The Wolf's Boy Read online

  I glanced up—to find both Lan and Shine less than a leap away. Legs locked, fur bristling along their spines, they blocked my path. They stared at me through eyes closed nearly to slits.

  Shine licked his lips showing his great tearing teeth. I am dead, I thought. I dropped my eyes. I am only taking the one you cannot feed, I begged him silently. One breath. Two. Ten. My heart thumping so hard I was sure they could hear it. Yellow Mother gave me my life. Let me try to give your pup hers.

  From the corner of my eyes I saw the two wolves drop out of their challenge stances. The ridge of fur along their shoulders went down. Shine tucked his hindquarters and sat. He sniffed the body of his dead mate. Licked her torn ear. Whimpered once like a pup himself. My heart twisted. I am so sorry, my friend. Then he turned his eyes back to me. I glimpsed the sadness in them before I looked away. Lan glanced at Shine once and then lowered his eyes.

  They had agreed. With my eyes still on the ground, I nodded. Then holding the pup to my chest with one hand, I picked up my stick and backed slowly away, one step at a time. I could feel them watching.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  When I reached the takka, my mother was sorting and brushing dirt from a basket of mushrooms. They were the kind that look like wrinkled skin. We call them mora, old-man mushrooms. She had a basket of greens, too. Her woman’s hunting had been good. My mouth watered. With my free hand, I grabbed a handful of the greens to eat raw.

  Ama clucked her tongue, but she did not slap my hand away. Bu was asleep in his sling on her back, his little head bobbing as she moved. My father and brother were up in the highlands, hunting.

  Suli crouched by the fire. Her face split into a grin when she saw me. I rubbed a smudge of soot from her cheek with my thumb. “Careful, you’re losing your ah-bu.” With one hand, I helped Suli stuff it safely back into the little sling on her back. It was made from scraps of leather and wool and was very ugly, but Suli loved it fiercely.

  “Not ah-bu—ah-bah! She’s a girl, Kai. Bu is a bu.”

  “I forgot.”

  “Kai,” my mother said, her eyes questioning.

  I did not answer. Instead, I opened the front of my anooka and showed her the wolf pup nestled against my chest. It turned to the light and whimpered with hunger. Ama’s eyes widened. Suli’s mouth opened. “Torn Ear is dead,” I told them. “The other pups are bigger and can eat meat, but this one needs milk.”

  My mother stared at me. “What are you going to do with it, Kai?”

  “I don’t know. She is hungry. I owe my life to the imnos. There must be some way to feed her.”

  My mother didn’t answer. The pup cried and nuzzled weakly against my chest. At last, Ama said, “There is a way that sometimes works when there is no milk.”

  She took the leg bone of the deer from our night meal, smacked it open with a rock, and scraped the marrow into a small das. Then she ground a bit of the bone into paste and mixed it with the marrow and some broth to make a rich gruel.

  “Give it to me,” she said.

  I put the pup into her hands, and she touched the tiny muzzle with her fingers. The little black nose snuffled. Suli crept close and reached out to stroke its fur. The pup licked her fingers. Suli giggled.

  Then my mother showed me how to dip a finger into the gruel and let the pup lick. At first the pup turned away, but suddenly, she attacked ravenously. Ama laughed. “You cannot eat without some manners,” she scolded softly. She handed her back to me. The pup lapped gruel from my fingers until it was gone.

  I ran my hand over the little belly. It bulged now like a filled waterskin. Suddenly the pup grunted and a stream of wetness dampened my front. “Ayee, you little leaking bah,” I whispered. I held the pup over the ground until she was empty. Then I held her close again, and stroked her head. She nudged my hand when I stopped. She liked my touch.

  She sighed, nestled, and was suddenly asleep.

  Ama laughed softly. “It’s good to see you smile, Kai.” She stroked the baby fluff. “Soon she will be able to eat soft meat. You must feed and care for her. Bu and Suli are enough for me. But Kai, a wolf is not the same as a baby crow, and your little thief-bird was trouble enough before he flew away last fall. Apa may say no.”

  My eyes flew up to meet hers. He could not say no. After all this, my father could not say no. I would not let him say no.

