Once again the darkness drew back.
This time, however, the process was slower. Everything felt different. He was aware, but felt no need to react; as though nothing mattered very much, and events were only mildly interesting.
He could hear a voice. It was a no-tail voice; therefore he did not know what it was saying. Nevertheless it was a vaguely soothing sound, and he listened to it, observing the rise and fall of inflection and the subtle changes in emphasis and volume.
The sound of very low growling dawned on him, and was not important at first. Part of him thought he should be anxious about it, but anxiety was difficult to achieve; it was a huge effort, and he wasn't sure if he had the energy. Moreover, he was comfortable. Nobody seemed to be attacking him. The no-tail's voice did not bear any indication that the situation was dangerous in any way.
It was Dorcha who was growling…
The stab of recognition broke through his lassitude, though his body still seemed to be incredibly slow and difficult to move.
He opened his eyes. The lids seemed heavy. He had to blink several times before he achieved focus.
The no-tail – Fearful, that was it – was seated comfortably at his work-place a couple of bodylengths away. He was looking at a slim rectangular object held in his paws, and talking to it.
This was so senseless a proceeding that Alpha blinked and stared harder. It was obvious enough why the no-tails would talk to one another; he had already deduced that they shared enormous amounts of information for no obvious reason. But why would any no-tail talk to something that could not reply?
Still the soothing voice went on. Almost against his will, he began to find the sound pleasant.
Suddenly a word popped into his mind. He did not know what it meant, but he knew that this was what the no-tail was doing.
Reading.
No-tails did not have to talk when they did this. They could do it silently, the way pack members signalled to one another. Therefore Fearful was talking for a purpose.
Alpha growled too. The sound was weak and breathless at first, but gained in volume.
Next moment he realised that something had been done to the lower half his injured right foreleg. It was twice its normal size, and white.
When he had been put into the darkness the day Fearful arrived, he had woken again later with some kind of hard material clamped around the area that had been damaged. The pain inside his foreleg was bad, but it was not unbearable, and a rim of white not-hide between the thing and the skin revealed why there was no sense of chafing. He had tried for a while to worry it off, but given up in defeat, though it was added as yet another of the hurts for which the no-tails would pay when he got the chance.
This, however, was far larger. It was fully as long as his entire lower foreleg had been, and there was no feeling in it: none at all.
Panic fear seized him. He tried to bite it, but his teeth could get no purchase. He attacked it with his other paw, but that had no better results.
After a few minutes of tearing away at it in a frenzy, he calmed down enough to recognise that the white was not his foreleg at all, but something that had been put around it while he was inside the darkness. At the far end of it his toes were visible, and his dew-claw protruded from the near side. Apprehensively he willed them to move, and they all moved. Not far, and not without pain, but they were in his control. And the pain, though it was a bright sun somewhere in the middle of the white, was no longer the searing, all-encompassing thing that it had been originally when he made an incautious movement.
He glanced warily at the no-tail. Fearful was still 'reading', but he had the feeling that he was quite well aware of what was going on. The fact that he had chosen not to react to it was even more worrying. Reactions could be dealt with. Deliberate avoidance of reaction concealed far too much, implied that something was being withheld that might emerge later on, without warning.
All the no-tails he had encountered so far had been simple. He might not understand their ultimate aims – certainly not with regard to himself and Dorcha – but their immediate ones had been obvious enough. Most of these centred on making sure none of them were savaged, and their methods of ensuring this were crude but effective. They would pick up the device and point it, and there would be a heart-stopping shock and then everything would stop working. During that time, the no-tails could do what they wanted to him without any fear of reprisal. Eventually it would wear off; sometimes after only a few minutes, others after a considerably longer period. He had learned to estimate how long it was expected to be by the fact that if they fitted what he thought of as 'the clear' over his eyes it would be some time before the tingling in his paws heralded the return of movement. The clear somehow kept his eyes damp. When they took it off afterwards, usually as he found himself able to blink again, moisture would run down his face where it had been.
