Country's War

.9

Feed the Wolves

     Stones balanced in hand, Mahya swung from a branch and landed lithely on the bamboo walkway with a hand on the path. Tridder floated overhead with the wooden cup clasped in his talons and let go. It bounced off the crown of Mahya's head with a plunk and landed in his palm, and he rubbed the sore spot with the other hand. He side eyed Tridder as he chirped a chuckle and flew into the canopy. 

     The hut was dark and quiet, and the table still messy with breakfast. He lit a candle of brown wax and began clearing the table. He took the dishes over to a bamboo spouted hole and pulled on a hemp rope in the wall. From the spout water flowed and he rinsed the wooden dishes and utensils, saving the larger scraps and gathering them in a bucket. 

     The island wolves loved the  scraps, but he was afraid to feed them. Usually his father took the scraps to their cave. Once in winter he took Mahya with him, trembling, he hid behind Oncoa the entire time and sobbed when the wolves' eyes glowed in the dark enclave. They sprung out to feed from the slop. Oncoa rubbed their heads and they licked his hand. Mahya's hair stood on end, he could feel the wildness in them. A wildness that he knew could vault forth at any moment and devour him. He felt safe with his father, his large hands could crush the wolves heads like a fruit pod. 

     Mahya sensed a similar wildness in his father. Perhaps the wolves sensed it too. He gathered this to be the reason they respected him. Mahya felt none of the wild within himself, and was ashamed at his fear. Even now, collecting the scraps, he felt his shame collect in the front of his throat. On edge, he jumped to his feet at his father's voice from behind. He worried his father sensed this shame in his son as well.

     "Did you gather the rocks?"

     "They're stacked out front." Obscured by shadow, he could not see his father, the sun hidden high above the canopy cast no light in the hut. The jungle was quiet at the noon darkness, when people returned to their huts to nap and whisper.

     "Good. You've collected many rocks now. Good." His face still hidden, Mahya thought he heard a small smile in Oncoa's voice. "The Yahna will soon be here. Before I grant you your footprints, you must do one last thing to prove yourself to me." Mahya swallowed and hid himself in his chest. He stood very still, and stared where his father's face should have been. His giant hands grasped the top of a chair as he stepped forward into the candlelight, his eyes low and face blank, he barely moved his lips. "You must feed the wolves."

     Tropical clouds sprang forward from the sea with swift warm winds. The canopy rustled from far above and bristled and hissed and he saw spots of faces from hut windows and pathways and he trudged through the jungle pulling the scrap bucket behind him. At times he dragged it through the dirt, almost hoping it would tip over so he would have an excuse to stop and turn back. He thought of the Yahna and what it would mean to get his first footstep. He tarried onward. 

     He smelled the rain while it was still over the sea. He could make it to the cave before it fell, but he'd be caught in it on the way back. He quickened his pace. Now far from the huts, he felt his spine stiffen and his footsteps lighten, the creatures of the jungle strained to hear him. Every bush reached towards him, and more than once he gave out a yelp at the poke from an adjunct twig. 

     Rounding a fat trunked tree, the jungle darkened around him as the rain clouds blackened and descended on his path with a howling thunder. The cave bobbed towards him now and the rain dropped through the canopy. Sticky and string like, it was warm and sweaty, and as the cave neared him, the rain mixed with his tears. 

     Only a hundred feet before him, the eyes in the cave began to blink open and he heard their paws shuffle on the stone cave floor. He tossed the scraps towards the cave and turned to run and felt his nose press against the snout of a large, thickly coated brown wolf. Teeth exposed and panting carefully.

     "I'm not afraid." He thought. I'm not afraid. But his heart beat otherwise, and the wolf knew it. He backed away and slipped on the scrap heap. The wolf inched forward, licking its chops and lowering its head, Mahya pressed backwards, his palms slimy in the slop and rain and mud, all he could do was slide in the muck. The wolf crouched to pounce and Mahya covered his head with his arm and braced for impact, when he heard a familiar, reverberating thud from behind. The wolf wagged his tail and barked and yelped and jumped with his tongue hanging from his jaw. Oncoa wrestled with him a bit and fed him some of the scraps. Mahya stood teary eyed and ashamed as the rain soaked them all. His father stood with the bucket in hand and they walked home in the rain and silence. The wolves watched them disappear behind the fat tree, and they scooped up the scraps and vanished into the cave.