Twilight of the Wolves

by Edward J. Rathke

  The suns shown bright and the butterflies filled the air of the clearing. Thousands of them of all colors and shades and hues, a floating rainbow of transient formations. The girl rolled from Hreao’s jaws and swam for the shore, running in circles around the pool, trailing her hands through the clouds of living color. Faoi ran after and nudged her into the water, laughing. She splashed, kicking, arms flailing, Faoi Faoi Faoi! she howled and wrapped her arms round Sao’s shoulders, then pushed down, submerging his head.

  Drying in the sun, splayed in the grass, a ladybug landed on her palm. Holding her breath and moving slow, she brought it close to her brownred skin. Her mouth open and her eyes squinting from the bright sunslight, an expression of wonder and excitement, her body pumping and beating but she controlled the urge and only watched. It crawled to the edge of her palm and she twisted her hand to give it more space to walk until it wandered over the back of her hand, its shell reflecting and bouncing a glare into her eyes. She pushed herself to her feet, slow, and tiptoed to Hreao, who lay on his back, and brought it close to his amber eyes, which were the size of her fist.

  Look, Hreao.

  His eye large and wide, he stared at the girl smiling.

  She looked at Sao, I think he likes it.

  He loves it, Sao took a bite of an apple.

  Hreao laughed, Even the smallest of creatures! What are the old gods for but to love the forgotten!

  She blew on it but it stayed and her smile widened, Sao, it wants to stay!

  And then it flew away and she rolled onto her back laughing, kicking her legs into the air.

  The suns fell in opposite directions and out of sync, the fragmented moon filling all the sky above the clearing.

  Why is the moon like that?

  Faoi, lying in the grass, pawed at the ground in front of here, Come, child. I will tell you a story.

  The girl scampered over and sat crosslegged before her clutching the elkskin to her naked body. Turning to Sao, she waved him over, Faoi’s going to tell a story, whispered.

  Long ago before humans walked and before the forest breathed, the world was empty and lonely. The moon hung above with its six sisters and it was whole and complete. Within the great moon slept the wolves who had been sleeping for a thousand thousand years. The moons spoke and they pitied the lonely world with its vast water and empty lands, so the largest moon split from itself to join the world and become its friend. It took with her the wolves. The moon hugged the planet and the wolves woke from their long slumber and they ran over the world, flowers growing in their footsteps. The wolves coupled and made more wolves and the wolves spread over the entire world. From the wolves came all other animals and plants. Do you know what it means to be whole? Good. Wolves are not born whole. Neither are humans. It is why they must come together to live. No wolf, just as no human, can survive alone. Wolves are the collection of all other wolves. Who one is depends on all the wolves she has met. And so in this way wolves become whole, but they are never fully whole until they meet their other half. For each wolf, there is another half. The wolf that completes me is Hreao and I complete him. We are one wolf in two skins. His heart is my heart and mine is his. We are the voice in the other’s head. We are the blood in the other’s veins. Wolves will search forever to become whole. When wolves become whole and grow weary of this running and feeding and breeding world, they unite into a single body: a tree. Every tree in the forest comes from the unity of two wolves who are the same wolf. In this way, they live forever. Together. One with the world and the forest and all other wolves who have ever found Life and made it complete, their roots stretching all the way to the heart of the world and so it is the blood of Life that flows through them and it is the song of the world they carry and sing. And so the forest and all the world was made from the wolves, even humans. Some wolves grew tired and lonely. The life of a wolf is a constant journey. We traverse the world, never resting, and we live in small groups of two to twelve, rarely stretching beyond that. These wolves longed for more. They never found their other halves, the blood for their heart or the song for their voice, and so they stopped moving and searching. They shrugged off their fur and stood on their backlegs and built homes to live in and became human while the wolves roamed on and on, never stopping, only spreading the forest, making it thicker, more alive. We are all of us, humans, too, wolves. You are a wolfgirl and Sao is a wolfboy.

  Her eyes wide, leaning forward on her knees, whiteknuckles twisting the elkskin, Is it all true? She turned to Sao, Is it real?

