Chapter 8 #2
The wind sang a song of its own, drowning out the whimpering cowardice of a male who failed to matter.
Like Shala in the cave, or Eleni on the steps, she should have screamed.
But she didn’t.
She said something I didn’t understand.
I’d learned seventy-seven Semitic languages, including dozens of Afroasiatic dialects. Indo-European languages, proto-Balto-Slavic languages, one at a time. I’d begun to learn the curious Germanic sound shift in the first millennium.
How many languages could humans invent? How many ways could I misunderstand my human? How could I tell her she was safe with me if I couldn’t speak to her?
But…I didn’t have to.
She asked me a question I didn’t understand, but I memorized the sounds, knowing I’d learn her language and interpret it the moment I was able.
“Will you stay?” Her question, the cord that tethered our souls.
I didn’t speak the language yet. It spoke through me, into me, all around me, and I knew.
This human did not fear me, despite the general terror.
Whether she had a death wish or no sense of self-preservation, the result was the same.
She didn’t recoil, nor did she panic in the life-saving way that had spared so many humans.
She was meant to fight, fly, or freeze. I would have accepted the fawn of an extended hand to sniff her fingers, to try to win a beast.
I wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d ran. Hell, I wanted her to be terrified, if only to know she had the instincts required to stay alive.
Coal-black eyes looked back at me with the sort of trust that cupped my heart in her two small hands, cracking it as she held it.
She wore the weariness of someone far beyond her years as she stared through me, into me, despite my beastly shape.
Perhaps she was too tired to be afraid. Maybe she was ready for it to be over.
I couldn’t say. All I knew for sure was that no man would touch her again.
Myths had been started by less than what happened that day on the ice.
Dozens of witnesses attested to the otherwise unbelievable event.
A throng of her people watched as an enormous wolf forged of frost and fangs appeared out of thin air to defend an innocent.
A protector, a rescuer, a spirit who’d emerged from the realms beyond reason to put itself between a girl and her attacker.
An ice-white monster, half the size of a mammoth, springing to a girl’s rescue and staying by her side was the stuff of legends.
I accepted my role in the tale, so long as I wasn’t the story’s protagonist.
She was the center of their story even before I knew her name.
She stuck her hands in my fur, threw a leg over me, and sat upon my back. I hoped she could feel my smile at her strange, brave gesture. I would have applauded if I’d had hands.
They weren’t wrong to revere my human.
She was blessed, and they treated her as such.
She may as well have been a god from the way her people revered her from that day forward.
Unlike Shala and Eleni before her, I vowed not to leave her side, even for sixty Hellish seconds.
Until her dying breath, she would have the resources of an immortal at her fingertips.
I endured the blizzards and long nights and harsh terrain for as long as it took to bring her a spark of joy.
The frigid night of my arrival, a recently widowed woman took in the girl—my human—which was fortunate, as I would never again let her earthly father anywhere near her. I would have torn his jugular from its throat and left it freezing on the ice if I hadn’t thought his blood would upset her.
The new woman received the blessed girl and became her world guardian as a surrogate mother, and as such, made her soup, lit her fires, provided her furs, and never spoke an ill word of the daughter she’d taken in.
My people called me Prince. Her tribe called me Hero. At least, I grew to understand that’s what the word meant.
My human called me Fluffy.
I supposed I could be both.
It’s worth admitting: Qawiaraq was a challenging language.
It took me nearly a mortal month to learn, which was a fact I’d lie about if ever pressed for an answer.
But when I learned that her name, Yuka, meant “Bright Star,” for the third time in my existence, I was prepared to cry.
I was not an innate omnilinguist, but rather one of time and exposure.
I’d stolen a fish from a seal and dropped it at her feet on my second day.
“Thank you, Fluffy.” She scratched behind my ears. Before knowing the language, it was something soft, something sweet, and something only for me.
I knew she could feel my smile.
This was my first time in the Arctic, and I had yet to adapt to the newness of the ways consonants and vowels met before they wrapped around one another.
But I was able to communicate more than enough as a wolf.
No man came near her, and she was given the sort of accommodations I could have only hoped for in Macedonia or along the Dead Sea.
