The winter winds raged outside the hardwood tree.
Over four hundred years since the Palace had left the New Land and stranded
the Wolfriders in the Thorny Mountain, and this was the cruelest white-cold
they could remember. Merciless gales blew down from the icecaps to the
north, while the dark clouds allowed no warmth into the forest. Inside
the elves’ den, a small candle provided the only light, while the strong
wood and heavy furs were the only thing keeping out deadly frost.
“Ohhh, Krim,” Shenshen sobbed, as she lifted her
eyes to her lovemate. Her gloved hand fumbled to take Krim’s. Laid out
of the bed of furs was the Go-Back’s firstborn, a tiny boy barely ninety
days old. Bundled in his own leather clothes, Cheipar laboured to breathe,
his life slipping ever away in the cold air. For days and nights Shenshen
had laboured her scant healer’s knowledge over the little elf, applying
hot compresses of herbs, feeding him rich nourishing broths. Still Cheipar
would not recover, still he slipped ever-closer into death. The four elves
who shared the tree had put all their efforts into his care, yet now there
seemed no more they could do.
If only Leetah were here. She could heal Cheipar
with a touch. Yet Shenshen wondered if even her sister could save the babe.
The white-cold was so fierce, Cheipar so tiny. He had been a small newborn,
frail and listless. Near-starvation kept Krim’s breastmilk thin, and there
was little they could find to suppliment Cheipar’s diet. Wolfrider females
could sometimes coax their milk to come even without pregnancy, to wetnurse
another’s children. Yet they were all too weak, too hungry. It was all
they could do to keep themselves alive. The babe had simply come at the
wrong time.
“Krim... your little Cheipar is...” Shenshen could
not bring herself to speak the words, could not admit the truth they all
knew. By morning he would be dead.
They had the Preservers. They could bundle Cheipar
in wrapstuff, let him sleep a timeless sleep until the thaw came, until
the new green bought new life. But Shenshen bt her tongue. That was not
the Way. She knew it, the two Go-Backs knew it. Pike, a Wolfrider born,
knew it most of all. The Way was the unspoken law of the Wolfriders, the
only path a Wolfrider could follow. To live as the wolf, to think as the
wolf, to be aware of nothing but the present and to be fully awake, with
none of the distractions of past or future.
“To sleep through the white-cold like rats is not
the Way!” Cutter had declared not two moon-dances before, when Petalwing,
the Preserver leader, had suggested it. Moonshade’s wolf Shimmercoat had
died from the cold, and Cheipar was weakening. “Wrapstuff is not the Way!
We will endure, like wolves. We will take our trials and we will fight
for life. We will not cocoon ourselves in a living death!”
Their chief’s word was law. They would not question
it.
“It was the wrong time to breed,” Krim spoke now
as she looked down at her son. Her voice was faltering; she was trying
to be stoic, to be a strong Go-Back. Death was a release, a joy, for her
son would soon be with the Palace, with the spirits of Go-Backs who had
died before him. But Shenshen sensed the pain in Krim’s voice. “Maybe there
is something to this Recognition business. He was frail from the start.
Moonshade always says... a child of Recognition–”
“Poke Moonshade!” Skot exclaimed, looking up angrily.
“None of us are children of Recognition – except Shenshen,” he nodded to
his lovemate. He bowed his head over his son, letting his dark brown bangs
shade his eyes to hide his tears of grief. “We aren’t less worthy than
the others. Go-Backs have been breeding without Recognition since before
anyone can remember. It doesn’t mean we’re going to die...”
His lifemate Pike reached over the bed to touch
his arm. **She didn’t mean it like that... she couldn’t have...** he sent.
**She’s harsh, but she’s not that cruel. She couldn’t be.** He reached
up to stroke Skot’s long hair, and Shenshen could not help but smile sadly
at the tenderness between them. Pike, Skot and Krim had been lifemates
for but three years before Shenshen had joined the Wolfriders, yet even
after centuries of treeing off and on with the three elves, she had yet
to match the bond that they shared between each other.
Skot took Pike’s hand and held it fast. “We’ll try
again,” he spoke resolutely, summoning some strength in his voice. “The
four of us. We will have fawns for the tribe, someday.”
Cheipar mewed softly, a strangled cry, then fell back into his thin,
shallow breathing.
