Firstborn (5 page)

“Does it hurt?” I asked from the lowest limb.

“Not much,” he said.

The next morning I woke before he did. His wound was festering. I flew back to the deer carcass. Other creatures had been at it, and insects, too, but there was still some flesh hanging from the bones. I pulled off the biggest piece I could manage and flew it back to the white pine. Blue Boy was awake but hadn't moved. When I dropped the bit of venison by his muzzle, he sniffed it.

“Thanks,” he said, and he ate it.

It wasn't much of a breakfast for him, but he licked his lips and rose to his feet and continued north. Around midday we reached the base of a steep, snowcapped peak. For me this wasn't a major hurdle, but most wingless creatures, even ones without festering bullet wounds, would have avoided such a grueling climb. To the east and west the terrain was considerably more hospitable. But Blue Boy was determined to keep on his northerly route, and he headed straight up the mountainside.

His powerful hind legs started to wobble and shake, but he struggled on. About halfway to the summit he collapsed. To keep his spirits up, I asked him about his home, but as dusk closed in around us his voice seemed to give out. My spirits sank. I'd thrown in my lot with this wolf, actually grown to admire him, and now he was going to die and leave me all alone in this craggy place.

But I was wrong about his voice. As a nearly full moon appeared between two peaks to the east, Blue Boy sat up and lifted his snout and let out a sound that made my neck feathers stand up. I've heard many wolf howls since, and they're always spine-tingling, but this one was so haunting, so melancholy, so soul-stirring that I swear the moon quivered in the sky.

It was only a matter of seconds before I heard my next howl: a small chorus of them, coming from far off to the south. I realized Blue Boy must have been calling for help. The howling went on for some time, back and forth, the other howls gradually growing louder, closer. The moon was near its zenith when it picked out three pairs of eyes on the edge of a pinewood downhill from us.

The glint of wolves' eyes in the night is a chilling sight. If I'd been wingless, I would have been terrified. Three wolves stepped out into the moonlight. Two were females who looked as if they might be related. The smaller, curvier one had a more lustrous gray coat and more flirtatious eyes. She walked by the side of the male, while the larger, sturdier female lagged a little behind. I liked the look of the male right off, for he had my color scheme: black and white, including a white blaze on his face. He was good-sized and probably would have impressed me if I hadn't seen Blue Boy first. As he approached, he growled, pulling his lips back to expose his fangs, and it occurred to me then that Blue Boy had howled not for help but as a way of putting himself out of his misery.

From my fox experience I knew there's a big difference between dreaming of ending things and actually facing death. But, unlike me, Blue Boy didn't shake or try to hide. He didn't as much as flinch. He just held the other male's gaze steadily.

“Ever seen such a big wolf?” the male said.

“Never,” said his consort. “He's in bad shape, though. Look at his neck. Let's finish him.”

I have no idea what got into me. As the couple crouched, their ears tilting forward aggressively, I dropped onto the ground in front of Blue Boy and squawked at the top of my lungs. The male wolf looked surprised. The female curled her lip, stepped forward, and gave me a swipe.

Her clawed foot knocked me sideways into a thorny bush. After a dazed moment I managed to extricate myself and aimed for a pine to gather my wits. I barely made the bottom-most branch.

“You hurt my wing!” I screamed.

It was horribly true. My left wing could barely flap. But the she-wolf wasn't paying the slightest attention to me. Her eyes were locked on Blue Boy's, as were those of the male at her side. The two of them snarled in unison.

But their attack was thwarted again, this time by the other female stepping around and taking up the ground I'd held so briefly. She turned to Blue Boy, her whiskers quivering. Blue Boy bowed his head in resignation. Instead of sinking her fangs into his neck, however, she started licking it. As her tongue slathered the bullet wound, Blue Boy flopped down onto his side. She kept right on with her licking. Eventually she started nibbling at the wound. When she pulled her head back, a slug fell from between her teeth onto the ground.

She swiveled around to her companions. “This is the one they made such a fuss about in the compound,” she said. “The one who dug his way out.”

“So?” said the other two in unison.

“Four makes a stronger pack than three.”

The other two didn't look convinced—though their ears had angled back a bit.

“You should find him some of your herbs, Frick,” said the female who'd pulled out bullet.

The male snorted dubiously. But after giving Blue Boy a long look he trotted off into the darkness. When he returned, he dropped an uprooted plant onto the ground. The female who'd extracted the bullet chewed the plant up and spat some onto Blue Boy's wound. The rest she put by Blue Boy's snout.

“Eat,” she said.

To my surprise, Blue Boy gave the green glop a sniff and ate it.

“I'm Alberta,” she said. “This is Frick and my sister, Lupa.”

“Blue Boy,” said Blue Boy. “That's Maggie.”

The three wolves followed his gaze up to me.

“Maggie the magpie,” Lupa snickered.

I wanted to kill her. But she'd beat me to the punch. With a broken wing I knew I wouldn't last a week.

ON CLOSER EXAMINATION
I wasn't so sure my wing was actually broken. But there were severely torn muscles. I could fly only a few feet at a time, and even on these short hops I veered disastrously to the left. With Blue Boy in equally dire straits I could only hope our ends wouldn't be too drawn out.

All that day Blue Boy barely moved, except for his heaving ribcage. The other wolves napped a lot, and at night they went off to hunt. At dawn Alberta brought Blue Boy back a chunk of deer meat. He lifted his head off the ground, took a few halfhearted bites, and passed out again.

The one called Frick evidently had a nose for medicinal herbs, and Alberta kept after him till he fetched a bunch. She chewed them up and applied some to Blue Boy's wound like a poultice.

“Won't help,” said her brutal sister, Lupa. “He's lost too much blood.”

Alberta spat out the rest of the herbs by his snout. “We'll see,” she said.

