Cánaalah

The forest was run­ning near them on the heavy wet snow. It was not snow­ing at the mo­ment, yet tiny particles of ice were build­ing up on their fur. In a rush, a trem­bling leaf with its broken bits frozen to­gether would fi­nally fall from the stiff birch tree on the ground, but only after touch­ing one’s muzzle.

If you fol­low the prey path, you can see that trees be­have dif­fer­ently. In sum­mer, there is a can­opy that pro­tects them from harm whereas in winter, the green­ery dis­ap­pears. This al­lows pre­cau­tion and bet­ter sight. Nev­er­the­less, when they are run­ning in search of meat, the cán­aa­lah also cast a glance up to the top of the tree trunks to check the growth of cold: if the high branches are brown from their pointy end up to where they con­nect with the trunk, they can tell we are in the be­gin­ning or end of winter; if the puny buds are frozen and the branch wears a white moss, then the cán­aa­lah know it is the sign of middle winter. At the same time, their fur be­comes thicker; as they have two lay­ers of it, the cán­aa­lah don’t suf­fer from the harsh­ness of their sur­vival conditions. 

∞

Hu­mans are not aware that each an­imal keeps the memory of its an­cestor alive. Even if people have named spe­cies, these an­im­als already had a primeval ap­pel­la­tion. Wolves call them­selves Cán­aa­lah after their an­cestor, the Canid. Cán­aalian le­gends say that Cernun­nos, the Celtic horned god, was once lost in a widu¹ and be­cause of long trav­el­ling, his feet were sore with blisters. It be­came harder to walk and dif­fi­cult to give way to reason when out of a sud­den, he no­ticed a crow. Cernun­nos knew about its con­nec­tion with fate and the god­dess of war: Mór­rígan. She meta­morph­osed from her an­imal state and de­cided to fight the horned god for un­eth­ic­ally cross­ing her path. Mór­rígan was known to be a ruth­less god. She usu­ally wounded her vic­tims and brought them near death, but did not provide them with the lux­ury of dy­ing in­stantly. When the rays of twi­light smoothly made their way to the ground through pine needles and be­hind cones, Cernun­nos was dis­figured: he was left with no horns, open bleed­ing marks on his arms; his left leg was broken and he suffered a severe head in­jury. Sud­denly, as the woods were al­low­ing less light to enter their ter­rit­ory, Cernun­nos no­ticed blur­rily a strik­ing shadow of a massive an­imal which he could not identify. This an­imal was si­lently ap­proach­ing him, but Cernun­nos could tell that it smelled his re­ac­tion: the an­imal was con­scious of the god’s aware­ness to­wards it. Cernun­nos no­ticed the hes­it­a­tion of the an­imal: it looked as if the un­fa­mil­iar scared it. The god felt the dif­fi­cult de­cision it made: the an­imal con­tin­ued to come closer out of curi­os­ity. At first, Cernun­nos was ap­palled: it was twice as big as him with a tre­mend­ous mass of white fur, tawny eyes, long muzzle and a tail that re­minded him of the sight of a forest seen from a hill in winter. If you po­s­i­tion your­self on a hill in winter, you can no­tice the sym­metry of a row of trees and them al­ly­ing to­gether to fight nat­ural phe­nom­ena by stick­ing their branches to­gether. Even if these are covered with frost, you can still see tiny brown rem­nants of the trees. This animal’s tail looked sim­ilar: his fur was alert, and even if this was en­tirely white, you could see grey shades mixed at the root of his fur. 

When Cernun­nos was con­vinced that this an­imal would fi­nally put an end to his life, it star­ted lick­ing his wounds. Then, the an­imal slowly made it down on its chest and it was push­ing its muzzle in Cernunnos’s right arm as a sign for him to climb on its back. The god hardly made his way up. The an­imal trav­elled care­fully with him on its back and this would snarl from time to time, Cernun­nos as­sum­ing this to be a warn­ing for other forest creatures he couldn’t per­ceive. This an­imal took Cernun­nos back to his temple where it re­ceived a name and a new title: the an­imal be­came the Canid (after its prom­in­ent killer teeth). It came to be the pro­tector of the forest and the healer of creatures. 

