Spirit of the Wolves

by Dorothy Hearst

  Prannan ran to her, his face crumpled in concern, looking so much like a puppy I wanted to call out to him to be careful. JaliMin stomped over to me.

  “Play with me, wolf,” he ordered clearly, dropping the piece of antler at my paws. I looked over at the humans watching me. I licked the boy on the ear, grabbed up the antler bone he had dropped, and ran with it. He chased me and, after a few circuits of the fire pit, I let him catch me. He pushed me in the ribs and I pretended to fall over. I dropped the bone and the boy snatched it up. He ran, shrieking with laughter, into one of the shelters. TaLi and I used to play that way, before she had taken on so much responsibility and become so serious.

  HesMi walked slowly over to me, Prannan trotting at her heels.

  “Thank you, wolves,” she said. “I never thought to hear his laughter again.” She spoke as if she knew we could understand her.

  Prannan panted up at her. His teeth showed as he grinned. Often humans found that intimidating. But she smiled down at him.

  “There is more to you than the hunt, isn’t there?” She reached down and stroked Prannan between the ears. He rolled over onto his back. Vole Eater wolves were always submissive. HesMi looked at me expectantly. As the leader of the council of elders, she would have much more influence than IniMin or DavRian would. I flopped onto the ground, rolled onto my back, and offered her my belly. She laughed and bent down to stroke my belly fur. Prannan yipped happily. HesMi smiled at both of us before walking away. We had completely won her over.

  I got to my paws, looking after her in satisfaction. I saw IniMin watching me and lifted my lip to him. Then I smelled bitter spruce. I turned around, dreading what I would see. Milsindra was standing just at the edge of Kaar, staring at me with contempt, the youngwolf Lallna at her side. They had seen me offering my belly to the humans. I started toward them, ready to explain, but they turned and bolted into the woods.

  14

  I waited just beyond the village, my tail wrapped around my legs in an attempt to look confident, but my heart raced and I found it difficult to breathe. Ázzuen hid behind a tartberry bush to my left. I’d wanted him to stay in the village to strengthen our new bonds with HesMi and the other humans, but he’d refused to let me wait alone. It wouldn’t take the Sentinels long to send someone after us. They had made it clear that we were not to be submissive to the humans, and I had no doubt that Milsindra had told them what she’d seen. I was afraid it would be Navdru or Yildra who came for me. When Neesa approached through the dusk, I drooped with relief.

  I dipped my head to Ázzuen, who backed out of the bush and back toward Kaar.

  I spoke before Neesa could.

  “We had to make them comfortable,” I said, talking as quickly as I could. “Otherwise they’d be afraid of us. We can change them once they trust us. We can worry about whether the humans want to be dominant to us then. If DavRian convinces them we’re dangerous, none of it will matter.”

  She waited until I ran out of breath. “Come with me, Kaala,” she said. “There’s something you need to see.” She nipped me lightly on the muzzle and turned to lope toward the distant hills.

  I followed. In spite of my concern over the Sentinels’ reaction to my submission to HesMi, I savored my mother’s closeness. I’d lost count of the number of times I’d dreamed of running beside her. I half closed my eyes and pretended that we were on our way to a hunt and that this was the first night of many when I would run at her side. But we were not on our way to a hunt, and I knew there would be trouble. I kept sneaking looks at her to find her watching me.

  “What’s Navdru going to do?” I finally asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said, slowing to a walk, “but there is something I want to show you before he finds us. You need to know that there is reason behind their rules. You’re not going to stop doing something just because someone tells you to,” she said. “You’re like your father that way.”

  “My father?” I asked quickly. I knew that Hiiln had been a reckless wolf. But she said no more about my father.

  “So I will show you what can happen when wolves are submissive to the humans. You’re not the first one to think of it, Kaala, of being with the humans. Far from it. It’s something we’ve tried many times. And every time it fails. And sometimes it fails in disastrous ways.”

  “Everyone says that but no one will say why,” I said.

