Cry Wolf
Anana watched Davis playing with his toy. He was like a boy, his eyes bright, fiddling with dials and pushing buttons. He was staring at the lime green horizon on the North Slope of Alaska, trying to make a connection between his electronic satellite data and the thickening yellow clouds rolling in.
The clouds told her something. A storm was coming.
She gathered the stuff of her camp, her small cooking pot, her ulu—a half-moon shaped woman’s knife that was used for everything from skinning an animal hide to chopping ice—and took them into her makeshift sod house.
She could have packed a tent, like Davis, but even though she had been to college in Juneau, and had been tracking with the Wildlife Conservation for nearly five years, there were things she held onto, continuing to follow many of the old ways—each brick in her sod house had been carved out of the earth with her ulu.
They had been here observing the pack for a month now. The pups were almost old enough for Davis to fit with collars, or so he kept saying. If he didn’t hurry, winter would be upon them, and the wolves would be gone, traveling long distances at night on terrain that they could not follow.
She heard him walking around outside. They could both walk upright when the older wolves were gone and the pups were tucked into the den with their wolf-babysitter. Anana had named him Maguyuk, for he was always howling, groveling, whining and rolling onto his back to show the white of his belly. He was the lowest wolf in the caste.
“Anana?” Davis was on his knees, peeking his head into the low entrance of her sod house. “The pack’s returning. I think snow’s coming.”
“Did your fancy toy tell you that?” she smiled at him, pulling off her fur mittens and laying them on her sod table so she could push her long, thick hair out of her eyes. There was only enough room to kneel for her, and she doubted that Davis could do even that.
“When are you going to move into the new millennium, woman?” He winked at her. “What, are you afraid that technology is gonna put you out of business?”
Anana snorted. “If I remember correctly, it wasn’t your GPS system that found the wolf den.”
She had used a GPS system for a while when she first started, in spite of her father’s warning that trackers could become dependent on them. It seemed like an amazing modern convenience, using satellites to pinpoint anything, including your own position. It only took her one night alone on the tundra to realize that it was taking too much of her time and energy away from actually tracking—that she lost her bearings with it, rather than finding them.
She looked at Davis and saw that his smile had wavered into a pout. He grumbled, “Well, you know, I told you—that was just a glitch.”
She waved her hand at him. She had heard it before. “There is an unalaq—a strong west wind. It will be a big storm, this one, strange for this time of year. Do you want to stay in here with me tonight?”
He looked around the small, dark space, frowning. “I think my tent will be fine.”
“Let me know if you change your mind.” She shrugged. “The pack has returned.”
“How—” Davis lifted his head, and looked to the west. Anana put her mittens back on, crawling out.
“They will bring meat back for the pups,” she said, edging him out of the way. “I want to see.” She crawled up the slope on her belly, her mukluks digging into the frozen ground as she edged her way to the top. Davis trudged his way after her, still carrying his GPS. Anana waved him down and he crouched, beginning to crawl up the slope.
He joined her at the top, the two of them still able to blend into the dark brown and green carpet of the tundra as they peered toward the wolf den. They were well above the tree line here, so there was nothing to mar the vast extent of the landscape, but in the summer, the ground was full of moss and lichens. The pups were out with their babysitter-wolf, Maguyuk, rolling and tumbling and biting on each other’s ears. Maguyuk was waiting for the rest of his pack, his nose lifted to the wind.
Anana watched the pups play. The biggest and most playful pup, who she called Pukiq, because he was very smart, snuck up behind his sister, Nukka, biting her tail.
“They are growing quite big,” Anana whispered. Davis nodded, watching in the direction that Maguyuk was looking.
“Wonder how they’ll weather this storm?” Davis wondered aloud.
“Wolves have lived out here longer than my ancestors,” Anana whispered. “They will survive the weather just fine.”
Davis glanced at her and shook his head, smiling.
The three older wolves returned, including the great black wolf leader, his eyes shining as he let Maguyuk mouth his chin, a sign of respect. With that, Maguyuk was off. Anana knew he would backtrack to the kill and eat his fill. The only female wolf was regurgitating food for the pups. Anana had named her Arnaq–woman. The pups crowded around to eat, growling happily, their tails wagging.
