Julie of the Wolves Read Free Page B

her had apparently meant something to the wolf. His ears shot forward angrily and it seemed all was lost. She wanted to get up and run, but she gathered her courage and pranced closer to him. Swiftly she patted him under the chin.
    The signal went off. It sped through his body and triggered emotions of love. Amaroq’s ears flattened and his tail wagged in friendship. He could not react in any other way to the chin pat, for the roots of this signal lay deep in wolf history. It was inherited from generations and generations of leaders before him. As his eyes softened, the sweet odor of ambrosia arose from the gland on the top of his tail and she was drenched lightly in wolf scent. Miyax was one of the pack.
    A LL THROUGH THE SUNNY NIGHT SHE WAITED FOR Amaroq to come home with food for her and the pups. When at last she saw him on the horizon she got down on all fours and crawled to her lookout. He carried no food.
    “ Ayi ,” she cried. “The pups must be nursing—that’s why there’s no meat.” Slumping back on her heels, she thought about this. Then she thought again.
    “You can’t be nursing,” she said to Kapu, and plunked her hands on her hips. “Silver growls when you suckle, and drives you away.” Kapu twisted his ears at the sound of her voice.
    “Okay,” she called to him. “Where are you getting the food that makes you so fat?” He ignored her, concentrating on Silver and Nails, who were coming slowly home from the hunt.
    Miyax went back to her pot and stuffed on the cold raw moss until her stomach felt full if not satisfied. Then she crawled into her cozy home in the hope that sleep would soothe her hunger.
    She smoothed the silver hairs of her beautiful wedding parka, then carefully took it off and rolled it up. Placing it and her fur pants in a bag made of whale bladder, she tied it securely so that no moisture would dampen her clothes while she slept. This she had learned in childhood, and it was one of the old Eskimo ways that she liked, perhaps the only one. She had never violated it, even in the warm, gas-heated house in Barrow, for damp clothes could mean death in the Arctic.
    When her outer garments were put away she took off the bright red tights her mother-in-law had bought for her at the American store in Barrow. Walking to the pond, she rinsed them and laid them in the sun. The cool air struck her naked body. She shivered and was glad that she had done one thing right—she had worn her winter clothes, not her light summer kuspuck , the woman’s dress.
    The wind gusted; Miyax scrambled through the low door and slid into her sleeping skin. The silken softness of the rabbit fur embraced her and she pulled the hood around her face so that only her nose was exposed. The fur captured her warm breath, held it against her face, and she became her own radiant stove. In this cozy micro-world she forgot her hunger and recalled what she already knew about wolves so that she could put it together with what she had observed.
    Wolves are shy, Kapugen had said, and they desert their dens if discovered by man; yet this pack had not. Did Amaroq not know she was human? Perhaps not; she had never walked in his presence, the two-legged signal of “man” to wild animals. On the other hand he must know. Kapugen had said that with one sniff a wolf knew if you were male or female, adult or child, if you were hunting or not hunting—even if you were happy or sad. She concluded that Amaroq tolerated her because she was young, had no gun, and was sad—a lost child.
    She next considered Nails. Who was he? Amaroq’s dependable friend, that was true, yet she suspected he was even more than that—a spiritual father of the pups. Nails took orders from Amaroq, but stayed close to Silver and the little wolves. He was father when their real father was busy. He was Amaroq’s serious partner. But Jello? Who was he? Where had he come from? Was he a pup of a previous year? Or had he joined the pack just as she had, by