THE SHE-WOLF AND THE RAVEN

Chapter 2: Canada

One day Raven told Deer to go out on a bank and cry. Deer asked Raven, "What should I cry for?" "Well, cry for your ancestors that died a long time ago," Raven said. Deer always mistrusted Raven because she had discovered him to be tricky while they were living in one house. Raven told Deer how much the ancestors would do for her now, if they were here. He made her believe that by crying she would get them back. Finally she believed Raven and decided to sit on a very high bank and cry for her ancestors. Raven had instructed her not to look around if she heard any noise because it might be her ancestors coming. So Raven followed her. On his way up there, he heard Deer crying at the top of her voice so he sneaked up behind Deer and pushed her down the high bank saying, "It is against the law to cry for nothing. If you cry for nothing, you might cry for sorrow," he said as he pushed her down the hill. So he went home.

oooooo

The wide Canadian forests and tundra gave her hundreds of miles of sparsely populated land to hunt and live in. In her wolf form, she worried for nothing except finding her next moose or caribou, and she could finally think, finally breath, finally be her own. She needed this. She'd needed this for a long time.

She could hear the others, like the relentless hum of a mosquito in her ear. Her packmates tried in vain to contact her, call her back, check on her, but she ignored them. As the months slipped past faster than a trout in a stream, she grew more and more desensitized to their pleas. She gave herself to her lupine instincts, let herself be more wolf than woman, and she was finally free to live in the present. She could disentangle herself from her turbulent past, like removing a fishing net from a tree branch, and cease her constant worrying over her unknown future.

She remembered reading about wolves one time, not long after she first phased: "A lone wolf…a disperser…is a wolf that is searching, and what it seeks is another wolf. Everything in a wolf's nature tells it to belong to something greater than itself: a pack. Like us, wolves form friendships and maintain lifelong bonds. They succeed by cooperating, and they struggle when they're alone. Like us, wolves need one another."

That description had haunted her since the day she read it. She felt the isolation like an old ache in her bones, like a chronic illness in her heart. She could ignore it better than the challenges of living with the pack as a perpetual outsider, a thorn that pierced both herself and those around her. She was as equally alone with the pack or with other humans as she was in the Canadian wilderness in the form of a wolf. It felt like a cruel irony – to be ostracized by the very nature that made her long for community.

She'd tried. She really had. For seven years, she'd faithfully served as Beta in Jacob's pack. The freedom and purpose she gained, apart from Sam and with her own small pack, had been as much of an improvement in her life as her decision to go to college and pursue her own identity outside of "wolf girl." Still, she knew it would need to change, as much as she knew that she would need to change.

It was late in the summer when Jacob made his decision. During a weekend salmon bake on First Beach, when both packs were together to feast and celebrate, Jacob stood. He held a Sprite in his hand and when all voices stilled around the bonfire and all eyes fell on him, he cleared his throat nervously.

"Well, it's been decided," he said and his dark eyes met those of his pack first before falling onto Sam. "The Cullens are relocating to British Colombia next month. It's, uh, close enough to Washington that I can still come back regularly, but we can still get a fresh start there. Now that Renesmee is all grown up, they want her to get the chance to try at high school and then college before we, uh, you know, start our new life together. This will be the best for all of us, I think. Seth, Leah, Quil, Embry - you are all welcome to come with, if you want, or to rejoin Sam's pack and stay here. Whatever you want."

Leah scoffed and rolled her eyes. She'd known this was coming for some time. Jacob hadn't done as good a job at hiding his internal debate as he thought he'd done. She'd had her own time to mull over her future and she knew what she needed to do.

To Leah, enduring the outcome of either decision repulsed her on an intrinsic level. She'd spent seven years putting up with all this and she was done. She needed a break or she'd implode…or explode…or both at the same time…and as much as they'd protest, she didn't think her packmates (or former packmates) would regret their own bit of space from her murky, conflicted inner world.

The waves rolled in to the beach where they sat together and finished off the remnants of their salmon and clams. Leah stared off into the twilight haze where she could just make out the rocky, pine-lined shape of A-ka-lat Island. It rose like a jagged apparition from the sea, as much a part of the Quileute blood and lore as the sea itself. She felt, as she always did when she stared at that silhouette, that she was surrounded by ghosts, haunted by the long dead shadows of those who walked these lands before her. While generations of their ancient leaders were buried in its island fortress, they still lived on and filled these lands with their memories. She could not escape the fish hooks of that past that dug beneath her skin and kept her rooted to the land below her feet.

The past haunted the land itself. The lingering syllables of a language only a few of the very old and very young still spoke covered this land with its etymological apparitions and hints of the people they once were. Many of their names were stolen and replaced with those foreign, as the names of the Quileute themselves had been, and their very identities colonized by those who descended on their lands to steal their fish, their whales, and their towering cedars. Even their language was bashed out of the tongues of their babes as the past generations were forced into mission schools for their "own good."