  But my father was my father. And I was only Kai, the son that would never be a hunter. The nameless one. What could I do to make him let me keep the little wolf? And Sen—what would he do? He had been gentle with my baby crow, had hunted eggs and caught mice to help feed it. But that was last year.

  I spent the rest of the day in a blackness of fear. The pup was lonely at first, whimpering, seeking her brothers. I made a nest for her from an old ibex fur that was used for wiping feet, near the opening, where we kept our winter sabas. She seemed to know my pair. She rested her chin on the one my mother had made to fit my twisted foot and slept soundly for a time.

  A few days before, Apa and Sen had used the game net to capture a saiga antelope. The creature had torn a hole as it thrashed and kicked. I was not allowed to knap flint into keerta points, but I was allowed my work blade. I made good twine and nets. My knots were strong. Very strong, as I had found out the time I bent to pick up a spilled basket of hazelnuts and suddenly the net came down over my head and shoulders, throwing me to my knees. I fought like an animal, nuts flying everywhere, with Sen’s laughter like stinging bees in my ears.

  “Let me go!” I shouted. I struck and kicked at him until he finally loosened the net.

  “I didn’t mean anything, Kai,” he said. “You were just so easy to catch.”

  My twisted foot was bruised where I had kicked one of the hearth stones. I rubbed it. Tried to keep my face empty. Suddenly he was the old Sen again. “Sometimes I hate Tal for twisting your foot,” he whispered, handing me my stick. Our eyes met.

  “Maybe Tal had a reason,” I said, with a shrug.

  “But you were a baby. You did nothing wrong.”

  “Tal gives two arms, legs, eyes, ears. If one is hurt, the other grows stronger. Maybe Tal is trying to make me stronger.”

  He eyed me strangely. Then he looked down. “You would have been a good hunter,” he said softly.

  As I knotted and twisted the fibers of the net back together, I worried. What if Apa would not let me keep the little wolf? What if Sen hurt her? Over and over I scolded Suli, “Leave her alone, she’s just a baby. She needs to sleep. Play with your ah-bah and your pinecone wolves.”

  After a while, the pup woke and cried at being alone. She needed to make water, and her belly was empty once more. I carried her outside. Suli laughed as the tiny thing squatted.

  “At least she’s doing it outside,” I told her.

  I made more gruel as my mother had shown me. “Hurry, Kai, she’s hungry!” Suli said. She was right, the pup yapped and cried while I worked. Then Suli made me let her feed the pup. A lot was spilled, but only because the little wolf was so greedy. It was good to see her eat. Now, instead of falling asleep, she wriggled around in my lap, sniffing carefully. It was as if she was learning who I was with her nose. She was stronger already.

  Bu watched, big-eyed. He laughed, reached out, and grabbed a fistful of fur before I could stop him. “Nah!” I cried, thinking the pup would bite, but she only turned and nuzzled my baby brother’s fat hand.

  Now the pup was wakeful. She didn’t like being alone. Suli held her close, cradling her in her arms. “You have a wolf bah to go with your ah-bah now,” I told her. My sister nodded, grinning. The pup nosed one of the tangled yellow braids that hung down Suli’s shoulders. She found the rawhide tie, and began to tug and chew. Suli giggled. Then the pup found her string of beads. They were only made of wood, but Suli was very proud of them. “Nah!” she scolded.

  I took the pup back to my own lap. The imnos had always lived near the People. Sometimes they followed us on hunts. But no family of the People h
ad ever taken one into their takka. Never. Was it wrong? The little wolf licked me. Shine, Torn Ear, see this. Your pup is alive. I will feed her. I will raise her for you. But how?

  It was nearing dusk. All around the immet, fires were being built up for the evening. There was little to fear from the Ice Men now. They were seldom seen during the warm months. Still, the fires would be kept burning all night to ward off hungry beasts—and thieving wolves. Sometimes a yellow wolf was bold enough to steal unwatched meat.

  I thought about the Ice Men. Once, when I was small, I had seen one. It was early spring. The women were trying to catch fish. Vida and I had built a small trap of stones to catch minnows in the shallows. They flashed in a silver cloud, the way swirling snow blows over frozen ground, as we chased them into our trap.

