So he went forward and out into the open. The air was sweet and fresh. No guns blasted holes in his pelt. Slowly he walked away from the cage, towards the trees, trees that were somehow familiar to him. He sniffed and below the fumes of the aircraft and the men he found smells he recognised. There was a rock he knew, not three lengths away. Ground shapes, undulations, flats he had traversed before.
He saw now what was happening. Around him were the sitka spruces of his old home. It was his old home. Koonama had brought him back to the place where he had been captured by the southern hunter and his native guide. This was where the dart had struck him in the rump and he had staggered and fallen into the deep black pit of unconsciousness. Not too far distant was the den where his mate and pups were waiting for his return. His heart flooded with anticipation.
Koonama showed his teeth and waved him northwards to where his den lay.
Athaba regarded his old pack member for a few moments, then turned and walked away with dignity, neither running nor strolling. A kind of high-stepping deerwalk, springy but not jaunty, firm but not rigid. When he reached an outcrop of rocks he looked back to where Koonama was standing. His ex-captor was very still at first and then, as if on an impulse, the man raised his head and let out the howl that they had used when Moolah had parted with the pair of them on the edge of the tundra: it was the farewell to the brother wolf call which ended in a triple tremolo. Athaba could see that the human’s eyes were shining and thought he was showing his teeth, the creases were only around his mouth.
Athaba returned the howl and then slipped between the rocks. Shortly afterwards he heard the sky machine leave, heard its wind amongst the treetops. Finally, there were only the sounds, smells and sights of the wilderness.
Soon he was on his way northwards, to his mate and his pups. The anticipation in his breast was tremendous. Now he could allow himself the luxury of dreams, to picture the faces of Ulaala and the pups, when he strolled up to the den. Should he howl first, to warn them of his coming? One of their secret howls, perhaps, so that she would not think it was another wolf usurping his position as her mate? Or perhaps not. Perhaps surprise might be the best tactic?
What joy there would be that night, though, when he was back by her side. And the pups would have forgotten his scent, and be puzzled by his presence. They would come into the den, one by one, and look at him, sniff him, and wonder what induced their mother to let this raggedy stranger share her bed. And when they found out who he was, their father, they would tumble over him, licking his jaws, nipping at his mouth.
He couldn’t wait. The long walk, the reversals, the pain and suffering, the disappointments, they had all been worth this moment. The excitement in his breast was overwhelming, so that his breath came out in short sharp pants. His expectations were as brilliant and wonderful as the northern lights.
Suddenly he was in the clearing and at last the crop of rocks was in view. His nostrils filled, searching for the scent of his loved ones. He was home. He was in the place he never thought to see again and a miracle had come true. There had been mountains, lakes, rivers and wide wide flatlands between him and his mate, and he had crossed them, put them behind him. The improbable had been overcome, conquered.
He took up a high-standing stance on a rock, again filling his nostrils with the smells of his den. Then again, and yet again. Anticipation began to melt away, to be replaced by hope, and finally by dread. Nothing. The ground was blank before him, around him. Once more he sniffed, hoping for the scent he wanted, no matter how faint. Once more the hope drained and was replaced by a feeling of gloom.
Something was badly wrong – there were no wolf odours!
Athaba ran forward, entered the den.
It was empty and cold.
Athaba still tried to fool himself with hope at first, thinking that Ulaala had gone hunting or perhaps taken the pups for a drink at the stream. Going down to the brook and he lapped some water himself, but there was no she-wolf there to welcome him. No sign of the pups either. (They would be over five months old: hardly pups any longer!) The tree-covered slopes to the south were beginning to sing in the wind. A norther was coming in with snow in its teeth. Athaba stared at the tumbling waters of the beck as it danced over his paws. Around him the rocks had a few secrets but they never gave anything away. It was all very bemusing. What to do? He had become, in these last few seasons, a wolf who lost himself in action, a doer that hated to remain too long in thought. But his situation required a lot of thought. He couldn’t just go rushing around in circles, hoping that serendipity would lead him to his family. A plan was required.
Back at the den again he sniffed around, inside and out, for a long time. The marks were old, the scents stale. His mate and pups had left a long time ago. It was pointless searching the ground around the den for a trail. Any spoor would be cold, impossible to follow. The temptation was to rush blindly into the trees and keep running. He wished he were an eagle or some kind of bird. Surely they never lost their kin. They could float on the wind, looking down, and see the whole world spread out beneath them, like a wolf from a high mountain peak. Rivers, forests, tundra, lakes, these would have shape and form up there, would present no barriers. If only he were an eagle!
A blizzard was building up: the first of the winter. He went inside the cold empty den and lay in the chamber, wondering what to do. For too long now he had been thinking of his homecoming and in all those thoughts not once had he considered the fact that the den might be empty. In his mind it was as if time had stopped for Ulaala and the pups, and no changes had taken place while he was absent. In fact the size of the pups would have surprised him since he still pictured them the way he had left them.
