Sometime that night the wind began to abate. Athaba, curious, arose and went round the wall to look at the man. His fellow creature was fast asleep and warm in the circle of stones. Athaba was a little indignant at this since the caribou was obviously not as efficient a windbreak as the stones.
He padded back to his own place, however, thinking primly that unnatural objects were best left alone, despite the fact that they were better suited to the job.
‘No wonder men are soft creatures,’ he grumbled sanctimoniously, ‘if they pamper their bodies like that.’ He was glad, he told himself, that wolves had no hands, nor brains to invent such artificial devices. ‘Why, we would soon deteriorate into dogs. No, no, I’m only too glad we can’t build things like that monstrosity.’
He fell asleep again.
Athaba rose to the rhonking of geese, newly arrived on the tundra after flying vast distances. The geese wintered in southern climes, mostly islands. With them, out on the boglands, were golden plovers, stints, godwits, wheatears, grey plovers and turnstones. The waders, like the plovers and turnstones, stints and sanderlings, search like the wolf for meat. Savagery is not confined to mammal predators out on the tundra, nor to the hooked beaks and talons of the harriers. Wader birds are without exception all carnivores. They are the wolves, foxes, weasels and stoats of the waterlands.
Athaba was uneasy. He could smell his own kind in the air. There were wolves hereby. The last thing he wanted to do was antagonise some local pack and have to fight and run, perhaps being pursued from horizon to horizon. If at all possible, he wanted to evade confrontation and the best way to do that was to avoid contact altogether.
However, just as the man was climbing to his feet, a stranger appeared from behind a piece of medial moraine, followed by four others. The creature that was obviously the headwolf stopped some distance away and regarded Athaba. Then it came forward again, the others at its heels. As it came a little closer, Athaba’s nose told him the leader was a she-wolf. Of the other four, only one, a yearling, was a male.
The headwolf halted, a little unsure of the situation.
‘You have one of our caribou there,’ she said.
A year ago Athaba would have already taken to his heels and left his kill to the pack. Since then a hardness had set in. Despite the good sense of his earlier promise to himself, he now decided he was not going to be bullied. Shunning a fight was one thing: running away from a direct challenge was quite another. There were advantages on his side. He knew how he looked: rangy and mean. He was an itinerant wolf and knew how to take care of himself. At the same time, he was not stupid. He knew that if all five wolves attacked him, he would not stand a chance. It depended upon how organised the pack was and whether they were prepared to suffer casualties. If they had not eaten for some days, he was in big trouble.
‘The caribou are yours? I was under the impression that prey was there for the taking. Since when did wolves own caribou? One might own a carcass – for example, this carcass is mine because I brought down the beast – but I’m sure you wouldn’t claim something which is obviously not yours?’
The she-wolf took a couple more steps, still not as confident as she should be in the circumstances.
‘You brought this one down, alone?’
Athaba was torn between pride and common sense. He wanted the wolves to acknowledge his hunting skills, but at the same time it would be better to present a stronger front if he could. In the end he chose strategy over vanity.
‘Not alone. I had the human hunter with me.’
The man was by this time hiding behind his pack. He was pointing a stick which he had cut from the dwarf willows, as if it were a gun. Both Athaba and the she-wolf stared at the southerner in amazement. What on earth did he think he was doing? He surely did not believe that wolves could be fooled into thinking a stick was a gun? Sticks and guns have quite different smells for a start …
‘That helped you catch a caribou?’
‘When I say helped, I mean the human acted as a beater, sending the quarry towards me, while I waited in ambush.’
Now the man had risen to his feet and was backing away from the group. Athaba decided to ignore him. The other four wolves were closing in on him slowly forming a hollow ring. He knew now that they were preparing to attack him so he turned lazily and trotted in the direction of the man, as if he did not care whether he was followed or not. He hated having to leave his kill to this pack but they would soon discover his injured limb, if they had not already, and this extra weakness would not do much to keep them at bay.
When he was some distance from the carcass, he discovered that one of the she-wolves was not far behind him. The approach was aggressive and he turned and faced her.
‘Don’t be foolish,’ he called. ‘Just because I retreated before a pack, doesn’t mean I couldn’t take on at least two of you and win. A single wolf? I would chew you up and spit you out. Go back to your own.’
‘You’re wounded. I saw the limp. I think that hunter shot you …’
‘And then threw away his gun?’
‘I don’t know, but my standing in the pack would improve if I were seen to take you on and beat you.’
She advanced a few more paces. Then she yelped and jumped as a rock struck her on the flank. She ran back, then turned again. Another rock whizzed under her nose. Athaba could see the human hunter now, a pile of stones at his feet. In any other circumstances it might be a stupid thing to do, to throw stones at a fully grown she-wolf, but the creature was unsettled. To take on Athaba might have increased her chances of pack promotion but to attack a human required more than a whim. When a wolf and a man seemed to be acting in concert, that situation needed thoughtful consideration. It was better to walk away than get into something which might damage an individual’s standing in the pack.
