The Sour Smell
Something was wrong on the other side. They could see it,
hear it, taste it and feel it. Before long, the slow ones would gather their
things and try to enter. It had been so long since they had had to face that
threat, and the other ones who had always lived here had always known enough to
respect the rules. But there were new ones who had come again, who had been
here years ago, and who had overpowered the older ones. They had killed many,
and burned many of the buildings, and driven a few of the slow ones into the
forest, begging for sanctuary. The white ones knew better than to allow them to
stay.
The oldest one was currently watching the hole deep inside.
There had been many strange signs, and ever since the twisted one had taken his
pack into the hole, they had been on edge. They should never have been allowed
to enter, but they had been sneaky, and they had overpowered the guardians. The
fact was, on that dark night, they had distracted two of the guardians, and
they had run inside. After disappearing, there was no way to go after them. All
they could do was wait.
She was not used to being so close to the edge of the
forest. She preferred to stay deep inside, near one of the deep lakes where the
icy water from the mountains pooled and formed a chilly reflection of the sky.
Her pups were with her, and had been disciplined to obey and to be observant.
They could smell the men from several miles away, and knew that they were
nervous. They had obviously been gathering supplies for some time, and as the
days grew warmer, and the trees grew greener, they knew that the slow ones
would march to the river with their supplies.
They shared in the dreams of the slow ones. From time to
time, under cover of darkness, they had ventured out as they always did, to
monitor the slow ones in their frantic burst of building and reclaiming of the
settlements that they had taken from the older ones. Dreams were easy to share,
and after cowing the dogs into remaining quiet, shivering in fright or running
off into the distance, they would settle down next to the tents and slowly
enter into the dreams of the men who slept inside. Dreams were like odors, they
were exhaled by the men, and they were read by the wolves, who could read the
emotions, read the thoughts, read even the ideas that the men were dreaming.
The wolves had known all along that the men were dreaming of
the forest. They were dreaming as well of the mountains off to the west, those
tall and jagged peaks that so terrified the wolves, but perversely, enthralled
and bewitched the men. The short-tailed one in particular was adept at reading
these dreams, and of detecting the hope of discovery, of minerals, of golden
rocks hidden inside, great rivers of precious minerals that they hoped to tap,
and for which they needed to enter into the forest and make use of it to expand
their settlements and provide the means by which to dig into the mountains.
The short-tailed one knew that the men dreamed of the hole,
of that entrance that the wolves guarded, without knowing why it shouldn’t be
disturbed. It was poisonous, and it reeked with death and the whisperings of
hidden ones who wished to leave the mountain and take the forest. But the men
knew little of this. They dreamed of gold, and they manifestly weren’t satisfied with having reclaimed the open land.
The golden-eyed wolf had heard the tale brought by the
short-tailed one, and by other sentries who had ventured out into the prairie,
and had listened to the men. They smelled the plans of these slow ones, who
gathered metal objects in little bags, and horses, and packs of dogs that once
had been wolves but had become too dependent upon men. The dogs would be easy
enough to deal with. They would be easily cowed, the way they were out in the
prairies, and they would flee the forest one the wolves gave the signals. But
the men would not be so easily cowed, and they would need to find a way to
dissuade them from venturing too deep.
Her pups were patient, the way she was. They huddled close
to her, for like her, they disliked being so close to the edge. They also
preferred the warm interior of the forest, the enveloping green sanctuary, the
moss and branches and dirt that was all they had known. Perhaps they would be
trained to become sentries in the future, to venture out and to keep watch over
the men out in the prairie, but for now, they were satisfied with the rituals
of the interior, with the hunt on moonlit nights, and the roads that they had
marked deep inside, roads that were little more than scent trails, but that
traced out hidden narratives, and told them who had been where and for how
long, and when they had eaten, and what they had eaten, and what they had been
feeling and thinking. They remarked on the myriad scents of other creatures
too, of the deer that traveled in their own packs, and the badgers, and the
squirrels and snakes and foxes and moles. It was a living language, written on
a living terrain.
But the plains were different. They felt exposed, and the
open land was a faulty text that was continually erased by the shifting wind,
and dampened by the rain, and scrambled because of the lack of stable markers
that could be imprinted.
She was ready to move her pups. They were following on the
scent trail of the yellow one, and it was their nature to follow the paths of
those who had preceded them. The yellow one had stood where she was watching
for several hours, and had moved to the south. It was almost dawn, and time for
her to follow.
As she got up, her cubs stirred then followed quickly. They
made no noise. Both cubs still preserved the dark fur coats of their adolescence, but
as they became adults, they would soon turn completely white. That was the
nature of their pack, the nature of the sentinels of the forest.
The older one, who had a slightly stronger pungent smell
that was almost like a heavy knock on her nose, jogged eagerly by her side. The
younger one followed, staying closer to her heels. This was natural, for the
stronger and more dominant one should always be in front.
The scent trail left behind by the yellow one weaved around
trees, and usually avoided hidden rocks. It was a trail that revealed nothing
out of the ordinary, nothing but a routine change of position, following the
curve of the forest to the south, further and further away from the river. She
was attentive to these signs, and it was like a script that unfurled before her,
and that was unmistakable, and a second instinct.
