by J B Cantwell
My body began to feel weak as I calmed down, and I stowed the book in my pocket and raised my eyes to the sky again, studying the two moons. The bigger of the two was much larger than our moon on Earth, though not as bright. The surface was covered in pocked craters, as ours is, but hovering around it was a thick ring of dust. The smaller moon was half the size of ours, and very dark by comparison. Its grayish purple hue barely reflected any light at all, and its surface was smooth as a marble. Both moons were completely full. I wondered how unusual it was to see two full moons in the same sky on the same night. But then, looking around, I realized there was no one here to see the moons but me.
My eyes meandered to the stars that dotted the cosmos beyond the moons. There were so many more than I had ever seen from Earth. Living in the city, we couldn’t see anything but a hazy, orange glow in the night sky. But here I was awash in the brilliance of a billion points of light. It was this, more than anything, that comforted me, though I couldn’t quite pinpoint why. The stars weren’t a familiar sight to me, though I did have a memory of seeing them, just one time, before.
I was maybe four. She had fought with my dad, and when he took off into the street, she took my hand and we left the apartment. We stopped at a neighbor’s door; I never knew her name, but she and my mom would talk from time to time in the hallway. After several minutes of hushed conversation, and what sounded a lot like pleading on the part of my mother, the neighbor handed her a single, silver key. Before the woman could change her mind, Mom grabbed my hand and together we ran down the stairs. She giggled, of all things, and I was so excited about the smile on her face that I followed suit.
The key was to a car, a rusted monster with leather bench seats and just a single working headlight. We drove out of the city as the sun was setting, and soon I fell asleep with my head in her lap. Some time later, she woke me, tickling my feet until I was finally upright. She had driven us to the mountains, she said. She grabbed an old, smelly blanket from the trunk of the car, and together we walked up a small incline to a precipice. She bundled me into her arms and wrapped the blanket around us both. I didn’t mind the musty smell so much, not with her warm arms around me.
We lay back into the dead grass, and only then did I realize that the sky was full of strange pinpricks of light. They were stars, she told me, and when she was a girl they could be seen from just about anywhere in the world. Her long fingers zigzagged above our heads as she murmured to me about dust particles and the birthing of stars, science too big for me to understand, but I didn’t care. I lay my head on her shoulder and listened to her talk about how much she missed being able to walk out her back door and look up at the stars.
“Why can’t we see the stars at home, Mama?” I had asked.
“Things are different now, baby,” she said. I watched her eyes drink in the light from the sky, the look on her face peaceful and calm. “Do you like them?” she asked.
“Yes,” I answered, and I did. If she liked them, so did I. Besides, I had never known that an entire universe lay hidden behind the veil of smog that blanketed our world.
“Me, too, baby,” she said. She sighed. “To me, seeing the stars is like seeing a family member you’ve never met, and yet somehow knowing them just the same. They make me feel…warm.”
I was happy there with her, but I was starting to wonder when we might be going home. Little sharp pricks of grass were sticking into my backside, making me long for my warm bed and soft sheets. I didn’t understand quite what she meant about feeling warm, especially since the breeze was starting to blow beneath our blanket, and I shivered beneath her embrace.
But now, lying on this soft, thick bed of snow, somewhere deep in the Maylin Fold, I understood. She didn’t miss seeing the stars just because they were pretty to look at. She missed them because seeing them gave her some sort of feeling of connection that our cities of millions, and my father, couldn’t bring. She missed them because of the way looking at them now was making me feel. I was lost, hopelessly lost in a frozen expanse of snow, separated from my home and all that I understood. But deep inside me, a primal animal was calmed and brought peace where before there had been discomfort and emptiness. She missed them because for millions of years, us and every other animal that had ever been had looked upward to see their familiar sparkling each and every night, relieved by their reliable appearance. It was a privilege now lost to those who lived on Earth.
I now understood a small piece of what the famine had taken from them, and from everyone who came after, and I wished that I could package up this sky and bring it back to her. Because when we look at the stars, we are comforted, rebalanced. And we are home.
Chapter 17
I woke, my face smashed into the cold snow, the howls of an already forgotten dream following me into waking. As I rolled onto my back and covered the snowy part of my face with the blanket, I realized that the howls weren’t from any dream at all. The mournful cries met my ears again and again, and I sat bolt upright, looking around.
The rolling white hills betrayed no predator I could see, but the howling continued, each cry piercing the silent night around me. I scrambled up, ready to run away, but in what direction? The noise came from the spot in the distance where the purple moon came closest to the horizon. The moons had sunk low in the sky. How long had I slept? It had felt like hours. Where was the sun?
Each howl that echoed in the night made me more and more nervous, and I quickly gathered up my pack and set off in the opposite direction of the noise, walking fast but not yet running. My boots were tough and warm, but my feet sunk several inches into the snow with each step. Progress was slow, but soon I was warm enough from the efforts of walking to lower the blanket from my head. The howls sounded, and I moved over the landscape in the opposite direction. My nerves jittered, but with no threat that I could see, all I could do was walk away. After a time I started to feel like a sheep being herded to a pen, but my experience with the faylons still sent me scurrying. I didn’t want to be anywhere near whatever it was that was making that sound.
