The Wolf's Boy Read online

  But then he took the string off. He gestured at one of the teeth and then at me. I did not understand. He tried to put the string of teeth around my neck. I shook my head. “Nah, you killed the cow. These are yours,” I insisted. Oooni shook his head. He would not be satisfied until I strung one of the teeth on a new length of sinew and put it around my own neck. Then he allowed me to place the string with the others around his neck once more.

  Over and over he touched his necklace. He turned the teeth in his big fingers, feeling how they hung securely on the sinew. Then he held his hands out, palms up, first to me and then to my wolf. “Mehu,” he said.

  It took me a moment to understand. Then, hesitantly, I nodded. “Meh…u,” I said, and held my hands out to him and to Uff. “Yes. Mehu. Imnos.”

  Friends. We three were friends.

  “Immmnosss…” agreed Oooni, and we grinned at each other.

  I wished we could talk well enough to share stories, as my people would have done. I imagined my family living in a place like this, made of stone. It would be so warm, such good protection from storms and beasts. It would be so easy to defend ourselves here.

  I stopped myself. They would never know. I was not going back. I was not ever going to see my family again.

  When we could eat no more, Oooni began to sing a rolling song from deep within his chest. It filled the cave. In the flickering light of the fire, he did his best to tell the story of his hunt to me. First he was the aurochs cow, digging for dried grass under the snow. She twitched her ears, snorted, flicked her tail. Then he was himself, the hunter, seeing the cow. His eyes grew big. He sniffed her scent. He rubbed his belly and licked his lips. Then he showed the long, stalking hunt, on hands and knees, working his way close. Uff whined. She understood. Finally, Hah! The fatal thrust when he was so close he could almost reach out and touch the beast. How she had flung her head back, smacking her skull into his cheekbone and blackening his eye.

  We laughed together. It was good to laugh.

  Reaching for my pack-basket, I drew out my osa. Perhaps Oooni would not care that I played it badly. I unrolled it from its rabbit skin. My hand and wrist were very stiff. But I was able to hold the osa and cover the holes. Curious, Oooni watched. I lifted it to my lips and played a few notes. They were not good ones. Still Oooni’s eyes widened. I tried the moon song, which is easy. Oooni’s mouth opened in amazement. I grinned back at him. He gestured for me to play more. Uff rested her chin on my knee.

  I tried another song. The sound filled the cave and thrummed in my ears. Now my notes were truer. I had never made the osa’s voice sound so rich and sweet. The stone walls seemed to sing back to me. Uff pricked her ears and made a sound in her throat. Oooni’s eyes were huge with wonder.

  I played another song, the one about the reindeer herd traveling. Then I played the song of the spring reindeer feast. It would not be long now until the great herds were on the move again. Oooni smiled broadly, his big hands dancing in the air with the voice of the osa.

  I began the song of ice melting and the greening of the world. Oooni started to hum deep in the back of his throat, and the cave suddenly came alive. The sound vibrated against my skin. Uff turned her head to the side, looking at each of us. Then she rose on her haunches, lifted her muzzle, and joined us with her own song.

  Oooni sang words in his deep voice. The hairs at the back of my neck prickled. The sound was old, as if it came from the beginning of time. It was the song of the Ice Men.

  I do not know how long the three of us made music together that night. All I knew was I was happy. We were friends. My chest swelled with the goodness of it. It filled the cave, making the fire burn more brightly. The sound swirled out into the starry sky with our smoke.

  In the morning, I woke to the sound of icicles dripping. I heard the far off whinnying of the herd of horses. But the cave was silent.

  Oooni was gone.

  He had taken a great chunk of the aurochs meat, so I knew he must be traveling. He would not be back. He had stayed with me until my arm was healed, had brought me meat to last until the arm was strong enough for me to hunt for myself again. Then he had left.

  I was not surprised. I didn’t understand why Oooni had taken care of me. But in my heart, I had known that the day would come when the Ice Man would leave.

  Something hurt inside my chest. My…friend…had left me. Oooni had never thought anything of my lame foot. Just like Uff, he had accepted me the way I was. I stroked Uff’s head. “At least I still have you. It’s just the two of us again.”

