The Wolf's Boy Read online

Jyn looked up from twining a feather into Mir’s hair. Her eyes widened. “Kai really is a wolf! He talks to it! He’ll tell the pack to hunt us!”

  “That’s foolishness,” said Cali. “Wolves hunt deer and mice, not humans, and it’s just a baby.”

  “I saw Suli playing with it,” said Vida wistfully.

  “It will grow big and hungry with horrible teeth. I wouldn’t like a grown wolf following me,” said Mir.

  Uff felt the wet sand under her feet. She stopped short, lifted a paw, and looked at me anxiously. “Water,” I told her. “This is where we get water. Here.” I scooped some from the stream and offered it to her. She nosed it, then lapped from my cupped hands. The girls stared, silent.

  Now Uff saw the moving stream. She did not understand it. Sunlight touched the surface, yet it was clear as air. She tried to bite a pebble on the bottom and got a nose full. She sat down hard. Sneezed. The girls laughed, and she spooked at the sound. I stumbled after her and caught her up. “It’s just the river,” I whispered, holding her close. “And the girls. They are alike, always babbling and laughing.”

  “Can I touch her?” It was Vida. She had left the others and come to my side.

  “You can hold her,” I said, putting Uff into her arms. My little wolf wriggled, licking Vida’s face. Vida stroked Uff’s fur and looked up at me, her eyes shining. “Once I found a baby rabbit,” she told me. “Its fur was just this soft. But my mother wouldn’t let me keep it.” Uff licked her face again. “She likes me!”

  “Of course she does,” I said. I felt my face suddenly redden. “She has a name,” I added. “I call her Uff.”

  Vida nodded. “I will be your friend, too, Uff,” she said to my wolf.

  “Vida!” The voice was shrill with fear. I looked up. Vida’s mother was striding toward us. “Don’t touch the wolf. It’s tabat, like Kai.” She grabbed Vida’s elbow and pulled her back toward the other girls. I heard her hissing, “I have told you to stay away from that one!”

  “He’s just a boy. He’s not some poison thing,” said Vida crossly, shaking her mother’s hand away. But she went.

  As I struggled back up the path carrying the full waterskin, I suddenly knew what I would ask my father. He was there, outside the takka, with Bu and Suli. I did not see Sen or my mother anywhere near. I stopped to watch. Apa had made a play keerta for Bu. The tip was padded with soft leather instead of a stone point. Bu waved it in the air, growling fiercely.

  Something stabbed my heart.

  Suli also had feelings. “I will hunt, too!” she said, her face stormy.

  “Eya, my Suli,” said Apa, taking her onto his lap, “but girls don’t have the strength and speed of boys. You will learn to throw a keerta to defend yourself and hunt rabbits and such. But mostly you will learn women things. Women have little time for hunting.”

  Suli’s lip trembled. “I don’t want to be a woman!” she said. “I want to be a blood-hunter, like Sen!”

  Apa grinned. “I hope you do not become a blood-hunter. You would have to kill something fierce and big that might hurt you.”

  “Apa,” I said. My voice cracked.

  He looked up at me. Raised an eyebrow.

  I set down the waterskin. Straightened my shoulders. Shuffled my feet. Tried again. “Apa,” I said. “If Uff could hunt her own meat, she wouldn’t need ours. But I can’t teach her if I don’t know how to hunt myself.” His shaggy eyebrows drew together. The blue eyes held mine. I took a breath. “I do not ask to use a keerta. The twine I make is strong. You have used it with no bad thing happening. Let me set snares. I know how it’s done. Apa-Da used to let me go with him when he set his. Sometimes…”

  I searched my father’s face carefully to judge whether or not I should say this. “Sometimes he let me be the one to find the game trail, or place the loop, or cut the twigs and bend a willow and set the notches. No tabat thing happened. Apa-Da’s snares caught many small animals. If I could catch such game, I could feed Uff—and maybe somehow she would learn to hunt them herself.”

  Hearing her name, Uff came and sat beside us with her head to the side, listening. My father’s eyes shifted to her, then they dropped. He seemed to be seeing nothing for a very long time. At last he said, “Alright, Kai. But you must do this alone.”

  And so I set my snares.