∞

-27 de­grees. Frozen trees. Icy air. Gla­cial ground. Still life. How­ever, mo­tion is chal­lenged by five an­im­als trav­el­ling one after the other up the white hill among pines and fir trees. These are the cán­aa­lah. They are cur­rently on a jour­ney to a new ter­rit­ory. Ac­cord­ing to their men­tal maps, the new ter­rit­ory they want to con­quer is a land of easy and vul­ner­able prey, as well as se­cure home for fu­ture pups. The five cán­aa­lah re­spect the hier­archy: the first and the second in the pack are Nákú­set (Sun) and Tep­kun­set (Moon) – the Al­pha male and the Al­pha fe­male. The fol­low­ing cán­aa­lah are two middle-ranked wolves, a daugh­ter and a son of the Al­phas, Mek­wék (Red) and Maqtewék (Black). At the end of the pack, there is the Omega mem­ber – an odd white cán­aala² who is called Naqalk (Leave)³. Naqalk was a strange fig­ure among these cán­aa­lah. Not only was he an out­sider from the pack (he was not one of the Al­pha couple’s off­spring), but he was also an al­bino. For these reas­ons and es­pe­cially be­cause he was an Omega, he was fre­quently bul­lied by the other mem­bers of the pack. Un­like other wolves that loved in­ter­ac­tion, Naqalk pre­ferred solitude. Be­cause he was con­stantly mocked by his step-brother and step-sis­ter, as well as by the al­pha fe­male, he would only find com­fort in his re­la­tion­ship with the al­pha male. After all, Naqalk felt that he must pro­tect Nákú­set be­cause he had saved his life. Naqalk was the type of cán­aala whose nos­tal­gia could be seen in his pink eyes. Al­bi­nos are ex­tremely rare among cán­aa­lah. Even if they are born, they do not man­age to last a long time in the wild. How­ever, Naqalk was now one year old and his ad­apt­a­tion to nature’s con­di­tions was rather satisfactory. 

∞

Dur­ing the night, when he would coil his tail around his muzzle and ears to keep him­self warm, he would re­mem­ber how he slept next to his mother’s breast; how her sur­vival thumps would as­sure him of pro­tec­tion and ten­der­ness; how he would play with the other four broth­ers and sis­ters, each of them prac­ti­cing their de­fense meth­ods. They were only two months old. They were part of a large pack: there were seven grown-up wolves and them. His fam­ily called him Wapék (White). One day, when play­ing next to a lake sur­roun­ded by trees with blue­ber­ries grow­ing next to their roots, they heard mul­tiple loud cries. Some did not be­long to an an­imal. They seemed like air thumps that hit the walls of your chest and knock you down. The other sounds were the whim­pers of an­im­als which were very close to them. Wapék iden­ti­fied the sound to come from the bank of the lake. He ran down and no­ticed a large an­imal with a black coat ly­ing with its head in the wa­ter. It was their mother. Quickly, with his sib­lings fol­low­ing, he was next to her and no­ticed a new shade in her coat: it was a red spot right on her ribs next to the chest where he used to feel safe. He looked more care­fully and no­ticed that all its aunts and uncles were ly­ing around the lake as well: some had their heads on stones; oth­ers were shak­ing, still try­ing to catch air. Their father was fallen on the roots of an oak tree, with his grey eyes still open. Then, strange creatures ap­peared. They caught the pups and tried to put them in odd boxes. Wapék man­aged to es­cape but he was al­most hit with that ar­ti­fi­cial aer­ial cry he had heard earlier. 

He ran to the woods back to the den where his mother would take care of them. He wept. He was about to howl and an­nounce his loss. Just be­fore this, he heard move­ment out­side the den. He thought that maybe one of his fam­ily mem­bers had es­caped and ran ex­citedly out­side. He didn’t ex­pect to en­counter him: it was an un­fa­mil­iar  cán­aala with yel­low eyes, grey and red coat and his muzzle smeared with blood, just like the one on his mother’s chest. Wapék was dis­turbed and afraid. But the grown-up cán­aala knew what had happened to the pup: their par­ents had been killed by hu­mans. He sat down on his haunches and looked at the frightened pup with self-pos­sessed calmness:

‘They are not com­ing back, you know.’

