Midnight's Sun: A Story of Wolves

by Garry Kilworth

  When it was time to leave, he almost regretted having to go.

  ‘We could make this our den,’ he said.

  Ulaala was not such a dreamer.

  ‘The hunting is poor around here. We have to think about feeding our pups.’

  Athaba felt a jolt of delight go through his body.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Our pups,’ said Ulaala. ‘Oh, you didn’t know, did you? We’ve been travelling so hard and fast … I meant to tell you. Anyway, you should have noticed the difference in me. Don’t I look like a mother to be?’

  ‘What? Yes. No.’ He could hardly think straight. Pups! His own pups. So all that earth and fire had not been simply for the pleasure of the moment. He was to be a father, the head of a pack. That was something to tell the sky about.

  His head went back and he howled to the heavens.

  ‘Quiet!’ said Ulaala, looking round nervously. ‘There are humans in the vicinity. Do you want to tell them too?’

  He puffed out his chest.

  ‘I don’t see why not. I mean, I’m the wolf with fire in his loins. Hunters? I chew them and spit them out.’

  ‘So you’re the only he-wolf that ever gave his she-wolf pups?’

  ‘No,’ he said, earnestly, ‘but these pups will be the greatest little wolves that ever stood upon the tundra. You wait and see. They’ll change the world.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you’re so pleased. I thought you might be a little jealous. You know I’m going to have to give them a lot of attention, and you won’t be the only wolf in my life after they are born.’

  He thought about that.

  ‘I can see I shall have to be more unselfish in the future. I think I can manage that. Just think of it though! Our own pack. I can’t wait.’

  ‘So,’ said Ulaala, ‘the den …’

  ‘Well, we can’t make it around here,’ he said briskly. ‘The hunting’s much too poor in this district. I’m surprised you even let me consider it. No, no, we’ll move on … are you all right? I mean, can you travel in your condition?’

  She snorted through her nostrils.

  ‘I’ve travelled this far, haven’t I? Of course I’m all right. On you go.’

  So he led the way from the cave, euphoric in the thought that he was going to have pups, be a father, have a pack. Just a few short months ago he had been a raven-wolf, his own pack all dead and gone, his life over. Now here he was, his life beginning again, and the promise of pups in the air. He did indeed feel fortunate.

  Chapter Eleven

  Once they were in a suitable area, finding a place to den became a matter of urgency. It had taken them some time to travel south and Ulaala was heavy with her unborn litter. She began to get testy and irritable with Athaba, as she worried about a warm dry place in which to give birth. A place where she could feel her pups were relatively safe from harm. There were strange things happening inside her which were affecting her personality. She regarded the whole world as a potential menace and yet had no real quarrel with anyone least of all Athaba, whom she frequently snapped at. During the rest hours she became miserable, certain that he would leave her because she had become a mean-tempered female. She needed him desperately. That was what was so strange about her feelings: she wished Athaba would go away, yet she wanted him by her side. How could you have both? How could you even contemplate both? Athaba gave her the choice pieces of meat after a hunt: she guzzled them down without a word of gratitude. The soft meats were necessary for her young to be born strong, full of iron. She saw him watching her with anxious eyes, knowing he cared for her and her condition, yet she was unable to respond with anything but words like, ‘When are you going to find us a place to den …?’ And when he did discover reasonably suitable areas, she rejected them, angrily. They were not quite right. There was always something, some little thing which bothered her. It might be that the entrance was too exposed, or the den just a fraction too far from water, or the ground a little too damp. She knew she was being fussy, but it had to be the perfect place. She wanted full confidence in it, so that she could forget about the world and have her pups without worry.

  While Athaba did not fully understand what Ulaala’s problems involved, he realised that everything was a crisis to her at this point in time and put it down to the fact that she was feeling insecure outside her pack. She told him once or twice that she was not herself, that having pups inside her did unusual things to her nature, but his comprehension on such matters was limited and he preferred to find more practical reasons for her attitude towards him. Once he had found the right denning area, he told himself, she would settle down and become a little happier. Then there was the litter. It must, he acknowledged, be uncomfortable having to carry so much weight around in one’s belly. Certainly, he could not imagine what it would be like. Ulaala sometimes tried to explain to him that far from being uncomfortable, this was a pleasant way to be. Athaba decided she was just being noble, that such a bloated state just had to make one feel awkward and cumbersome. He put his faith in the den and just hoped the pair of them hadn’t made a mistake in running away together. He could not imagine they could go on like this for the rest of their lives.

  Finally, he found it, the place for which they had been searching. When he led her to the small clearing, with the stream running at the base of the nest of rocks, and asked her if she could see the opening to the den, he knew by her whole demeanour that it was the right place, and heaved a sigh of relief. Now he hoped she would relax a bit and start to put the world into proper perspective.

  There was an improvement in both of them, once the den had been built. Athaba recognised a change in himself as well as Ulaala and realised that he too must have been tense, strung up, for once they were safely established in their new home something flowed from him into the sandy earth and left him feeling so much better. His frame of mind altered considerably. He felt ready to tackle anything.

