Midnight's Sun: A Story of Wolves

by Garry Kilworth

  Hope entered the pup’s heart again and from then on he went about his duties with a little more enthusiasm. Ulaala had promised them they would escape and his mother always kept her word.

  Before that could happen, however, Yanthra found he had to make his own plans for escape.

  The pack woke after a general sleep to find Ginnant’s body stiff and lifeless. He had died, soundlessly, during rest. There were a few flecks of blood on his lips to suggest that his lungs had not been in the best of condition. His death left Yanthra without a tutor and to his (and Ulaala’s) horror, Skassi insisted that Ginnant’s replacement should be Nidra.

  The she-wolf who had been displaced by Ulaala from Skassi’s ‘side’ could not wait to get hold of one of her rival’s pups.

  ‘I’m going to make that little devil sorry you’re his mother,’ whispered Nidra to Ulaala. ‘He’ll wish he died at birth. I’ll teach him, all right. I’ll teach him the meaning of suffering …’

  A fight followed this remark, and the two she-wolves had to be forcibly parted by shoulderwolves. Skassi was very angry and would not listen to Ulaala’s pleas. He insisted that Nidra would not dare to harm the pup when she knew the youngster was under Skassi’s protection. But the wolf leader’s mind was somewhere else most of the time. He was becoming increasingly difficult to reach, both in a mental and physical sense. There was a high rock on which he lay and always this was guarded by two of his shoulderwolves. Approaches from other pack members were discouraged. Skassi divorced himself from the petty squabbles of the pack and when Yanthra looked up at the rogue headwolf, almost always occupying his lofty position above the den, it was obvious that the mega’s thoughts were on some distant place beyond the ken of mere pups. The eyes belonged to some time in the past: there was no future in them.

  Skassi’s indifference to all pack politics which did not directly concern himself left the field open to the sneak bullies and life became uncomfortable for most of the pups and especially for Yanthra. In fact he was tormented so much by Nidra that he made his own plans for escape. Almost a yearling now, the pup grew stronger by the day and one rest time, without saying anything to his mother, he slipped out of the den area and made his way back through the mountain passes to where the old pack were still wintering.

  When he arrived with his alarming tale, however, they turned him away. They were afraid that Skassi and his renegades would follow the pup and retribution would fall on any who gave Yanthra shelter. They gave him food and returned him to the trail.

  The youngster made his way back into the mountains, to a place where food was to be had, albeit in small quantities. He survived from day to day, all the time expecting to be followed and forcibly dragged back to Skassi’s hideout. However, dark days passed and no wolf came up the trail, until his father arrived.

  ‘And that’s the whole story,’ said Yanthra to Athaba. ‘Of course, it’s not really the whole story, but all the important bits are there. What shall we do now?’

  Athaba mulled over what his son had told him. The situation was certainly very grave. If he did not get to Ulaala and the rest of his pups before spring, the hunters might very well get there first and kill the whole pack. Then again, Skassi would probably move on once the weather improved, and it was difficult to say which way he would go. Spring was not now far off. Cracks of light were appearing in the long night.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, truthfully. ‘It’ll require a lot of thought. We’ll talk about it when you’ve rested.’

  There was another problem which had to be considered. Although Yanthra had indicated that his mother was not happy at being told she was Skassi’s mate, she and Athaba had been apart for a long time. Too long. They hardly knew each other, if the truth were to be faced, even though they had had pups. How long had they actually spent in one another’s company? A season only. There was no reason why Ulaala should retain any feelings of loyalty towards Athaba. She might even have forgotten him. He was dead to her mind. A pup’s eyes are always clouded by the certainty that its mother and father are fond of one another and wish to be together. This might not necessarily be true. Ulaala may have formed an attachment for the rogue leader. After all, even a youngster like Yanthra had been able to recognise that Skassi had immense charisma. Such personalities, however misguided and dangerous, were often fatally alluring to normal wolves. How else had Skassi managed to mobilise a huge pack of mankillers?

