Wolf Hunting (2 page)

The maimalodalum were descended from the results of sorcery gone awry. In the generations since a plague had either killed or driven away from the New World those who were most skilled in the magical arts, these mutations had interbred. Their children and their children’s children now resided here at the heart of Misheemnekuru, a secret from most who lived on the mainland.

Yet for all their ugliness, Firekeeper respected and even liked the beast-souled. She knew better than most how intelligent and strong-willed were the spirits imprisoned within those mismatched exteriors. As Firekeeper entered the round Tower of Earth toward which a waiting raven guided her, she bowed her head in respectful greeting to those who waited within. Beside her, Blind Seer stretched out his forelegs and gave a sort of bow, a mannerism he had picked up from humans that had nothing to do with the hierarchical groveling of wolves.

“Join us, Firekeeper and Blind Seer,” said Hope. Her form blended, not disagreeably, the features of a bird and a human woman. She indicated a space left empty in the seated circle of the beast-souled. “We heard from Lovable that you were coming, and gathered here that we might speak with you. But perhaps you and Blind Seer would prefer to eat or drink before we convene? You have run far. Perhaps you need to rest.”

“We hunted,” Firekeeper said, “while we waited for the tide to shift so we could cross the inlet to this place. There were springs and creeks enough on the path we followed here. We slept through the worst of the day’s heat. There is no need for you to wait your business.”

“Is this wolfish efficiency I hear?” asked Hope, her laugh holding a touch of a bird’s trill. “Or human curiosity?”

“A bit of both, Hope,” Firekeeper said. “You invited us. We came. There seems no reason to delay. Why did you summon us here?”

Hope gave a quick, dipping bob of her feather-capped head. Her gaze, eagle-sharp, scanned her companions and found only listening interest. “Very well. I will begin. You remember Truth?”

“A Wise Jaguar,” Firekeeper said. “The diviner. She was driven mad.”

Driven mad,
Firekeeper thought,
helping me. Had Truth not immersed herself in omens that final time so I might climb Magic’s tower before it fell …

But might-have-beens were the stuff of nightmare. Firekeeper knew this far better than most of her acquaintances even suspected. Of those present, only Blind Seer knew that she cried in her sleep and sometimes awoke screaming. In her nightmares, too, she almost remembered her human life, but most of the time Firekeeper was a wolf—a wolf in everything but shape.

Hope continued, “You know that Truth did not return to the mainland after the events here last summer. She was certainly not fit for the honored position she had held. Equally, she could not simply be let roam free. She would have died of starvation. Moreover, she would have been a hazard to any who encountered her.”

Firekeeper nodded understanding. Any jaguar was dangerous. A Wise Jaguar, larger and more intelligent than its Cousin-kin, would be more so, even one who was insane—perhaps especially one who was insane.

“Yet we could not simply kill her,” Hope said. “Truth had done nothing to earn execution. Her injuries were as much battle wounds as those so many others took to their bodies.”

Firekeeper felt a twisting in her gut as she thought about those who had died or been permanently mutilated. She herself bore scars from the battle in which Truth had lost her mind. The least of these marked her body. The deepest were in her heart.

“So you didn’t kill Truth,” Blind Seer said, perhaps to give Firekeeper a chance to compose herself, “nor let her run free. That must mean you have taken care of her.”

“We have,” Hope said. “Powerful Tenderness made Truth’s care his charge, and to him belongs the next part of this tale.”

Attention shifted to where Powerful Tenderness sat—or rather hunkered—on the ground. He was one of the most physically terrifying of the beast-souled. It was impossible for Firekeeper to decide whether his torso was that of a brown bear or merely of a very large, very hairy man. His head bore traces of both ancestries. His toes and fingers ended in claws, not nails. His eyes, when Firekeeper forced herself to meet them, were those of neither man nor bear, but the cold, somehow dead-looking eyes of a snake.

When Powerful Tenderness spoke, a snake’s tongue slipped from between too-human lips, and gave his words an incongruous hiss. Yet for all his fearsome appearance, Firekeeper knew, Powerful Tenderness deserved his name as much as she deserved her own. She waited with interest to hear what he would say.