  She looked at me as if to say, Eya, there is me and there is you. My arm was weak, but it was healing. And much of the winter had passed. I had a safe place to stay until the weather warmed, and I was strong again. But I didn’t want to stay longer than I had to in Oooni’s cave. The ghosts under the rock piles made me shiver.

  There were things I could do. I needed a new stick for walking, and I could make a new pair of sabas with the aurochs hide. In the woods nearby, I found a grove of hornbeam trees and among them a likely sapling. I found chaga fungus on one and hacked off a piece to replenish my tinder supply. It was good medicine too, if I got sick.

  Spit and dung! It took a long time to hack through the tough little tree, and longer to trim, peel, and smooth it. I worked on it for several nights. This stick would be nearly two hand-spans longer than the old one, a little more than I needed, but perhaps I would grow that much. I could always cut it shorter if I did not. When it was finished, stout and beautiful as such a thing could be, I carved the sign of the fish eagle into the top of it.

  My sign.

  I could not think what to do with the old one. My father’s hands had made it. I could not burn it or throw it away. There was a narrow ledge, about shoulder height, near the back of the cave. I placed it there.

  Outside, day after day, the wind howled, piling snow around the entrance to the cave. Often we heard wolves singing to one another as they hunted. Uff would raise her head to listen. “It’s another pack, Little Bah, not ours. We are a small pack—the two of us—but we have a good den.” Oooni had left us firewood. We were warm. Uff spent most of her days curled up beside me, but each time I went out, she leapt up, eager to run through the snow. Her tail hung low with her disappointment when I didn’t go far from the cave. “We’ll hunt together again soon, my friend. Soon,” I told her.

  My arm throbbed. I had to stop and rest it many times as I worked. But it was healing. I flexed it, turned my hand this way and that, tried lifting things with it. Each day it was a little stronger, the ache a little less. “Thank you, Oooni,” I whispered into the smoky shadows. I touched the aurochs tooth around my neck.

  The sabas took longer. Aurochs hide is very tough, which is why it is so good for the purpose. It took much effort to make it pliable. As I scraped the hide, I remembered doing such work when I was small. I could hear Sen and the other boys laughing as they practiced throwing keertas. The ache of wanting to be with them made me chop and stab with the scraper.

  “Go easy, or you will slice right through, Kai! Do not mind it. All work is good, and needed,” Ama had said. But that did not make my anger any less. “Cold can kill a hunter as surely as a cave lion,” Ama had added, as she patiently stitched seams that kept out the bitterest wind. She did not need to add that the loss of a hunter could kill a family, but she did repeat the old words: The life of the People is stitched together with gut and sinew.

  One morning, we woke to sun and wind from the south. I was nearly finished with the hide. Soon I could begin cutting and stitching. After a time, I had no choice but to stop. The muscles in my arm were shaking. I had to rest. Sitting back against the rock wall, I said, “Little Bah, I’d let you do your part and chew this hide to soften it for me, but you would do too good a job. There’d be nothing left!” She turned her head to the side, listening. I was grateful to have her to talk to. “At least you can have the tail!” I hacked it from the hide and tossed it to her. She jumped up
and snapped it out of the air, shook it as if it were alive. Then she bowed, looking at me from the corner of her eyes, asking me to chase her.

  “Alright, alright,” I said.

  So we went out. The day was warm. Slip-sliding in the melting snow, I hobbled after her. She pretended to go one way, then whipped around me on the other side, bounding in crazy circles, tossing the aurochs’s tail in the air and catching it again. Never letting me get close enough to snatch her prize. She had grown even more, was filling out. Her coat shone. For a moment, I remembered her, a handful of fur, shivering and hungry, when I brought her out of Torn Ear’s den. My wolf—so big now!

  Then, over the snow, from somewhere away to the west, came a howl—the call of the pack leader. Ahooooooo! Oooooo! It was echoed by several others. I turned my head. They were not far off. Uff dropped her plaything and froze, trembling all over. Her ears worked the air. She listened. Suddenly, she lifted her muzzle and called back to them.