This place was strange, much stranger than the green grasses of Kiron’s or the medieval stones of Stonemore, and utterly silent but for the howls in the distance and the crunching of my feet on the snow. The hills were so alike that there was no way to tell which was which, and my trail of footsteps was the only clue as to what direction I had come from. Without the moons to guide me I would have been entirely lost; at least I knew I was heading in one general direction. From time to time the howling would start up suddenly, pushing me to change course, but the longer I walked, the fainter the cries became.
I pulled out the book again and studied it as I walked, hoping for a clue about where to head next, but the pages remained stubbornly blank. I trudged on, hoping I would find somewhere to hide. The animals, if they caught my scent, would surely be faster than me in this snow.
After an hour, I came to the lip of a valley, the first change in the land I had seen. The basin was enormous and round, surrounded by the same little hills on all sides, and down in the very center stood an object I couldn’t identify from this far away. All I could tell from the edge of the bowl was that it wasn’t a tree or a house. Then what was it? Some enormous animal?
I stood for a time and watched it, but after a few minutes it still didn’t move. I carefully started to walk down the hill. The snow here was deeper, and I found myself almost up to my waist in the stuff as I struggled to keep upright. My feet were still dry, but a thin layer of snow melted against my pants, and soon I was shivering again.
I finally made it all the way down and cautiously approached what I now saw was some sort of monument. When I realized that the statue that stood atop it was carved into an enormous wolf, I froze. The wolf stood tall, his form lifted fifteen feet off the ground by a marble base.
It’s not alive.
But my hammering heart didn’t hear the logic in my head. I inched towards it until I found myself face to face with the enorm
ous stone statue.
The howling had stopped completely, and now he and I stood silently together in the moonlight. He stared off into the night, dominance carved into his face. This was his land.
I stared at the stone wolf for what seemed a long time. Whoever had carved this statue had possessed fantastic skill. Even from the ground I could see the details in his fur, the delicate shape of his ears. Everything about him seemed alive, everything but his eyes. Cold, flat stone looked out at the surrounding valley.
I moved around the base, looking for what, I didn’t know. All around each of the square sides were inscribed these words:
At the place where the sun meets the land
Lies escape they have surely not planned
Discover the code and you’ll see
The way forward to win you the key
I walked around the podium again and again, trying to make sense of the inscription. It told me to go somewhere where the sun met the land. But where? This place seemed to be in a perpetual state of darkness.
I moved on to the next line, escape they have surely not planned. My hand dragged along the surface of the monument, feeling the roughness of the rock as I paced around it. On one side several horizontal notches were carved out, just deep enough for me to fit my fingers into. I stopped and moved my hands back and forth over the rough grooves. Maybe this line was about my escape from Maylin, my journey back home. Who would want to keep me from escaping Maylin?
Discover the code. Of course! I stopped pacing and took the book from my pocket, When I opened it a wave of relief washed over me. The pages were full, top to bottom, with writing. This was it! It wasn’t a map, that was true, but this little tome would give me what I needed, I was sure of it.
I walked around the base of the statue again, looking for a place to enter the code, but found none. I ran the last line through my head again and again. The way forward to win you the key.
I circled it again, searching this time with my hands. Starting at the ground the base rested upon, I worked my way up each side of the rock until my fingers were extended all the way above my head. Still nothing. I took several steps back from the base. Maybe I needed to see this whole thing differently.
I slapped myself on the forehead for my own stupidity. The horizontal notches I had been running my fingers over, they weren’t just random notches cut into the stone. There were five of them extending from a foot off the ground and all the way to the flat top of the pedestal. It was a ladder.
I fitted the toes of my boot into the lowest rung. The carving was so shallow that I could barely get a hold of it with my foot. Extending my arms to the rung above my head I gripped the rock hard with my fingertips and began to climb.
My first few attempts to ascend the structure resulted in my flailing and tumbling to the snow below. But on the fourth try I was finally able hoist my weight up onto the platform. I carefully stood up on the edge of the base and came face to face with the stone wolf.
He was gigantic. Standing as tall as me, his eyes were almost perfectly level with mine. No snow stuck onto any surface of his body. I reached out to touch the stone, and was surprised when I didn’t feel rock beneath my fingertips, but the soft warmth of fur. I snatched my hand back, alarmed, but he didn’t move. I stretched out my hand to touch it again, entranced. My fingers could press in on the fur, but it otherwise remained entirely motionless. What was this thing?
I carefully lay my ear against its back, listening. I heard no heartbeat or other sound. I was both relieved and disappointed by this. So it wasn’t alive then, but something else. In such a lonely place, part of me had been hoping to hear a sign of life beneath the marble. Though the idea of being greeted by a huge, live wolf was terrifying.
I dropped back down to my hands and knees and began to brush away the snow that covered the rest of the platform. It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for. My icy fingers moved over the four distinct notches carved into the base. Above each rectangle shaped notch, strange ciphers were written. I pulled out the book and flipped through the pages in the moonlight.
