Secrets of the Wolves (5 page)

It seemed that even the trees breathed a sigh of relief when the angry Greatwolves left the clearing. My legs decided they’d held me up long enough. I sat down hard.

“What was that about?” Rissa asked, staring after the Greatwolves. “Even Milsindra is not usually as bad-tempered as that.”

Frandra stretched and stalked over to a pine stump we used as a lookout spot and leapt upon it. “It’s about your youngwolf not knowing when to follow orders,” the Greatwolf said. “I thought you taught your pups better, Rissa.”

Zorindru spoke before Rissa could respond to Frandra’s insult. “Milsindra and Kivdru would have caused trouble sooner or later. Still, you should have waited for us, Kaala. Had I not been nearby, Milsindra could have caused your pack real harm. She could have killed your packmates.”

“I heard that you’d changed your minds,” I said.

Unexpectedly, Zorindru opened his jaws in a huge smile. “Yes,” he said, “the ravens will have told you that. You would think that I would have learned by now to look in the trees before I discuss anything I wish to keep secret.”

Tlitoo left his perch and glided down to land in front of me. He stood facing Zorindru, his head just below my chin. It was where he stood when he thought I needed defending.

“It is what you said,” he quorked.

“Yes, it is,” the Greatwolf answered. “You did not, however, wait to hear all that we said. Your flight was too hasty.”

Tlitoo croaked an insult. Zorindru shot him the same quelling glance that had so intimidated Milsindra. Tlitoo blinked back at him, unimpressed. The old Greatwolf laughed.

“Very well,” he said. “I will tell you what you would have learned if Kaala had come to us this morning as she should have.”

Zorindru stretched, and I heard his old joints pop. Ruuqo and Rissa quickly stepped forward to guide him to the best resting spot in our gathering place, a soft mound of earth next to the pine stump Frandra had claimed. Frandra quickly jumped down from the stump so that she would not be standing above her leaderwolf. She sat to one side of Zorindru, and Jandru stood on the other, as if protecting the ancient Greatwolf. Tlitoo took over Frandra’s perch on the stump. When the rest of us had settled uneasily around them, Zorindru watched me for a long moment, and then spoke.

“What I did not know at autumn’s end, Kaala, was the effect your actions would have on the Greatwolf council. When you stopped the battle at Tall Grass, and when I convinced the council to give you a year to keep the peace, it helped Milsindra win more wolves over to her side.”

When he hesitated, Jandru spoke up. I couldn’t miss the resentment in his voice.

“Most on the council already believed you smallwolves incapable of taking on responsibility for the humans. They believe that you are certain to fail, and that when you do, it will be disastrous for wolfkind.”

“You promised!” Tlitoo said, interrupting the Greatwolf. “You promised you would give the smallwolves one year. Now you renege. Now you change your minds. It is not fair.

Jandru and Frandra growled up at the raven. He picked up a twig in his beak and spat it at them.

“The Greatwolf council is twenty wolves strong, plus myself, raven,” Zorindru said tiredly. “I do not rule over them completely, and Milsindra and Kivdru have coveted my position as leader since my mate died eight winters past.” The sadness that flitted across the oldwolf’s face made me lower my eyes. When I looked up again, Zorindru’s face was impassive. Jandru and Frandra eyed Tlitoo with contempt.

“Milsindra has spent the winter feeding the council’s fear,” Zorindru said so calmly I thought I must have imagined his distress. “She has convinced many of them that my mind is weakening, and that I can no longer be trusted with the responsibility for the Wide Valley wolves and their role in the fate of wolfkind.”

“I do not find your mind to be weak,” Tlitoo said. He hopped down from the stump to stand next to the Greatwolves, hesitated for a moment, then reached up to draw his beak through the fur on Zorindru’s chest. I’d never heard a raven apologize to anyone. I thought that this might be the closest I’d ever get.

“Thank you, my friend,” Zorindru said gravely. Rissa coughed a laugh. Tlitoo flipped back his wings and leapt back up on the watch-stump. From there, he hissed at Frandra and Jandru and glared around the gathering place.