In the aftermath of the "kill the Indian to save the man" and "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" era, their people buried more than their ancestors in those sacred cemeteries and they now struggled to reinvigorate their collective heart with some semblance of life. They remained a people on life support, even as the sea's ever-rising waters crept closer in onto their lands and robbed them of what precious little remained of their 8,000 year history on these shores.

The lingering effects of old treaties still trapped the Quileute on their postage stamp of land, emasculating the once proud warriors of land and sea, and robbing them of their vast riches of earth, sea, and spirit. The ashes of their sacred long houses and ancient carved regalia still burned in their memories, after yet another thief, in an attempt to steal their land, stole their history instead.

It was during the midst of their "dark times," as they struggled to adapt to their ever-shrinking borders that they were met by a new threat. Their wolf warriors and protectors encountered the golden-eyed Cold Ones who also insisted they form a treaty.

During the days long sunk into the ocean, when their canoes were the wonder of all the peoples, back when the rich waters from Alaska to California were their highway and their freedom and their livelihoods, they were the masters of this land and accountable to no other. While the Quileute had nearly always been unique, both linguistically and as a people, they still were respected warriors by even those they warred with. Peoples came from miles around to war and to feast, to share potlatch and to partake in the bounty of the land, those days the land was theirs. As long as the spears of their warriors stayed sharp and the eyes of their watchers stayed vigilant, they could travel as they pleased.

The long, cold winters saw them huddle in the safety of their longhouses, warming themselves over their fires as they shared the tales of their people, celebrated their festivals, and made their preparations for the coming thaw. The warm months gave them freedom to disperse across the lands to glean what they could of its fruitful bounty. There were no limits, no boundaries, no fence posts, and no lopsided treaties to rob them of their freedom and force them within a geographic cage.

But the freedom of those days had burned alongside their sacred longhouses.

The freedom to keep their lives and land was a hard-fought Quileute victory. Instead of being forced onto Quinault land, into a land and a people who did not know Quileute songs, they won their precious (even if unsustainable) strip of Pacific coast. They did not take their small victories for granted.

How different was the treaty with the Cullens from any other with the Ho-kwat? The Cold Ones could go anywhere, except the one mile square territory belonging to the few hundred Quileute that remained there, and the Cold Ones could live as they pleased. It was the wolves who must stay trapped and have their authority and their territory limited. It was the wolves who received no benefits from the treaty, save for the begrudging permission to keep breathing.

It was freedom that Leah sought now, but a freedom to move forward and not forever grieve what was buried in the past. The presence of the Cold Ones, intentional or not, sparked a chain of events that engulfed her old life in a forest fire until nearly all that remained was ash. Her love, her father, her sense of self, her place in the world, and her dreams for her future all burned and she was left stare out into the sacred spaces where she buried them all, haunted by their memory, and wishing she knew how to rebuild.

Perhaps it was possible to maintain both a past and a future, but with the weight of what was lost still burning holes in their collective and individual hearts, she did not know how.

Sometimes, during the late night patrols or bonfires, they'd talk about it and wonder the way forward for their people, their young ones. As yet another wave of Cold Ones, even those with golden eyes, forced the new generation into a self-protective role and territorial prison, she could only think of what was lost and the high cost of that treaty.

Jacob didn't think too much about it, but then again, he was young and caught up in the cares of youth. In all honesty, he had spent so long pining over one girl or another that he hadn't taken much time to really reflect on the larger responsibilities and deeper questions of life and identity. She understood. After her father died, she understood. With the loss of a mother and the distance of his sisters, thoughts of the past sometimes needed to stay buried for awhile. Jacob lived for the present and that was all that concerned him. He didn't trouble himself with the pull between the past and the future.

She appreciated that about him, even as much as she grumbled about it. Leah considered it her self-appointed duty to remind Jacob he was an idiot. She tried to help him remember his priorities and who he should strive to become. She did it because she cared, even if it didn't always come across that way. Even way back when, before he'd imprinted, she told him again and again to get over Bella, genuinely wishing he'd listen. He didn't, of course, but that didn't mean she didn't feel obligated to try.

It wasn't that Leah had a personal grudge against Bella, but she certainly didn't like her. The thoughtless teenage girl had played with the unbroken heart of a once strong man until she saw him wilt before her like a plucked flower and then she left him in pieces. Sure, she was broken too, but why spread her misery around? Sure, he'd recover, just as well as Leah had 'recovered' from Sam. Right.

She couldn't say it out loud, but she couldn't hide her thoughts when they phased.

Why would she choose you? Even a Cold One, a dead Ho-kwat, is better than you. What can't he give her? What can you? All you are is woven of ghosts of the past that is beyond you and aspirations for a future you can never attain. What is there for you to become except trapped somewhere between wolf and man?

She didn't mean to crush Jacob's heart with her projected internal struggles. She knew already that it was hard. Too hard. Still, she was a realist. Each wolf lived out their own microcosm of what their people long struggled with and Jacob Black was not exempt.

