Once There Were Wolves

by Charlotte McConaghy

  There is blood in Nine’s fur. I can’t yet see where he was shot. But his eyes are open and glassy and his tongue is lolling out, and the sight is so upsetting that I feel a shift come upon me. This feeling is why we don’t give them names. Why we don’t get too near to them. Because they are so fragile.

  Now it seems cruel that all he was to us was a number among others.

  I look up at Red and he recoils from whatever he sees in my face. There is a kind of embarrassment in him that I should be so openly vulnerable, so wounded. So blazing.

  I close Nine’s eyes and mouth and stroke his fur over and over again, wanting to sit here and stroke it forever. When I can’t put it off any longer I ask Niels to carry him back to the car, but when he is too heavy for Niels, it is Duncan who lifts the wolf into his arms and limps his way back over the hills.

  An old man sits outside Red McRae’s house. The spitting image of Red, plus a few decades. His father, I’d put money on it. He watches us load the wolf into our truck, and he lowers his hat to his chest in a sign of respect I could do without.

  * * *

  We take Nine to Amelia’s veterinary clinic to perform the autopsy. We know how he died, but there is more information we can gather from his body, including the contents of his stomach and digestive system to determine what he’s been feeding on, and his overall health before the gunshot. When we have worked the carcass we will bury him. I’ve buried wolves before and I will do it again. I never make peace with it.

  Duncan is in the waiting room to hear our findings.

  “I want McRae charged,” I say.

  “He said—”

  “I know what he said. Do your job.”

  * * *

  I arrive home as night is beginning to fall. The days are growing longer and twilight brings an unearthly glow to the light.

  I’m unlocking my front door when I hear it.

  The howl of a wolf.

  The first in these lands for hundreds of years.

  My hands drop and I turn to the forest. A gust of wind rustles through the leaves of the trees and carries the sound to me. It raises the hairs on my arms and neck. It is filled with a desperate aching question. And as it continues on through the night without answer, growing less hopeful by the hour, I know which wolf the eerie sound belongs to. Snowy Number Six, calling her lost mate home.

  8

  Number Six, alpha female of her dwindling pack, has not stopped howling for two weeks, from dusk until dawn. It’s driving everyone in earshot mad. I’ve had daily phone calls from properties and houses spanning kilometers telling me in no uncertain terms to shut her up. As if she is my dog, and I have merely to discipline her better. I try to explain that she’s a wild creature in mourning. But the thought of a beast grieving her mate in such a confronting, almost human way is too much for most folk. None of us can help carrying her voice within us.

  * * *

  I wake before dawn and go walking.

  Up the driveway and over the fence. Cutting across the paddock to the looming shadow of the spruce forest. Through trees so tall and thick that even were there sunlight it would be dark as night within. I touch flaky bark as I pass trunks, reach my fingertips to the prickly edges of the needle-like leaves. Silently I tell them I hope they are left alone and in peace but I know this won’t be. The track leads me up and around, over a stream that trickles invisibly; I only know I’m crossing it because my feet come away wet. I have a destination. Through this man-made forest, its carefully measured Sitka spruces planted only to be cut down, to a wilder place, a much older one. As I leave the heavy, dense trees I emerge into a sloping landscape dotted with thousands of silver birch, glowing in the moonlight. I take a breath; the forest takes it with me. Wind is a distant ocean, calming as it reaches me until it’s no more than a kiss to my cheeks, my eyelids, my lips. I recognize this kiss; I have felt it before.

  * * *

  A year passed in Dad’s forest. He came and went, but mostly he went. Aggie and I kept going to school, at seventeen it was our last year. We worked the garden to make sure we had food, tended the horses and the house and went hunting for meat we could sell for some cash. We were lonely but we had each other, and really we were too tired to be lonely.

