As chief, I had to know many things to lead my clan well; how to find water and food, how to find safe trails through the deep snow at the time of the Whiteness and how to avoid the teeth of the Wolf Clan that follows us in all places. Even now, I am teaching these things to my son who will succeed me as next leader as I prepare to learn those things I must know for the next life.
As I sit beneath the tall trees, watching my son run with his companions, I think back to the days when I first led my clan. I was eager to seek out our enemies, not so quick to run for the protection of the low brush. I learned the folly of my eagerness as I watched Ell, the old friend of my father's youth, fall beneath the fangs of five of the Wolf Clan as he followed me into the deep woods, into the snow that trapped him. I watched, helplessly, as they ripped his throat out to let his blood spill over the white blanket that covered the Mother. Even my need to do battle was quenched by the sight of so many grey bodies as they lunged over and over again at his dying figure. I slipped silently away to safety and shame, vowing never to be so foolish again.
This would not be the last time I would see the Wolf Clan take one of my tribe. The Way was such that many times we would watch in awe as one of the Old Ones, too weak to run, would go down to the fangs. This was the fate that the Elders have told me awaits all of us in time, an act of renewal for the Clan and the Earth.
As I slept last night, the Elders came once again in my sleep and said that this night, I was to sit in the center of the Circle of Wisdom before the sacred fire to learn the mysteries of the time before our time, when the Earth was different. Then my time will be done.
I sit in the Circle, awaiting the Elders. In my mind, I can hear the sacred words forming; gradually, the smoke of the fire reveals my Ancestors, those whom we call Elders. Up from the fire they arise from the flames; their song takes shape in my mind. I hear wondrous stories of the Time of the Change, before the days of the Clans of Elk, Wolf, Bear and others of the wood and plain, before we were given the mind-voice that allows us to speak without words.
I hear of strange creatures that walked on two legs and flew above the clouds as did the small creatures called birds. I hear of how all the two-legged things were burned in a great fire of their own making.
I learn that the Clans were changed after the fire, after the Earth had cooled, that only the creatures that took to the deep woods had survived to roam the lands.
I see with an inner sight these wonders of which they sing and now I sing along with them. We sing of heroes and deeds done and horrors we have seen. We sing of the many turns of darkness that followed the fire before the Clans were transformed from creatures of no understanding into what we became. Long into the dark night, we sing of how the Clans would always be on the Earth, to roam and to keep the Circle, maintain the Way.
I wonder as I hear these things if the Elders might be wrong, but in my deepest being, I know it all to be true. Now the telling is over, the songs have stopped. Now I must go for the last time into the deep woods, alone and without fear.
The darkness closes around me, a cloak the enfolds me. I can hear the stirring of the small Clans as they take to the night. I feel the chill of recognition as the leader of the Wolf Clan picks up my scent. I tell him with the mind-voice that I have come for them, that it is my time to become one with the Elders. He answers in the unspoken tongue we all share.
Now they have come. My body will rejoin the Earth and my spirit will rise to my place of honor. My one last thought is that I will no longer be able to look over this land that was given to my people so long ago. The wolves leap.
The story Luk is Copyright 1998 by Allen Beck.
The collection of works called Fish Eggs For The Soul is Copyright 1998 by Brian Rickman.
Copy edited by Sara Fawbush, editor of The Young Writer's Collection.