Midnight's Sun: A Story of Wolves Read online

  MIDNIGHT’S SUN

  Garry Kilworth

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Gateway Introduction

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Part One. The Day of the Wolf

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Part Two. The Night of the Raven

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Part Three. The Birth of New Songs

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Part Four. The Long Walk

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Part Five. The Feral System

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Part Six. The Manhunter

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty One

  Website

  Also By Garry Kilworth

  Dedication

  Author Bio

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  This is a work of fiction, a story, a folk tale. It has to be, for no one knows the mind-set of a wolf, nor how it views its world. Were the story about primitive men however, I would have to say the same, for who can tell how such creatures thought and reasoned? Perhaps the earliest of them were wolves in all but features. We know as little about much of the human race as we know about wolves. The history of the wolf, persecuted for seasons out of time, might well be the history of primitive peoples.

  Where possible I have tried to ensure that the physical behaviour of the animal characters in this story does not deviate from that of the wild creatures in the real world. For this information I have to thank Barry Holstun Lopez’s book Of Wolves and Men (Dent), The Arctic Wolf by L. David Mech (Airlife), Peggy Wayburn’s Adventuring in Alaska (Sierra Club Books) and The Wolves of Mount McKinley by Adolph Murie (University of Washington Press). These authors are naturalists, possibly purists. They have spent many years studying creatures I have chosen to use simply in order to write about fortitude, endurance, comradeship and other abstracts that interest creative writers. I wanted to write about wolves because their way of life intrigues me and because I believe the wolf, through folklore and fairy tales, has had a bad press which it does not necessarily deserve. It is time for a tale in which the wolf is the good guy.

  Finally, thanks to Anita and David Bray, Hong Kong friends and neighbours, whose natural enthusiasm for the place and subject refired my own, week by week, at a time when the unwritten majority of the book stretched ahead, seemingly into infinity.

  Garry Kilworth, 1989

  PART ONE

  The Day of the Wolf

  Chapter One

  The wolf Meshiska gave birth to five pups on the night before the full moon. Outside the den a storm was lashing the spruce trees. The sky and the land had become part of each other: a scatter-wind night swirling with fragments of white and;; black. There were walls of snow piled against rock-faces and deep pits where seconds before there had been flat land. Snow became darkness and the darkness snow, and any creature lost between the two found a rock or tree and lay down beside it to wait until the world had formed again.

  Inside the den the pups whimpered and nuzzled close to their warm mother, blindly seeking milk. They could not hear the storm, but they could sense it, beyond the dog-leg tunnel that led to their hollow. Curled in the safe world of fur they either slept or fed according to their needs and dispositions: no feelings of fear stirred in their breasts. The world outside might rage and tear itself apart but mother was there to keep them from harm.

  Meshiska was also warm with maternal feelings. She licked the pups continually as they rolled and slithered over each other in a tangled heap in her belly fur. They were hers. Hers! She would kill in defence of them, die in defence of them. No mother ever had such beautiful mewling puppies as she had at that moment. Each one of them was as precious to her as her own life. She was even glad that Aksishem was out hunting for food so she did not have to share this moment, even with her he-wolf. She lay with her muzzle on the ground and smelled the earth of her ancestors.

  There were three female pups and two male.

  Meshiska was a headwolf, as was her mate. Together they led the pack in most enterprises. They were mainly headwolves for hunting and choosing the place for the den. Since she was the dominant partner of the two it could be said that she led the pack, but not in all things. The pack’s pecking order was not rigid; it changed to suit circumstances and situations, and Meshiska was its leader only by the agreement of the others. At certain times, skills others than those she possessed might be needed and she would defer to one of the shoulderwolves in the pack. Leadership was also subject to alternation in the seasons. What was necessary in the pack was that they worked as a team. The pack that was not fluid, with members that fought amongst themselves over such petty issues as who was going to make the decision to stand or run, was a pack that did not survive.

  In Meshiska’s pack there were those whose senses were primed for the scent of man, there were those whose knowledge of water-holes surpassed her own, there were those who knew the weather and its ways, who saw the coming of the storm, who sensed a long drought in the air. To these she and Aksishem deferred when necessary.

  Each pack had a hierarchy of females and a separate hierarchy of males. Each hierarchy had its own head and these two heads became the breeding pair. One of the two, either male or female, would be th
e dominant headwolf. There was also an interwoven tribal structure to the pack, consisting of pups, undermegas (yearlings to three year olds) and megas, who were wolves that had undergone an initiation at the age of three years.

