never comes.
Poul passes by, his teeth chittering fast like an angry squirrel, but since he has jaws like the grill of a monster truck, it’s not as funny as it should be. Elijah always stops when he is near. Maybe there are wolves who will tell him what I am like as a fighter, he says, but maybe not. Anyway, there is a world of experience that cannot be expressed by words.
Traditionally, Elijah says, challenges are held on the last day of the Iron Moon. The subordinate wolves fight first. They tend to be more cautious and circumspect. A lot of posturing overseen only by the echelon’s Alpha. But by the time the higher ranks fight—the Alphas, Betas, Gammas—the aggressiveness increases and so does the audience.
“Blood sells,” Elijah says, picking at something in his teeth that had earlier been attached to my foreleg and is now bleeding profusely from my bicep. “The biggest draw for a long time was when Varya fought Kieran for insulting Thea. You know him? The brindle wolf with the scar through his eye? I never understood why Varya, who had always hated humans, tore open a wolf’s face over one. Still yours… Got it.” He spits the piece of my hide out. It has a bit of fur attached. “Still yours has sex, xenophobia, and a high probability of death…so, you know, what’s not to like?”
* * *
There is another wolf who never comes.
I rehearse that last time I sat with her on the Holm, watching the water streaming down from her collarbone. Picked out by the moon, it gleamed like lightning on her tawny skin, and the truth is, at that moment, I was so tortured by thirst, I would have done whatever she wanted if she would let me lick the water from her breasts, suck it from her nipples, slake myself inside her.
Then she scrubbed her arm with her fisted hand, like she does when she’s cleaning away any trace of me, and I couldn’t.
* * *
As the days pass into weeks and the wolves decide that I’m not a walking casualty, that there is a chance, however slim, that I might not die in the first two minutes, they begin to whisper suggestions, making it clear that not all of the Great North sides with Poul simply because he’s one of them. Tiberius tells me to walk off the paddock several times, measuring it with my feet for the dips and rises that will tell me if I’m getting too close to the wall.
A female from Poul’s own echelon says he twisted his left hind ankle and is still stiff.
Järv tells me to jump in as soon as the fight between the 11th’s Gamma and Beta is over so I can take the western edge and the sun will be at my back.
“But piss first,” Ziggy adds. “Once you’ve entered, you cannot leave until the fight is over. If you do, you are a coward and outside the protections of the law. For wolves, submitting is acceptable, but running away never is.”
* * *
I finally see her on the first evening of the Iron Moon. With blackfly season over, the Pack spreads out on the grass that rolls down from the Great Hall to Home Pond. The sounds of crickets and katydids meld with quiet conversation and gentle snufflings as Homeland and Offland wolves greet one another. A loon glides through the air, skimming through the purple-gold surface of Home Pond and almost, but not quite, going under. His voice is hollow as he calls to his mate.
That’s when she leaves the Great Hall, closing the door behind her.
After giving the traditional blessing, she sits not with us but with the 9th. She says nothing to Elijah and he doesn’t bother her. Even Cassius has the grace to keep his mouth shut while he digs divots in the grass with a stick.
I don’t see much of her once we are changed either. People have heard about the wolf sighting, and as much as the Great North has tried to spread rumors that it is a coyote, the photograph has gone viral under the hashtags #ADKWolves and more ominously #ADKTrophies.
I hunt with the 7th, then lope through the High Pines where the tree-darkened days meld into the bright moonlit nights, all of it infused with my own cool gladness.
There was a birthday many years ago when I imagined I’d reached the pinnacle of happiness. I had waffles and sausages and goose and