Run with the Pack: Chapter 8

As Bahr approached Elha, she turned and both wolves stopped, looking at each other from a few paces away. Bahr was still panting from his ordeal and the exertion of fighting off the stranger wolf. There was a deep gash to his shoulder and another wound to his flank. This time, when Bahr approached Elha closer, she did not growl or show her fangs. She licked his muzzle, and he returned the gesture. They were now reconciled to each other, it seemed.

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Having formed a tentative alliance, neither wolf was sure what to do next. There was no game to be found. Anything that moved had long been scared off by the infernal noise made by the fighting wolves and Bahr, in any case, was exhausted from the fray. He needed rest but as he turned away from Elha to find a place to lie, Elha brushed against his side and began to lick the wound in his flank, and then the wound to his shoulder. Moving between the two, she continued to brush her coat against his, giving ample opportunity for Bahr to take in the complex scents now rising from her.

Bahr understood and returned the brushing gesture and both wolves continued to contemplate and to savor the various odors and scents and tastes with their implicit messages, as if carrying out a conversation by sense of smell alone. It was a conversation that continued for some time, subtle in its nuances and detailed in the range of gestures that were exchanged, becoming more and more agitated, working itself into a frenzy.

The coupling that followed was mercifully brief and followed by an overwhelming calming of the agitation that each had experienced. Elha felt, not just the relief from the frenzy, she also felt a profound but subtle difference in herself. She felt she was a different wolf. The same wolf but different. She felt somehow more. More wolf but not many wolves. She felt a different shape and she felt a different size. There had been a fundamental change to her every being. Perhaps it was the magic hare she had caught but, then again, perhaps it was something else that had caused her to change. She did not ponder the question too much, but she did examine her feelings and scents and shape to try to understand what the difference could be.

Bahr too, could tell there had been change in Elha. Though he could detect no change in her appearance, he could still understand that there had been a change, for it was communicated to him through his understanding of the complexity of scents and their meaning. He knew at once that he was in company with a different wolf altogether. The same wolf, yes, but nonetheless different. A different quality of wolf. One wolf but more. In his mind’s eyes he saw the image of his elfa appear beside Elha and, walking up to her, nuzzling each other, and then his elfa was gone. Bahr knew, without pondering further, what this vision of his mother had meant.

Whatever changes had been wrought deep within Elha she had one overriding and immediate need and it was the powerful need to eat. Bahr too had eaten little and needed to fill his belly. They both thought of the magic hares and, without any active collaboration, each thought that this would be the best source of a quick meal, albeit a meagre one, given their hunger.

Equally, they needed rest and rest must come first. The next day they would begin again the relentless quest for their next meal. They each had the same thought at the same time. First rest and then food.

With that understanding established the wolves separated, as if part of the understanding, and each found a place to lie down. This time, closer than they had laid together before but not quite together, as if each understood the other’s need for space and distance, albeit a space and distance that were almost non-existent, but a space, nonetheless. They lay facing opposite directions, each guarding the other’s back. Again, part of the unspoken accord that they had reached by the lengthy negotiation that passed through gestures and scents.

Laying close together on the forest floor, both wolves had a feeling that they were no longer alone. They were not many, certainly not enough to consider themselves a pack, and they were not family. They were not one, but they were not many, either. Yet they each felt the strength of combined purpose. Perhaps in any subsequent need to fight they would fight together. Or perhaps not. There was no need to consider the events of an unknown future when every day in a wolf’s life would bring its own challenges. Whatever those challenges might be, they would deal with them as they came to be, without worrying what might be.

With these pictures in their minds, surprisingly similar pictures given that they were little more than strangers, both wolves were able to rest. As darkness settled down to a calm, cool, windless night, both wolves settled themselves into an almost slumber. They were resting, yes, but fully alert for the slightest movement, the slightest sound, and the smallest change in the scent picture before them. They rested for some time, each giving enough attention to the sounds and the scents of the forest, alert enough to be able to spring fully awake to face any danger or any opportunity to find and kill food.

Having rested, the two wolves were eager to move on from their present surroundings and to find territories that were less prone to incursions by aggressive strangers. They must, again, move on. They needed to find a portion of the forest that was not already occupied by other wolves, that had access to sufficient sources of food, and which they were able to protect from incursion from any passing strangers. First, they must think of food.

Thinking as if one, they both headed in the same direction, and it was the direction of the magic hares. Arriving on the scene of their first combined attack, albeit an uncoordinated one, the two wolves immediately settled down a few paces apart from each other at the edge of the thick bushes overlooking the meadow.

Breathing regularly, they were aware of each other as if the other were a part of them, the other side of themselves, a left flank and a right flank with a giant invisible head and jaws suspended in the air above and between them. In the dark meadow before them, their senses were focused such that, despite the dark, they were able to see every detail as if in daylight. There were no hares abroad at this time but the two wolves-as-one were aware that the magic hares could appear at any moment.

Sure enough, a hare appeared before them. As the last remaining moments of complete darkness began to dissolve into the half-light of dawn, so the first hare appeared. Soundless until it made its appearance, leaping and bounding its mad and magical dance into the world. In a moment both wolves had shot out of the bush, each on a diverging trajectory, forming a growing vee-shape with the hare at the bisection of the angle thus produced.

