Secrets of the Wolves (29 page)

TaLi was dreaming of rabbits when something shook her awake. She would have cried out if a gnarled hand had not covered her mouth. In the glow of the fire she made out the face of her grandmother.

“Come with me,” the old woman said. “Make no noise.” And although she was frightened, TaLi obeyed. It would not have occurred to her to disobey the old woman, who was the tribe’s krianan, their spiritual guide.

TaLi followed the krianan silently until they reached the river. Then she let out a cry of fear. She had crossed the river only once before, when the entire tribe had gone on a hunt, and she had clung to her aunt’s back rigid in terror. Her grip had loosened only the slightest bit and she had felt the river pulling at her like a hungry beast intent on swallowing her. Her aunt had taken her by the wrist and pulled her along to safety, leaving dark bruises on TaLi’s arm. She had been smaller then, and her aunt was stronger than her grandmother. She could not imagine crossing the fast-moving water on her own.

“Quiet,” the old woman ordered. She tied together several strips of soft, strong antelope hide, fastening one end around TaLi’s waist and then to her own. The other end she tied to a long strand of skins that stretched all the way across the river. TaLi could just make out through the moonlight that far across the river, the skins were tied to a stout trunk of a willow.

The old woman set out across the river, stepping agilely from one half-sunken stone to the next, using her walking stick to steady herself and the antelope skins as a guide. TaLi, tethered to the old woman, was forced to follow. Her legs were too short to manage the stones, so she clung to the skins with desperate determination. At first, where the river was shallow, she managed to stay upright, stumbling in the mud. But when the river deepened, she could only flop in the water and crawl from stone to stone.

When she reached the halfway point across the river, she saw a boy, a few years older than she, standing next to the willow and holding tight to the skins. Each time she fell, he pulled against the skins, ensuring that neither she nor her grandmother was pulled under. After what seemed like an entire night, TaLi stumbled the last few feet across the river.

“You’re going to need to learn to swim,” the old krianan said, “but you are not without courage. That, at least, is a start.”

TaLi swallowed her fear. If the old woman thought she was brave she would be so. Without another word, the old woman strode into the woods. With a curious look at the young boy, TaLi followed.

Ten minutes later, TaLi crouched in the old woman’s shelter, still shivering in spite of the warm, overly large bearskin clothes the old woman had given her. She drank tea from a thick gourd cup and immediately felt revived. She wondered what her grandmother had put in it.

“Good,” the old woman said when TaLi had finished her drink. “Come on, now.”

They walked for almost an hour to a flat clearing encircled by stones. There were people there, people TaLi didn’t recognize. They greeted her grandmother.

“This is the girl, Nia?” asked a woman, frowning. “She’s much too young.”

“She’ll get older,” TaLi’s grandmother said.

“And then she’ll forget how to understand the animals. As has every other child we’ve brought the wolves since KaraLi died.”

TaLi stood up straighter. KaraLi had been her mother’s name.

“Perhaps,” the old woman said, unruffled. “We won’t know until she’s grown.”

“Can she understand the guardian wolves?”

“That is one of the things we’re here to find out.”

The other woman opened her mouth, then cocked her head, just like the raven who had made fun of TaLi. TaLi laughed.

“They’re coming,” the frowning raven woman said, and TaLi was surprised at the mix of excitement and fear in the woman’s voice. “Too late to do anything about her now. You’d better hope they aren’t hungry.” The woman grinned at TaLi. “Do you taste good, little girl?” The woman cackled, and TaLi’s grandmother placed her hand upon TaLi’s head.

“She’ll be fine,” the old woman said. “Do you really think I can’t recognize one who has the gift? I even found you, InaLa, and your talent was hidden behind pride and silliness.”

Whatever the younger woman was going to say was stopped when eight giant wolves strode into the clearing. TaLi stifled a gasp and pressed close to her grandmother.

The huge wolves—they seemed almost twice as large as any she had ever seen—stared at TaLi. Two of them strode forward, sniffing at the girl. TaLi resisted the temptation to scream, to run, to push the wolves away. She held perfectly still and allowed the beasts to smell her all over.

One of them gave what TaLi swore was a laugh. NiaLi listened intently then spoke to TaLi.

“Jandru says he likes you,” she told the girl. “He says he considers you worthy.”

The wolves and humans spoke for hours, or at least that’s what TaLi assumed they did, since to her the wolves merely made noises and moved their faces. When weariness overtook her fear and curiosity, TaLi fell asleep.

She awoke surrounded by the soft fur of a wolf. The wolf smelled of forest and of flesh, and TaLi felt warm, protected. At first all she could see was the fur and a bit of pink flesh showing through it. When she turned her head she saw her grandmother’s face looking pleased.

“What do you think, Jandru?” TaLi heard the old woman say to the mountain of fur that surrounded her. The rumbling in the wolf’s chest sounded like a laugh. TaLi felt the last of her fear depart as NiaLi pulled her from the wolf’s embrace. TaLi was so tired that she nearly fell flat on her face, but she told her legs to move and, stumbling, her mind full of questions, she followed her grandmother into the wolf-scented night.

