Overwinter

by David Wellington

  Then silver light flashed between them, an instant that stretched out to eternity. The pleasure of his hands on her body melted away in the overwhelming glory of the metamorphosis. The gray wolf howled in pure joy. The male grasped her with his paws as she squirmed around, pulled her back toward him.

  This time, they did not stop.

  38.

  It was a rare thing when the wolves went to sleep and woke still in their own bodies. They relished the morning light and rolled about in the snow, stretching their legs out as long as they would go, yawning great yawns so their pink tongues flapped in the air. The gray female got up to relieve herself. Marking territory was important, now—now that she was part of a mated pair.

  Her body throbbed with the soreness of the night’s exertions and she picked her way carefully out of the copse of stunted trees where they had sheltered for the night. Her pads barely broke the crust of the snow as she started on a looping trail, lifting her leg every few meters to put her scent on the land. Later on, she knew, her mate, the alpha male, would follow her path, finding each of her deposits and double-marking them. In this way he would advertise to the world that she was his.

  Halfway along her route, however, she stopped and sat down on the snow. There was something wrong with the sky.

  Normally wolves have no interest in meteorology. The weather is not something they can control, nor do they have the human time sense that allows them to remember past conditions and extrapolate predictions of weather to come. There are some instincts, however, bred so deeply into the wolf brain, that they can break through even the immediacy of hunger and the constancy of the hunt.

  Overhead, to the east, the west, the south, the sky was blue, a fierce unclouded blue that went on in all directions forever. Except to the north. The sky there was black.

  The wolf turned her head to one side. Whimpered a bit. This wasn’t good.

  The blue shaded almost imperceptibly down into solid night up there. The wind coming from that direction was not particularly strong, though it did smell a certain way that bothered her. It smelled like snow. Not the powdery, soft snow that covered the world around her. It smelled like particles of flying ice.

  She yelped a little, without really knowing why.

  The male and the white female came and joined her presently. They both took a look at the wall of darkness approaching from the north, and they both looked concerned. But none of them seemed to know why it scared them so much.

  By noon a curving arm of cloud had emerged from the darkness. It stretched over their heads as if it were gathering in the air, the way a human in bed gathers the covers on a cold winter night, bunching them around her body. The smell of icy snow had grown sharper and the wind had picked up.

  The wolves spent most of the day hunting for lemmings under the snow. They took no real precautions, though they kept eyeing the salient features of the landscape, looking for those that might provide some shelter if this wind really picked up. Their bones told them something was coming. That was enough. Their bones would get them through it. Wolves had been relying on those instincts for millions of years, and they rarely failed except in the most extreme of circumstances.

  By late afternoon the black sky had gained shape and definition. It was a whole system of clouds, spiral in shape, that was bearing down on them at a steady clip. In the middle of the spiral the air seemed—disturbed, somehow. There were occasional flashes of lightning inside the cloud.

  The wolves were well fed by that point. It was definitely time, their ancestral memories told them, to start looking for a place to ride this out. In a very abstract way they knew that this was a storm coming, and that it was going to be a big one. They started nosing around the trees, poking their paws between clefts in the rocks, looking for caves. There were none to be found, however. The hills were of glacial origin, not volcanic, so they were very smooth and had few cracks or crevices in them. Those that did exist had long since been filled in by permafrost too hard to dig through.

  The females looked to the male, who just watched the storm coming. They needed a plan, but he didn’t seem to have one. The gray wolf started to really worry.

  Her head sank between her shoulders and her ears went back. She grumbled, a kind of half-growl, half-barking sound that was quiet enough the male could pretend he didn’t hear it. It was not the kind of sound a confident, well-fed wolf would normally make. The white responded by standing closer to the male, which sent the signal that she believed in his leadership and would follow him anywhere.

  There was nothing in the storehouse of instinctual knowledge, though, that the male could drag up. No perfect plan for what to do next. They could try to hide in the trees, but any serious wind would cut right through the naked branches. They could try to dig down into the snow and curl up there, melting out dens for themselves with their own body heat. There was a risk, however, that if the storm dumped more snow on top of their snow dens, they would be buried under deep drifts and not be able to breathe.

  The one other option was to run south, to flee the weather. The male seemed to resist this idea, though by the look on his face even he couldn’t have said why. Anyway, by the time it was upon them, it was far too late to outrun the storm. It moved much faster than any wolf that ever lived, supernatural strength or no.

  It hit them like a freight train, and they were not ready.

  39.

  It happened more quickly than any of the wolves could have imagined. Even the male, who had lived in this part of the world for decades, had never been this far north. Not in wintertime. He was unprepared for what the land above the Arctic Circle could do.

  Everything seemed hushed and waiting. There were a few lazy snowflakes, drifting in the air. The snow danced on tiny air currents, the frayed hem of the wind, as if gravity itself was holding its breath.