It wasn’t the Grecian palace of yore, but the whale bones and animal hides and furs warmed with a bright fire were hers and hers alone.
Yuka was revered as the girl who’d summoned a spirit wolf—respected as one who’d served as guardian and protector of her, and the village.
Here, she was left alone.
Despite a frostbitten land destined to slay the weak, she was the safest she’d ever been.
Bright days filled with long treks, snow blindness, wind-chaffed skin were guided by the sun.
We hauled the tents of hide and fur when we needed to move for shelter or food.
The people bunkered down with the insulation of carefully crafted homes made of ice for weeks or months at the time, should we discover a prosperous source of fish and seal.
The ties that bound us tightened.
She’d speak to me during the day as if talking to herself, sometimes upon my back, sometimes walking beside me, sometimes wrapped up in my fur as I lulled her to sleep.
“Where do you think we’ll find game?” “The fire is getting low. If we don’t find a new forest soon, we’ll freeze.
” “My, the stars are bright tonight. Thank you for watching them with me.” “Fluffy, come outside! The sky is singing. Green, pink, purple, blue…can you hear it? The colors sing.”
That they did. There was an other-worldly sound to the lights this close to the Arctic Circle, though as someone other-worldly, I could attest to the phenomenon belonging to the mortal realm. Even for me, it was magic.
“It’s time for bed, Fluffy. Cuddle with me?”
She slept against my fur at night, her head on my chest as five years passed, then ten.
She marched with me during the day. We hunted together.
We’d run under the daylight for moments of joy.
She’d cry into my fur in moments of weakness.
She was my world, and I was hers, though I’d never imagined it could take such a form.
Her people became my people, if by accident. I protected the nomadic tribe, as their pain brought her sorrow, and their victories brought her joy.
I didn’t give a shit about the others, but I supposed my intentions were irrelevant, so long as I remained a guardian.
I would never forgive the tribe for standing by as a father beat his daughter in broad daylight. The only one I didn’t hate, aside from my human, was Yuka’s surrogate mother. That said, what was good for the many was also good for the one, and that’s all that mattered.
I helped them hunt because it meant feeding her.
I offered warmth, healing, and led the way time and time again as they continued their south-bound journey, because it would keep her warm, keep her healthy, and get her someplace safe.
I wasn’t particularly fond of the howling winds, the white-out blizzards, or the grueling frostbite, but my human was here, and that made it all worth it.
I’d felt love since arriving in the Arctic. I’d felt anger. I’d felt annoyance.
My first brush with fear came the day one of her gods came to see who had intruded upon his territory.
Despite my trepidation, Igaluk, their lunar deity, visited only twice with idle curiosity.
He treated my presence with indifference, which was neither good nor bad.
It wasn’t the camaraderie I’d felt with Athena, but it was better than any sort of territorial hostility.
I was quite sure I was ready to take Hell to war with any pantheon if they challenged my claim to my mortal, and perhaps they sensed it wasn’t worth the bloodshed.
I should have saved my apprehension for the true test of my mettle.
My guard was down when Nanook appeared.
In my tenth year, the god of bears, the apex northern predator, was not apathetic to my presence.
I smelled him before I heard him.
“Fluffy?” Yuka sat up in the middle of the night. She shot a look at her now-mother, and I shook my head. No. Don’t follow.
The voice beyond the shelter challenged. “Face me.”
She watched as I pushed the leather flap separating the warm tent with the great outdoors. I disappeared beyond the entrance, shaking my head one last time.
Do not follow.
The imposing presence atop the nearby hill cast a terrifying silhouette against the moon.
Yuka hadn’t listened.
I understood the god’s command, but to the village, a bear had arrived, and they were prepared for attack. Torches were lit. Weapons gleamed. Men and women waited anxiously as I took careful steps forward.
His lips pulled back from his teeth.
His people were afraid, and for the moment, he was the enemy.
Snow crunched beneath my paws as I scrambled for a plan.
I was a dire wolf, but Nanook was twice the size of an already-enormous polar bear. I couldn’t fight him. Not if we were both in animal form. I had no right to his territory. I didn’t belong among his tribes. One foot in front of the other, I knew I’d die before leaving Yuka.