  At first I didn’t go far from the takka with Uff. Often I had to wait for her. She would come trundling along the path after me. Her tongue hung out. Her eyes were bright. When she tired, I tucked her into my pack-basket and carried her. But soon her legs lengthened. She no longer tripped over her big paws. Wherever I went, she followed.

  A hunger that had been inside me was filled. With Uff at my heels, I was no longer alone.

  For many days, my snares caught nothing. Over and over, I whispered the hunter’s prayer for luck: Nnnnn-gata, nnnnn-gata….But still they would be empty—always empty. I didn’t stop trying, but I couldn’t neglect my work. There was the endless task of gathering fuel. There was not much wood near the immet. Old bones could be burned, but dried dung was best for a quick, hot fire.

  One morning, I shouldered my pack-basket, called to Uff, and set off. I didn’t go close to the great hearth, with its circle of flat ground worn bare by many feet. The women came there to sew, work hides, and talk, while the children played and the old people told stories.

  As a little boy, I had spent much time at the great hearth, helping my mother with her work. But my heart had burned to be with the other boys. There had always been stares and whispering. Now a wolf pup followed me. Who had ever seen such a thing? If Rhar blew his aurochs horn, I would have no choice but to go hear what was to be said. But otherwise, I kept away.

  There was a place that was used for throwing keerta. The boys spent much time there. I stopped at a distance to watch them. I couldn’t help myself. I held my breath with each toss, willing the keerta to fly straight and hard to its mark. No one saw me at first. Sen and his friends took turns. They used a reindeer hide stuffed with moss for testing their skill. Someone had set a skull where the head should have been, and drawn a mark on the hide to show the killing place. A ghost deer. Every time it was hit, the skull with its broken antlers fell over and they shouted. The hide was tattered from the many keertas that had pierced it.

  I copied their stance: opposite foot forward, arm held back and high—the sudden forward motion and snap of the wrist. Eya! Even leaning on my stick, I was sure I could do it.

  Then Xar spotted me. I started to turn away. His eyes were hard. Cold. I did not want to look into them. Xar kept the front of his hair hacked so close to his skull that the skin showed through, white as bone. It was as if looking fiercer would make him so. It was said that Xar’s father had once run away in a fight with a boar. Another hunter had died because of that. We all knew that the bruises on his son’s face and the missing tooth were not accidents.

  “The pup brought one of his wolf friends,” Xar said over his shoulder to the others. Then he grinned at me, his tongue sucking loudly at the gap in his teeth.

  “It follows him like a child!” said Uli. He was so short and thickly built that the others often called him Ice Man, which made him very angry.

  “Wolf-ama!” called Fin. I didn’t mind Fin so much. There was no meanness in him; he just liked to tease. But the others were not so kind.

  “You’ll need to kill a lot of game to feed your wolf bah!” Uli added with a sneer.

  “It won’t be a baby next winter,” muttered Sen.

  “He’s not allowed to hunt—a keerta would split in two if he touched it!” said Ptyr, laughing.

  “Cripple!” hissed Uli.

  “Tabat one! Get away from our throwing place.” Xar’s voice was like ice.

  Sen’s cheeks reddened. He spat on the ground. “Kai is growing the hide for my new winter robe,” he told them.

  My mother was wrong. Their words were not just words. They were aimed like keertas at a mark. I could not make my heart as tough as hide
. The words cut me. And they did not grow tired of mocking me.

  “A man fights those who hurt him,” my father had said. I had promised him that I would not touch a keerta, but my hand itched to hold one now. Still, I knew I could not fight a bunch of older boys.

  “A bad foot isn’t everything. You must find what there is in you that is strong.” It was Apa-Da speaking in my head now.

  Suddenly there was a hiss, a soft thud behind me, and gleeful shouts. Uff yipped and scooted sideways. I turned to see Xar’s keerta still quivering, its point buried in the ground barely a hand-span from where Uff had been a moment before. I grabbed her up with my free arm and hobbled quickly away.

  “You didn’t have to do that!” I heard my brother say to Xar. I did not hear more.