  For his part there would never be any other mate for Athaba but Ulaala. However, he could not reasonably expect Ulaala to feel the same way about him. After all, he had ‘deserted’ her when she needed him most, when the pups needed both parents. When she found out he was not dead, she might even be angry with him, for allowing himself to be captured at such a time.

  All this was conceivable.

  He had to prepare himself for such a disappointment, but one thing was certain, he could not leave his pups to be slaughtered and he knew Ulaala would agree with him on that issue. She had told Yanthra that she planned to take him and his siblings away when the spring came. If Athaba did that for her, she could then choose whether she wanted to stay with Skassi or join him and the pups. That seemed to him to be fair. He had to give her the choice and not use the pups, who would be yearlings by then anyway, to force her back to his side.

  He thought about other matters.

  He might have to fight Skassi. That did not bother him as much as it should, but there were wolves who would rush to the assistance of their great leader. Athaba might be confident about a victory over Skassi (and even that was not certain, since fanatics tend to have a suicidal strength to draw on), but he certainly could not fight a whole pack. This meant he had to choose his moments very carefully indeed. It would be no good marching in and demanding the return of his pups. If he was not leapt on and torn apart at the time, the pack would be warned and ready for him.

  Skassi himself seemed now to be the wolf on the tower of rock who communes with his ancestors but not his fellows. He sounded – deranged. There had been others like him in wolf history. In the end they reached a stage where they believed themselves invincible, omnipotent, unbeatable. In the end they were destroyed by themselves as much as by any enemy. If Skassi had detacheed himself from his pack and was now spiritually isolated, there would be no reason in him. His compassion would have been burned out. His uunderstanding of his kind would lie buried under the great weight of his own self-importance, his sense of a sacred trust, a mission sanctified by the voices of his ancestors. Voices that now occupied his head and drowned the sound of pack.

  How had Skassi reached such a state …?

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Skassi heard the sound of the gunfire from the middle of the frozen lake. It did not go on for long, but he knew from its repetitiveness that it was devastating. He left his quarry and raced back to the snowbanks. It took him an age to reach the spot where he knew he would find the pack. By that time the sound of the air machine was circling in from the east, but he would not have cared greatly if it had been directly overheard. There was a terrible feeling in his chest. Instinctively, he knew that the world had changed within the last few moments.

  On reaching the slope where the corpses lay, he stared about him in bewilderment for a while. Then he went up to the nearest dead wolf, a womb-brother. Megilla was on his underside, the right way up, his limbs splayed out from the four corners of his body. He looked like he was forming himself into a cross. His head was flat on the ground, mandible resting on the snow, with his nose pointed to the north. The eyes were open and staring. Along his back were four large ugly holes which had oozed thick blood. This had frozen on contact with the cold air.

  ‘Megilla,’, said Skassi, nosing him under the chin.

  The head flopped to the side.

  Skassi went rapidly from one to the other of the pack until he was sure that they were all dead. Then he ran away from them, still in a state of shock, and wandered around for a while without any set purpose. A
t one point he came across Athaba’s tracks in the snow and with hope fluttering in his breast, followed them. But they ended at the edge of a cliff and when Skassi looked over he could see nothing but snow beneath. He sniffed Athaba’s spoor, ascertained that it was indeed his old rival, then left the place sadly. He was now convinced that he was the only member of the pack left alive.

  There was the sound of the flying machine returning. The wolf hid behind a rock overhang and Watched as two men go out of the machine and then threw the bodies inside. When all the corpses were in the flying machine, it took off again, slipping up and sideways into the white sky until it was lost from view.

  Skassi headed south and walked for two days without a break. Then, exhausted, he fell to the ground and slept where he lay. On waking, he found himself to be extremely hungry and went on a hunt, which kept him busy. Once he had fed, however, the full impact of the last few days hit him so hard he physically staggered.

  He knew he was alone.

