Secrets of the Wolves Read online

  Ruuqo and Rissa were first across the river. As soon as they emerged, they shook themselves and set down the meat they carried. The rest of us were not far behind. We set down our own pieces of snow deer and stood, ready to confront the Stone Peaks.

  As the four leaderwolves glowered at each other, Pell kept trying to meet my eyes. I ignored him. Our packs were enemies. He shouldn’t be trying to be friendly to me.

  “Hello, Kaala,” he said softly when I refused to look at him. I felt my spine go warm and my eyes trying to lift up to meet his. I wouldn’t let them, though. Next to me, Ázzuen rumbled a growl.

  It was up to Ruuqo and Rissa, as the wolves entering another pack’s territory, to greet the Stone Peaks first. They inclined their heads the tiniest bit.

  “Hello, Torell. Ceela,” Rissa said. “We claim safe passage to the human homesite.”

  Torell didn’t even bother to acknowledge her greeting, as a well-mannered wolf would. He sneered at the five of us like we were hyenas. His face, like Werrna’s, was scarred from a battle long ago. But while Werrna’s scars covered only one side of her face, Torell’s entire face seemed to be one large scar. It made him seem even more intimidating than did his great size.

  “Is it true?” he demanded. “Can what I hear be true?”

  “I don’t know, Torell,” Rissa said, shaking more water from her white coat. I realized I’d been too nervous to shake when I climbed from the river. Suddenly, the water in my fur was intolerable, and I shook hard. Water sprayed all over Ceela, who glowered at me.

  Rissa stifled a laugh. So did Pell.

  “Why don’t you tell us what it is you have heard, Ceela?” Rissa suggested.

  “I hear you bring meat to the humans,” Torell snapped. “I hear you bring it to them as if they are part of your pack.” His gaze took in the shinbone Ruuqo had set down on the ground, at the hunks of belly meat that Trevegg, Ázzuen, and I had carried. A look of revulsion crossed his scarred face. “I did not believe it when I heard it. I thought better of you. And I hear you mean to live with them,” he said, as if speaking of some perversion. “Tell me it isn’t true, Ruuqo.”

  “As I have told you more times than I can remember, Torell—what the Swift River pack does and does not do are of no concern to you. Stand aside and let us pass. We don’t have time right now to make you do so.”

  Torell snorted at that. He was a large wolf, even for a Stone Peak, and known for his courage in fighting. It would take a very strong wolf to survive in a pack, much less become its leader, with whatever injuries had left him so scarred.

  “You don’t deny it?” Ceela was incredulous. “You admit you bring meat to our enemies. Winter is hardly over and the prey still scrawny and you give good meat to the humans? They would kill you as carelessly as you kill a vole. What’s wrong with you?”

  “Do the Greatwolves know of this?” Torell said slyly. He curled his lip. “You are always such good little wolves, doing everything the Greatwolves tell you. What will they do, I wonder, if we tell them what you’re doing?”

  It was an empty threat. Torell hated the Greatwolves even more than he hated the humans. Still, I could see Rissa took pleasure in answering him.

  “It is the Greatwolves who have asked us to do this,” she said.

  Asked wasn’t exactly the right word, I thought.

  “We will be calling a Gathering of all the packs in the valley in a half moon’s time,” Rissa said. “If you wish to send a representative, do so. We will be at the verge near Wind Lake territory.”

  “You probably don’t want to come yourself, Torell,” Trevegg said with a yawn. “Most wolves still blame you for the fight at Tall Grass.”

  All three Stone Peaks growled at that. It was the Stone Peak pack who had tried to attack the humans three moons ago, and every wolf in the valley would remember that. Torell had taken his pack into hiding throughout the winter. They had emerged only half a moon ago, and no one really knew what their status in the valley was.

  A crafty look crossed Torell’s face. “Just as many blame your drelshik pup for stopping us from getting rid of the humans,” he said. “Perhaps we should discuss that at the Gathering.” I felt my gut clench. A drelshik was a cursed wolf, a wolf despised by the Ancients who brought disaster wherever she went. It wasn’t the first time the accusation had been hurled at me. I wanted to crawl back into the river.

