This was no longer true, and Athaba knew it. Koonama was part of his pack now, and as headwolf he was responsible for all that occurred on the trail. He was the pathfinder and it was up to him to find ways and means of surmounting any barriers they came across, or avoiding them altogether, if that were possible.
However, Koonama looked down into his eyes, as if he understood. Athaba was convinced that at times the human did comprehend what he was saying. At least, he often reacted in the way Athaba wanted him to. Perhaps such a reaction was just automatic, not denoting any real understanding on the part of the human? It didn’t really matter. Koonama was a kind of company for him, not exactly a companion, but he was there.
With a loud unexpected bark, the wolfman threw his pack on the ground, stared at the white foaming water with his hands on his hips, and then kicked a stone petulantly out into its currents. Then he dropped to the ground. A cloud of midges and mosquitoes followed him down, biting him in every conceivable place on his body.
Koonama looked as exhausted as Athaba felt.
Athaba found there was a kind of rhythmic pain, a repetitive pattern of agony, which set in with walking. When he stopped for the day, in the evening, his body was numb. During the light-darktime, when a sort of peace settled over everything, his body began to thaw, so by the time morning came everything from paw to nose to tip of tail ached. He would drag himself to his feet, stumble to the nearest watering point, and drink. If he had anything to eat, he ate. Then he would begin to walk again. Gradually the aches disappeared, to be replaced by actual pain which started on the pads and in the joints, and juddered through the body. Since walking has a rhythm, pain too has a motif. It almost became addictive. Athaba knew that if something went seriously wrong, a thorn in one of the pads, or a torn ligament – something that had to be rested for more than a day – he might never be able to walk again. It was not the actual walking that was agony, but the stopping. Once he had halted he would notice how light his head felt, how dry the joints of his legs were, how sore his pads. Should he have to stop for a whole day, a stiffness would set in which might be impossible to overcome when the time came to walk again. The longer the rest, the heavier and more difficult to overthrow becomes the lethargy. It became a permanent tenant of the body and mind. Before long, life itself seemed a weary burden, and he felt that it would be a better thing just to stay on the same spot, to die there, and enter a world where there was no need for walking. That state of mind, when death becomes more attractive than life, is more dangerous than the bullet.
It is only rhythms that keep us going.
Koonama tried entering the water, but soon sank up to his thighs as the river took the silt from under his feet. He turned and reached for a rock on the back, using it frantically as an anchor to pull first one leg from the sucking mire, then the other. His sweat-smell told Athaba how relieved the human was to get out of the swirling waters.
Athaba studied the thick eddies himself. They looked solid things, like twisted white wood. There was no way he could see himself swimming through them. If he stopped, and waited until the flood subsided, he might not get back on his feet. He was going to walk, south along the bank of the flow, to find a crossing point upriver nearer the source.
Turning, he began the detour. Koonama groaned and followed, no doubt realising that there was no alternative.
They plodded on, staying on relatively dry ground, for two days. Food was not a problem: there were other creatures for whom the river formed an impassable barrier and some of them had halted, bemused or irritated by this wall of water, at the bank. They were easily caught. Even Koonama managed to chase a hare into the water, then grab it. The wolfman was becoming quicker, despite his tiredness. He looked leaner and meaner than ever, his eyes brighter, and set in a face that had once been pudgy and flaccid, but was now narrow and angular. The arms were muscled and stringy, the legs wiry.
He was a little mad, of course.
He tried to talk wolf talk sometimes, and when he received no answer growled away to himself in his own rambling way. He threw stones at things he disliked, like the river, or objects that annoyed him, like the stars. The wolf, used to loneliness, having experienced a great deal of that terrible inner emptiness during his seasons as an utlah, did not succumb to the attractions of losing his reason. He envied the man in a way. Madness was a wonderful escape from the ravages of loneliness: it provided imaginary companions with whom one could argue and converse. Lack of food only left the stomach empty but lack of company hollowed the body, the head and the heart, leaving a void that was startling in its size. The wildernesses of the spirit were vast places, more desolate and bleak than any external land. They were charred areas where forests of feelings have been burned to black ash and there was nothing left to explore. They were infinite vacuums of darkness where not even a star shone to break the monotony. That was why the man threw stones at the stars, because he envied the night sky. He wanted one within him.
