Dodging Arrows

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Although, as the winter progressed, some things changed between Manueline and Wals, most of what happened seemed to coalesce the relationships they had with each other and the way they felt about themselves. Wals rarely smiled and only occasionally volunteered a remark or initiated a conversation. He was like one of the wolves, quiet, watchful, wary of the people and things around him.

The wolf cub was just the opposite. He was young and full of life and frequently drew Manueline out of herself, walking with her, playing with her. He liked her to hide things, especially her shoes and a scarf she knitted for herself. She would hide something and later in the day say to him, "Cub, my scarf, go find it."

He knew the difference between 'shoe' and 'scarf' and he would scurry off round the house looking for what she had hidden. As time went on, she hid them in more and more difficult places; outside up a tree, on the roof, under the roots in the root store. She never let him bully her into showing him where they were. He would scurry round the house eagerly sniffing and looking and then come and sit and bark at her, his odd wolf, growling, ruff of a bark, demanding to know where it was. She just waved a hand at him telling him to go away and find it for himself.

Once the search went on for three days; she had hidden her scarf up a tree but only told him to find it after snow had fallen covering her tracks. Over the next three days, every now and then, she would say to him, "Cub, my scarf, go find it." It almost drove him to distraction. She happened to be outside returning from the midden heap when she heard him barking and howling a little way up the river. She smiled to herself, knowing he had found the scarf, expecting him to come back and complain because she hid it up a tree where he couldn't reach it. She heard him bounding through the undergrowth and finally saw him running up the path with the scarf in his mouth. Somehow, he had managed to get up the tree and get the scarf down though she couldn't imagine how. 'Wolves don't climb trees; or at least no wolf that I ever came across.'

Next time she hid the scarf up another tree, even further out of reach convincing herself that he couldn't possibly jump high enough to reach it. Again, she waited until after snow had fallen before she told him to go find it. He was wise to her now and after eliminating the usual places round and about the house, he started casting round widely, looking for some chance scent that would give him a clue to where she had hidden the scarf. It only took him a short time and again she heard him barking. Shortly afterwards he came bounding through the door, the scarf in his mouth, dropping it at her feet and looking at her as if to say, 'Come on, just try and hide it somewhere I can't find it.'

Some of the games with the wolf became serious. Manueline and Wals both practiced with the bows Wals had taken from the party that came across the river; both of them becoming quick and accurate. The cub would sit and watch but had no idea what they arrows were for or what they could do and several times nearly got in the way of a flight. Manueline wouldn't tie him up but thought it important he should learn; so she baffled a couple of arrows and every time he wandered into the line of fire, she used one of the baffled arrows and shot at him, hitting him the rump or the shoulder. The blow from the arrow was not enough to do him any serious damage but hard enough to hurt. The first couple of times she did it he yelped and jumped out the way; then he turned the arrows into a game as well, deliberately putting himself in the line of fire and challenging her to hit him. He grew amazingly adept at tracking what she was aiming at and where the arrow would go.

The cub grew at an astonishing rate and Manueline came to believe he must have been born in late summer not in the autumn at all. By the end of the winter, he weighed more than Manueline. He was enormous and evidently not about to get any smaller. Wals still would not take him out with the pack, he was too young and the others would fight him. With no adults to protect him, it was likely the pack would kill him.

In the late winter, Wals and Manueline built a shelter near to where they kept the boat and started moving things out of the valley and over the hill, preparing for the journey down river. Manueline did not think they could leave until after the spring thaw. It would come suddenly, once the weather turned, and the river would go wild for a few days, ice and huge amounts of water pouring through it as the snow started to melt and the ice broke up. At least for a time, they would be safe from anything the villagers might do but the river would quickly settle after the initial thaw and she felt they would have to take some risks, traveling before the time the villagers might think to come across. Deep down she was sure they were so afraid of the forest that they would not interfere; still Manueline had a surface anxiety she could not let go of.

Thinking about it one day, walking over the path that had originally taken them into the valley, she realized some of what she feared was that the villagers would not drive them out. She and Wals and the wolf would live and die in the valley. It seemed an empty hopeless sort of a life to her but one that could easily draw her in and once drawn in, she would never escape.

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