Ice -- Wolv book II

23 - All alone out here

Nahanni held out her hands. "It's been a long time, and time is all I have."

"Well...okay. Um..." I wrung out my hands, not sure where to start. "I guess, after you chased Abrams out of this place, he ended up in Atikaki. His daughter was bitten--"

"I know."

"Right, sorry. Anyways, he wanted to find his daughter, so he sent in a bunch of people to find and subdue us so he could look for her. He killed several wolves, but we were able to stop him. My friend...Mingan, in fact...tore out his throat."

Nahanni frowned. "I don't understand. You're saying that he is dead? Then who killed all of the wolves?"

I shook my head. "He isn't dead, unfortunately. He survived." I looked down at my hands, trying to pick out what was worth telling her and what wasn't important. Oh heck, it's all important, isn't it? And she is Nadie's mother! She probably wants to know every detail!

"You know what? I'm gonna just start from the beginning here."

And so I told her everything, right from when I'd been bitten, up until the point at which my friends and I had abandoned the Atikaki pack. Nahanni reeled, taking it all in. She hadn't known about our hidden ability to shift back and forth, just as she hadn't known that the wolvs had managed to reproduce naturally--twice.

I held up my hands at the end of it. "I don't know why the pack has now fallen silent. When we left it, there were still many people there."

"So where did you go?"

"We went up north. Way, way up north. We've been looking for a new home for many months now."

"And have you found something? I don't understand. If you went up north, than what are you doing back here?"

"We, uh...we found more people up there. People like us. Wolves."

Nahanni smirked. "That's impossible. The Anishinaabe--the Ojibwe--have been in a symbiotic relationship with the wolves for nearly seven hundred years...or has it only been six? The point is, if part of the pack here had migrated north, we probably would have known about it by now."

"They aren't from this pack. They're not like us, either." I studied her face, yet the look of surprise told me she had no idea what I was talking about.

"How is that possible? For as long as anyone's known, we've been the only ones! Our pack has been the only one ever to exist!"

I laughed bitterly. "That's not what they said. They said that our--my kind had fought with theirs hundreds of years ago and lost. And I do have to admit, we did look different from their wolves. Can't really deny that."

"Oh, my... ma'iingan!" Nahanni breathed.

"What's that?"

"There were legends...tell me, Humfrey. You seem to understand the anishinaabe words that I've spoken thus far. Do you know what our word is for wolf?"

"Uh...ma'iingan? You just said it, I think."

"That's right. Now, do you know the Cree word for wolf?"

"Mahikan."

"Ma'iingan and mahikan. Right again!"

"Where are you going with this?"

She shifted around on her chair. "Mothers used to tell their children stories--fables, actually--about two wolves, fighting for many days; it was Ma'iingan, and his brother, Mahikan, quarrelling over food. Ma'iingan fell and was injured; he ran away into the woods and hid, fearing that Mahikan would come and find him once more and be angry." Nahanni shook her head thoughtfully. "Honestly, that story is nothing more than a nursery rhyme. Something we tell our children; we use that story to help them understand why the wolves must always be kept a secret. 'We don't want Mahikan to find Ma'iingan now, do we!'"