Lone Wolf (4 page)

Faolan raised his muzzle, which was speckled with red dots. At the same moment Thunderheart glimpsed the flash of a trout. There was a loud
plash
as she smacked her
forepaw into the river, grabbed the trout, and slapped it on the rock. Blood spurted into the air, the droplets caught in dazzling shards of light from the sun on the horizon.

Faolan froze. He smelled…blood. His eyes fixed on the spinning drops glittering madly in the morning light. His heart raced, he felt a quickness in his mouth. His tongue went suddenly wet. He was stunned by a new hunger aroused deep within him, and with an overwhelming admiration for Thunderheart. He shook his head fiercely to rid himself of the annoying ladybugs and meekly walked over to her.

Faolan lowered his head and then his entire body, flattening his ears as he flashed the whites of his eyes. Thunderheart softly woofed at him. “What are you doing?” she asked. Faolan had never appeared more wolfish, and yet she instinctively knew that he was showing her respect. But where had he learned this?

She knew the answer. Blood. With the claw-ripped body of the fish, she had awakened Faolan’s blood passion. It was the same with cubs, but never had any of her cubs behaved in quite this way. They scrambled and tussled, trying to get in for the first nip of fresh meat, shoving and pushing rudely in their clamor to try this new taste. Faolan, however, was approaching her on his belly.
As if I am Ursus and no mere mother bear!

She ripped the trout in two and dropped it in front of Faolan. But he hesitated and looked up at her with almost pleading eyes. She could see the saliva dripping from his mouth, but still he hesitated. She pushed the fish even closer to him. But Faolan only flattened himself farther and began to make small squeaking sounds. Thunderheart studied him carefully. She noticed that he stole a quick glance at the fish and then at her. Suddenly, it burst upon her:
I should eat first!

But how
, she wondered,
will he survive if he allows others to eat first?
Was this something wolves did? Pack behavior?
But he has to eat! He cannot give way to others, he will be eaten!
Her mind roiled with confusion.

She was rearing a wolf but knew only the way of bears.

Faolan remained flattened on his belly, stealing a glance at her sometimes, but mostly rolling his eyes back as if he dared not even look at her. Finally, she gave up and bit off the tail of the fish, making sure to leave the meatiest part for the pup.

Immediately, he pounced on what remained.

From that moment on, she never had a more ardent student of fishing. By mid-morning, Faolan was following Thunderheart into the river to swim behind her as they examined every cranny for schooling trout. The splayed
paw served him well, and this, for Thunderheart, was perhaps the most rewarding aspect of the whole endeavor. Faolan became skillful at slapping and scooping with that odd front paw.

By mid-afternoon both Faolan and Thunderheart were stuffed with fish. They lay on a sunny bank and traced the path of clouds across the sky. Thunderheart grunted and raised one paw to point out a cloud that looked just like the trout they had been catching. Faolan yipped with glee and immediately began scanning the cloudscape for another picture. Suddenly, he jumped up in great excitement and began to beat his tail against the ground. Two towering clouds had silently collided, a hump bulging from one cloud near the top. Around that hump shoulders rose. Faolan yipped and Thunderheart sat up, too. Above the hump a smaller dark cloud was settling. Faolan could not contain his joy. “It’s us! It’s us! I ride you in the sky!”

And with that announcement, Faolan flung himself onto Thunderheart’s back. The huge bear roared with delight, and the ground shook as they bounded off together, with Faolan perched on top of her.

THEY HAD NOT GONE FAR WHEN Thunderheart felt Faolan grow suddenly tense. She saw immediately what caught his attention. In a clearing, a mother grizzly and two cubs were making their way to the river to fish. The grizzly mother and cubs spotted them and froze in their tracks. Faolan tumbled from Thunderheart’s back and scurried behind her, trying to hide. He nudged up against her hind leg, pressing into her fur. The mother and cubs approached cautiously. Faolan peered out, and the cubs both made chuffing sounds. They were laughing at him and he knew it! Their mother simply stared, dumbfounded. Thunderheart could feel Faolan shivering.