  I remembered stopping. Sniffing. Listening. There was a prickling at the back of my neck. I lifted my head, turned, and stared across the stream. Nothing. Just rocks and low bushes. Beyond that, open land in patches of green and yellow. A herd of horses grazing. Far-off blue humps that were hills.

  Nothing moved.

  But then my sight changed. It came into a different way of seeing. Eyes—deep-set and shining—watched me from the shadows. There was thinking in those eyes. And hunger. I took a step closer, with the river water running cold past my shins. Then I made out the rough clothing and the shape of the man crouching in the brush. His features were jagged, but he was a kind of a man. Stocky, hairy, and ragged, but I was sure of it—a man.

  He smiled, showing strong white teeth. Nodded at me and made a gesture of eating, then for me to come to him. I had a strip of dried meat in my carrying pouch. Maybe he smelled it—wanted it. I took another step toward him, but then stopped.

  “Look, Vida,” I whispered. “There is a creature…like a man. It…he’s watching us from across the stream. In the willow thicket. There!” I pointed. “I think…he wants us to come across to him.”

  Vida looked up from where she was kneeling in the shallows. She leapt to her feet shrieking, “Run, Kai! It’s an Ice Man—they eat children!” Suddenly I was stumbling after her, and all the women and children were running. I hobbled as fast as I could over the gravel. My brother was ahead with the bigger boys. I saw him turn to search for me, heard him shout to my mother. Ama looked around, eyes wild, snatched me up, and fled after the others. But I could not help staring over her shoulder as she ran.

  There were three of them. They stumbled away from us, crashing through the tall reeds along the river. I saw terror in the dark eyes that stared back at us.

  When we reached the safety of the immet, a party of hunters went out but found nothing. Ice Men were not fast runners, but they had gotten too good a start. Ama held me tight, patting my back. “Hush, Kai, you must not cry. See, Bol does not cry.” I looked at my brother. He was crouched by the hearth, shoulders hunched, clutching his elbows. His face was the color of bone. His lip trembled, but he was not crying, would not cry, for he would be a man someday, and a hunter does not cry.

  “What were they? Who?” I stammered.

  Ama took a shaky breath. “They are animal-men, Kai. They live in the north where the ice stays forever in the mountains. They are few and shy, but fierce, and very strong. An Ice Man can break a person’s back with just his arms. They cannot speak as we do or even sew clothing and sabas. They do not make long keertas. Their weapons are short and heavy. They cannot throw them as we do.” She shook her head, biting her lip.

  “Do they eat children?” I asked, trying hard not to cry again.

  She wouldn’t look at me. “In the deep of winter, when food is scarce, sometimes they come at night.” Her voice fell to a whisper. “They steal children, Kai. I cannot tell you why. Last winter we were lucky and they didn’t come—just that lion the one time. You are too young to remember the winter before, when so many had the coughing fever. My friend Imi was killed by an Ice Man and her little boy taken. They stole all the meat in their storage pit.

  “Imi’s man, Baq, and your father and some of the other hunters set out after them. There was a battle by the crossing at the little river where the big boulders are. The Ice Men sheltered behind the rocks. Our keertas were not much good there. Baq was killed, and another of our men. The Ice Men got away with the boy. I don’t know why they come now. Winter is over. There is food.” Angrily she brushed away her own tears.

  “But, did they…eat…the boy?” The words hurt to say. Still, I had to know.

  “I don’t know.” Then Ama saw the terror on my face. “Don’t be afraid, Kai. No one can throw a keerta like your apa. He will not let anything harm us.”

  For a long time after that, the face of the Ice Man at the river haunted my dreaming, beckoning me to come and be eaten.

  But this evening, such terrors were far away. There was only the worry of my father and Sen coming home from their hunting to find my wolf pup. The spring air was sweet. We sat by the outside fire pit, and Suli danced around with the pup at her ankles. Suddenly, she yelped and hobbled to me on one foot, sobbing.

  Ama shook her head, saying, “Suli, I told you not to run over Apa’s work place.” I made Suli sit and hold out her foot to me. I studied the bottom of it until I found what she had stepped on. “You go from sunshine to rain very quickly, Bramble,” I told her.

  I looked up, pretending to see something over her shoulder. “Is that a woolly rhino grazing across the river?” Suli twisted around to look. In that moment, I pulled out the splinter of flint and tossed it back to Apa’s work place.

