I’m alive... is that good or bad?
Tiny dots of light spread in a small cluster below him. From his high ledge cut in the mountainside he could see everything but the stars, drowned out by the town’s glow. Blood dripped from his jaw, staining the clumps of snow below him red. He could still feel the heat radiating off the hollow sheep’s carcass beside him. How far had he dragged his prey from the farm? Far enough that the farmer wouldn’t catch him. Guilt was always his secondary feeling after feeding, first being satisfaction. He’d murdered one of God’s creatures, as well as stealing from a fellow man. And now nature was getting back at him, for the Pull was leading him straight over the mountain looming in the night behind him.
A small splash of colour against the blackness of the night grabbed his attention. Fluttering around his head was a vivid red bird with a black face, singing a sweet song. A Northern Cardinal. He recognised it instantly and he knew what this meant; spring would soon arrive. Hope elated him. An ending to his suffering was in sight. Being alive is good, he decided.
The climb was a difficult one. The steep mountainside was made of jagged rocks that could tumble away in a lethal land-slide if he wasn’t careful. Mother Nature was a cruel, unforgiving woman. When he reached the top, his paws sliced and bleeding, he was rewarded with a view far better than the one earlier that morning. Down one side were the rocks he’d just scrambled up and the town. Down the other, the sun was rising over the lakes that speckled the forest.
The rest of the trek would be easy, all downhill on smooth, leafy terrain. He’d journeyed through half the night and would carry on until midday. He set off in a run.
Closing his eyes, he let his other senses guide him through the forest. The Pull urged him to go faster, faster than he’d ever gone before. He succumbed. Thud, thud, thud, his paws pounded the ground, claws digging into the soil to propel him forward. His breath was beginning to get uneven.
Snow crunched under advancing footfall, his eyes snapped open, registering an up-coming obstacle. He dug his paws into the snow to stop himself. Snow sprayed either side of him as he skidded forwards, coming to a halt an inch from the nose of another wolf.
He blinked. She was beautiful.
Her white fur glistened with the snow he’d just sprayed on her. Her eyes were bottomless oceans of clear, sparkling blue water. Like the ocean, there was a whole other world hidden below the surface, a world he was curious to enter. He was beginning to drown in the beauty of the twin pools staring back at him but he dragged himself to the surface and forced his brain to think. “S-sorry,” he stuttered.
With his mind whirring back into action, he registered that the wolf’s snout was puckered in a snarl, her ears flat against her narrow skull. Instinct made him scoot backwards. Danger, his senses alerted him. Threat. Violence. Jeopardy. The fierce wolf softened at his reaction, starting forward as if to comfort him. She was whiter than the snow floating from the sky, her movements softer than a rook’s feather, soundless like a spirit.
Her attention snapped to something behind her, like an automatic response to the calling of her name, then she turned back to him. He cleared his throat. “My apologies for our near collision, miss,” he said.
She blinked, and for a moment he wondered if she understood him. “If you think that’s hardship, you haven’t lived as long as I have.”
Her voice was not what he expected. It was not delicate, nor sweet. It had undertones of an accent since masked, not American, nor British, nor Asian. Her words he found the most curious though. For a moment, he applied it to his thoughts that very moment, of all his misery and pain, the things he did day in and day out, how the sight of her had washed it all away. But that couldn’t have been what she was referring to.
“Kasia,” the word floated down the mountainside.
Again, her ears perked up and her eyes darted around. “Get out of here,” she hissed, turning to leave.
“Kasia?”
“Coming!” Kasia snapped impatiently.
He fought the urge to follow the spirit wolf as a pack weaved through the tress ahead. She scampered up the slope to meet them and fell in step at the front, leading the pack of five in the direction opposite to him. He stepped forward, bowing his head to sniff the prints she lefts in the snow. Kasia. The name was fitting.