Pike stroked his little son’s cheek. Little Cheipar,
with Skot’s dark hair and Pike’s deep blue eyes. Their son... now just
moments away from death. Outside he heard the plaintive howling of his
wolf Tanglebrush, a mourning song for the dying child. The others wolves
would join soon, and the Wolfriders themselves, a howl for their dead tribemate.
How happy they had been when Krim had conceived,
two winters ago: Pike and Skot both proud fathers in the tribe’s eyes no
matter which elf it eventually proved sired the child. And Shenshen, a
delighted expectant aunt, already dreaming of the day she could help nurse
her dear lovemate’s child.
And by daylight they would be howling in mourning,
leaving his cold body cached in the snow for the forest to claim as its
own.
As they had left Pike’s father, his mother, his
younger brother Shale, and all the other elves who had died over the years...
He wouldn’t let them howl for Cheipar. Not for their
baby son.
“Shenshen,” he whispered urgently. “Find Petalwing.”
By morning Cheipar was gone. Pike woke the other
Wolfriders to tell them. He, Skot and Krim had laid the child deep in the
snow for the forest denizens to find, but they did not want to look upon
his cold body any longer. They all howled from him, the Wolfriders and
their wolves. The white-cold endured, until the new green finally broke
months later. The three lifemates and their friend Shenshen endured, and
their grief lessened day by day. If Timmain, the shapechanged High One,
had seen the four elves frequent a strange hollow in the woods not far
from their tree, where the Preservers slept away their nights, she said
nothing about it. She was just a wolf after all, and not one to question
the elves’ strange dealings.
Another hundred years passed on Thorny Mountain.
The humans built their strange camps larger and larger with each passing
year. Strongbow fell ill with the foaming sickness and was cured by the
troll matriarch Old Maggoty. Tyleet adopted a human cup marked for death
and named him Little Patch. The tribe continued in the Way, all save Cutter,
tied forever to the past and future, waiting patiently for his lifemate,
his brother, and his cubs to reappear with the Palace.
The humans continued to encroach into the mountain.
The trolls dug pitfall to keep them from their tunnels. Redlance grew expanses
of thorn briars to protect the holt. Timmain was stalked for her white
pelt. Venka and Zhantee grew close in love’s embrace. The Wolfriders endured.
Until the day Cutter was wounded trying to save Timmain from a hunter’s
snare. Until the day he was forced to abandon the Way, to go into wrapstuff
and sleep until a healer could be found. Until Leetah could return.
The rest of the tribe went willingly, following him into the troll
caverns where they would sleep until the Palace reappeared. Ten thousand
years of sleep. They took their wolves and their most precious belonging
with them, and let the immortal Preservers seal them up in a deep trance.
And if Pike insisted on been wrapped with his leather
satchal, which seemed to be full of treasures he would not reveal, no one
thought anything of it. He probably feared there would be no dreamberry
bushes in the future; he probably had a small bush tucked into his bag
for safekeeping. And Timmain said nothing, merely sat guard over the sleeping
cocoons of elf and wolf, keeping a special watch over Pike’s cocoon.
Ten thousand years later:
“Slow down, Pike, what is this you want me to see?”
Leetah let the eager Wolfrider pull her through
the dense forest towards the tree Redlance had just shaped to form their
new den. Pike hustled her up the steps shaped into the trunk, while Krim
and Shenshen held her elbows, guiding her lest she fall. Not one day had
passed since the Palace had reappeared in the sky. Skywise, Leetah, and
the cubs were safe, though returned to a tribe aged five hundred years
and a world aged ten thousand. Rayek and Ekuar sat in the Palace, sunk
under the sea, as they tended to Winnowill broken body. Cutter and Skywise
had gone to the small woodsman’s house a short distance from the troll
caverns, to sniff out what the new humans had grown into. Ember and Suntop
slept under Tyleet’s watchful eyes. Redlance worked to shape new dens from
everyone.
“What – I don’t understand,” Leetah lifted the cumbersome
skirt of the dress the human woman had given her the night before. Pike
pulled her into the den, and she sat down on the thick furs they had already
laid down.
“We need you to heal someone,” her sister Shenshen,
once younger than she, now in fact older, whispered low.
“Who?” Leetah asked. She looked at Pike, at Skot
and Krim. They were healthy and fit. Who needed her magic?
