Spirit of the Wolves

by Dorothy Hearst

  An old male human crawled from one of the mounds.

  “Welcome,” he croaked, “we’ve been waiting for you.” The man addressed me as well as TaLi. He wore a longfang tooth attached to a bit of alderwood on a preyskin strip around his neck, just like the one NiaLi had given to TaLi when the girl accepted the role of krianan. I realized that he must be a krianan, too. We had found their village.

  Just then, a young male dashed from behind one of the smaller mounds.

  “BreLan!” TaLi yelped. That was why the old man knew who she was. TaLi’s mate-to-be must have told him about us. TaLi threw off her pack and galloped to BreLan.

  Ázzuen got to him first. BreLan was his human, and he loved the boy as much as I loved TaLi. When he was still two wolflengths away from BreLan, he launched himself. The young human was tall and well muscled, but the force of Ázzuen’s leap knocked him on his rump. Ázzuen licked his face over and over again, his tail whipping so hard it kept hitting TaLi, who was trying to get to BreLan, too. Other humans began to gather, quietly emerging from shelters and from behind trees as if they were wolf rather than human.

  BreLan returned Ázzuen’s greeting, thumping his ribs so hard that Ázzuen coughed. BreLan shoved Ázzuen away, stood, and lifted TaLi off her feet. He swung her around several times before setting her down. He held her so close I didn’t know how she could breathe. I walked over to them and pawed BreLan’s leg.

  “Hello, Silvermoon!” he said.

  Then he saw MikLan standing next to Marra.

  He grinned at him, releasing TaLi. Then he looked MikLan up and down. “You’ve grown,” he accused.

  MikLan walked shyly to his brother. He thumped the blunt end of his spear on the ground in formal greeting. BreLan pulled him close. “Thank you for bringing TaLi safely,” BreLan said.

  MikLan smiled up at him. “I have to go back soon,” he said. “I promised the other krianans in the valley I’d tell them what’s happening here.”

  BreLan’s face grew serious as he stepped away from his brother. “You’ll have a lot to tell them. There’s more going on here than even NiaLi knew. I don’t know if she would’ve sent TaLi if she had known.”

  BreLan pulled TaLi close again, wrapping one arm around her while his other hand rested on Ázzuen’s back.

  “How is NiaLi?” he asked. “She wasn’t strong enough to come?”

  “DavRian killed her,” TaLi said, beginning to cry. “He killed her and blamed it on the wolves.”

  BreLan looked down at her.

  “She’s dead?” He rubbed his eyes. He had loved the old woman, too.

  TaLi nodded. She pulled his head down to hers and told him what had happened since he’d left the valley. His face grew grimmer and grimmer.

  “I never would have left if I’d known DavRian was so dangerous,” he whispered. “And it won’t help things here.” He started to say more, but a female human came forward.

  “You’ve had a long journey,” she said. “Would you like something to eat?”

  At the word eat I looked up. Ázzuen’s stomach growled. Marra yipped, and the woman laughed.

  They brought us more food than I had ever been given by a human. It was older elk meat and not cooked in the fire. I had grown used to the humans’ firemeat, but the rich elk was so good, I gulped it down and then ate more. Ázzuen and Marra ate as voraciously as I did, and Tlitoo darted in to grab scraps. I licked my muzzle to get the last of the meat from my face.

  “They were hungry,” TaLi said, apologetically, and I realized how quickly we had bolted the food.

  The faint scent of wolf blew through the pines. It wasn’t Lallna or the other Sentinels, but it was familiar. The wolf was too far away to cause us trouble, but something about it tugged at me. Something made me desperate to follow it.

  TaLi was safely delivered to the humans and gazing up at BreLan. I could leave her for a little while. The strange wolf scent pulled me as strongly as my love for TaLi did. I nosed Ázzuen’s cheek. “Watch over TaLi for me,” I said, and began to slip as unobtrusively as I could out of the little village.

  “Come back here, youngwolf,” an imperious voice rang out. I stopped, one forepaw raised. Ordinarily I would have kept going, so strong was the pull of the scent, but the leaderwolf authority in the voice made me pause. And I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. It seemed to come from the sky. My paw still raised, I looked over my shoulder.

