King of Wolves Page 5

  It was slow going to get through the layers of blood. The bucket of water was becoming a deeper red with each rinse. Nikkan didn’t speak further as we worked to get the wolf leader cleaned up. Each time I started on a new spot, I hoped we weren’t going to find an unhealable wound. The wolves and Red needed Micco. He was the strongest and had kept the village running through all the changes over the past twenty winters. There was no one to replace him. I wiped away more blood with the cold water as it finally shocked the older man into at least a little consciousness.

  “Mmmmm,” Micco mumbled, stirring a bit but not wholly waking.

  Nikkan threw his rag in the water and moved to hover over Micco.

  “Micco?” Nikkan said as he tapped his leader's face. “Waking up finally?”

  Micco opened his eyes just a slit and looked at Nikkan. He groaned as he moved his arm to push Nikkan out of his face. Nikkan moved, though I was more than certain the older man didn’t actually push Nikkan enough to move him.

  “Stop shouting,” Micco grumbled.

  Pushing up, I sat back on my feet rather than kneeling before I reached over and pushed Nikkan back too. I could see the worry in my friend’s eyes. He moved to lean in closer a second time, but I held my hand out to Nikkan. Everything we cleaned showed that Micco was going to be okay.

  “Help me get him inside,” I told my friend, who still stared at Micco with worry all over his face.

  I didn’t blame Nikkan. Micco was the leader of the wolf village because he was the strongest. One thing you never wanted to see was the strongest looking weak like he did now. It would take super strength to defeat Micco, or maybe the wolves that were sick were stronger than ordinary wolves when they were in their lupine form. That was going to be more than a bit of a problem. Infected wolves with no recollection or control of what they were doing were one problem. Sick wolves stronger than the alpha was an even bigger problem. Red should have listened to me. This was a problem the whole kingdom of Elder was going to have to face.

  Nikkan took one side, and I took the other as we helped Micco to stand and then hobble into my home. We set him down at the table, and Nikkan hurried back into the kitchen to get some food for him. Micco sighed as he sat down.

  “Are you okay, or do I need to go get Red?” I asked.

  Micco shook his head as he accepted the glass of water from Nikkan. He took a sip before talking.

  “She’s not here with you, so I take it that means she’s not helping,” Micco deduced, his voice more raspy than usual.

  He was right, but I hated to tell him that. I just nodded as I couldn’t think of any words to explain. Micco nodded back to me, and his encouragement brought my words back.

  “She doesn’t think anything is wrong. She’s planning this festival and thinks it will bring everyone together. She sent me away.” I shrugged. Micco knew her well enough to know there wasn’t anything I could say to change her mind at this point.

  Micco nodded at me. “Don’t blame yourself, boy. This is my own doing. I should have been honest with her on her last visit. I should have told her the truth.”

  I wasn’t sure I’d have done any different if I was in his shoes. I didn’t believe him when he first told me. It would’ve taken time actually to see the problem.

  “I tried,” I began, but Micco held up his hand to stop me from talking.

  “I’ve known Red longer than you’ve been alive. She was my best friend’s girl. She’s strong-willed, and once she sets her mind to something, she’s a little more focused than she should be. This festival isn’t anything new. She’s been wanting to do it for over ten winters now. Since she defeated the curse, she’d had one goal, to bring the wolves and tree people together. I get that she can’t stop now to see what is happening.” Micco took the food Nikkan brought him and began to eat. “Red isn't mean or careless. She’s just too focused on the festival.”

  Micco ate slowly. It was like it hurt him to move any muscle, including his jaw. Piece by piece, bite by bite, he got more in him. Every piece of food seemed to give him the energy he was needing.

  “What happened last night?” I asked. I didn’t want to interrupt his meal, but if the state of him at my doorway was any indication, we needed to work fast to do something to stop the sickness that was spreading in the wolf villages.

  Micco took another bite of bread and washed it down with the water Nikkan refilled for him.