  Hreao laughed and Sao nodded, It is all true.

  She hopped to Faoi and hugged her, burying her face in her fur, Thank you, Faoi. Pressing her cheek against Faoi, she listened to the slow heartbeat like the beating of a drum coursing through the body of a wolf and into the body of a girl. Faoi nuzzled her back, pawing at her, and the girl massaged her.

  Sao, she said, her voice muffled, Who am I?

  His smile cracked and the veins in his neck thickened, What?

  She lifted her head and looked Sao in the face, What is my name?

  Smiling, looking down at his hands, What do you want your name to be?

  Hreao snorted, Said like a wolf. You will be fine, child. You are only a step from eternity.

  I don’t know, she said, chewing her thick lips. Can I have a wolf name?

  I don’t know any wolf names.

  But you do, her eyes flashed from Hreao to Faoi and back again.

  You are not a wolf, Faoi’s soft voice vibrating through the air, making it viscous, trapping spacetime within, You must have a human name.

  Aya, Faoi said.

  Aya, she repeated. What does it mean?

  Let me tell you another story, she pawed at Aya again.

  What’s it about?

  It is about a girl. There was a city far to the east that was dying. It was sick and all of its people were sick. Humans came and gathered from all around the world simply to see this place but it was dying and all the humans were disappearing. There was a plague. A plague is a sickness that kills. You have never been sick—Sao’s expression darkened and he touched the stone round his neck—but it means that one’s body goes bad. Humans heat up and they grow tired and can do nothing until their body is healed. Within this plague was born a girl. The girl was beautiful and her mother was beautiful and her father was kind and just. The plague swept through and continued to kill. It killed her father before she was old enough to even know who he was, but he died all the same. Soldiers came next to burn it all away. They thought that the only way to end the plague was to kill everyone who had the plague, but they were too late because the plague had already escaped. A young man saw the soldiers approaching the city he had heard about for years but never seen. He ran ahead to try to save the people and their city but no one would listen. No one could believe that the soldiers who fought to protect them would come to kill them. But they came and the man rushed back and forth through the city trying to save as many as he could. He warned them and told them to run not realising that to tell them to run was to kill them, for the soldiers surrounded the city and killed all who tried to leave. The man did not know. Hearing the cries of a child, the man stopped and followed the noise. He found the girl’s once beautiful mother dying from burns and wounds. The woman begged the man to save the child who had somehow escaped the fires and the plague. The man took the girl in his arms and escaped the burning city. For days it rained ash upon the forest from all the fire it took to burn that once-great city down. Luca, they called it, Grand Luca. Now it is only a field where nothing grows, haunted by the echoes of a million people. The man took the child into the forest, away from humans, for only humans could be so cruel as to murder a million of their own kind in order to live a few more years. The man raised the girl as a human and a wolf and the girl grew up to be a wolf. Tired of the lives of humans, she did what her ancestors did a thousand thousand years ago: she became something new. Reversing the process, she gave up her possessions and the a
nxieties of humanness, and became a wolf. As a wolf, she lived for centuries until she found him: her other half. And with him she disappeared into the song of the world and all its memories, into Life and the Dream that is Life.

  Can a human really become a wolf? She shook with excitement, her hands clutching her knees, knuckles turning white.

  Everything is within your grasp, little Aya, if only you spread your fingers and make a fist.

