Midnight's Sun: A Story of Wolves

by Garry Kilworth

  The southern hunters, being devious creatures however, were not to be stopped by a few degrees below zero, permafrost, or raging blizzards. Eventually they found methods of fighting the cold, the loneliness, the barrenness of the northern landscape. They even reached the glacial country where the ice rumbled across the land and broke its snout in sections that floated away over the cold oceans. They came with their dogs and devices and began to establish supremacy in the land that had resisted them for so long. Even the Only People were unhappy at the inevitable invasion, but like their former kin, could do little about it.

  Athaba’s mind swam with the image of a wolf changing into a man, and a man changing into a wolf. The two images blended. Gradually light seeped into the corners of his eyes. He felt sick and groggy. His throat was dry and his nose was warm. He would have slept only there was a feeling of alienness about him which he wanted to dispel. Slowly, he opened his eyes.

  Looking down on him was one of the Only People, the native hunter that had been with the, southerner. The eyes were sympathetic: a wolf’s eyes. Athaba could see brittle winters in those eyes, the deep frosts, the swirling ice, the white winds. They were narrow, crinkled at the corners, and set in weathered skin. A lock of black hair had escaped the hunter’s furry wolfskin hood and was like a dark smudge on his brow. The hunter showed his many teeth. Athaba could smell his breath, smell a thousand foreign scents. He backed away, snarling. He needed to get back to Ulaala and the pups. His mate would be concerned by his absence. If these hunters had no wish to kill him, then it was necessary he leave at once, and return to his pack.

  His posterior came up against a barrier and he turned and snapped at it in his weak state. He went forwards, then sideways, flinging himself in all directions for a moment, and being blocked each time. He lay down again, panting, dizzy. When his strength returned he tried again, and the hunter’s barking infuriated him as he struck barriers each time. The hunter stood up, tall as a giant, over him. Athaba wanted to leap up high and rip open that barking throat, get at those curled lips, those teeth.

  It took some while to realise he was entirely surrounded, enclosed by a thing made of thick metal wire. Never having seen one before, he had no name for it, but he had seen and heard of fishermen’s nets – had found them and worried them on the ice – and this thing appeared to be a metal net. They had him trapped. Outside the wire net was the open landscape. They had not yet taken him anywhere.

  He lay on the floor of the trap and looked up at his captors, the one with the eyes of a wolf and the pallid-skinned southerner with a fire-stick in his mouth. The southerner’s scents were atrocious and made Athaba want to retch. There was a gun at the man’s side which smelled sickly as well as metallic. A shot from that weapon had robbed Athaba of his senses. The southerner’s teeth were showing too now and he barked rapidly at the native hunter, while still looking down at Athaba. Then Athaba started as the face came down to peer more closely at him. He waited for a second, then leapt and snapped at the wire just below the face.

  The white hunter jumped back, his teeth had disappeared behind his lips and his complexion grew paler than before. Athaba saw the quick flush of fear on his enemy, smelled it on his body, and was triumphant. Not so powerful, these southerners, when you took them on face to face. They were jerky creatures, no fluidity about them. Then, annoyingly, the white hunter showed more teeth, pointed and barked in a high rapid tone, and the signs of fear were gone from him again. Athaba’s triumph had been a short-lived thing. Never mind, he could watch and wait, and repeat the performance. He had the feeling that these southern humans did not like sudden movements or surprises. What Athaba had to do was remain immobile, seemingly docile, then go for the face that came down to meet his own.

  He was not going to give in without a fight.

  When his strength returned he attacked the thick wire that surrounded him with renewed vigour. He wanted to get out, get back to his Ulaala, the she-wolf he had only just found! It was a cruel fate that had kept him bereft of company for so many seasons, given him Ulaala, a perfect mate, and then snatched it all away again.

  All he succeeded in doing was breaking a tooth.

  The native hunter came over to him once and kicked the metal net with his soft boot.

