From some distant eyrie an owl screeched in the night. Huttser felt his legs go weak and he sagged visibly. This news drove out any real doubts he could muster.
‘Dying?’ cried Palla.
‘Then we’re surely cursed,’ whispered Bran sadly, covering his ears with his paws and letting his muzzle sink into the grass, ‘Morgra warned that she would break the pack, one by one.’
‘A lump has been growing in my belly for many suns now,’ muttered Brassa mournfully. ‘But now Morgra has had her revenge for my crime, perhaps my death can make amends.’
Fell had sprung to his feet though and he came running towards Brassa. He began scratching the ground in front of her and whining. His eyes were full of pain and incomprehension.
‘Please, Brassa. Not you,’ growled the young black wolf.
‘It is no real sadness, Fell,’ said the old she-wolf softly, trying to smile and touching his muzzle with her own. ‘I’m old and have lived a full life. It comes to us all, Fell. It is nature’s way. You know I will be almost glad when it comes.’
Fell looked at her strangely.
‘Though I have one regret,’ she added, licking Fell’s ears.
‘I watched Palla and Skop grow and tended to them like my own. I wish I could see you too come to adulthood.’
‘I am an adult,’ said Fell furiously, pushing away from her, ‘and I can fight off anything. Wolfbane and legends and curses...’
‘Perhaps you can, my dear,’ said Brassa proudly. ‘But there is one thing in life not even you can fight. None of us can ever fight.’
They all knew what Brassa meant and the wolf pack dropped their eyes.
‘When, Brassa?’ said Huttser quietly, staring at the ground. There was no anger left in the grey wolf now.
‘That is in Tor’s sight alone, Huttser, yet I do not think I shall make the winter. But you mustn’t worry for me. I will go into the woods on my own when it is time. You must set out as soon as you can. Some call the Sight a blight and some a blessing, but it will grow in Larka. Perhaps her powers will help you to fight Morgra’s words at least, as you flee the boundaries, for if it is mastered the Sight will help her draw on all the powers of the universe.’
Fell looked up immediately. His ears twitched and there was suddenly an oddly jealous look in his eye. But Kar was thinking of the curse and how childish it made his motto seem now, ‘Stones are raw, they blunt my paw. But words can never harm me.’
‘But I don’t want the powers,’ muttered Larka miserably.
‘The Sight is not something you can choose, my dear,’ growled Brassa softly and she looked at Larka with great understanding. ‘You must accept it, not as a curse but a gift. But once you have found out all you can from Tsinga, then get beyond the pack boundaries. Before it’s too late.’
Bran was looking up again at the castle and, though its walls were lost in night, it towered above them once more.
‘If Morgra believes you are really this family then you are a threat to all she seeks. So now, whether she gets her paws on the cubs or not, she will do everything she can to destroy you. You are cursed, but remember she has the Night Hunters at her back too and she will want to get to Larka again. Go. As soon as you can.’
‘Mother,’ Larka growled suddenly, ‘let me go on my own. Then you’ll all be safe. If it’s me Morgra really wants.’
‘Hush, my child,’ said Palla, licking her daughter’s forehead.
‘Brassa,’ growled Huttser suddenly, for the Dragga felt his authority was slipping too far beyond his reach. ‘We will not leave our territory. We will go into the mountains, yes, and perhaps find Tsinga. But we will mark the boundaries again with a clear, strong scent. We will live free as a pack and keep everything out. Curses. Wolfbane. Man. That is why the wolf marks its territory, so nothing may enter. But we shall not succumb to fear and we shall not run away.’
But Huttser suddenly looked rather foolish as he stood there.
‘You must, Huttser. For all your sakes.’
‘But we won’t leave you, Brassa,’ said Palla. ‘The pack will not leave you to die alone.’
‘Palla. You must think of your cubs,’ insisted Brassa, ‘of the future.’
But there was gratitude in Brassa’s eyes.
‘Oh, Brassa,’ cried Palla, bounding up to her old nurse, ‘what shall we ever do without you?’
‘Cleave to the law of the untamed wolf,’ answered Brassa gravely. ‘Survive, my dear, survive.’