He knows he’s different!
It was bound to happen. Her first instinct was to shield him, prevent the bears from staring. But the more the mother stared and the more the
little cubs chuffed—one was chuffing so hard it was rolling on the ground with glee at this odd sight—the more determined Thunderheart was not to shield Faolan. She moved her legs so that Faolan was exposed, and shuddered when she realized how tiny he was in comparison to the cubs.

Faolan made a mournful cry and looked up at Thunderheart. If she could have, she would have willed him to be twice his size. But she stood still as a rock. Not a sign, not a sound passed between them. All she could think of was that night she had dragged him from the river, that spark of life, nearly quenched yet still flickering. That fierceness!

Faolan caught something in her eyes. Slowly, he turned his head to the cubs, who were now convulsed with chuffing in the tall grass. In a split second, the pup’s body transformed. His shivering stopped. He lifted his head high and began to walk forward with a regal bearing, his tail raised and his ears alert. The cubs’ mother bristled with fear. She reached out and swatted the cub nearest to her. He yelped, and then his sister gave a gasp as she looked up from her tumbling and spotted Faolan.

The bear family regarded the pup with confusion now. How could something so small do this to them? Thunderheart herself was baffled. Faolan had not grown
a speck bigger and yet somehow he appeared dominant. For one moment she had observed the pup caught between two worlds—one of which he had never seen. It was as if Faolan had joined something very important and very old, as if he were surrounded by the spirit of an invisible pack.

Then his tail began to waver just slightly and droop, and Thunderheart trotted over to him, grunted the command to follow, while reinforcing it with a light tap to his shoulder.

The mother grizzly blinked. Who was this strange creature who looked like a wolf, but now was behaving like a bear cub?

In truth, all the animals were confused, including Faolan. As he trotted behind Thunderheart, one thought ran through his head:
I am different. I am different. I am different.

On their way back to the den, they passed a small inlet from the river where they had fished. The water was still, undisturbed by current. Faolan paused and peered down at the gleaming surface. Thunderheart came up beside him, wondering if he had found more fish. Both their reflections quivered on the surface of the dark water.
I look nothing like her, nothing like any animal I have seen. Why are my eyes so green? Why is my face so narrow?
Thunderheart’s face is huge, wider than my chest. Her fur is so thick and dark. My fur is too bright.

They returned to the den. Out of habit, Faolan clamped on to Thunderheart’s teat. As he nursed he looked gravely into her eyes, and she saw a question in the deep green pools of light.
Why am I not like you?
She growled softly and licked his nose in answer.

Love
, she thought,
love is all that matters.
But she did not say these words aloud. Bears, being solitary creatures, had great reserve and did not often give voice to their most powerful feelings. It was as if to utter such thoughts aloud was to diminish them. But she looked into Faolan’s eyes, and he, who had learned the ways of the bears, met her gaze. Engulfed in the deep amber light of Thunderheart’s eyes, the wolf understood that he was different. And he knew he was loved, as if he were her own cub.

He would not be able to nurse much longer, for Thunderheart sensed that her milk was drying up. She was happy that they had been successful with the fish, but knew that she must now teach him to go after the real meat, the red meat. This might be easier than she
had thought, for it was Faolan who had first sensed the mother grizzly and her cubs. He must have picked up their scent. And if so, he had done it faster than she had. A good thing for hunting red meat.

They both slept through the rising heat of the day and into the late afternoon.

Thunderheart thought she smelled the bear coming. But she could not move. Her limbs felt heavy. It was as if she had sunk into cold sleep.
This is not winter, she told herself. I must move. My cubs…my cubs. Yet if it is cold sleep it is not mating time. So why should I have scent marked? Why am I so confused? Was there time to scent mark?
She could hardly lift her head, let alone rise to her full height and mark the trees near the den. A torrent of blood slashed the perfect blue of the sky as the great male grizzly ripped open the back of her cub to its bone. Thunderheart rose up, roared, and charged the male. She tore at his arm. A deep gash. He screeched in pain and ran off. But was it a mortal injury? She feared not. He would be back…He would be back…

Thunderheart woke up from the horrific dream with a violent shake that spilled the wolf pup from the lap.

