The Sight (55 page)

The leaves fell and winter came once more to Transylvania, biting the land with cold and piling the mountaintops with snow and, because the animals possess the gift of memory but faintly, they began to forget what Larka had shown them.  The snow settled on the forest and the slopes, it fizzed around the edges of the river and heaped about the sides of the castle, softening for the first time that grim aspect.

Fell was becoming more and more distant.  As he watched winter’s teeth closing on the Lera and the forests again and felt the anger of survival stirring in his guts, more and more his thoughts would turn back to Morgra and all he had seen and done, as though the patterns of the land were shaping the contours of his mind.  But they were thoughts he could not share with his parents, or Kar, and the evenings would see the wolf standing solitary on the slopes of the valley, etched black against the freezing white.

The pain of Larka’s loss tortured Kar.  He was losing the will to live.  He would howl long and softly to himself, a mourning call, and mutter of Tor and Fenris and Va.  He would ask Palla to tell him the stories from his childhood of magic and power and somewhere make himself believe that Larka had not gone.  That one sun soon she would step from the trees like Tor, to heal his wound.  But in his secret heart Kar doubted that stories could change life.

Kar was lying on his own one wintry night, though, when suddenly he looked up.  A she-wolf was coming towards him through the grass.  Kar’s heart began to pound furiously.  It couldn’t be.  It was a cub’s fable.  Larka was padding through the stones.  Kar sprang forwards whimpering, but even as he did so and saw the scar across the she-wolf’s muzzle he started to growl.  It was only the darkness had made her coat appear white.

‘Slavka,’ growled Kar.

Kar growled again but there was something in her eyes, a warmth, that touched him.

‘What do you want here?’ he said.  Slavka looked tired and sad.

‘Solace, and perhaps forgiveness.’

Huttser and  Palla sprang  up as Kar and  Slavka approached them, but as Slavka began to talk to them they realized immediately that she had changed.  Her eyes were clear and certain as she told them how she had found her way down from Harja.

‘You have softened, Slavka,’ said Huttser, as they listened to her.  ‘Have you stepped beyond the harshness of survival?’

‘We must survive,’ growled Slavka, ‘but I was too hard, Huttser.  I’ll use my instincts and hunt where I will and fight when I must.  But as a wolf.  No more than that.’

‘No more talk then of a Greater Pack,’ whispered Huttser, ‘or a boundary that can keep everything out.’

‘The wolf needs to know its boundaries if we are to respect each other,’ answered Slavka thoughtfully.  ‘And not murder each other as we try to survive.  And perhaps we all need to ask Larka’s Blessing of each other.’

‘Larka’s Blessing,’ said Palla in amazement.

‘The free wolves,’ growled Slavka softly, ‘they no longer call it Tratto’s Blessing.  Now they call it Larka’s Blessing.’

There was a sadness in Huttser and Palla’s eyes, but a gratitude too.

‘But, Huttser,’ Slavka went on slowly, ‘a Greater Pack was a foolish dream.  Until, perhaps, the wolves are ready for it.  They must choose that for themselves.  And now I know there are things in life that we cannot keep out with mere boundaries.  Should not keep out.’

‘What do you mean, Slavka?’ growled Palla.

‘Larka.  She did cross boundaries, not only of rivers and trees, or the markings of power and fear, but borders of the mind and spirit.  She crossed them for us all.’

‘And now she has gone,’ growled Kar.

‘Or perhaps she has simply crossed the greatest boundary of all.’

Slavka was looking kindly at Kar.  Huttser raised his head.

‘What do you seek here, Slavka?’ he asked.  Slavka’s eyes were unafraid.

‘To join your pack.  To have cubs again and love and protect them.  To live.’

Huttser and Palla remembered Morgra outside the den, Morgra who in her very birth had been made the scapegoat.  Huttser licked his mate.

‘Very well, and we shall learn together.’

Kar had a vivid dream that night.  Larka seemed to rise out of a swirling mist, and then she was standing before him among the trees and her coat was shining with a brilliant light.  The wolf whimpered in his sleep.

‘Love is what shields us from the pain and fear and loss, Kar,’ she whispered.  ‘What shields us from ourselves too.  From our own hate and fear.  And it is the greatest energy there is.’

‘Love, Larka?’ growled Kar in his sleep, thinking bitterly of how she had left him.  ‘The stories command us to love, Larka, but was it not partly Morgra’s love of cubs that began all this? Isn’t there a law in life that makes love nothing more than a word we use for our own?