First, Wapék was afraid to an­swer and wanted to snarl, but he failed. 

‘How do you know?’ said Wapék. 

‘Hu­mans are ob­sessed with wild things. That’s why when they come here, they take everything they can either alive or dead, but never re­turn it.’ 

‘But why?’

‘It is a way of prov­ing su­prem­acy. We are the pro­tect­ors of the woods and the heal­ers of creatures. How­ever, we have never man­aged to pro­tect the woods from hu­mans or heal them from tak­ing what be­longs to this land. Every time we get rid of some hu­mans, more come back and they are more threat­en­ing to the living.’

‘Aren’t they like us?’

‘No, they aren’t. They don’t con­sider us equals. We are sub­or­din­ates, and sub­or­din­ates must obey whatever their whims are.’

‘Are they com­ing back?’

‘They will, yes.’

Wapék was terrified. 

‘Are they com­ing back for me?’

The un­known cán­aala re­acted surprised. 

‘The wild is about hold­ing on to life and fight­ing as well as you can with those who would cause you any harm. You are a spe­cial kind, and if the hu­mans no­ticed this pe­cu­li­ar­ity about you, they would prob­ably come back for you. Be­cause they knew about your pack, they could find this den very eas­ily and once they find your home, they find you. But this is not go­ing to hap­pen if you choose to come with me.’

Wapék wasn’t sure he un­der­stood right. He asked for more information:

‘Ex­cuse me, but where? And who are you, anyway?’

‘My name is Nákú­set and I live with my fam­ily on the moun­tain, op­pos­ite the lake, near the steep cliff.’

‘But Nákú­set, I wouldn’t be ac­cep­ted. I would be an out­sider. My mother taught me about this. The cán­aa­lah that enter a new pack have to work double so they can be treated as part of the pack…’ said Wapék. 

‘What is your name, son?’

Wapék was stunned. He barely could tell his name when he heard how Nákú­set called him ‘son’. It soun­ded ex­actly like his father. 

‘Wapék, we are still fam­ily in a way or an­other. If you stay here, you will either starve or be killed. A lonely cán­aala can hardly man­age on its own es­pe­cially when winter is ap­proach­ing. A cán­aala should al­ways pro­tect its kind, even if some have other beliefs.’

Wapék had mixed feel­ings, but he de­cided to go with Nákú­set. He thought at what his mother would tell him. He knew she would al­ways choose the right way to pro­tect him. 

‘Are you sure your fam­ily will ac­cept me, Nákúset?’

‘They are your fam­ily now, too. One more thing, son. I think we should give you a proper name that would say more about your vir­tues than just the col­our of your coat. How about Naqalk?’

‘Naqalk? What does that mean?’ said Wapék ac­tu­ally thrilled about the new name.

‘It means leave. The Canid only gave the name Naqalk to those who un­der­stood that sac­ri­fice is some­times un­avoid­able. Leav­ing the land of your fam­ily and go­ing to a new ter­rit­ory is not easy, es­pe­cially when you’re so young, but some­times it is ne­ces­sary. Some cán­aa­lah that end up alone like you are now usu­ally die. The pack work is really im­port­ant for the cán­aa­lah. Naqalk would lit­er­ally mean that you are a brave cán­aala that chose sur­vival over death and thus, a new cán­aala was born.’

‘Do you think it suits me, Nákúset?’

‘It cer­tainly does.’

Naqalk would con­stantly have the same dream:  he sleep­ing in his mother’s coat; he find­ing his dead fam­ily; he hid­ing from the creatures; he en­coun­ter­ing Nákú­set and he leav­ing with him to the new family. 