  That thought – the idea that he was alone – was almost enough to drive him mad there and then. For the first time in his life he appreciated what he had done to Athaba, when he had caused him to be banished from the pack. Yet Athaba had still trailed after the pack: knew his kin were close by. It was the most terrible experience, to be alone, and if there had been a cliff nearby he would have dashed over it in that moment, simply to stop the hollow ache in his heart and head. He felt as if all the space, the emptiness of the tundra, were within him. Somehow, all those geographical wastelands had moved from outside to inside, and his heart lay on their bleak desolate flats and ranges, enclosed by nothing.

  For a long while he just kept heading south, picking up food as he went. There seemed to be a sense of purpose in him but he had no idea where he was going or why. He simply travelled through the darkness as though it were a tunnel until he came to a human village. The night that he arrived at this place, which could have been any human habitation, he rested on a hill amongst some trees and waited until dawn.

  Skassi had a wakeful dream that night, of the land that he loved. The land of the caribou, moose and snowshoe hare: creatures that ran through boreal forests of white and black spruce, larch, birch and aspen. The land of the red fox that hid itself amongst alder and willow, where the air was full of raptors who used the sky as a great swing, to stoop and rise, stoop and rise, in magnificent sweeping arcs. Born to the sound of giant slabs of ice crashing together, Skassi needed no gods to awe him, no supreme beings to amaze him. The natural forces around him, that filled the sky with white dust and thunder, that populated every plain and taiga, every field of cotton grass where seas of white stretched beyond even the imagination, were enough to humble him and give him a sense of his own insignificance in the world.

  He had always distrusted mysticism because he felt it robbed the wolf of his appreciation of the real world, which had wonders enough for any creature.

  What beast, listening to the song of the ice, that eerie creaking as temperatures changed, could doubt that the earth was the only god? It did not matter what the season, there was always wonder over the land. Sometimes there was golden moss in the muskegs and fireweed spreading like red hot lava around the throats of broad lakes and oxbows. Sometimes the ground was covered in multicoloured berries and purple spruce cones that had dropped from their needled mothers like pieces of midnight sun. Sometimes, on windy days, there were seedling threads, wispy-white, filling the air.

  Then there were the mountains, that was the great god earth rolling his shoulders slowly over seasons out of time. On the lower hills, greenery, and moving skyward the huge grey slabs of rock that supported and maintained the glaciers, winter’s children.

  No mysticism could match such grandeur.

  Skassi was dedicated to the land in which he lived and the one dark stain upon it, that spread wider each season, was man. He intended to do something about that blemish. It was time to begin eradicating it.

  The sun came up, late in the day, and Skassi left his knoll to go down amongst the houses. He went down amongst the enemy with no thought in mind at that time but to see what kind of creatures they were in their own dens. What kind of beast it was that had wiped out his whole pack in the blink of an eagle’s eye. He knew they hunted wildfowl on the tundra, where the lakes were covered in ducks and geese. They ate those. He knew they liked to shoot the hare for its meat and the caribou for its coat. In that they were no different from the wolf. Why, though, sweep through a whole herd, or flock, or pack, and cut down every living thing for no apparent reason? This was the great mystery of man which he wanted to uncover.

  The people remained out of sight. Then as he was passing a house a human stepped out on to a porch and down the steps to the ground. The human was watching its feet, careful of the slippery stairs and afterwards the icy street. Finally, when it was about two lengths from the wolf it looked up from its boots and met Skassi’s eyes. There were a few moments during which they simply stared at each other. Then the human face twisted and it began to scream in a shrill voice. The two-legged creature’s eyes were now wide and wild, and its mouth open and red. Whether man, woman or child was not evident, not to Skassi whose whole attention was taken by the noise this human made, rather than noticing height or form.

  The screaming penetrated deep into Skassi’s head. Skassi’s brain flattened in his skull, his eyes went dark. The shrieking terrified as well as incensed him. The sound was like thorns behind his brow. He acted instinctively. He fell upon the screaming creature, swiftly tearing its throat. The act was over in a second: one lunge and then away towards the foothills.

  Before he was fully up the slope above the town, a hunt was in progress. His pursuers were many. They came out, some ill-equipped, to get him before he disappeared into the wilderness.

  At least, he thought, licking the blood from the corner of his mouth, they now have a reason.