  Ulaala was still anxious a lot of the time, but it was a more gentle expression of worry. A sort of preoccupiedness which bothered Athaba much less than the taut moods to which she had been subject during their trek.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ she said to him tenderly, one night after they had eaten and were preparing for rest. ‘Once the pups have been born, it’ll be all right. Mothers, get fretful, especially before the event …’

  He accepted her word for that.

  Even as the pair had been building their den in the nest of rocks, they were aware that there was a hunter further to the south. They were attentive to this danger, but knew it was pointless to move on. They would not find a better, more secure place to den. When they had left the north, it had been barely the end of winter with a hint of spring in the air. It was now the beginning of summer and the pups were almost ready to be born. In the summer, the hunters were active everywhere, so it was a case of find, settle and hope.

  Luckily, they did not have to do a great deal to the natural cavity in the rocks in order to make it comfortable. Normally, they would have dug a hole in well-drained soil with a small entrance, a short dog-leg tunnel, and a dry chamber at the end. There would be no bedding. As it was, there was a cave in the cluster of rocks, the entrance of which was overlapped by the mottled, pitted monoliths, forming a natural camouflage. The outcrop was on a sandy hill, easy to dig. Athaba and Ulaala had widened the tiny entrance, which must have been formed in the Firstdark by a fountainhead, and scoured out the chamber within.

  There were in the area, moose, beaver, marten, muskrat, caribou and bison, and, of course, all the smaller game. It was rich country during the season. There were also bears, which brought back some nasty memories for Athaba, but he intended to steer clear of the devils. A red fox came nosing around the rocks shortly after they arrived but Athaba soon put the creature on its toes and running. It kept stopping and looking back as if to say, ‘You don’t own the landscape!’ The trouble was, he felt as if he did.

  Contrary to normal procedures, normal behaviour
, Ulaala and Athaba devised new howls to use alongside the traditional ones. In any other pack, the composing of new howls would be regarded as profane, since the songs of the ancestors were supposed to be complete in themselves. There was a whole set of howl cycles which were sacred and needed, it was said, no improvement.

  But Ulaala and Athaba were not ‘normal’ wolves and had their own very radical ideas about life. Athaba said that for too long wolves had been automatically accepting what was passed on to them by their foreparents, without question, and had lost the initiative and inventiveness of those early wolves. They had become set in their ways, soulless, unthinking, blinkered, stolid. It was time to reassert the values of original conceptions.

  The pair of them had made a start on this extremist programme, by inventing new howls. These were secret-pack-howls, the meaning of which was only known to the two of them. There were love howls, and warning howls, and howls just to clear the heart of exuberance. There were mournful howls for depressing times and racing, clipped howls for exciting moments. There were dream howls, to clear the head of fantasies, and dark-and-light howls for clarifying the soul. There were hot howls and cold howls. This tonal language of the wolves had been developed over many eons and though some of the other canids shared the ability to indulge in this complex and harmonious skill, none could match the wolves for depth and range.

  It was not just the formation of each note that required talent, but the interpretation of each nuance of sound. It was as important to develop the ear, as it was the throat. Some wolves set out from birth to become listeners and were highly respected for their ability to interpret sound. A human, caribou or bear might think they have heard the same note nine times in succession, but a wolf with a reasonable ear would be able to distinguish subtleties between each note and form a mental picture of the Howler’s message.

  Ulaala and Athaba practised their skills on cold clear nights when their cries rang out amongst the rocks and echoed along gulleys. They found a Howling Rock near to the den which was perfect for Swallowing-the-moon. (This was a traditional howl whereby the Howler tried to entice the moon down to the Howling Rock using songs of promise; beautiful songs that had been composed especially to attract the soul of the sun. The idea was that if the moon ever came close enough, the Howler could suddenly break off in mid-note and swallow Groffs work for good and all, thus robbing men of their night light. Although there were witnesses to testify that some wolves had been very close to achieving this goal, no wolf had yet succeeded in swallowing the moon. It had become, like most traditional activities, more of a hypnotic game than a serious attempt at revolution. Wolves who played it became intoxicated, drunk on their musical attempts to draw the sun’s soul from the heavens, and the mesmeric effect of watching the moon moving closer to their open mouths made them giddy with excitement. In fact, Athaba wondered if he would have the courage to actually do it, should the moon ever get within snapping distance. After all, the wolf that swallowed the moon would have a full stomach indeed and the dull light from its belly, shining out on the snows, would lead man to wolf. What would they do with such a wolf? Cut it open, perhaps, to release Groff’s lantern?)

  It was better to treat it as a game.

  These were also anxious days, wondering if the birth would be good and without complications. Athaba fussed around Ulaala so much so that she took to finding a place to sleep on her own. They slept for long hours, sometimes in the den, sometimes out in the sunshine. Athaba hunted and cached many of his kills.

  One evening he went hunting. When he returned, the pups had been born. There were two males and four females. Six beautiful deaf and blind wolf pups. He had a pack at last, his own pack, their own pack. Life was complete.