It seemed to Athaba that Koonama was becoming more animal than man. When they stopped to eat, Koonama would tear at his food like a wild beast, and bend down to drink at the water’s edge like a real wolf. When the march had first begun, the man had been fussy about where he took his water and used cupped hands to drink from. None of that now. His hands were as black as his face and not to be trusted as a utensil since the bony fingers would not hold water.
He made beds from sedge and moss, but some animals and birds did that so this did not lower him in Athaba’s eyes. He still walked on two legs, but Athaba did not expect the impossible. He still used his eyes more than his nose or ears, but was becoming more in tune with these latter senses.
There was indeed hope that the wolfman might save himself, if they spent a season or so in getting where they were going. Once, they had been hungry for several days when they came across the carcass of a caribou. Other predators had been there before them, and the parasites too. All the meat had gone and just the bones and horns remained. However, the beast had been in velvet when it was killed, so Athaba began stripping this covering off the antlers with his teeth. Koonama, possibly near to starving, copied the wolf. Between them they chewed and swallowed every last shred of the membrane, and afterwards Athaba felt proud of the way his pupil was coming along. He ate like a wolf, slept with the alertness of a wolf, was almost as hairy as a wolf, drank like a wolf on all fours. If Koonama would just throw away those silly coverings and could learn to walk on his knuckles, there was no saying what he could accomplish in the way of wolfery.
Eventually they came to some high ground where the river narrowed and the ground was solid. Koonama crossed first, his pack above his head, and was washed away. He went tumbling downstream, losing his backpack, and had to fight his way to the far bank. He made it, collecting by the look of it, some cuts and abrasions. Then the wolf went.
Athaba did not try to cross between two points. He allowed the torrent to take him downstream, much further than Koonama had gone, gaining a length across for every six sideways. Eventually his paws touched firm ground and he struggled from the water. The wolfman joined him later.
They spent the night sheltering behind a ridge, during which the man grumbled and raved in his sleep. There was some darkness, after which the wolf climbed the ridge to get the lie of the land beyond. When he reached the top he could scent humans. In the far distance, lights were embedded in the ground. There was a settlement not half a day’s walk from the ridge. Even closer, a road wound its way across the flatlands below, to the south-west.
Athaba lay on the smooth crest of the ridge and studied the landscape for a long time, before trotting down to where the man was muttering and thrashing. He found himself a crevice in the rocks and went to sleep.
When they awoke sometime later, almost together, Koonama went back to the river to bathe his feet. He seemed obsessive about his feet. Athaba went to drink. Then the wolfman fed on water plants. He was good at holding things down these days. Not much came up any
more, though the other end of him was not always so lucky. He tended to suffer from recurring diarrhoea.
The day’s walk started shortly afterwards.
Athaba struck out north-west, to avoid running into humans from the settlement. He kept the pair of them below the hill, out of sight of the road and the houses beyond. It was his duty as headwolf to protect himself and Koonama from human hunters. Koonama followed closely behind him, keeping pace with him. Athaba’s hindleg still gave him trouble, but was not nearly so bad as it had been in the early days. The fits were still with him, but infrequently.
This was not the first time Athaba had been aware of the proximity of humans since the walk began. Previously he had smelled parties of hunters, closer to them than the settlement had been. However, he and Koonama had been lucky. The hunters had not so far caught the scent of the travellers. The pair of them passed within a few yards of one abandoned encampment but the hunters had been good at hiding traces of their journey. The ashes from their fire had been buried and all other signs wiped from the landscape. Athaba saw Koonama’s nose twitch on this occasion as they passed by the spot. No doubt the wolfman could still smell the traces of charcoal in the earth. Koonama’s expression at the time was one of puzzlement but the area was soon behind them, and thus forgotten. They lived almost moment to moment, and the last river, the last batch of dwarf trees, the last scent of sage, was history as soon as it was out of sight, smell and hearing.