‘Perhaps  love takes  cunning, Kar,’ growled  Larka strangely.  ‘I despaired, too, and at the last it made me believe even more.  Believe in the Varg.  In a pack and a mate and cubs.  Be true to your own nature, but don’t let that nature turn on itself.  Believe in life, and freedom.  And Kar, love is not a commandment, it is a need, as real as eating.  But, like the oriel in the old, old story, love must be free, as free as the birds.  Free to leave and free to return.’

Larka paused.

‘But make me a promise, Kar.’

‘What, Larka?’

‘Promise me that whenever you really love someone,’ she whispered, ‘you will tell them.  You will not keep it a secret.’

Kar whined.

‘And tell Fell.  That he must learn to close the eye of the Sight too.  To heal himself.  For the Sight does heal.’

‘But you died, Larka,’ growled Kar in his sleep.  ‘We all die.’

‘Yes, Kar.  And perhaps only when we know that we are going to die can we truly begin to live.  To see the beauty and wonder of it all.  ‘The light side of the Sight?’

‘Yes, Kar, though it is all really one.  As Man and Lera come from one.  But there is something in us – in our thoughts – that splits us and we must beware.  As the Dragga is split from the Drappa.  Beware of the dragons that fight in our minds, that throw false shadows on the world about us.  Trust life, Kar, let it carry you to safety.’

‘I would sacrifice myself if I could bring you back.  Kill myself.’

Suddenly, in his dream Larka snarled furiously at him from the trees.

‘No,’ she cried, ‘no more sacrifices.  Not in blood.’

‘But you, you sacrificed yourself.’

‘I did not escape the legend, Kar,’ growled Larka.  ‘For it was its own kind of trap, as Man’s freedom will be if he doesn’t learn.  But life is not a legend or a story.  Reality is far more precious than a story.  And to love each other we must begin to see each other properly.  Besides, Kar, at times, the greatest courage of all is to live.’

Kar trembled.

‘So let me give you a blessing.  Whenever the darkness threatens to consume you, learn to hold on to the truth.’

‘What do you mean, Larka?’

‘When everything around you seems conspiring to tear out your heart and your mind, or show you that there is nothing but power and survival, look up there, Kar, at the moon in the giant sky.  Hold it as a truth, beyond what we are too blind or ignorant to see all around us.  Hold it like love, Kar, and remember me.’

‘Remember.’ Kar shuddered in his sleep.

‘Learn to heal your mind.’

‘How?’ growled Kar sadly.

‘By going out there and looking, Kar.  By turning and walking out of the cave of your own thoughts.  By opening your eyes and feeding your sight on the mists that furl the mountains, and the waterfalls that shimmer past the rocks, on the great lakes that lie like a sigh among the trees and the mighty rivers that thunder to the sea.  For it is you, Kar.’

Kar growled and stirred in his dream.

‘But the humans, Larka, they will destroy it all.’

‘Not if they learn to love what they really are.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Kar,’ whispered Larka, ‘let me show you one last thing before I go.  Let me give you a vision of hope.’

‘Hope,’ growled Kar in his sleep, ‘hope and faith? Like our stories.’

‘Kar,’ whispered Larka firmly.  ‘We all need hope and faith, just as we all need stories.  But what use are either without love, and what use is love without true strength? Let me show you something perhaps truer than a story.  And not just truer than the story of Sita, but the story of the wolf Fren, too.  This is for you, Kar, and it is something far beyond even the stories of the Varg.  Look, Kar.’

Suddenly, before Kar, there stood that army of humans, their heads bowed in shame and fear and confusion.  But among them now, side by side, man next to woman, some stood taller, calmly, like guardians Though their eyes were closed, they turned their heads to one another, and Kar knew that they could read each others’ thoughts and that they loved one another and the animals, too, from where they had come.  For they had looked into the darkness of their own natures, their own past, and been able to bring light out of that darkness.  As Kar watched, he noticed that bees and little butterflies were settling on their shoulders and backs and, suddenly, the strange humans opened their eyes and looked back at Kar.  When he saw them, they were so beautiful that he was transfixed.  Their eyes.  The humans had the eyes of wolves.

‘Stay near to the light,’ whispered Larka.

‘Where are you, Larka?’

‘I am there.  I am in the rain and the skies.  I am in the trees and the flowers.  I am in the sunlight and in the moonlight, too.’

