Nadya—The Wolf Chronicles

by Pat Murphy


A little bit of background on the book:

Growing up on the edge of the Missouri wilderness in 1830, Nadya knew she was not like other girls. When she reached adolescence and the Change came, Nadya — like her mother and father before her — became a wolf when the moon was full. When Nadya was eighteen, an unexpected tragedy caused her to flee from her home, traveling westward to the Oregon territory. On the way, she finds danger, love, and thrilling adventures.

This excerpt begins after Nadya has left her home in Missouri. She is traveling alone across the prairies.

Chapter 12

After leaving Wolf Crossing, Nadya avoided settlements. That first night on the trail, as she sat by her campfire, she took out her hunting knife, sawed off her long braid, and threw it on the fire. When the hair burned, the acrid smoke brought tears to her eyes.

The next day, she rode west, always west. She wore trousers and kept Papa's hat pulled low over her eyes. If anyone wondered where the Rybak family had gone, if they wondered what had happened to Nadya Rybak, if they wondered how Rufus had died, they would come looking for a young woman, traveling with her parents. No one would be looking for a young man, traveling alone.

After a few days, she left the Missouri woodlands behind. The prairie lands of Kansas were flat and open: no trees; no hills; just an endless sky. She talked sometimes as she rode. Not to herself, but to her mother. She said that she was sorry, that she should have listened, that the cards had warned her. The wind, when it blew through the tall grass, whispered in her mother's voice. Nadya wept sometimes, and the wind caught her tears and carried them away to water the prairie grass.

The horse, Rufus's gray gelding, kept up a steady pace. Each day, she rode until she was exhausted, but even then she did not sleep well. She lay awake at night, wrapped in a blanket and staring up at the stars that dotted the vast sky.

She ate whatever she killed-jackrabbits and wild prairie chickens and once a pronghorn antelope. She did not care much for food, and she ate what she needed to live, nothing more. After a time, her trail joined the emigrant trail that ran alongside the Platte River and she followed the ruts left by emigrant wagons heading west.

Sometimes, she made camp where other travelers had camped. She could smell their leavings. Bear grease dripping from wagon wheels. Corn bread and whiskey. Used tea leaves, dumped in the prairie grass. Familiar scents that reminded her of home.

She gained on the emigrants, day by day. They were traveling slowly in ox-drawn wagons; she made better time. At night, as she gazed up at the stars, she thought about catching up to the emigrants. Perhaps she could travel with them for a time. Sometimes, she thought she would welcome human company.

But then she would remember her last experience of human company. She remembered the baying of hounds and the shouting of the men on her trail, pursuing her. She remembered the wolfskins strapped behind Rufus's saddle. And she knew that she wanted no company. When she saw the wagon train in the distance, she would leave the trail and make her way around the emigrants, not even stopping to exchange greetings. She wanted nothing to do with other travelers on the trail.
On the afternoon of the Change, she stopped well before sunset and made camp by the Platte River. After building a fire, she roasted and ate a prairie hen that she had shot. She tethered her horse securely in a patch of lush prairie grass and stowed her saddlebags nearby. The moon was still below the horizon, but she could feel its pull in her belly, in her groin.

Alone on the prairie, with the emptiness of the grassland around her, she undressed, folding her clothing and putting it in her saddlebags to keep it from the dew. So strange, so lonely, to be waiting for the Change with no one else nearby. Always before, her parents had been with her.
She stood naked in the tall prairie grass. The wind ruffled her short, unruly hair, and she pushed it back from her face. She faced the east, looking toward the rising moon. The sun set behind her and her long shadow stretched away into the empty land. She felt as cold and as empty as the land around her.

In the distance she heard a wolf howl, a low note that was joined, after a moment, by another wolf. A third wolf joined in, then a fourth and a fifth. Somewhere nearby, a pack was gathering together and announcing their claim on this land. This patch of prairie was their territory, their place.
The first light of the full moon burned on Nadya's skin. She closed her eyes and opened her arms to the moonlight. She Changed, and a gray wolf stood by the grazing horse, gazing eastward in the moonlight.

The past, which had concerned her so much as she made her way across the prairie, faded with the Change; the future became irrelevant. Those other times-that faded past, that irrelevant future-those times did not exist. What mattered was this single moment, this now.

The warm air was rich with scents. She lifted her head and breathed deeply, catching smells that had eluded her before. Somewhere, not too far, there were other wolves.
She followed her nose to find the pack's scent markings on a nearby boulder. This unobtrusive gray rock had been marked by each member of the pack in turn. She investigated the smells thoroughly. The wolves had been here recently — maybe a few hours back. Two males and three females. One of the females, by the smell, had pups; Nadya could smell traces of nursing milk where the wolf had rested in the grass. She left her own scent mark on the boulder and continued on her way.

