The Wolf's Boy Read online

  It would be foolish to go closer. I took a deep breath. What I was seeing was magic, yet real. It was a thing few people had ever seen. Almost by itself, my hand went out before me, and in the air, my fingers traced the curve of tusk and grasping snake-nose, the great humps of brow and shoulders, the small, wise eye, the sweep of fur almost the color of Oooni’s hair. Which colors would I mix? What words would I use to make another person feel the wonder? If only Uff were here with me to see this. If only I could sit by the fire to make pictures and tell it to someone. It was a thing that would never leave me. It would stay in my mind forever.

  I glanced back at a steep-sided ravine that opened onto the meadow. Suddenly I saw a thing. If Uff were here, if there were other hunting-partner wolves, other hunters of the People—together, they could turn a mammut and drive it away from the herd. They could chase it into a narrow place like the ravine. Men with keertas, waiting on the cliffs could…My heart burned with the thought. Wolves like Uff could make it possible to hunt the great mammut!

  Other wolves.

  Perhaps sometime I could find another pup. Try again. Perhaps. Slowly I made my way back to Oooni’s cave to gather my things.

  I would find my own cave and make my own life. I knew now that I could do this. Even without Uff, I could do it. I had new sabas, a new work blade, and a new stick for walking. Everything I needed was stowed in my pack-basket. Squatting at the edge of the stream, I filled my waterskin for the journey. Warm air moved up from the river valley. Patches of blue sky. Sun glittering on melting ice. What new thing would this day show me? Where would the night find me? I shrugged into my pack-basket and flexed my shoulders. It was a good day to travel.

  Then I looked up and saw a wolf—a wolf I did not know and yet did know—streaking toward me. She squealed like two trees rubbing together in the wind. She knocked me to the ground with her great paws, slapping my face with her wet tongue. She rolled onto her back and showed me her belly. Oh, Uff! Then she leapt up, raced in a circle, and knocked me flat again. Together we danced and chased each other until we were breathless. Together we laughed and yipped our joy.

  At last, panting, Uff sat down and gazed up at me. I crouched beside her, took her head between my hands, and put my forehead against hers. “I suppose you are hungry—is that what made you decide to come home, you miserable wolf?” I whispered to her. “If you had waited another day, I would have been gone from here.”

  Home. We were not home. We would never go back to the immet of the People. We had left one home to try to find another. But somehow, with my wolf beside me, anywhere in the world was home.

  She was thinner. There was a half-healed slash on her cheek, patches of hair missing along her flanks that were not just from shedding her winter fur. But the lead wolf had not allowed the others to kill her. She was too young for him to have chosen her for his mate, but somehow he had favored her. “I think you have an admirer, pretty girl,” I whispered to her. There was a new thing in her eyes. There was a story of her life that I did not know and she could never tell me.

  But she was Uff, and she had come back to me.

  “There is a thing I have yet to do,” I told her. “Come, we will find our new home together—and then someday…” Did I dare to think such a thing? “I, yes, even I—the tabat one—will hunt and kill some great beast.” My voice hushed to a whisper. “Even if there is no one else to tell of it, I will become a blood-hunter!”

  With a last silent thank-you to Oooni, I picked up my new stick and my keerta. “We will go now,” I said to Uff.

  She bounded in front of me as we headed still farther up along the Forbidden River. It was full of tumbled rocks, broken trees, and churning meltwater. The going was uphill, but not difficult. A hunter of the People would have trotted swiftly over the open ground, as a wolf trots for long spaces of time. I laughed wryly to myself. “Perhaps I am slow, but at least when we find game now, I will not miss,” I said to Uff. She turned to look at me over her shoulder, then raced on ahead.

  By sundown, I had missed five times: a fox, an old, crippled saiga, and three ptarmigan. But, in a flurry of feathers, I took down the fourth bird. We camped in a hollow above the rushing river. Uff looked at me with a question in her eyes after she had bolted her portion.

  “What, you want more? We would have had the saiga if you’d pulled your head out of that marmot hole! Tomorrow we’ll find something better,” I told her.