Alone once more, he turned to leave. In that moment, he felt something was absent. Something was missing from his very being. The Pull – it was gone. He gasped. His throat constricted and he choked on the chilly air. The Pull - his guidance, his quest - was gone, and he had never felt more alone. Abandoned in the middle of nowhere, lost with no direction. After following it for over a year in hope of something larger, the Pull and all its incentive had vanished in an instance.
His back legs gave out and he fell to a sitting position. What’s happening to me? He tried to stay calm, tried not to panic, but what do you do when your reason to live just ceases to be? Bounding back the way he came, he tried to reconnect with the force. But no such thing happened. Which way was the pull pulling went it still pulled? He looked around, trying to find some amusement in his little tongue twister. That way. He sighed heavily. Towards the spirit wolf.
Wrong. It was pulling east, he corrected himself, remembering the sunrise that morning. So east is where I’ll go.
With the coming of the sun came a fog creeping across the mountainside, oozing between the trees like an illness. This mist prevented him from locating the sun or the mountain’s peak to get a bearing. He picked a random direction and hoped for the best.
After hours, it seemed, he stumbled across an awfully familiar setting. Didn’t I just come through here? He thought, gazing at his surroundings. Panic welled in his gut. The gnarly grey trees twisted upwards and outwards in familiar patterns, frost clinging to their dead branches. The forest was turning him around, leading him in circles
“Caw! Caw!” High above his head a raven took flight, shaking the branch on which it was perched. From it fell a clump of snow, smacking the end of his snout. He shook his head rapidly, trying to shake off the shivers down his spine that had nothing to do with the cold snow.
They were surrounding him.
On all sides they trotted almost silently. He sensed them tightening their circle on him, there was no escape. They were the reason the raven had abandoned its nest, whoever they were. He stood up straight, hackles on end to give off the impression he was bigger and stronger than his scrawny body suggested. His lips curled back over his teeth automatically and his ears perked up to hear their movement.
Numerous sets of paws moved quietly through the undergrowth on all sides. Their breathing was slow and even. He matched it. Glancing left, he heard movement to the right. He glanced right and there was a grating laugh from his left.
“Friend, it’s been a while.”
He did a double take. The voice, gruff and familiar, was out of place here. It could not have been who he thought it was. “Malik…?”
The grey wolf emerging from the trees had dirty, matted grey fur and beady yellow eyes. His fangs were rotten and chipped, displayed in a familiar grin. Two smaller brown wolves flanked Malik, and he could hear more hiding in the dense forest on all sides.
No, no, no, they’ve come for me. It’s over, it’s all over. He began to feel himself already giving in, giving his soul over to the hands of a murderer once more, but a spark in his mind lit the flame of determination. He will not take me. I will fight for my freedom.
“What do you want?” he inquired. Better to be blunt.
“Come now, manners boy. I’m here on… real-estate business.”
“You want this territory for yourself,” he comprehended.
Neither confirming nor denying his suspicions, Malik put forward his own line of questioning.“What about you? Have you found your place in the world yet?”
“No,” he admitted. “I’m still... wandering.”
Delight glinted in Malik’s eyes. “So I see. What say you join me once more?”
He gulped. “Thank you but no. I must be on my way now, good bye.”
“This won’t be the last I’ll see of you, wanderer,” Malik called after him as he loped away. It was the same promised he had made last time the two parted, and once again he knew it was true. They would cross paths again, and most likely very soon.
By night fall the fog had cleared and he’d reached a high ridge from which he could see the peak and the whole landscape again. He realized he’d been heading more north than east, but after the day he’d had, losing the Pull, meeting Malik and the spirit wolf, he couldn’t bring himself to care. The trees around this area had been fiercely scent-marked and deep, even grooves that could only have been made by claws marked almost every tree. This must’ve be the border of the pack’s territory.
He tipped his head back and howled, celebrating the end of his extremely long, cold winter. Letting the world know he was there, he was alive, he’d made it. Telling everyone he was not giving up, despite the Pull’s absence. But most of all, reassuring himself of those things.