The pack watched helplessly as the old nurse grew weaker and weaker. The only thing that could rouse her from the painful lethargy that seemed to come over her so swiftly were the children – and especially Larka, who she would talk to quietly of the Sight.
As Brassa spoke of it, Fell and Kar would shift nervously and stare in wonder at the white wolf. They hardly understood what it all meant but they were frightened for Larka and their fear grew as they realized that, as her winter coat began to grow, the colour of her pelt was getting lighter and lighter.
Kar would ask Skop if the curse and the legend were really true, but Skop was much like Huttser and the evidence of what had already happened was beginning to wrestle with his doubting nature. He could do nothing but shake his head and look down gravely at his charge. But after he had seen Morgra that night above the ravine and heard her terrible words, a fury had stirred in Skop’s gut and his mind had long been turning back to thoughts of Slavka and these rebels, gathering somewhere near the high mountains.
Brassa expended all her remaining energy telling the children stories too, making sure that her best tales were passed on to the future, since she had always believed that they might help to protect them. Her talk was mostly of Tor and Fenris, the great wolf gods in the sky who looked down kindly on the Varg. She would whisper too that she was about to go on a great journey. Fell listened especially attentively when she spoke like this, and a new gravity seemed to have woken in the young wolf.
The weather began to change suddenly, as it can do in Transylvania. Autumn came, turning the leaves to burnished gold and fretting fire through the forests. The leaves began to fall and in the high mountains the first snows came. Like Brassa, the country was dying, but for the old nurse, the distant seasons would bring no spring.
Fell and Larka found Brassa one stirring autumn morning. She had not gone off on her own into the forest but instead was lying beneath the trees, and the falling leaves had settled on her back. It was as though the wood had begun to lay a shawl across the old she-wolf to cover her passing. Fell nuzzled Brassa and whimpered softly as he touched her old body with his paw but his friend would not stir. Her body was cold as stone and already stiffening beneath her coat. As Fell stared at her he could not believe that this had ever been Brassa at all.
‘At least she went peacefully in her sleep,’ said Huttser quietly, as he padded up beside them.
‘What should we do, Father?’ growled Fell helplessly. ‘Should we cover her up in the ground?’
‘No, Fell. Now we must leave her for the Lera and for the seasons. For the creatures of earth and air.’
‘But, Father, it’s too cruel,’ gasped Larka, looking at Brassa’s body and thinking suddenly of the ghastly birds feasting on the dead water buffalo.
‘She is not there, Larka,’ said Huttser gently. ‘She is with Tor and Fenris now. But what she was in life is now a gift to feed nature. To feed the future.’
Fell could not understand his father’s words and the thought of it made him turn away angrily. The pack padded over in turn to take their farewells of the old nurse. Palla licked Brassa’s nose gently, as Larka growled sadly beside her. The strange guilt that Larka had felt over Khaz was burning inside her again and Larka felt herself a threat to the whole pack. The children had all grown to nearly two-thirds of the adults’ size, but in that moment none of them felt they knew anything of the adult world.
‘Goodbye, Brassa,’ whispered Palla bitterly, and she lifted her head and howled. Apart from her brother Skop, the last link with her childhood was gone. The call rose into the skies, and the wolf pack took it up together sadly by the river. As the mournful elegy sounded for the old nurse and for Khaz too, its pain and sadness were in terrible contrast to the beauty of that wild autumn day.
‘There is one blessing,’ said Palla, as their call subsided. The pack followed the Drappa’s gaze up to the Stone Den high on the craggy mountaintop. ‘I was happy here as a cub, but now I shall always associate it with bad memories. I shall be glad to leave.’
‘Are we running away, Mother?’ asked Fell suddenly.
‘No, Fell,’ growled Huttser. ‘We will mark the boundaries while we go in search of the fortune-teller.’
Palla looked at her mate and shook her head, but it was not the time or place to argue with him about what lay ahead.
‘Come, then,’ cried Huttser. ‘Kipcha, walk with me a while.’
Kipcha stared helplessly at her brother. She could hardly bear to leave the place were she and Khaz had been so happy together, even for such a desperately short time. But something bitter had got into her gut too.
‘We never had a chance, Huttser,’ said Kipcha as she thought of Khaz.