The Al­pha fe­male was not happy at all when he saw Nákú­set com­ing with an­other pup. Tep­kun­set star­ted snarling vi­ciously at Naqalk and caught Nákú­set by the neck. He didn’t an­swer back, as it is against the rule of the wild for a male cán­aala to at­tack a fe­male cán­aala. Naqalk was ter­ri­fied by Tep­kun­set. He knew she didn’t like him. One night, when he was sleep­ing among his new sib­lings, he heard her say:

‘But he is an albino.’

Al­bino? What is that? His mother had never called him an albino. 

‘His fam­ily had been slaughtered by the hu­mans. What was I sup­posed to do?’ Naqalk re­cog­nized Nákúset’s voice. 

‘You went out hunt­ing for your own pups, re­mem­ber?’ ‘The cán­aa­lah have been given two noble tasks: to pro­tect and to heal. I will pro­tect my kind and I will try to help him heal from what he’s been through.’ 

∞

Naqalk spent a lot of time on his own. When he was with the pack again, he tried to take care and edu­cate the new mem­bers –– the new pups –– but Tep­kun­set was usu­ally snarling at him when he was get­ting too close to the young. Some­times, when he was fed up with be­ing bul­lied by Mek­wék and Maqtewék, his step-sis­ter and step-brother, he would just go and hunt small an­im­als, like squir­rels or birds. When he was by him­self, he would spend a lot of time think­ing and liv­ing in the past. I don’t think I de­serve this name. Naqalk – the name of a noble cán­aala who un­der­stands the wild. But do I un­der­stand it? Of course not. I’m sure Nákú­set tried to give me a proper edu­ca­tion and help me grow into a re­spons­ible cán­aala, but I failed him. I failed my mother. Where is she now, any­way? I some­times fancy that she is not really dead and that while I am ly­ing in the sun in our meadow, she is re­turn­ing from hunt­ing. I’m sure this is not true, but I’m try­ing so hard to make it as real as pos­sible so I can be­lieve my­self. What would she say about my new fam­ily? I don’t think they care much about me. But they take care of you, my mother would say. They do, but is it just an act of kind­ness or an act of pity? I’m a full-grown cán­aala now. I’ve been think­ing for some time now to talk to Nákú­set about my emo­tions. Does he really care? I guess not. I’ll try.

Dur­ing that night, they all hunted down a moose. First, the Al­phas ate, then Mek­wék and Maqtewék to­gether with the new pups and at last, Naqalk man­aged to have a good meal as well. Be­fore fall­ing asleep, he went and asked Nákú­set to give him a mo­ment to talk. 

‘What troubles you, Naqalk?’

‘Nákú­set, it’s been one year since I’ve left the ter­rit­ory near the lake. I’m a full-grown cán­aala now. You’ve been really kind to me, but I think I’ve been enough of a bur­den already. I think it’s time to be on my own.’ In­vol­un­tar­ily, he gave out a griev­ing howl.

‘What are you howl­ing about? Why do you want to leave?’ said Nákú­set who didn’t ex­pect this. 

‘I’m an out­cast here. You know that.’

Nákú­set snarled at Naqalk when he said this. 

‘You are part of this fam­ily. Why do you want to desert it? We are here to pro­tect each other and heal wounds of whatever kind. I thought your wounds were healed long ago.’

‘I think I can­not be healed, Nákúset.’

Nákú­set jumped and bit him by his muzzle. Then, he calmly got up and licked Naqalk’s ears. 

‘If you want to leave the pack and find your­self a mate, fine. You have my bless­ing. But if you want to leave the pack just to be sol­it­ary, you will be just like the oth­ers: act­ing out of fool­ish­ness to prove your­self great for no real cause.’

‘No one really cares about me here.’

‘We care for each other be­cause we pro­tect each other. It doesn’t mat­ter who you are as long as you are a cánaala.’

‘Tep­kun­set said I was an al­bino in the first even­ing when I had ar­rived. It took me a long time to un­der­stand, but now I know. Al­bi­nos are very rare and they don’t live too much. I will never be as fast as Maqtewék or have such a good sight like Mek­wék. I am a bur­den. And when the food is scarce and you are no longer the Al­pha of this pack, I will be cast out. So, I have de­cided to leave be­fore this happens.’