It was a brief howl, he didn’t have the energy for anything more. He lay down, resting his head on his crossed paws. Wind tickled his fur. A mosquito landed on his forward facing ear and it twitched, sending the mozzie buzzing on its way. He curled into a ball, tucking his nose into the nook of his hind leg. Embracing the darkness of his closed eyes, he plunged into sleep.
*
Sleep evaded Kasia. She sat on the steps leading up to the veranda of the faded red cottage, picking at the flaking paint on the railings. Though the smell of flowering plants suggested spring, she shivered in her purple hoodie and jeans. Winter was lingering longer this year. Kasia couldn’t stop thinking about the lone wolf she’d encountered early that morning. Is he stupid or what? If Kammal found him on our territory, he’d rip the poor guy to shreds...
The lights that were on inside the cottage shone brightly through the windows, illuminating elongated rectangles across the meadow. Shadows danced between the trees bordering the meadow about two hundred meters away, but Kasia held no fear. She was soothed by the sea of trees swaying in the breeze. The wind chime of their leaves brushing against each other drowned out the soft mumble of the TV inside and the screeching bats, squabbling in the starry sky.
The flyscreen door creaked open behind her. “Yo, Kasia,” Daine bumped her arm friendlily with his large fist. “Watcha doing?”
“Nothing,” Kasia shrugged. “Looking at the stars.”
Daine dropped to the step two below Kasia, leaning his head against her knees. Great, she thought sarcastically. She wanted to be alone.
“You smell funny,” Daine sniffed.
“Gee, thanks, Daine.”
“No, I mean, you smell like... like not you. You didn’t go out in the forest today, did ya?”
“No...” Kasia tried to edge away from Daine a bit. “Kammal said not to go out alone.”
“You ok?” Daine twisted his head to look at her.
Gazing out at the forest, Kasia presented a mask of fear. “Yeah... I just really hope that other pack gives up and leaves us alone.” It wasn’t as though she was lying, but it felt close enough.
“No way, it was getting boring around here.” Daine had turned back around but Kasia could tell by the way his ears moved that he was grinning. “A good fight is what we need!”
“Be serious, jackass,” Kasia scolded. “Things could get ugly.”
“Don’t see how it can get uglier with you involved. The ugly meter would break.”
Kasia wacked Daine over the back of the head but she couldn’t help grinning.
“I’m kidding, cupcake,” Daine chuckled. “Chillax.”
Kasia’s eyebrows shot up. “Chillax? Cupcake? Right, Joseph, I’m gonna kick your ass.”
A blush crept up the back of Daine’s tan neck. He didn’t like people using his first name. “Honey, it would be funny to see you try.”
Every last muscle visible under Daine’s tight black shirt tensed as a howl echoed down the valley. Looking up at the small summit of the mountain, Kasia tucked her thick brown hair behind her ears to hear better. It’s Him. And he’s lonely, she thought sadly. The howl faded away and the flyscreen door banged open behind them.
“Was that someone howling?” Kammal asked, looking around with restless black eyes.
“No.” Kasia frowned, giving her alpha the what the hell look.
Kammal gaze flicked from her to Daine.
“Don’t know what you’re on about, Kam,” Daine said, not turning to look at his alpha.
Kammal believed them. “Going insane...” he muttered, retreating back into the cottage.
Daine twisted around to gawk at Kasia. She hit him, glancing over her shoulder to make sure Kammal was out of ear shot.
“Why d’you lie?”
“I dunno,” Kasia shrugged. “Why d’you go along with it?”
“’Cause you’re my friend and I was hoping you had a good reason.”
Kasia folded her arms. “Well, sorry, I don’t.”
“What is up with you? You’ve been all weird recently.”
“Nothing. No I haven’t.” Kasia got to her feet and straightened out her hoodie. As she turned to leave, Daine grabbed her wrist.
“Who was it? Who’s out there?” His brown eyes bored into hers, sharp and demanding.
“No one.” Kasia tore away from him and thudded inside.
I hope you know what you’re doing, Daine thought as loudly and clearly as he could, to be sure Kasia could hear.