Athaba was good at his job, which was to weave a silent path between human settlements so that the pack remained undetected. This job he performed with unswerving diligence and the pair of them managed to avoid all contact with humans. This he did for the good of the pack.
It did cross his mind once or twice that Koonama might possibly wish to catch a nostalgic glimpse of his old-world fellow creatures, but really that was not Athaba’s concern. Survival was the overriding all-important rule, and wolves did not survive by inviting contact with men. His man had become more wolf than human and therefore had to sacrifice any sentimental desires for social contact with his former life. This was necessary both for the good of Koonama as well as for the good of the pack.
Two days later Koonama had a fever. He fell during the afternoon walk and lay with his face in the moss. Flies gathered around the sores on his cheeks and feasted in the cracks of his lips. The wolf walked on, leaving the wolfman behind.
Athaba splashed through pools and across country until the man was out of sight and scent. His olfactory sense was full of the odours of moss and lichen. His eyes were fixed on the distant horizon and his neck muscles remained rigid. He heard only the call of his pups, the howl of his mate. There was a lot of country between him and his home and he had only half a lifetime to cover it in.
The sky above him was striated, like ice scored by rocks. A dirty-ice sky, solid in appearance but with a depth to it: ocean ice, almost unfathomable. Across such a sky migratory birds travelled twice a year. Why did they bother? Why risk death time and time again to travel thousands of miles from one place to another? Why not find some place that suited them all the year around? But, in the early spring and late autumn, something shifted in the heads of the geese, the stints: a tilting of the brain’s axis, an equinox of the mind. Shortly afterwards the air became full of beating wings. Birds swarmed liked bees and went south or north, depending on the season.
When he reached a cairn that had been built some time ago by humans, traces of man-scent on the stones, weak as they were, jerked some subliminal trigger in the wolf-brain. The light twisted behind his eyes and the subsequent action was involuntary but undeniable. He retraced his spoor across the bogs. He did not himself understand why he was returning to the sickbed of the wolfman: something had clicked in his brain, like the seasonal signal to a migratory bird, and he had obeyed it without resistance. There was no denying it. A bird flew south, Athaba retraced his tracks across the tundra.
Athaba went back to where Koonama lay on the soft wet bed of the tundra and waited, he knew not why, for either death or recovery.
That night Athaba lay near his charge, wanting to be on his feet and travelling, yet somehow held to this place. Wolves have never been very good with the sickness of others. They prefer to turn their backs on it. A sick pup will often be killed. At best they did what Athaba was doing: they stayed around the ill creature, studying the sky, the plants, the water, as if wholly unconcerned by the suffering close by. This is nothing to do with me, was the impression they gave. Athaba, despite his own experiences of being ostracised from the pack because of his fits, was at heart no different from other wolves. Like the rest of his kind he had an unreasonable dread of illness, of any creature that was not functioning normally. Abnormal behaviour worried him and presented him with fears he did not know what to do with. If I ignore this, he told himself, it won’t visit me too.
Koonama shivered or sweated alternately, sometimes snatching at the air as if he were catching mosquitoes. Delirium caused him to thrash and moan as if he were grappling with strange invisible monsters. Perhaps he was? If so, he won, for the next morning the fever appeared to have subsided. The wolfman looked thinner than ever, but his eyes were clear.
There was a weakness about him which told Athaba that they would not be going very far that day. Athaba went off and ran down a hare, bringing it back. He ate his share, leaving the rest for the pack. The wolfman stirred himself long enough to make a fire. Then he partially cooked the tough meat, before devouring it.
Koonama seemed concerned about his little container of flames. He kept holding it up and peering at it, then nodding his head mournfully. Athaba was at a loss to know what was worrying his pack. After all, the container still produced fire. So long as it did that, where was the problem?