Of course, when he really gave it sensible consideration he realised there was no reason why his pack should still be in the den. They obviously thought he was dead. Given that this was the case, it seemed reasonable that Ulaala should leave an area with which she was unfamiliar to travel north, where her old pack were. With her mate dead she would want some help with protecting her pups.
Her old pack?
But she had aided in the killing of one of the males and run away with the perpetrator. Would they accept her back into the pack after such a deed had been committed? More likely they would fall upon her and punish her for desertion and other crimes. What about the pups though? They would be an asset to any pack: six healthy pups. (Providing, of course, that they were all still alive. He hadn’t thought of that before.) Maybe they would take her back on sufferance if she took the pups with her?
Where else might she go?
It was possible that she had gone south, looking for him perhaps, or to find a home in the forests. This was something to keep in mind, although she would need a very secure hiding place to keep herself and her pups safe from humans. Usually, there were not many hunters around during the winter: a few, but the woods were not crawling with them once the snow came. Now that Skassi had turned man-killer, the world was not a predictable place.
He felt daunted all of a sudden. Having been on his long journey with Koonama, he knew how vast was the landscape around him. To the east, from which he had come, was almost infinite tundra. There was no reason not to suppose that the same unlimited lands lay also to the west. Here and there were ranges of mountains forming impassable barriers. Also rivers, but these would happily be frozen during the winter and presented no real problem.
Still, if he let his mind range over the size of the area of search, his head began to spin. It was possible that fifty lifetimes would not give him enough time to carry out such a search.
What choice did he have?
None.
He needed his mate, his family. Somewhere Ulaala was struggling to feed his pups and he should be with her, at her side, providing. They needed him. If he knew he had to spend the rest of his existence this side of death simply in looking for Ulaala, that task would still have to be carried out. Could he just shrug his shoulders and make his home he
re? Or do a cursory search of the surrounding woodlands and hills? Or even search for a season, then give the thing up as hopeless?
None of these.
He had to search until he found her, nothing less.
He decided to confine himself initially to a spiral search from the den outwards, hoping to come across some signs of Ulaala that were not cold. The more he thought about it, the more he convinced himself that she would not have gone without leaving something to tell him where. What he had to do was go out and search the area minutely for any marks.
He was not a wolf to sit around and pine. He needed to be working at something, even if that something seemed hopeless. He could talk to other animals, find out if anyone knew where she had gone. She could not have travelled a long distance without someone being aware of it. And if the distance was short, so much the better, he would find her all the sooner. Optimism suited his personality much better than confusion or despair. If he had to tear the stars down from the night sky, or swallow the sun to get them back, he would do it.
Awaking in the den the next day, he was aware that there had been a heavy fall of snow outside. That deadened snow silence was all around him: the world had been muffled. At the entrance the cold white crystals had pushed themselves inside and formed a plug, which Athaba dug out fairly easily since the snow was still loose and light.
Once out on the landscape again, everything seemed to have taken new positions overnight. The earth had a new language. All previously visible landmarks had been erased or altered. Yesterday’s pattern of smells, which is a wolf’s map of the immediate world, had changed. It had been simplified. There was no complex interwoven mat of scents: just fine fresh threads running to and from definite directions. Normally the smell-pattern took time to analyse, but after such a heavy snow fall only the newly laid odours were available, along with visible spoor.
There was a clarity to the air, the dust of dry days and the mists of damp nights having been borne to the ground by the heavier snow. The light, such as it was, was soft and rounded, producing hazy shadows on the surface.
Athaba was again a little despondent as he made his way through the white blanket, sometimes disappearing into a drift, at others ploughing his own path between rocks and trees. Any signs Ulaala had left him were now buried deep beneath the surface. All summer Ulaala’s movements had been lying on the ground, waiting for him to find them, and after just one night they had been obliterated. Her spoor, her scent, any deliberate marks on tree or rock. He found a weasel shinning up a rock.
‘Do you know of any wolves in the area?’ he asked the weasel in its own language.
The weasel nodded.
‘To the north,’ it said, its eye wide.
He asked the same question of a wolverine and got the same answer.
Hunger forced him to hunt for some of the time, but he tried to combine this with his search of the landscape.
When he found nothing of value to him in the immediate area, he decided to start to make his way northwards, beyond the areas of white and black spruce, and even the cottonwoods, and into the bare rock ranges. The world froze before him as he walked. Ice floes came together to form sheets and fields of frostfire. There were fewer creatures abroad, some having gone underground. Foxes passed him in the night, their lean shapes almost part of the darkness. He envied the fox and its ability to be satisfied with its solitude, wondering why wolves were cursed with the need for company. On his journey into the dark regions of the north, he trapped a raven in a hollow between two rocks.
‘What do you know of wolves in the area?’ he demanded of the raven in its own tongue.
‘Meee? Arrrk. North, try north.’
‘Which pack? Is it the wolf Skassi’s pack?’