Zorindru continued. “Milsindra’s followers are neither strong enough nor certain enough to challenge me at this time, nor can they force me to deny the promise the council has made.”

“But what?” old Trevegg asked, watching the Greatwolf sharply.

“But there is enough opposition to my rule that Milsindra was able to insist upon some conditions, upon a test.” The seriousness left his face, and he panted a smile. “Or rather I suggested one and let Milsindra think it was her idea.”

“What test?” I said, feeling my stomach clench. Wasn’t it enough that I had to find a way to stop wolves and humans from fighting when I was not yet ten moons old? Even with my pack helping, as they had promised to do, it was a daunting task.

“The council says that it is not enough merely to keep peace for a year, that wolves and humans could refrain from fighting for that long merely by keeping away from one another and would fight again soon after.”

“I wouldn’t do that!” I stood, too restless to stay sitting. “I want to be with the humans.” Zorindru’s reproving glare silenced me. His eyes rested on me for a moment before he continued.

“The council has decreed that for the course of one year, wolves must live with the humans, as members of the same family, as members of the same pack.”

For a moment we all looked at him in shock.

“The two packs must become one,” Tlitoo crooned from atop his stump.

“That’s what NiaLi told us we should do,” I said, remembering the words TaLi’s grandmother had spoken. “After the Tall Grass fight she said that the two packs must become one, that it was the only way we could keep peace between wolves and humans.”

“You told us later that the council would never agree,” Trevegg said. “You said they would never let us be together with the humans, that we would have to find another way. What changed?”

I barely heard the oldwolf as an unexpected surge of anger rose up in me. The humans were mine. I was the one who had brought wolves and humans together in peace. I had risked everything to be with them and had been banished from my pack because of it. I had been called a
drelshik
—a cursed wolf. I had risked my life. And now the Greatwolves were ordering us to live with the humans, when it was what I had wanted to do in the first place.

Then I felt my heart lift. That was it? That was the task? We were to
live
with the humans. It would be me. It would have to be me. I knew the humans best.

“Stop looking so pleased with yourself!” Ruuqo snapped. I realized that my ears had lifted and my tail had begun to wag of its own accord. Quickly I tucked it down between my legs. It rose up again. Ázzuen’s tail thumped in the snow. Unnan growled softly.

“Pups,” Ruuqo snarled. “We’re supposed to entrust this to pups?”

The fury in Ruuqo’s voice surprised me. He was always careful to follow the rules of etiquette when speaking to Greatwolves, even when he disagreed with them. I never thought I’d hear him challenge the highest-ranking Greatwolf in the valley.

“Exactly how are we supposed to do this?” he demanded. “We’re more likely to grow wings and fly like the ravens than to get the humans to allow us into their homes.”

“I have not yet figured that out,” Zorindru admitted, “but I wouldn’t have agreed to the test if I didn’t think it was possible for you to succeed. And if you wish to save your pack, Ruuqo, you must find a way.” He looked sharply at the leaderwolf. “You cannot go on as if nothing has changed.”

“We have no intention of doing so, Lordwolf,” Rissa said. “But Ruuqo is right. The humans will never trust us enough to allow us into their homesites.”

Tlitoo quorked into the silence that followed. “I heard more. The Grumpwolves said more.”

Zorindru sighed. “What did you hear?”

“They said smallwolves are weak. They said wolves will be the humans’ slaves. They said the paradox will make the smallwolves fail and that it would be better to kill all wolves than to let the true nature of wolfkind be compromised. I heard them. They were loud.”

The paradox. It was why wolves and humans had never been able to come together peacefully. In order to keep humans from destroying everything around them, our ancestors had promised that wolves would stay close by the humans. Yet every time wolves and humans were together, they fought.

“They said wolves would not be wolves,” Tlitoo added. “I did not understand that. What else would wolves be?”

“If wolves are allowed to become too subservient to humans,” Jandru said, “as the humans always seem to insist, we will lose something essential to our being, the part of us that is uniquely wolf and part of the Balance. We will be wolf no more. That is why there are two kinds of wolves: Greatwolves to watch over the humans and you smallwolves. One kind of wolf to guard the humans, the other to keep the legacies of wolfkind safe for future generations. Indru himself commanded it be so.”

