The map of the Far North
The map of the Island at the Edge of the World
A bat flitted past Torak as he drew an arrow from his quiver. Wolf raised his muzzle and sniffed the breeze. He glanced at Torak, then into the thicket. There.
They crept between tangled alders, Torak squelching knee-deep in black water, Wolf’s big paws making no sound. Torak picked a hair off a twig: coarse, reddish-brown. Elk calves are reddish-brown. The calf’s mother must have hidden it in the thicket while she went to graze.
Torak glanced over his shoulder at the lake. Elk can swim deep underwater. She could be anywhere, diving to the bottom to uproot water lilies with her tongue.
Wolf froze: paw raised, ears rammed forwards. Dimly through the trees, Torak made out a calf-shaped darkness.
The calf whined and wobbled to its feet. It was as tall as a horse. One chop of its front hooves could split his skull.
As Torak nocked the arrow to his bow, Wolf gave a warning uff and the mother elk exploded from the lake in a chaos of white water and flailing hooves. Torak dodged. She cracked a trunk by his head. Wolf leapt and sank his fangs into her pendulous nose. She swung him high, he clung on. Torak couldn’t get a clean shot, couldn’t risk hitting his pack-brother. With a twist and a heave the elk sent Wolf flying. He hit a tree with a yelp. Torak floundered towards him. Mother and calf had disappeared into the Forest.
Groggily, Wolf lurched to his feet and wagged his tail. Torak gave a shaky laugh. ‘That was close!’ Renn would tease him when she heard how he’d nearly been brained by an elk.
As he was leaving the thicket he saw a Willow Clan hunting party, two women and two men, bearing a roe buck’s quartered carcass. Wolf vanished into the Forest, as he did when strangers approached, but Torak put his fists to his chest in friendship. On impulse he asked if they’d seen his mate. ‘Renn of the Raven Clan,’ he called. ‘She’s been to see them but she’s coming back today.’
One of the men turned, and in the dusk his clan-tattoos were stark: three willow leaves between his eyes, like a permanent frown. ‘Saw her a couple of days ago,’ he called back. ‘Long way downriver.’
‘Oh, then it wasn’t her, the Ravens are camped upriver.’
The man’s frown became real. ‘I know who I saw. Red hair, her uncle’s Fin-Kedinn the Raven Leader. Summer before last she mated with the spirit walker, the boy who talks to wolves. That would be you.’ His eyes narrowed and he touched a bone amulet on his jerkin: Stay away.
‘Looked like she was going on a journey,’ a woman sneered. ‘She was paddling a canoe, had a pack and a sleeping-sack.’
Torak bristled. ‘Then it definitely wasn’t her.’
The woman sniggered. ‘Maybe she’s tired of you.’
Laughing, they went on their way.
Torak was still irritated when he reached camp. It was in darkness, no welcoming firelight and no Renn.
Neither Wolf nor his mate Darkfur had returned from the hunt, but the cubs pounced on Torak, leaping at his chest and whining for food, while their older brother Pebble gave him a distracted greeting. Pebble took his cub-watching duties seriously and rarely relaxed.
In the shelter Torak found the double sleeping-sack as he’d left it, although slightly chewed. He felt a twinge of unease. It was the Cloudberry Moon, when parts of the river were still choked with salmon – and salmon means bears. Renn said Torak worried too much about bears. Torak said she would worry too if her father had been killed by one.
Ah, but she could look after herself, she was the best shot in the Forest with a bow and arrow. She’d be annoyed if he went to find her.
The wind rose, blowing thistledown in his face like summer snow. The pines stirred restlessly. They knew something was wrong.
Tracking was what Torak did best, and even by starlight he found Renn’s three-day-old trail. To his alarm it didn’t lead towards the valley where her clan was camped, but down to the River Blackthorn where he and Renn kept their canoe. The canoe was gone. Drag-marks and bent twigs told him that Renn had paddled downriver, just as the Willow man had said.
She was going on a journey. She had a pack and a sleeping-sack.
This was all wrong, it couldn’t be Renn. She would have had to make that gear in secret: scraping and sewing reindeer hides for the sleeping-sack, weaving willow withes for the pack. She would have had to deceive Torak for days.
No, no, it couldn’t be true. Renn wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t leave him without a word.
But she had.
Many Lights and Darks ago when Wolf was a cub, his father and mother and pack-mates were drowned by a terrible Fast Wet. Wolf had been frightened and hungry until Tall Tailless had come. They’d been pack-brothers ever since.
Tall Tailless wasn’t a real wolf, he walked on his hind legs and had neither fur nor tail – but he had the heart and spirit of a wolf and he was part of the pack. Together he and Wolf had hunted their first deer. They’d fought demons and other bad things. They’d found mates. But even though Wolf was one breath with his mate and cubs, he’d always known that it was his purpose to be with Tall Tailless and protect him. This was what Wolf was for.
The Hot Bright Eye was rising in the Up as Wolf and his mate trotted back to the Den with their bellies full of salmon. The cubs attacked them with eager snuffle-licks and hungry whines, Me first! Me first! Jostling, shoving, they gulped the delicious sicked-up fish, then collapsed in a pile and fell asleep.
Wolf’s mate lay with her muzzle between her paws, and even the older cub snoozed – but Wolf was restless. Something wasn’t right, he felt it in his fur. The pines guarding the Den were moaning. What had they sensed?
Now Wolf felt it too: a shadow and a threat, some creature in the Forest that didn’t belong. He caught no whiff of demon, but his flanks throbbed from old wounds, and suddenly he knew – with the strange certainty that came to him at times – that Tall Tailless needed him.
As Wolf raced uphill to catch the scents, his keen ears caught the sounds of the Forest: a lynx sharpening her claws in the next valley, two stallions fighting many lopes away – but where was Tall Tailless? Wolf swerved to avoid a bear clawing an ants’ nest. The bear lashed out, Wolf dodged with scornful ease. He wasn’t afraid of bears. He wasn’t afraid of anything except losing his pack-brother.
At the edge of the cliff he skittered to a halt. Far below, the Fast Wet foamed angrily between rocks. Tall Tailless sat on a log, pushing himself through the wet with a stick.
Wait for me! Wolf barked. But his pack-brother’s ears weren’t as keen as his, he didn’t answer.
Wolf put up his muzzle and howled: Wait – for me!
Tall Tailless howled a reply: Go back to the Den! You can’t come!
Wait! howled Wolf.
You can’t come!
Wolf was stunned. Tall Tailless was leaving the pack? Leaving Wolf?
Wolf ran in circles, mewing in distress. A wolf does not abandon his pack. Tall Tailless could not leave. But neither could Wolf: he had to look after his mate and cubs.
And yet Tall Tailless needed him. Wolf didn’t know what to do.
His mate appeared in the bracken, panting, her black flanks heaving. Go, her bright eyes told him. The older cub will take turns with me to hunt and watch the young.