  “Remember Nathan? I was doing as I have been every night for the past two moons, watching over him. He doesn’t have any family left to take care of him, and most of the wolves are now getting too scared to go near the sick wolves at night. They don’t want to catch whatever is going around.”

  Catch? I was going to have to ask more, but I didn’t want to interrupt him.

  “As in all the previous nights, Nathan transformed at soon as he saw the moon. His wolf took off into the night, and I followed in my human form. We suspect that you can only catch the disease wolf to wolf, so I couldn’t chance transforming until we know for sure.”

  I raised an eye at Nikkan. He loved his wolf form, but he might be human a bit more often now if that was the case.

  “Nathan took off into the woods like he had every time. I tracked him for most of the night. He wasn’t making any sense, going one direction and then another. I hadn’t any idea where he was going, but I began to notice he hadn’t caught any food. The woods are getting thin by the village because all the sick wolves can’t help how much they are eating, but it almost seems like the animals know something is wrong and are fleeing from us too. Whatever the case, the wolf Nathan had to find somewhere new to hunt, and that’s when he turned south. I chased him and used a few short cuts to cut him off. He was heading for the tree villages. I have no idea why or how he could tell there was life that way, but he knew.”

  Micco stopped his story to take another big bite of bread. This time, he chewed slower before washing it down.

  “I was able to stop him, but I had to fight him to do so. Wolf against human is never a fair fight. I didn’t have the energy to make it back to the village and knew your house was nearby. I kind of hoped your mother would be here, and I could speak to her, but I understand.”

  Micco took the dried meat from Nikkan, who continued to feed his leader. Wolves could take a lot of injuries and stay alive, but it took food to make them heal quickly. If we wanted to be able to help Micco head back home, then he needed to feed and heal.

  “I’m sorry she’s not here,” I told Micco. And I truly was. If she had seen Micco as beat up as we found him, she probably would have believed me finally.

  “Is it still just the same ones?” Nikkan asked. Micco nodded, and Nikkan relaxed a little bit.

  “Your father sent Nadia and Sander to your uncle’s place. Right now, only two of the three villages are infected, and it’s safe there. Your uncle is going to keep all the children isolated and away from the infected, even going to any of the islands if needed.”

  Nikkan looked more relieved to hear that his little sister and brother were somewhere safe from the sickness.

  “Your uncle is doing well. I think they are better off since their main source of meat is fish, and the sick wolves can’t deplete their food.”

  “Will everyone not sick move up there too then?” I asked. It would be hard to support two villages in one place, but it was better than being with the sick wolves who ate all the food.

  “No. I let the children leave if their parents weren’t infected, but they can’t handle the whole city moving there. They’ll run out of food. And almost a quarter of the children stayed behind since the males are the ones getting sick. There’s no one to work or take care of things, so some refused to leave. I would’ve made them leave, but I did the same as a kid.”

  “Then what do we do?” I needed to help. At least the children were safe, but there were still completely innocent people at the village.

  “We looked for the old cages they used twenty moons ago to c
age up the sick males. We found enough for the sick wolves we have now, but if we have any more, we don’t have a way to contain them. We’ve decided to build a wall around the village.” Micco looked out the window in my small kitchen. He wasn’t proud of the choice, but it was his choice.

  “But that means anyone left will be exposed to the sickness every night. And if the wolves are sick, then they might attack their own family as food.” Nikkan was more than a little worried about his family. I didn’t blame him. This was a sickness without any explanation or way to heal.

  “What choice do we have?” Micco replied to Nikkan.

  Reality set in. There wasn’t a right solution. The wolf villages were sacrificing themselves to save their loved ones but even more, to protect the people of Elder. I doubted the tree people of Elder would understand the sacrifice these people were making.

  “But then they will catch the sickness too.” Nikkan slammed his hand on my small table.

  “Man, what’d that table ever do to you?”