Seeing one wolf first, the hare immediately sped off in an opposite direction, only to catch the growing image of the second wolf racing out from the other direction. Changing direction again, the hare headed away from the woods, away from the direction the wolves were running from and tried to outsprint the two hunters. Without success, the hare stopped and darted and changed direction, wasting valuable escape time as it dithered over which direction to take.

The wolves were gaining, despite heading partly away from the direction the hare was running. Desperate for a new tack the hare stopped, mid-bound, and leapt in reverse, this time towards the wooded cover, hoping to gain ground before the larger beasts were able to halt their momentum and switch their own direction. But, reversing direction, the hare had to gain sufficient ground to be past the two wolves before it could gain any ground in the opposite direction. It wasn’t quick enough. The pursuers were able to switch about, just as the hare was passing their line of attack, such that they were closer to the hare once all three animals were heading in the opposite direction.

Resisting the urge to head directly for the hare, both wolves now headed on a parallel course to the hare, which was now heading directly for the cover of the denser bush and trees of the forest. Not fast enough to escape its fate as, in a straight sprint, the wolves were gaining on the hare. Desperate, the hare tried to head away from the nearest wolf, only to find itself heading directly for the other. Changing direction again, the hare, again, was heading directly for the other wolf.

Still resisting the urge to converge on their prey, each wolf changed direction to head off the hare which, tantalizingly close to reaching cover and sanctuary, leapt high, changing direction mid-air to head back out into the open meadow, not quick enough to throw off its pursuers who were able in a single bound to leap off after their prey. Hunter and hunted were coming closer now, closer to meeting, closer to the end. Still the wolves did not converge but kept moving to head off the hare, at once from this direction, and then from that, until the hare, despite its magical powers, was unable to know which direction to bolt. Tiring, the panicked creature leapt again, high into the air, hoping to escape the monstrous jaws of its tormentors. The two wolves now made a sudden combined convergent leap into the center point and up and, jaws agape, competing to catch the flying, lithe shape of the hare as it returned to earth. Powerless to resist the upward thrust of the wolf, the hare was trapped between Bahr’s crushing jaws, the life of the panicked hare instantly dashed away.

Crashing to the ground on his side, Bahr rolled with the force of his return to earth, regained his footing and stood, facing his partner in the chase. Placing the catch, gently, almost reverently on the ground between them, Bahr opened his huge mouth to let out a gasp of relief, fighting to regain the breath he had expended in the chase. Elha, too, was exhausted from the pursuit and stood, paws slightly apart, gasping to take in the reviving cold air of the now breaking dawn. Both wolves were aware of a profound moment. The moment when they had, for the first time, chased down a prey animal with a joint effort. Not a pack kill but not a lone kill either. As they searched each other’s eyes and scents, the two carnivores were acutely aware of the power of their coordinated attack. One wolf, alone, found it hard to bring down a prey animal. Not-one wolves had a greater power to kill than one wolf and one wolf, each acting along. Not quite a pack, but not one wolf either.

The body of the hare, already cooling in the harsh spring dawn, lay broken and bloody between them. Both wolves dipped their heads a fraction, as if in reverence to the magic creature they had caught between them. Bahr, looking directly at Elha, half expecting her to growl and make a claim, saw no such challenge in her eyes. Instead, he saw nothing but the fire of a profound life, with an immense desire to keep burning. Bahr shared that desire and found nothing in his next gesture to militate against the primeval survival instinct.

With a yip and a whine, Bahr lowered his head and stepped back, away from the hare, hungry as he was, offering the food to Elha. Without considering his motives, he knew, despite the clawing pain in his belly, there was a greater need for Elha to feed. A greater need for both wolves, for the survival of each of them, that the carcass that lay bleeding in the snow should feed Elha, not he.

Elha, herself dipping her head as if she were about to offer the meal back to Bahr, stepped up and began, without ceremony, to rip the carcass to shreds and devour it. All the while, Bahr stood there, without a sound, watching as the meal was consumed, conscious of his own need for food yet conscious of a greater need. The final morsel of the no longer magic hare was not swallowed by Elha. With a generous mouthful of stripped meat and hide still lodging in her gaping jaw, she stepped up to the silent Bahr and placed her open jaw around his, pushing the last mouthful of meat and sinew into the other wolf’s mouth. A symbolic rather than a substantive feeding.

Both wolves were far from replete, but they were both wolves used to being without food for long periods of time. Elha, as the one wolf of the pair that was more than one wolf, had the most food inside of her. For Bahr, the pain of hunger was still acute, and it would become sharper still as the days went by. Yet inside, Bahr felt he had something that was almost as good as a full stomach. He was not sure what it was but, whatever it was, it would help to sustain him in the hungry days to come.

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Run with the Pack was published by Park Langley Editions in 2022. I will continue to post each chapter in turn here, as long as there is interest from readers. Please comment and/or like if you wish to read the next chapter.

Continue with: Chapter 9

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• Prologue: Farewell Dear Brother

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