“Down,” Anana hissed, putting her mittened hand on top of Davis’ head. Their cheeks rested on the cold ground, facing one another, their breath wafting together in white streams. The temperature was summer, still, nearing fall, probably in the high twenties or early thirties, Anana guessed. She knew Davis could have glanced at his watch and told her exactly.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Amaguq,” she said, saying the name she had given the leader of the wolf pack and lifting her head very slowly so she could see above the slope. The great black wolf was still watching them, his long snout sniffing the air, although they were downwind.
“The alpha?” Davis lifted his head as well to look. Anana sighed. He called them all by technical names. They were alpha male, alpha female, beta male one and two, all four of them fitted with GPS collars so Davis could track their positions. The pups were also numbers—pups one through six—although up until recently, they had been too young to fit with collars.
“He knows we’re here,” Anana whispered. The regal wolf turned twice in a circle and howled, the sound piercing the air. She knew how to live out here, she had done it all of her life, and it had been she who had used her skill to allow them such close access to the wolves’ den.
If it had been up to Davis, toting his gun and looking for caribou to hunt, the wolves would have been long gone, she thought. Instead, she made him put his gun away, forced him to rub his tent down in mud to camouflage it, and they had trapped their food and crawled on all fours whenever the wolves were in sight.
She also refused to allow Davis to wear his bright orange parka, making him favor his dark blue one. He had blushed, she remembered, when she joked to him that it brought out the color of his eyes.
“I think he’s always known,” Davis replied. “Thanks to you, I think he’s accepted us.”
Anana smiled at his acknowledgement, putting her mittened hand over his.
“This storm may send us home, early,” she whispered. “I don’t think we’re in for any more thaws.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he replied, looking at the GPS in his hand. “Our observation period is over next week. Once I put the interim collars on the pups, we can call the plane to take us back to the mainland.”
Was it so soon? she thought. They had been out here for months together, and she had watched the changing of the seasons, the lemmings disappearing, the terns fading in numbers, but her heart didn’t seem to want autumn to come.
Anana watched as the third adult wolf, a sleek, silver male that she had named Qopuk, after the ice, nuzzle Amaguq under the chin. They were a family, although she wasn’t quite sure what role this male played in the pack. Trusted servant or best friend, perhaps? He didn’t mate with the female, Arnaq—wolves remained monogamous through the season, often through many seasons—but he wasn’t the low-man, like Maguyuk, either.
“The storm will be here within the hour,” Anana announced, her eyes on the horizon. The arctic terns were circling, and she knew it was over the site of the wolf kill. The clouds were gathering. The sun didn’t set, and there was little difference between noon and midnight in the sky, now, but storms clouds in the arctic had a strange, lemon yellow tinge, a bright warning against the pale green of evening
“I better pack everything into the tent,” Davis said, turning and sliding down the hill on his bottom. Anana rolled over and watched him moving around his camp, gathering equipment. He was a tall man, although all kablunaks seemed tall to her, she knew. She was just barely five feet, her limbs short, her body compact, with the same broad, flat nose of her ancestors, the same round, moon-like face.
She had grown used to his presence as they tracked the wolves through the beginning summer months. Her primary occupation was tracking, and she had been taught by her father, and her father’s father before him. She grinned as she remembered how angry Davis had been that she was assigned by the conservation department to tag along with him because this was, after all, his first real field assignment. That’s how he put it: “I don’t want her tagging along.” Like she was some annoying little sister.
Walking toward his tent, his part of the camp, she found him squatting on the ground, his parka hood down and his gloves off as he punched information into the GPS in his hand. There was a label along the side of it that read: Division of Wildlife Conservation Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
“You are a slave to that thing,” she sighed, squatting down beside him. He glanced up at her and smiled.
“I have to admit, I’m beginning to think it’s worthless next to you,” he replied, slanting her a look.
She raised her eyebrows at him. “Do you want something? What’s all this praise about?”
He laughed, turning the GPS off and standing. “You’re always questioning my motives.”
She watched him stretch and yawn. It was still strange, somehow, to be wide awake at midnight. They were on wolf time, now, sleeping during the day and up at night to observe the pack. The passing of time was just the rhythm of life out here on the tundra. He looked down and saw her watching him. She turned her eyes to his tent.
“Are you sure you going to be okay in there?” she asked him.
“Listen here,” he said with a snort. “That is a North Face VE-25!”