  I pointed to the crack beneath his hand to try to lighten the mood. It wasn’t like Micco was forcing his people to do this. I was more than confident this was the choice of the villagers. Micco wasn’t a tyrant. He was a fair leader.

  “We might,” Micco replied to Nikkan. “But that’s the chance we have to take. We can’t go back to how it was twenty winters ago. We can’t go back to being killers that the whole world feared. We can’t go back to fearing ourselves.”

  He had Nikkan there. The whole of Elder feared the wolves before. They were ruthless killers that would attack and eat anything that had a heartbeat. Many men, women, and children died at the hands of the curse. Even more, they were turned into the beast that forced the tree people to move into the trees. If word got to the people of Elder that the wolves were going bad again, they would never be trusted. All Red was working for would be lost.

  “We need your help,” Micco looked to Nikkan and then to me. “All the wolves able to help are meeting at the village to begin making the wall.”

  “The village is huge. How can you really build a wall to contain it? And what will you do once there’s a wall? How will you eat? How will you live?” Nikkan was full of questions.

  “I had hoped Red would help me with all the details, but we will just have to figure it out. For now, we need to protect the people of Elder from the sick wolves. And we need to do it now. We can’t wait for Red to understand and believe us. We need to work now as quickly as we can to get it done. Without it, it will be back to how it always was. We will be the bad guys of the forest and hunted like the animals we turn into at the rising of the moon. I don’t want that life for anyone, wolf or not. Please help us.”

  I didn’t like the idea of caging up the wolves. I couldn’t imagine Nikkan in a cage, but then again, I couldn’t imagine him not being himself in his wolf form. I looked at the friend leaning against the wall across from me. He didn’t like what he was hearing, but he was logical. Something had to be done, and Micco was presenting a good case.

  “We will help,” Nikkan replied firmly. Micco nodded to him and then to me.

  “Stay here and regain your strength today,” I told Micco. The older man nodded his head.

  “We will head to the village at first light tomorrow,” Nikkan replied, giving me the stare that looked like a challenge.

  We were needed sooner than that, but I knew he was more than a little concerned about my safety. It was going to take a while of feeding Micco to get him back to full strength, and by the time we made it to the village, it wouldn’t give us an entire afternoon to work before we’d have to leave to get far enough away to stay safe. We could wait another day.

  I nodded to Nikkan. I didn’t want to cage my friends, but it had to be done. We had to keep Elder safe.

  1st March

  Nikkan and I left at first light to make our run to the wolf village. Micco had taken most of the day to recover the day before with us constantly feeding him. He’d been hungrier than he looked. All of the non-sick wolves were slowly starving, and that played a role in his recovery taking longer than anyone wanted. I was a bit worried when he was headed back after such a brutal fight, but he looked so much better. We had a short afternoon to catch as much as we could for food to bring with us to the village.

  By the time we approached the wolf village, I could tell everyone was already in full swing on making the fence. I could hear the noise of workers long before we made it close enough to see anything. Nikkan had run most of the way as a wolf and now had to transform back to work.

  “I really don’t know how you wear these things day after day,” Nikkan complained about his pants. That was all he was going to put on. It didn’t matter that it was barely warm enough to go without a winter coat; he was just in a pair of pants with no shirt or shoes.

  “I don’t know how you go naked day after day,” I answered back.

  “Ewe man, you didn’t need to put thoughts of you going naked in my mind,” Nikkan answered as we approached the village. “Fine. We’re even.”

  I laughed. I hadn’t intended that when I said it, but I got how he took it that way.

  People were everywhere as we came closer, but no one paid us any mind. They continued on working. Men, women, and even the children that stayed behind were doing something. Near the edge, Micco talked to a group of men. He turned as he sensed our approach.

  “Good. You made it,” he called to us.

  “Ready to work.” I held my hand up as a gesture of greeting to the wolves with Micco. Most nodded or grunted in return as they spread out in different directions. I handed our small kills to one of them and turned back to Micco.