  Then they heard a howling noise, like a beast in torment. A beast the size of a country. In an instant the squall was upon them. The wind slammed through the scrub forest, tearing branches from the trees, kicking up ground snow in enormous prismatic sprays. The squall brought with it a million tons of ice, ground up small and thrown at the wolves with the force of a sandblaster. It was all they could do to keep from being picked up by the wind and thrown about like the storm’s playthings. They were forced to dig their feet into the snow and the frozen earth beneath, their heads blown sideways, their eyes smashed shut to keep the stinging crystals out. The gray wolf tried to howl, but the sound was torn out of her, ripped away and thrown high up into the air.

  The constant beat of the ice crystals on her nose, on her eyes, on the sensitive pink flesh inside her ears was torture. The screaming of the wind deafened her. The gray wolf tried time and again to get her head around, to keep it from being tossed and blown back by the storm. Somehow she managed to face forward. To open her eyes, just a crack, so she could see what was ahead of her.

  Through squinting eyelids she could just see the male ahead of her, tail held straight back by the wind. His fur was slicked back by the wind and he kept trying to raise one foot, only to have to put it down again to regain his balance.

  He growled with effort. She felt the vibrations of his voice through the soil, rather than hearing it. Somehow he got one foot to move a few centimeters forward before he had to slam it back down. She saw the muscles of his hind legs bunching, getting ready to push him forward another step.

  Behind her the white wolf curled into what little lee the gray’s body made in the wind. The gray wanted to turn and snap at the white for being so close, but she didn’t dare turn broadside to the wind. It would knock her over and send her rolling halfway down to America. She tried to shuffle her forepaws forward, tried to inch them ahead of her into the wind. It was like trying to press her body through a brick wall.

  She was stronger than a normal wolf. She was stronger than any living thing on earth. She would take this step. When it was done she would take another. She would follow the male, her alpha, where
ver he chose to go. She would follow.

  She managed to get her forepaws a centimeter farther. She sank lower to the ground, spreading her legs a little for balance. She couldn’t seem to catch a breath before the wind tore it away. It didn’t matter. Another step, another centimeter—there. She braced her hind legs, as she’d seen the male do. Shoved forward with the thickest, strongest muscles in her body. The wind tried to push her down. Tried to shove her face into the snow. She refused to allow that. Lifting her muzzle was agony, but she got her nose up into the wind, like the prow of a ship steering into a massive ocean current. It wasn’t easy. Nothing was easy.

  She was panting from exertion. Her muscles cramped and begged her to stop.

  She refused to listen to them.

  Another step. Another centimeter.

  Ahead of them, perhaps a hundred meters, she could just make out a place where the ground fell away between two rounded hills. The site offered no sharp cliffs to shelter underneath, but if they could just get into the softly sloped hollow, if they could get into some kind of windbreak, any kind at all—she understood that this was what the male wanted. Where he was leading her. Knowing they had a plan helped. It gave her new strength. She took another step.

  Another centimeter.

  Behind her the white wolf scurried forward, drafting along with her, stealing forward momentum from the gray’s strength. The gray barked in annoyance but kept moving forward. Every time she tried to lift a foot the wind grabbed it and tried to tear it off her body. It did not matter. She would beat this wind. She would hold out against it. Ahead of her the male took another step. Faltered, his chin grazing the snow, his forelegs sprawling sideways. His body shook with the effort as he pushed himself upward again, pushed himself into the wind.

  She would do the same. He was her alpha. She would follow him.

  Another step.

  Another centimeter.

  40.

  When they reached the hollow between two hills, the gray wolf wanted nothing more than to lie down in the snow and sleep until the storm went away. It wasn’t an option. The snow down there was up to her chest and constantly getting deeper.

  It was coming down so hard that she couldn’t see anything but white. The male was a shadow in the glare, the sky a shade of white that deepened to almost perfect darkness overhead. The white female was lost altogether in the whiteout. Only her lolling pink tongue and her panting breath gave her away.

  Snow crusted on the gray’s muzzle and got between her toes, where it burned. She had evolved to live in this environment, perhaps, but this was the Arctic at its most harsh and nothing could survive its wrath for long without shelter.

  At least they could move here. Not easily. Each foot had to be lifted clear of the snow, dragged forward, and then stabbed downward through what felt like shaved ice. But it was better than when they’d been out in the fiercest current of the wind.

  The male refused to let them stop. He kept them trooping forward, deeper into the storm. He was heading north, still, regardless of conditions. The gray followed him because he was her alpha, but she didn’t have to like it. She grumbled and growled and snapped at the snow around her face when it drifted up around her. Eventually the male got tired of her vocalizations and turned to snap at her. After that she was silent, complaining only with her eyes.

  They followed a more sinuous course now, winding their way through the hills, staying out of the wind. Moving at least kept them warm—the work of just forcing their muscles to obey them was enough to generate plenty of body heat.

  It got harder as they progressed, however. The snow kept piling up until it was at the height of their chins. The gray wolf found she had to lift her nose to the wind just so she could breathe. It became all she could do to keep pulling her legs out of the snowdrifts with every step. Did the male expect them to burrow through the snow once it was over their heads?

