Sorry about the late upload, to those who were waiting. I meant to post this chapter May 5th, and technically I did, but it looks like somehow it didn't post like it was supposed to. So without further delay, here is the latest (and second-to-last) chapter of White Legend. Brace yourselves, folks, because here we go.

"They'd just begun to go with me, when a face I saw with fear

Came towards me with the news I knew I didn't want to hear.

And although I tried to steel myself, I trembled when he said,

'Why bother the Teacher anymore? The little girl is dead.'"

Don Francisco, Gotta Tell Somebody

Aniu

I made no sound as I followed the dogs, save for the pounding of my heart. I burned with the desire to race ahead and speak with my husband. It had to be Kodan; my mind would accept nothing less. I had seen him. I knew him. Yet I held back, pacing myself, trusting the gathering dusk, the clouds, and my own white fur to hide me from sight. The musher would be armed. I had to wait.

I had no need to follow them long. The musher, seeing it would be a dark night, called his team to a halt before long, untethered them, and fastened them to trees. I could hear him muttering as he fed them, cursing the fact that it was just far enough from Nome to make traveling that night too slow and dangerous, and that if only the moon would show itself they could have pressed on instead of spending another night in the cold.

I could hardly believe the chances, and I rejoiced that the clouds had hidden the moon. This one night, Kodan would be in reach! As soon as all were asleep, I would slip to him and find some way to set him free. We would steal away together. He would meet his children at last. We… we would be a family again.

It felt like forever before the musher entered his tent, and the dogs crawled into dens of snow. I waited and waited, knowing that to misuse a chance like this and throw it to waste would kill me, even more surely than anything the musher or the other dogs might do. At last, when I could stand it no longer, I crept to the place where my love lay.

"Kodan," I whispered, slipping my head into his burrow.

"Huh?" came a voice within. It sounded strange, and my hopes wavered for a moment.

No, I told myself. It's only drowsiness changing his voice. "Kodan, it's me. Aniu!"

"Wha? Who?" He shifted and moved toward the exit, and even before he emerged my heart plummeted with the truth: it was not Kodan. The fur was like his, and most of the shape, but the eyes and nose, and worst of all not knowing me; it wasn't him. My hopes and wishes – my own longing – had deceived me!

"Wait a second," he said, blinking. "You're not on my team. Who-?"

"Please help me!" I whispered desperately. Despair had given way to fear. If he realized what I was and decided I was dangerous, he might rouse the others, and then… Oh, the children! How could I have been so careless, to leave them behind while I chased…!

I drove the fear from my mind. If I wanted to see my cubs again, I had to think. "Please," I repeated. "I've lost my husband. Have you seen him?"

I might have spoken too loudly, for I could hear the others stirring and coming out. I stayed, knowing that if I ran they would know something was wrong. For the moment, the one who looked like Kodan showed no fear, and I think confusion or pity must have clouded his distrust.

"What's going on?" one of them asked.

The one who looked like Kodan answered. "This lady here is looking for her husband, uh..." he turned to me blankly. "What's his name?"

I could hardly believe my good fortune. The dark night was hiding my true nature from them. Perhaps, for all my carelessness, I could still gain something! "His name is Kodan. He's a husky, I lost him in Nome one night when he went out and never returned..." I began to lose control of myself. "...and he looks very much like you."

"Which 'you'?" someone asked.

"The one I first woke. I'm sorry, sir. I didn't ask your name."

He coughed. "Sorry. I'm..." then he trailed off, and in the darkness I could see him examining me closely. "Say, if your husband disappeared in Nome, what are you doing out...?"

In the short space of his question, my blood began to chill. It halted completely, however, when the worst thing that could have happened did.

The clouds parted, and the moon revealed me for my true self.

"WOLF!" The cry rose up from every dog there.

I was petrified. "No, wait!" I cried. "I mean-!"

I might as well have tried to reason with a storm wave crashing in from the sea. With a single enraged movement they rushed upon me, and were stopped from slaying me only by their leads holding them at bay.