  She watched him. Carrying the faded and tattered elkskin in her hand or draped over a shoulder, a pace behind but close at hand, she studied the way he stepped, the way the wind blew his long hair, the way it drifted in the air like the feathers of birds. His thin short legs and long torso, his near hairless naked body compared against her own, he moved weightless through the fecund forest. Faoi and Hreao brought her meat, gifts from the forest, and Sao cooked it while he ate fruits and nuts and various plants given to him by the forest. The scents and sounds wound round her and she heard a music everywhere, drawing her through the winding and shifting paths. The trees moved and huddled to shade her and they spoke in ancient voices, a polyphonic chorus turning the sunslight brighter and warmer. The energy coursing through every branch, every leaf, every blade of grass, all she touched and all that touched her was electric against her skin, the smile imprinted deep into the muscles of her face and deeper to the nucleus of her being. Wide-eyed, she studied the Life all around, under every rock, swimming through every stream, swinging through every tree, in every animal and fruit. And always the song, always the ancient voices, she took his hand and his heat poured into her. She climbed on Faoi and her fur swallowed her, sinking deeper within until she saw through Faoi’s eyes, beat with her heart, breathed with her lungs. Enclosed in the womb, she drifted in and out of sleep, in and out of Faoi. Within Faoi all the world grew sharper, the colors more vibrant, the song louder and intelligible, and the smells drove her wild. Far away she smelt the pain and repugnance, the crucible burning a generation to ash. From that elastic distance, the song grew melancholic and the mourning howls broke the atoms within, filling her with fear, disgust, hatred, and always acute pain, not only at the center of her being, but in every nerve from nose to tail, down to her claws and teeth. The pain drove her out and closed Faoi to her and she listened to her rapid heartbeat, her shallow breath. Sao never noticed but always looked ahead, walking away from the music. At night he stared at the moons and the rock around his neck, his face masked by distant pang. Taking his hand, she held it to her cool cheek which made him smile. His smile, like a supernova, she pulled him down to her and held his head in her lap, curling his hair round her fingers, singing with the trees. When he held her in his arms she felt her body with acute detail, every molecule and atom down to the very center, nebulous but ecstatic at his touch. She clung to Hreao but Hreao did not allow her to enter and so she returned always to him with caresses and kisses. Hreao laughed at her and called her, Wolfgirl, which caused the laughter to rise within her, uncontrollable, and he tickled her with his great wet nose and thick whiskers.

  A leaf fell and Sao watched it and Aya watched Sao. The bluesun hung high but the redsun hovered at the horizon and the golden leaf drifted through the air, back and forth, carried by pockets of air. Waiting, Sao let it fall into his hand and took it between his index and thumb, spinning it. He smiled and Aya smiled but he did not see. For a moment and a moment and a moment more, he stared at the life with his wide eyes, then closed them and blew it away to drift to the grass. He walked past it and Aya picked it up, still warm from his touch. Holding it in her fingers, the way he did, she smiled at it, watching it. Turning to see Sao and the wolves waiting for her, she tucked it into her hair and skipped after them.

  The wolves slept but Aya, burrowed in Faoi’s fur and listening to her breathing, watched Sao. The glow of embers all that remained of the fire, she could not see his face but watched him, his legs crossed, leaning back on his hands, his head tilted to the sky. The two smallest moons orbiting one another hung at the tops of the trees in a night dazzled with stars like a million jewels scattered in the ink of the night. Sitting so, unmoving, the clear air thickening round him, enclosing him, words rose in her chest but she swallowed them away, pulling the elkskin close and smelling it, wiping it against her face. Blinking away tears, she clutched at Faoi’s fur. Her heart splintered and the tears came and so she held her breath, silent, quaking, a pain from that nebulous center pouring into her bloodstream, carrying its blackfreeze to every fracturing cell of her body. Faoi’s tongue cool and consoling on the back of her neck, tickling her, and she shuddered, a smile fighting its way across her lips, damming the tears and freeing her heart. Taking the stone around his neck in hand, he held it to his face, a faint glow, purples splashing within.

  Sao lay down, fetally, in the long grass warmed by the fire. His breath evened and he fell into the darkness of sleep.

  Watching, Aya released her shuddered teary breath, hot and sticky against Faoi’s forepaw. Through the night she watched Sao’s body kick and roll but could not see his face. She cried, openmouthed into Faoi’s fur and Faoi pulled her close and nuzzled against her. Biting her lip, Aya turned and faced Faoi. Faoi’s head, immense and white and warm, could fit Aya within it and her eyes glowed as yellow and bright as the stars.

  What is wrong, wolfchild?

  Her breath still caught in crying gasps, Why does Sao hurt so?