She knew exactly what kind of tent it was, but she didn’t tell him so. She just looked at him blankly.
“That tent is pretty much bombproof,” he said, looking exasperated. “It’s got twelve tie-downs, a geodesic pole design, and bar-tacked corner reinforcers.”
Anana bit her lip to try to hide a smile. “If you say so.”
Davis frowned, looking toward her shelter. “In fact, why don’t you stay in with me?”
“In that?” She made a face.
“Yeah, that,” he said. “It’s gotta be safer than that little hole in the ground you’ve built. What if you get snowed in?”
She laughed. “So much for praising my abilities.” She stood and turned to walk back to her sod house. The wind was already picking up, and it ruffled the wolverine fur trim on her parka.
“I’ll see you after the storm,” she said. Kneeling down, she crawled into her little hole in the ground.
Anana took off her mukluks and placed them by the door. Then she took off her outer clothing, her parka and her fur-lined pants, folding them carefully. Off came the clothes she wore next to her body. She continued stripping herself until she was nude and she placed everything into a bag made of a whale bladder, sealing it tight against moisture. That was another of the old ways she refused to let go. In the Arctic, damp clothes meant death.
She shivered in the cold, seeing her own breath. She slid into her sleeping skin, a moose hide bag lined in rabbit fur, pulling it up around her until only her eyes were showing. Her breath against the fur warmed her face. She heard the wolves howling. They knew the storm was coming, too. She closed her eyes, and slept.
*****
“Anana!” His voice was close, but she couldn’t see him at the entrance. Outside, it was a world of white.
“Davis?” She sat up, shivering in the cold, and grabbed her caribou skin off the floor, wrapping it around herself as she made her way to the door. He was wearing full gear, and he was covered in snow as he crawled toward her. She must have slept long, or it must have snowed hard, because the ground was already covered. She could see it built up at the entrance of her house, which she had made the way her father taught her, creating a slanted awning for possibilities such as these.
Anana couldn’t see anything past Davis’ bulk crawling toward her, not his tent, or the pond, or the slope that led up toward the wolves. It was a white out—the wind a bitter, chilling reminder that this was, indeed, the Arctic.
She reached her hand out and grasped his arm. “How did you find me in this?”
“I don’t know.” He slid down into her home, landing with a thump on the floor, his breath ragged. “It’s gone,” he gasped. “Everything is gone. I barely got out of tent before the wind took it.”
Anana knelt beside him, taking off his gloves, his hat, unsnapping and unzipping his parka. “We’ll find it,” she reassured him, putting her fur-warmed hands to his cold, red cheeks.
“There’s a foot of snow out there already.” His voice was shaking. “I didn’t think it would be so much. I didn’t put the heavy snow load bearing poles in. With that high west wind, it all piled up on the east side and the tent collapsed.”
“You’re safe here.” Her hands continued to work, undoing his parka.
Davis put his head in his hands and stared at the dirt floor. “You don’t understand.”
“I understand that you are very wet,” Anana told him, pushing his parka off his shoulders. “And if you don’t get dry, you’ll die.”
It wasn’t as bad as she feared. His Gortex parka and pants were wet, but would dry by morning. His clothes were just a little damp along the edges. Davis let her strip him down to his underwear, which was no easy feat in the small space. It was only then that he seemed to notice that she, too, was nude, his eyebrows going up, his eyes raking over her. She laid the caribou skin back on the floor and his clothes on it.
“Now what?” he asked. “All my clothes—everything was in that tent.”
“I know,” she said, pulling him along as she crawled toward her sleeping skin. His hand was cold and clammy from the dampness. She had rubbed him down the best she could. “Here, get in.”
He hesitated, looking at her body in the only light coming from the entrance, a hazy, greenish glow. “Anana…”
“Get in,” she insisted. He slid himself into her sleeping skin, and she crawled in beside him, stretching her body against his and pulling the fur up tight around their heads. They lay belly-to-belly, listening to the wind outside.
“The wolves,” he whispered.
“Will fare better than your tent.” She smiled, but when she saw how devastated he looked, she regretted it. “We’ll find it, when the storm is over.”
“It could be miles from here by now,” Davis sighed. “There aren’t any trees to stop it.”
