The Wolf's Boy Read online

  Copyright © 2016 by Susan Williams Beckhorn

  Cover illustration © Levente Szabó/Goodillustration.com

  Cover design by Maria Elias

  Designed by Maria Elias and Rachna Chari

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney-Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney-Hyperion Books, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

  ISBN 978-1-4847-2576-4

  Visit www.DisneyBooks.com

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Two

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Author’s Note

  Words of Kai’s People

  Words of Oooni’s People

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  To the wolf cousins of my life:

  Spike

  Jessica

  Oakley

  Cedar

  George

  Genny

  Spike II

  Chloe

  George II

  and

  Curry

  The man stopped to sniff the air. Cave bear, but not close. The valley was filled with the sounds of birdsong and rushing water. He shifted the baby in his arms and continued on to the denning grounds of the yellow wolf pack. The child was strong, but one of the tiny kicking legs was curled like a withered leaf.

  The man’s eyes were dead with sorrow. Still, he could not go against the law of the People. He laid his son beside a hollow under a great pine stump and turned away.

  Yellow Mother had just two pups that year. She heard the child’s cry and found the baby among the litter of bones at the mouth of her den. She nosed him carefully. He turned his cheek to her touch. The wolf opened her jaws, lifted the child, and gently carried him into her den. She laid him beside the others. There, the human pup found comfort.

  The wolf licked the baby’s twisted leg, giving it much attention. Time does not matter to a wolf. She licked and straightened the curled leg over and over. The pups grew. The sun and the moon shone into the entrance of the den many times.

  The People knew death well, both swift and slow. White teeth tearing flesh. The human mother felt as if her own heart were torn open. She was grateful to think that her child did not suffer long. Still, her arms were empty, and she ached for him. Could the spirit of a misty-eyed little boy live now in one of the wolves?

  One night as she stared into the darkness of the reindeer-skin hut, she heard a new note threaded into the singing of the wolves. It called to her, like the beckoning sound of her father’s little bone osa, or the voice of a lost child….

  As one dream-walking, she too went out to the denning grounds of the yellow wolf pack. She carried a gift—a slab of deer meat. A full moon floated up out of the hills while she sang her own song to the wolves. She poured a mother’s longing for a lost babe into the night. Then she was silent.

  Suddenly, Yellow Mother sang back from the warmth of her den, a low, crooning song. The woman did not know what to think. And then she heard the muffled squalling of a pup—not a wolf pup; a human pup.

  The woman crept to the entrance of the den and peered inside. In a ray of moonlight, the wolf’s eyes glittered back at her. The woman’s eyes widened when she saw the tiny round head of dark hair between the bundles of puppy fur.

  The two mothers stared at each other. The wolf resumed her licking of the curled leg. The woman watched for a long time. Then she began to talk to Yellow Mother. She told how her child had been taken from her and that he had been hers first. She talked most of the night. In the early dawn, Yellow Mother licked the pup one last time. Quietly, the woman took her son back.

  Then, holding him fiercely to her breast, she walked back to the immet of the People.

  I could not get free. The string of spit dripped closer. My brother was good at this game. I struggled, but he held my wrists above my head.

  Sen and the others had found me alone in the grassland where the herds of bison, horses, and woolly rhinos came to feed. I was gathering dried dung for the fire—women’s work. The boys were on their way back home from the willow copse. Each carried a keerta with a flint point. Each had several ptarmigan swinging at his waist. Each walked tail up, stiff-legged—like young wolves, full of the success of their hunt.

  My knee landed a blow to my brother’s middle. He grunted.

  “Do it, Sen,” Xar urged. “Spit on him!” His voice cracked with excitement.

  “Wolfboy, try to run now!” shouted Uli, craning his head over Fin’s shoulder.

  “Run? He can only hop like a toad!” Xar called back, snorting at his own joke.

  Sen let his spit drip again. I tried to twist away. It stretched out a finger’s length…slppp! He sucked it back up at the last instant.

  Again.

  And again.

  The boys howled. They danced, holding their keertas over their heads. Soon, each of them would kill a deadly beast, as Sen had, to become a blood-hunter—but what would I be? I tried to swallow my fear.

  “You would have been smarter to tend the fire beside your ama,” taunted Xar. He grinned, sucking loudly at the gap where he was missing a front tooth. I hated Xar’s broken grin, hated the whistling sound he made, hated his bristled scalp and pale eyes. “A lame pup makes good bait!” he hissed, staggering and lurching to show how I walked with my stick.

  Xar was the closest to my age, the loudest to mock me.

  Fin and Uli instantly set on him, raking his back with fingers held in pretend claws and snarling. A pair of slobbering hyenas. They fell against each other, weeping with laughter.

  Xar was right. A single person, with no keerta, even one with two good legs, might be stalked by a cave lion—or worse. It wasn’t the hungry season. Still, I could have met an Ice Man. It was bad to be alone, especially for me. I was tabat, cursed. It was forbidden for me to hunt or even to handle a weapon. I had nothing but my work blade to protect me. But I was twelve winters old, almost a man. Anger burned in my stomach.