  Once Uff and I were at a safe distance, I knelt beside her to catch my breath. She had gotten over her fright. She gazed at me the way Shine’s followers looked at him—not so much at me as into me. I gazed back. Her eyes had lost their blue color. They glowed deep amber now. “He’s a stinking pile of hyena dung,” I told her. “Someday I’ll fight him. You do not think I am tabat. You don’t hate me for my bad foot.” I put my forehead against hers. “You are my friend,” I whispered. She licked my cheek and gently bit my nose. I stroked her shoulders where a few long, glossy hairs with black tips were growing through the puppy fluff.

  “Come,” I said to my wolf. “Let’s go set more snares.”

  “Uff, NAH!” I tried to yank my mother’s saba away, but Uff tugged back, tail waving, play growling. The moon had grown full again, and she had grown strong. “It’s not a game—give it to me!” My voice frightened her. She dropped it. There was a gaping hole gnawed through the toe.

  “Kai, you can’t let her do that!” My mother snatched the saba from my hands. “Look what she’s done!”

  “I’ll mend it,” I said. “Please don’t tell Apa.”

  Ama opened her mouth to say more. She looked down at Uff, pressed up against my legs, shivering. She closed her mouth again.

  “Please,” I begged. “See. She knows it was wrong. She just wants to use her teeth now that she has them. Like Bu.” My mother smiled. I fetched the sewing things.

  That day, Uff stared at me as I gnawed on a bone from the shoulder of a deer. “So, Little Bah, you want bigger game?” Uff’s eyes did not leave the bone. “Well, then. I’ve had enough.” She lunged for it, dragged it from the fire circle, and tore at it with her front teeth, grinding sideways with her back teeth. She chewed for a long time. At last, she fell asleep, one paw stretched over her prize.

  Others were watching. I met my father’s eyes. “Kai,” he said, “it’s a long time until the deer come back to us. The wolf is growing bigger. Are you catching anything in your snares?”

  I looked down. Shook my head. I still had caught nothing.

  “You must be doing something amiss, some careless thing.” My father’s voice was gentler. “Think. Become the rabbit or the ptarmigan. The small creatures are not stupid. They see us and hear us move. The marmot can feel the earth tremble when the horses run. He smells the smoke of our fires. He tastes meat eaters on the wind.”

  I expected Sen to say something cutting, but he only raised an eyebrow at me as if to make sure I was listening. I stared at him, mouth open. Did my brother want me to be able to kill game for Uff? For myself, too?

  See, hear, feel, smell, taste. A hunter used all these things. He stalked game not just with his eyes but with ears, nose, and even his open mouth, tasting the air with his tongue.

  Of course.

  I snatched up my stick and pack-basket. Then, calling to my wolf, I hurried off.

  The day was gray with mist and the ground was damp. Softly. Eya, that was how I must walk. Stalking.

  Uff had little trouble with this. She was still young, with the big paws of a pup, but her feet knew how to be soft on the earth.

  I came to my first snare. Sprung by last night’s wind and rain, or a wary animal, but empty. Uff’s nose worked carefully, studying it. Smell…I inhaled, mouth open. Damp moss. Sweet bramble blossoms. Then I sniffed the sleeve of my anooka. Wood smoke. Meat. Sweat. I smelled the palms of my hands. Eya, they had an odor, too. I have left my smell.

  I swung back on the trail to where a boar had rooted under a hazel bush searching for old nuts. The ground was torn open by its sharp hooves. I scooped handfuls of dirt, rubbed it over my hands, arms, feet, legs. Then, quietly, carefully, I went back to my snare and, handling it as little as possible, set it again. “Nnnnn-gata,” I whispered.

  The next morning, as I was setting out to check my snares, Uff suddenly raced out of the takka with Suli’s ah-bah in her mouth. My sister stumbled after her, screaming. I followed as fast as I could. Uff circled, dodging bushes and boulders. This was a good game!

  “Nah, Uff, give it back!” I scolded, trying not to laugh. At last she let me come close enough to catch it by one arm. I tugged, but she shook her head, tugging back. The leather tore. Suli cried.

  When I finally pried the ah-bah from Uff’s teeth, she yelped. Blood in her mouth. I crouched to look. One of her little fangs hung by a shred of flesh. I opened her jaws. In the back of her mouth, big teeth were growing. I caught my breath. Teeth are sacred. They are life and they are death.

  “You are growing up,” I whispered. In a quick motion that she hardly felt, I jerked the loose tooth free.

