by Maria Vale
“Start again,” Gran Tito says to a female, who judging by the awkwardness of her stance, is probably in the Year of First Shoes. “You can do it,” he says with an encouraging smile.
Finally, the high-pitched slurry voice pups have until they get used to the shallow mouths and thick tongues of this form rises above the chopping walnuts.
“‘As the creeper that gird the tree trunk, the law runneth forward and back…’” She watches me ransack the cupboards with a nervous expression.
“‘As the creeper that gird the tree trunk, the law runneth forward and back…’” she starts again, and again her voice dies out.
“Where are the cheese chews?” I ask.
“Top corner pantry,” says Gran Tito. “Now keep going, Rainy.”
I find the raisins in the top corner pantry as well. The kitchen is still new to me, but this is obviously where they put things they want to keep away from little hands and littler paws.
I take a cheese chew and start gnawing on one end. Even in skin, I like them, though they have the consistency of snow tires. The young female looks at her fellow juveniles, an empty look on her face.
“Rainy, focus,” Gran Tito says again. “‘The law runneth forward and back…’”
I remember learning this bit under a different elder, in the old kitchen.
Absently, Rainy rolls the sticky bits of date into a ball under her palm and then pops it into her mouth.
It is making me angry, this lack of attention. She is no longer a pup. She has responsibilities now and must learn to take them seriously.
“Rainy,” I snap. “What comes next?”
Her eyes flicker to her echelon, but the entire table has fallen silent. There is no chopping. The juveniles stare at the table while Gran Tito looks at the dish towel in his hands.
“They are not going to help you. This is your responsibility.”
“The law runneth forward and back,’” she finally repeats. “‘For the strength of the Pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the Pack.’”
“Keep going.”
“But it’s not my turn,” she whines. “We’re each supposed to take one—”
“I don’t care what you are supposed to do. It doesn’t make any sense unless you learn the whole thing. You can skip the part about elephants.”
One of her echelon starts mouthing something to her, but his jaw clamps tight when I look at him.
She becomes misty-eyed and lifts her chin up and to the side, displaying her cheek. It’s what pups do when they are feeling insecure and need reassurance.
I do not mark her. Instead, I grab the chair and twirl her around, my eyes boring into hers.
“We are wolves. We do not have the luxury of being frail and delicate. Now look at me and do it!”
Then I growl low and rough, the way dominants do when they are running out of patience and are about to attack.
That gets her attention.
As we stare at each other, her breathing comes steadier and faster, and she pushes my hand away and starts again, this time hissing through gritted teeth.
“‘As the creeper that gird the tree trunk, the law runneth forward and back;
For the strength of the Pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the Pack.
When Pack meets with Pack in the forest, and neither will go from the trail,
Lie down till the leaders have spoken; it may be fair words shall prevail.
When ye fight with a wolf of the Pack, ye must fight him alone and afar
Lest others take part in the quarrel and the Pack is diminished by war.’”
I interrupt her before she gets lost in the dietary restrictions, because this was the important part. “Remember: you are nothing without your Pack. But the Pack is nothing without the law. Without order, we all die.”
Gran Tito rocks an imaginary knife back and forth in the air to get his charges going again, then disappears into the pantry.
“Alpha?” he says. “There are still plenty of my soy chips.” I shove the two large boxes into my bag.
They wait only until the door has closed before the complaining starts. This little female does not understand the mind-numbing, foot-freezing cold of fear. Or that anger is the only thing hot enough to burn through.
With any luck, I have given her an ember for when the fear comes, as it always does.
* * *
My body never feels entirely comfortable in skin. Everything seems far away, as if my eyes, ears, nose, and skin are coated with a thick cotton baffle.
But my mind is never entirely comfortable wild. Wild, I always look over my shoulder, half expecting to find some westend looking at me down the barrel of a gun.
When I get back to the cave, the water bottles are untouched. The sleeping bag hasn’t moved either. He’s either asleep or unconscious. I unzip the bag, slowly. He’s not shaking like before, and instead of being curled up tight, he is stretched out, lean and rangy. Tall, muscled chest, lean hips, long legs. Strong, but not in Lorcan’s broad and bullish way; more like a mountain lion, lithe and sinewy. It is a body built not for banging on the ground like a hammer but for slicing through the air like a knife. Dark hair starts in the hollow below his navel. Even soft, his cock lies thick against his hip.
I look at his leg.
Our bodies heal rapidly, so the fact that he hasn’t is testament to how weak he has become. I think his fever has gone down. Slightly. The skin is knitting together, and the mountain range of infection has lessened. Slightly. More than anything, he needs water.
“Hey.”
When he doesn’t respond, I shake him.
“Hey, you.”
His long, solid body is heavy, but I am strong and I lift him up, letting his head droop back against my shoulder. I feel his sinew, so hard and lean against my thighs. The fluid lines of his shoulders against my arms. The sharp wing of his shoulder blade against my damaged chest.
Holding my thumb across the mouth of the bottle, I drizzle water into his mouth, one half sip at a time.