  Eventually, Athaba heard that appalling noise and his heart raced as a bird machine dropped, thundering from the heavens. He was going to die after all! They were going to rain metal on him, dak-dak-dak-dak-dak, from the sky, and there was no way he could escape. The noise was appalling and nearly drove him out of his mind. And there were ragged winds tearing at the snow, pulling at his fur. Unnatural winds, that knew no real direction, crazed winds that had been driven insane by the noise of the machine and twisted in on themselves as they tried to escape its terrible whirling wings. It was all clatter and panic and rushing blood and mind-screaming and confusion and ugly smells and noise and noise and noise …

  Once again he flung himself this way and that, bruising his body in the futile attempt to breach his prison. Ulaala, his mind screamed, what are they doing to me? He had to get out, get back to his family. The pups … his mate … they were waiting.

  They put wooden staves through his net and lifted him up under the swirling wings of the giant metal bird. So big! He had not realised how big these flying machines were. The native hunter put some slivers of meat through the wire but Athaba ignored them. He was too terrified to eat. What were they going to do to him? Was he to be swallowed by this metal monster? The noise. The noise. The noise.

  Once he was inside the flying machine, the din increased, and all he could do was lie flat and wish to die. He was miserable, terror-stricken and defeated. The vibrations of the machine made his head spin. He vomited on the floor, not caring about the stench. Then his stomach fell rapidly away from him, dropping downwards. There was a feeling of instability, as if he were dangling from a string of meat by his teeth. If he let go, he would fall a long way, down to the middle of the earth. Cold air rushed around him. He closed his eyes and his head spun. If he could have torn out his own throat, a quick death, he would have done so at that moment.

  The racket seemed to go on forever and Athaba despaired of ever being free from it. Then there came a heavy jolt and eventually the clatter became a clangour and then, a miracle, it ceased altogether.

  Again Athaba’s prison was lifted on poles and he was carried to a ground machine and then taken on a short journey to a building. Inside the building were bright lights and warmth. Food was given him, and water taken from a small metal fountainhead that worked to the command of the southern hunter’s hand. Athaba still refused to eat or drink. He was too unhappy and confused. Unfamiliar odours assailed him, some of them causing flutterings of panic, but things were too bad to follow one individual line of terror through to its natural conclusion. There were also many strange sounds around him. In the wild, any one of these scents or sounds might have him bolting, but since there was no where he could run and a multitude of fears hissed and bubbled inside him, he did nothing but turn his face to the wall and wish to die.

  Eventually, thirst forced him to lap some of the water from the metal dish. Not rainwater, meltwater, bogwater, nor even stream water that had gathered some salts on its journey through the rocks and earth. This liquid had a strange taste, as if it had been poisoned with bad salts. Water seasoned in a hollow stump did not taste that bad. Water from the sac of a freshly killed caribou tasted sweeter. It smelled too, of one of those odours only found in the vicinity of men. Athaba waited for the poison to have an effect on his body. He was glad they were killing him this way. He could just let his chest weaken and his head fill with mist.

  Nothing happened. He was disappointed. Water that smelled like that, with such a slippery softness to it, surely had to be bad? But it seemed it was just water, after all.

  He began to miss so much that he had taken for granted when he was in the wild, never having been deprived of them before. Simple things that he had
thought part of the natural order of all lands, all places. The air for instance. Why was the air so still? Where was the wind with its freshness and its tingling scents? Even in the back of the deepest den, there was a stirring, a draught of outside air. What about the sounds of the earth? The ticking of insects, the cry of the birds, the sound of snow and ice? What had happened to all those noises that came from the sky: the eerie whistles and the sound of the stars calling to one another in high-pitched voices? In here the atmosphere was like dull metal, dense ice. He might as well be buried in rock. Where were the sweet smells of his lost landscape? Where was the sun, the moon, the darkness? What were these strange hot lights buried in the metal sky above his head? None of it made any sense to him.