Huttser couldn’t bear to see his sister like this and he turned away, shaking his head sadly. Kipcha padded slowly after him but as she went he had no notion that now Kipcha was carrying a secret with her also. Huttser looked back at the castle and its shadow seemed to be reaching after them. He tried to smile reassuringly at his sister, but his head was ringing with words that Morgra had cried out above the ravine, ‘Fear, betrayal, here begun’, and a cloud had just passed over the sun.
The children came next, Larka in the middle. Only Bran hovered about the river. He looked up towards the castle too and then across to the forests where Khaz had gone. Then to Brassa lying still beneath the trees.
‘One by one,’ whispered Bran fearfully. ‘One by one.’
As he spoke, a pheasant took wing and the startled flurry sent the Sikla bounding frantically through the leaves behind his friends.
If a bird had been circling through the blue, looking down as autumn painted its ripening colours across the forests of Transylvania, it would have spied a wolf pack weaving upwards through the dying grasses. The eight of them went in single file, with the largest wolf at the front, searching the land ahead with his cunning eyes. Now and then the bird would have seen him stop and lift his grey-red tail expectantly, but for the moment at least, nothing came to trouble the pack as they fled.
Yet if that bird’s eyes had been keen enough it might have noticed that there was something especially wary in each of the wolves’ treads. That at every sound one in particular, with a smudge round his right eye, would start and look behind him. The three young wolves trailing behind the adults kept scenting the air questioningly and two of them watched the third white wolf with special care.
As this bird watched the secret body language of the moving pack it might have thought that there was some dark secret troubling the wolves. Yet, knowing the laws of nature and of the wilderness, it might have thought simply that the sprung tension in their padding gait was nothing more than the essence of these mysterious creatures, their perfectly adapted instinct towards flight or fight.
The wolves had been travelling for ten suns, and as they journeyed Huttser insisted on marking their territory. Palla had begun to remember a little of the contours of her old pack. She had been on many markings herself with her parents, and wolves know their territory as intimately as any human knows his home or the room he sleeps in. Palla would stop to remark on a familiar tree or brook, a glade that she suddenly recognized, or the shape of a boulder or a cairn. At these places the pack would linger, leaving a clear scent to warn off intruders, howling as they did so and pawing the earth.
Their spirits were low, but they were glad to be on the move at last, and the business of marking at least gave them something to occupy their thoughts. Larka had grown introspective and would look up now and then to find Fell and Kar watching her nervously. It upset Larka a great deal.
Kar had tried to cheer her up, chatting to her and even trying to get her to romp in the autumn leaves, but Larka hardly responded, preferring instead to pad quietly after her mother. In the end Kar gave up, and in truth he was frightened.
Fell’s feelings were more complicated. When Brassa had first talked of the Sight he had felt a jealousy towards Larka, for he could see one thing plainly. It had made her the centre of attention in the wolf pack. Now he almost wished that he had the powers himself. This jealousy was an unpleasant feeling and Fell grappled with it, but it made it harder and harder for him to confide in his sister and he held it to himself like a guilty secret.
But something else was stirring in the wolf’s guts. Fell had sensed it growing in him after he had been so gripped at the hunt. It was like the fury and exhilaration that blended in him at tasting his first true meat. It was anger.
At times Fell didn’t know what the anger was directed towards. He looked out on the world as they went and felt a strange stirring in his belly. He would growl at the Lera around him and long to hunt again and watch the world running before his paws. Now and then he would snap at his mother and father and blame them for not paying him enough attention, or understanding the feelings of growing isolation that were coursing naturally through his blood.
At other times he would allow Huttser and Palla to comfort him and feel the peace of being a cub again. He would curl up beside his parents when they rested and listen to their strong voices and remember the stories they had told him as a pup and feel safe. But then Palla would say something to him that sounded silly or made him feel young and foolish, or he would remember resentfully how his father had clasped him by the back of the neck that sun. Then he would recall his anger and sense of freedom at the hunt and stalk irritably away. Fell grew sullen and brooding and when this happened he learnt to direct his feelings towards Kar, another source of jealousy in Fell, for he could see how fond Larka was of him.