  When Dad stayed gone for longer and longer and finally seemed to be that way permanently, when he stopped being able to recognize us, I felt a great defiance in my soul and knew I had to do something, try something. So on a Tuesday morning I loaded my little family into our rattling old car and set off on a very long drive. First to the west coast of BC, not far really from where we lived, to the tide pools where a strange and fey-like breed of wolf was rumored to live, the sea wolves who fed on salmon and seals and swam the waves they were born to. Most of these wolves had never seen a mountain or a deer, and on this remote stretch of First Nations land they had not yet learned to fear humans. We parked our car and walked through the conifers and down onto the rocky stretch of beach. The mighty Pacific blew a salty wind onto our faces and we sat, binoculars at the ready, waiting for a sighting. None came. The wolves were off in the land of driftwood and ocean.

  Next, south into America. Across Washington and into Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Big-sky country and god, it was big. To the Lamar Valley. A river valley wide and famed for its wildlife. The road here curved and then turned straight as a knife through wide flat plains and distant snowcapped mountains. There were dozens of people lined up beside their parked cars, quietly awaiting a wolf or bear sighting through their long-lens cameras.

  I pulled the car over at the end of the line of spectators, disappointed not to be alone. Aggie sat on the car bonnet and closed her eyes to the sun. For some reason Dad set himself to the task of weaving grass into a basket and when I asked him what it was for he said, as though I were an idiot, that it was to carry things. We saw no wolves in the Lamar Valley, though I’d read at length about the famous pack who lived there and was named after it. But we did see bison suckling calves and bucking heads and swimming across rivers. I saw birds of prey hovering, watching. And a young man parked beside us admitted to having seen a black bear and her cub amble past only the day before.

  Wolves were here somewhere, breathing and sleeping and hunting and playing, and whether we saw them or not they made this place richer and more alive just by existing. I could feel them, and I was glad as the Wyoming sun set purple, pink, and gold over the prairie that the wolves had remained hidden, that their lives were their own, their mystery remained.

  Aggie didn’t understand. She was bored and wanted to leave but she also wanted me to see what we’d come here for. The wolves were the point of the trip, after all. Except that they weren’t, not really. I wanted our dad back, our all-knowing, large as a Doug fir father. I wanted his passion back, his love of nature that I might show him I had cultivated the same. I wanted to share this awakening in me, share what I had learned, what I now knew my life was to be, and for him to be proud of me. That hope trailed behind us like a rattling tin can for a while until I cut it loose for good.

  As I drove the rusting old Chevy van out of Utah, Dad fell asleep and Aggie woke.

  It wasn’t far now.

  “When we get back we have to start talking about some kind of help,” my sister said from the back seat.

  I didn’t reply.

  “I found a couple of places.”

  “He needs to stay in his home,” I said.

  “It’s gonna get worse and we don’t know how to look after him.”

  “We can learn.”

  “Are you gonna feed him and wipe his ass? Because I’m not.”

  I winced. “Those places would kill him.” Being stuck indoors, without his horses, eating microwave meals in front of a TV. It would kill him.

  “Maybe a quicker death would be kind,” Aggie muttered.

  I looked at her in the rearview. “I know you did not just say that.”

  She sighed, meeting my eyes. “No. But it is gonna get worse.”

>   I nodded, and started thinking of ways to set my sister free. Trouble was, even if I could she wouldn’t go.

  Left onto Highway 25. Into Fishlake National Forest.

  I pulled over. Dad woke and we all climbed out of the van to go the last part on foot. “Where are we?” he asked.

  “Fishlake,” I said. Then added, “America.”

  He peered around at the trees, confused. They were not trees he recognized. But he said once that forests are all of our homes, no matter where in the world, and that’s what I was hoping for, that this knowledge lived somewhere too deep to misplace.

  “Come on,” I said. “Follow me, I want to show you something.”

  The air was warm, gentle.

  We three crested a rise and saw a forest of quaking aspen. Thousands of slender white trunks and a canopy of electric yellow mist above.

  Our fingers trailed the smooth bark and I said, “It’s one tree.”

