| Chapter Three |
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The wolf awoke to the sound of her own whimpering, laid prone upon her side in the rank gloom. Her teats lay swollen and sore in the dirt. Her cubs, birthed whilst the thunder shook their earthy den and the lightning struck the skies beyond, had been still born all three. Surviving clumps of blooded fur and bits of bones lay to one side, where she had left them. She scraped the den floor with a foreleg in her sorrow, and whined. The yearling had been waiting at the den mouth for sounds of her mother stirring. The air from the den was sour with the threat of sickness. She rose and peered along the short tunnel and across the gloom, to where her mother panted with the beginnings of fever. The yearling whined quizzically but there was no response. She timidly entered the tunnel and crept cautiously towards the sick wolf. But before she could lower her head to wash her mother's chops, the older wolf growled and snapped, and the yearling started and scrambled to leave, ears pulled back and tail between her legs, a yelp perhaps of worry for her mother rather than fear for herself. It was not yet dark as she poked her head back through the den entrance. A trio of pigeons flapped the air in panic, desperate to be lifted away to the skies, but she seemed not in the mood to give chase. She must have known her father was not far away and would watch the den entrance for his sick mate. And so she sloped away north-eastward, maybe hoping that the regular padding of her feet would bring relief to her worried knots of muscle and thence to her worried heart, and that she would see the situation more clearly, and perhaps even see what was to be done. For with her mother sick it was she who must find the solution, she upon whom the sick wolf depended. Their pack was but three strong, her twin brother having had his legs shot from under him whilst yet a pup. The sun was slipping from the sky, birds chattering noisily from their roost, the colour draining from the day. The wolf must have tramped this path toward the north-east pool so many times that her legs could take her by themselves. The pool drew deer toward it and often provided the pack with food and with the promise of food, and was thus a special place within the wolves' territory for these reasons. She could not visit too often, lest the scent of wolf keep away any thirsting ungulates. She would watch the skies dance upon the rippling water, and perhaps she would see what she was to do. A fat horned beetle scuttled the path just ahead of the wolf, and she snapped it up and chewed it, lips pulled back, never even breaking stride. The breeze from the east blew with it a sudden muffled and unfamiliar mew. The wolf stopped dead in her tracks and cocked her ears, the fur on her hackles shivering. If she had thought that she knew every sound the forest had to offer, this was something new. Her ears were scout to the pack, and she had no choice but to investigate. She stole now silently eastward, her body lower to the ground, her nose twitching expectantly for scent of the new unknown. Suddenly she was flooded with scent of badger, and within minutes she spied a lone badger snuffling through the rotting leaves, kicking up heady mouldering scents, unware of her presence until she padded past. It was not badger that she sought. And then she caught it. Familiar yet strange. The sweet scent of birth, but not of wolf. Sweeter, less musky, yet so similar that she must go closer. The moon was not yet up, and the darknesses bore her passage as she moved in. Many pads more into the wind, and then a several few slightly more to the south, and she had the source. A stray afterbirth cold upon dead fallen bracken, a mother who cannot be well enough to eat the trace and thus clean the den and protect her young, and there, two cubs, neither now mewing. The thought of her mother sickening for lack of cubs back in the den must have spurred her closer, as nothing else could have. She nudged the mother, who simply sighed, seeming to have drifted clean away from this world, unable even to wash much membranous amneosis from the pups. She sniffed the stronger cub. It must have been a pleasing smell. She licked its face, and its eyes opened to gaze at her. The wolf licked its scruff and then picked it up in her jaws, the cub silent all the while. She carried the cub all the way back to the den, its body swaying to the rhythm of her trot. Nearby the den her father waited, having smelt the cub approach. He sniffed its rump and nipped it gently and the cub squealed. The young wolf picked the cub up again, loped up to the den entrance and laid the cub just inside the tunnel, for its scent to reach her mother. She then whimpered her mother's attention and drew away from the entrance. Inside the den the older wolf lay yet in pain and sorrow, milk fever hanging like a threatening shadow over her dugs. Her breath as she panted was rank, and she did not smell the cub above this for a time. When the scent did finally drift in she wondered was she dreaming, but then came a mew, and she struggled to her feet to investigate. The cub was all but hairless, laid upon its belly, lit by the evening's early starlight that pawed a way into the tunnel. She poked its rump with her snout and it mewed again. She licked its back and licked away the sheen of dried birth and licked through its matted furry head and picked it up by the scruff and took it into the den. The young wolf outside listened keenly to what would ensue. Was her mother licking the cub simply to tender its meat? Finally came the sounds of the cub suckling, and a pained cry from her mother as the milk began to come, and she knew that her mother had accepted it. She shared a look of hope or relief with her father, and turned and ran swiftly back to fetch the remaining cub, before any danger could befall it.
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