She called back, ‘What are you, a dog?’
Athaba was more amused than angry by this question.
‘Who me? Or him?’
The she-wolf disdained to continue the conversation and loped back to the carcass where the others were feasting.
Athaba felt it wise to put some countryside between himself and this pack and he continued on his journey across the desolate landscape. His leg felt a little stronger but he still had to favour it. The human followed on behind, stopping to drink at streams when Athaba did and moving on when Athaba moved.
For three more days they walked, resting only when they were exhausted. The sun hardly rested itself now, merely dipping below the horizon for a short time before reappearing. The whole world seemed an unsettled place. The tundra chittered with bird life. Lake surfaces rippled with fish. The air was full of insects. There were mists and fogs, and rain, when visibility fell sharply. There were warm days when the blue sky seemed to be lower, closer to the ground.
The wolf caught small mammals for his food but the man fed mainly on fish. He had learned to dam a stream with rocks at two points, to isolate a stretch of water. Then he would divert the flow upstream of his trap, digging out a channel in the soft earth with his fingers. Once the watercourse had been altered, his trap would drain leaving any fish caught between the two dams, flopping in the shallows. The first time he did this, the man did an extraordinary thing. He threw one of the fish to Athaba, keeping two for himself.
Athaba let the gift lie where it was, not far from his nose, while the man gathered brushwood from a forest of dwarf birch and made himself a fire. He watched the human wash himself in the stream, the water droplets clinging to his face fur. The smell of the cooking fish made Athaba’s saliva glands active. It had been spitted on a stripped dwarf tree and suspended over the fire. The southern hunter turned it lovingly, roasting all sides of his meal. When it was sufficiently cooked for his taste, the human lifted it off its rockstand and held it up – a gesture to Athaba – before sinking his teeth into the flesh. Scales decorated his face fur now and warm juices ran down to drip on to his clothes. He was showing his teeth in that way peculiar to
humans.
Athaba wondered what to do about his gift. If he took it, would he lose some of his independence? What would be the position between him and the man? How would it change their relationship?
As it was, Athaba preferred to think of himself as travelling alone. If another creature wanted to trail along behind him, that was nothing to do with him. However, the man had helped drive off the she-wolf a few days previously and was now throwing tidbits to him. The only time Athaba had accepted something from a human was when he had no choice: when he was captive. Would this give the man the idea that Athaba was his creature? No, there was one other time Athaba had taken from humans: when he was a raven-wolf. He had scavenged from the waste bins outside the huts in the ice country. Surely this was the same thing? The man did not want the fish. He had too many to eat at once, and this one would go rotten on him and he would be unable to devour it later. Wolves could eat rotten meat, but not men. Humans had delicate constitutions, as easily disturbed as the stomachs of pups.
This was waste food. Why leave it to the birds?
In truth, the smell of the cooked food had been driving Athaba crazy, and once he had swallowed the fish he felt guilty. The she-wolf had been right. He was a dog. He had become one of man’s creatures. Never again would be feed from the hand of a human.
Yet this man was different, wasn’t he? The tundra had grown into his skin. His smell was no longer as bad as it had been when they were first thrown out of the sky together. He had the mosses and lichens in his fur, the dirt between his fingers and toes. He washed his body in surface meltwater. His mind had changed too. He had grown more contemplative. At least that was Athaba’s observation. The wolf had watched the man watching the midnight sun watching the world. Tranquil skies put the human into deep reflection, had him staring into their mottled redness of an evening with his chin cupped in his hands. The southern hunter was more like a native now, alert to scents and sounds which would have previously escaped his attention.
The man’s shoes were now so worn and rotted they had fallen away from his raw and bloody feet. He had tried wrapping rags around these soft appendages at first, but this invention only worked for a short period of time and he was running out of material. For a whole day now he had been completely barefoot. He hobbled a little and spent time washing his abrasions and blisters, but he did not whine now as he had in the beginning of the march. Before the walk was finished, if he did not die, the man might become a wolf.
Athaba’s own injury wavered from improvement to worsening, depending on how hard he drove himself during the day’s walk. He longed for familiar scents to come over the horizon which would tell him he was nearing his journey’s end, but these never came. In his heart he knew he was still many days, perhaps months, from his old stamping grounds. It would not do to give way to despair, however, for that would surely finish him.
While he was thus engaged in thought, the pack they had encountered a few days previously caught up with them and began to ring them. The man caught sight of them almost at the same time as Athaba himself was aware of their presence. Neither of them panicked. Instead, the man gathered more brushwood and built up the fire until its blaze was flicking upwards with long tongues. Athaba saw his companion place some smooth river stones right in the middle of the flames. He then settled at a distance from his work. It seemed to Athaba he was waiting for something.
Athaba gathered together vestiges of strength that he knew he would need in the coming fight. He was going to die, just like the man was going to die, but he wasn’t going to sit down on his bottom playing with rocks and just waiting for his throat to be opened.