The wolves howled again. They were speaking to her, but not in the structured, controlled fashion of human words and sentences. The howling went straight to her heart and her belly and her groin with a visceral pull. She could not ignore this call, any more than she could stop her heart from beating. The message was one of longing and one of threat. We are here, this is our land, our place. Do you hear us? We are here. This is ours.

Thought and action were the same; there was no gap between them. She was thinking about going to the wolves and she was trotting toward them, moving across the prairie with a steady loping pace that she could maintain for hours without tiring. She headed away from the river, following the scent of wolves in the grass.

She had been traveling for half an hour when she saw the pack in the distance. Half a dozen wolves had gathered on a small rise. On the wind, she caught a milky scent — this was a den site with young pups. She slowed her pace, drawn to the wolves but feeling suddenly anxious. Her heart was pounding quickly, and she resisted the urge to run.

In the Missouri woods, in the company of her own family, she had never met another pack. More than once, they had found the scent markings of other wolves in their nocturnal wanderings, but her father had always led his family away from those animals, avoiding an encounter with another pack.
Nadya was upwind of the pack and they had not noticed her yet. She hesitated, gazing at the distant animals. The hair on her neck and back was bristling, an involuntary response to the nearness of these strange wolves. One of the wolves caught sight of her and barked, a breathy sound that turned into a low, hoarse howl, alerting the pack to the presence of a stranger. All the wolves turned to face Nadya, fixing her with intense stares.

Nadya whined low in her throat, flattening her ears, tucking her tail between her legs, and lowering her head submissively. Part of her wanted to run away, but she was drawn to the pack by her loneliness and her need for companionship. At the same time, she was afraid, knowing that she did not belong here.

It is difficult to apply human words to situations that have no words. Encounters among wolves are not discussions, not quarrels, not arguments. But a conversation takes place, a dialogue of movements and gestures. There are no words, but much is communicated by the position of the ears, the attitude of the tail, the angle of the head. Much is expressed by pulling back the lips to show the teeth, by staring fixedly, by growling low in the throat.

A wolf pack is a complex social hierarchy in which each animal knows its position. The central question in any conversation among wolves is simple: who is dominant? who has the power? The dominant wolf is not always the strongest animal. Sometimes, dominance is a matter of attitude, of personality and intelligence. But always the question of dominance is at the heart of any interaction.
In an established pack, relationships are clear and well-defined. As puppies, packmates wrestle and fight in ritualized combat, establishing the social order. As adults, the wolves in the pack are always testing one another, jockeying for better positions in the hierarchy. But though they challenge one another constantly, each wolf knows its place, knows who is dominant and who must submit.

That's how it is in an established pack. But when a strange wolf meets that pack, power relationships are not clear. The outsider is a threat to the established social order, a competitor for the resources on which the pack depends, a trespasser on the pack's territory. Nadya was all of those things — and a threat to the pack's young pups as well. In this situation, the rules of ritualized combat did not apply. The wolves of this pack would protect their own by injuring or killing the outsider.

The alpha female, the mother of the pups in the den, was the first to rush Nadya, lunging toward her and biting at her forelegs. Nadya reared back on her hind legs, snatching her legs away from the snapping jaws. The other wolf reared back as well, snarling and biting savagely at Nadya's neck. Nadya parried the wolf's open jaws with her teeth, matching bite for bite while backing away, giving ground before the fierce attack. The wolf got a grip on the thick fur at Nadya's neck and shook her head like a terrier with a rat, trying to tear the skin. Nadya caught the alpha female's ear in her teeth, tasting blood and preventing the animal from shakng her head again. The wolf lost her grip on Nadya's neck, and Nadya wrestled her to the ground.

If the alpha female had been alone, Nadya might have won the fight. But as Nadya wrestled the alpha female to the ground, the rest of the pack closed in, mobbing her from all sides, tearing at her face, snapping at her legs, biting at her unprotected back. She was borne down beneath half a dozen snarling wolves. She felt jaws closing on her foreleg, jaws tearing at her lip, jaws ripping at her ear.
She had to get away. Thought became action and she was wriggling out from beneath them, bucking them off, snapping and snarling and threatening. Then she was on her feet and running — a panicked desperate flight away from the den, away from the wolves. The pack chased her through the prairie grass, but she outpaced them, her legs pumping, her breath coming fast, her heart pumping.

She did not know how long they chased her. A mile perhaps, then the pack members abandoned the chase, one by one. She was alone again, running across the prairie in the moonlight, running though no one pursued her. Running to escape the scent of the wolves, the scent of home, the scent of sorrow.

At last, she collapsed in the grass, breathing hard. Her lip was torn where a wolf had grabbed it. Her forelegs and back were bloody where hard bites had broken the skin. She was bruised from falling beneath the pack of wolves and weary from running.

For a time, she lay in the grass and licked her wounds, cleaning her fur of blood and soothing the cuts with her tongue. As she rested, her heart slowed to a steady beat.

