Midnight's Sun: A Story of Wolves

by Garry Kilworth

  After a while the noise had a mesmeric effect and Athaba was able to sleep fitfully.

  The noise stopped abruptly! A terrible sensation entered Athaba’s head. He began sliding down to the front of his prison, until he was bundled up against the bars. Then the floor seemed to go almost level again. There was a kind of whistling silence, a feeling of floating for a moment, and finally the world burst open, spilling noise, light and air. Athaba blacked out as his body slammed hard against the end bars.

  He awoke feeling cold. There was the sound of the wind. The affects of whatever had been pumped into his bloodstream were now gone. His barred prison lay half on the jagged edge of the flying machine and half on the snows. It had broken loose from its restraining straps. Looking around him, Athaba wonder whether another giant flying machine, perhaps a raptor, a predator of the species, had torn this one to pieces with its claws. It had been decapitated. Broken crates and boxes were everywhere, out on the snow.

  The hunter came to look at him. Athaba could see the man was in a state of shock. His eyes had a dark spiral look to them. The hunter ran fingers through his hair, rubbed his face, and then began gathering up bits of clothing and putting them over those he already wore. He moved amongst the debris gathering items and stuffing them into a bag. There was no sign of the other man.

  Athaba tried to stand and found one of his legs hurt. It would not support his weight without an excruciating pain shot through his whole body. He lay down again.

  Darkness came. The hunter made a fire a short way off. Athaba did not like being so close to burning wood (and whatever else gave off that awful stink) but there was little he could do about it. He was able to lick through the bars at the snow, to get some snow to quench his thirst. The hunter seemed to have forgotten about him and no longer provided water, let alone food. Athaba was not at that time too hungry, but he was quite thirsty. A bird came close to being dragged through the bars in the middle of the night.

  The following day the light came over an escarpment like something brittle and sharp. The snow was patchy and beginning to melt. Athaba was able to get a few more laps.

  The hunter was busying himself, making a kind of sledge with shoulder straps, but Athaba had never seen these used by the natives where there was little or no snow, and he could see hard work ahead of the man. He could also see the second human now. He was lying still on the ground. One of his legs was missing and his head stuck out to the side.

  When the sledge was halfway through, the hunter tried pulling it over the rocky ground. It stuck, several times, and the man got angry and kicked it to pieces, before sitting down with his head in his hands.

  A while later he was busy again, piling rocks on the body of the dead human. He heaved and grunted during this activity, having to take off some of his clothing while he worked. When it was completed he tied two pieces of metal together in the middle and stuck them like a small tree into the mound of stones.

  They stayed there again the next night and Athaba began to get desperately thirsty. He howled and whimpered, pleading with the man to get him some water. The hunter simply raved at him at first, and threw stones at the side of the dead flying machine when he got too noisy.

  The man had a light and came to him in the middle of the night. After staring at him for a long time, the hunter went away and returned with a dish of water. He pushed it gingerly through the bars. Athaba lapped at it greedily and not at all grateful.

  Athaba was now a little incensed that could not get free. It had been different while the prison was inside one of the men’s buildings, but now they were back in the wild. Heeee could smell the scents of the land, feel its spirit. Naturallly, he wanted to be out there, running with the wind. He sensed he was a long way from home – a very long way – and he wanted to begin the walk. If he died getting there, so be it, but he was eager to be on the trail, despite his painful leg.

  Two more days passed, during which a flying machine was heard, but at a great distance. The man danced like he had an insect in his ear, waving his arms and barking hoarsely at thhe sky. He had a fat-barrelled gun which he tried to shoot into the air, but it did not seem to work and he screamed and threw it into the flames of the fire, whereupon it exploded with a bright red flash. The hunter was showered with bits of flaming twig and Athaba could smell his singed hair. Again he danced, but this was a different dance.

  The buzz of the distant flying machine died.

  The hunter stood looking forlornly up into the clouds where his brothers lived, probably wondering why they did not come down and help him. He was clearly needing some sort of help.

  No more machines appeared.

  Finally, the hunter began to walk down the gentle slope, heading westwards. He stopped several times, looked this way and that, shook his head and seemed to make a decision before continuing. On his back he carried an overfilled pack.

  Athaba howled his anger after the man.

  When he was at the bottom of the slope, and small, the hunter turned and looked around. He stood still for a very long time before taking off the backpack and starting the long climb up the slope again. When he reached the flying machine, he stood by Athaba’s prison. He smelled of sweat and the flies were bothering him. Finally, he reached down and did something to the end of the prison, and stepped back several paces quickly. Then he went off at a jogging run, occasionally looking over his shoulder.

  When he was halfway back to his pack, he stopped and turned and stared.

  Athaba, lethargic through lack of food, staggered to the end of the prison and nosed the bars. They moved. There was a space for him to leave the prison. He limped through the gap and out onto the ridge.

  The hunter turned and began walking away again.

  Athaba watched him for some time, then went over to the mound of stones and nosed around. A smell of rotting meat had been coming from the place for a while now.