I felt a jolt, then heard the flapping of wings. Then I was lying next to TaLi, listening to her heartbeat, inhaling her scent. Tlitoo stood a few steps away, watching me.

“You saw it, wolf? You saw?”

Thoughts raced through my mind. When I’d first seen the spiritwolf, Lydda, when I was four moons old, I had worried I might be crazy. Now I was seeing the thoughts of another creature. But I wasn’t alone. Tlitoo was there, and he had seen it, too.

“How come you can do that?” I demanded. “Does it only work with humans?”

“No,” he said. “I do not think so.” He hopped over to where Ázzuen slept and looked a dare at me.

“I am Nejakilakin,” he quorked, “the winged traveler, the first born in the memory of any living raven. I bring together the worlds. It is what I was born for.”

“Winged traveler?” I said. Both Lydda and NiaLi had told me to seek answers from the one who traveled. When I was a pup and Tlitoo a fledgling, he said he had been sent to me.

He peered at me and quorked again.

I just stared at him. I had known Tlitoo most of my life and he had just been an ordinary raven.

“Do you want to see if it works with others than your girl, or not, wolf?” he asked, sounding more like himself. “I do!”

Watching TaLi’s memories had made me as tired as if I had run three hunts, and I felt my eyelids trying to close. Besides, it seemed wrong to go into Ázzuen’s mind without asking him. I wouldn’t want someone doing it to me. But of course I wanted to see.

Tlitoo had said that what he could do was important to our task. Ázzuen was my closest friend. Maybe he wouldn’t mind. I got to my feet and walked as quietly as I could over to where Ázzuen slept beside BreLan. He had rolled a little bit away from the boy. Tentatively, I lay down beside Ázzuen and pressed up against him. Tlitoo immediately leapt upon my back. Scent disappeared and flapping wings lifted me, then dropped me. This time, I was prepared for the feeling of falling, and because I was seeing things through the normal senses of a wolf, I felt neither sick nor dizzy. I felt Ázzuen’s breath match mine, his heart beating evenly. I rolled over with him, and he shifted in his sleep and fell more deeply into the world of dreams.

Ázzuen remembered the day he first opened his eyes. Before that day, everything had been about the taste of a sweet nourishing substance on his tongue, the softness of a warm form next to him, the feel of a heavy, steady beat, and the scent of moist earth. There were also other squirming forms that sometimes shoved him away from the place where the warmth and nourishment came from. The first thing he saw, when he opened his eyes, was soft fur and the rise and fall of his mother’s belly. Later, the other pups told him that they couldn’t remember opening their eyes. They couldn’t even remember the first time they heard a sound. It was as if their brains were deadened in some way. Marra said she could just barely remember the first day she was out of the den, though to Ázzuen it was like a thousand sensations dashing across his nose, a tumble of thoughts pounding in his brain.

Ázzuen remembered hearing Ruuqo and Rissa talking about him that first day outside the den. One of the squirming bodies had stopped moving, and Rissa had shoved it aside. Somehow, though he did not know how, Ázzuen knew the pup was dead. The pup who had told him that every time she woke up she wanted to howl in joy for the day. She loved the milk that came from Rissa’s body, but she had trouble drinking it. After she was dead, Ázzuen realized it was because she was drinking the wrong way, but it was too late by then to save her.

He knew he was smart. He knew that he understood things other pups didn’t, but he didn’t see how that would help him.

“This one won’t make it either,” he heard Ruuqo say to Rissa. “You should save your milk for the others.”

“He still suckles,” Rissa had answered. “He still lives. If he is willing to fight for his life, I will let him.”

“I’ve seen weaklings before,” Ruuqo said. “Weaklings hurt the pack. I know this one will not live. You know it, too, Rissa. It’s cruel to let it suffer.”

“I know he will most likely die,” Rissa had said. “But I will give him the chance to live.”

Ázzuen thought he would be able to live. He knew where the milk came from, how to stay warm, even once he had left the den. What he hadn’t planned on was the other pups, who wanted him to die. They kept him from the milk, from the warmth of the den, from being part of the pack. He grew angry and then despondent. One day, when the other pups had gone in to feed, he decided not to bother anymore, that it would be easier to die.

But
she
wouldn’t let him. The pup, smaller even than he was. She was not of his litter. She, too, was supposed to die since her mother had broken pack rules by having pups without the leaderwolves’ permission. But she had not given in. When Ruuqo tried to kill her, as he had the other pups from the forbidden litter, she had fought back. She bore the pale mark of the moon on her chest and she smelled, even as a tiny pup, of a wolf of strength. She made him live, not just that day but yet again, when they crossed over a vast plain to their first gathering place. Her scent was the scent of home, the sound of her voice the sound of his future. The pups they would have and the life they would live together was the reason for each breath he took and for each and every beat of his heart.