“Anyway, he's not from the compound. He has no collar.”

“It got shot off,” I said.

“A likely tale,” Lupa said.

She still had her collar—I wished it would shrink and strangle her—and so did Alberta and Frick. It seemed that, like Blue Boy, they'd been going about their business in the Canadian Rockies only to find themselves suddenly transported to pens in Yellowstone. After their release they'd left the park, too, migrating west into the mountains of Idaho.

Around midday Blue Boy came around, and Alberta forced him to eat the remaining herbs along with a chunk of deer. Once he'd finished, she asked what had become of his collar.

“Shot off,” he said.

I gave Lupa a look, but she was preoccupied with her grooming—or pretending to be.

That afternoon, while the wolves were napping, I made the mistake of dropping to the ground for a peck of leftover deer. Try as I might, I couldn't get back up to my limb. The best I could do was scuttle onto a nearby stump.

When the three healthy wolves got ready to go hunting that night, Blue Boy astonished me by jumping up and saying he was joining them.

“You mustn't,” Alberta said. “You need another day's rest, at least.”

Blue Boy went anyway. This left me completely vulnerable, a sitting duck for any passing fox or bobcat or wolverine. But what could you expect from a wolf? I hunkered down in a rotted-out pit in the stump and tried not to move a feather. After first light a hawk drifted by high overhead, but luckily he didn't notice me. When the wolves finally returned, Blue Boy astonished me again—by depositing a nice hunk of venison by the stump. It was enough to last me a month!

Judging by how quickly Lupa and Frick curled up together and conked out, I figured they must have feasted at the kill site. Alberta lay down too but didn't close her eyes. The way she watched Blue Boy made me think he must have displayed his hunting prowess. After a while he met her gaze and said quietly:

“Will you do me another favor?”

“Another?” she said.

“You already saved my life. I was hoping you'd look after Maggie.”

“Well, sure. But—”

“Thanks. I hope I can repay you someday.”

Before Alberta could get out another word, Blue Boy turned and trotted up the mountainside. She sat there, stunned. I was stunned too. I couldn't fly after him, and by the time I thought of calling out good-bye, he was out of sight.

“Where's he going?” Alberta asked.

“He has a mate and pups up in Canada somewhere,” I said quietly, feeling more doomed than ever. There was no reason in the world for Alberta to watch out for me while my wing healed. What was I to her?

We stared up the mountain for a long while. When Alberta eventually lay back down, she kept shifting positions, as if she couldn't get comfortable.

In time the other two wolves woke up. After giving her lustrous gray fur a thorough licking, Lupa looked around.

“This mountain's for the birds,” she said, using a turn of phrase I detested. “There's no water. Let's go back where we were.”

“It's nice up here,” Alberta said. “Don't you think so, Frick?”

Lupa gave Frick a sharp look, and he murmured that maybe going back south was the best plan.

When he and Lupa headed down into the woods, Alberta came and stood by my stump.

“Let's go,” she said.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“You can't fly, right? I'll give you a ride.”

Landing on the back of a steer was one thing. Cattle are torpid, slow-moving creatures with flat molars for chewing grass. Wolves, on the other hand, are fast as lightning, with fangs designed for ripping flesh—or feathers. I'd even kept a safe distance from Blue Boy.

“I'll be fine here,” I said. “Blue Boy left me food.”

“Don't be a birdbrain,” Alberta said, using another of my least favorite expressions. “You're defenseless if you can't fly. Somebody's bound to come along and eat you.”

And you won't? I thought.

“Listen, I can't split up the pack, and I can't break my word to Blue Boy either,” she said. “So you have no choice.”

She was right about my not lasting long on my own. And if she intended to eat me, at least it would be over quickly. But even so I would have balked if not for the look in her eyes. I know it's a strange thing to say about a wolf, but there was a real warmth in them.

Conquering every instinct in my body, I hopped onto her back. I clenched my beak, ready for the worst, but Alberta just trotted down into the trees.

I clung to her coat for dear life. When we caught up to the other two wolves, Lupa gave a snort at the sight of us, and I couldn't help thinking Trilby would have done the same. He'd considered a magpie and a bluebird a weird combination—what would he have made of a magpie and a wolf? But to my surprise Frick shot me a smile when Lupa wasn't looking.

The ride didn't get easier as the day wore on. We traversed countless ridges and several mountains. Late in the afternoon we arrived at what had evidently been their previous rendezvous site on a wooded hillside. Lupa gave me a hungry look when I hopped down off Alberta's back—none of us had eaten all day—but Alberta warned her sister off with a low snarl. The wolves napped a while and went off to hunt. I scrounged up a few seeds and berries and dragged myself under a bush.

When I woke at daybreak, the wolves were still gone. I hopped out into the open and tested my bum wing. It was no better. But when the wolves returned, both Frick and Alberta had brought back small chunks of meat for me.

The next day was much the same, and the next. As days turned to weeks, I tried not to dwell on the thought that my wing might be permanently out of commission, but I couldn't help resenting the wolf who'd turned me into a pathetic, earthbound creature. Still I had to give Lupa credit for looking good. When she wasn't sleeping or on the hunt, she was grooming herself.

At first Frick and I didn't talk much. But I came to realize he knew about more than healing herbs. He even paid attention to birds. He could tell a black vulture from a turkey vulture, and a Canada goose from a snow goose. One windy day he gave me a tip about putting pine sap on my feet to keep a better grip on my branch. Another day he showed me how the seeds in a Douglas fir cone look just like rats diving into a hole. Lupa rolled her eyes when he went off on one of his “silly tangents,” but I took to chatting with him while she was busy grooming or napping. He was no Jackson, of course, but for a creature who'd been stuck on the ground all his life, he'd picked up a lot of information.