Firstborn

by Tor Seidler

  18

  THE SQUEAK OF A SCREEN door brought me around. It was early morning, and Golden Hair was coming out of the A-frame. Righting myself on the hard-packed dirt, I shook the dust off my feathers and scuttled out of her way as she approached the garage. When she lifted the garage door, she let out a gasp.

  “Brian!” she yelled. “The wolf—I think he’s dead!”

  I made a clumsy takeoff and managed to swerve by her and make a pass over the cage. I caught only a glimpse of Blue Boy, but it was enough. He was lying in a crimson pool, his beautiful blue coat smeared with blood and bits of chopped meat. Near the tipped-over bowl lay one of the glorious incisors he used for ripping out elks’ windpipes. In a moment, Furry Face came running into the garage, and I flapped awkwardly away.

  As I flew out of the compound, I knew I should go back to the den site to tell the others the dreadful news, but I had to land in a lodgepole pine and collect myself. I was having trouble breathing. I couldn’t believe that magnificent wolf who could shoot through forests and bring down creatures three times his size would never move again. It seemed so terribly wrong, a crime against nature.

  When the sun rose over the treetops, I set out for Slough Creek. I couldn’t fly quite straight, so I aimed a little left of where I wanted to go.

  Once I got to my aspen, I saw that Raze, Lupa, and Ben were up near the top of the hill with their heads together. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but I could hear the whine of pups from inside the den, and Frick and Hope conversing in low tones near the entrance.

  “I shouldn’t have told her,” Frick was saying.

  “It’s throwing her nursing off, no doubt about it,” Hope said. “But you couldn’t keep it from her.”

  It sounded as if they’d told Alberta, who must have still been in the den, that Blue Boy had been killed. So at least I was spared having to break the unspeakable news.

  “I always thought he was invincible,” Frick said. “Utterly invincible.”

  “It doesn’t seem real,” Hope said bleakly. “Do you suppose Uncle Sully’s right, that they were actually after him?”

  “It would be quite a coincidence otherwise, him showing up and Blue Boy getting shot the very next day. I heard him slink off in the night.”

  “He must feel awfully guilty. I wonder where he went.”

  So did I. I cared about a tenth as much about Sully as I did his brother, but it didn’t seem right not to warn him that Furry Face could track him by his collar and was coming after him with real bullets. I was so cast down that I hadn’t even noticed what a glorious spring day it was, but as I flew a little crookedly out over the valley it was impossible not to. The river, surging with snowmelt, was almost as blue as Trilby. The trees on the banks were dusted a green so pale it was almost yellow, and the antlers of the young bucks were sheathed in ruddy velvet. I found Sabrina and Audubon chatting by the bank of the pond. Sabrina hadn’t noticed any wolves that day, but Audubon had seen one heading toward Buffalo Creek.

  “Did he have a bluish tinge to his coat?” I asked.

  “Sorry, didn’t notice,” Audubon said. “All wolves look the same to me.”

  I hadn’t seen Sabrina since fall, so she had to tell me about her winter down south before I could head off toward Buffalo Creek. On this side of the woods that hid the creek I spotted a wolf moving through the tall grass. From a distance only his tail and the top of his head were visible, but I could tell it wasn’t Sully, for the wolf had both his ears. As I got closer, I saw it was Lamar. From the spring in his step I knew he hadn’t heard about the shooting.

  “Hi, Maggie!” he said as I landed nearby. “Have you seen any voles?”

  “Sorry, no,” I said.

  “I saw a shrew, and a garter snake, but I wanted to get Artemis her favorite today. Last night we talked for hours!”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to be the one to tell him that while he’d been enjoying his coyote friend’s company, his father had been killing himself against the steel bars of a cage.

  Lamar trotted on into the woods, found the creek, and had a good slurp. I took a little drink myself and then fluttered up into one of the cottonwoods. With his thirst quenched Lamar sniffed at a cluster of tiny purple flowers by his feet. Suddenly his ears flattened, pressing outward, and his muzzle twitched. Across the creek a grouse burst out of a bush and shot up through the budding trees.