  There were packs that were skewed in some way, either in part or completely. Meshiska had come across those that were wild and undisciplined, recognising in them a sense of doom. She had heard of packs that had spawned megalomaniacs: tyrants who were strong enough to brook any opposition and did so out of pure pride. Such packs had been wiped out in a single day. Packs, like wolves, were subject to personalities. To survive, a pack had to subject itself to controlled change. She was the dominant headwolf of such a pack.

  One of the small privileges of such a position was that she could name her own pups.

  Meshiska called the females Tesha, Kinska and Koska.

  She named the two males Athaba and Okrino.

  The first two weeks were tumbledown time when the pups crawled all over each other and Meshiska, and rolled, and flopped, and gradually grew in strength. They developed hearing and sight, though neither sense was of much interest to them in the darkness and peace of the den. Grey shapes moved around them, silver-hazy and indistinct, and the murmurings of their father, or the occasional protests from their mother when her teats became too sore, these were the sights and sounds from their closed world. Koska was the strongest of the five and consequently grew even stronger since she was first at the teat, shouldering her weaker siblings aside. There was no brotherly or sisterly love when it came to food: survival took precedence over all emotions.

  Okrino was the clown of the group, his floppings and sprawlings more pronounced than those of the rest of the litter. The markings on his face gave him a permanently earnest expression, as if he were either in a mood of constant concern for the welfare of the world or in an uncomfortable state of constipation. His parents thought him a strange little pup, though not unusual enough to cause them undue worry. Meshiska just hoped he would not grow into one of those wolves that irritate the rest of the pack by unwittingly acting the fool. Such wolves were dangerous, accident prone and apt to lose concentration at crucial times. To be a clever clown was something else entirely; that sort of wolf kept the pack amused during hard times. Even at this early age, though, Okrino appeared to enjoy being the centre of attention, and sometimes repeated a roll or flip which had brought forth a wry comment from his father. No doubt he would be a clever clown.

  Kinska was the smallest of the pups, the runt, and though there were only four siblings to contend with she had to battle hard to get her share of the milk. During the first few days of life she hardly put on any weight at all.

  Tesha was the next smallest, but this cub had a determination which Kinska seemed to lack. You could see by her expression that she was ready to take on a bear if she had to in order to get her milk. There was a haughty little tilt to her jaw and a gritty look in her eyes. When Koska shouldered her out of the way sometimes, Tesha would throw herself right back at the bigger cub time and time again in an attempt to remove her big sister from the teat. Koska often looked very puzzled by this behaviour. She knew she was the strongest and couldn’t understand why Tesha took no notice of that fact. Sometimes, after Tesha had come back at her for about the fifth time, Koska would look up at one of her parents with an exasperated expression, as if to say, ‘What is it with this half-pint? Why isn’t she afraid of me? What do I have to do to teach Tesha her place?’ But Tesha didn’t recognise places. She only knew she became furious when thwarted at the teat and size didn’t mean a diddle in the den when she had her hackles up.

  Finally, there was Athaba, who though he put on weight tended to be much more wiry than the other four. Quiet and thoughtful looking, he had a far deeper curiosity than his siblings. The dog-leg tunnel interested him, especially when he got to the curve and could see the silver-grey light at the end, before his mother jerked him back again. He sensed there was a much larger world beyond that hole, a place full of happenings. Out there were monsters and fiends, but great wonders also. He wanted to be the first to investigate this mystery before his brothers and sisters. Unlike them he could not believe this was all there was to life: milk and sleep and an occasional tumble. The world could not just consist of a hollow of earth and two giant slaves that catered for your every need. There had to be more beyond that hazy bright stuff than a few smells where one of his brothers or sisters had urinated. After all, his father and mother occasionally went along that tunnel and disappeared for long periods of time – so long sometimes the youngsters thought them dead. Often Athaba would take himself off into a remote corner of the den to consider these happenings. The others, especially Koska, did not like this behaviour. There was something not quite right about one of them thinking he was better than the rest of his family. She would waddle over to him sometimes and grip him by the jaw to pull him back into the group. Athaba only half resisted this because, though he preferred to be alone, he also liked to please. He was not a pup to court rejection.

  Two weeks after the birth Kinska died from hypothermia, despite the efforts of Meshiska and Aksishem to keep her alive.

