BEASTS
By Shannon Riley
"In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences."
-- Ingersoil
Prologue:
They raced down a slope gutted by logging skidders and rain, the huge gray wolf and his silver-haired mate. Around them a graveyard of bleached and rotting logs glowed white as old bones in the light of the full autumn moon, and the wolves themselves seemed insubstantial as spirits as they flew over the fallen timber.
They were not ghosts, but creatures of myth and legend, the survivors of an ancient race once honored in their native land. Yet to the hunters pursuing them through the north Mississippi backwoods, they were aberrations, demons they must destroy.
Hounds, racing ahead of the three men, streamed over the crest of the hill and saw the wolves below.
Baying wildly, scrambling over downed trees and brush piles, the dogs plunged downhill after their prey, eager for the kill.
With a desperate burst of speed, the wolves raced toward the dark stand of pines at the foot of the hill. Safety lay just beyond the trees, and if they could beat the dogs to the woods, they might be able to lose them among the dense undergrowth.
Alerted by the hounds' frantic barks, the hunters broke into a run. They tore through briars and across gullies, cursing and yelling to the dogs, urging them on. When they reached the top of the hill, the men stopped and tried to take aim, but the dogs blocked the way of a clear shot.
The the oldest man raised his rifle and fired high as if to drive the wolves on or to send a signal.
Then he gestured for his companions to follow, and, mindful of the sharp branches and treacherous footing, they began working their way downhill.
As the wolves neared the foot of the incline, the hounds closed in. Ahead the dark woods beckoned, but a shift in the wind brought the scent of new danger.
Man-smell. Others waited in the woods ahead.
A trap.
Off to the left lay the lake, wide and swollen from recent rains, and beyond its far banks, the lights of cabins beaded the shoreline. No safety there.
On the right rose a steep hill matted with kudzu and second growth timber, and hidden in a den dung deep into the red clay dirt of the hillside, their young cub waited. If the hunters found the cub, they would show it no mercy. They would shoot it or turn it over to the dogs to be ripped apart for sport. The wolves instinctively knew that to protect their young, they must lure their pursuers away from the den.
A look of understanding passed between them. Then without hesitation they plunged straight for the grove of pines.
Gunfire erupted from the darkness ahead, and the men coming downhill stopped and brought up their weapons, firing whenever the dogs gave them an opening.
They caught the wolves in the crossfire. A bullet ripped through the gray's shoulder, spinning him around. The dogs were on him at once, nipping, biting, made reckless by the scent of blood.
The oldest hunter on the hill fired, and his shot brought the great wolf down.
Then a bullet plummeted into the she-wolf, propelling her body into the air with the force of the blow. She fell into a crumpled heap beside the lifeless form of her mate, their blood mingling with the red clay of the torn hillside; their bodies mangled like the wasted husks of trees.
High upon the nearby hillside, huddled among the vines and brush, the wolf cub whimpered in terror.
Then in the cold, hungry and bewildering night that followed, trauma set in, repressing all memory of what had occurred.
* * *
In the pale light of dawn, the old woman made her way down a narrow path through the pines. At the base of the hill near the wood line she found the
bullet-riddled bodies of the man and woman.
Moaning, she fell to her knees beside them. Her hands trembled as she brushed back the bloodstained hair from her son's forehead and touched her daughter-in-law's cheek. She knelt there beside them for a time, then gently closed their eyelids and unclasped the silver chain with its odd pendant from around the woman's neck and placed it carefully in her apron pocket. "For the wee lass," she whispered, "to remember ye by."
She braced herself with her cane and rose to her feet. Then she raised the intricately carved staff, extending it over the bodies of her kin, and in a voice as strong and unwavering as the granite cliffs of Ireland, she began to chant in a language old as her native isle itself. Her words might have been a prayer or an incantation, for suddenly a dense fog began to rise. Its wispy tendrils coalesced to drape the bodies of the dead in a thick white shroud.
* * *
The woman found the child, crouched and shivering, in a tangle of honeysuckle vines near the wolves' den.
Murmuring words of comfort, she picked up the little girl and wrapped her cloak around her. Then she cradled her granddaughter in her arms and made her way back down the hill toward the path that led through the woods to her cabin.
* * *
Later that morning, when the fog in the lowlands yielded to the penetrating rays of the sun, the bodies near the timberline had vanished. Not even a trace of blood remained to mark the spot.
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