Larka and the dream were gone.  Kar opened his eyes and looked up into the evening.  The moon was as round as it had been at Harja.  Again it had come full circle, but as the grey wolf lay in the grass, he suddenly felt that now perhaps there was something new in the world.

So spring came and the snows melted and the rivers swelled.  The wolves felt a force that neither pain nor loss nor suffering could resist, the force of new life, of rebirth, rising through their paws.  Life’s sap was climbing and soon a miracle took place no less strange than the wolves’ pilgrimage to Harja.  Kar was lying on the river bank with Slavka and Huttser when a head emerged from the badger’s set in the bank where they had hidden from the dogs.  Palla looked exhausted, but her eyes were bright.

‘Come, Huttser.’

Huttser disappeared into the set, and when he returned to summon the rest of his pack, his face was full of pride.  Kar squeezed his muzzle into the den and he could hardly contain his joy.  The pups were bound tightly in a bundle, sleeping as soundly as the earth.  Two Draggas and two Drappas.  Palla was nestled about them, grooming them tenderly.

‘Look,’ cried Kar, squeezing from the set again, ‘Slavka, Fell.  Come and look.’

The pups’ eyes opened five suns later.  Fell would spend hours watching the cubs as they moved them to the Meeting Place and, though they found him strange and slightly frightening, they soon got used to his quiet ways and his mournful, searching eyes.  Fell hunted for them, too, whenever he could, but Huttser and Palla noticed that he rarely sat with them.  He would leave them meat on the edge of the Meeting Place and nod gravely as they took it, then turn away.

Fell spent most of his time on his own these suns and, though he would smile at the little family, Kar could see that he was still troubled.  One evening as the sun sank once more around the castle Fell came to see Kar.  He was on his own by the river as the black wolf padded up.

‘Kar,’ he growled, gazing into the moving waters, ‘I am going away.’

‘Going away, but why, Fell? You are a part of the pack.’

‘A pack?’ said Fell, ‘like the Balkar? Like the rebels? No, Kar.  I am not.  I can never be that.’

‘A family, then.’

Fell shook his head.

‘You are still in pain, Fell, I can sense it in you.’

‘Yes.  Sometimes I think her curse still hovers over us all.  But I must find my own answer.  Out there in the wild.  Or perhaps,’ added Fell, lifting his head suddenly, ‘perhaps among the humans, for I can read their minds, Kar.’

‘And in spite of what we saw,’ growled Kar, ‘they can love too.  You can see it in their eyes.’

‘I think their eyes have been watching us all along and I have been walking through a dream.  I feel as though I was nothing more than the tales Brassa used to tell us as cubs.’

‘Of Wolfbane, or a human that lives in the earth and cannot die? No, Fell.  Those were lies.  But we are wolves.’

But as Kar looked into Fell’s eyes he shivered, for he knew that the Sight was still burning inside him and that his journey had only just begun.

‘What will you do, brother?’

‘I am Putnar, Kar,’ growled Fell suddenly, ‘so I will hunt.  But I will track down lies.  And I will hunt for meaning too.  And, Kar, remember this, I can see in the dark.’

Evening was coming down as Kar lay with the pups at the Meeting Place.  Slavka was at his side, and Huttser and Palla were sitting together in front of them.  Palla’s eyes were sorrowful, but Huttser kept nuzzling his mate.

‘He’ll be all right, Palla,’ he growled kindly, ‘he’s strong.  Like you.  And, Palla, we must learn when to let our children go too.’

Palla laid her head gently on Huttser’s paws.

‘Father,’ said a little voice suddenly.

Huttser looked down at the cub sitting in the grass in front of him.

‘What is it, Larka?’ he whispered, licking his daughter’s ears.

‘Will you tell us a story, Father?’

‘Oh yes,’ cried another voice loudly, and a second pup came bounding over and began to scramble on his sister’s back.

‘Careful, Skop,’ growled Palla, ‘and leave your father be.  He’s too tired for stories.’

‘Palla,’ whispered Huttser gently, ‘don’t be angry.’

‘Oh please,’ came two more voices.

Now there were four cubs sitting expectantly in front of their parents.

‘Khaz,’ said Palla softly, ‘Kipcha.  Please settle down.  Your father doesn’t want—’

‘Will you let me?’ said Kar suddenly, ‘I’ll tell them a story.’

‘Oh yes, Uncle Kar,’ cried Larka.  Her coat was perfectly grey.

‘What would you like, children?’

‘The Stone Den,’ said Kipcha excitedly.