“Urskadamus!” she muttered. Faolan blinked at her in alarm. He pulled back his lips in a grimace of fear, the hackles on the back of his neck rising as he tucked his tail between his hind legs. The grizzly huffed nervously. The time was coming when she knew the males would be feeling the urge for her company. If she could scent mark before she was fertile and before such a male came into her territory, it would be good.

She knew that wolves scent marked as well. This might truly confuse other bears. She had no inclination to mate. Faolan was her last cub, and she was determined to do the best possible for him. No male was going to harm him or run him off.

But could he learn to stand up and walk, even run like a bear? He could jump quite high when he wanted a ride on her hump. He could almost reach her shoulder and she knew he could scent mark. He had certainly urinated in the area around the den, but more scent marking was needed; the other special kind that she had sometimes caught wind of when she passed wolf territory.

This was a practical lesson. Unlike the notion of love which could not be expressed in words, this one could be
spoken, with very clear actions to accompany the words. Faolan’s language skills had grown. Thunderheart had heard wolves and owls speak on occasion and at the time thought the words were so different from her own, but they weren’t at all. It was merely the tones, the register in which they were uttered that seemed strange. She sometimes thought of it as water. The sound of water in a fast-running brook differs from the clamor of a falls or the trickle of a stream in the dry season. But it was all water. One just had to listen.

Faolan’s voice was shallower, not as deep as her own. Owls’ tones varied widely. Some were almost hollow, others more sonorous, and a few screechy. None of the owls’ voices were remotely like that of a bear, and yet the words were almost identical. Nevertheless, Faolan was beginning to sound slightly bearish when he spoke. He was acquiring some of the rough, back-of-the-throat sounds that were common to the grizzlies.

And as soon as they were out of the den, Faolan scampered toward the riverbank. Thunderheart gave him a low snarl and a firm head butt to his flanks that spun Faolan around in the direction that she wanted him to follow. “This way!”

She swung her head toward a large white pine, then
rose up halfway on her hind legs and began rubbing her back against the tree. There was a harsh scratching sound. She was leaving a scent, but it was not the odor of a female, fertile and receptive to mating. Faolan must leave a scent as well, his own scent.

Thunderheart stared at him hard. She sensed that Faolan must do this scenting with his hindquarters. She lowered herself now and sprawled on the ground and woofed softly for him to come over as she often did when they tussled. He immediately clambered onto her back. A strong odor rose through the thick fur from the stimulated scent glands beneath her skin.

“What’s that?”

“My scent.”

Faolan had smelled that scent before when he had ridden on her, but now it was stronger, almost overpowering, and very different from the thick sweet smell of the milk. It was a strong signal. A defensive message that this den and everything around it from the white spruce to the riverbank and up to the grove of alders belonged to Thunderheart, and to him, her pup. It triggered something in Faolan. “I can do that!”

He sank into the thick, odiferous fur and nuzzled her neck, licking the inside of her ear and then tumbling off
to run to the nearest tree. Thunderheart watched him as he backed his hindquarters against it and lowered his tail.
He is quick!
Thunderheart thought. She hadn’t had to explain anything, really. He had immediately understood the urgency of this scent message.
What a remarkable young pup!

A muscle at the top of Faolan’s tail contracted as he began to rub against the trunk. He felt something release. Immediately, he began running about marking every tree, rock, and stump he could find.
Mine! Mine! Mine!
The thought coursed through his being. But this was only the beginning. As he marked, there were stirrings in other parts of his body. He began to scratch furiously at the ground. Another scent from between his toes was emitted, and the cry in his head,
Mine! Mine! Mine!,
changed to
Ours! Ours! Ours!
Something had unlocked deep in his wolf history.

But Thunderheart was the only other creature that he knew. He paused and looked at her once more. She stood by a tree that she was rubbing, not half crouched as before, but tall and majestic. She eyed him with the deep tawny light he loved so much, and yet now there was challenge in her eyes. She huffed and barked. “Come on, come on!”
Faolan cocked his head. He began to jump up for a ride on her hump, but each time she moved to another tree before he could catch her, waving her arms and batting the branches above her.