afraid of the dog. But he knew what a lethal combination the man and the dog made together. He couldn’t rely on the farmer recognising him. Raymond Rozalski had never seen any of the wolves close up on the mountain. And, anyway, apart from Rhamin, most wolves would look the same to a human, the same as most humans looked the same to a wolf. The only thing that distinguished wolves from humans in that respect was that wolves had the extra advantage of an extremely sensitive sense of
smell which gave every man and every animal a distinct and separate identification tag. The farmer might think Rasci was Solin. That could be a lethal mistake. Although he strongly believed that the farmer was wolf friendly, and would treat any wolf with respect, Rasci was sure that Raymond Rozalski would gladly make an exception in the case of the killer, Solin. And Smokey was the next problem. Even on his own, it was possible that the dog would not take kindly to her territory being invaded by even a single wolf.
Rasci began to contemplate the options. His plan when he left the Darin was simple. Approach the young man, Ben, and get him to introduce Rasci to his father and his dog. Brilliant!
He looked at the fencing and slumped back down into his hollow. There had to be a way of befriending the only human ally he was likely to gain. What am I doing here? he muttered to himself. What good is making friends with them, anyway? he chuntered. It wouldn’t advance things much further than they were at the moment. Rhamin was still either dead or in a prison compound. What was the brilliant plan that Solin was supposed to have put in place? Oh, yes, kill some cattle and get the farmer to kill Rhamin. Another sparkling conclusion to an even more dazzling chain of thought. So, based on those criteria, all Rasci had to do was provoke Raymond Rozalski into welcoming him into the circle of friendship. “Welcome to my family, Mr. Wolf. I trust you implacably! Make yourself at home. Smokey, you are instructed to love your wolfish friend!” That should do it. Easy really. Just like getting a hare to jump into your mouth. They do it all the time.
Rasci’s head thumped.
Once again, troubled sleep engulfed the tired brain of the well meaning wolf, and for a while the pain in his head retreated to a tiny throbbing pulse above his eye. For the time being, without the pain, it was almost a relief to sleep, to dream.