  Ulaala, though she was very protective towards the pups, became more like her old self. She was a mother first, but the pressure had an outlet and the relationship between her and Athaba improved, became even better than it had been when they first met. Athaba felt fulfilled too. Not so long ago he had nothing, and now he had a whole family. It was a miracle. It was difficult not to feel intense pride in Ulaala and the pups. He wanted to shout about them to the forests and mountains.

  Eight weeks after the birth, when the pups had been weaned, Athaba’s life fell apart again.

  He was out hunting, and had crossed a muskeg – a basin of rock in which a bog has formed – rich in plant life. There was bog rosemary, skunk cabbage, marsh marigold and the carnivorous insect-eating sundew, all of which he had sniffed, searching for the scent of some recent prey. His tread across the sphagnum moss, with its cushioning layers of wood peat, was naturally springy and light. On the far side of the muskeg was a grove of lodgepole pine mixed with mountain hemlock. He paused to study this with suspicion. The breezes played around the tops of the trees, but there was no other movement so far as he could see. He went back to sniffing the small trails across the moss, through the highbush cranberry plants. Suddenly, his head came back as a strong scent offended his nostrils.

  There, beside some sedge, were the footprints of a man.

  After the initial shock to his olfactory organ this did not bother him unduly, since not all men were dangerous, of course. It was probably best to treat them as if they were, but there were those who ventured out gunless and harmless, to do whatever humans did with themselves in that part of the world. He remained cautious but continued his hunt. He found several pools around the muskeg with some shrikes and yellowlegs moving amongst the rushes, but he wanted something bigger than birds.

  At noon he came to a stream from which he drank. There were fish in the water, but after a few desultory attempts Athaba gave up trying to mouth-spear them. They were too quick for him. It was not a hot day, there being a lot of cloud cover, and consequently the fish were lively.

  He left the stream and continued down a dry gulley, overgrown with dusty weeds. It was at the end of this gulley that he caught a very powerful whiff of native hunter. This was no southerner, white and pallid-skinned, clumping over the landscape in coloured shirt. This was a local hunter, who knew the earth as well as any human could. He was giving off that odour which told Athaba that the man was out to trap or kill wild animals. It was sweat-smell of a particular kind. Yet, there was another odour, another hunter’s smell, but this one was not native. Athaba had no doubt this was a tandem hunt. A southern hunter being helped by a native tracker. The situation was as bad as it could be. Powerful weapons and good tracking skills.

  Athaba came out of the gulley and began trotting towards some rocks. A breeze brought another wave of odours. The hunters were very close. He had to find some cover. He could not smell the scent of a machine, so that much was in his favour. Obviously they could follow, but only on foot.

  At first he began heading back to the den, but then he veered off sharply, thinking that if they managed to keep up with him, he would be putting his mate and pups in great danger. It was better to circle the den, to try to find some area where the landscape was full of hiding places.

  Suddenly, he hesitated. Something was very wrong. The strong scent of native hunter was carried to him on the wind, almost like a gift. Why would a skilled local be upwind of him? That didn’t make sense. And there was no southern hunter smell of smoke and flowers. Where had he gone to? If Athaba turned around, avoiding the native, then he might find himself in an ambush.

  For a moment, he did not know what to do. Finally, he veered off again, to the west, keeping under cover of a ridge. When he broke out the other side, he found the southerner waiting for him. The gun was already levelled.

  Athaba began running, at the same time waiting for the sound of the gun. His heart was pounding, but he did not panic.

  There was no loud report. All he heard was a ‘plopping’ sound, and then he felt a sharp sting in his rump. Instinctively, he nipped at the pain, thinking to find a hornet. Instead, it was some man thing that was stuck in his muscle.

  He went on for six more paces with the object dangling from h
is rump, then a dizziness overcame him. He staggered. The world swam around his head. He fell forward, his legs suddenly becoming boneless. The skies folded over his eyes.

  It was believed amongst Athaba’s kind that at one time the native hunters were once wolves themselves. It was their eyes that gave them away: they still had the eyes of a wolf. Possibly some utlah, tired of being a raven-wolf, consulted the fox mystics on the dark arts of shape-changing. After sneaking into a cave and selling something, perhaps the meaning of a sacred howl, the raven-wolf had been given the secret. It had crept out on to a moonlit landscape that sparkled with ice and snow; where shadows were thick and black; where streams either raced in torrents or froze solid. This was a landscape that was hostile to man and therefore safe from invasion. It had crept into the land of the midnight sun, transformed itself into a human. Other utlahs had followed suit. This new kind of man, this exiled wolf in disguise, could live on the tundra or in the country of ice to the north, as well as any indigenous creature. This kind of man could track and hunt almost as well as a wolf, though during the act of transformation, some of the skills had been lost. Almost as well as a wolf. This new kind of man – a human as close to the earth as any wild thing – lived alone on the tundra, in the snows, for a very long time. So long was it, that wolves began calling them the Only People, since it seemed that the march from the sea of chaos had been halted somewhere a long way south of the tundra. These were the ‘only people’ who could live in the high country. Of course, they were cold in their new naked form. They began to hunt their former kin, to get back the skins they had lost.