But Man’s fury and his hunger were as remorseless as the sun. The humans turned their anger on each other, too, at times with such appalling cruelty that they seemed nothing more than wild beasts. Everywhere they were fighting with their burning air, but not simply to hunt and eat and survive, but to know, as though they would cast a light into all darkness, into night, into the heavens and the future itself.
‘No,’ gasped Larka, ‘no.’
‘Show us, Larka,’ growled Morgra’s voice, ‘you have seen the past. Now don’t you want to know what will come?’
Larka looked up through the child’s eyes at the moon and stars and suddenly she knew that the stories of the moon had been a lie. That the stories of Tor and Fenris and Wolfbane had been a lie. And with that knowledge came a great surge of freedom.
Larka wanted to journey for ever, out into the night, like a bird, like Skart, travelling on and on, past the moon and the sun. Like the clear, straight paw prints of the hunting wolf. An arrow of mind, cast by the sprung bow of human thought into infinity. Beyond light and dark, beyond love and hate, into for ever.
Larka remembered the spider again, and she knew that just as she could see out into the stars, she could look with the power of this mind down, too, at the smallest of living creatures. That she could look further still. That she could look into water and see the tiniest of fish. That she could see, even on their backs, the microbes and bacteria that fed on the great carcass of being. That, even as she looked at these tiny wriggling forms, she could see beyond, into the very cells and atoms that made up their shapes.
The tiny atoms were like the stars too, like seeing planets revolving around the sun. She wanted to reach in, to reach in with her paws, with her hands, and hold those miniature worlds in her palms, to control the very force that bound life into shape and meaning.
‘This is true freedom,’ she cried.
Then Larka’s mind flamed. It flamed with power and strength and cunning, and she knew that Man would not only look, but one day try to control the energy that dwelt in all things and the power that gave strength to the Sight itself.
Suddenly the animals were looking on a strange column of metal that glinted in a desert. It rose as high as a pine and its centre was hollow. At its top hung a metal sphere as round as the sun and Larka alone knew what it was. It had been made by the cunning and ingenuity of Man as a force for war. Like Man’s swords or his arrows, his hands had forged this terrible thing out of the strength and cunning of his mind. As the animals looked on the strange sphere fell.
‘The Sight,’ trembled Larka, as it plunged towards the earth, ‘the Sight is made flesh.’
As the sphere struck, the earth flashed before them; a burst of light brighter than the sun, and the air itself was fire. A tidal wave of liquid heat swept away everything around it. The humans and the Lera and even the stones within its reach turned to flame as they watched, consumed by the very energy that Larka had seen locked inside the nucleus of the earth, the energy that she had felt through the power of the Sight. About the devastation hung an aura, but not the vivid colours of fear or hunger, hate or love, Larka had seen about the Lera. A sickly glow.
Still the vision went on and the animals realized that Man had not yet destroyed himself with this power. As the humans fought to survive and their minds brought them success, their dens spread everywhere and around them their factories rose. The world was lit with light that seemed to have been drawn from the very thunderbolts, and peace seemed to have come upon the humans, but in that peace a terrible realization began to dawn on the watching Lera. The world itself was suffering. About them they saw the earth and it had grown black and tired. Then they saw forests consumed by machines, and the seas grew dark and polluted. Smoke and fire were being pumped into the skies.
‘The elements,’ whispered Larka, ‘what are they doing?
Tsarr was right. The humans are losing contact with what they are. They are forgetting their instincts.’
Even the air had changed, and above their vision the sky seemed thinner and the sun’s heat had a new power. A power that was pitiless. Then suddenly the animals were looking on great mountains of ice. The walls of blue cold rose before them, pure, magnificent beautiful. But even as they looked, great cliffs of ice crashed from their rocky peaks and thundered into the sea. The seas began to rise as the ice caps melted and the air grew thinner and thinner. Terrible winds began to blow and then, when the seas had swamped the land, and the flowers and the trees and the animals were gone, when everything the Larka loved was gone, even man, a terrible cold settled on the earth. Again the ice came, but this time it was everywhere.