  A one-eared wolf came slinking along the opposite bank, his head low to the ground, his feet making squishing sounds in the wet mat of last year’s leaves.

  “Hello, Uncle,” Lamar said.

  “Lamar!” Sully exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

  “Hunting voles.”

  “You like vole?”

  “It’s for a friend.”

  Sully cast a glance over his shoulder, then gave Lamar a baleful look. “I’m sorry about your father,” he said.

  Lamar stiffened. “My father? What about him?”

  “You don’t know? He got shot.”

  “What?”

  “Yesterday, on his way to the hunt.”

  “He’s not . . . dead?”

  Sully hesitated. “I hate to carry bad news, but that’s what Hope told us. She said the humans collected the carcass.”

  Lamar looked thunderstruck. There was no point in telling them that Blue Boy hadn’t been a carcass yet when the humans had collected him. For a long time the two wolves just stood with the water sluicing between them.

  “What a wolf he was,” Sully said mournfully.

  It seemed to take a while for Lamar to register his uncle’s words. A flicker of surprise crossed his face. “You’re sorry he’s gone after the way he treated you?” he said.

  “You mean sending me packing that time?” Sully sniffed. “I deserved it. He never told you how we parted years ago?”

  Lamar shook his head. Sully told him how he’d helped dig the tunnel out of the pen in the compound and then refused to use it.

  “Blue Boy needed my help to protect his family back up in Canada. But it was so cushy there, I wouldn’t go. I’ll remember the look he gave me till the day I die. I was always a lot smaller than him, but that morning I felt like a mouse. He never told you about the owl, either?”

  Lamar blinked at him. “The one that got Rider?”

  “Who’s Rider?”

  “My little brother.”

  “I don’t know about that. But when I was a pup, an owl grabbed me. I was heading up into the sky when Blue Boy made an amazing leap and clamped onto my hind leg. The weight of two pups was too much for the nasty bird, and he let us go.”

  Lamar’s jaw went slack. No doubt he was thinking he might have done the same for Rider. I thought back to that day, too, realizing now why Blue Boy had been so sure in identifying the owl.

  “I never properly appreciated my brother,” Sully said. “But a couple of days ago he took me into his pack anyway.”

  “He did?” Lamar said, stunned.

  “Yes. And see how I repaid him.”

  Lamar stared at him.

  “The humans were after me, not him,” Sully explained. “I’m sure of it. I might as well have pulled the trigger myself.”

  Lamar said nothing, but I had an idea what he was feeling. He’d left the pack because of his father treating his brother poorly, and now that very brother was singing Blue Boy’s praises—eulogizing him. It’s always disturbing to learn you’ve gotten things wrong, but gut-wrenching when it’s too late to do anything about it.

  “I’m sorry I ever came back down here,” Sully said, turning away.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  Sully glanced back, giving a loose shrug. “I don’t know. Who cares?”

  This seemed to penetrate Lamar’s despondency. “Are you going back to where those cattle live?” he asked.

  Sully shrugged again and gave the wound on his thigh a lick.

  “You can come with me if you want,” Lamar said.

  Sull
y looked at his nephew, his eyes softening for a moment. “I appreciate that, Lamar. But I’m afraid I have to say the same thing to you I once said to your father.”

  A breeze rustled through the trees.

  “What’s that smell?” Lamar said, sniffing.

  I thought I caught a whiff of human. However, Sully didn’t seem to, for he started talking about the last time he and Lamar had met. “Remember where it was?” he asked.

  “The barranca near the knoll,” Lamar said. “You’d caught a fox.”

  “That’s right. I passed through there this morning and saw some voles.”

  “I looked there already.”

  “Down in the very bottom. A regular convention of them. If I were you, I’d get a move on before it breaks up.”