‘No one will cast you out. You will al­ways have your place in the pack…’

Naqalk was already leaving. 

‘I will al­ways have my place as an Omega. The low­est, filthi­est and most miser­able place.’ And when he said this, he ran among the trees. Nákú­set didn’t fol­low him, as he thought Naqalk would return. 

∞

Naqalk was now in a dif­fer­ent land. He re­membered all the places where he had lived be­fore: the den next to the lake, then the cave next to the steep cliff. This place was dif­fer­ent. It was a very thick forest, still green due to pines and fir trees. Naqalk was mov­ing very smoothly among the frozen In­dian grass when he dis­covered a river run­ning down a val­ley. He leaped in the clean wa­ter and washed his paws of mud. The other side of it looked un­fa­mil­iar, but it made him really curi­ous. When he crossed the river to the op­pos­ite bank, he dis­covered new types of trees here. He smelled one of the fallen things from a tree in the snow and real­ized it was a walnut. 

There was a path go­ing up a hill which was half frozen. As he was climb­ing up, he no­ticed a small, rather aban­doned con­crete house. He peered in through the door and no­ticed it only held a few wood planks placed in a cer­tain way so that they can hold apples and pears. He went out of the house and he was now un­der a half-fallen quince tree. The tree seemed not to have grown ver­tic­ally as they usu­ally do, but al­most in a di­ag­onal dir­ec­tion. His roots grew chaot­ic­ally out­side the soil in­stead of grow­ing underground. 

Un­der the tree, Naqalk no­ticed a creature rais­ing some­thing in the air and then hit­ting a piece of wood. This blow would in­stantly split the wood in two. He was as­ton­ished. Sud­denly, the creature saw Naqalk and they each ana­lyzed each other. Naqalk didn’t move be­cause he was afraid, but he smelled fear com­ing from the creature. This tried to come closer to Naqalk, talk­ing in a lan­guage he could not un­der­stand, but without seem­ing a threat. Naqalk al­most in­vol­un­tar­ily star­ted snarling while sit­ting on his haunches. When the creature put his hand in front of his muzzle, he smelled it but couldn’t identify danger. Then, he just let the creature touch his head. It re­minded him of his mother’s caresses. The creature was pet­ting him, but at some point, it went in­side the house. So then, Naqalk got up and left the garden of the man who ac­tu­ally went in­side the house to bring him some­thing to eat. 

Later, while walk­ing in the woods again, he was think­ing at this con­nec­tion between the cán­aa­lah and these creatures Nákú­set called hu­mans. I think they are like us. Some of them ac­cept you, some of them don’t. Do they pro­tect each other the way we do? I think yes. I’m sure they smell danger, but they do it in a dif­fer­ent man­ner. Do they hunt food? I know they do, but some­times it af­fects the woods. We go in the forest for food but we are also the heal­ers of the woods. We don’t let it suf­fer, not like them.

While ex­plor­ing, he dis­covered an elk car­cass that was be­ing torn apart by some ravens. Sud­denly, he smelled some­thing ap­proach­ing him. 

At first, he couldn’t tell what it was. It was some­thing growl­ing and howl­ing, but in a dif­fer­ent way than he did. Then, he no­ticed a shadow mov­ing in the dis­tance. He wanted to run, and he did run, but he ended up in a snare. Naqalk tried des­per­ately to free him­self, when he saw one of those creatures that killed his mother. Two cries of aer­ial thumps were heard and a long wail­ing broke out from the val­ley of the pines. 

Nákú­set and the rest of the pack fol­lowed his trail when they heard the blows. He tried to smell the air and felt a slight sense of blood and Naqalk. When that happened, he let his tail fall down and led the pack back home. That night, the whole pack howled in mourn­ing for Naqalk. Nákú­set felt how he failed to heal Naqalk and be­cause of that, the young cán­aala chose to take this deadly path. This in­cid­ent changed the be­ha­vior of the pack. They no longer went in that part of the wood and they have never for­got­ten Naqalk. They know no oblivion. 