Indru was the leaderwolf of the pack from which all Wide Valley wolves descended, the wolf who had bargained with the Ancients themselves for the survival of wolfkind.

“That,” Jandru said, “is why much of the council does not want smallwolves near the humans. They are not the ones meant to be the watchers.” He turned his head slightly so he could meet Zorindru’s gaze out of the corner of his eye.

Zorindru looked as if he was going to say something. He stopped himself, closing his mouth with a snap.

“So wolves must be with humans for a year,” Rissa said when Zorindru remained silent.

“Yes,” the oldwolf replied. “You have three moons to get them to accept you into their homes and must stay there for a year after that.”

“Will you help us?” I asked.

“I cannot. If I do, the council will claim that it was I, not you, who kept the humans under control. You will not see me again until you have succeeded—or failed—in your task.”

My joy at being allowed to be with the humans fled. “What if I can’t do it?” I whispered. “What if I fail?”

It was Frandra who answered. “Then the council will do as it wished to do at autumn’s end. The experiment of the Wide Valley will be deemed a failure, and the wolves and humans in the valley will be killed. We will try again elsewhere. With smallwolves who actually do what they’re told.”

“And packs that are able to control their pups,” Jandru added.

“Is that true?” I asked Zorindru.

“It is,” he said. “If you fail, I will no longer be leader of the council and Milsindra will be able to do as she wishes. If you fail here in the Wide Valley, then we will know that smallwolves cannot be guardians of the humans and that wolves and humans cannot be together. Understand this,” the old Greatwolf said, “those on the council who follow Milsindra have agreed to this test because they are certain you will fail. They don’t think it’s possible to live with humans without fighting them or becoming their slaves. You must find a way to prove them wrong.”

Ázzuen began shifting from one paw to another and looking from Ruuqo and Rissa to Zorindru.

“I know,” he said. “I know what we can do.”

We all looked at him. I thought one of the older wolves might reprimand him for addressing the Greatwolf leader, but they didn’t. Ázzuen was already gaining a reputation for being the smartest wolf in the pack. Even wolves from other packs knew he was clever.

“It’s something Zorindru said about Milsindra,” he continued, shamelessly flattering the old Greatwolf. “We don’t ask the humans to let us come into their homesites. We get them to ask us. We make them think it’s their idea.”

Ruuqo looked at Ázzuen as if all of his fur had fallen off, and Frandra and Jandru and Unnan all laughed out loud. But Zorindru cocked his head.

“I would like to hear this,” he said, and sat down once again as Ázzuen began to speak.

Á
zzuen’s plan was simple. In the Wide Valley, a wolf who seeks welcome into a new pack might bring a gift of meat to the pack’s leaderwolves. Doing so not only shows that the wolf respects the pack leaders, but also proves she can hunt well, and thus would be a valuable addition to the pack. We would bring such gifts to the humans. The three Greatwolves had listened silently as Ázzuen spoke and agreed to let us try. I was to go to Frandra and Jandru in a quarter moon’s time to tell them if it was working. They would tell NiaLi of the plan. The old woman, I hoped, would tell TaLi. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to get everyone to agree on the plan.

Agreeing how to go about it proved to be less simple.

Ázzuen, Marra, and I wanted to take our three humans hunting and bring a whole prey to the human homesite. We also assumed that the three of us would be the wolves who went to stay with the humans. Ruuqo and Rissa rejected both plans. They watched silently as Zorindru, Jandru, and Frandra left the gathering place, then huddled together with Trevegg, whispering for several moments. I tried to hear what they were saying, but the wind was blowing the wrong way. Finally they stopped talking and called us over to them.

“Hunting with the young humans is too uncertain,” Rissa said, sniffing at the junipers the Greatwolves had crushed. “We have only three moons to gain the humans’ trust, and it took you nearly that long just to catch one deer with them. How can we know you’ll hunt more successfully now?”

“And how will you convince them you helped with the hunt?” Ruuqo added, joining Rissa at the edge of the gathering place. “Your girl is too submissive in her pack to convince them, and you say they no longer listen to their elder.”