  The hills became smoky shapes and the watch star came out over the cliffs. Ama turned her head at each sound, a burst of laughter from another takka, a stick of wood snapping, the thump of grind stones. There were worry lines between her brows. My father and Sen were late.

  I took my grandfather’s osa from its secret place. It was made from the hollow wing bone of a great vulture, my most precious thing. In his last days, when he had little breath to play, Apa-Da had been trying to teach me. “Hold it so, Kai. Put your fingers here and here. Breathe like this—feeeeeu—and let it out slowly.”

  My squeaks and sputters made Sen laugh.

  In all my remembering, so many nights had been filled with the sound of my grandfather’s osa. It whispered stories that carried me to sleep.

  His music was magic. It was his heart song.

  The morning after my grandfather walked away from us forever into the winter night, I found his osa lying beside my bed. For many days I could not look at it. Then suddenly I knew what Apa-Da had asked of me. I must be the one to play the osa now.

  I tried, but I was a very bad osa player. My breath ran out. I had trouble covering the holes. I made squawking sounds. Sen liked my playing because it gave him a chance to mock me. “Ayee! My ears! Careful, Kai, you sound like a dying rabbit. See, the vultures are circling already!”

  I hid the osa in a hollow under a stone, where my brother wouldn’t find it. Now I did not play it if he was near. But when I was sure that he was not around, I worked at trying to make good sounds. For Apa-Da. Somehow he might be listening. He would not laugh. I was getting better at finding the notes, but I thought I could never make the little hollow bone sing as my grandfather had done. I did not have a heart song.

  I tried a high, dancing tune now. Some of the notes were sour. But Suli sat quietly, listening, with the wolf pup curled in her lap.

  Then I played the song I remembered best: the one, a little sad, that made me think of moonlight on the frozen river in winter. Again I missed some notes. The baby wolf stared hard at me. Suddenly, she lifted her sharp little muzzle and sang with the osa.

  When I finished, I looked at my mother. “I cannot play like Apa-Da,” I said.

  “Not yet, Kai,” my mother agreed, “but still, I like to hear it.”

  At last, I spotted Sen and Apa. Each carried the quarters of an ibex. Apa carried the skin and head as well. It was a male. The long horns curved down over his shoulders like two new moons
. Hurriedly, I took the wolf pup back from Suli and ducked inside to put my osa away. Then I crouched near the opening, waiting.

  When she saw them, Ama laughed softly, the lines of worry gone. There was a clattering sound made by the rows of teeth on my father’s anooka as he set his burden down. Sen did the same, throwing his shoulders back so that the teeth of the aurochs bull, sewn to his anooka, clicked together loudly. He was taller now than Apa, though still skinny. He brushed a hand over the front of his head where the yellow hair was cut short. The rest was pulled into a tail at the back of his neck, the way hunters wore theirs.

  “Sen killed one as well,” Apa told Ama proudly. “He gave it to Mir’s family.” My parents’ eyes met. They smiled.

  Suli reached for the beautiful horns. Apa chuckled, touching her cheek with a calloused hand. “Patience, my Suli,” he said. My father stepped inside the takka. “We will have a good new waterskin from the hide….” He broke off, his nostrils working over the blood scent of the freshly killed ibex. Then he turned to me where I crouched.

  “I smell wolf.”

  There was no use trying to hide what could not be hidden.

  “The one I call Torn Ear was killed,” I whispered. “The other pups can eat meat, but this one is too little. She would have died.”

  My father stared. Sen came inside to see. His lip curled. “Kai has brought home his little brother!” he said. “A pup with a pup.” His voice was like sour fruit.

  I glared at him.

  “Hush,” said Apa. For a few breaths, he was silent, thoughtful. Finally he squatted beside me and held out his hands. Trembling, I put the pup into them. I looked up at him, silently pleading. Those hands could break the neck of a small animal in one swift motion.

  He held the pup, stroking her fur and running the tiny tail though his fingers. He could not help a trace of a smile. “How did you find it, Kai?” I told him about crawling into Torn Ear’s den. His face went very still. “You did that?” he asked in a low voice. “You were not afraid?”