  Then the wolf left the heap of rocks, to follow the hunter down into the shallow basin where he could smell water. He walked three-legged mostly, only putting down his paw when he forgot there was something wrong with it. On the way he scented lemming. Immediately, he lay down and patiently waited for the creature to come within striking distance. It ran under a rock. The boulder was not very heavy and he nosed it over, snatched up the lemming, and fed for the first time in days. Near where he caught the lemming he smelled the metal, wood and other scents of a man’s gun. The object had obviously been flung from the site of the crash, out onto the slope, along with many other things. The hunter had been unable to find it, though Athaba had seen him searching the whole landscape while the wolf had been starving to death in his prison.

  Athaba left the spot without any regrets. He didn’t like the odour of firearms. It was best to put distance between himself and any weapons of man.

  In front of him there was the hunter, now going north. The man seemed to have no idea of where he was heading, no sense of direction whatsoever. Athaba was aware by his demeanour, his scents, his movements, that the man was full of indecision.

  Now that he was free, all thoughts of revenge had fled from Athaba’s mind. The wolf was no longer interested in the southern hunter. They could go their separate ways and never see each other again. All thoughts were for home which lay beyond horizons and horizons. Athaba did not know whether he was a month or a season or a year away from his den, but he did know that the country around him was so unfamiliar that he had never heard tell of it shape. The whole geography was new to him. No itinerant creatures had ever described this area.

  Yet the actual composition of the landscape – the rocks, soil, the general appearance – told him he was in a world similar to the one he had left behind. He knew from the ravens, who spoke to migrating birds, that there were lands with far different faces. Lands that were hot and green, with waxy plants that sweated under a fierce sun. Lands that were covered in grasses, green or gold, that swayed under shallow breezes. Lands of nothing but sand, where not a thing grew. H
e had heard about these places from the ravens, had at first dismissed them as lies, but the black birds were so insistent that he realised there was more to the world than the timber country and the tundra and the permafrost.

  The temperature told him he was further north than where he began, but not out of touch with his old world. They were moving into the season for the long day. At the present time the light was hazy on the horizon, with slanting silver-grey streaks forming a kind of wall from the clouds to the earth. Somewhere beyond that wall was a familiar landscape, familiar scents.

  The hunter picked up a rock, threateningly as Athaba passed within a short distance from him, but the wolf disdained even to glance in the man’s direction. If the man thought Athaba was going to honour him with an attack, he had rocks in his head as well as in his hands. Such thoughts were for captured creatures who needed thoughts of revenge to stay alive, not for free beasts, who could outrun any two-legged fiend without a gun. The man was a miserable specimen of animal life and not worth a short pause.

  Athaba limped down to the stream, nosed through some tall reeds, and drank the first sweet water he had had since his capture. It went down coolly, filling his belly. He wanted to hear it slosh around as he walked, and lapped until he was thoroughly satisfied. Then he stared along the braided water, watching it tumble through stones, sweep around a curve. Colourful insects danced over the spray and birds came in to feed. Athaba snatched at a small fish, missing the first time, then catching it. A morsel only, it slipped down in a single gulp. The place was humming with life. This was not a landscape on which he would starve. A flock of ducks came arrowing over his head, to land with trailing legs on a stretch of shining water ahead.

  No, he would not go hungry.

  PART FOUR

  The Long Walk

  Chapter Thirteen

  In the early summer the tundra is a waterland. The permafrost is like a layer of bedrock not far below the topsoil and surface meltwater has no drainage. It remains where the ice has thawed, open to the heavens, forming lakes and pools, streams and flows. Flatlands are covered in hammered silver sheets, or veins of shining mercury, looking as if they have been wrung from the clouds by some artistic sky-creature, concerned about the brown stains that are left behind when the snow departs.

  On these decorative stretches are waterfowl, millions of them, covering the shallow lakes, wading in the streams and rivers, splashing through the pools. The waters are thick with fish and insects, especially mosquito larvae. This is low, windswept country. The tallest shrubs are the dwarf trees, not much bigger than a hare on its hindlegs. Here and there a swath of short willows or stunted birch breaks the monotony of the landscape.

  The terrain makes for difficult travelling on foot. The ground is boggy marshland and sucks at the walker. At best the wanderer finds spongy moss to form a springy path under his feet. Those who do not know the firmer tracks flounder in the sticky marsh. Where the granite or gneiss pushes a rounded shoulder through the sediment, it is easier going, but still normal distances can take up to ten times longer on the tundra than on more solid landscapes. Here, there are big skies, mostly clear, in which a mind can lose itself. Here the midnight sun rests like a giant molten ball on the edge of the earth, as red as iron straight out of the forge on the first day of creation.

  Athaba’s injured hindleg slowed him down. The damage felt muscular, rather than to do with a fracture or dislocation of the bone, which gave him some hope that if he showed consideration towards the limb it would mend.

  Since the daylight hours were long, there was little problem with maintaining visual contact with the landscape. The wolf picked his way over the mosses and lichen, trying to keep to firmish going where possible.