  In answer, she began to run again. We loped through a birch forest and then through a wood of pine and spruce. When my paws were aching and my throat was dry from thirst, she stopped.

  “We’re here,” she said.

  We stood on a small hill overlooking a rocky plain. My mother settled on her haunches and I did the same. I could smell, just barely, unfamiliar wolf upwind. I hadn’t been able to until we were on the hill, and my mother had positioned us so that we were downwind of the wolves, which meant they wouldn’t be able to smell us. When entering another wolf’s territory, it’s good manners to let them scent you coming. That meant that Neesa must have had a reason for not announcing our presence.

  When she crawled forward on her belly, I followed as quietly as I could.

  The yips and barks of pups reached us across the plain, though it was too early in the season for there to be pups out of den. Then I saw them. The wolf pack was resting in the moonlight, and a few of them were playing a game of chase. My first thought was that it was a pack of youngwolves like me, but then I looked more closely. There was something odd about them. Their heads were rounded like newborn pups’, some had limp ears, and their muzzles were shorter than that of any wolf I’d ever seen. They looked like the little wolf who had been spying on us when we first reached Kaar.

  “Are they sick?” I asked.

  “In a way,” Neesa answered. “This is what happens when wolves are submissive to humans for too long. After many generations, they begin to look like this. After the lives of twenty wolves have passed, they change even more and look and behave always like pups. They forget the reason behind our involvement with humans.” She placed her head in her paws. “The Sentinels kill them if they find them with humans.”

  “Why?” I couldn’t see how these not-quite-wolves could be a threat. They seemed to be so joyful in their play. “Why would they kill wolves who aren’t after their territory?”

  “The little wolves want the humans for themselves. And they are not wolf. They are our death. If we allow such streckwolves to be with the humans, the Promise will be forgotten. The humans like such wolves because they don’t challenge their sense of power. They like them so much better than they do us, that they kill us and let only these streckwolves live. That is the end of wolfkind and the Promise.”

  “Streck” was what we called the most contemptible kinds of prey, the ones that wouldn’t even fight for life. A streck was weak and cowardly, and to call a wolf streck was an insult worthy of a fight.

  Neesa began walking again, back toward Kaar. The night was half over when she trotted up a low hill covered with scrub grass. She looked down the hill at what I thought at first was a huge hunting plain. Then I looked more carefully. What I saw was no hunting plain.

  Before us stretched a withered, broken landscape. It reminded me of Oldwoods, a burned-out hunting ground in the Wide Valley, but this place was so vast, I couldn’t see the end of it. There were some scraggly plants, but not enough of them for a meal for more than a few elk or horses. There was also almost no small prey—the mice and voles and squirrels that thrived even where large prey could not. There were remnants of human shelters, their mud walls crumbled to dirt but parts of their stone bases still standing. As far as I could see, there was starkness, a devastation like none I’d ever seen.

  “What happened here?” I whispered, afraid my voice would disturb the ghosts of the place.

  “The humans happened,” my mother answered, “and wolves who would not heed the Promise. These are the Barrens. They are the result of wolves becoming less than wolf.”

  Which
still explained nothing. I lowered my nose to sniff the earth, then ventured out into the dead place. The ground held the long-faded scent of humans and their fires. Overlaying it all was the scent of old death. I returned to the rise, where my mother awaited me.

  She spoke before I’d finished settling onto my haunches.

  “This is one of the places where, many years ago, we tried to get humans to remember that they are part of the world around them,” she said. “Wolves like you, who were drawn to humans, befriended the humans who lived here, and it seemed that the humans would accept them as pack. But then the humans began to drive away or kill any wolves who wouldn’t submit to them. They wanted a pack of curl-tails.”

  Most packs had at least one curl-tail, or submissive wolf, but a packful of them made no sense. There would be no leaders, no fighters.

  Neesa continued. “They kept only the most docile wolves, and then only the meekest of their pups. These wolves eventually became streckwolves. In changing wolves so, rather than welcoming the wildness of wolf as we intended, the humans took the wildness from the wolf.”