This is a terrible intimacy, sitting here with a dying wolf between my legs, the heat of his body searing mine, his head lolling against my chest, his pale hair against my cheek, as water runs from the corner of his mouth, along his jaw, behind his ear, and onto my neck, finally dribbling onto my breast.
It takes a long time before he swallows. It is reflex, nothing more, but drip by painstaking drip, he drinks. I hold him there, even when he stops. Let him lean against me, unconscious and unknowing. Let the smell of cold surround me.
I hold him there long after the sun moves overhead and its rays retreat along the rock-strewn floor. I do not hold him when the ground starts to tremble. Then I arrange him back on top of the sleeping bag and tent my fingertips to the packed ground. The dull throb is too regular and too ceaseless to be the earth’s natural stirring. It’s followed by a distant pounding, a whisper that compresses the air in waves, even here in the tight space of this cave.
I grab a bottle of water and slip outside, though not before I touch the backs of my hands, convulsively checking my long, naked fingers and pale-gold skin to be sure that I at least look human.
One helicopter is a mistake. Two are not. The Great North distributes bribes and threats freely to make sure Homelands isn’t on any flight path, so where are these helicopters coming from? If it was from the airport in Malone, it would be traveling farther east, but this one is coming from the north.
Creeping along the ledge, I grab hold of one of the pines bent close to the ground, then scramble up to the bald peak of Westdæl for a clear view.
The northwest corner of Homelands is cradled by mountains. Not the highest in the Adirondacks, but high enough. Defining much of our northern border is a ridge divided up into parts by shallow ravines. At some point that range was named Norþdæl
, the North Part, but mostly they are called the High Pines after their most important feature, the dense, chaotic region of evergreens that flows across them. If something makes the Pack nervous, the High Pines is where they hide.
At the northwest corner, the westernmost slope of the High Pines meets the northernmost slope of the imaginatively named Westdæl, the West Part. Between the two is the Gin—the Old Tongue word for gap—though it isn’t really, because over the years it has been filled in by downslides, stone fractured by the cycle of freeze and thaw. A few stringy plants cling to the Gin, but trees that try to put down roots on its loose and windblown ridge usually don’t last long, so the Gin is mostly bare.
And that’s where the helicopter rises.
Thuppathuppathuppathuppathuppa.
Chapter 7
Looking over Homelands, I see wolves move through the hardwoods that are still bare and provide nowhere near enough cover. They haven’t dealt with men in planes, so they are running by instinct for the High Pines or other evergreen cover, instead of doing what they should: find any tree trunk, wrap themselves around the base, and be still.
Every shadowy movement through the underbrush, every hint of silver or gray against the damp, dark forest floor, every sliver of dark fur against gray stone or retreating snow or beige reeds makes my heart beat against my ears in rhythm with the helicopter blades.
I sit down, because if my legs fail, it’s better that I look like a westend hiker out of breath. I don’t want them landing to help me.
The pilot sees me and comes closer, nearly level with where I sit. The bottle drops from my shaking fingers.
Wolves are not by nature religious. We believe in the sanctity of the land and the Pack and our sacred selves. But that didn’t mean Yefim, Vrangelya’s last Deemer, was above teaching us a prayer. Just to give us the illusion of control when there wasn’t any. The whole thing, if we had time, was Alys us fram westendum and fram eallum hiera cræftum.
Save us from humans and all their works.
It got shorter when there were more humans and their works were deadlier. Alys us fram westendum. Or simply. Alys us.
Alys us fram westendum and fram eallum hiera cræftum. I pick the bottle up again, holding it so tightly that it cracks and the water drains down my jeans. Alys us fram westendum. The life of the forests goes silent and contracts, small and hidden, as the helicopter flies low overhead. Alys us.
It is so close that I can see the doors have been removed. A brindle wolf cuts across the Clearing toward the hardwoods to the north.
Thuppathuppathuppathuppathuppa.
A man in a dark-green jacket, jeans, and an oddly fluorescent-pink aviation headset sits harnessed into the back seat looking east, until the pilot, seeing me wave, turns his head toward his passenger and points. The harnessed man looks at me. I touch my smooth skin to remind myself once more that I am human. If they shoot the brindle wolf, it’s sport. If they shoot me, it’s murder.
The man has something in his hands. I am human. I am human. I am human. He won’t shoot me. It is a camera. The brindle wolf gets low behind the olive cover of a leather leaf.
I lift the nearly empty bottle to my quivering lips.
Thuppathuppathuppathuppathuppa.
The man waves, his mouth opening and closing. Willing my hand to act, I wave back, then point to my ear with a shrug.
The helicopter keeps moving out over our woods and over the Clearing and over the Great Hall. I watch as it continues over Home Pond and the land that lies between Home Pond and the westend lands to the south.
When I am sure that the helicopter is gone, I drop the water bottle and bend over, vomiting up water and air. Then I clap both hands over my mouth and take in a deep breath, reminding myself that I am no longer some quivering pup, so terrified by small planes that the shadow of a passing snow goose makes me weak with terror.
