Wabi

AS WE CONTINUED DEEPER INTO the heart of the valley, the forest around us began to change. The first trees we had seen had mostly been those that keep their coats of green all through the cycle of the seasons. Now wider-leaved trees were around us, maples whose winged seeds provide food for many creatures, oaks and beech whose nuts are eaten by the deer and the squirrels and the mice. When I was an owl, such forests as this had been favorite places for me. Good hunting.

The change was not only in the trees. We began to see tracks and hear the sounds of small creatures rustling in the leaves and the grass. That was a relief to hear. Although the gelabago had wiped out all of the animals around its pool, there was still life other than monsters to be found in Wide Valley.

I thought of the tales about the bedagiak, the Thunder Beings. I had heard those stories being shared by the humans of Valley Village around the fires at night while I hid in the nearby cedars. The bedagiak were beings shaped like giant humans who hunted for monsters with their fiery arrows. When their arrows struck the earth, it was to cleanse it of evil.

I had liked hearing those tales, even though I knew the real story. Great-grandmother had told it to me when I was young. The Thunder Beings were not men, but great birds. How else could they fly across the sky?

Sometimes, if innocent humans (or owls) were in the wrong place, they might be accidentally harmed or even destroyed by those fiery arrows the Thunder Beings hurled. Malsumsis and I needed to find shelter. It was becoming difficult to see in the heavy rain, which was now mixing with hard little balls of ice. The rumble of thunder was getting closer. There in front of us was a huge old tree, as big around as a human lodge. It was broken off at the top and hollow at the bottom. Malsumsis started to trot toward it. I grabbed him with both hands by the scruff of his neck and pulled him back.

“No, my friend!” I shouted to make myself heard over the splash of rain, the spatter of the hail, and the whistling of the wind. “Not a good place!”

There was nothing that I could see with my eyes, nothing that I could smell with my nose. And, of course, with the noise of the storm, nothing I could hear. But I felt a wrongness there. Inside that hollow tree was danger that we should not approach.

We staggered in the opposite direction from the big hollow tree. It was the part of the valley where we had seen the roll of hills. The side of one of those rocky hills came into view. In it was the mouth of a cave.

As soon as we tumbled inside, falling down on the dry, sandy earth beneath the wide overhang of stone, the screaming of the wind and the roar of the heavy downpour diminished.

Malsumsis shook himself so hard that water sprayed in all directions and it made me laugh. Then he sat down on his haunches facing away from the cave entrance. I wiped the rain from my face, and shook it from my soaked hair just as my wolf friend had done.

Sheets of rain washed across the mouth of the cave. It was hard to see far outside, although now and then I could make out faintly the shape of that huge broken oak. It looked even more ominous now from a distance. It was good that we had not taken shelter there. If we had entered that tree, we would not have been alone. I was certain now that something was inside that hollow tree, something not at all pleasant.

Then I realized that we were not alone here either. My sense of smell was no longer drowned by the rain, and I could smell something, something other than Malsumsis’s moist fur. Malsumsis, of course, had noticed it long before I did. His nose was better than mine. That was why he was staring so intently at the back of the cave. I turned slowly to look behind us. It was not a deep cave, but it was so shadowed at the back that it was hard to make out what was crouched and hiding there.

Malsumsis was not growling as he would if there was danger. In fact, he was gently moving his tail back and forth. And that was when I too recognized the scent that had reached my nose.

A small whimper came from the back of the cave that was answered by a yelp from my wolf friend. A pale shape lifted itself up and came forward, head down, tail tucked between its legs. It dropped onto its side and then rolled onto its back at our feet, exposing its throat in the ancient sign of friendship and submission. It was not as large as my friend, and where his fur was black as night, hers was as white as snow. But there was no mistaking what it was: another wolf.

Malsumsis nudged the smaller wolf with his paw, gently grasped her by the throat with his jaws, shook once gently and then let go. Sister, we accept your friendship.

The female wolf jumped to her feet. Wagging her tail, she shoved her wet nose against my leg, then ran in a circle around us, whining and barking. Malsumsis kept his dignity, even though I sensed that in another place at another time he would also have been running and leaping, as happy to see her as she clearly was to find herself confronted not by enemies or monsters, but by new friends. Finally, she calmed down enough to sit back on her haunches, madly wagging her tail.

I squatted down, my back to the cave mouth that was still veiled by the wash of the rain and wind. I did not reach out to pet her as I did Malsumsis. Her submission had been to him, not to me. It would take her some time to accept me as fully as she did another wolf. But I already liked her. That crazy energy of her greeting had told me something about her personality.

“Wigowzo,” I said to the female wolf as she lolled her tongue out of her mouth and smiled at Malsumsis. “You are happy indeed.”

But there was more I needed to know about her than her good nature. If, as I suspected, she was one of Malsumsis’s lost pack, then why was she alone? Where were the other wolves? The gelabago had spoken of a being he had called Winasosiz, the old, old woman, who had all of the wolves. What did it mean that she had all of them? And why was Wigowzo not with them?