Spirit of the Wolves by Dorothy Hearst

stream,” she said to herself. I looked around, expecting to see humans at any moment.
    â€œThis next part isn’t on the map,” TaLi said to MikLan. She went about two hundred wolflengths into the woods, turned to the left, and walked for five minutes. Then she stopped near a trickle of a stream.
    â€œThis should be it,” she whispered.
    Pell knocked me in the shoulder. “I’ll explore the territory around here,” he said. I was going to protest, then smelled his unease. He had put up with our humans to help us, and I liked him all the more for it. I wouldn’t insist he stay to meet a packful of strange humans.
    At first I couldn’t figure out where the humans would be,although I could smell them close by. I looked for the large mud-and-rock structures and burning fires that made up TaLi’s village back in the Wide Valley. Then I remembered NiaLi’s shelter, how it had seemed to grow from the forest, so much so that other humans often walked by it without noticing it. When I looked more carefully, I saw signs of humans: a flat place where they would build their fires, and mounds of stone and dirt that seemed to grow naturally from the earth but that had to be shelters.
    An old male human crawled from one of the mounds.
    â€œWelcome,” he croaked, “we’ve been waiting for you.” The man addressed me as well as TaLi. He wore a longfang tooth attached to a bit of alderwood on a preyskin strip around his neck, just like the one NiaLi had given to TaLi when the girl accepted the role of krianan. I realized that he must be a krianan, too. We had found their village.
    Just then, a young male dashed from behind one of the smaller mounds.
    â€œBreLan!” TaLi yelped. That was why the old man knew who she was. TaLi’s mate-to-be must have told him about us. TaLi threw off her pack and galloped to BreLan.
    Ãzzuen got to him first. BreLan was his human, and he loved the boy as much as I loved TaLi. When he was still two wolflengths away from BreLan, he launched himself. The young human was tall and well muscled, but the force of Ázzuen’s leap knocked him on his rump. Ázzuen licked his face over and over again, his tail whipping so hard it kept hitting TaLi, who was trying to get to BreLan, too. Other humans began to gather, quietly emerging from shelters and from behind trees as if they were wolf rather than human.
    BreLan returned Ázzuen’s greeting, thumping his ribs so hard that Ázzuen coughed. BreLan shoved Ázzuen away, stood, and lifted TaLi off her feet. He swung her around several times before setting her down. He held her so close I didn’t know how she could breathe. I walked over to them and pawed BreLan’s leg.
    â€œHello, Silvermoon!” he said.
    Then he saw MikLan standing next to Marra.
    He grinned at him, releasing TaLi. Then he looked MikLan up and down. “You’ve grown,” he accused.
    MikLan walked shyly to his brother. He thumped the blunt end of his spear on the ground in formal greeting. BreLan pulled him close. “Thank you for bringing TaLi safely,” BreLan said.
    MikLan smiled up at him. “I have to go back soon,” he said. “I promised the other krianans in the valley I’d tell them what’s happening here.”
    BreLan’s face grew serious as he stepped away from his brother. “You’ll have a lot to tell them. There’s more going on here than even NiaLi knew. I don’t know if she would’ve sent TaLi if she had known.”
    BreLan pulled TaLi close again, wrapping one arm around her while his other hand rested on Ázzuen’s back.
    â€œHow is NiaLi?” he asked. “She wasn’t strong enough to come?”
    â€œDavRian killed her,” TaLi said, beginning to cry. “He killed her and blamed it on the wolves.”
    BreLan looked down at her.
    â€œShe’s dead?” He rubbed his eyes. He had loved the old