  I think Lamar was in such a state of heartbroken guilt over his father that for a moment not even the prospect of getting Artemis her favorite food could shake it. But before long, Sully’s words sank in, and Lamar tore off through the woods.

  “It’s funny, that kid almost makes me wish I’d had pups of my own,” Sully said, watching him go.

  I got another whiff of human. Soon I spotted Furry Face approaching stealthily through the trees.

  “You better move it too,” I said. “The human’s using real bullets.”

  “To tell you the truth, bird, I’m sick of moving,” Sully said. “What I’d like is a nice, long sleep.”

  Sully took a drink from the creek. When he lifted his head, water drooled off his snout and whiskers. Then there was a sharp crack, and my tree shivered. At the next crack Sully twisted around, crabbed sideways a few steps, and sank to the ground.

  Furry Face tromped out of the trees. He was carrying a rifle, the barrel lowered. He came up and stood over the fallen wolf. When he nudged him with a boot, Sully didn’t stir. The man squatted down to examine Sully’s bullet wounds—one brand new, one a few days old—then stood up again.

  “I’m sorry, fella, but I had no choice,” Furry Face said sadly. “Why’d you have to go killing cattle?”

  I stayed in my cottonwood as Furry Face trudged off downstream. A dark splotch was spreading in the fur at Sully’s neck.

  “I guess you were about ready, old wolf,” I said quietly.

  It startled me when one of his eyes opened.

  “I thought you were gone,” I said.

  “Playing possum,” he said.

  “Can you get up?”

  Sully tried but didn’t make it to his feet. I caught a glint of panic in his eyes.

  “Don’t leave me?” he said.

  “I won’t,” I said, and I flitted over to a tree on his side of the creek.

  He drifted in and out of consciousness all that afternoon as the bloodstain darkened his whole neck. At dusk, clouds blew in, making for a starless, moonless night. I could barely make out the dying wolf below me. Every now and then I heard a raspy breath over the sound of running water. But few things induce sleep like a murmuring creek, and I finally dozed off.

  A ragged cry woke me with a start. A faint light was filtering in through the prison bars of the trees. I looked down and met a pair of yellow, terror-stricken eyes. The blood had soaked Sully’s whole chest, merging with the dried blood from his older wound. I dropped down and landed not far from his head. I suspected that the “vole convention” had just been a way of getting Lamar out of harm’s way, and I thanked Sully for looking out for his nephew.

  “You were a good uncle to him,” I said.

  Sully stared at me a moment, then laid his head down on the moldering leaves and closed his eyes. His chest rose and fell for a while, but slower and slower, till at last he was still.

  19

  IT WASN’T AS BAD AS with Jackson’s corpse. I hadn’t known or loved Sully nearly as well, plus I was older now and knew how littered life is with death. But even if Sully had been lazy and spineless he’d muddled along by his own dim lights, and now they’d gone out forever. It’s awful to look at someone who can no longer look back at you, who will never look back at anyone. Though at the same time, to be honest, you do feel a flicker of gratitude that it’s not you.

  The clouds were still thick, but more daylight was leaking into the woods, and a few thrushes and vireos began to sing, in their tuneless way. Even now it seemed heartless to desert Sully. But all at once the singing stopped. A pair of enormous buzzards flapped down through the treetops. I shot off into a tree across the creek as they landed on either side of Sully’s body. It didn’t take them long to start doing what buzzards do. I couldn’t stop them, and it was too painful to watch, so I flapped away.

  As I passed over the ridge trail—I was flying straighter now—I spotted Hope, dropped down, and landed on a toadstool just off the trail.

  “What are you doing out here by yourself?” I said.

  “Somebody has to get food for Alberta and the babies,” she said.

  “What about Raze and Lupa and Ben?”

  “I’d like to tell you they’re in mourning.” She sniffed. “But if you ask me, they’re plotting something.”

  “You shouldn’t hunt alone, Hope.”