“Bide while I begin with those first days,” Powerful Tenderness began, “for only in knowing how Truth was then can you understand what she has become.”

Firekeeper inclined her head respectfully, and slung one arm around Blind Seer’s shoulders. This was a posture that said “I am not going anywhere. Speak as much as you like,” and Powerful Tenderness responded to it as he would have to words.

“At first, I despaired of keeping Truth alive once the fat in her body, the strength in her muscles, was depleted. It was almost impossible to get her to eat, and the few times I restrained her and tried to force her …”

He held up one forearm. A scar made a white river through the brown fur. He need say no more.

“Weakness saved Truth,” Powerful Tenderness went on, “for when she was weak, she seemed to see this reality more clearly and would eat what I set out for her. But this was not her salvation. Every time Truth ate herself to some modicum of strength, she would again see each possibility in her action and balk at dangers we could not imagine, though sometimes phrases she spat to invisible enemies gave us a clue. She might fear choking, or illness from a faint trace of rot, or even mourn the creature that had died to provide her sustenance. She would again refuse to eat, grow weak, and become somewhat sane, only to fall into madness as she regained her strength. It was not a good time.

“But at last—sometime this spring—Truth broke this cycle. She did not return to full sanity, but she had flashes wherein I know she knew me, knew where she was, and knew, too, that this reality held the foundation from which she derived her omens. Then, just as I was hoping Truth would be with us more often than not, something new happened. Truth seemed to find another …”

Powerful Tenderness trailed off, and for a long pause Firekeeper thought he had forgotten what he had been about to say. The other beast-souled waited with such tense watchfulness that Firekeeper felt certain that they, too, had not heard this tale. Hope alone held herself differently. Hope waited, her lips pursed as if ready to prompt her friend, but she held herself silent: a bird on the edge of song.

She knows,
Firekeeper thought,
but she does not wish to take this hunt from her friend
.

“It was as if,” Powerful Tenderness said at last, “Truth had located another reality, one as solid and as real as this one. I swear I saw her lap as if drinking. There was no water near her, but I saw the muscles beneath her throat fur rippling as she swallowed. Once I thought I glimpsed a drop of water on her whiskers, but that might only have been saliva. Yet, yet … It glittered clear and shot rainbows when the sunlight touched it.”

Firekeeper fought the urge to lean forward, not wanting to seem like a bird dog straining at the leash. Others of those gathered there, as new to this tale as she was herself, were not so restrained. One, a lean bipedal creature whose tusked boar’s head seemed far too heavy for the frame it concealed beneath human-style clothing, made a snuffling, grunting, rooting-in-the-ground noise. Beside him, a voluptuous creature who might have passed for human, except that she had three paired sets of breasts and was downed in thick red fur, twitched her bushy tail uneasily. She wore a fox’s muzzle like a mask over human features—though Firekeeper well knew this was no mask.

Another, a man with a stag’s head—or perhaps a stag with a man’s chest and arms where only a stag’s muscular neck should be—dipped his rack as if seeking some enemy he might impale. The stag-man had retractable claws like those of a cat; he was sliding them in and out in his nervousness.

Some few of the nervously listening maimalodalum made even these look normal, for in them the traits of many beasts and perhaps even several different humans were so blended that deciphering their actual heritage was difficult, even impossible. Yet in this company, their oddness went unremarked, for all were remarkable.

The maimalodalum who broke the listening silence resembled either a very short, very fat man with a fat, fluffy tail, or a very large raccoon who had become bipedal. His facial features reinforced the confusion. Although his nose was more like that of a raccoon, his mouth was a bit broader, like that of a human.

When he spoke, it was in the tones of one who is being reasonable, although he knows full well he has excuse to be otherwise.

“Why,” the raccoon-man began, “didn’t you speak of this before, Powerful Tenderness? You of all people knew all too well the concerns we have harbored this year and more.”

Powerful Tenderness’s reply held the faintest rumble of a bear’s growl mingled with his usual serpent’s hiss. “Plik, I said nothing—except to Hope, for she shared some of my vigil with Truth—because there was nothing definite to say. Spend enough time with madness, and you will begin to doubt your own sanity.”