  I often slipped away alone.

  Sen’s eyes narrowed. I fought with all my strength, but could not wrench free. Suddenly, his shoulders shook with laughing. Wetness splashed across my face. Into my mouth. I spat back. Hated my brother. I would have pounded my fists into his teeth, the way Xar’s father did to him that time, if I could have. But I saw a flash of something in Sen’s eyes—regret?

  “Sorry, Kai,” he whispered. He started to wipe my face with a hand, but the other boys jeered. He g
lared at them. Then he leapt to his feet and shouted at me, “You should never have been born! The yellow pack should have eaten you and cracked your bones!”

  A spatter of laughter came from the river path. Had I not had enough? I didn’t need the pack of girls mocking me, too.

  Mir was the tallest of them. Her laughter bubbled out through perfect teeth. Her hair gleamed like sunlight on water. Her eyes were bright stars. It was no secret that those eyes looked only at Sen.

  I sat up, tucking my twisted foot out of sight.

  “Your little brother looks like a wolf, Sen!” said Mir. “His eyes make me shiver. Careful, or he will bite your leg! You don’t want to be a cripple, too!” Several of the other girls laughed with her. But two of them did not.

  “Leave Kai alone!” said Cali. She gripped her keerta. My brother took a step backward. Cali could throw a weapon well. Her eyes and hair were the color of dark wood. She wasn’t beautiful, but she was good to see. Still, I knew that when my brother looked at the girls of our immet, the only one he really saw was Mir.

  Sen’s cheeks flushed. “I was teaching Kai a lesson,” he muttered.

  “There’s a dead marmot near the gravel hills, Sen. Why don’t you vultures tear at that instead?” It was Cali’s little sister, Vida, who spoke. Her eyes, as brown as Cali’s, snapped hot sparks of anger. Everyone stared at her in surprise. She was only eleven winters old and usually shy as a brush hen.

  Vida and Cali were Rhar’s daughters. Rhar was the headman.

  Ignoring them, Sen gave Mir a slow smile. Then he ran off with the other boys. I watched their long legs moving so easily. The shafts of their keertas glinted in the sun. The girls followed. Cali strode ahead, straight and silent. I saw Vida scowl and jut her chin at another girl. Then she glanced back at me, a question in her eyes. I shrugged to say it was nothing. Her face brightened a little. She turned and followed her sister.

  I was still breathing hard. The crushed grass smelled of spring. I reached for my stick and yanked myself to my feet. I could still hear the boys yelling as they ran—as if they had just won a fight with the Ice People. It was a great honor to spit on one’s enemy. I was not much of an enemy, though.

  Part of me hated Sen, but part of me didn’t blame him. He had not asked for a crippled brother. Secretly, he used to make play keertas for me. We had mock hunts and battles with Ice Men when no one watched. If I fell behind on the trail, he waited.

  But things had changed. Now, at fifteen winters, my brother could read a trail nearly as well as our father. He could hurl his keerta so that it thrummed when the stone tooth struck the heart of its prey. He could run like a young horse, far over the open land, without tiring. He was the first of his friends to become a blood-hunter by killing an animal that could as well have killed him—a black aurochs bull with great white spots, like storm clouds, on his hide and huge horns.

  Since then, I had become invisible—or something shameful to Sen.

  I slammed the scattered dung back into my basket and dumped it beside a rock. Cripple or not, I was nearly old enough to be a hunter. There was nothing wrong with my eyes, my arms, my hands. I could climb high into a tree. I could swim and dive in the icy water of our river.

  Scrubbing hard at my eyes with the back of my fist, I stumbled to the torrent running down from the snowbanks. A hunter does not weep. I crouched on my good leg, plunged my face into the icy water, rinsed my mouth, splashed my cheeks. Then I shook the wet hair from my eyes. Not curling yellow hair, as my father and Sen and little Suli had, or even brown like my mother, but straight black—like the tips of wolf fur. Wolfboy.

  Did I really look like a wolf? Mir was not the first to say so. Even my mother sometimes brushed the hair from my eyes with her hand and asked, “What are you seeing, Kai? Who gave you those eyes? They glow like amber in the firelight.” I had glimpsed them myself, staring back from the surface of still water. An odd brown—almost golden—with green sparks. Strange eyes. Wolf eyes.

  I could have gone home. Ama might have needed me. Our Bu was not always an easy baby—and my little sister, Suli, could be more trouble than help. But I still seethed inside. The things I felt half choked and half blinded me.

  There was a place I liked to go.

  I made my way now to the immet of the yellow wolf pack and crawled into an abandoned den under a great pine stump.

  It was quiet at Torn Ear’s den. I became still, waited. The wolves knew my scent. They would not be troubled. I let my thinking go where it would. A memory flickered. I was perhaps four or five.