  Her song was a question at first. Then it changed to a call of longing. I was gripped with terror. “Uff!” I cried. I made my way to her and seized her by her scruff. My thoughts stumbled over each other like my clumsy feet. You cannot leave me. You and I are a pack!

  But Uff was not a pup anymore. There was no loose skin to grasp, only thick, glossy fur. She jerked and plunged, trying to pull away from me. I felt her strength. “NAH!” I said, wrapping my arms around her shoulders. I had never been so fierce with her.

  A cold wind had sprung up. Winter is not over. On the far stream bank, a single wolf appeared—a big male. Huge. His fur was the color of sun on sand, with a cape of charcoal over his ears and shoulders. He turned to look at us. I saw his breath, white in the air. I saw the wind riffle the hairs of his bushy tail. His yellow eyes did not look at me. He was staring at Uff. But wolves do not mate in the first year or even the second. Uff was too young. I gripped her harder. “You cannot have her!” I whispered desperately to the male wolf. Uff trembled all over. She whined, trying to twist from my grasp.

  Six other wolves trotted into sight, sleek, well-fed for this time of year. There was a brief romp. The younger ones shouldered one another, snapping like puppies. A smaller male, grayer in coloring and a bit scruffy, bounded toward the leader. A name for the big yellow male came into my mind without my willing it—Sand. He turned the younger wolf aside with a quick downward thrust of his muzzle.

  Where was his mate? A pack leader almost always had a mate. Uff was locked to his gaze now. Sand called softly to her. She whimpered and fought again to get away from me.

  Once more, Sand called, clear and wild. Uff’s tail waved. She struggled, cried, begged me with a quick lick to my face. Then suddenly, she wrenched free. She ran from me.

  I could not believe it. For an instant, I stood silent, watching her dash down the rocky, snow-covered slope. A brief greeting. Then the pack—with Uff in their midst—disappeared over the rise.

  “Uff! Uff!”

  I screamed her name until my throat would make no more sound.

  I slumped to my knees. I did not try to hold back. It was as if I was still feeling the twisting of the broken bones in my arm. Not Uff. Please, not Uff. The pack would tear her to pieces. I remembered the strange wolf I had seen killed by the imnos so long ago.

  She did not know how to be a wolf. I had made her something else. She was my friend. She belonged at my side.

  I do not know how long I crouched in the snow. I was stiff with cold when finally I stumbled to my feet again. Wolves could run effortlessly all day. I could only limp. There was no use trying to follow.

  Alone.

  Oooni was gone. And now…Uff. I should have known. Even if she was too young, it was the mating time of the wolves. I should have seen it coming. I could have tied her up—kept her in the cave somehow. Sobbing so hard I could not get breath. Slamming my fists over and over into the snow.

  I might as well be dead, too. Leaning heavily on my stick, I made my way back to Oooni’s cave. My thoughts had gone blank. Like one half-dreaming, I built up the fire and warmed myself. I could not eat. At last, I curled into a knot and slept.

  The next morning, it hit me all over again, like the thundering wall of snow. Uff was gone. Have you not taken enough from me, Tal—making me grow up a nameless cripple, casting me out from my people? Why must you play with me—let me think I could be a hunter, have a life, have a friend? She was all I had!

  She is only a wolf.

  I know. She is not a human person. She is not my sister, or my mother, or my child. It is not like losing one of my family.

  But she is my family now—if she even lives anymore.

  I stared at the thin flames of my morning fire. I thought of how Uff had followed me for so long, like a second shadow. Rested my forehead on my arms. Let the tears burn and flow.

  It had never mattered to her if the sun shone or not, if we fed or hungered together, if I was happy or sad—she would not leave me. Uff had stayed at my side from the day I carried her home. We were part of each other. How could she leave? She was a wolf, but not like the others. What did you call a wolf like that?

  At last, I ate some cold meat broth left from the day before. It had gelled in the night. I did not bother to warm it, but ate it as it was. There were chunks of meat in the bottom of the das. Out of habit, I stabbed one out with my blade and looked to the place where Uff usually lay. Closed my eyes as the pain sliced through my heart again.