  “Perhaps they do,” Trevegg agreed, clearly pleased to have gotten a rise out of Torell. “We appreciate your concern and will give it the attention it deserves.”

  Torell narrowed his eyes at the oldwolf, but Trevegg’s tone and expression were too mild to give him reason to take offense.

  “We grant you leave to come into our territory,” Torell said at last, turning from the oldwolf to speak instead to Ruuqo. “I’m sure you won’t mind if we guide you? Just to make sure you don’t lose your way.”

  Ruuqo regarded him for moment, and I thought he might refuse. Then he dipped his head to the Stone Peak leader, picked up the shinbone he had set down when he confronted Torell, and took off at a run, Rissa at his side, and Torell, Ceela, and Trevegg on their tails. Startled by the quick turn of events, I grabbed up my deer meat and ran after them. Ázzuen and Pell ran with me. I made a point of concentrating on where I was going, but after a moment Pell spoke.

  “Hello, Kaala,” he said again. I had been avoiding looking at him, but it would have been rude to ignore his greeting a second time. I looked up into his eyes, and then away when I saw the warmth in his gaze.

  “Hello, Pell,” I said, mumbling around the meat I carried. I hadn’t spoken to Pell since the first day I met him—the day Ázzuen, Marra, and I had overheard the Stone Peaks plotting to kill the humans. I had only talked to him that one time, but he had made it clear that he liked me, which made me nervous. He didn’t know me well enough to like me or not.

  “I see you’ve done well over the winter,” he said. “You look healthy and strong.”

  Many pups did not live through the hungry times of winter. Doing so was evidence of a pup’s strength and likelihood of long-term survival. There was no mistaking the admiration in Pell’s voice.

  “We’ve all done well,” Ázzuen said sharply, sprinting to catch up with us. I was shocked to notice he had left his deer meat behind at the river. “All four of us survived the winter. How many Stone Peak pups did?”

  I glared at him. It was rude to ask another pack which pups survived the winter. And I couldn’t believe he’d left his deer meat behind. We’d need it to win over the humans.

  Pell looked down at him. “Stone Peak had no pups this year.”

  I thought about that. Did he mean that none had been born or that none had been allowed to live? At nearly three years old, Pell was the youngest wolf in the Stone Peak pack. If they didn’t start having pups soon, Stone Peak would be no more.

  “How was your winter?” I mumbled. Then felt like an idiot. It was a stupid question. Pell had been badly wounded at the battle at the Tall Grass plain. He had hurt his left rear leg so severely that he had trouble walking. I was surprised that he was still allowed in the Stone Peak pack.

  When Pell didn’t answer right away, Ázzuen pressed him.

  “How’s your leg?” Ázzuen asked.

  I almost choked on the deer meat I carried. Calling attention to another wolf’s weakness was incredibly offensive. Now I realized why Ázzuen had left his meat behind—so he could harass Pell. The Stone Peak wolf would have been within his rights to challenge Ázzuen to a fight for his rudeness. But Pell only grimaced.

  “I cannot yet run the hunt,” he said. It must have been hard for him to acknowledge that. A wolf who couldn’t hunt wasn’t considered a true wolf. I thought it was brave of him to admit it to us.

  Without breaking his stride, he bent down to speak softly to me. His sage-willow scent, made stronger by the damp predawn air, seeped into my nose, distracting me. “I am all but useless,” he said, and there was real pain in his voice. �
�If I cannot hunt soon, I will leave the valley.”

  Startled, I stopped and set down the meat I carried.

  “But Torell wouldn’t keep you if he thought you were useless!” I protested. “Have you tried hunting?” Suddenly I didn’t want him to leave.

  “Torell has wanted me as his successor since the day I left the den,” Pell said, “but I will not stay to be a burden to my pack. I tried to hunt, but I looked like a fool. I’d rather not do that again.”

  “Hunt with me sometime,” I said impulsively. “I’ll help you. Then none of your pack will see you struggling, and you can go back to them when you have regained your strength.”

  I had no idea why I said it. He was a member of a rival pack, a pack that hated Swift River. I heard an indignant whuff from Ázzuen. Embarrassed, I picked up my deer meat and began running again.