The ravens being followers were familiar with the different groups of wolves, knew the location of several packs within flying distance, and often changed from one camp to another as the hunting fared better or worse. This one knew of Skassi’s man-killers and told Athaba they were now in the mountains to the north-west, having to winter in the less accessible areas of the country. Fierce winds, as well as glaciated heights, gave any human hunting parties great difficulties in tracking the pack. Skassi’s wolves reputedly used the high windy ridges and rugged canyons normally only favoured by wild sheep, in order to stay out of reach.
Athaba’s former rival had made the landscape ten times as dangerous for any four-footed traveller than had previously been the case. Normally, there were patchworks of men out hunting for various reasons, some of them poachers, some of them hunting with authority. Never before, however, in wolf memory, had the human communities risen in such numbers and with such single-mindedness. It seemed that every two-footed mammal with a gun was out searching. And the creature they were looking for? The wolf.
Of course, they were killing other creatures as well, such as moose and caribou, with more abandon than usual. But in their eyes was the image of the wolf. They wanted the skins of those who had turned (unthinkable!) to killing men. Despite the fact that humans had left a trail of murder since their emergence from the sea-of-chaos, they were almost insanely self-righteous about their own prerogatives to life. The death of a bear, seal, wolf, or other creature was often necessary, occasionally perhaps regrettable. The life of a human? Why, that was a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-l-y sacred! A human life was the most precious thing amongst all the billions of lives on the planet. A million whales, ten million seals, innumerable wolves, did not make up a single human life. Those who took a human life were hunted down with a ferocity and determination unmatched by any other situation. Men protected their species with a fanaticism not found in any other animal.
Only men were allowed to kill men, and then only in great numbers. When one man killed another man, he was hunted down like any animal, but when hordes of men killed multitudes of their own kind, that was acceptable.
This attitude might have bemused the beasts of the field and the birds of the air who could have felt indignation, except that they had long since ceased to Wonder at the vagaries of man. Now and again they accepted that men went crazy with fury when the blood of their own kind was spilled.
Athaba travelled with great caution, using secret ways and hidden paths, to reach his destination in the north. Like the others, he accepted that the situation was an unusual one, and that when Skassi had been caught, and a period of adjustment had followed, things would settle down to normal once again.
And they would catch the killer pack, eventually. They always did. There would be no rest for man nor beast until Skassi’s skin had been stretched between a set of poles and left to dry.
Athaba battled through the snows, over ice fields blasted by screaming winds, through gales scouring out valleys and blizzards raking the mountains with their savage claws, to the gates of the high north. There he set about systematically trying to find Ulaala’s old pack.
They had not, of course, remained in the same spot where he had left them, but he knew they would be somewhere in the region. He had to travel almost to the shores of the iced-over ocean, before he found traces of their whereabouts. He had no real plan in mind, except to find one of their number – a flankwolf perhaps – who would tell him whether Ulaala was back with her pack once again.
Athaba was aware that his own life was in danger from the pack he sought, remembering he had killed one of them. There were at least two other members of that pack who would recognise his scent: probably more since he had criss-crossed their territory with his trails in the times when he was a raven-wolf. So he had to move with extra caution and attempt to cut a single wolf out of the pack. A youngster if possible. Athaba wanted no fights. He needed to keep his strength for travelling and physical injuries were the last thing he needed at that time.
He kept an attentive eye on the ridges, especially, looking for a silhouette. Occasionally, he heard a solitary howl and moved in its direction, only to find his target had disappeared. It was almost as if they had known he was coming and w
ere playing a game with him, tormenting him.
Chapter Twenty Two
It took a whole month for Athaba to locate the pack. One of the problems of finding Ulaala’s old pack was that Athaba might have difficulty in confirming their identity. He had to rely on his memory of their marks, their scents, from the previous winter. There were one or two other packs in the region which confused such identification. However, he finally found what he believed to be the right group and did one or two surveys of their den from a distance.
The pack had found a cave a long way to the east of their previous den. The cave was in a valley, so Athaba was able to get up to a ridge and observe them without being too obvious. They would, of course, eventually pick up his scent. Their reactions to this he could only guess at. They might be wary, even afraid of him, since he had killed one of their skilled warriors, but then again they might still be harbouring cold anger towards him and might hunt him down in numbers to exact revenge. It was impossible to decide what they would do, really, since the dynamics of packs alter drastically with changes in leadership. Athaba seemed to recall that Ulaala considered her pack leadership to be weak: that power swayed back and forth between uninspired headwolves that lacked the kind of personality to form a strong cohesive group with firm policies. It was a strange world which produced, in some packs, three or four charismatic potential leaders, any one of which was strong, capable and inspired. In such a pack, the struggle for power was occasionally bloody and savage, depending on how close in years the contenders were. Other packs might go for many seasons under indifferent leadership: wolves who dropped in and out of the headwolf position, having no forceful intentions and no positive interest. Such packs displayed a distinct lack of innovative methods in both hunting and surviving. Instead of ‘I will brook no opposition in my desire to be headwolf!’ it was ‘Not me again? I did it last season’.
Midnight's Sun: A Story of Wolves Page 25