  Faoi exhaled, the air warm and moist against Aya’s chest, Sao runs from the past and the future where he believes only pain exists. Our Sao hurts from places he does not know and cannot understand.

  But why? Why does he have to hurt? Can’t he feel us near him?

  Dear heart, Faoi licked and cuddled her close with large paws, Sao knows your love. It is all that makes him smile. There is nothing in this world that Sao loves more than you, child. He will live and die so that you may go on living. Countless times, he has fought so that you may live. Every beat in his heart he has given to you and for you.

  I don’t want him to be sad anymore, she cried, biting her hand to hold in the noise, her throat clicking and cracking, If I go away he will be happy. He will not have to fight.

  Little heart, no. You must never leave him or he will fall apart. Without you he will lose Life and the Light. He needs you so that he may live and one day be happy. He does not know what he searches for or where he will find it, but he knows that none of it matters without you.

  All I want is for him to be happy, Faoi.

  There is a fierce power burning within him. He fears it more than anything and so it consumes him more and more with each passing moment. He lives with a constant limit upon himself, binding his wolfheart in chains to keep himself human. He will not eat meat or give into his passions because he believes he will lose himself if he gives in. He is correct in a way. He stands at the precipice of transformation. The slightest push will take him away, make him something new. If he continues to fear that which is within him, it will eat him alive and he will become a monster. He must take the next step willingly and consciously. He must choose but he does not understand and does not want to understand and so it burns him. He is afraid of this power and he runs from it because he has seen what it can do. It will take him. It should have taken him. You are all that keeps him human. He has killed for you. Killed to save you and keep you alive. It is hard for him to kill another human just as it would be impossible for me to kill a wolf. It is anathema, abominable, but he has done it for the love he has for you. You and the love he holds for you. It is all he has. All he wants. To remain human and for you to live. I can hear it in his heartbeat and smell it on his breath. His love for you is all he has.

  Aya’s tears dried upon Faoi’s snout and her breath calmed in slow whimpers stuttering through her, Will he always be with me?

  Dear sweet child, your Sao will never leave you, Faoi nuzzled her. Your Sao belongs only to you. Now and forever.

  The Twilight Day came and Sao woke with the dawns to breathe. Faoi
and Hreao sat erect watching him. Aya sat beside him, imitating. Opening her eyes to see him silent and still, she closed her eyes again. She yawned and watched him, then closed her eyes and breathed when Sao breathed, her legs crossed like his, her hands in the same position as his.

  Hreao smiled and howled. Faoi joined him and far away another howl and then another, and the forest filled with the howls of wolves stretched across the forest that was the world.

  The rivers met at the steps of a stone temple housed and preserved by the forest. Fifty meters wide and eight meters high, a vast square structure covered in grime and colored by weather and growth. Aya stopped, blinked again and again, What? she broke off.

  Sao put a hand on her shoulder, Let’s go see.

  They walked to the edge of the steps where Hreao yawned and lay down. The pillars carved as streams of water holding up the roof and a great expansive entrance gaped before them with the statue of a demon, half fish and half woman, watching over the temple from the back of a great and monstrous tortoise. Many more such creatures were carved into the walls along with men and women in long flowing clothes that turned into waves of water. Whales and sharks and dolphins and squids claimed spaces on the walls or stood atop the entrance beside the demon and tortoise.

  Sao stepped onto the stone and turned to Aya smiling, Want to see inside, little one?

  She smiled taking Sao’s hand as he helped her up and Faoi lay beside Hreao and licked his eyes causing him to snort and paw her away.

  Within the temple, all was dark and the shadows turned the statues of gods and demons and augers grotesque and Aya squeezed Sao’s hand, their steps echoing against the thick walls, the scent of mildew and decay filling their nostrils. Walking slow and halfblind by the darkness they approached the central pool. Sao took a step and found no ground, plunging into the water and pulling Aya with him, her echoing scream piercing the wolves who jolted to the entrance only to hear Sao’s laughter multiplying to thousands of voices bouncing off one another. Aya screamed at him and splashed and they wrestled in the shallow water, Sao lifting her into the air to fall once more with a splash.