  We loped in silence for several minutes, not wanting to get too far behind the other wolves. Even though he was lame, Pell easily kept pace with Ázzuen and me. When we reached the path that led to the humans’ homesite, we saw the other wolves waiting for us. Without a word, Ceela and Torell ran off into Stone Peak territory, but Pell bent his head to speak softly to me.

  “I will think about your offer,” he said. He panted a smile, then noticed Ruuqo and Rissa watching him. “I wish you good luck with the humans,” he said to them. He bent his forelegs to bow deeply to the leaderwolves, then followed his packmates into the woods. Ruuqo and Rissa looked after him in surprise. Ázzuen growled.

  “What happened to your meat?” Rissa asked him, when she saw Ázzuen’s empty jaws.

  “I dropped it in the river,” Ázzuen lied. “Seeing the Stone Peaks startled me. It won’t happen again.” He spoke respectfully to the leaderwolves but watched the woods Pell had disappeared into. When he looked again at me, his eyes were filled with resentment and betrayal.

  5

  Fire and meat. Burnt stone and dried mud. Sweat, flesh, and old preyskins infused with sun and smoke. Those were the scents that met us as we neared the human homesite. When the sun rose, we would hear the sounds of rock upon rock as the humans shaped and used the elaborate tools that made them so different from other creatures. We would hear their loud, proud voices, echoing through the woods, as if they were completely unconcerned that every hunter within howling range could hear them. Ravens behaved that way, too, but ravens could fly away from danger.

  “It’s not as if the humans are trying to hide,” Trevegg had said when I’d asked him about it. It was true. The humans of the Wide Valley lived, in many ways, much as wolves did. But unlike wolves, they lived most of the time in their one gathering place. They would leave it for days at a time for hunts or other journeys, and found warmer shelter for the winter moons, but then they returned to their homesite. It was as if they lived always at a den site. They also lived in groups larger than any pack, and each year their homesites grew larger. They called this permanent gathering place a “village,” TaLi had told me, and it was only in her grandmother’s lifetime that they had begun to live in this strange way.

  Ruuqo and Rissa hid in the spiny tartberry bushes on a small hill above the humans’ home, while Trevegg, Ázzuen, and I crept as quietly as we could to stand silently at the very edge of the village. We didn’t want to frighten the humans, so we had decided that the first time we brought meat to their village, we would simply give it to them and leave immediately. If they accepted our gifts, we would bring them more.

  The three of us waited there until the early morning light made it possible for the humans to see us waiting just beyond the glow of their fires. As soon as some of the adults caught sight of us, we set down the meat and slipped away to rejoin our packmates on the hill. We hid for a few moments with Ruuqo and Rissa, watching as the humans took the meat back to their fires. Then we quietly left them and returned to the pack.

  We waited two days, keeping far from the humans’ paths in case they were angry that we had come to their home. When no human hunting party came after us, we returned with more meat, this time bringing it just a bit farther into the homesite. Once again, the humans watched us from a distance, coming to take the food only after we were gone.

  The third time we brought food to the human homesite, it was different. They were waiting for us. We came once again at dawn, since it was one of the times humans were most active and one of the times many of them were gathered together. It was also a time, Rissa had told us, that they would be least frightened of us. The humans could not see well in the dark, and thus were more fearful in the nighttime.

  When we crept into their homesite and saw a large group of them standing in a half circle, like the elkryn sometimes did when they challenged us before a hunt, we nearly ran. Ázzuen and Trevegg began to back away, but when I saw TaLi standing, smiling, next to HuLin, I spoke.

  “Wait,” I whispered, setting down the heavy walking bird I carried. Something had shifted, something had changed.

  “Kaala,” Trevegg warned, “we can’t confront the humans. We’ll have to come back another time.”

  “Trust me,” I said. “They aren’t afraid, not really. They want us to be here.”

  He raised his nose to the slight breeze. There were so many scents swirling in the human homesite—excitement, anticipation, curiosity, a little bit of fear—that I knew he wouldn’t be able to determine what the humans were feeling solely by scent.