  Perched like a raven in a pine tree above the fire pit was the old human male who had first greeted us. Tlitoo flew to land beside the old man on a sturdy branch, cocking his head back and forth and quorking curiously at him. I’d seen TaLi and the other young humans clamber about in the trees—it was one of the things I envied about their long limbs and nimble hands—but never one so old. The old humans I had seen were less agile.

  The old man slid down so that he was hanging from his arms and his feet touched a lower branch. He then hung from that branch and dropped to the ground, landing next to TaLi as gracefully as if he really did have wings.

  “I am so sorry to hear of your grandmother’s death,” he said to TaLi, placing a gnarled hand on her head. “I knew NiaLi when she was a young woman, and she has done more for us than any other krianans I know. She told me that you were the one who would take her place when she was gone.”

  “I’ll try,” TaLi said softly.

  “Can you speak to your wolves?” the old man asked, his voice sharp in spite of his smile.

  “No,” TaLi said, ashamed. “I could when I was little, but then I forgot. Silvermoon, I mean Kaala, and I were trying to learn Oldspeak, but then Grandmother died.” Oldspeak was the ancient language all creatures once spoke. I knew more about it than TaLi did, but not enough.

  The old man’s cheerful expression faltered just a bit. “So I am the last one,” he said so softly I wasn’t sure the other humans could hear him. He raised his voice. “NiaLi was able to speak to them and we hoped you would as well. Did you try to learn, wolf?” he asked me.

  Startled to be addressed, I answered without thinking. “Yes,” I said. “But we didn’t have time.”

  “And we don’t have time now,” he said. His eyes crinkled at my surprise. “I can understand you, even if your girl cannot. You and TaLi will have to find another way to communicate with each other.” He gripped TaLi’s arm in one hand and MikLan’s in the other. He nodded to us. “Come with me now, all of you. We have little time and much to do. We have a plan in place, and will need your cooperation as soon as possible. I have friends that you must meet.” He turned and strode away, dragging TaLi and MikLan with him.

  The wolfscent blew past me again, and my heart began to pound as I realized why I knew it.

  It was my mother’s scent.

  I tried to catch Ázzuen’s eye, or Marra’s, but they were following behind the humans, and they wouldn’t recognize the scent even if they were paying attention to it. They had only met my mother once, on the day she had been chased from the Wide Valley. They had not suckled at her belly nor slept against her warm fur. They would smell only a wolf passing too far away to be a threat. They followed the humans into one of the mounds.

  I was rooted where I stood. The scent blew past me again, a bit closer this time, and with it came memories of warm milk, the soft dirt of the den, and safety. I remembered her giving me my name and defying Ruuqo when he killed my littermates. As the humans and my packmates crawled into the shelter, I bolted into the woods.

  I ran full pelt through thick trees and thicker underbrush, following the scent until I reached the open plain. Tlitoo flew low, just over my head. It was nearly high sun, and the Hill Rock seemed to shimmer in the late morning light. My mother’s scent came from just beyond it. I ran faster.

  “Wolflet, wait!” Tlitoo said. “You do not know what awaits you.”

  I didn’t care what awaited me, except that it was my mother. After all this time, I was within wolflengths of her.

  I galloped across the grass
and back into the woods, following the scent until I reached a stream. Across it stood a smallish, light gray wolf. She looked up sharply, her nose twitching.

  I would have known her anywhere.

  I had no words. I just ran to her, stumbling like a smallpup through the stream. I had waited for her for so long. I had wished for her for so long. The one thing I wanted more than anything in the world was to find her. A puplike whimper of happiness escaped my throat.

  For just a moment, I thought I saw a flash of joy and welcome in her gaze. Her ears, for an instant, lifted in pleasure.

  Then, when I was three wolflengths from her, something changed. She pulled back her lips as far as they could go and flattened her ears. The fur along her back rose, making her look bigger than she was, and a deep, throbbing growl burst forth from her.