  How easy it had been! Why, these creatures were no more invincible than lemmings. When you caught them by surprise, they were virtually defenceless. They didn’t even have horns. The arms flailed uselessly and the legs were not made for swift movement. The caribou was quicker, more formidable. They had no teeth nor claws. The hawk and the lynx were better armed.

  The guns and machines made men what they were, and if you caught them without metal in their hands, they were easy kills!

  Skassi escaped because it was winter. Although his pursuers returneedd to their homes and prepared themselves for a long hunt, he was by that time out of their reach, well into the mountains. He found a cave in which to hide, knowing that the falling snow would soon cover any tracks. Still in a high state of excitement, with his heart racing, he lay in the darkness of the narrow tunnel and considered his act of rebellion.

  Yes, it had been so easy! This was the thing that surprised him the most. Since he had been a pup he had been taught that humans were to be avoided because they were the most dangerous animals on the earth. Yet he had wounded, perhaps killed one of these creatures, with very little effort at all. And it was over and done with so quickly it was almost frustrating. He had wanted to savour the act.

  Now that he had time, he went over the attack in his mind. The human had stepped out of the dwelling, dressed in furs. From behind it, from the open habitation, had wafted a mixed human stench: a disgusting compound of odours which included sleep, food, sweat, and many other stale smells. This was so strong and revolting that Skassi almost turned and ran from it.

  Skassi had no idea what sex the creature had been, or whether it had been a mature human, or one not fully grown. He had seen the look in the eyes change from puzzlement to fear, once the creature had realised that he was not a dog but a wolf. He had smelled the fear. It had swamped his senses, making the adrenalin surge through his body. There followed the screaming sound. Then the creature had raised its arms in front of its face, as if it knew that Skassi was about to leap, to protect itself.

  That movement had acted as a trigger on Skas
si’s reactions.

  He had felt the power jolt through his body. He sprang and though his body weight was only three-quarters that of the human, bore the biped to ground. There was noise coming from the creature’s throat, but Skassi soon stopped that. He would have liked to have dragged the human along the ground, gripping with his teeth and twisting and turning the meat with his jaws, shaking it. Of course, that would have meant his own death, because the human’s pack came out shortly afterwards to find out what was troubling one of its own.

  The proof was now there. Humans were far from formidable foes. They were in fact extremely easy to kill, once you got them without their weapons. Skassi felt he had exploded a myth that had protected these creatures for a long time now.

  Of course, if they did have their machines and guns with them, then men were very dangerous. But the times one came across them when they were unarmed were not infrequent. Perhaps their resources were finite? Maybe they only had a limited number of these weapons and if you kept on the move you could avoid those with and kill those without? There was a thought! Organise the wolves into mankilling packs.

  War! War against men.

  His nostrils burned with excitement. His brain swirled with fantastic images. The audacity of the idea was heart-stopping. Skassi would not only have his revenge, he would find a place of fame amongst his more illustrious ancestors. He would be a legend amongst wolves, outshining even the great warrior-priestess Shesta who had triumphed over the dog-king Skellion Broadjaw in the battles after the Firstdark. To be one of the immortals!

  But, he quickly reminded himself as this shining image threatened to take him over completely, his main purpose would be to teach humans a lesson. To show them that they could not massacre the pack of Skassi without being punished.

  In his hole in the rock, while the air machines were searching for him, and dozens of humans tracked him on foot, he made his plans. When he came out and began looking for recruits, he found his scheme to be self-generating. He had attacked and, most likely, killed a human. Those men who had come after him had shot and killed anything that even resembled a wolf. There were now wolves in the region who had lost their mates, or pups, or pack members. He found bitterness amongst his kind and used this to gather wolves to his cause. Of course, the grieving wolves had no idea the shootings had been the result of an attack by him on the human settlement. And left to themselves they would normally have licked their wounds and found a new hunting ground. But Skassi sought them out, fuelled any anger he found with strong rhetoric. He convinced them that the time had come for wolves to make a stand, that they should fight instead of run.