Page 68 of Blacktail

Though they were very hungry, none of them returned to where Fatberry lay. Belly-Scar and Gray-Ear wouldn’t even look in that direction. Quickfoot wasn’t sure what to make of that, but she was cautious by nature. She thought to hide in the den for a day, or perhaps longer, and come out to hunt when the traveler was gone. She asked what had happened, but Belly-Scar and Gray-Ear would not speak. Gray-Ear seemed not to hear her at all. But she kept nagging at Belly-Scar, and by twilight she was able to coax him into telling what he had seen.

“That’s impossible,” Quickfoot said flatly when he was done.

“No!” Belly-Scar said, his voice high, hysterical. Gray-Ear still said nothing, only cowered in the corner and shook. “It’s true! I swear it! His jaws, they stretched somehow, he…he…” Belly-Scar trailed off, his eyes wide and terrified. He was looking over her shoulder.

Quickfoot spun around. Blacktail stood in the mouth of the den, a black silhouette against the rising moon. His profile seemed distorted, and it took her a moment to realize that he carried Little One in his jaws, gently, like a pup.

Behind her, Belly-Scar whimpered.

Blacktail padded into the den. He had to crouch deep to pass under the arch. Even so, his fur brushed the ceiling. Whatever her other failings, Quickfoot didn’t miss much. He didn’t have to crouch to come in last night, she realized.

He is bigger now.

Blacktail made his way to the lord’s sleeping hole, which Fang’s father had dug, but was now occupied by Quickfoot. At the look in his eyes she rose and moved away. She thought Blacktail would claim the throne for himself. Instead he laid Little One in it very gently.

“They told me what you did,” Quickfoot said. “I would have helped, but—”

Blacktail bared his teeth. She went silent.

Blacktail walked through the den sniffing them, but not freezing for them in turn. No one protested the insult. No one said anything. The only sound was Little One’s labored breathing.

When their subjugation was complete, Blacktail knelt down over Little One and began to lick his wounds clean. He spoke as he worked, saying, “Were it up to me, the three of you would all starve and die this winter. In my eyes you are nothing. In my eyes you are as dung. But for reasons I cannot think, Fang loved you. Little One loves you still. It is for their sake and theirs alone that I tell you there is bear meat aplenty on the far side of the hill. Go now. Eat as much as you can stomach, before the vultures take it.”

Gray-Ear and Belly-Scar slunk away, but Quickfoot lingered. “You have laid him in the lord’s hole,” Quickfoot said.

“Yes. He is lord now.”

“What? The lord will be chosen as he always is, by combat…and by consent of the lady.”

“No. Little One is now lord. You might remain lady if he chooses you…but perhaps you should be kind to Gray-Ear. Just in case.”

Quickfoot’s eyes flashed at this. “Likely he will die,” she said.

“Perhaps,” Blacktail answered. “Perhaps not. Little One’s heart is very strong. A strong heart may sometimes conquer where a weak one would fail. I wouldn’t expect a thing like yourself to understand that, but it is true, nonetheless. Either way, dying or no, he is still lord.”

“No,” Quickfoot snarled. “That’s quite enough. How dare y—”

Blacktail had heard enough. He sprang forward, snapping at Quickfoot’s head and neck. She yelped and tried to resist. That only infuriated him; it turned what might have been a quick chastisement into something much more serious. Again and again he savaged her head and face. When he was finished, both of her ears were in shreds. One eye was deflating. Quickfoot lay on her side, breathing heavily and only semiconscious. She would live—probably—but no one would ever speak of her beauty again.

When Belly-Scar and Gray-Ear returned, Blacktail stood over Little One and said to them, “Whether he live or die, Little One is now lord. Let me be clear. This is my price for killing Fatberry. If you are so foolish as to defy me in this matter, you will find that bears and two-legs are the very least of your worries.”

The two of them cowered and slunk about, unwilling to look directly at him. When he was satisfied, Blacktail lay down next to Little One to sleep.

ix

Little One’s wounds were grievous, and he heard none of this.

For three days he lay dreaming, trapped in the twilight land that lies between life and death. He dreamed of a great gray wolf. In the way of dreams, Little One knew her to be Blacktail’s mother, when she was young and without puppies. It was deepest winter. It was the night of the full moon. As Little One’s dream eye opened on her, she walked alone into a snowy clearing. She was in heat. The scent of her was all through the forest, but no one came. She was a handsome beast, and the heat was on her so fierce that she thought she might go mad. Even though he lay near death, Little One’s prick rose up at her scent.

All through the night she waited, sometimes howling and sometimes silent, but no one came—no wolf, nor even any dogs. The moon went down, and it became very dark in the clearing, and in her heart she finally knew what she had long suspected: She was the last of her kind here, perhaps the last anywhere.

Then, just before dawn, something heard her call.

It had the shape of a wolf, yes, and a hint of the wolf scent as well. But it left no paw prints in the soft snow and showed no breath in the air of the winter night. Blacktail’s mother tried to scent it but found she could not. Whenever she moved to its neck or hindquarters she lost herself for a moment. There was terror in this, but there was a species of relief as well—at least something had answered her scent, something had heard her call. If she had courage, she needn’t be the last wolf in these woods. Finally she abandoned herself and presented her hindquarters to the thing, and it mounted her.

She had thought it near dawn, but the sun did not rise.

They mated once, then again. The pleasure of it was beyond anything she had ever known. It was like being pulled down in an avalanche, subsumed. She fell away from everything. First the night stars receded. Then the cold, the gentle frost fell away, taking with it the scents of pine and evergreen. In her mind she ran in a thicket of holly bushes. First they snatched at her as she ran through the dark. That fell away, too, receded into a black and gentle warmth. In the end she lost the whole of herself. Who could know what happened next? Some time later she awoke. She did not know how many breaths had passed, only that it was daylight…and that whoever—whatever—had been with her was gone.