I am Varya the Indurate, the Alpha Shielder of the 12th Echelon of the Great North Pack. What a laugh.
The Great North remains still and quiet. Evie doesn’t call the all clear until she is sure that the malignant beat of the blades is not returning north. Once she does, the shadows begin slipping through the leafless hardwoods toward Home Pond. If I had to guess, I’d say that few Pack will be wild tonight, preferring to disguise themselves with skin and words and thumbs and upright posture.
Scrabbling down the side of the ledge, I bend back into the mouth of the cave. The sound of the helicopter did what slicing a knife through the wanderer’s abscessed leg could not. It got him up. Somehow, he dragged himself to the front, where he sits folded up and shivering in a corner at the cave’s mouth. That’s what someone does who knows what it is to be trapped in the back. Who knows it is better to stay in the darkness near the front so that as soon as any intruder passes, you can race for freedom.
Which is what he does. Not race, stumbles. Delirious, starving, bloodless, injured, he keeps going. His leg has reduced him to grabbing onto whatever support comes to hand—mostly the crooked trees that give the Krummholz its name. Here, the trunks are bent low to the earth by the brutal, untamed north winds until they hardly resemble their tall, noble cousins of the more protected lands below; they are the survivors of a harder life.
He collapses, clinging to a bent spruce, the pale hair streaming like an icefall between his broad shoulders.
This is what the Pack needs. No more half Shifters or humans, but a wolf who is not only strong of body, but strong of marrow. A wolf who has the power and will to survive.
He moves faster, but then inevitably topples and steps hard on his injured leg. I leap forward, shoving my foot into the loose earth so I can catch him before he falls. He hops to a standstill against me, his breath hard and ragged. He turns to face me.
Ah.
Now I know.
Now I know why he is alone. Why he has always been alone.
And why he will be alone forever.
I guess I’d only seen one eye before—the pale, ice-blue one. Never the other. Never the one that is the bright, variegated green of the forest canopy.
Dragging him back to the safety of the cave, I settle him onto the open sleeping bag.
Once more, I put a few bottles of water in easy reach. I don’t try to talk to him. I’ve had enough talking to doomed wolves to last a lifetime.
He circles around until he curls up in a ball on the sleeping bag, his head turned slightly, like a wolf without a tail, and falls back into his fevered sleep.
I fold the sleeping bag over again and sit for a little while, my chin on my knees, until it’s time for me to leave yet another white wolf I am helpless to save.
Chapter 8
Putting the scythe stone back in my pocket, I set the blade parallel to the ground, my feet shoulder width apart, and, with long, smooth strokes, continue cutting.
Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh. Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh. Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh.
Yefim, Vrangelya’s Deemer, had given up on teaching the pups anything as sophisticated as law, keeping us entertained with old, invariably grim stories instead.
Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh. Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh. Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh.
“Eormenburh,” said Yefim, “was from the Ironwood, the forest that bred and nurtured all wolves.”
Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh. Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh. Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh.
“She was the Alpha of the first Pack and, as her name suggests, the great defender of the wood. She was powerful and fierce and a brilliant fighter, and the Ironwood was called the Ironwood because no westend could break into it. No ax could fell it; no fire could burn it down for fields. It was iron dark and iron strong.”
Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh. Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh. Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh.
“And all was well for the wolves of Ironwood, until the first Alpha burned with need for Loki, the first Shifter.”
Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh. R
uuucccckkkk, Shhhhh. Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh.
Over the years, Yefim went on, Eormenburh bore three children. Fenrir, a wolf, took after his mother and was the wildest of the wild. Jormundgard, a snake, took after his Shifter father and was the strongest of the strong.
Then came little Hela, who took after both parents and was split down the middle: half wolf, wild and divine; half skin, smooth and profane.
Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh. Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh. Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh.
Though the Ironwood was obscured even from Odin, those busybodies Huginn and Muninn had noticed Loki sneaking in and out on more than one occasion and told the big fart.
That’s what Yefim called him because wolves owe no debt of respect to the gods of men.
Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh. Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh. Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh.
Odin came with his Aesir and did what hunters of wolves always do. He found Eormenburh’s denning young and tortured them until they howled. When the Pack came running, desperate and heartbroken (“slavering,” the westends say), the Aesir killed them all.
Except one.
Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh. Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh. Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh.
Even after Eormenburh’s death, the gods were frightened of Eormenburh and could not bring themselves to say her name. Instead, they called her Angrboda, the Bearer of Sorrows, the “sorrows” being her children, who because they carried a god’s blood could not be killed. But they were dangerous enemies who hated the killers of their mother and their Pack, so the gods imprisoned them. Fenrir was tied by magic chains, Jormundgard was bound under the vast oceans, and little Hela was caged so deep in the ground that her jail shared the same bit of real estate as the dead.
Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh. Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh. Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh.
The single survivor of Eormenburh’s Pack wandered the earth looking for his Alpha’s young until he finally found Hela’s scent. He followed her into the abyss that bears her name, and loyal to the end, he guards her there.
Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh. Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh. Ruuucccckkkk, Shhhhh.