  “Nikkan, we could use your strength cutting trees,” Micco waved for Nikkan to follow one of the guys as they left. Nikkan nodded and left me standing with the wolf leader.

  Since I wasn’t a wolf, I didn’t exactly have the same super strength of the rest of the people in town, though my strength was stronger than a tree person. I was stronger than average, just nothing compared to a wolf. Cutting the trees down was going to take massive endurance on my part to keep up as they chopped quickly. I might be able to do a few, but I wouldn’t be able to keep pace with the wolves.

  Nikkan always talked about being a wolf as something not to wish on anyone, but it was apparent, he loved being a wolf, and the perk of super strength and fast healing didn’t sound too bad either.

  “I’ll start you on digging the trenches,” Micco said, waving to the group of mostly women that were already digging a long hole that was deeper than a sapling is tall.

  I nodded and turned to leave, but Micco kept talking.

  “Two more succumbed last night to the moon.”

  He was barely talking loud enough for me to hear standing right next to him. The pounding of the trees into the already dug portion of the ditch was loud enough to keep most people from hearing him. Our conversation was almost private.

  “Do you have enough room? Can they be put in the cages?”

  Micco nodded as he looked at the people working as fast and hard as they could. The wolves were tired before this started but somehow found some reserve vigor to do this. There was a sense of urgency but more so a sense of community. It needed to get done, and they all knew that. I might not be one of them, but I wanted to help them badly. I didn’t want any of the wolves to be a target for the rest of Elder to hunt.

  “I just don’t know if we can work fast enough. It took over a new moon cycle for the first two people to break to the call of the moon, but these last two have only been sick for less than six moons. At this rate, more than half of my camp will be sick by the end of the next moon cycle. I don’t know if we’re doing enough.”

  “You can’t look at what might happen. You have to look at what we can do now. And right now, I can work. We are going to make this wall and keep Elder safe. And once Elder is safe, we will convince Red to help us find a cure. The wolves won’t be the enemy, and they will get bet
ter. Every sickness has a cure.”

  Micco looked at the working women and nodded, but not like he agreed. He was more likely resigned to the fact that there was nothing else we could do. For the time being, we needed to fence in the wolves.

  “I’ll dig, and you will see. We’ll have everyone protected in no time.”

  I reached over and patted him on then back. He was taking this hard, and I didn’t blame him. He was responsible for all of the wolves. Not waiting for Micco to respond, I went over to the closest group of people working and picked up a shovel. It was time to get working.

  I didn’t speak to the people around me as I began to dig but, instead, lost myself in my own thoughts.

  This wasn’t fair. The wolves were always the bad guys. No one chose to be a wolf. No one wanted to be sick. Someone had to know how to cure them. Why did they keep being the ones that were getting hurt? I was angry for the wolves and mad for the people of Elder. The curse had lasted many generations, yet it wasn’t a full generation since Red saved everyone. Why couldn’t the wolves have more time being free of being the bad guys? The anger bubbled inside of me. It wasn’t fair, and I didn’t have the slightest idea how to make it fair. I hit the ground hard with my shovel and lifted more dirt out of the way, making my trench longer.

  It was healing to just dig in the dirt. I took an end of the trench and could go at my own pace, no need to wait for someone beside me. I could dig as fast as I wanted. I might not have been a wolf, but that didn’t mean I was slow by any means. And my anger fueled me to work harder.

  The rhythm of digging took over. Push down into the ground. Give a little tug. Push the dirt up and toss it to the side. Repeat and keep going. Make the trench longer. Protect the wolves by making the wall. Mind-numbing, but so needed.

  I wasn’t alive when the curse was in effect all those winters ago, but there were a lot of people that were. Both wolves and tree people of Elder spoke of that time often to the kids as we grew up. They wanted us to know what it was like as if we would never have to face a hardship in our lives. Well, they were wrong. Something was going on with the wolves now, and it wasn’t anything anyone was prepared for. Red had supposedly saved us all, including the wolves, but now there was something wrong.