There was another round of uncomfortable shuffling at this point, and Firekeeper felt Blind Seer’s flanks heave as he swallowed panting laughter. Clearly, while all the beast-souled had agreed that Truth should not die of her mental injuries, only a few had been willing to assume the tedium—and danger—of nursing an insane Wise Jaguar.

Blind Seer said so only Firekeeper would understand him, “Unlike wolves, jaguars are solitary souls. Even Truth’s Wise kin would have been unable to care for her properly. Such dependence from another adult would have strained even her own mother.”

Firekeeper scratched between the wolf’s ears in agreement. She had tremendous admiration for the great cats—both the pumas of her childhood ranges and the jaguars she had met here in the south. One on one, a jaguar could defeat any wolf, but ultimately, she felt that their solitary habits were a weakness.

Plik replied cryptically, “I have not spent time with madness, no, but I have come close. I think you should have trusted us.”

Powerful Tenderness flicked his ears forward (they were placed like those of a human, but rounded and furred like those of a bear) in acknowledgment, and resumed his report.

“To this point I have spoken only of supposition. Truth had run from invisible terrors in the past, had hunted insubstantial game. It did not seem unreasonable that she was drinking water where there was none. In fact, Hope and I concluded that Truth might have found some congenial hallucination. Our plans were centered on how to use this to our advantage in her care.”

The lean creature with the boar’s head grunted, “And then?”

“And then Truth spoke,” Powerful Tenderness said simply. “She spoke not muttered phrases nor screams, but clear sentences, meant for our hearing.” Powerful Tenderness glanced over at Firekeeper. “You must understand, I only quote.”

Firekeeper nodded. “I do.”

“Truth said, ‘Bring me the bitch. The wolf-bitch. The human-wolf-bitch. She’s impossibly stupid at times, thinks the world runs on simple lines, but bring her.’” Powerful Tenderness shrugged. “Truth said this repeatedly. Hope heard her. We both tried to question Truth as to why she wanted you, but we got little more from her. What we did get was not precisely comforting.”

“And this was?” Firekeeper asked, keeping her manner casual.

“‘There is a door here,’” Powerful Tenderness quoted. “‘My paws cannot open it. She has hands. She can open the door. She can let me out.’”

Firekeeper frowned. “Do you have Truth caged then?”

“After a fashion,” Powerful Tenderness said. “To let her roam free would have been a danger to herself and others. However, where she is there is no door—not so to speak. She is within a walled area that was once part of a house. The ‘door’—if you can call it such—is a hole in the wall. I have blocked it with a huge boulder. Forgive me, for I remember you are strong beyond what one would imagine for one so small, but I do not think you could move this stone. Even I need a lever to do so.”

Blind Seer tilted his head back as if taking a scent. “So you think that this door of which Truth speaks is no door at all. You think she refers to something else.”

The vixen-human yapped excitedly. “Or that this door is in another place, some other place that Truth has found, the place where she found fresh water to drink!”

“So you wish me to speak with Truth,” Firekeeper said, “perhaps learn what this door is of which she speaks.”

“Yes,” Powerful Tenderness agreed. “Not only may it be the means of helping Truth from her delusions, but it may be related to something else that has been troubling us. Would you hear of that now, or go to Truth?”

“Is Truth in any immediate danger?” Firekeeper asked.

“No. She is in one of the quieter portions of her cycle.”

“Then let us hear the rest of your tale,” Firekeeper said. “If I am not mistaken, this one”—she indicated the raccoon-man with a toss of her head—“has hinted at it already.”

Hope stretched, rolling her head as if to loosen tension in her neck. Her arms were adorned with feathers, as if they had tried to turn into wings, but had failed. For the first time, Firekeeper realized that the bird-woman looked weary, and not her alone. Every one of the dozen or more beast-souled gathered here showed signs of weariness. True, they were mostly diurnal, unlike Firekeeper and Blind Seer who were as often active at night as in the day, but this seemed more.

This wasn’t just the sleepiness of those accustomed to being awake in the day, forced by circumstances to stay alert through the night. There was tension here, nor was it the drawn tension of a bowstring the archer has pulled back, preparatory to loosing the arrow. This was the tension of a tree bough, overburdened with snow or ice, ready to snap unless something shook that burden free.