  She was small and delicate—for a wolf—and it wasn’t so long ago that she’d been speared by that branch. But she shrugged her narrow shoulders and moved determinedly on down the trail. I fluttered after her. From the promontory a big herd of elk could be seen on this side of the river. A bull and a cow and two calves had strayed from the crowd. But instead of waiting in the tall grass till one of the calves wandered away from his mother, Hope went after the bull. I couldn’t squawk at her without spooking her prey. She crept upwind of him almost as silently as her father would have done. The bull’s uneven gait made me think he was slightly addled—he’d probably gotten his skull cracked fighting over the cow in rutting season—but this didn’t make Hope’s targeting him any less distressing. When Hope leaped onto the bull’s shoulder, he tried to gouge her with his antlers. She clung to him tenaciously. He finally managed to knock her off, only to have her jump right back on and sink her fangs into him again. The bull writhed and thrashed but finally stumbled. Once he was on his knees, Hope went straight for his windpipe.

  By the end Hope was exhausted. And after all that effort she didn’t take a single bite, simply stripping off a big hunk of the haunch and lugging it back up onto the ridge trail.

  When we reached the den site, Frick was drinking from the creek. The other three wolves were uphill from the den, Raze sharing a bone with Ben while Lupa groomed herself.

  “Why didn’t you wake me?” Frick called out as Hope dropped the meat by the den entrance. “You shouldn’t go hunting by yourself.”

  Before Hope could even answer, Raze had hustled down to her. “What do you think you’re doing?” he said, eyes narrowed.

  “Getting Mother food so she can nurse—what does it look like?” Hope said.

  “You should offer me the first taste.”

  Hope snorted contemptuously. Raze shot forward, grabbed her by the neck, and tossed her down the hill toward my aspen. I squawked in outrage. Not only did Raze have a size advantage, but Hope had expended every ounce of her energy bringing down that elk. While my squawk still hung in the air, Frick sprinted up the hill and attacked Raze. Raze spun away and raked Frick’s scarred backside with his claws. Frick yelped and scrambled back to where Hope lay panting.

  “Bring it to me,” Raze said, his voice laced with threat.

  By now Lupa and Ben were standing behind him. Hope struggled to her feet, but neither she nor Frick made a move toward the den, so Ben grabbed the piece of elk and dragged it to Raze. Raze tore off about a third and started chomping.

  “That’s meant for Alberta,” Frick said, blood streaming down his furless hind legs.

  Raze dropped the meat and gave Frick a look of cold menace. “The first taste goes to the alpha,” he said.

  “And you think that’s you?”

  “I suppose you are?” Lupa said, nostrils flaring.

 
; “Alberta’s our leader now,” Frick said.

  “She’s suckling pups,” Lupa said.

  “I hunted that for them,” Hope said angrily.

  “Tell you the truth, I’m not so sure I want a bunch of Blue Boy’s pups around,” Raze said. “Next year Lupa and I’ll make our own.”

  “You’d let the pups starve?” Frick said incredulously. “Are you out of your mind?”

  Raze was on him in a flash, this time clamping his jaws around Frick’s throat. Hope threw herself on Raze, but Lupa and Ben yanked her off. Forcing Frick to the ground, Raze snarled the bloodcurdling snarl of the kill.

  I flew up in the air and was about to dive-bomb him when I saw a wolf come over the crest of the hill. A big wolf. At first I doubted my eyes. I flew up to the top of the hill and saw that the wolf’s coat, though spattered with dirt and dried blood, had patches of blue showing through. I zipped back to my aspen and crowed.

  “Father!” Hope cried.

  Raze let go of Frick and jumped backward. Hope threw herself over Frick like a shield. Lupa’s ears shot back, pinned against her head. So did Ben’s.

  Then another astounding thing happened. Alberta never deserted her suckling newborns, but suddenly there she was, bounding out of the den. She whirled around and cried:

  “Blue Boy!”

  Hearing Alberta say his name dispelled any lingering doubts I may have had. Blue Boy truly was here. He was wagging his tail at the sight of his mate.