"What's going on out there?!" came the musher's voice from the tent.

I found my paws and knew I must run. The dogs might be held, but the musher would have a gun! I tried to flee through a gap in the dogs, but one of them snapped his lead and lunged. I turned and ran another way, but everywhere I was met with snapping teeth, and the other leashes were starting to give way.

When the musher emerged, he was barring my only escape. He stared in shock and tried to shoot me dead as I darted, back and forth, directly toward him. Just as he fired his third failed shot, I ducked under his gun, rammed him in the chest, and knocked him flat.

As I had hoped, the fall of their master halted the dogs for the merest of moments. By the time he rose, doubtless frightened beyond words but probably unhurt, I was gone.

The dogs did not pursue me far, despite the attack on their master. I hoped and prayed desperately that the fact I had done him no serious harm would gain me some apathy. Not mercy, not favor, but simply a decision that I was not worth chasing.


I should have known better. It was only four days – just when it seemed my hopes had substance – that my fate found me at last. I was sitting by the den, watching the cubs tug back and forth on a piece of skin left from a caribou, when I heard a familiar voice in the distance.

"No," I whispered, pleading for my ears to be wrong.

Balto let go of the skin, causing his sister to tumble backward. "What's wrong, Mother?"

Before I could answer, the voice came again, louder and clearer.

"Cousin Snowflake?!" exclaimed Hope.

It was less than a minute before Snowflake came charging into sight. "Aunt Aniu!" she panted, "you have to get out of here!"

"Why? What's wrong?" asked Balto.

My adopted niece was gasping and sobbing, her voice soaked through with grief and accusation. "I told you to stay away from the sled teams! Why didn't you listen?!"

It took little time to learn what had happened. As I had feared, word of my 'attack' had reached Nome, and the spark had ignited the waiting brush left in my wake into an inferno. Worse, the place I had met the team gave the townsfolk a lead on where I had hidden myself.

"You've got to get out of here," Snowflake urged. "They've organized a bunch of hunting parties, and they're coming for you."

There was no time to waste. "Balto, Hope, come here," I ordered. As they came bounding up, I looked at Snowflake. "We'll leave as soon as you have your breath."

"There's no time!" she argued. "You have to take the rough terrain to hide your tracks. You'll have to go right toward them, and you have to do it now!"

I knew she was right, though fear for her and disbelief at the horror I faced held me there. Finally she threw herself against me. "Go!" she screamed. "I'll catch up when I can!"

I grabbed the cubs, who were still too stunned to understand any of it, and ran; ran and ran and ran.

It was only several minutes later, when I heard a howl carry through the woods, that I realized the truth: Snowflake had lied. The howl had certainly been her voice, but if the distance and direction were any sign she had gone to where I reached the trackless ground and then went the opposite way. She was throwing the hunters off the scent... as living bait.

"No!" I cried, putting down the cubs and dashing toward the sound.

"Mother!" cried my children.

For the second time that horrible day, I froze. There is no word for how I felt toward Snowflake at that moment. I hated her and loved her with the same force, wanted to curse her and thank her in a single breath.

She was beyond the reach of all, however, and so with a quick and silent plea for her safety I grabbed my children and kept on running.

How long I ran, I do not know. Wolves can run all day if we must, but fear and grief drained me and slowed me down. Sometimes I thought I heard Snowflake howling; sometimes I was sure in my heart she was dead. Sometimes I thought I had escaped the dogs and their masters, but other times I know I heard them near behind as I ran one way and another through the woods.

I decided to try a desperate trick. I knew the woods around my den for miles, and I had found many secret dens and a path I knew no man or team of dogs could easily follow, I stowed Hope down a deserted rabbit burrow.

"Stay here," I told her, "and don't come out unless... unless I or Counsin Snowflake come for you."

"But Mother-!"