∞

Novem­ber 29^th, 1985

The trunks of apple trees are all frozen. Some still hold on to their last fruits. As strange as it might sound, I have al­ways liked look­ing out of my kit­chen win­dow and see­ing the orch­ard covered in snow, with trees on which crim­son or golden apples would still hang from branches covered with snow. It is Novem­ber, in­deed, but it’s already snowing.

Three days have passed since Cheveyo left. Al­most a year since I found him. We had a strange en­counter at first. That day, I heard the gun­shots near the forest where my cabin was. I took my rifle and ran. Then, from be­hind a thick fir tree, I saw them: two poach­ers watch­ing an an­imal caught in a snare howl­ing and snarling at them. A large, white animal…It was the wolf that came to me when I was chop­ping wood! I watched the two guys: clumsy, scared, only-driven-by-money people. The wolf was bleed­ing heav­ily. On his white fur, he had a thick blood stain. ‘The wound is really deep’, I thought. Then, I heard them:

‘That’s a big wolf… I won’t get closer to him now. Let’s leave him here for a while and hunt down some rab­bits or deer.’

‘Are you out of your mind? What if an an­imal comes and kills it?’

‘Calm down, for heaven’s sake. Look at it! It’s lit­er­ally shak­ing with an­ger and frus­tra­tion. Too bad for you, wolfie! Come on, Jerry. We won’t go far from here. Just around the places where the snares are. Just ima­gine catch­ing two more wolves!’

When they fi­nally left, I ap­proached the white wolf. He had caught his hind legs in the iron clench and be­cause of the fright, while try­ing vehe­mently to free him­self, his paws were all bleed­ing and his flesh was already vis­ible. When he sensed someone near him, he was already in a lam­ent­able state. He didn’t even snarl; just cast his eyes in the ground. I broke the grip. I looked at it but he didn’t move. I took it up in my arms striv­ing to get back to my cabin. 

It took him a whole week to get his health back. That was when I bap­tized him Cheveyo. It was a Nat­ive Amer­ican name mean­ing Spirit War­rior. When he would sit on his brown blanket next to the green stove, he would watch me writ­ing. Every time I caught his gaze, I would think that this wolf had seen so much death and pain. At such mo­ments, I would re­mem­ber a le­gend my uncle told me when I was a teen­ager. It was about this horned god that was saved by an enorm­ous wolf. The an­imal be­came the pro­tector and the healer of the woods.  I al­ways thought whether me sav­ing the wolf could be con­nec­ted to the wolf sav­ing the god. And then, did Cheveyo know about this le­gend? I think I’ll never know.

I liked the wild. I pre­ferred my sol­it­ary cabin to the crowded block of flats in some noisy city. I think Cheveyo was a her­mit, just like me. And we liked each other’s company. 

But I had to let Cheveyo go. You see, the wild loves deeply and wounds deeply. And Cheveyo knew that. That day, he licked my knuckles when I touched his muzzle and then we hugged. A long, crav­ing hug. Then, I watched how he went down the steep to­wards the val­ley of the pines. Be­fore he got into the pine woods, he looked back for a second. I thought he had changed his mind. But he just gave a short howl and lost his track in the unknown. 

Do wolves for­get? I will surely re­mem­ber my Cheveyo. Yes­ter­day, when I was chop­ping wood, I heard the howl­ing. Cheveyo! It was one single howl. ‘Still by your­self, ha?’, I thought. I wanted to hear one more sign of him so badly! But that was it. Then, while tak­ing the axe back in my hands, I stamped on the frozen grass. ‘I hope the wild is good with you’. 

∞

Selena Ac­qui

∞

(Writ­ten Decem­ber 5 2019)

Notes

* Cán­aa­lah is mostly an in­ven­ted word I made up in or­der to refer to wolves differently. 

1. woods, forest; 

2. I thought that the cán­aa­lah with the “h” at the end should be the plural form whereas cán­aala without an “h” should be the sin­gu­lar form. 

3. Names are taken from the fol­low­ing web­site: http://​www​.nat​ive​-lan​guages​.org/​m​i​k​m​a​q​_​w​o​r​ds.htm