  Ama helped me over the rough places, calling to the wolves as we came. The wolves sang back. Yellow Mother met us on the trail. We called her pack the imnos—friends—because they liked to live near the People. They were small wolves, in many shades of yellow. They were curious, sniffing at a broken basket or playing with a worn-out fur. The gray pack were the lupta—wild ones. They kept to themselves.

  Yellow Mother’s amber eyes did not look for the gift of bones that day. They went to me.

  “Thank you again for our Kai,” Ama whispered.

  Very slowly, the wolf placed one paw in front of the other. I was not afraid. Her whiskers quivered. Her nose almost touched mine. Then she licked me.

  Other times, Ama and I would be digging roots or picking white ear mushrooms. Where there had been no wolf a moment before, Yellow Mother would suddenly appear. She might sniff my foot or let me rub her ears. I saw her many times, and each season’s pups as well. But then one spring when the pack returned to their denning grounds, Yellow Mother did not come.

  I missed her.

  Torn Ear was Yellow Mother’s daughter. She was strong, playful, and beautiful as smoke. Of all the pups of all the litters that I had known, she was my favorite.

  I had named Torn Ear’s big mate Shine. His fur was like autumn grasses. The two of them were the leaders. Mostly, they taught the others to obey with a downward thrust of muzzle on muzzle. Sometimes there was a snarl or a lifted lip showing an ivory fang. The wolves had their quarrels. I had seen fights that ended in belly-up yelping. Sometimes blood spattered the ground and a beaten wolf limped away from the pack with his tail tucked between his legs.

  Once, I watched as a strange wolf tried to join the imnos. There was something about him that was wrong, but nothing I could see. It was over in moments. A fury of slashing teeth. Blood in the snow. A stiffening carcass. Tufts of fur blowing away on the wind.

  But for the most part, they were kind. They greeted each other joyfully, tumbling and wrestling. They hunted together as men did. There were low members of the pack, like the young male I called Lan, uncle. He guarded the pups while the others hunted. But he had a rightful place. He was not despised.

  Now, hidden in the old hollow under the pine stump, I watched as three pups spilled from Torn Ear’s den. They tumbled and yipped. A fourth, smaller one crawled to the entrance, eyes barely open. It did not come farther. Lan stepped out of the brush. He had been there all this time! He lay down and was swallowed by a tangle of baby wolves. They tugged his tail, hung from his ruff, all the time snarling.

  I watched until dusk when Shine returned alone. Something was wrong. The big wolf limped. His belly did not bulge as it did when the hunt had been good. One at a time, the others of the pack slunk back to their own dens. Dried blood darkened Shine’s flanks.

  Where was Torn Ear?

  The three larger pups jumped on their father. They licked at his lower jaw until he emptied his belly for them. It was a small pile of meat—perhaps a hare. The three ate. The fourth pup hung back in the mouth of the den. It was not ready for such food. It wanted milk.

  But Torn Ear did not come.

  The night beasts would be waking and hungry. Slowly, I turned for home. The outside of my twisted foot was as calloused as the bottom of my good one. Still, it ached when I walked. Often I stubbed it on roots or stones. It was an ugly thing. I could hide it when I sat, but I would feel stares as I walked through the immet o
f the People. Wolfboy. Tabat. Why did his mother bring him back?

  My mind raced ahead of my feet. How long could the smallest pup live without milk? What had happened to Torn Ear?

  As I approached the immet, the smell of roasting meat made my mouth water. Smoke hung over the cluster of takkas crouched in the shelter of the cliffs. I could hear children laughing and screeching. A woman’s voice scolded. A baby squalled. It came to me suddenly that the immet of the People was like the denning ground of the imnos. There was a headman and his mate. The hunters went out and brought food back. It was much the same.

  In front of our takka, my brother and father squatted beside the fire. Sen smoothed his new keerta. Apa heated pitch to help hold the point in place. This would be the first keerta with Sen’s new sign on it, a curving aurochs horn for the bull he had killed.

  Keertas were sacred and powerful. They meant life. My brother’s hands worked patiently, shaving tiny curls of wood one after another into a neat pile on the ground. My own hands clenched as Sen ran his fingers along the surface searching for rough places. A keerta that could kill game or save a man’s life was full of magic. Luck hovered over a hunter and his tools. And no one—especially one as unlucky, as tabat, as a cripple like me—could touch a hunter’s things.

  I eyed my brother’s new keerta with a bitter taste in my mouth.

  Sen. It wasn’t easy getting used to his new name. But I tried hard to remember, because when I forgot he reminded me with a fist jabbed into my shoulder. I had a few of my own names for him that I did not say aloud.

  Sen means steady one. The name we had called my brother for as long as I could remember was Bol, tree. But now he was a blood-hunter of the People. He had shed his boy’s name as a snake slides out of its skin.

  The night of Sen’s kill, Vida’s father had roared out the story of how my brother had stood his ground when the bull charged. “He judged the distance. He did not throw wildly or too soon, but waited for a foreleg to stretch, baring the ribs over the heart. Then he threw! And only then he sprang aside—so that he felt the hot breath of the beast as it thundered past!”