With each rise of the moon his pace slowed. Grubs and small rodents did not stave off his hunger. He inhaled the different scents, separating one from another, identifying them, judging their distance. One made him drool. His paws followed his nostrils until he saw a mallard in the wetland. He crouched in the rushes and advanced on his belly, but when he lunged, the duck rose up on beating wings, its webbed feet treading the air, and Crooked Ear sank into the shallows with nothing more than a mouthful of feathers.
He recognized another delicious smell. The rabbit moved toward him with rocking hops, nibbling the grass. It stopped abruptly. For a fraction of a heartbeat it tried to bolt for cover, but Crooked Ear’s jaws closed on its neck. Within a minute nothing remained.
Fate, it seemed, had brought Crooked Ear to the summer territory of The People. He had picked up the scent of Upright miles away, not the frightening odour of lumberjacks and their exploding sticks, but the gentler smell of those who had lived at Clear Lake where he had been born. He howled, but there was no reply.
The People heard his cry, but were too preoccupied to indulge in wolf talk the way they had in the past. They were worried about the pale-faced people moving up from the south, cutting down the great white pines. Travellers told stories that seemed impossible to believe: tales of limbless tree trunks being dragged away by teams of horses and floated down the river to another world; accounts of severed stumps, the girth of ten men; reports of a vast dead land where there was no birdsong, no chittering of squirrels and chipmunks, no deer, no elk, nothing! Nothing except the strangers who wanted to take all the land for themselves and their four-leggeds.
Night after night The People sat around campfires discussing the latest news, trying to reach a decision about what they should do. They sat in big circles and small. They smoked, sang, drummed, and prayed. For generations they had been able to talk and listen until everyone was in agreement, but the more they talked, the more obvious it became that there was little agreement and that nobody knew what to do.
Crooked Ear was afraid to approach the pack of The People uninvited, yet he could not move on. He paced the periphery of their territory, howling each night and listening for a reply that would invite him to draw near. When his forlorn call was answered, he bolted toward the howl and slithered to a stop in front of a small Upright.
Boy and wolf had not met face-to-face before, but each had a vague sensation that they knew the other. More than two moons had come and gone since they had both lived at Clear Lake, the wolf in the forest on the ridge, the boy in the winter camp on the beach below. It had been a crisp, clear night, right after the spring elk hunt, when wolf and human bellies were fuller than they had been all winter. The moon had risen and the sound of drumming pulsed across the ridge. The wolves had trotted to the outcrop of smooth ancient slabs that tilted toward the crest of the ridge and had listened to the strains of The People. Then, in a tradition as old as the rocks on which they stood, the alpha had thrown back his head and howled. The sound travelled easily through the still night air. The People heard and responded.
Crooked Ear had weaved through the pack that night and trotted to the highest spot on the ridge. Silhouetted against the star-studded sky and clearly distinguished by his ears, one pointing like a triangle to the sky, the other folded in half, the young wolf had thrown back his head and given his first puppy howl. Down on the beach, close to the fire, wrapped in his grandfather’s blanket, the boy had cupped his hands around his mouth and howled a reply.
Now, face-to-face with the child, the young wolf bowed down on his front legs, haunches pointed skyward, lowered ears and waving tail gesturing submission and friendship.
HeWhoWhistles blocked his son from running toward the wolf pup. “He is small, but his teeth are sharp.”
“Where is his mother?” Red Wolf asked.
“If she was close, she would speak,” HeWho-
Whistles replied. “I fear she is dead.”
Crooked Ear rolled onto his back, exposing his vulnerable soft belly to the new pack. It was a gesture that The People understood. “He says that he will not harm us. He wants to be friends.”
HeWhoWhistles approached the young wolf slowly and squatted a few feet away, but when he reached out to stroke the pup’s head, Crooked Ear scrambled to his feet and jumped back.
Compassion filled HeWhoWhistles’ heart. “He is starving. Look at his ribs!”
Red Wolf tugged at his father’s hand. “Can we feed him?”
“Yes, son, the hunting has been good. We have meat. Go get some.”
When the child returned with chunks of venison, it didn’t take long for the pup to eat from his hand. Then, with his hunger satisfied, he leaned his head into the gentle touch of the small human. For the first time in weeks the pup was content.
The days were warm and long and Crooked Ear’s rough, malnourished puppy fur was replaced by the sleek coat of a healthy juvenile. His loneliness vanished along with the hunger in his belly. He was as comfortable with the small Upright as he had been with his brothers and sister, rubbing against him, pushing his head under the soft hairless hands, licking the smooth flat face, and encouraging him to romp like a wolf pup. The boy understood the games but yelped louder than any wolf pup when Crooked Ear nipped or scratched him. The noise startled Crooked Ear so much that he soon learned to play with soft paws and gentle mouth.
Crooked Ear was cautious around the other Uprights. They were unpredictable. They might ignore him, or they might run at him waving their arms and shouting. Sometimes they hurled sticks and stones in his direction. When that happened, he ran into the forest. He caught mice and, if he was lucky, a rabbit or a grouse, but after a while he returned to the human pack, slipping in and out of the shadows and flattening himself into the undergrowth until his senses told him that it was safe to go to the boy.
At nighttime when The People went into their dwellings, HeWhoWhistles sent Crooked Ear away. “The wolf is a wild creature,” he told his son. “He must to learn to take care of himself so he can live wild and free, the way the Great Spirit intended. He has his own path to walk and we must let him find it.”
But when all was still, Crooked Ear crept back. He listened for the rhythmic breathing of the family and lay down against the wall of the wiigwam, closest to where the boy slept. At dawn, before The People stirred, he stole back into the bush and waited patiently until the boy came looking for him.
Crooked Ear had become accustomed to the smells of The People, but one day his nostrils quivered at an unfamiliar odour. He didn’t like it. He whined softly. The People didn’t seem alarmed by the smell, and the boy ignored his warning, so Crooked Ear took refuge in the forest.
Red Wolf was the first to see the stranger as he rode into camp. But it was the horse that captured his attention, not the heavyset man or the dog that accompanied them. The child had never seen such a beautiful creature. Its coat gleamed in the sunlight like beech leaves in autumn, and its mane flowed over its neck and shoulder, like a waterfall.
The man heaved himself from the saddle, hitched the horse to a tree and, moving with the discomfort of one who had spent too many hours in the saddle, approached the gathering group of people.
The boy ignored his father’s command to sit in the circle. Instead, he stood close to the horse, captivated, as it delicately tugged leaves from the tree and worked to get them past the heavy metal bit. Green slobber frothed from the animal’s lips and a sodden mess fell to the ground. Red Wolf laughed.
The stranger was a white-skin, but he spoke in Algonquian, a language that had the same roots as their own Anishnaabemowin,