  The land changed. The going became steeper, harder. I searched the cliffs, looking for caves. I wouldn’t need to fear attack from beasts in such a place. And if there were other Ice Men, unfriendly ones, perhaps I could defend myself. But Oooni had been a friend to me. Maybe I could find a way to be a friend to his people if there were any here.

  On either side of me were gray walls with slopes of gravel and boulders at their feet. There were still a few patches of ice and hollow places filled with snow, but the new wind coming from the south had scoured most of it away. The sun was bright. There was the fresh scent of open earth. The world was coming alive again.

  Uff ranged ahead. She thrust her face into every hole she found. Once she met with some small, fierce creature that sank its teeth into her muzzle. She yelped and let go of it.

  Every now and then, she circled back to check on me. She touched my leg briefly with her nose. Then she moved off again. Over and over, I looked at my wolf and grinned. I can’t believe you have come back. I wondered if her brothers had grown as big as she was now. Then I thought of myself. I was taller, stronger. I carried a keerta. I knew how to use it. “I think we have both changed,” I whispered to her.

  I came around a bend in the river. Stopped. Stared. Out of the cliffs on each side, gray stone thrust itself into an arch—a huge arch as high as the cliffs it grew out of. It spanned the river, which flowed under it, leaving a shelf of tumbled rock just wide enough to walk along. Oh, Tal! An opening into another world! The water under the arch swirled deep blue-green, the color of Suli’s eyes.

  My breath was gone out of me. I was dizzy. I could feel the breath of the river. What would a new world smell like? The living stream. A pebble beach. Gravel banks. Trees. A meadow curving back toward more cliffs. All smelling of the newness of spring—new, but familiar. The world on the other side of the arch looked the same as this one.

  Was it the same?

  I stood, silent, listening with my whole body. Uff was quiet, too. She came to my side and sat still, also listening. Nothing. Just this beautiful, powerful place. It pulled me forward. With Uff close at my heels, a step at a time, I passed beneath the arch. Swallows circled high overhead. They led us through, playing in the currents of the wind. I turned my head up as I walked. The stone arch soared above us. Green vines trailed down from it. More birds dove in and out of nests in hollows in the rock. The water rushed endlessly through the great opening.

  We scrambled over boulders and pushed through a willow thicket. Then we were on the other side.

  I glanced back the way we had come. Looked forward again, scanning every direction for danger in this new place. But nothing happened. All seemed the same: the river, the cliffs, the sky. Then Uff rushed after something in the bushes, and I saw a reddish-brown shape disappearing up the slope. Just a red deer come down for a drink.

  Uff returned to me, panting, excited. “Sorry, Little Bah, next time I’ll be ready.” I shifted my keerta in my hand.

  The sun moved higher in the sky. We kept walking. I had to turn my head up to see the tops of the cliffs on the far side of the river. Clusters of ferns grew out of crevices. The rock face was pocked with hollows. Some were big enough to shelter in if I could have climbed up to them.

  On our side of the river, the land opened into a level valley, facing south. In summer it would be lush with grass. There were trees and more cliffs farther back from the river. Then, in a fissure in the cliff side, I saw what looked like a path leading upward. Twisted juniper bushes grew out of the rock.

  I worked my way
up through the trees. The path followed a rock ledge. It must have been used by ibex coming and going to the river, or people….My heart raced. “Stay with me, Uff,” I called softly. I don’t know what made me follow the path, but I couldn’t turn back. Something pulled me upward.

  Uff scrambled ahead, her paws sending showers of gravel down the rock face below us. I made my slow way along the ledge behind her. We came to a place where the trail turned back on itself. I turned and drew in my breath. From here, the stone arch looked like a great mammut crossing the river! The sun shone on the valley below. It was sheltered from wind. A small herd of horses grazed on the fresh new grass. It was a sweet, rich place. So powerful.

  Suddenly I thought, Vida would like this.

  When at last I turned back to the path, nothing. No sleek wolf, no happy, waving tail. I looked behind me, ahead. Uff was nowhere to be seen.

  Where was she? There were no trees here to hide her, nothing but rock and stunted juniper. I scanned the path once more. “Uff!” I called. Still nothing. I searched the slope above. Just cliffs, soaring up to the bright blue of the sky and far above, a kite spiraling. How had she disappeared like that?