The book was split into three sections. Each one had a large set of characters decoded several times into different types of what I could only guess were alphabets. I focused on the first character of the code on the stone and searched the book for its twin.
I found it quickly enough in the third section. This part of the book only had about thirty different characters translated, and I saw with relief that several of the translations were written in letters from the alphabet that I had learned back on Earth. Was I supposed to draw the letter? It seemed a logical conclusion to write it onto the stone, but with what? I reached out a single, frozen finger and traced the first letter in the sequence onto the bare stone, which was J.
Before my finger had even begun the loop on the bottom of the letter, the path it had taken on the stone came to life. Gold shimmered beneath my hand as I completed it, and then the next. And the next. At last I found the final letter in the code, an E, and completed the word.
J-A-D-E
A loud click came from the base as an unseen lock slid into place.
I stared at the stone, waiting for something to happen, but nothing did. No secret compartment opened in the floor. No other codes or letters alighted on the stone. I rested on my hands and knees, searching for some sign that I had accomplished something. But the unforgiving stone had remained hard and lifeless.
Then I heard it. Breathing. Right above my head. I closed my eyes, willing it not to be true, but the hot breath that blew over the back of my neck was undeniable. I slowly sat back on my heels and, trying not to scream, looked up at the statue.
He looked right back at me. No longer was the wolf made of stone. His fur rippled with the movement of his breath, shining white hot in the moonlight. His eyes, now full of life, stared deep into mine.
I had little control over what happened next. In my primordial brain the alarm bells were ringing; I needed to escape this predator. My mouth hung silently open as I stood and backed away from the beast, completely forgetting that I was fifteen feet above the ground. I backed right off the edge of the platform and fell to the snow below.
You might think that landing in snow would have broken my fall, but you would be mistaken. The snow, only a foot or so deep in the center of the basin, was maybe enough to keep me from breaking my ankle, but definitely not enough to keep me from injury. The pain shot up through my leg and I yelped, clutching at it and writhing on the ground, the wolf above all but forgotten. In the background of my own cries of pain I heard whining. I looked up just in time to see the wolf jump down from the platform.
I tried to scramble upwards but I was unable to put any weight on my leg. The whining continued, and slowly the animal made his way over to me, snorting giant plumes of vapor into the frigid air. I struggled to push myself backwards in the snow, but there was nowhere for me to escape to. He approached me, snuffling the air around my neck. I lay back into the snow, breathing hard with terror and panic.
This was it. This was how I was going to die. Not from a heart attack or a bout of asthma, or even whatever it was that Cadoc had planned for me, but instead eaten alive by an impossibly alive wild animal. I tried to close my eyes, to give myself over to the inevitable, but they stayed stubbornly wide.
Suddenly I felt something entirely unexpected; a warmth was spreading from the center of my chest outward. I looked down into the face of the beast, and was surprised to find him resting his head on my rib cage. I barely breathed. He looked at me through silver eyes and a low whine came from his throat.
Could this really be happening? He didn’t seem to want to eat me. I waited, but neither of us moved.
I tentatively lifted one hand and touched the wolf’s head between his ears. He blinked at the touch and sighed. My fingers slowly dug into the fur and scratched the skin beneath it, and his eyes closed with pleasure. Was he…tame?
I slowly sat up and he raised his hea
d as I did so, eyes following mine. When he didn’t attack, I risked trying to stand again, and once more crumpled to the ground with a whimper. The wolf watched me try this again and again until I lay motionless in the snow, defeated. He moved then, nudging his head underneath my arm and sliding forward on his belly until it rested on his back. He pushed his back into me, nudging me farther and farther until his body was almost completely underneath mine.
I then did what was probably a very stupid thing. I swung my injured leg over the back of the wolf as if he were the old draft horse on Grandma’s farm, and held my breath.
He positioned his legs underneath himself and rose from the ground, me hanging on to two tufts of fur between my fingers. I tried to grab big handfuls of fur instead of just a few strands, not wanting to hurt him, but he didn’t seem to notice the pulling at all. I steadied myself on his back as his feet pranced underneath. Then he lifted his shining head into the night and gave a long howl. The sound echoed across the basin, bouncing back to us until a chorus of howls filled the darkness. It sounded like a hundred wolves were responding to his call. I looked around, expecting to see an army of animals descend from the surrounding hills, but the landscape remained empty.
He moved then and quickly broke into a run. I flopped myself down closer to his back, hugging my arms around his neck to keep myself from flailing around. But I soon realized that his gait was smooth and easy to balance with. I sat back up and watched the land around us zip by in a streak. My eyes watered from the cold air, and I released one of my hands to pull up my hood to protect my quickly freezing ears.
It should have been wonderful, glorious. But what I remember most about that ride was that it was freezing, icy cold. His giant head bobbed up and down in front of me with each stride, and though his fur glowed brightly in the moonlight, little heat came off him to warm me. I kept my fingers from freezing by gripping the fur close to his skin, but my face and ears were soon stinging. I bowed my head closer to the wolf as he ran, my head throbbing in protest.