He hated the helplessness. He hated the no-tails. He hated his surroundings. He longed to be back with his pack. Hatred and fear and bewilderment and anguish fought in his breast until it was a physical pain that felt almost great enough to kill him.
He hated the no-tails worst of all. They had come and taken him away from his pack, from his world. They had imprisoned him and hurt him and stripped him of his dignity. They stunned him to protect themselves and touched him without his consent. They pushed needles into him and sucked red out of him, or pushed them in and made pain spread through him.
Worse, they did the same to Dorcha. They did not heed his raving threats as he watched them doing things to her. Under Fearful's supervision, the junior members of his pack handled her carefully and gently, but through the clear on her face her green eyes were always fixed and terrified.
At least none of the males had mated her.
Yet.
There was a buzz at the door, and Fearful gave permission for those outside to enter. Alpha watched malignantly as a number of strangers came in, carrying pieces of metal at whose function he could not guess.
Under Fearful's direction, the strangers began making what was soon recognisable as another pair of cages. These, however, were more complicated. They were considerably larger, and each of them had a den. As soon as he recognised this, Alpha was conscious of a feeling of longing. One of the worst things about his imprisonment was the sense of constant exposure, of having no privacy or refuge from the no-tails' scrutiny.
But strangest of all, the cages were tall. He was quite used to being on all fours, for that was the way he had used to interact with the other wolves, especially the pups. He felt less different among his pack when he was closest to their height, and after a while he had hardly noticed that almost all of them were taller at the shoulder than he. Only when moving any distance had he reverted to walking upright, and even then it had come with a cost of an uneasy flicker of unwanted memory.
Even the entrance to each den was tall, high enough to admit a no-tail. Alpha could imagine no reason for this, but it did not lessen the attractiveness of the thought of having somewhere to hide. Maybe some other unfortunates had been captured and were being brought to be tortured for the no-tails' inexplicable purposes. They could hardly be described as 'lucky' in such circumstances, but their living quarters were certainly enviable.
The work went on periodically for the rest of the day. Fearful took a close interest in it, and gave what were plainly commands when something displeased him; it was once again obvious that he held a position of authority.
Alpha and Dorcha retreated to the back of their cages and watched, pressed together as close as they could get for mutual support and comfort. He found himself licking the white repeatedly, even though it tasted bad, and she whined softly in sympathy, staring at it with almost equal anxiety and puzzlement.
Food was brought for the no-tails, but nothing for them. Their water bowls were not changed, but they were not thirsty anyway, and they would drink stale water if they needed to. There was still a little left in each.
After everyone was gone, and the prison was quiet again, they rose on their hind-legs and peered at the new cages, able now to show curiosity openly. There were glass circles like watching eyes in every corner, and red lights winked beneath them at every movement, as they always did; Alpha hated those too - though he couldn't have said why - and bared his teeth at them.
It was late the next day before work on the new cages started again, but at last it was finished. The others went away again, and nobody was left but Fearful. He pressed a button on the desk and spoke to it. A voice answered.
Then there was a little pause. He sat at his desk looking at the object from which he had been 'reading' the day before. As he turned it to set it down, it was visible that there was now a picture on it, of a no-tail with long yellow hair.
He walked to the new cages and went into one of them. He entered the den. Then he came out, went into the other and inspected that as well. Then he came out of that too, leaving the doors of both wide open.
He went back to his desk and sat down. The direction of his glance suggested he was looking at the picture again. Next, his hand went to a pair of buttons at the front right hand side of the area where he usually worked. A clicking sound revealed that they had been activated ready for use.
Both Alpha and Dorcha tensed. Those buttons were associated with the device; they were only activated when the prisoners were to be taken out of their cages for the next maltreatment. Next moment he would pick up the device, aim it, and one or both of them would fall. Only when that had happened would the buttons themselves be pressed, and the cage door (or doors) slide upwards.
Sure enough, he reached for the device. But although he placed it on the desk in a position from where it could be snatched up in an instant, he did not lift or level it.
Instead, he simply pressed the buttons. In response, the doors of their respective cages slid silently upward, and stayed up.
They were free.
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