The following is an excerpt from, Wind, A Novel of the Ice Age, by Patricia Kranish which about a time when wolves and men saw how much they were alike and told stories to explain the mysteries of the night sky and of life on earth.
The author loves living in the past. Wind, is set in the Ice Age although she hates being cold and left New York four years ago to live in Las Vegas. Inspired by the community of writers she found here, she has published four stories this year, and is working on a collection called Tales Out of School, based on her experiences as a high school teacher in Brooklyn.
Pat lives with her husband Mike and not too far from her three grown children who provide a safe and loving space that lets her share her imagined family of characters with readers.
Chapter Seven – Night Sky
He drifted to sleep as Xur’s voice lulled them with intimations of what lay beyond the observed world. How else could they shine light on the unseen forces that propelled it? What was time but the recurring cycles of days and months and seasons; an eternal spiral with no beginning and no end? The stories connected the small bands of the Huul mountains with each other. Wherever they traveled they encountered people who shared the awe of the unforgiving natural world and the boundary of their existence.
What were the glittering stars that got no closer no matter how high they climbed, that moved as they did with the seasons? The stars were hearths, they said, for the spirits of those who left their bodies in the dust of the earth, in the bat-besmirched caves, or in the frozen waters of winter. Why on a clear night could they see so many? There was no word for this abundance, no satisfaction for their infinite curiosity. Their only recourse was to break down the vastness of the night sky into discrete images that they could understand and explain: a bear and her cubs, a hunter with a raised spear, hearths for ancestors beyond living memory. Look up, the storytellers invited; the night sky knows all secrets.
Xur and Bani lay awake under the canopy of light against black, a blanket of bearskin stretched between them and the frost covered ground.
“Where is the hunter?” said Bani, his dark eyes mirroring the lights above.
“There,” said Xur, tracing the starry outline of the Hunter with his finger. “And where is his brother?” said Bani. “No,” said Xur, “the wolf that walks behind him is not his brother. He is his father. In the time before the hunter, the people were beasts. They walked as all beasts do on four legs. Their snouts were close to the ground. They called to each with howls and barks. They did not make weapons because they had claws and teeth as sharp as blades and jaws stronger than the grip of any man.”
“I have never seen a wolf,” said Bani.
“That is because the wolf can smell you and hear you from far away, before you can get close to him. He is so fast that if you did get near him you would think only that a puff of wind had passed. He hunts with such cunning that he becomes one with his band. Even the bear, with all of his strength and ferocity, is brought down.”
“If the wolf is all those things, why did he make his son a man?”
“Because the wolf,” said Xur, “could not do the one thing he desired most. So he traded his warm fur and sharp teeth and claws so that he could rise up from the ground and speak.”
Bani drew his hand from under his cover and examined it in the near darkness. He traced his fingers over his face and across his soft mouth.
“Do you think it was a good trade?” said Xur.
Bani was silent and Xur thought he was asleep. As Xur nestled down under the heavy furs, Bani replied, “I think you would have to ask the wolf.”
After a moment he said, “Tell me the story, Xur.”
The hunter and his son chased the rabbit to the region where the forest meets the desert. The hunter stopped to rest, but the younger wolf who had not yet learned restraint, ran on despite the warning his father sent him on the wind. The rabbit vanished into the gullies and the shadows of the forest, but the son of the wolf, filled with the joy of speed, could not stop.
The iridescent wings of a raven fluttered in and out among the trees. She was bright and black by turns, lit by the sun, then lost in the shade, then sparkling like water flowing through the sun’s rays. The bird seemed to beckon the wolf to follow, but when he reached the center of an assembly of oaks, he became confused, and spun foolishly looking for the direction she had taken.
A voice from a branch high over his head sang, “Tell me your name.”
He looked up as the bird fanned her wings against the bright sky blurring the outline of her feathers. He tried to sing his name to her in tones that would express what was in his heart but instead a baleful howl caught in his throat. He reared up on his hind legs to reach the branches where she perched but he lost his balance and fell against the rough trunk. His very nature was routed by the desire to declare himself to her and he cursed his clumsy limbs and inarticulate mouth for failing him. Words of endearment emerged as snarls and his mordant teeth bit his beastly tongue till blood ran down his throat.
The spirit of the oak was roused by the wolf’s unhappiness and took pity on him. First he stripped the wolf of his soft and luxuriant fur. The wolf stood naked, exposed to the ridicule of all the other beasts. Still he reached for the raven. Then the spirit shaped the wolf’s mouth until it was as tender and harmless as a suckling cub’s. He molded the wolf’s claws into a shape that could hold whatever he could reach. But he left the throbbing heart of the wolf unchanged as he transformed him into the thing we call a man. The man embraced the raven as his wife, and her raven locks and lissome voice keep him, to this very day, enthralled.
Xur closed his eyes and folded his hands across his stomach as if to say The End.
“Wait,” said Bani, “does that mean that we have the heart of a wolf?”
“Is that what you think it means?”
“I don’t know what it means,” he waited for Xur to tell him.
“Xur, if we have the same heart as the wolf, does that make us good or bad?”
“Why do you ask that, Bani?”
“Nin said that the wolf kills for pleasure, he kills for the pride in his skill and not only because he is hungry.”
“Some have said so,” said Xur.
“Nin said that the wolf kills the weak and the old and fears the hooves and antlers of the stag.”
“Does Nin not fear the hooves and antlers of the stag?”
“But Nin says that the wolf hunts like a coward, he bites the elk from behind because he’s afraid of him.”
“Brother, don’t judge the wolf differently than you would judge a man whose heart beats with cowardly fear and runs from the beast without throwing his spear. The same heart, whether a man’s or a wolf’s can face the worst danger; I mean Bani, that sometimes we are all afraid.”
“So,” said Bani, “sometimes the wolf is good and brave and sometimes he is bad and cowardly.”
Xur nodded.
“When Nin wakes up tomorrow I’ll tell him it’s not bad to be afraid.”
“Bani,” said Xur, “the story of the wolf—it’s not only about bravery.”
“I know.” Bani yawned.
“It’s about the pull of the heart when one confronts the other.”
“The other what,” said Bani as his eyes closed.
“The other sex,” said Xur.
“Let’s talk about that tomorrow,” said Bani and then he really did fall asleep.