But then they noticed the wrong note. It was a smell that
was coming further ahead along the scent trail left behind by the yellow one.
It was very clear, and it registered alarm. It also registered the slowed
movement of the yellow one, who had stopped, and hunkered down, and had waited
for some time before moving on ahead.
She stopped as well, and her cubs, who had detected the
scent also, followed her lead. They became more aware of their surroundings,
and to the smell of the many animals and plants and insects around them. And
what became evident to them was that the smell of fear had grown more powerful,
and had been shared as well by squirrels as well as rodents and also the
infinitesimal scent trails left behind by beetles and other insects.
There was evidently something wrong up ahead. Her first instinct
was to retrace her steps, but it was plain to her as well that the yellow one
had chosen to forge ahead, and the trail appeared to go in the direction of a stand
of trees off to the side. They smelled alarm, and curiosity, but no outright
danger. The wolves had little enough to
fear in the forest, other than the opening deep inside that was guarded by
their sentinels. They had no natural predators, and even the bears knew enough
to avoid the wolves, solitary creatures that they were, unable as well to
withstand any coordinated attacks. There was no scent of bear, and no scent of
man, and no other recognizable scent of danger.
Slowly, she followed the scent trails. It registered the
increasing alertness of the yellow one, a mature and older wolf who no longer received
regular sentinel duty, and was assigned to patrol, given his ability and
practice in reading the dreams of men. But could it be that the yellow one had
grown careless, and was registering unnecessary alarm?
They proceeded forward, and the cub were attentive to the
scent of their mother as she ventured forward. They circled around the stand of
trees ahead, and they continued following a line that seemed to follow the
curve of the forest at times, and at other times, ventured hundreds of yards
in. The trees were pack closely together at the edge, something that had been
achieved since time immemorial and the rule of their mythical founder, the ragged
one, who had deemed it necessary to build a barrier against the incursions of
others. All the wolves well remembered the stories of old, of how the white
wolves had arrived after a trek of years from the far north, and of how they
had been followed. They had had to fend off their pursuers and lay claim to the
forest, and for years, they had been hounded and threatened before they had
managed to make their stand. The result was that they had come to see the forest
not only as a new home, but as a fortress that they had to protect.
The trail snaked steadily inward, and then, they all stopped
and their fur rose in shock. The overwhelming smell of death overtook them, and
it was mingled with the smell of the yellow one. It was like a blow so strong
that it overwhelmed the smellscape of the rest of the forest, blotting it out.
They knew it could only be one thing. The body of the yellow one lay up ahead.
For animals that were used to the quiet, it had become
deathly still. Outside the forest, they could make out the slowly brightening
rays of approaching daylight. The big she-wolf could smell even daylight, in
the way the air was warmed, and could feel it as well in the way it heated up
and rose in waves. But what was more overwhelming was the smell of death, and
the fact that the yellow one had apparently chosen to run ahead from what she
could detect of the scent trail.
She cautioned her cubs to stay behind, and moved forward
cautiously. She had need to see what she could see, in order to give a complete
report. For one thing, it was known that the slow one, the men of the plains,
were known to have metals sticks that shot fire. She could detect no such
smell. It was, instead, an unknown smell, something that was more sour than she
could place, a smell that resembled drying fish left out in the air, but mixed
with something else.
Slowly she crept up to the tree, and stepped carefully over
the rock that was covered in leaves and moss. The overwhelming stench of death
assaulted her, but she tried to stay attentive to the scent indicators left by
the yellow one as he moved ahead, while alive. There seemed to be no fear mixed
in, and from what she could determine, death had been sudden.
She saw the spatters of blood, or rather, smelled them on
the tree up ahead. It had been a messy death, and as the light of the early
morning grew brighter, she wondered if the Yellow One might not have been
crushed by a tree. But she would have noticed the smell of an uprooted tree,
and this smell was not present, nor did she notice anything out of the ordinary
in the branches or the adjacent trees. She peaked around the trees carefully...
…and noticed the body of the Yellow One on its side, with
paws stretched out, as if they had tried to push something away. The white hide
was soaked in dry blood, and the leaves around the dead wolf registered the
imprint of what had been some heavy object, for the leaves were crushed deeply
into the soil. The flies were buzzing in a swarm around the body, but she found
this unusual, for the fur seemed to show no open wounds. She inched closer and
around the death scene, and then her fur stood up in horror.
The Yellow One’s head was missing. The flies were thickest
her, because here they had access to the body, access to their food. Something
had torn away the head, for this was not an accidental death. It had been done
by something, and from what she could see, the cut had been thorough and clean.
The head had evidently been bitten off.
She looked from one side to the next, wondering if she might
find it or at least detect the scent trail of blood as it led away. Then she
saw the dark shadow jump down from above, quicker than she could have imagined,
and as she turned to fend it off, she felt it land on her and she smelled the
blood of the Yellow One, but also, that sour smell, more powerful.
She had time
to yip a cry of alarm as she lost consciousness, and her last thought was of
her cubs, lying in wait back along the trail.
(Feb. 15, 2014)
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