  “What do you mean?” Aggie asked.

  “It’s not a forest. It’s one tree. One huge organism. It’s called the trembling giant and it’s the oldest living thing on this planet, and the largest. Some think it could be a million years old. And it’s dying. We’re killing it.”

  I turned to see my father crouch to the earth’s floor and place a large hand on it. Over the web of connected roots, from which shot thousands of genetically identical trunks, clones of each other. I watched as he closed his eyes and listened to the giant tremble beneath us. When he opened them once more they held tears and the trees had returned him to us.

  “My girls,” he said. “You’ve grown up.”

  Aggie held him. I pressed my cheek to one of the tender, elegant trunks. Wind whispered through its naked branches and against my eyelids, my lips. A kiss. I could almost hear it breathing, could feel its heartbeat beneath and around and above me, the oldest language of all.

  * * *

  Now, in a different forest, a highlands place as dawn breaks, I hear a bird sing nearby; I imagine it a nightingale. I wish I knew what it was saying. I come to a small loch and sit at its edge to watch the dawn light paint its color, gray to blue to silver. A mist carries in over the water. The water birds are waking, calling to each other.

  I want never to leave this place. I want never to see another human again, I want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything. The aloneness is exquisite; it is calm. Until Number Nine slips back into my thoughts, the way he’s been doing since he was killed, and the man who killed him is there too and some savage whim lifts my voice in a bellow, the very same that used to compel my sister to break the quiet. It feels good but only for a moment. When the sound fades I see that the birds have been frightened away.

  * * *

  I don’t walk straight home. I take a longer route, my feet leading me to the hill that overlooks the back of his cottage. From here I can see his kitchen window. I can see him moving around, even through the shroud of morning mist. I watch him, wanting to walk down the hill to his door but unsure if it’s to confront him—to ask if he has charged Red, to give voice to my anger—or for something gentler and growing.

  The dog starts barking and I turn home before Duncan spots me.

  * * *

  My phone rings while I’m driving to work. It’s Evan. “Don’t get angry,” he starts.

  I sigh.

  “Niels went out and found the den.”

  “What? Fuck!” I hang up so hard it hurts my finger, before pulling into the parking space of the base camp. I burst through the front door, eyes swiveling to land on Niels, who looks sheepish in the kitchen. Zoe and Evan take cover by the computers.

  “I must have misheard on the phone just now because I’m sure you did not go out to that den after I specifically told you not to.”

  Niels holds his hands up to stall me. “We needed to locate it.”

  “She’s going to have those pups any day now, she needs her den.”

  “She wasn’t even there when I found it.”

  “That’s worse!”

  “Let’s tone down the temper,” Evan suggests, eyes pointedly shifting behind me.

  I glance over my shoulder to see Duncan standing in the doorway, watching this exchange, but don’t have space to worry about what he’s doing here right now. I turn back to Niels. “What were you thinking?”

  “You’ve been hands-off this whole time, since we got here,” he says calmly; he’s always so goddamn calm. “I don’t know what’s making you so timid this time around but you know as well as the rest of us that sometimes we have to get involved.”

  Heat floods my cheeks. “If you’ve displaced her from her den,” I say, “I may actually kill you. The cop’s here—he can be my witness.” Instead of waiting for a response, I stride back outside to cool off. I lean against the twisted trunk of a juniper, my favorite tree in the area, and watch the gentle movement of the forest. Sunlight in shafts through the canopy. A rustling in one of the hip-high ferns. I’ve been non-interventionist, but I didn’t think that was the same as hands-off.

  It’s not long before I hear the door and Evan is beside me. He’s quiet a while, then murmurs, “We did need to locate the den.”

  “Not by going there in person, not this close to the birth.” If Six left to find food, and she returns to smell human at her den site, she won’t go back there. Even if she’d had the pups she’d be likely to abandon them, so great is their fear of humans. Niels knows this, we talked about it yesterday when I decided we couldn’t risk going out there, not yet.