The days were beginning to get darker and colder. Koonama’s old clothes were in tatters, but he kept some of the pelts of the kills and wrapped them around himself. Even to Athaba’s nostrils, used to rotting meat, he began to develop an odour fit only for a six-month-old carcass. What worried the wolf was the fact that other predators – perhaps bears? – would be able to scent Koonama from a long way off. There was nothing to be done about it though. The wolfman had to keep himself warm or he would die. To Athaba’s eyes he certainly looked better. The skins acted as a camouflage and when the pair of them were hunting together, Koonama was able to move upwind of the prey, while Athaba waited downwind, ready to ambush. It was not the way wolves normally hunted, but it was developed between them because the wolfman was useless at stalking and running down prey. A wolf might follow prey for days, stopping when the quarry stopped, patiently awaiting the right time to attack. Koonama would run at the prey and give up the moment it took to its heels.
So, some time after Athaba had run down a young musk-ox and the man had skinned it and made himself a cloak from the pelt that hung with shaggy matted knotted hair, they began their teamwork. Even to the wolf the wolfman was a ghastly sight. Athaba could imagine what went through the mind of any prey that was ambushed by the pair of them. First of all it would be aware of an awful stench riding on the back of the wind. This would have the creature up on its toes, alert and ready to bolt. Then there would be a rustle, a movement amongst the distant dwarf willows. The small trees would tremble and shimmer in the eerie light of the northern day. One or two birds would bullet from hiding places. By this time, the quarry would be an instant away from flight, nerves tingling like electric insects, tendons so taut they hummed in the breeze. Then this thing would suddenly leap up on its hindlegs – this ghastly thing which had no real shape and from which bits of flesh and skin dangled horrifyingly – this thing which would let out a warbling shriek loud enough to frighten a bear – this stinking creature from some other world, with bright eyes, even white teeth, and waving limbs.
If the prey did not have a heart attack or freeze on the spot, it would fly across the soggy turf, uncaring of anything but getting away from the monster that had sprung from the earth befo
re its very nose and eyes. Athaba would be waiting, crouched behind one of the roches moutonnées that littered the landscape and spring on the unfortunate beast, thus realising its worst nightmares.
When the wolfman was ready, they continued with their long walk across the tundra. Athaba wanted to make good headway before the autumn, which was not far off, began to shake itself loose of sleep and walk across the landscape.
Koonama too must have been aware of the coming cooler weather, perhaps glad of it since wherever he went a cloud of flies and other insects followed. No doubt the cloak was partly responsible for the gathering of these pests around his head. He must have wished for the yellow dryas to wither and decay, so that the flies would leave him alone and disappear back into their hidy holes.
Mists began to roll across the landscape with hearts of soft light. These fallen clouds would leave Athaba and Koonama dripping with moisture and would cause the creases in their joints to become sore with rubbing. So many discomforts, yet they went on, deeper into the western sky. It had become a way of life, to move in the same direction, day after day.
Chapter Seventeen
First there was Cle-am, the Long Hot Wind, followed by the fox A-O and the wolf Sen Sen. These three were responsible for shaping the earth, giving form to a nebulous mass. When the word reached the sea-of-chaos, where humans were moving through an inner darkness, a jealousy was given birth. Humans were not world shapers and were able to do little with the murky sludge at the bottom of the waters in turmoil. They coveted the earth and were prepared to kill any bird or beast that stood in their way.
At the height of the wars following Firstdark, in which wolves were being slaughtered by the ten thousand, there was one called Ranagana who felt there must be another way to make peace with the humans. He was aware of the failures of others, to negotiate with Groff. Ranagana had heard of those who had spoken with dogs and cats and had tried to find a way they could meet humans halfway. No political change had come from any of these attempts and Ranagana lay down in a cave on the hillside and being a wiser wolf than most, indulged in original thought.
Midnight's Sun: A Story of Wolves Page 20