  Stunned, I tried to skid to a halt but I was running so quickly that I tumbled into her instead. Her scent overwhelmed me, the scent of the den, the scent of the one time in my life I had felt safe. She threw me to the ground and pinned me hard. Then she took my neck in her jaws and bit down, hard enough to hurt.

  “You aren’t supposed to be here,” she snarled. “Go and don’t come back.” She stepped off me and I staggered to my feet, my legs so weak they could barely take my weight. When I didn’t move, she snapped at my face again and again, growling until I stumbled away.

  A confusion of scents rose from her. I smelled anger and frustration, but also terror. I couldn’t imagine what about me could frighten her. I took a few steps and then looked back at her.

  “Go!” she growled.

  I couldn’t find anything to say. I couldn’t think of anything to do. I could only stumble back in the direction I’d come, my mother’s ferocious growl sounding in my ears.

  6

  When I was just three days out of the den, Ruuqo whispered to me that I would not survive to adulthood. A wolf without mother or father, he said, had no true pack. I’d lowered my eyes and said nothing, as any pup would, but I’d told myself he was wrong, and that just because he had exiled my mother didn’t mean I didn’t have one. Every time I caught the scent of dusk sage on the wind or saw a slight wolf with pale fur, I thought of her. I knew that someday I would meet her and she would place her head over my neck and pull me to her and tell me she was proud of me. I would feel whole again. I’d never been more wrong about anything.

  I ran blindly, ignoring the scents and sounds around me. I started to wheeze, as if my lungs were filled with dirt, and I couldn’t stop. Tlitoo screeched something above me, but I couldn’t make out the words.

  “Kaala!” Pell’s voice sounded as if it came to me through a windstorm. I’d run right past him without noticing. I stopped and tried to tell him what happened, but I could only blink up at him. “What’s wrong?” He buried his nose in the fur on my back.

  “You smell like Neesa!” he said. “You found her?”

  “I found her.” My voice sounded dead. We were in a stand of pine and juniper that smelled like home. Ázzuen and Marra pushed through the juniper bushes. They caught sight of my expression and looked from me to Pell and then back again.

  “She found Neesa,” Pell told them.

  “Is she all right?” Ázzuen asked.

  “She’s fine.” Anger overtook my hurt and shock. She had left me to fend for myself in the Wide Valley. She had let my littermates be killed and then told me to risk everything to find her. I closed my eyes and gathered my breath, trying to find a reason for what she’d done. I told my packmates what had happened, hoping that they would have some explanation for her behavior.

  “She growled at me,” I said, holding back a whimper. “She bit me and chased me away.”

  “Neesa always was unstable,” Pell said. “She went to the humans and bred with a wolf outside the valley. She bore pups of mixed blood.” He stopped suddenly. I was one of those mixed-blood pups, and if she was unstable, that meant I could only be worse. He averted his eyes.

  Tlitoo glared at him. “Oafwolf,” he quorked.

  “She attacked you, Kaala,” Pell insisted. “Her own pup. What kind of wolf would do that?” His eyes, when he lifted them to mine, were gentle. “When my father wanted to kill a wolf in our pack, he would invite that wolf to a meeting somewhere without the rest of the pack and then attack. Maybe Neesa was doing that. Or maybe she’s just crazy.” He pawed the dirt. “We should go back home. I don’t think Neesa has anything to offer us but trouble.”

  I was saying the same thing to myself, but I didn’t want to hear it from another wolf. I snarled at him.

  “There has to be a reason, Kaala.” Ázzuen had been so quiet that his voice startled me. “She wanted you.”

  “How do you know?” I demanded, still snarling. He lowered his ears.

  He had no answer. Because there wasn’t one. The image of her snarling face would not leave me. I’d left my home and led my packmates into danger because she had called to me, because she was supposed to tell me what I needed to do to keep the Promise. It was all for nothing. The Greatwolves would kill my packmates, and our humans, and the Swift River pack.

  And my mother didn’t want me.

  I tipped my head back and opened my jaws and allowed all my misery and sorrow to rise up from my heart and escape through my throat. I howled of loneliness and failure and my despair.

