Spirit of the Wolves (4 page)

T
he humans found a new sleeping place an hour's walk away, between three tall rocks that would both shelter them from the rising wind and hide them from DavRian. I was glad, not for the first time, that humans had such weak noses. He wouldn't be able to find us by scent.

With the wind came the beginnings of a rainstorm. MikLan took a large rolled-up elkskin from his pack and TaLi took one from hers. The humans had found a way to keep the skins from decaying and to make them as supple and strong as if they were still on a living beast. They unrolled the skins, then shoved their walking sticks into holes they dug in the soft dirt. Ázzuen watched, his ears pricked in interest. The humans and their tools held an endless fascination for him. TaLi and MikLan used their clever hands to secure the skins to the walking sticks, then tied the two together with strips of dried deerskin woven with reeds to form a small shelter. Ázzuen sniffed along the bottom of it. Tlitoo followed behind him, quorking
deep in his throat. When the humans turned away, he pecked hard at the bottom of one of the walking sticks so that the skins fell down around Ázzuen. Tlitoo cackled.

“Stop that!” MikLan said. He scowled at Ázzuen, pushing the skins away. The rain had flattened the boy's headfur, making him look smaller than usual. There was no way for Ázzuen to tell MikLan that it was the raven who had made the shelter collapse. Tlitoo chuckled, pleased with himself, and strode a few paces away.

“If you could talk to your humans, you could tell them what happened,” he said. “It is too bad you never learned.” TaLi's grandmother was the only human I'd ever met who could understand us.

Ázzuen snapped at the raven. Tlitoo leapt just out of reach, quorking happily.

The humans shoved the walking sticks back into the ground and crawled into their clever shelter. The skins repelled the rain, and, though I was impatient to leave the valley, I was also exhausted, and the humans' cozy den tempted me.

Pell jumped up onto one of the rocks. I couldn't help but notice the strong muscles moving under his wet fur.

“I'll keep watch, Kaala,” he said. “You need to rest.” He'd chosen a rock as far from the human shelter as he could get. Pell didn't trust humans, and he'd once told me he had no desire to hunt with them. As we'd walked, I'd caught him watching MikLan suspiciously more than once, and he startled easily when he was around them.

Ázzuen claimed another rock and Marra the third. I wanted to keep watch with them, but it had been two frenzied,
panicked days of running and fighting for my life since I'd had a good rest. My eyes were closing as I stood.

MikLan sat cross-legged at the shelter's entrance, his spear across his lap, his face serious. He was younger than TaLi. It was hard to trust him to watch over us, but he wanted to take on adult responsibilities, just like I did, and I admired him for it. As I stumbled toward the shelter, he smiled at me. MikLan had always been easy with us, even more so than TaLi. From the first time we met him, he had treated us just as he would his own kind. Marra thought that it was because he was still fully a child. I hoped he wouldn't lose that easy trust now that he was leaving childhood behind.

I left my packmates on guard and crept into the shelter. TaLi was already asleep, and I settled down next to her. I listened to her even breathing and waited for sleep to come. But as tired as I was, my eyes would not stay closed. I wriggled closer to TaLi. I needed rest, but there was something I needed more.

“Tlitoo!” I whispered. He didn't answer. I called again, a little louder. I was about to call a third time, when he stalked into the shelter.

“I am not an owl, wolf. I am not a bat. I have been up too much of this night already.”

“I want to see what she's dreaming,” I said.

He clacked his beak in annoyance. I lowered my ears.

“All right, wolflet,” he grumbled. “If you look at me like a hungry pup, I have no choice. But next time you are most in need of a nap, I will wake you up.”

Still grumbling, he pushed in between me and the sleeping
girl. I had told no one, not even Ázzuen, what Tlitoo and I could do together. I didn't want my friends to know how different I really was.

Tlitoo and I had gone into the minds of Greatwolf and ordinary wolf alike, but it was entering TaLi's thoughts that most fascinated me. I wanted more than anything to be able to talk to her. When Tlitoo took me into TaLi's mind, I felt as close to her as to another wolf, and I craved that closeness now.

Tlitoo quorked softly and lay against me, so that he was touching both me and the girl. He needed contact with both of us to make the journey.

I readied myself for the lack of sound and smell that always accompanied me into the mind of another, and for the sudden feeling of falling that still made me gasp. I couldn't prepare for the confusion and dizziness that followed me into TaLi's mind. Entering into the thoughts of another wolf was less jolting. The strangeness of the way humans saw their world—through vibrant colors and soft edges—was especially disorienting.

I waited until my nausea receded, then sank into TaLi's thoughts.

I saw the old woman's face and cringed away, remembering how I'd helped cause her death. Then I took a deep breath. If this day in the old woman's shelter was important enough for TaLi to dream of it, I could have the courage to see it. I allowed myself to relax into her thoughts.

TaLi knew that her grandmother would not be with her much longer. The old woman had told her that her lungs had weakened, that she would not live out another winter, and that TaLi would have to be ready to take over as krianan.