‘The fifth element,’ gasped Larka. ‘Man will try to control the elements, until the elements control him. This is truly Wolfbane’s winter.’
Again Larka heard that voice. Morgra.
‘And now you have seen, you are truly free, Larka. Free to do as you will. For what could you be loyal to after that? What could you love or be faithful to? What but destruction and power?’
Even as she said it Larka felt Morgra’s mind and she knew that she could control her, that she could control them all. That, through the child, the Man Varg could master all the Lera with the Sight and turn them to her service. But the knowledge brought nothing but terror. Larka knew the secret of Man’s freedom and so his power – but what they had seen was leading to the death of nature itself.
‘If this is their freedom, I do not want it,’ she cried pitifully. ‘I am a wolf, nothing more.’
‘Do not want it?’ Morgra’s thoughts growled. ‘It is too late. You have touched the Lera. The trap has been sprung. You are the greatest Putnar the world has ever known.’
‘Man,’ whispered Larka bitterly. ‘If I don’t stop them, they will destroy everything.’
‘And because there is only death at the end of the journey,’ cried Morgra triumphantly, ‘not just the death of each of us, but the death of everything there is, take the power, Larka. Take revenge on the Lera. Take revenge for the anguish of life as Man has always done, because it is he who hates the very thing he comes from, and the thing he is going to.’
‘No.’
Morgra was laughing now. Her laughter seemed to shake the mountain.
‘But you have shown us their past, Larka, our past, and the future too. What is there left?’
Suddenly, Larka felt a great surge of hope as she remembered what she had learnt in the Red Meadow.
‘No, this may never come about. For I have visited the Searchers, and that may change the future – this may change the future. There must be hope.’
Larka seemed to be pushing Morgra’s mind away.
‘Then lead us against them,’ hissed Morgra suddenly, ‘lead the Lera against the humans and wipe them from the face of the earth.’
Larka was paralysed, but for a moment she was tempted by Morgra’s great thought. But she remembered her journey with little Bran and the secret, too, that they had learnt together. Then she saw a wall of ice before her again and in its grip, tiny specks of algae as she had seen in the frozen river.
‘The still element,’ she whispered, ‘that holds all in potential.’
Larka lifted her head.
‘No, Morgra,’ she cried. ‘For life is sacred and Man and Lera need each other to survive. Man may come from the Lera, but he has an understanding that the Lera in their present shapes can only glimpse. He can learn and he can truly remember. Perhaps he will find the answer that we all seek.’
The white she-wolf closed her eyes. She emptied her mind and suddenly she was on the bridge again as Morgra, on the other side, turned towards the child.
‘Down, Morgra,’ snarled Larka furiously. ‘Down.’ Morgra knew she was beaten, and above them the great moon was passing out of its zenith. She grew suddenly old and weak, as though she was shrivelling up. The old She-Varg slumped on to her paws in front of the statue and Huttser and Palla could move again.
‘Hurry,’ cried Larka. ‘Mothe
r, Father. Bring the child to me.’
As Huttser turned to the statue, Slavka stood above the child and their eyes locked.
‘Have you not done enough?’ whispered Huttser.
Slavka was held by Huttser’s anger. He fancied he saw something else in her, too, the flickerings of shame. Huttser crouched down by the creature. Filled with terror, the little human was desperate to reach out for any comfort and it recognized Huttser’s scent. It began to scramble on to Huttser’s back.
‘Come,’ said Larka calmly, her voice echoing across the drop below her, ‘bring it across the void. I will protect you.’ Silently Palla and Huttser threaded across the bridge, as the child rode on Huttser’s back among the Searchers and was carried to safety over the abyss.
‘Slavka,’ called Larka, as her parents brushed against her flanks, ‘Slavka. Join us, sister.’
As they faced each other again, like twins, the rebel leader growled guiltily and began to back away. In front of the statue, Morgra lifted her head.
‘So, Larka. What will you do with your power?’ Larka’s ears came forward.