  “Quiet, Kaala!” Pell swung his head back and forth to look around the copse. Marra spun around to look deeper into the woods. Ázzuen took three steps toward me and then stopped, flattening his ears.

  “What are you doing, wolf?” Tlitoo demanded.

  I cringed. I’d just announced our location to every wolf in Sentinel lands.

  “We should get out of here,” Marra said, shifting from paw to paw, ready to run.

  I was shaking so hard I couldn’t take a deep enough breath to talk, much less run away. It was as if the howl had drained me of every drop of energy I had. My legs weakened and I sank to the earth. I didn’t care if Milsindra found me and killed me.

  “Get up, Kaala,” Ázzuen said. He grabbed me by the scruff and tried to drag me to my paws. He wasn’t strong enough.

  Tlitoo pecked me on the rump. “You are boring when you mope, wolf. I would not have come with you if I had known you would curl up and whimper again.”

  Back in the Wide Valley, I had been haunted by a great sorrow that came over me whenever I thought of my lost mother. I would be hunting, or running with my packmates, and find myself whimpering, unable to go on. Since she had called to me, I had almost forgotten about it. I’d imagined, again and again, how my mother would greet me when I found her. I’d dreamed of her welcoming me as pack. Now my despair threatened to return.

  Tlitoo pecked me harder. “Will you let your packmates die because you wish to sulk?” he quorked.

  Ázzuen, Pell, and Marra were watching me anxiously. I knew better than to tell them to go without me.

  I pulled myself together and staggered to my paws. Pell bolted from the copse. I stumbled after him, Ázzuen and Marra at my side. Tlitoo flew just beneath the branches of the dense trees. As soon as we began to move, I felt a little better, the rhythm of a forest run steadying me. If we were lucky, I thought, no wolves nearby would care enough about a wandering pack to track us.

  We weren’t lucky. Lallna and the other young Sentinels caught up with us ten minutes later, just as the trees thinned and we reached the edge of a grassy plain. There were more of them this time. Eight to our four. They surrounded us, their stances aggressive, their teeth bared.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Lallna demanded, showing her fangs. “You promised not to let anyone else know you’re here!”

  Then she fell silent and stared at my chest. The stream had washed the mud away, exposing the moon mark on my fur.

  “You’re the drelwolf,” she whispered.

  I didn’t know what she meant. I’d been called drelshik and drelshan, but no one had called me “drelwolf” before.

  “I
f we’d known that, we wouldn’t have let you go,” Sallin growled. The cut on his head was bleeding into his eye and I found myself staring at it, wondering why no one cleaned it for him.

  Lallna sat, bent back her head, and howled.

  “I found the drelwolf!” she bayed. “At the edge of the plump horse plain!” It was a hunting cry.

  One by one, the other Sentinel wolves joined her in her howl. I’d always loved the sound of the howls that called wolves together, especially the summons to a hunt. It was different when I was the one being hunted.

  “Time to run, wolves,” Tlitoo quorked from a low branch above us. He dropped down and landed on Lallna’s back.

  Pell slammed into two of the Sentinel youngwolves, knocking them over and clearing a path for us. We bolted out of the woods and onto the plain.

  Pell loped across the grass and toward the spruce wood on the far side of it, his long stride carrying him across the grass. I lowered my head and followed. If we could make it across, we might be able to lose the Sentinel youngwolves in the woods, or at least take advantage of the terrain to outfight them.

  Then I heard Ázzuen yelp behind me. I lifted my head and saw wolves pelting toward us from different directions. My throat went dry.

  More and more wolves emerged from the woods behind us and in front of us. We ran faster, veering away from the approaching wolves, angling toward open plain. More wolves appeared. Singly and in groups of three and four, they charged onto the grass as Lallna and the other youngwolves came up behind us.

  There was no hope for escape. We stopped and stood rump to rump in a circle, waiting for what was to come, facing the wolves who ran at us from all directions. I couldn’t tell whether the trembling in my haunches was my own or my packmates’. Ázzuen’s breath was harsh and labored and Marra coughed in fear. Pell lowered his head and rumbled a challenge. Tlitoo streaked into the woods in front of us and then back again, shrieking obscenities at the approaching wolves.