  Apparently he did. She could understand, in an abstract way. There was nowhere here for them to rest, nowhere they could stop and wait this out. Their only chance was to keep moving and find such a place. A cave, an abandoned bear den, a place where the rocks formed an overhang they could shelter underneath. Anything.

  Night came and found them still struggling along. The darkness was total. If the gray had thought whiteout conditions were difficult, she quickly found the pitch blackness inside a snowstorm at night was worse. She did not know where she found the strength to keep moving. Eventually she decided she did not have any strength left. She kept moving anyway, because there was no choice.

  The snow piled up around her face. She held her neck up as far as it would go so she could still breathe.

  It piled up over her nose. She burrowed forward through it, shoving her chest against the drifts like a plow. Her breath was close around her face, and she felt like she was swimming in snow. She felt like her feet weren’t touching the ground anymore.

  She felt like the whole universe had been filled up with fluffy white snow. That she was falling through it, falling forever, with no earth left to catch her, no sky to be above her. She tried to flail her legs, to find something to catch onto. There was nothing there.

  And then … she couldn’t move her legs.

  The weight of the snow above her was pressing down on her so hard it prevented her from moving. She couldn’t get the leverage to move her feet. Not even enough to turn her head from side to side. She could just barely open her mouth—which instantly filled with snow.

  She couldn’t breathe. Werewolves can’t asphyxiate, not like that.

  But the gray wolf didn’t know that.

  She panicked. Tried to scream. Snow packed her throat and she couldn’t even scream. She couldn’t see anything, couldn’t smell, couldn’t taste—felt only snow around her, only freezing cold—her brain bashed at the confines of her skull, desperate to escape. She was buried alive, she was buried, she was, she was buried and couldn’t, she was buried, buried alive and couldn’t escape, she couldn’t, couldn’t—

  Fangs buried themselves deep in the fur of her neck. She tried to twist around, to fight. The white wolf must have taken this opportunity to kill her, she thought. The white wanted to seize dominance, to take her mate away from her! She fought and scratched and clawed, but her body refused to obey her commands. She had to fight back—had to—had to—

  The jaws dragged her upward, to the side. The power behind them was enormous, its strength seemingly limitless. Her body was pulled along by the loose folds of skin at her neck, pulled out of the snow until freezing air screamed all around her. She howled and whined and snapped but the teeth in her neck wouldn’t let go. They hauled her backward, hauled her around. A wolf’s head butted her stomach and made her spit up snow she’d aspirated into her lungs. Another push and she was up on her feet, standing on a spur of rock that had been cleared of snow by the wind.

  It was the male. Her mate, her alpha, had come to rescue her. She tried to lick his face, tried to thank him, but he was in too great a hurry. Leading her by shoving against her side and goosing her backside with his nose, he made her run forward, her feet sliding on the frozen rock, sinking through the snow around it. He shoved her forward another few feet and then saw her collapse in the comparative shelter of a fallen tree. Beneath its great mass the air was almost still. The snow that spilled over the top of it came down softly and with an almost pleasant pattering sound.

  The white was already there, curled around a broken branch, fast asleep.

  It didn’t take the gray long to join her.

  41.

  The storm lasted for three days. The wolves had to move constantly to avoid being buried under all the snow. Shelter became harder and harder to find, and each time they moved to a new location they had to push harder against the wind. They couldn’t tell the solid ground beneath them from the treacherous snowpack. When the gray female slid, flailing, into a ten-foot drift, the male grabbed her by the neck and pulled her out. Later, when the male fell, he managed
to struggle his way out before the gray could come to his rescue. When she tried to lick his face afterward and show him her concern, he growled at her and trotted forward to the front of the pack again.

  On the morning of the third day the sun managed to punch through the spiraling clouds, and they were blinded by snow glare, but the gray knew it had to mean they were reaching the edge of the storm and she was glad for it. By driving them northward, through the storm, the male had actually taken the shortest possible course out of the snow and wind—had he run south, as she had wanted him to when it began, the storm would have followed them as far as they could run. By the afternoon of that day, when the wind had died down to a roar in her ears and the snow had stopped falling, she was so happy to be able to stand upright again (instead of leaning constantly into the wind) that she raced forward, nipping at his heels. The white brought up the rear and barked so they wouldn’t forget her and leave her behind.

  The clouds broke, dissolving into long curving streamers of shadow that could no longer blot out the sun. Eventually even the sky grew clear and they found themselves atop a rocky outcropping blown almost clean of snow, looking out on an ocean of white.

  The drifts were as high as the tops of the hills. All the trees and bushes that had dotted this land before, all the winding creeks and streams, were completely buried. There was nothing to see from horizon to horizon but snow—and each other.

  The male let them rest, for a while. They lacked the energy to do more than drop to the ground and pant, stretching their legs out in the air every once in a while. They soaked up what little warmth the sun offered and simply breathed, simply let their bodies uncurl and let the ice around their eyes and muzzles melt in their body heat. Long before the gray was ready, the male signaled it was time to move on again. The females followed, because that was what packs did. They followed their alphas.