  At four weeks the pups’ ears became erect, standing up from their heads like arrowheads. It was at this time that Okrino let out his first howl. He not only startled his brother and sisters, he also made himself jump. The little pup looked around him nervously, then glared, as if it were one of the others that had made the sound and he was not too happy about it.

  ‘Did you see that?’ said Aksishem to his mate. ‘Okrino was the first. He almost hit the ceiling.’

  Meshiska replied, ‘I saw. Wonder which one will be next …’

  It was Tesha. She let out a long thin note which had Athaba cowering in the corner of the den. Then the he-pup tried himself, and found his own voice. Finally, Koska joined them.

  Aksishem buried his head between his front paws.

  ‘There’ll be no peace in the den tonight,’ he grumbled. ‘I only hope they get tired quickly, so we can get some rest. Listen to it!’

  By seven weeks they had been weaned and were mauling each other in the entrance to the den. They were now seriously into mock combat which sometimes left one of them with wounds. There was no organisation to their fights at that point, they just threw themselves at each other and tried to gnaw a leg or a tail, or they would battle jaw to jaw, trying to grip their opponent and force him or her to the ground. Naturally, Koska won most of the fights she had with her brothers and sister.

  They were in the middle of such play one day when something happened which would haunt Athaba’s dreams for many nights and days to come. Their mother was down in the den, their father out on a hunt. As they fought each other, they gradually worked themselves some distance from the opening to the den. In a short while Meshiska would be out to herd them back inside again, but on this particular day she was unwell and her reactions somewhat slower than normal. Suddenly, a creature with a flat face and terrible narrow eyes dropped from a nearby fir tree and ran across to the pups. Its legs were stumpy and its body thick and round, but its movements were fast, agile. Athaba saw some vicious claws spring magically from previously innocent-looking soft paws. They were quite unlike his own scratchers, being long, curved and extremely sharp, resembling large thorns. The marauder’s flat face opened to reveal many pointed teeth and the jaws snatched a pup. The beast ran off, leaving the other pups startled for a moment. Then they set up a wailing which brought their mother out immediately. A swift assessment told her that Tesha was missing. She then called for assistance from the pack. A team of four set out in pursuit of the predator, but returned a day later without having caught it. Tesha was gone forever.

  Meshiska’s pups were down to three.

  The incident disturbed Athaba more than the other pups. Koska and Okrino soon forgot about their sister and the monster that snatched her away to oblivion. Athaba, however, missed Tesha quite a lot. He was closer to her than the other two and had
been very fond of the stubborn, determined pup who refused to acknowledge the fact that she was smaller than her siblings. There was something to admire in such feisty behaviour, though Koska had continually tried to put her sister down. Athaba, in his way, had recognised that physical prowess, strength alone, was not the end of all achievements. Spirit, too, was important. In fact he had seen in Tesha that no matter what the state of the body, the spirit could enable one to triumph. He himself had mock-battled for hours with Tesha, finally becoming disheartened because his sister just would not give in. Wherever she was, he thought, she was giving somebody a puzzling time with her pugnacious will.

  The beast that had stolen his sister was also much in his thoughts, both sleeping and waking. He had guessed there were monstrous creatures in the world, but never did his imagination produce a furry fiend such as this robber of siblings. It had come out of nowhere fast, and went back there even quicker. It was all yellow eyes, teeth, claws and wild fur. Even its ears had wispy hair going up into little curled points. Such a demon had been spewed by the dark rocks and swallowed again by the trees. It surely had not come from the wholesome world of wolves? Not from the forests or the tundra? Not from the mountains? The boggy muskegs with their gaseous smells must have spawned such a devil.

  It was a long time before he thought to ask the creature’s name and learned that it was called a lynx.

  Koska, Okrino and Athaba grew strong and healthy until the summer season was upon them. The still mock-fought each other and their parents, improving their skills by the day. Koska was the natural leader and something of a bully. Once she wounded Athaba quite badly and the he-pup had to lie up for a few days until the gash in his rump healed.

  Aksishem would arrive home after a hunt with a slab of meat and eat it in front of the pups. Then all of them would begin a strange writhing dance, their supple bodies twisting. The pups would squeak and jab at Aksishem’s muzzle in impatience, trying to get him to regurgitate the food so that they could eat sooner rather than later. Occasionally, Okrino would go for the meat before one of his parents had devoured it, only to be knocked firmly away. Koska was even bolder and would try to growl the adult away from the raw food like a fully initiated mega, which amused both Meshiska and Aksishem.