  “Uff!” Turning, I called again, louder this time. Nothing. This was impossible. There was nowhere to hide. “Uff!” Fear in my voice. Had something taken her? Were we in some magic place where a wolf could disappear in a blink of time?

  “Uff!” My voice echoed from the gray cliffs. A hunter did not reveal himself so recklessly, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t lose her again. Once more I filled my lungs and called her name. “Uff!” My voice was almost a scream.

  And she appeared. Out of the rock. No, out of a place, a hole, between two rocks. Her paws were muddy.

  She came to me, waving her tail, happy. Then she turned as if to say, Come see what I have found! I realized there must be a hollow place in the rocks. Uff turned and looked at me over her shoulder. I stumbled after her.

  At the back of an overhang, there was an opening. Not so big, but plenty big enough for a wolf—or a person…or some other creature. There was no sign of people, no footprints on the path, no mark of humans. With a hand on each side of the rock opening, I peered inside. It was very dark. Black. Silent. A current of dank air wafted out. It was like an ancient breath on my cheeks. Uff slipped past my legs.

  “Wait!” I called to her. “Nah, you can’t go in there! Something might be…” I didn’t know what. But something. I grabbed a fistful of her fur. “Wait,” I said again. She whined, nose working. She had caught a scent. She wanted to go back inside. I felt it, too. A pulling on my whole body, my spirit. The opening in the rock seemed to draw me into itself.

  Perhaps this was a better cave than Oooni’s small one. I called softly into the opening at first, then louder, an owl’s call. “Hoo hoo hoooo!” My voice echoed back to me. There was space inside the cliff. A big space.

  “I have to find a torch,” I told Uff. Breathing hard, I scrambled back down the path to the place where the juniper bushes were growing. I searched among them, and at last found a length of dead wood with a good knot of root and yanked it free. I fumbled in my pack and opened my fire pouch. The ember of chaga fungus I carried glowed when I blew on it. I fed it dried stuff until I had a small blaze going. Then I added twigs until it was strong enough to catch the root. It crackled and smoked its sweet juniper scent. There was much pitch in the root that would blaze for a long time.

  It was not easy to manage the torch with my keerta and my stick. But I could leave none of them behind. I felt for my work blade. Then I climbed back up, Uff close on my heels.

  Panting now, I paused at the opening—a gaping black mouth. Then, holding the torch before me in one hand and dragging both my keerta and my stick in the other, I crawled inside. My wolf scrambled in eagerly after me.

  At first there was just a narrow shaft. The torchlight played along it, shadows flickering. Damp rock. Traces of small animals sheltering here. A few hazelnut shells. I remembered wriggling into the wolf’s den long ago. Then the opening widened. Blackness. Space. I drew the air of the cave into my lungs. Cool, moist. I stood carefully and lifted the torch high above my head. Its wavering light spilled over rough walls that soared away into blackness. It was huge, this hole under the earth! It was a world inside the cliff.

  The floor of the cave was smooth. I could stand, no, I could walk here! I tucked my stick under my arm. Then I grasped both my keerta and the torch in my right hand.

  There was that faint odor. It seemed to be all around me. Uff whined softly. “I think you are a foolish wolf to follow me in here,” I whispered to her. But she, too, was spellbound.

  I made my way forward. Mud oozed between my toes. Uff went ahead of me now, the fur along her spine bristling. To my right, I saw a side passage. I must not lose my way. But there would be our tracks in the mud to follow back.

  Uff’s shadow was a great creature with long legs. Mine was also four-legged, a hulking thing. They danced weirdly beside us as we moved along.

  I thought of Moc-Atu showing each animal’s foolishness of the season in the dance of spring madness. I heard my own breathing. In. Out. In. Out.

  I turned.

  Teeth!

  They loomed out of the dark: rows of great, white teeth, many times taller than myself, hanging down and rising up from the cave floor. My feet wouldn’t move. There was a roaring in my ears, yet silence really. I had to tell myself to breathe, keep breathing. Silence. But no—a drip. A faint, slow, endless drip.

