The Unwanted Child

The she-wolf loped through the forest, her belly full of rabbit and her teats heavy and aching as she made her way through the trees. Life was difficult for a wolf with no pack and a litter of cubs. If her mate hadn't been taken by the two-legs, he would have hunted for them both so she could be safe in her den. The rest of the pack would have guarded or helped with the hunt.

A wailing cry caught her attention. It was a strange sound, nothing she had heard before, but it called to her, pulled her towards its source, even though that brought her dangerously close to the two-legs den, close enough that she could smell them when the breeze turned that way.

At the base of an ancient oak, nestled on a bed of fallen leaves, a tiny creature lay, the source of the siren wail.

The she-wolf sniffed the creature with caution, whuffing when she scented an odd mix of fire, blood, and metal. No living thing had a scent like that.

The little thing burbled, opening its eyes to stare at the she-wolf. Red eyes stared, and the wolf knew that this oddling creature was Pack, though it looked like the young of the two-legs – it didn't have the odd fur they had, just a patch of white fuzz on its head, and the red eyes were nothing like any natural thing – and what she needed to do.

The odd cub held still when she lay beside him, then little fists locked into her fur, their stubby claws too short and weak to hurt.

The she-wolf carefully rolled back to her feet, feeling the grip of the strange cub, her belly knotting with the cub's hunger. She would bring it to the den, and it could suckle with her cubs.

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The boy lay flat on the limb of the old oak, the bark rough against his bare skin, and watched the two-legs swarm from their nest. He didn't know what drew him to them, or why he watched them so closely. It was something that he had to do, like wandering all over the land that was in some way part of him, or running with his wolves, who were also part of him.

The two-legs were part of him, too, a part that feared and hated him. He didn't understand that, but whenever one of them saw him it would make a lot of noise and then all the big ones would come boiling out of their shelters and go hunting for him.

He remembered the last time they caught him: the shouts and the hurting and the fire. The fire was worst.

Then lying in the den with wolf-mother, her warm milk soothing and helping him heal.

The noises the two-legs made, those were words. Words were special. They had a word for him, he'd learned: demon. It wasn't right, but it was the only word he knew that got used for him. The big ones who hunted him, those were men. If he'd been a two-leg instead of whatever he was, he'd be a boy.

The others, they were girls and women. They did different things, things like turning pelts into the wraps – no, clothes – they used instead of growing their own fur.

He'd thought maybe that was why he was demon, the clothes, and tried to use sharp flint he'd found in the old grave mound that was his home to scrape off the hide of a deer he'd caught, and turn it into something a bit like their clothes. It wasn't, and he only just got away from them before they burned him again.

They didn't call it burning though. They called it sacrifice. Or sending him home, only his home was here, all around him, the forests and the swamps and the rivers and the coast. Burning him wouldn't change that.

Another new word: they were people. He wasn't a people. He'd tried, learned their words by listening to them, learned how to make clothes, even tried to talk to them. All that happened was they burned him again, and he couldn't do anything to stop them. Something inside him wouldn't let him do anything that would hurt them, and when it got really cold and the white stuff they called snow was everywhere, he knew when they were hungry and hunted for them, leaving his catch near their nests so they wouldn't die.

There were lots of peoples, lots of different nests. This one was closest to his home, so he watched here most. The ones who had the warm hard stuff they called amber, they had more things and did something called trade. They didn't burn him – they tied him up and threw him in the river instead, and they still called him demon.

Right now, with summer at its height and the days long and warm and lazy, he liked to lie and watch in bare skin, a coating of mud keeping the paleness of his skin and hair from stopping him from hiding. When it got colder, he'd use his clothes again, and wrap himself in furs from his catches.

As he often did when his mind wandered, the boy wondered just what he was. He wasn't a people, he'd seen them go from tiny like him to men to old and die. He wasn't a wolf, but all the wolf-mothers would help him and the wolf-hunters would let him ride on their backs when they hunted. He wasn't an eagle, but the descendants of the eagle he'd found with a broken wing and hunted for until she could fly again followed him whenever he was near their aerie, and one of her chicks had become part of him, changing shape from a little yellow chick to a massive black eagle whenever it wanted.

As if recognizing that his thoughts touched on it, the chick peeped softly from his nest in the boy's hair, and the boy reached a hand up to rub against the chick's feathers. As always he marveled at how very soft the feathers were, not stiff or hard at all. Strange how something so soft could fly in the biggest storms.

One of the little peoples fell and set up a wail that brought a flurry of the older woman-peoples running to see what had happened. The boy wasn't sure which one pulled the little one into her arms, because his eyes started stinging.

What would it be like to be a people and have someone care if he hurt or cried? Being peoples might have bad things about it, like having to do what someone bigger and stronger said, but maybe having someone who'd look after him would make up for it?

He didn't know.

Every time the first flowers showed themselves after the cold and the snow, he'd used his flint to scratch a mark in the wall of his home, and he had hands of hands of hands of hands of marks, so many he'd have to drag something in to stand on to make new marks, but he still didn't know what it meant to be a people, or how it felt to be wanted.

Maybe that was why he stayed little. Peoples with their closeness and looking after each other, they went from little to big in a few hands of winters. Then a few more hands of winters later they were tired and had maybe three more hands before they were shrinking and old. He had a feeling that was how things were supposed to work, that you got big and were a full people for a while, then you got old and got to watch while you cubs and fledglings did the work for full peoples, and then you went to the dark place where they thought he belonged, the place where you didn't have a body anymore and you were dead and had to stay with Peckols in the dark and hope his demons didn't eat what was left of you.

That was how he knew he wasn't demon. Demons didn't eat bodies, they ate the people inside. He ate food, like peoples did. So he couldn't be demon, even if he wasn't a people.

As if on cue, his stomach growled, and the boy pulled away from his thoughts. It would be dark soon: he'd best be away from the peoples dens before then so he could eat and sleep without having to worry about running into bears.

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