Wabi

I knew that voice. It was my great-grandmother’s, yet there was something strange about it. It seemed both close and far away, there in the darkness that held me. I felt her beak gently preening the feathers on my head. No, fingers were brushing the hair back from my forehead. Fingers?

Have you ever been in the midst of a dream and became terribly confused when you suddenly realized it was a dream and not reality? That is how it was for me as I struggled to wake. Was I an owl dreaming that I was a human or a human dreaming that I was an owl?

I opened one eye and saw what I was. No owl had a nose like the one I could see there in the corner of my eye. No owl was able to move its eye around in its socket the way I was now moving mine. I was still in a human body.

With that one open eye, I also saw where I was. I was inside a wigwam, the arc of bent poles covered with animal skins and tree bark above me. I tried to open my other eye, but there was something blocking my vision. I tried to lift up my arm on that side to feel what was there. A sharp stabbing pain shot through my shoulder as I did so. I could not move that arm at all. It seemed to be fastened to my chest. I struggled to sit up, but it was so hard to do. I felt dizzy.

“Be calm,” said a pleasant voice from the side where my other eye could not open. I turned my head to look. A man and a woman sat there near the door of the lodge. I had the feeling they had been there for some time.

“Be calm,” the man said again. I suddenly recognized who he was. It was Dojihla’s father, Wowadam. “You were struck hard by some of the pieces of stone from the avalanche. But all of your injuries will heal, including your eye that is now covered to protect it.”

“It is true,” said the woman who sat next to him. It was Dojihla’s mother. I noticed how, just like her husband, she was sitting completely still with her hands clasped in her lap. Strange.

“Olinebizon,” she continued, “has assured us that you will be well and strong again. She will be back soon and tell you herself.”

I reached my good arm up to touch my painful shoulder. As I felt it, I remembered the stab of sharp teeth just before the darkness came over me.

“Do not remove that poultice, Wabi,” Dojihla’s father said. “Good Medicine Woman has assured us that it will draw out the pain and help you heal.” He raised a hand to gesture that I should lie back.

A threatening growl came from just behind my head and Dojihla’s father quickly dropped his hand back into his lap.

“Your friend is very protective,” he said, his voice just a little nervous. “I would say that he is a wolf were he not so much larger than any other wolf I have ever seen before.”

“There are only two people he will allow to touch you,” Dojihla’s mother said. “We can approach no closer than here by the door of the lodge.”

“Despite the fact,” Dojihla’s father said, “that we have been ordered by a certain one of those two people—”

“Ordered,” Dojihla’s father continued, “to keep watch over you when neither one is here.”

Malsumsis came around to my side. I raised my good hand to stroke his head. I noticed how he was looking at my wounded shoulder. The way he looked was almost . . . what? Guilty, that was it. It came to me then what had happened.

“No,” I said. “Do not be sorry. You dragged me to safety. If you had not done so, I would have been crushed.” Then a thought came to me. “Dojihla?” I said, trying to sit up. “Where is she?”

“And Majiawasos, the Bad Bear, was destroyed by the avalanche that came down that cliff side,” Dojihla’s father said.

“But there will be little left to see other than bones,” Wowadam added. “According to some of our young men who went to view that place, a pack of wolves came down from the mountain and has fed on the creature’s body.”

“Good,” I said, a smile starting to come to my face. “But, wait, no one has tried to bother those wolves, have they?”

Dojihla’s father laughed. “No, of course not. As long as they go their way and allow us to go ours, we are happy to share this valley with them. There has always been room for both wolves and humans. When they were gone, we missed them. It’s been good to hear their songs on the night wind again.”

Then I began to hear something new. It was the sound of two women talking to each other as they approached the door of the lodge.

“Ah,” said Dojihla’s mother, turning toward the door. “Here are the two who have been caring for you, Wabi. We will leave you in their care now.”

“My dear wife means that we will leave before we are ordered to leave,” Dojihla’s father said with a smile. He followed her out the door.

I was weaker than I had thought. I had to lie back down and close my good eye. I heard the two women come into the lodge and kneel beside me.

“Move aside, you,” a young woman’s voice said. I heard the soft pad of my wolf friend’s feet as he allowed himself to be shoved back.

I could think of nothing more to say. It was not just because the expression on Dojihla’s face was filled with hope. It was also because I could see behind her an old woman with hair as white as snow and a strange smile on her face. I had never seen that old woman before . . . or had I? And then I knew.