The Turn of a Page

Chapter 27

Chapter 27

            With an annoyed sigh, I trotted over to the tree line on this side of the river and repeated the same sequence of steps as I had before. The same relieved feeling soared through me once again, and I knew I would never get used to it. Once on the other side, I knew I would have to do it again to be with him, so I did.

            ‘There, what do you think?’ I asked, confidently strutting around in front of him.

            ‘Very good, and you’re a fast runner,’ he commented, still lying down with his front legs crossed. ‘Now, what else do you want to do? Since you dragged me all this way from camp, I guess we have time to kill.’

            That last word made me shiver a little. ‘Well, speaking of killing. Could you teach me how to hunt?’

            He replied simply with, ‘No.’ And then went on to explain when I dropped my head, my nose almost touching the ground. ‘That takes time, and since this whole wolf thing is newer to you than if you had been one from birth, then it might take longer than normal. But I can teach you one thing.’

            ‘And what’s that?’ I asked, touching my nose to his.

            ‘Howling. It is very easy but there are different kinds. There’s a deep one, from your gut, then there’s a higher pitched one from your chest and nose. Here, let me demonstrate.’ And he sat up on his haunches.

            My body convulsed as I imagined the pitches in my head. ‘Must you? You know it makes me nervous.’

            ‘Or may be that feeling is you mistaking it for nerves. It might be that you’re subconscious was itching to join in. I know that’s how I feel when I hear any other wolf howling, no matter who they are.’

            ‘Now how would I know that? But carry on, I’ll watch and listen,’ I commented.

            In one deep breath, he summoned up his voice and bellowed into the air, straightening his spine and looking up to the sky with closed eyes. Although the notes of his howl changed, they were all relatively low notes and it did seem to come from deep within him as his fur rustled in the little breeze that slithered through the clearing. The bubbling inside me, the unsettling of my stomach, rose up and my throat seemed to open up as though I was about to throw up.

            ‘Owwww! Baz, stop!’ I shouted, shaking my head and my ears flapped about a bit.

   ‘Huh? Do that noise again?’

   ‘What noise? I didn’t make one. Owwww!’ I sounded as he snapped his jaws into my neck as I did to him when pulling him out of the river. To my amazement, the noise I was making was indeed howling and it was deep; deeper than I thought my voice could ever go.

            ‘Sorry, I’ll heal that later. But whatever you felt through you when you did that. That’s how to do the lower howl,’ he explained.

            I snarled at him for biting me but then lay down. ‘And what about the other one?’ I asked out of new found curiosity.

            ‘The other one... think of me biting into your leg. The pain is a lot sharper and that’s the type of notes you’ll want to make when doing the higher howl. And after sometime, you’ll learn to put them both together and make music for wolves’ ears.’

            Music, I thought, maybe I could get used to this after all. Then something more troubling occurred to me. ‘Baz?’