Pike opened up his worn satchal, and reverantly withdrew a small bundle
of wrapstuff. Skot hurried to help him, and the two elves laid the cocoon
down in the healer’s lap. “You have to heal him,” Pike implored.
“An animal?” Leetah asked, frowning at the small
size. The Wolfriders seldom kept pets. Ember had had a ravvit she had been
very fond of, long ago when they had lived in the Forbidden Grove. But
they had let the ravvit run wild when they had journeyed to Sorrow’s End
in the Palace. She supposed in anyone would have a pet it would be Pike
or Shenshen. What else could such a small bundle be? Perhaps a wolf pup.
“When we open it, you have to heal him fast,” Skot
hissed when he saw Leetah’s doubt. “He doesn’t have much time.”
Leetah nodded uncertainly. “I will do my best.”
“Careful,” Pike whispered as he took Shenshen’s
delicate dagger and sliced through the strands of the cocoon. They peeled
back the layers of wrapstuff, and Leetah stared in horror at the for they
unwrapped.
It was a baby.
“Who... whose is this?” she asked. The elfin child
was now stirring softly, breathing with a painful rasp.
“Hurry, healer,” Krim urged. “You promised.”
Leetah placed her hands overtop the child and felt
do sickly he was. His lungs were frail and wet from a cold frost, and he
had little strength in his organs. Closing her eyes and sinking into a
healing trance, she plunged her consciousness into the tiny infant, searching
out damage to repair. She brushed the ice crystals away from his lungs,
opening up his congested chest to allow fresh spring air in. She spread
a healing glow through his heart, warming his blood while urging his heart
to beat faster. She pushed the growing warmth of his body out to his extremities,
healing the ravages of hypothermia. She urged his internal organs to action,
to secrete vital nutrients into his blood. Slowly the child’s palid complexion
grew rosier and his breathing became stronger.
At length the child let loose a loud wail, his fists
clenching in indignation. His leather-clad limbs thrashed with newborn
energy, and he drew in his first uncongested breaths. Leetah sat back,
releasing a long pent-up sigh of relief.
“Oh, Cheipar,” Skot cooed, scooping up the baby
and hugging him tightly to his chest. Cheipar recognized his father’s scent
and immediately his crying changed to a soft giggle of delight. He opened
his deep blue eyes and smiled up at the Go-Back. Krim and Pike swiftly
moved to flank their lifemate, reaching out to touch their son.
Leetah stared at the reunited family in wonder.
She had seen the two Go-Backs in many mood sin the thre years she had known
them, but never had she seen such sheer joy written on their faces. They
laughed as they passed their son between them, heedless of the tears streaming
down their cheeks. Pike was sobbing with relief and gratitude when Krim
handed him Cheipar, and he clutched the infant close, burying his face
in Cheipar’s hair and inhaling the almost-forgotten scent.
“Pike, Skot – we heard something–” Cutter burst
in the den’s doorway, only to stare dumbfounded at the thriving elfin child
and the discarded filaments of gossamer wrapstuff.
“You went against the tribe!” Strongbow glowered
as the Wolfriders sat at council on the rocks below their dens. Krim sat
proud and defiant as she nursed her son, Leetah having already coaxed her
milk to flow once more. Skot and Pike surrounded their lifemate, completly
focussed on their child.
“How can you object to a defiance that saved an
elf’s life?” Shenshen protested. “Would you have preferred we let him die
for nothing. There are too few of us as it is. There have been no Recognitions
in all our time here.”
“That’s not the point!” Strongbow countered. “You
disobeyed our chief. You went behind all our backs. Had you come to the
tribe... but no, you hid him yourself. Suppose one of us had cut him out
of his cocoon, mistaking him for a ravvit? Suppose a bear had taken him
as food one day while you were out hunting? What if he had broken out of
wrapstuff while we all slept.”
“We have nothing to lose,” Pike lifted his head.
“He was dead anyway. We couldn’t trust that Cutter would say yes. It wasn’t
the Way, after all.”
“You Pike – a born Wolfrider, I can’t believe you
would do this,” Treestump accused.
“He did right,” patient Clearbrook argued calmly.
“He should have asked.”
“I should have asked for permission to save my son?”
Pike snapped in uncharacteristic defiance.
“The Wolfriders only function as one,” Cutter spoke.
“By acting on your own, without the tribe, you broke our most important
law.”