‘Nothing, Morgra.’
‘Surely you will kill me.’
‘No, Morgra, I will not kill you.’
‘But you are the victor,’ growled Morgra, filled with anger and confusion, ‘it is the law. Take your spoils.’
‘Have you learnt nothing at all? Have you not learnt that we must forgive and show compassion. I do not want the power of Man, Morgra. I am just a wolf.’
‘But think of the power to enslave all.’
‘The secret of the ancient verse,’ growled Larka. ‘You thought it would enslave the Lera. But it is a question, Morgra, not an answer. ‘‘In the mind of the Man Varg, then who shall be free?’’ ’
Morgra snarled.
‘So I shall give you that answer. Those who chose freedom, Morgra, shall be free, just as those with the Sight must choose their own way. As I choose it now. This secret shall not enslave us at all, it shall aid us all, Man and Lera alike. Man’s mind is on a journey towards freedom, if he doesn’t destroy himself first. And this Vision. If we learn from it, so can they. The wolves are free of the Man Varg, as are all the Lera. It is over.’
Larka turned her head to the Searchers.
‘Be gone,’ she cried in a booming voice, ‘for the past is done with and we must look to a true future now. Or to a present, as wolves. The Pathways of Death are sealed.’
That army of silver spectres dipped their heads in submission and their forms began to fade, grow transparent, vanish into night.
‘You think you can turn darkness to light,’ cried Morgra suddenly, for as Larka had turned, Morgra found she could move again. ‘That you can change the law of life, the law of power and survival? But you have not won, Larka. You will never win. There will always be one such as I to fight you, to hate you, as long as the humans build their dens. For ever.’
Morgra sprang and crossed the ground in an instant. She was on the bridge, too. Morgra and Larka were facing each other above the chasm.
‘You,’ snarled Morgra bitterly, ‘you.’
Larka knew now that with a single thought she could cast Morgra into the void. But she did not use her strength. She could not. Not after the vision that brought such terrible power. She longed to run free with Kar and have cubs of her own. But if she must fight, she must fight as a wolf now.
‘You think you are evil and darkness, Morgra,’ whispered Larka scornfully, ‘but even you are not evil. Only what you do is evil, because it thinks to raise darkness above light and cripples and maims. But the truest power of the Sight, Morgra, is to heal.’
Morgra was straining towards her.
‘What they did to me,’ she snarled. ‘Your mother’s pack.’
‘They were mistaken, and they were wrong. But because of it you would have the world live for ever in hate and guilt and darkness. Like some terrible story we can never escape.’
‘They betrayed me. The wolf is the Betrayer.’
‘Don’t you know yet who the Betrayer really is?’ growled Larka. ‘Hate is the Betrayer, Morgra, for it feeds on itself. Hate and its mother, fear.’
But Morgra’s eyes were burning and then Larka knew that it must be, as surely as the wolf must hunt and fight and live. As surely as Man must fight. Morgra’s jaws opened and, as she sprang, Larka rose to meet her. High over the abyss, on the arched bridge, they were fighting, just as Larka had foreseen in the water. Round they spun, and Larka was forcing Morgra back towards the rebels and her parents.
Kar shuddered next to Fell, and Huttser and Palla were on either side, the child on the ground between them. Kar’s heart was racing, for as the wolves struggled they came closer and closer to the edge.
Then they felt it. It came deep from the earth itself, as though the whole world were shaking with anger. It was more furious than before. The ground they were standing on was moving. Around them the statues and the stone trees began to sway and totter and fall and, in a great flurry of wings, the terrified birds took to the air. The whole mountain was moving, quaking, rocking the ancient city, as ancient as that tree in the forest, to its crumbling foundations. And then the stones beneath the bridge began to dislodge, just as Larka had seen it before in the water. First one, then two, tumbling into the gulf.
‘Larka,’ cried Kar furiously.
‘Help her,’ gasped Palla.
Morgra slipped backwards and nearly fell and, as Larka saw those stones begin to go beneath them, an anger woke in the she-wolf that seemed to answer the mountain.