  From the very first time I saw the humans, I’d been told that when we were with them, we risked becoming less than wolf. No one would tell me why it was so important. “Why does it matter?” I asked.

  Neesa shifted on her haunches. “There are things that make us uniquely wolf,” she said. “Among them, our skill in the hunt, our sharp teeth and strong jaws, our loyalty to pack, and our willingness to fight when needed. Each creature has such qualities. The rock bears have their claws and their stubbornness; the aurochs, sharp horns and fierce dispositions. But, most important of all, each creature has the instinct to follow its own will. That’s what makes up the Balance: each creature is uniquely itself and yet part of everything around it. This is the wild. If the humans accept only wolves that are willing to forsake their will, then the humans are not becoming part of the natural world; they are changing the nature of the world. This makes them feel even more different. They see the world around them as one of their tools, something to be used up. And they create Barrens.”

  “That’s what happened here?”

  “It is,” Neesa confirmed. “The humans used their curl-tails to become the strongest village in the land. The village grew larger until the prey was gone and the land destroyed. They burned what was left so that no others could use it. They created the Barrens. Then they left it. The Sentinels ordered all streckwolves to leave the humans. A few agreed and were spared. The rest refused. The Sentinels killed them so that such a thing would never happen again.”

  “But it did,” I said, beginning to understand. The streckwolves, in being submissive, had given up their will and forsaken the wild. “In Kaar.”

  “It wasn’t allowed to happen,” she answered. “Streckwolves were never allowed near humans again. When the Sentinels tried again to change the humans, they sent ordinary wolves like us to Kaar, but they began to submit to the humans. They started to change like the wolves before them. Then they stood with humans against wolves in a battle over prey. Yildra and Navdru demanded that they be destroyed by any wolf who found them.” Her voice shook. “Hiiln protected some of them. He said they were needed. So the Sentinels killed him, too.” She was silent for a moment. I’d known two wolves who had lost their mates. I still didn’t know what to say to her. I wanted so much to ask if Hiiln was my father, but Neesa looked too sad. I couldn’t do it. She shook herself. “With Hiiln’s help, some of the tainted wolves from Kaar escaped. They found a pack of streckwolves who had been hiding nearby, breeding among themselves from the time of the Barrens. The wolves you saw are their descendants. They are closer to real wolves than those in the Barrens, but are strecks nonetheless. That is why you must not be submissive to the humans, Kaala. Because the Promise would fail. And because you would die for it.”

  “Why don’t the Sentinels kill all of the streckwolves?” I asked. They were ruthless enough to be willing to kill my whole pack. “The ones you showed me could still go back to the humans.”

  “It would go against the Balance to do so. Even Greatwolves will not kill off an entire group of creatures just because they might be a threat. As ruthless as they are, they are not so mad as that. But any streckwolves who go near humans are killed.”

  “I can handle the humans,” I began, but Neesa was no longer paying attention. She stood and whirled to look back down the hill.

  “Run, Kaala! Get out of here. Now!”

  I saw them then, four Greatwolves running across the plain with the determined lope of wolves on a hunt. Two ravens soared and dipped above. Tlitoo and Jlela reached us as we turned to dart down the hill.

  “The Grumpwolf told them you are the humans’ curl-tails,” Tlitoo quorked. “She told them you were the humans’ curl-tails in the Wide Valley, too. I do not know why she says this now and not before.”

  “They would not have believed it before,” Jlela rasped. She caught an updraft and hovered ahead of us. “Now that it has happened here, they do. They say you are a streckwolf and a menace.”

  I didn’t have the breath to answer. I lowered my head and ran. Neesa stayed by my side. The Greatwolves gained ground, running with a grim, relentless gait. I saw a line of trees in front of me. Greatwolves were faster than ordinary wolves, but not as agile. If I could make it to the trees, I might have a chance. Tlitoo and Jlela soared back to the approaching Greatwolves and flew in their faces, but the Greatwolves snapped at them and kept running.