  Most of all he missed Ulaala and the pups and spent much of his time fretting about whether they were coping without him. He had let his mate down. She needed him to hunt or watch the pups while she did so. The young ones would be in danger every time she had to go out to find food. These thoughts were so distressing he often howled, but though a human looked in on him occasionally they took very little heed of his mournful cries.

  At other times he became angry and furiously attacked his prison. The meat they had left him was caribou. He disdained it. His carrion days were over. He was a headwolf with his own pack. How dare they give him meat fit for only ravens? Was he to go back to being a scavenger again? Let them throw it to the weasels and the ermines.

  The native hunter came back and kneeled down, looking in. Athaba tried to frighten him with snarls and snaps, but the hunter merely narrowed his eyes. You don’t scare me, said those grey eyes. I know you, wolf. I know your ways. I have been you. Then the hunter reached in for a sliver of meat and retrieved it quickly. He put it into his mouth and chewed on it slowly.

  Athaba watched the jaws working.

  I won’t eat, he promised himself. He might have drunk the water, but he certainly wasn’t going to touch their foul meat. He would leave it there until it stank and the flies were feasting on it.

  Why didn’t they kill him now?

  What were they waiting for?

  Nothing made sense to Athaba, who had never heard of a human hunter capturing a wolf alive. Perhaps they were going to use him for some ceremony: kill him slowly? Roast him alive over one of their fires. Watch his eyes sizzle and his tongue burst into flames? His imagination could work overtime in such a place.

  Chapter Twelve

  For a long while Athaba could think of nothing but Ulaala and the pups. How were they faring without him? Were they getting enough food? Was Ulaala managing to protect the den from intruders? These thoughts went round and round inside his head, driving him crazy. He knew he had to escape somehow, but it seemed impossible. For days he gnawed at his prison, trying to bite his way through the metal. It was the only thing he could do, but it was a useless exercise. All that happened was his gums bled and later his jaws ached. The frustration he felt was intolerable. Never before had he been so restricted in his movements and there were moments when he thought he would choke on indignation and rage. In his head were snow-peaked mountains, wide tundras, valleys, hills, open forests. In his eyes were walls within walls. The scents that attacked him were of steel and concrete: dull, cold odours with an offensive metallic sharpness to the former and a heavy dustiness to the latter. There were noises, too, which made him start every so often: clangings and bangings, roarings and rattlings, snaps and cracks. None of these was in any way familiar and consequently he was always tense, always on the edge of anxiousness.

  In certain drugged states, however, he momentarily forgot he was confined and got up from a deep sleep to dash himself against the wires, not remembering they were there. At those times he went berserk. He had never been entirely enclosed before in his whole life. Suddenly his world had shrunk to a tiny place which stank of Athaba. Some of his faeces did not drop through the holes in the floor and his urine smell clung to the thick wire. While these odours would not have bothered him ordinarily, when they were fresh, they made him anxious when they went stale. He wanted to get away from them, hide them under the dust, but there was no dust to dig inside his prison.

  When he was having one of his bad days, flinging himself around, crazed with frustration, the southern hunter would come and try to calm him. This man did not seem to like him being distraught and seemed worried that he would injure himself. Since the man had been responsible for putting Athaba in this position, the wolf was at a loss to understand the reason for concern. Still, the man came, and tried to soothe him with quiet barking and growling. He willed the human to put a hand inside the prison so he could bite it off at the wrist. Athaba promised himself that if ever he and the southern hunter ever confronted each other in normal circumstances, Athaba would not hesitate to tear some holes in his flesh.

  Eventually, to his own distress, Athaba began eating. It was the beginning of the end for him. It meant that he had accepted his fate, that he knew he was never going home again. Hope died. He even gave up his tantrums. There was nothing to do but lie on the grid and become nothing. He was not a wolf any longer. He was not even a raven-wolf. He was nothing.