  Gone.

  Dead, probably.

  Would I find her body? Would I ever know what happened to her? I dropped the piece of meat back into the das and flung my work blade against the wall.

  Many times in the following days, I looked for Uff to greet me, to see her get up from her place by the fire, expected to feel her nose touch my hand. Sometimes I thought I heard her padding softly along behind me as I went out for wood or water. I missed the sounds she made in her throat while she waited for me to roast meat. In my sleep, I reached out in the dark to stroke her head, and woke feeling the coldness of the place where she used to curl beside me, knowing again that she was gone.

  “Tal, you have taken so much from me,” I whispered over and over, “not Uff, too.”

  More snow in the night. No break in the weather. I did not care if my arm was still weak. There was no reason to stay. But I was trapped in Oooni’s cave until I could travel and hunt again. I went back to making my new sabas. It was something to do. Blisters rose on my fingers and broke open. I did not mind the pain. I almost welcomed it.

  I remembered making the little antler wolf for Suli. I put down my work and leaned my head against the wall. Had I done wrong to make the carving of Uff? Was it tabat? Was that why Tal had taken her from me? But it was only a plaything. Ayee. Suli had loved my wolf, too. My wolf. But not my wolf anymore. Uff belonged to herself—and probably to the spirit world now.

  But Uff had dug me free when the snow was killing me. She had helped me fight off the cat. She had learned to hunt with me. She had given me my life many times. Many times. Had I taken hers by not teaching her how to be a wolf? I closed my eyes, feeling the hurt of losing her again and again. Without her, my heart was dead.

  I lost track of the days. The wind howled endlessly. Sometimes I ate. When it was dark, I slept. The sun moved in the sky. Slowly the world grew warmer. I lived in loneliness.

  But at last, my thoughts began to waken. I needed meat again—but could I hunt without my wolf? Could I? Uff and I had always hunted as a team. She is your power. Did that mean I was powerless without her?

  I stared at my hands, flexed my arms, looked at my keerta. Opening my pouch of sacred things, I took out her sharp little puppy tooth and held it in my palm.

  No.

  I was not powerless. I was not the same person I had been before I found Uff. I would hunt and I would live—because of her. “You will always be my power,” I whispered. “I will not dishonor you by giving up.”

  At last trickles of melting ice ran down
outside the opening of the cave. The nights were filled with a new sound—geese, heading north once more, calling like wolves when they sing on the trail. The mornings were noisy with the voices of returning birds. My arm was stronger. I hunted again, but differently—creeping, waiting, creeping again—as Oooni did. It was difficult without Uff to help track and then turn the prey to me, but I killed and I ate. Soon fish would run in the river. Maybe I could find the reindeer herd when it traveled north again. In the cliffs I saw other caves, all too far up or too small, or not right in some way. But perhaps I could find one suitable for shelter. Soon I would head out again and search. Sometimes I heard wolves in the night. I listened for Uff, but could not tell her voice.

  One more day…

  As I was crossing a great meadow to the west of Oooni’s cave, there came a bellow, like no creature I had ever heard. Then I saw them—mammuts, browsing in the distance! The great bull called again, telling the others to follow. I found the direction of the wind and moved closer. Tal! Each beast, with its shaggy coat the color of bloodstone, was as tall as the willow trees they tore at and fed on—a mountain of meat! Useless to a hunter alone like me, impossible for one person to hunt, but such a richness for an immet of People, if by luck and courage they could kill one.

  There were eight of them. Now I was close enough to hear their great teeth grinding. The old bull swept a half-melted snowbank aside with his tusks to get at the bushes underneath. The tusks were yellowed with age, curved as wind-bent trees, and as long as he was tall. The tip of one had been broken in some past battle. The females muttered and stamped as they fed, so that I felt the ground shuddering under my feet. They curled their snake-noses around bunches of grass and twigs, and fed themselves that way. Two small ones, last year’s babies, tussled in a thawing mudhole.