‘But if we are really free,’ cried her thoughts, ‘if we can change the future, why must I make this sacrifice? Don’t I, too, have a choice after all? Don’t I have the right to live and be happy? Why should I be trapped within a legend?’
Larka looked up. Beyond Morgra she suddenly saw a narrow ledge on the side of the mountain.
‘No,’ whispered her thoughts bitterly, ‘because to really love one another, first the wolves must see. They must understand suffering. That’s why the stories say Tor sent Sita down to the world. Because of love.’
Yet still something stirred in Larka. Freedom. The freedom of Wolfbane as he was hurled from the heavens for his rebellion, the freedom of Man, or of living animals, the freedom of the untamed wolf.
‘A story,’ she cried, ‘is it just a story?’
The little family stood paralysed as they watched. It went suddenly, the whole bridge. And as it went Larka sprang.
As her paws reached out for the ledge and they all looked on, it was as though time itself had frozen. As a minute particle seen through the slits of a screen can seem to be going in two directions at the same time, Larka might have fallen or reached the ledge.
It was as though her future was nothing but the choice of those who watched, their choice and so, their responsibility. As though they had been given the free will to reach back into the ancient past and to sacrifice Sita herself once more, or to stop that terrible act before it ever happened and escape a legend. So the wolves would not need to resurrect Sita in their stories and pretend there is no death and no suffering. Because love takes responsibility and in all experience, too, there is a pact between the seer and the seen, the listener and the storyteller, the judge and the judged.
But between Larka and the ledge, between a story and freedom, between the past and the present, stepped reality. What really happens. And, as the family watched, horror woke in their minds. A horror nearly as terrible as that blast of energy. Larka missed and down they both fell, Larka and Morgra together, spinning towards oblivion. Their bodies broke together on the vicious rocks. Kar felt his heart following Larka into the ravine, and a part of the wolf died with her.
‘Please,’ he cried, ‘the pact.’
Fell’s eyes grew black and angry and bright with pain, and Huttser and Palla’s minds began to howl. The bridge crashed on top of them, the ravine was now an uncrossable gulf, the air a void of empty silence, stirred only b
y the sobbing of a tiny human heart.
There they stood and looked down helplessly. Above them in the giant sky the birds rose like a great soul, released from torment and lifting into the firmament and, as they scattered across the skies, the moon was as full as ever. Its light, as pure and brilliant as eternity, shone down as though reflected by that vision of the little sun in the cloud, shone down with neither pity nor sadness on the wolves.
Beyond the chasm, in the grass where old Tsarr lay dead, a statue was lying at his side. The giant statue of a she-wolf and her human cubs – Romulus and Remus, Fren and Barl, too. It had split apart, broken by the moving earth itself, and the images of the children had shattered. But the she- wolf lay intact in the grass and, across the void, a real child was stirring.
18 - Larka’s Blessing
‘Mine is an unchanging love, Higher than the heights above, Deeper than the depths beneath, Free and faithful, strong as death.’ William Cowper, ‘Lovest Thou Me?’ Olney Hymns
Kar woke suddenly and shivered. From the agony of his dream he saw Skart’s yellow-black eyes gazing into the distance. The eagle ruffled his feathers guiltily now as he saw Fell padding slowly out of the trees. Huttser and Palla lay in the grass too, with the little human between them, below the mountain that concealed Harja. The wolves lifted their heads as they too caught sight of their son. The son that had been brought back from the dead. As the black wolf drew nearer in the sunlight he addressed Skart wearily.
‘What was it all for, Skart?’
‘To warn us,’ answered Skart. ‘And teach us.’
‘To teach us what, Skart? Fear and suffering? Loss? Will that make us better? Doesn’t the Varg suffer enough in the world?’
The black wolf turned and walked slowly towards Kar and his own parents, huddled around the human child. Palla growled softly, but there was an emptiness, too, in her look. It was four suns since they had seen Larka die on the bridge and come down from Harja.