  Suli had caught up to us. She sobbed over her ah-bah. “I will sew her arm back on,” I told her. “But look, Uff is growing new teeth.” I tucked Uff’s baby tooth into the pouch around my neck where I kept my sacred things, hoping Apa had not noticed. He was sitting by the fire eating his morning meal.

  But Suli ran to him. “Uff is growing new teeth,” she announced.

  “Suli, hush!” I hissed.

  “Great big ones! As big as cave lion teeth!” Suli added, holding fingers curled like fangs up to her mouth.

  My father’s brows came together. He stared at my wolf and shook his head.

  “Come,” I said to Uff. I needed to check my snares.

  The first one was sprung. Empty. The second was still set. I trudged on. Uff looked up at me anxiously. I knew she was hungry. “Maybe we’ll find something for you left from some creature’s kill,” I told her, but that was not likely. What the big beasts did not finish, the hyenas and vultures picked clean.

  As we came near the next snare, Uff brushed past my legs, ears and tail up. She stopped. Growled. “What?” I whispered. I pulled a branch aside and there, dangling by its hind legs, was a rabbit! Dead.

  I closed my eyes. Thank you.

  Now I caught small game almost every day. But Uff was growing fast. Her belly was always empty. My father and brother did not have luck with every hunt. Sometimes I shared the small meat I caught with my family. I felt pride watching them eat. Twice, as I tended my snares, I came very close to red deer coming to the river to drink, and once closer than I liked to a big spotted cat lying out on a log. If only I, too, could use a keerta…I gritted my teeth. If only.

  One afternoon, I was startled by Ama’s cry of anger. Scattered rushes everywhere. Uff feasting on strips of dried meat. The basket she had ripped open on its side. Bu wailing.

  “Ayee, ayee, ayee!” my mother cried, trying to snatch up the remaining pieces. My father grabbed Uff, yelping, by the scruff of her neck and dragged her outside. He picked up the broken basket and found that it was empty. He smacked it on the ground. Kicked it away.

  How could one small wolf eat so much?

  “Kai, I told you she would steal from us!” my father shouted. Sen sat on his heels and smirked. Then Uff tried to crawl back inside on her belly to burrow under my bed fur. I dragged her out again.

  “Bad, that was bad!” I told her. I turned to my father, my stomach wrung into hard knots. “She doesn’t know it was wrong. To her, food is to eat. Wolves eat when there’s food and hunt more when it’s gone. She can learn. Please give her one more chance! Please.”
r />   “How do you know a wolf can learn?” Then my father sighed heavily. Shook his head. “I don’t know why I give in. Until winter, Kai. She can stay until winter—but only if you don’t let this happen again.” He walked away to cool his anger.

  “I will make a new basket,” I called after him.

  “We could tie the other baskets, and anything else she might get into, out of her reach on the poles of the takka,” said my mother. I looked at her gratefully.

  “Where Apa and I will bump our heads,” grumbled Sen. But he helped us to do it, which was good because he was so tall. “It looks like we live in an upside-down place, with all our food stored over our heads,” he muttered when we were done. “People will think we are strange.”

  “I don’t care what they think,” I said.

  That night I did not take my eyes from my little wolf. When she wriggled close to Bu and Suli, hoping to steal their meat, I scolded her, pushed her away. “Nah, you must wait,” I whispered.

  Uff put her head to the side. Whined. I am hungry.

  “I know it’s hard. You’ll have what’s left when we’re finished. Nah! Stay there!”

  Uff struggled. The hunger water dripped from her mouth.

  Until winter. I heard the words over and over again in my head. I couldn’t send Uff back to her pack. She would be a lone wolf to them. They might kill her. If she couldn’t hunt for herself, she’d starve. As she lay resting her muzzle on my knee, watching me work, I didn’t think she would willingly go. This was her place, beside me.

  The moon would grow full twice more before cold weather came again. There was still time.

  Coming home with Uff at my heels one day, I saw Sen and many of his friends gathered around the outside fire pit. They were talking eagerly, laughing. Uli and his sister, little brown-haired Hani, who lived in the takka nearest to ours, were there. As usual, Uli was full of loud talk and jokes. Mir and Jyn, who always shadowed her, sat at one side of the fire. Mir was wearing her good anooka, stitched and decorated with tiny river shells, as if it were the reindeer feast and not an ordinary day.