  In the early morning of the second day he stalked a small rodent for a serious length of time, only to have it snatched from in front of his nose by one of those pirates of the sky, a jaeger. As the buccaneer of the air swooped on his quarry, Athaba leapt, thinking to have both bird and mammal for breakfast. The jaeger was too quick for him and he merely received a shooting pain up his damaged limb for his trouble.

  ‘One of these days,’ he growled, as the robber flew off. ‘I swear I’ll eat feathers and all!’

  Hunger gnawed at this belly. In his present condition Athaba was ill-suited for hunting, but if he did not hunt the situation would worsen. He came to a small desert of gravel and spent some time nosing under stones and finding beetles. This was not ideal wolf fare but it was better than nothing. Beyond the gravel was one of the thousands of lakes. On the edge of the lake were some red-throated loons, the dark chestnut band under their necks appearing black from a distance. Athaba immediately went down on his underhairs and began belly-crawling towards these unwary creatures, inching himself painstakingly along through white-tufted flowers and alpine plants.

  By noon he was within striking distance of the birds. Out on the lake the geese and ducks cruised, and if they knew of the danger they failed to warn the loons. Perhaps it was none of their business? They, after all, were safe enough in deeper waters.

  Sunlight angled from the surface of the lake turning half to blinding metal. Athaba’s inching had been reduced to fractions now. All he had to do was wait for the right moment to spring.

  The warm sun on the patterned plumage of their backs and flanks lulled the birds into a dreamy state. At the appropriate moment, Athaba leapt and went berserk for a few seconds amongst the panicking fowl. When it was all over, three birds lay dead around him. He began eating one of them straight away. Having finished one, he started on another. Once the second one was under his waistline, he was too bloated to eat the last of them.

  He took the third loon and tried to cache it in a safe place. The ground was unsuitable for digging, though, and all he could do in the end was cover it with ferns. It was not a very satisfactory piece of work.

  He continued on his journey, around the lake, a little more glow about him. The scents of wild flowers and ferns, of waterbirds and rodents filled his nostrils. He almost felt like his old self again.

  After traversing the shore for some way, he scented the hunter, and turned to witness his cache being uncovered. The man stood, looking guilty, holding the bird by the neck and staring at Athaba. The wolf wondered what to do about it. Should he attack the hunter for stealing his cached meat? In their present state, Athaba was probably the stronger, but his instinctive fear of man was hard to overcome. There were also practical reasons why he should not attack. Although the man was in a weak state he would undoubtedly fight for his life, perhaps injuring Athaba in the process. Athaba had to be fit for a long journey: he could not afford to carry more injuries than he already had. Also, what was to be gained by such a move? He had eaten two birds. It would be a while before he could manage the third. Athaba wondered why he had bothered to hide it in the first place, since it was doubtful he would return this way ever again? Habit, probably.

  It would be foolish to attack the human.

  Athaba decided to rest for a while, since his injured leg was giving him trouble. He lay down in the sedge at the edge of the lake and watched the man tear feathers from the bird with frantic hands. Then the human tried to bite at the raw flesh.

  He wants to be a wolf, thought Athaba.

  This was clearly an unsuccessful attempt at feeding himself, for the man made various sounds of disgust and then began looking about him. He gathered some dried vegetation, of which there was little, for some time until he had a pile. Then taking something out of his pockets, he put a flame to his little pyre. There was a swift whumph and the grasses burned away before the hunter was able to do more than singe the bird’s feathers. A look of consternation appeared on the man’s face.

  Athaba rose quickly and trotted away from the place. The smell of fire awakened a feeling of panic in his breast which made his limbs tingle with nervousness. Athaba walked into the shallows of the lake, glancing behind until he was sure that the fire was not heading in his direction, befo
re stopping again.

  He turned to stare at the man.

  Next, Athaba saw a flash of silver, like a fish breaking water. The man had taken out a blade and was cutting the underside of the bird. He extracted the liver and some other pieces of offal and stuffed them into his mouth, chewing on them quickly. The next moment the wolf witnessed the man being violently sick. Evidently, his hunger was not sufficiently advanced for him to overcome his revulsion of raw still-warm liver. Not for the first time Athaba wondered at the weak stomachs of southern men. Why was it that they had to burn their meat before they could keep it down? The local people, who had once been wolves, could still eat raw flesh, especially fish, but the southern hunters always made a fire and roasted their meat. They were such delicate creatures, and without their weapons, so puny. Really,, they were to be despised rather than feared. Why, if wolves had weapons that could kill at a distance, then men would be the prey!

  After a further time, the hunter succeeded in making a small fire out of rags from his clothing, and some other pieces of material from his backpack. He managed to burn the outside of the bird enough to be able to take some bites out of it and hold the meat down. Athaba saw him tear up some of the lakeside plants and gnaw at the roots.

  The wolf now realised why he had not been fed over the last few days. Although the man had had food, at least up until two days ago, the amount was not adequate for both creatures to survive on. Supposing the hunter had expected rescue within a short time? One of those flying machines? Then he had to eke out his supplies and cache food for a period of time.

  A wolf will feast and then go days without eating. Evidently men were not able to do that. This man was as starving as Athaba had been before the divers were caught.