Just as the pack was closing in, there was tremendous CRACK from the area of the fire. It sounded like a rifle shot. Athaba leapt in the air and ran twenty paces himself. The wolf pack just scattered over the countryside, splashing through pools and across bog. There were two more ‘gunshots’ from the direction of the fire which had Athaba running circles, wondering whether to join the pack in their flight or stay and find out where the man had found a gun from.
When he was brave enough, he went back to where the hunter stood, stirring at the flames and barking in triumph. The man shook his fist at the retreating wolves. Athaba was still bemused. He had no doubt that a trick had been performed: there was none of the odours normally associated with firearms, in or around the fire. Something had been done but what it was remained a secret between the man and his work. Something to do with stones and fire.
Fire was not a thing wolves were fond of anyway since it was almost always associated with men. Brush fires could be started in the forest by lightning but mostly fire was the work of man’s magic, one of his evil tools. Man and fire had almost always gone together. No other creature possessed the sorcery which would enable them to conjure heat and flames from wood and dried plants. Sometimes, even men lost control of their devilish art and forest fires raged killing both human and beast. Wolf lore said that man had not brought the secret of fire with him out of the sea-of-chaos but had acquired or stolen it since. There was one idea that said that the southern men had found a way to trap fork lightning during thunderstorms, and were able to break each jagged spear into tiny pieces, which they kept in small shiny containers like the one this southerner had with him. However, the natives had been making fire from two pieces of wood for many hundreds of seasons before the southerners ever arrived with their metal containers: this was in the songs going back through a thousand great ancestors. There were those, too, who had witnessed both natives and southerners rubbing tiny splinters of wood against a hollow block of wood resulting in a flame. These hollow blocks, made of thin bark, had been found and nosed by brave canids, but the mystery of their ability to create fire remained unsolved.
So far as Athaba was concerned, it was best to treat it as sorcery and forget reasonable, logical explanations.
The next day, he and the magician left the scene of their triumph over the wolves of the tundra to continue their quest for the home of their kin and kind.
From that point on, the man’s physical state underwent a gradual deterioration. He was attacked by mosquitoes, ravaged by them, until his skin was raw. The female insects fell upon him in their thousands and feasted on his blood, gathering their protein. Athaba knew from wolf lore that on the tundra there is not just one but some forty different species of mosquito. All of them were out for blood. Athaba suffered as well as the man, but the effects were not so terrible. The man was driven nearly insane, scratching and making himself bleed. The cuts festered.
Athaba liked his man better when he was crazy. It made him more acceptable somehow, less of a threat.
When the mosquitoes were at their worst, the midges came, so thick that neither man or wolf could draw a breath without filling their nostrils with little black bodies. They were like dust in the air, like powered stone. Their bites were not so dramatic as those of the mosquitoes, but they were an irritant just the same and there were more of them.
Along with the midges came the black flies: small dark insects with short legs, broad wings and humped backs. Like little demons they came straight from hell, their savage bite almost as toxic as that of a wasp. Indignity piled upon indignity. Man and wolf were drawn closer together in their fight against the common enemy, though they were able to do little in retaliation. They offered one another sympathy in looks and gestures. The swarms were unrelenting and there was now no darkness in which to hide and lick one’s wounds.
Chapter Fifteen
The wolf finally gave the man a name.
There had once been an ancestor of Athaba’s who was accused of having human characteristics because he preferred cooked meat to raw, was obsessed with roast beef and boiled bacon. This forefather had been killed while attempting to steal a ham from a human encampment. His name was Koonama.
So the man became Koonama.
Of course, Athaba did not even try to communicate this to the man. It was merely his way of accepting that the h
uman was now part of his pack, his responsibility as headwolf.
Chapter Sixteen
And they came to a river, swollen with recent meltwater and rushing in torrents. It looked impassable. Since the beginning of their journey they had skirted lakes, waded through streams and braided rivers, splashed across wide shallow pools and slept on wet moss. Athaba was beginning to hate water. Normally, water did not intrude upon his life. Water was an essential commodity in frequent, small amounts, but beyond that it was barely considered.
Out here, in the wetlands, it became first a nuisance, then an annoyance and finally unbearable. It was omnipresent and formed barriers across the country which the two travellers could well do without. Athaba would have liked some fox-god, such as A-O, to reform itself out of the water, and thus rid the land of the stuff. He felt it a shame that wolves did not have a god of their own, otherwise he could have asked such a god to speak to his fox colleague and get something done.
Koonama looked at his headwolf as if it were the canid’s fault that a river blocked their path, as if Athaba should feel personally responsible for this latest outrage, of nature.
‘No one asked you to follow me,’ said Athaba to the dumb creature at his side. ‘I didn’t promise you smooth passage across the wilderness. All I’m trying to do is get myself home. I’m not responsible for you.’
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