“Well, if you don’t find it—”
“If we don’t find it, we’re dead,” he told her, his voice flat. “How do you think I was going to send the signal for the plane to take us home? We’re stuck out here in the middle of the Arctic tundra with three hundred miles between us and civilization. Just how do you propose we’re going to get back? Walk?”
She put her hand over his lips, her eyes soft. “If we have to, yes.”
“We have nothing.” He shook his head, his eyes dark. “We’re as good as dead.”
“Tawia!” Anana cried and pushed against his chest. “Enough! You are with the best tracker in the Arctic. Do you think I can not get us home?”
“I—” Davis sighed, closing his eyes. “Let’s not talk about it anymore. Okay?”
Anana turned away from him, but there wasn’t much room to move, and nowhere to go. Her back was pressed against his belly.
“What kind of fur is this?” Davis asked, after a moment, sounding surprised. “It’s so warm. I’m always cold, even in my sleeping bag.”
“It kept the rabbits warm,” she murmured, closing her eyes. The wind was a faint whistle outside the door.
“It’s quiet in here,” he remarked. She could feel his legs against her feet, less clammy now.
“The earth is a great insulator,” she said. “So, do you feel warm now?”
“Yes,” he replied. He was quiet again, and then he said, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she replied, smiling. His chest was rising and falling against her bare back. It was much warmer in her sleeping skin with the two of them.
“I can’t sleep,” Davis whispered.
She turned her head toward him, smiling. “Do you want me to tell you a story?”
“Tell me how you do it,” he said. She felt his hand looking for a comfortable place to rest, settling on her hip. It was warm and large and it made her skin tingle.
“How I do what?”
“Track.” Davis curled his body around her. “It’s amazing. You see things that I never could.”
She could feel his breath over her cheek. “That’s because you only see what is right in front of you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You need to open up the lens of your vision,” she said. “Right now, you’re looking at my body, yes?”
Davis shifted against her and cleared his throat. “Yes.”
“What do you see?” she asked him.
“Uhhh…”
“The curve of my neck, the slope of my shoulder, maybe?”
She could hear the smile in his voice. “Yeah.”
“That’s tunnel vision,” she told him. “Make your eyes go wide angle. Relax your focus. Like you’re looking at one of those magic eye puzzles my nephew keeps doing instead of his school work.”
“What?”
“Just do it,” she urged, pressing her hand to his against her hip. “Now, what do you see?”
Davis propped his head up on his elbow, looking around. “Fur. The earth walls. The caribou skin. That little square clod of packed dirt you call a table.”
“Yes,” she said, turning onto her back to look up at him. “Wider. Look at the negative space.”
“What?” He shook his head, smiling down at her. She saw his eyes dip below the edge of the sleeping skin, traveling down the length of her body.
“It’s not about where I am,” she whispered, lifting his chin and directing his eyes back out toward the little room. “It’s about where I’m not.”
His eyes moved over the room, his face twisted in confusion.
“What are the impressions?” she whispered. “Where have I been?”
“Ohhh,” Davis breathed.
“Yes,” she smiled up at him, her eyes bright. “It’s just like that, tracking wolves, or anything, really. You find the patterns, the subtle shifts, the places where they lived. Everything leaves an impression on the world.”
Davis was looking down at her again, his eyes searching. “God, you’re beautiful.”
“You can touch me.”
“I want to,” he said.
“I know.”
She took his hand and placed it against her breast. They were small and firm, her areolas as dark and round as a new moon. He brushed his thumb over her nipple, which was flat and wide and thick in the middle and very sensitive to touch, watching it harden.
Her face tilted toward his, and he met her mouth. She melted into him, the ache to be with him mounting as his tongue found hers.
She had never been with a kablunak, and she was fascinated by his body, how long his limbs were, how light his eyes and hair. She kissed his cheek and the scruffy, dark blonde, three-month beard on his chin, rubbing her cheek there, reveling in the sensation.
“You like that?” He smiled, pulling her hip toward him so they were belly-to-belly again, burying his face in her neck and rubbing his beard over her flesh.
“Davis,” she whispered, running her hand over his upper arm, feeling the muscles, tight and hard and sinewy. She tilted her face up again to be kissed and he obliged, his hand moving over the flesh of her back, pulling her in to him. His lips were a soft cloud in the rough landscape of his beard, his mouth a wet cave that her tongue dipped in to explore.