  The time passed in greyness. He was transferred to a stronger prison with bars. A dirt-tray floor helped to improve the atmosphere. He had a fit shortly after this move which appeared to cause great consternation amongst the humans. This left him with a wish that the fits were voluntary and that he could control their comings and goings. It would be satisfying to throw a fit when there were people crowded around his prison, waiting for him to do something spectacular. It would give them something to ogle at. He might even be able to arrange a little foaming around the mouth, pretend he had some deadly disease, like rabies. Now that would send them scuttling for the exits. It would probably also ensure his quick execution. Not a bad thing.

  They put him to sleep shortly after his fit and he was vaguely aware of a man in a white coat taking things like spittle and blood from his body. For a while the southern hunter underwent great anxiety, pacing backwards and forwards alongside the prison, and stopping to stare in through the bars. This activity ceased abruptly after a day or so. The hunter appeared to have shed his worries.

  From time to time, people came to look at him, other humans from outside the large place in which they kept him imprisoned. Sometimes the southern hunter would accompany them – the native hunter seemed to have disappeared, for Athaba had not seen him in days – and point to Athaba. The humans would bark and show their teeth, some of them shaking in that peculiar way. Athaba felt humiliated by these visits. He was sure they were mocking him for being trapped, and that the hunter was bragging because he had captured a mature wolf.

  There was one visit that Athaba did not mind. A child would come to see him, with dark hair and bright wondering eyes. Athaba had seen native hunter children from a distance, playing near their homes, practising for when they became adult hunters. This child was the southern hunter’s child. He could see the similarity in the bone structure and smell it in their scents. The hunter was always fussing with the child, touching its hair, and whenever Athaba made a noise in the back of this throat, the child would reach for the adult’s hand.

  But the eyes were full of curiosity and wonder as the child watched the wolf pacing his prison or lying on the floor with his head on his paws. He made Athaba think of his own pups.

  One morning there was a stirring of excitement in the air and Athaba knew that something momentous was happening. He paced and spun in his small prison, stopping occasionally to look to where the southern hunter was standing, other men around him. Clearly the hunter was organising something.

  A man in a white coat came and shot one of those sharp devices into Athaba’s rump. It made him drowsy but did not rob him of his faculties completely.

  At mid-morning a ground machine rolled through the great doors pulling a platform on wheels. Carrying poles were slipped through slots in the side of Athaba’s prison and he was lifted up and pl
aced on the platform. Then a short journey began to where a flying machine stood.

  It was not one of those that dropped out of the sky, but one that had to run along the ground before taking to the air. Certain types of bird had to do that, could not take off vertically.

  To Athaba’s consternation he was transferred into the belly of this great machine. It was huge! In the sky they looked only as large as a hawk, though they got a lot bigger when they landed on their skids on the ice. Man’s machines seemed to have the facility of expanding or shrinking, depending upon the way in which they were being used. Athaba was not surprised that they got smaller once they were in the air because birds did the same. It was probably something to do with flying itself: a need to be as light as a seed in order to remain floating on the wind.

  However, though these winged machines were bigger on the ground than in the air, close to this one was absolutely enormous. It was like a great cave inside: a cave smelling of metal and other materials used exclusively by men. Athaba’s prison was strapped down to the floor of this cave, along with wooden cases and boxes and metal objects of strange shape and design. The wolf could not even guess what some of these things were and was too sleepy to pay them much attention anyway.

  Along both walls of the cave were little round holes through which Athaba could see the blue and white sky.

  After a very long time, the small child came and looked in through the entrance. It waved its hand at the wolf, its eyes wide and round. Then two humans climbed on inside: the hunter and another man. (A cloud-dweller?) They disappeared into one end of the machine.

  Noise and motion. Noise and motion.

  Athaba began to feel as sick as he had done on the other flying machine as his stomach plummeted and his ears began to hurt. He howled – a long tremolo – and swallowed, which seemed to relieve the pain in his ears. The noise did not cease for an instant and Athaba flattened himself on the floor of the prison, certain that he was going to slide over the edge of somewhere and fall a long distance.