The Creature Known as Danger: One Wolf's Account of Humanity

Her scent, caught on the snow-fallen breeze, was entirely new to me, but my mother knew her kind.

We were in the tall-rock-place, and the scent on the wind was salt, blood, and something not quite floral that raised the ends of my thick fur with its echo touch. I had not yet survived my first winter.

When I bounded over to my mother, she was weary. Did she know to whom the scent belonged?

Danger, came my mother's answer, her tail stuck straight as a birch log.

My mother was an old wolf, and she had spent her whole life learning our territory and all that it held. Still, I was not so sure. I wanted to follow the scent on the wind, find this danger where it bedded down, where it bled.

My mother led me elsewhere.

-

Many moonrises later, my mother gave birth. Puffy, tickling flowers sprouted in the meadow, and suddenly, I had tiny siblings to play with, to teach, to help feed.

When my littlest brother crawled out of the den beneath the oak roots, licked and pawed at my mouth for more! more! more! I went back to the tall-rock-place.

My family, if you ever go there, you'll find the rock to be like that of the river-shaped pathways. It must have grown out from this place, but slowly, because I’ve never seen it grow and it does not have the growing scent. My mother told me it used to be the territory of animals larger then moose, who roared when they slithered. But they all died or went away, and I have never seen these animals.

That day, the wind carried my scent towards the creature. She was quiet and I did not sense her until she was in my peripheral vision. My gaze caught her and she was still. Being told of it, I know it is hard to understand, but she clutched a short stick not in her mouth but in one limb. We stared at each other for several slow heartbeats.

Danger! a crow called. Danger! danger! Watch closely! Move with care!

The wind changed, and she did not smell of danger. I did not recognize its posture in her body, which was unlike any other I have seen, even after all my winters. She was tall, not like the rocks that surrounded us but like a tree, although she did not smell of tree, not anymore then me. Rather, the fear scent fled her body like scattering deer.

The creature moved, lowered the limb with the stick, and something else moved too.

A second skin! It didn't smell like an elk or a white-tail or any other animal I knew. Was this second skin all hers?

I came closer with a lack of caution my mother would have nipped me for. The crows screamed their warning, voices joining, echoing, but I only followed their advice to watch closely.

Quickly, the creature turned and tripped like an elk at the end of a hunt. She yelped like a pup, but she smelled to be of mating age. Was she a pray animal? I couldn’t smell any others like her on her, and hadn’t before, either. So, she was independent.

I bounded over to her, and she brought her limbs to her face, breathing heavily, the fear in the air between us. I stayed away from her biting mouth and her kicking hind legs, the ends of which appeared to be hooves, although they were not quite like any other animal's hooves.

A crow landed on the stone, reconsidered if she might not be danger but rather near death and ready for a wolf to rip her open. I reconsidered, too, and retreated a short distance, threw my head back, and howled for my pack.

She got up quaking, on all four of her limbs then on two. I wanted to stay with her, to learn more. Certainly I could have caught her! I didn't. I let her escape between the tall rocks, hooves hitting the stone earth.

My same-age brother found me and asked, what was so exciting?

My ears perked at the thought of her. I led him to the spot where the creature had fallen. The scent told: scared, adult, had bedded down in pine needles. The almost floral scent was absent. It must have been from a far away plant, and she had walked a long way to the tall-rock-place. I thought perhaps I would smell it again, even find its source, when I left my home territory to find my mate.

I never smelled it again.

My brother told me: this is the smell of danger.

Our bellies burned with hunger.

-

I returned to the tall-rock-place frequently, even though many of the small animals who made their burrows there tasted slightly of sickness.

I would see the creature half-hidden behind the rocks with the gaps underneath. The fear smell became less strong with each meeting of our gazes.

Once, when the moon had barely risen, and the light was at its halfway point, her legs collapsed beneath her like a dying deer. Her calls were high-pitched, pup-like, but distorted, and they tugged at me. She smelled strongly of despair and exhaustion.

I slinked forward, waiting for her to turn and stumble away.

She didn’t.

As I came closer, she opened her mouth, heavy breathing carrying an unknown scent.

Slowly, like a snake, she extended her non-hoofed limb towards me. Danger! I remembered who I was and retreated, my claws scraping the stone. With the distance of a large elk herd between us, I howled for my family.

They did not respond with calls of their own, but the creature did.

She was not loud enough for my family to hear, but she howled nevertheless, laying on her side, head tilted towards the sun.

I stopped calling out. I watched her. My family did not respond—they'd be scattered in the forest and the meadow, hunting and caregiving.

My own fear left me completely, and I walked back towards the creature. She quieted. Her breath came slow and even. I stepped close enough that she could extend a limb and touch my paw. It's true! I put my head down, raised my tail, and licked her salty eyelids.

I memorized her taste, but after I walked away, I never saw the creature alive again. When my mother said hello to me, licked my mouth. She told me that she knew the taste, too, that she had never hunted or killed a creature of this kind, but she had fed from several. She said they used to live in hives in the tall-rock-place. Hives! I can’t imagine an animal like that in a hive, like a bumblebee. My mother told me one had lived in a huge den in the forest at the edge of our territory, and had always carried a stick. It was not a normal stick, in smell, or function. They would—I know you do not believe such a thing! The creatures would raise a limb and whatever was across from the stick would get struck by something, causing a severe bloody injury. With the injury came a quick, lightning-less thunder.

Young ones, you do not believe me the way I could not, at first, believe my mother. But you will grow, and perhaps you, too, will venture into the tall-rock-place, with its bad tasting but easy to hunt pray animals. And perhaps you will enter one of the tall-rock-caves, so different from other sorts of caves, and you'll also climb to the top of the cave, and find the half rotted flesh of the strangest creature I ever met.