  Drip.

  Drip.

  Drip.

  And the strange smell. I could not run. It would eat me. Whatever it was, wherever it was, this fearsome thing would eat me. And I could not turn away from it.

  The cave drew me deeper into itself. Uff pressed close to my legs. We were inside the teeth now. Uff sniffed a great, dripping fang. It didn’t frighten her. I reached out a finger. It was cold and wet. Slick. My torchlight flickered on the surface. Uncountable tiny stars sparkled in the whiteness when the light moved. Shadows leapt across the walls. The teeth were not ivory. They were stone.

  Uff was curious, excited. We moved on. The passage opened into a cavern with pale, gleaming walls. We were inside the beast. I held my torch this way, that way, this way again, lighting up the darkness. Beautiful. First the arch and now the cave. Oh, Tal, such power!

  And then I saw a mammut.

  Not a living mammut. It was the image, the spirit of a mammut—painted on the wall. The ground-shaking beast, just as I had seen them in the great meadow. Hulking shoulders, powerful snake-nose lifted high, deadly tusks curving.

  And there—a hand—a human hand outlined in blood! And then many handprints together. These were the marks of shamans and hunters, like the marks that Sen and Apa had made on the wall of our takka. This was not real blood, it was paint blown through a hollow bone.

  Someone has been here. A bead of sweat trickled down my spine. I glanced behind me, inhaled deeply again. I could smell something else now. Charcoal. Here and there on the floor of the cave were the remains of old fires. But people could not live here. The smoke from a cooking fire would drive them out. These must have been small fires for light.

  Hesitantly, I reached out and touched a red line. It was covered by a film of stone. Had the ones before me been turned to stone? I looked again over my shoulder. Looming walls. A soaring roof of shining stone.

  I felt the old ones somewhere in the shadows, beyond my torchlight.

  I turned in a slow circle. There, on the far wall! More animals! Trickles of sweat fell between my shoulder blades. Uff’s nose touched my leg. “They’re not real,” I whispered to her, trying to calm myself. But they were—so real. A wall of cave lions, stalking. A big female spitting at her mate. The lions seemed alive. In the flickering light, they moved in the sinewy way of cats.

  Tears ran down my face. I sank to my knees before the paintings. These were such pictures as I had seen when I was trapped under the snow. Alive
but not alive. Real but not real. Lines with magic in them.

  Uff was sniffing the floor and whining. I looked down.

  Bones. Leg bones. A shoulder blade. A scattering of large and small bones. But not human. I crouched lower to study them. Some were glazed with the same ice stone. It did not melt when I touched it with my fingers. But it had frozen the bones to the floor of the cave. And tracks. Great wide pads—the tracks of the hind feet looking almost human. Deep furrows left by five terrible claws. Claw marks on some of the paintings. Cave bear. But the tracks were not fresh. They too had been turned to stone.

  I glanced around quickly. Tens and tens and tens of bones. Many strange pits in the floor. Had bears scraped out these hollows for winter beds? A huge skull. Bear. Many skulls. Bears came here. And died here.

  My torch sputtered. Ash had collected on the end. I tapped it against the stone wall. The ash fell away, and it flared bright again.

  Go! But I could not.

  “It’s alright,” I whispered to Uff. My voice was strange in my ears. I felt her nose touch my leg again. The fur along her spine was raised. We went on.

  The walls narrowed, changing to reds and oranges like the colors that swirl sometimes in the northern sky. The passage narrowed, turned back on itself. The gut of the stone creature. My breathing seemed to echo from the walls. Still I could not go back. There, on a hanging tooth of stone, the image of an owl. Owls hunted the night. They could see in darkness. I thought of Moc-Atu, with his man-owl stick and his strange eyes. Could the old shaman see where I was now?

  Suddenly the cavern opened again to a wall of snorting horses. Beside the horses, two rhinos fought while others paced in a row. Once I had watched rhinos fight like this far out on the grassland. I had seen a cloud of dust, the flash of their eyes, and heard the snort and thud as they came together.

  The passage narrowed even more. And then there was a gaping pit at my feet. I almost stepped into it.