  “We might have to bring her in,” I say.

  “Then we’ll make that work.”

  I glance sideways at him. “Have I been timid?”

  Evan tilts his head. “Just … unwilling to get too involved.”

  “I want them to be free.”

  “Aye, but we brought them here, and we put them in danger. They may yet need our help.”

  I nod slowly. My father used to say the world turned wrong when we started separating ourselves from the wild, when we stopped being one with the rest of nature, and sat apart. He said we might survive this mistake if we found a way to rewild ourselves. But I don’t know how to do that when our existence frightens the creatures we must reconnect with.

  I would give anything not to frighten them; it makes me so sad. And yet the truth is that their fear of us keeps them safe from us.

  Inside the cabin there is an awkward silence as they wait to see if my temper still reigns. I meet Niels’s eyes. “Can you make me a map to the den?”

  “Of course.” He jumps to the task, while I start readying a travel pack.

  “Can I’ve a word?” Duncan asks me.

  “I can’t right now, Chief. I’ve gotta get out to that den.” It occurs to me that he might have seen me this morning, watching him from the hill, and if that’s the case I might die of embarrassment.

  “I’ll tag along then, shall I?”

  I laugh. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m going alone. The fewer bodies traipsing around out there the better.”

  “Tell you what. I’ll step where you step and make no noise. I can be subtle when I need to be.”

  “Is that right.” He’s watching me. Trying to figure me out. Circling. I don’t need to make it easy for him, so I glance pointedly at his leg. “You’d be wasting a day following me out there and I don’t need to be slowed down.”

  I take the map from Niels and shoulder my pack, then head out to the stables to ready a horse. As Duncan follows me and starts to do the same I stare at him in irritation. He’s audacious, I’ll afford him that.

  I give in, my mind already darting ahead to worry about the wolf. “You do what I say, okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  * * *

  “The female who’s been howling at night?” I say as our horses walk through the dappled morning sun.

  “Aye,” Duncan says. “I’ve had complaints. She’s scaring people. What’s wrong with her?”
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br />   “Her mate was the male Red shot. She’s calling for him, hoping he’ll come home.”

  “Oh,” he says. “I didn’t know they did that.”

  We duck beneath the long, twisted branches of the Scots pines. It’s easier traveling now than in winter, when snow turns the ground perilous. Still, there’s no path, and the underbrush is thick. We go slowly so the horses don’t lose their footing.

  “The breeding wolves—you’d call them alphas—mate for life,” I say. “We think this female alpha—Number Six—is pregnant. Either that or it’s a pseudopregnancy. We might have to bring her in.”

  “Why’s that?” Duncan asks. His leg made it difficult for him to mount the horse, but now that he’s up, he looks okay in the saddle, a bit tense. I gather he’s not much of a rider.

  “Raising pups is a family thing for wolves. Every wolf in a pack takes on a role. They rely heavily on each other for survival. Six will have to do it alone. It’d be hard on her to hunt while suckling. Even harder if we’ve displaced her from her den.”

  “Could it make her more aggressive? More likely to make the easy kill?”

  “Livestock?” I think about his question. It’s been keeping me up at night. Eventually I say, “That’s why we might have to bring her in.”

  Something compels me to continue, “Wolves get lonely, same as us. Difference is that for wolves being alone makes them vulnerable, while for humans it keeps us safe.”

  Duncan scratches his salt-and-pepper beard. “I’d have to disagree with you there, Inti Flynn.”

  The white trunks of the birches seem to glow. Their tiny leaves shimmer green, maybe nearest to Werner’s siskin green, the color of ripe Colmar pears, Irish pitcher apples, and the glittering mineral called uran-mica. They give the world a spring haze; even the bluebells are coming out, carpeting the ground in purple and turning this forest from the stark, dangerous place it felt in winter to someplace warm, pretty, welcoming. All around us the birds sing a joyous racket.