“You called wrapstuff a living death!” Shenshen
spoke up. “You would not let the Wolfriders sleep before – how could we
know you wouldn’t say no again, even as Cheipar lay dying. I may have spent
eight eights times eight with you in this New Land, but the Way still seems
needlessly hard to me sometimes. Wolves and Wolfriders have died to preserve
your Way. We couldn’t take the chance that you would want Cheipar to die
as well.”
Skywise, formerly silent at Cutter’s side, stepped
forward. His eyes were heavy with grief, doubtlessly still recalling Starjumper’s
death – in his mind mere days ago. “They did right, I think,” he spoke.
“The Way can’t be rigid as ice. If the Way includes wolves breeding with
jackals, jackwolves coming back to kill their cousins... then the Way includes
Cheipar.”
“No one’s saying they should have let him die,”
Strongbow said.
“You are!” Skot snapped. “You wanted his body fed
to your wolves. You would have probably eaten him yourself given half the
chance!”
“Skot!” Cutter reprimanded.
“Go-Backs believe in death too,” Skot sat tall.
“We don’t believe in feeding our kin to the stags, though! We don’t believe
in letting our infants die needlessly when there’s a chance they can grow
to be warriors. The Wolfriders are even less than the Go-Backs in their
worst season. We saved a fawn for the tribe and you yell at us?”
“There should have been a Preserver for Starjumper,”
Skywise murmured under his breath. “There should have been one there, not
lagging behind with Leetah, a moment too late.”
“I still say you should have let that jackwolf have
it!” Skot spoke up.
“No one’s asking for your opinion!” Strongbow snapped.
“No, we lower wolves don’t get to do that,” Skot
shot back. “Just obey and roll over and let our children die to ease the
chief wolf’s headache! Poke the Way! The Way kills!”
“Insolent pup, you’ll never show throat,” Strongbow
sneered.
“And you’re colder than a human, sourface!”
At that Strongbow leapt from the rock, clearly intending
to thrash some obedience out of the Go-Back. “Enough!” Cutter’s voice boomed.
“Why are we even debating this?” Leetah asked as
she sat down behind Krim. “There was no disobedience as I see it. Pike
and his family acted to save their son. Look at him. He would have died
years ago, but now he’s strong and thriving,” she spoke with no small amount
of pride in her work.
“Leetah is right,” Cutter smiled at his lifemate.
“Though Pike did act against the Way. But,” he lowered his eyes. “We all
have, in our time. We should not punish them for saving a life – that would
be an even greater breach of the Way. Let’s forget the past...” here his
voice grew weaker, and he fought to escape the memories. “And look only
to the Now. Now – Cheipar lives, and he is as welcome to our tribe as Tyleet
and Venka were so many eights ago. I say the matter ends here.”
Pike let out a jubilant howl, and instinctively Skot joined him. Before
long Tyleet had added her voice to the song, then her parents and their
friends. The wolves too, howled with delight, and soon the forest echoed
with their cheers.
Though Strongbow hung back, and Moonshade hesitated at the fringe,
all the other Wolfriders came forward to see their newest member, a tribemate
called back from death itself.
“Skot must be the father,” Leetah spoke, remarking
on Cheipar’s dark brown hair.
“Skot and Pike both,” Krim smiled, a rare delight.
“He has Pike’s eyes.”
“Suntop and Ember will like having a new friend
to play with,” Tyleet approached the family. “And my hands touch with joy
to see a new cub in the Wolfriders. It seems not so long since Patch left
us.”
“His is not a Wolfrider’s soulname,” Treestump spoke,
somewhat more gruffly than he had intended. “He’s pure Go-Back. But this
is a new Way now, in this time. He’ll be as much a Wolfrider as any of
us.”
“Perhaps he’ll even have his own wolf-friend in
time,” Tyleet smiled.
“Wolves,” Skot wrinkled his nose. “Pity there aren’t
any good stags around here. I could teach him how to ride like a Go-Back.”
Cheipar, his appetite sated for the moment, slumbered
half-asleep in Krim’s arms, unaware of the other elves gathered around
him, or the new forest with its strange smells. He stirred, mumbling fitfully
as Krim passed him to Pike, then settled in his father’s arms as he scented
the faint taste of dreamberries around the elf. Sunlight was beginning
to shade through the trees, bringing morning and sleep. Cheipar yawned
once, stretching his tiny arms, then shifted in Pike’s arms, falling fast
asleep.