  We were less than ten wolflengths from the trees when they caught up with us. Milsindra leapt and knocked me over. I tumbled over my paws, yelping in pain as rocks dug into my flesh. I rolled three times and came to a stop. She had hit me so hard I couldn’t get any breath in my lungs. Neesa, who had run on ahead, pelted back to me.

  Navdru and Yildra were there. The fourth wolf was Kivdru, Milsindra’s mate. I hadn’t known he’d left the Wide Valley with her.

  “Stand away from her,” Navdru said to Neesa. “She allowed wolves to become the humans’ curl-tails. That is not permitted. We will decide later, Neesa, if we’ll spare you.”

  “You don’t have to decide,” Neesa said. “If you kill her, you kill me, too.”

  “That would be for the best,” Kivdru growled, “since you’re the cause of all this. Kill both of them.”

  “Or try,” a voice warbled. More ravens than I could count had gathered above us, hovering in the updraft. I didn’t know which one had spoken. I had never seen so many ravens awake at night. Yildra and Navdru looked at them uneasily.

  “The ravens can’t guard them forever,” Milsindra snapped.

  “But we can always find Grumpwolves,” Tlitoo croaked.

  My mother sat calmly in front of me. Her breathing had slowed and she looked as confident as if she were merely hunting mice.

  “Would you kill the wolf who travels with the Nejakilakin?” she asked.

  I gaped at her. I had no idea she knew Tlitoo’s other name. I’d told no one. Not even Ázzuen. Navdru reacted as if someone had set fire to his tail. He darted forward and snapped his teeth at Neesa. “There is no Nejakilakin. It is a story.”

  “Just because you do not know things does not mean they do not exist,” Tlitoo warbled.

  “How the Ancients laughed

  Making wolves with larger heads

  And yet smaller brains.”

  A rain of twigs dropped down around the Greatwolves. I couldn’t help but laugh at Navdru’s befuddled expression as he looked up at the ravens. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. My life was in danger and there was nothing I could do about it, and I couldn’t stop a hoarse laugh from choking out of me. Navdru snarled and hurled himself at me, pinning me under huge paws.

  “You claim to be the Nejakilakin to mock us?” He lowered his open jaws to my throat. All I saw was teeth.

  “Show them, Kaala.” My mother’s voice was desperate now and seemed to come from far away.

  I couldn’t do anything but look up
at Navdru. The next thing I saw was feathers as Tlitoo landed on my belly, squeezing between me and the Greatwolf. He shoved his head up against Navdru’s chest.

  I welcomed the familiar falling sensation. All scent and sound faded. I had been in a Greatwolf mind once before. Like the humans, they saw the world differently than we did and I had to fight against the dizziness and nausea that threatened to overcome me as I sank into the strange mind of the Greatwolf.

  Navdru was the largest pup in the litter and so he was the one who was to lead the Sentinel pack. But he would never be allowed to do so if he couldn’t hunt. And he could not, for he feared prey. He was terrified of their hooves and horns and the way they looked at him with contempt. He was almost a year old and had not made a kill on his own. If any other wolves knew, they would not only force him from the pack, they would kill him. The Greatwolves did not abide the weak. If he could not catch something now, he would not return to his pack. He would leave and live or die as he could.

  He had watched his packmates hunt and had watched the longfangs hunt and even watched the smallwolves. But it made no sense to him. How could they not be afraid?

  He circled the herd of horses. They, at least, did not have sharp, curved horns to gore him. But they stampeded and they stomped.

  He retreated. Ravens descended on the plain, poking his rump and pulling his ears, driving him back to the horses. Every time he backed away from the herd, one of them would smack him with its wings or peck at his eyes until he was back among the prey.

  An old raven with raggedy feathers landed on his back.

  “I will tell you something, wolf,” he said. “All are afraid. It is not fear that is bad, but giving in to it. We will help you with the first one, then you are on your own.”

  “Why?” Navdru was suspicious. “Why would you help me?”

  “Because we will have need of you when you are grown. If we help you, do you promise to do your part for us when we request it?”