"No!" I insisted. There was still hope. If I could get back to the place where I had turned and follow another path, leaving an obvious double-back, they should pass this route entirely. At the very least, Hope would be safe from the hunters.

I might even live to come back to her. "I love you," I told her, grabbing up her brother and fleeing again.

On and on I ran, making a winding course toward Nome. I would go that way, make them think I was a threat, and then double back into the wilderness. If the men and their pets feared me, I could use that to my advantage; let them take me for a threat, or an animal fleeing in senseless panic. I no longer cared; I had to save my children.

I left Balto in a hollow among some tree roots a few miles from Nome, commanding him the same as I had his sister. I will never forget the parting look on his face; such old eyes for such a young pup. He knew I might never return; that I might go the way of his father or worse. He begged me not to leave him; to bring him even if it was to death.

"I'm sorry," I told him, and ran on.

As darkness fell, I finally slowed to a halt. I had gone out into the wilderness again, and was now in a rocky place ideal for fighting if it came to battle. Yet it seemed I had eluded the dogs.

For minutes – perhaps hours – I waited, hoping and praying that they had just stopped chasing us. Hope mingled with sorrow in my heart as I thought of where I was. My friend gone. My husband who-knew-where. My only solace was that I lived, and the cubs lived. If there was indeed a merciful God somewhere in the heavens, perhaps somehow Kodan would find his way to me, or I to him. If only the hunt would end!

"Oh, they gave up long ago," came a voice I knew I could not be hearing.

I whipped my head around, and there he stood, perched atop a rock so like the one from which my parents held court that the first thought in my mind was that he had actually usurped their rule at last. Yet it couldn't be him. It couldn't-!

"Yes, it's me alright," he said in a calm voice, assured once and for all of his triumph; his superiority. "You did very well, I must say. Even I almost lost your scent a few times – but I confused the trail for you; slowed them down, even killed a few. After all, I didn't want to lose my prey to such... lesser animals."

I puffed out my fur, stalking toward him and snarling. "I saw you die," I reminded him. "Killed by one of those 'lesser animals,' you might remember."

Kava laughed. "Well, your parents never should have sent a dog to do a wolf's job. But speaking of that lapdog, before you attack me it might interest you to know that I know where he is – and he is alive, by the way. I was going to kill him, but when I saw what was in store for him I thought it more amusing to spare his pitiful existence."

"Where is he?!" I raged, my hope in Kodan's survival too strong to be held back at the fact that this creature, alive or dead, would happily lie to mock my pain. I had rounded the back of the rock now, and was climbing up it toward the monster who passed as a wolf.

"Ah, now, no free answers," he answered calmly. "I'll tell you what: we'll fight over it like true wolves – if you still remember how to do that. If you beat me, I'll tell you where your sweet pet is. I might even tell the truth; it would be amusing to see your fate when you go after him. But you won't win. I will, and when I do I'll track down those mongrels you hid away... and I'll finish them nice and slow."

I could contain my rage no longer. I lunged, a wild cry tearing from my throat as I aimed for his throat.

Whether I lived or not, I did not care. My only concern: that however it was that Kava still lived, before the night ended the snow would be red with his life's blood.

For one of us or the other, this would be the final battle.

And here we part ways with Aniu, legend of the wilds and mother of a hero. I'm sorry to end on such a note, but the truth is that as I make it a rule not to deal in ghosts, I hit a bit of a Catch-22 as to her final fate. How did she become the wolf we saw in the first two movies? Is she alive? Dead? My own favorite theory is that she is some sort of halfa like Danny Phantom, but I could think of no workable way to make that happen. So in the end, I thought it best to have her end be as mysterious as her beginning: appearing out of nowhere, and disappearing into much the same.

Yet I will not leave all mysteries unsolved. I do have plans for a sequel to this story, once I can accquire the proper information to do it justice. In the meantime, stay tuned for the epilogue and learn the fruits of Aniu's desperate flight.

As always, thank you for reading and please feel free to respond. Don't forget that fave button if you want to know what comes next!