They were a people suffocated by the insatiable appetites of the peoples around them and they were locked, as Leah was, between their past and their future and in a present where their very natures conflicted with their reality. The expansive land that once supported their people was no longer theirs and their population had dwindled alongside their acreage.

What did they have left to sell but themselves? Their culture, their history, their environment, and the very parts of themselves their elders were once told to hate and discard and give away were all that remained for them to sustain themselves. They could work at the fish cannery, organize whale watching tours, or work at the resort. They could peddle to the curious tourists who came to peer over their gates, taste their "otherness", and purchase their own piece of the "exotic past" through crafts and drums, canoes and baskets. Or they could leave the Res to seek their fortunes in the urban jungles far removed from the songs of their people and the land in their blood.

The Cold Ones were not the only ones who threatened their people and their home, but the weapons of the Quileute wolves were much better suited for battles against the Cold Ones than legal battles over fishing and land rights or the internal battles over assimilation and culture change.

Since Jacob imprinted, it had helped him get over Bella, but it hadn't necessarily help him grow as a man or bridge the tenuous gap between the past and future of a Quileute. In the constant company of immortal Cold Ones, the undead Ho-kwats who grew money on trees and neither aged nor sweat nor shed tears, how could he not struggle with his own sense of self? The subtle jabs at the "dog" and "pup" would only reinforce his less-than status, his inhumanness, and implicitly highlight his inherent unworthiness in their eyes. If his lack of economic autonomy or the struggles his family endured growing up were to be discussed, it would only highlight him as a creature of pity and not the strong warrior he was meant to be, that the tribe saw him as, that the Cullens could not see in him. The histories that wove their stories was vastly separated from his own and he carried the wounds of a people still struggling to exist and hold their heads up against the rising tides.

She didn't know how he could take it or how he could look himself in a mirror each day. It's not that they meant it. The Cullens were ever polite, kind, and generous. She didn't doubt that they loved him (in their own way) but they could not help but shove their superiority onto him, even without knowing they were doing it. He was and would always be "other" to them in every way, more an object in a zoo than a man of dignity and worthy of respect. To them, he would never fully be "right" unless he allowed himself to be remade and recast in their image and likeness, forced into their cultural mold.

Now that they were starting over in high school in a Canadian city - how could that be an improvement? Moving with the Cullens wherever they went, following their mode of life, being forced to adapt to their style of dress, their ways of living and being - she knew it would eat him up on the inside and he would be homesick for more than just his home.

Yes, on the outside he would seem happy. His imprint was there and that filled him in many ways. But they were wolves. They were not made to live in isolation but in interdependent communities with their people. Jacob would miss the sea, the canoe races, the salmon ceremonies, the searches for whales, and the place he was born to, the place he belonged. How could he be fully happy or fully himself pretending to be "one of the Cullens" in his new designer clothes, playing high school sports, and surrounded by people who only loved parts and pieces, but not all, of him?

She couldn't bear to watch Jacob try to fit in and so she wouldn't go. She needed to take a break, at least for a little while. She also needed to find her own place in the world and integrate the dissonance between her past and future. She could not do that surrounded by the constant reminder that she was as misplaced as a beached whale.

She left a note for Seth and her mom letting them know she would be heading off for some time. Then she phased, and didn't look back.

oooooooo

The summer morphed into autumn and then snows blanketed the empty tundra as she wandered aimlessly and purposefully. The biting cold could not penetrate her warm fur and all the lands turned into a white, crystallized powder. It was beautiful, especially through her wolf eyes, but in a way that reminded her too much of the glistening exteriors of the Cold Ones for her to truly appreciate it. When the short winter's sun created dancing patterns of light in the snow, she couldn't help but shudder and catch an imaginary scent of sweetness on her tongue. She knew it was only her memory since the lands she traveled in were sparsely populated by others - human or otherwise, but she still cringed and double-checked over her shoulder for unseen enemies.

Despite her rugged isolation, life as a wolf was simpler. Her days were based purely on instinct, on basic biological need, and not muddled up with human struggles of being and belonging. She simply was. She drank from glacial springs and spoke only in wolf songs to the other creatures who shared her forests and grasslands with her. She slept beneath tree branches and in shadowed rocky crevices and under the never-ending expanse of stars.

In her wanderings she found a contentment that skirted closer to peace than she had found since she first phased. For once, all four of her paws were firmly rooted only in the present and that was where she intended to stay, at least for a little while longer.

ooooooo

Author's Notes: Thanks for reading and reviewing!

Ho-kwat: White Drifting-House people (term developed by the Quileute for the first Europeans who sailed to the area in ships in the late 1700's.)

"Raven Pushes Deer Over the Cliff" excerpt from Reagan, Albert B., and L. V. W. Walters. "Tales from the Hoh and Quileute." The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 46, no. 182, 1933, pp. 297–346. JSTOR.

"The Lone Wolf" description comes from www. livingwithwolves about-wolves/social-wolf/

Descriptions of Quileute life and history come from predominately from the Quileute's own website, though I incorporated info from various internet articles and JSTOR articles.

All mistakes are mine so please let me know if you catch any!