“You have the wolves,” NiaLi said. “You are the first to run with them in many years. That will help you.” TaLi looked over her shoulder. A young wolf slept heavily against the mud-rock wall of the shelter, snoring a little and moving her paws in her sleep.

TaLi walked over to the wolf and sat beside her.

“I can't talk to her,” TaLi said. “Not the way you do.” She had spoken to the animals when she was little. She'd talked to rabbits and ravens who told her she smelled bad, and even to rock lions. She had understood the giant wolves her grandmother had taken her to see when she still stumbled on her feet like a colt. But now she could not. Often she thought she saw meaning in Silvermoon's eyes, but she could never be sure.

“You will have to find another way,” NiaLi said.

TaLi lay down next to the wolf and inhaled the rich forest smell of her. When she was four, her grandmother had begun training her to become the next krianan for the village, and from then on she had been alone. So many of the village did not want the krianans telling them what to do and what they must and must not hunt. They laughed when TaLi told them they were just as much a part of the forests as the animals they hunted and the plants they ate, and they had shunned her. She'd felt as if she no longer had a family.

Until the day she had fallen in the river.

She had struggled for life, but part of her had wondered what would happen if she let herself float down the river and over the distant falls. When the wolf splashed into the water and swam toward
her, she thought it must be coming to kill her, for she'd been told since she could walk that wolves lived to kill humans. But the wolf bobbed near her and TaLi grabbed its fur. It swam with her to shore, saving her life.

Then it stood over her, panting, and she could see huge teeth. She waited for it to kill her then, but it did not. It helped her home.

She rested her back against the warmth of the wolf and looked up at her grandmother.

“They might not let me be krianan,” she said.

“I know, child,” her grandmother said. “If they do not, you must leave the valley. You are a krianan whether they accept you as one or not. You must find the krianans who live in the forest surrounding the village of Kaar. They know that we must be part of the natural world. They know that if those like DavRian prevail we are all lost, and they are fighting for our cause. You must go to them and help them. You and your wolves.”

TaLi stared at the old woman. It was enough that she was supposed to convince her own village to keep the natural way. She couldn't possibly do so among strangers.

“You must,” the old woman said, as if she could read TaLi's thoughts. “What happens in Kaar will influence what happens throughout much of the land. They are a village larger than any you have ever seen, and they are deciding whether to go the way of the krianans or the way of those who believe that humankind must rule all other creatures. I am too old to make the journey and I trust no one else. It must be you.”

“What if the wolves won't come with me?”

“It is their task, too.” The old woman's voice grew sharp. “You have not been listening. The wolves and the krianans share this task. Your wolves are discovering it, they have told me so. If you
can't find a way to talk to them, you will have to find other ways to keep your tasks aligned.”

The old woman struggled to her feet and limped toward TaLi.

“You have the strength to do whatever you choose. You and your wolves. It is your duty, and I know you can do it.”

“I will,” TaLi whispered.

The old woman looked down at the girl and the wolf, and an expression so complex passed over her face that TaLi could not catch exactly what it was.

“Her name is Kaala, you know,” NiaLi said, smiling down at the snoring wolf. “And her friends are Ázzuen and Marra. You are all lucky to have found one another.” She rose slowly and returned to her seat by the fire, wincing as she sat and pulled her furs around her.

TaLi buried her face in the wolf's thick fur. “I love you, Silvermoon. Kaala.” She whispered the words she had never said aloud to anyone, not even BreLan. “I can do this if you help me.”

Each beat of the wolf's strong heart, each steady breath it took, relaxed her and at the same time gave her strength. She didn't know when she fell asleep, but when she awoke the wolf was gone and her face was wet and sticky. She smiled. Silvermoon—Kaala—always licked her when she left. TaLi stood, kissed her sleeping grandmother on the cheek, and slipped out into the cool morning air.

“Wake up, wolflet,” Tlitoo rasped. “Daylight comes.”

I blinked up into Tlitoo's beady gaze and forced myself the rest of the way awake. Going into the mind of another creature always made me tired, but I wanted to howl with exhilaration.
I had learned something important from my journey into TaLi's memory: our tasks were one and the same.

I should have known as much, for the krianans were responsible for keeping other humans in touch with the Balance. The Balance was what kept the world whole. Every creature strove to live, and to have as much food and territory as it possibly could. But if one creature grew too strong or took too much, the Balance would collapse and many creatures would die. The humans upset the Balance, which is why the Promise came to be. The human krianans reminded their people of their place in the world.

I remembered that day in NiaLi's shelter. I'd arrived weary from a failed hunt and had paid no attention to what the old woman said to the girl. Now that I had, it made my heart race. I already knew that both wolves and krianans were sworn to keep the humans in touch with the natural world, and I knew that TaLi had to leave the valley. Now I knew that her task and mine were the same and that the krianans she was looking for might be able to help us achieve it.

I also saw something TaLi had not. She had not understood the expression on the old woman's face, but I did. The humans relied so much on their words that they were not as skilled at reading expressions as we were, even among their own kind. The old woman's face when she looked at us was full of fear and worry. But there was more. There was hope. The old woman was not naive. If she had hope, then so did I.