  “How do you know for certain?” he asked. Ruuqo and Rissa were leading the rest of the pack on a hunt, so the three of us were alone. Trevegg was responsible for Ázzuen’s safety and for mine. “How do you know they won’t get frightened and attack?”

  It wasn’t a smell, or a sound, or even the way the humans had stopped clutching their sharpsticks so tightly and holding their young so closely. It was a change in the air itself. When I had first seen the humans nearly six moons ago, I had felt it—a warmth in my heart, a yearning that could only be eased by moving closer to them, the feeling that something I had lost long ago was within reach. I knew that if I resisted it, the warmth would build to an intolerable burning in the moon-shaped crescent on my chest, and that if I gave in to it and could lay my head on TaLi’s chest, the yearning would be replaced by a feeling of rightness and belonging. When the humans had been so fearful of us, the pull had been muted. Now that they wanted us there, it swelled.

  “Trust me,” I said again, lifting my chin to meet Trevegg’s gaze. I would explain everything to him when we had time, but if we were to keep the peace with the humans, if we were to have a chance of succeeding at the Greatwolves’ task, the adults in the pack were going to have to rely on my judgment. “You need to trust me,” I said.

  “Be careful,” Trevegg said at last. “At the first scent or sound of trouble, you leave. Understand?”

  I dipped my head in agreement, but my chest was already moving forward, drawing the rest of my body with it. Ázzuen’s soft whine told me that he was resisting the temptation to run to the humans. Picking the bird up in my jaws, I walked cautiously forward. Not to TaLi. To HuLin. As I neared the tall human, I began to lose my nerve. I almost set the walking bird down several wolflengths away, but something about the human leader’s manner made me keep moving forward until I stood just in front of him, so close that my breath made the fine fur of his deerskin wrap tremble. I waited there, looking up at him, holding the walking bird in my mouth.

  And he took it from me. Like it was the most natural thing in the world. For a moment, I stood perfectly still, transfixed by the curiosity in his gaze. A quiet whuff from behind me brought me back to myself and I stepped back, just a few paces. Ázzuen came forward next, giving HuLin a piece of deer shoulder, and Trevegg came last with a rabbit. When the human leader took the rabbit from Trevegg, the oldwolf pressed his head against his hand, and HuLin briefly rested his hand atop Trevegg’s head before stepping away from the oldwolf. HuLin handed the rabbit and Ázzuen’s shoulder meat off to other humans but he held onto the walking bird, looking at it
with satisfaction.

  There had been an incident with Werrna over that bird. She was the one who had caught it, and in spite of the fact that Rissa and Ruuqo had ordered every wolf in the pack to save food for the humans, she had not wanted to give it up. We came upon her near the river. Walking birds travel with their mates and often one will not leave even if the other has been killed. The feathers and blood sticking to Werrna’s muzzle made it clear that she had already eaten one of the birds. The second one lay, still warm, in the melting snow at her feet. She was digging a hole to bury it in when we came upon her. She looked at us defiantly.

  “I will share with my pack,” she said, “with elders and with pups. I know my duty. But I will not give any more of my meat to humans.”

  Ruuqo and Rissa both raised their chins at her. For a moment, I thought Werrna might challenge them. She was strong, and a good fighter; she would be a formidable adversary. But after a moment she stepped away from the walking bird, glaring at me.

  “We can find something else to take to the humans,” I mumbled.

  “No,” Rissa said, “we cannot.”

  I wanted to argue. The last thing I needed was for other wolves in the pack to think I was depriving them of meat. Enough of them resented me for making us responsible for the humans anyway. But the look on Rissa’s face changed my mind. With an apologetic glance at Werrna, I picked up the soft, warm bird.

  Now, watching HuLin admiring it, I was glad Rissa had insisted. Walking birds are rich and fatty, almost as good as greslin meat. HuLin handed the bird to a human female standing behind him. Very carefully, very slowly, he reached out his hand to me. I took two steps forward and sat at his feet.

  “TaLi,” he said softly, as if he feared a loud noise would startle us, “you say you have hunted with them?” I could tell by the approval in his voice that her status in her tribe was rising.