In the distance, a wolf howled. It was the alpha female, calling the others back to her. Nadya lay still, listening as the other wolves joined in, singing in the night. This is our place, they said. You do not belong here.

Nadya sampled the wind. She could not smell the pack — she was far from the den now. The wind had shifted and she caught the scent of wood smoke and oxen. She stood, lifting her head and breathing deeply. Intriguing smells: lye soap and cayenne pepper, wheat flour and salted pork, corn meal and spices.

She stood and shook herself, then followed the wind, drifting toward the human smells. A canvas-topped wagon stood by the river. A bay mare was tied to the wagon's wheel, asleep on her feet, by the look of it. Six oxen grazed nearby, tethered in the tall grass. The grazing oxen glanced at Nadya, then ignored her, understanding from her actions that she was not hunting just now. Not far from where the oxen grazed, Nadya found a mound of earth, a grave, newly dug.

She drifted closer to the wagon. The ashes in the fire pit were cold, but the smell of biscuits lingered. And other smells: a woman, alone. A flame flickered inside the wagon, illuminating the canvas from within.

The human part of Nadya, a tiny corner of her mind, thought it odd to see a lone wagon. Emigrants traveled in groups for protection against Indian attack.

Curious, drawn by the smell of the woman, Nadya approached the wagon slowly, until she stood right behind it, breathing deeply of the scents. She heard paper rustling inside the wagon. The woman was reading by the light of a tallow candle. The scent of burning tallow touched the human part of Nadya, reminding her of winter nights in the cabin in Missouri. She stood by the wagon for a moment, forgetting her pains, feeling warm and happy.

A night hawk called overhead and the horse woke, startled by the sound. The mare snorted and shifted her feet restlessly. Catching sight of Nadya, she snorted again and reared up, tugging on the wagon wheel and rocking the wagon, just a little.

Nadya slipped away from the spooked horse, quietly putting distance between herself and the wagon. She was moving away when the woman flung the back flap of the wagon open. The woman's eyes were wild; she stank of fear. She clutched a pistol awkwardly in both hands. Her white nightgown flapped in the breeze. The horse, terrified by this sudden apparition, reared again, whinnying in fear.

Nadya was just starting to run when she heard the explosion of the pistol. Then the oxen were running with her, the lead ox having lunged forward and ripped up his tether. His bell rang furiously as he ran, and the other oxen followed him, stampeding away from the frightening noise, the flapping white thing that pursued them and called out in a human voice. "Whoa! Wait! Bill Sikes! Fagin! Oliver! Whoa!"

The voice faded behind Nadya as she ran, outpacing the oxen. For the second time that night, she ran away through the tall grass, her heart pounding with fear. This time, she ran back to her own camp, where the gray gelding grazed by the riverside. She lay down beside her saddlebags and bedroll, reassured by the familiar smells. She curled up and finally, exhausted from running and fear, slept for a time.

When she woke, the moon was low in the western sky. In the east, she could see the first light of dawn. She stood to greet the sun and the morning light touched her gray fur with color, warming her after the long night.

What is it like, returning to humanity after a night on the wild side? It's like waking from a dream of passion alone in your bed. You remember holding someone in your arms, but that someone is gone.

It's like pulling on a pair of old shoes that don't quite fit anymore. Too tight, too confining. As the sun rises and the moon sets, the scents that fill your world begin to fade. And words return to you, words and thoughts that seem so important when you are human. But in that moment, when you are coming back, words seem trivial and foolish, the gruntings of an ape shaping sounds around an idea.

In the moment that you return to yourself, you know that words are all too often lies. Even when you try to make them true, words are incomplete. There are no words for the night you have lived, for the scents no human can smell, for the sounds that humans can't hear. No words for the fears and longings that have touched you and left you changed.

But words come back to you. And with the words come memories of the past and worries for the future, filling your mind so that the world of now is diminished, squeezed smaller and smaller so that there's scarcely any room for it at all.

Nadya stretched in the sunlight. Her body, now changed, no longer bore the bites and bruises of the night before, but the memory of those pains lingered. She was alone, and that was hard. It was always hard returning to her human form, but it had been easier when her mother and father were with her.

She bathed in the river, immersing herself in the warm murky water and scrubbing with the bar of lye soap she had carried in her saddlebag. The smell of the soap reminded her of the wagon she had visited in the night. Fragments of memory: a wild-eyed woman, running in the moonlight; a pistol shot; a desperate voice calling to the oxen, calling them back. Why would a woman be out on the prairie alone? And what would she do without her oxen, without her horse?

Nadya left the river and dried herself on her shirt, then pulled on her clothes. She was weary from the Change, but memories of the previous night made her restless, unable to sleep. She saddled her horse and went looking for the oxen that had stampeded in the night.

Legal Stuff:


This entire document is Copyright (C) 1996 by Pat Murphy. All rights reserved.
This work not be reprinted, translated, sold, or distributed without prior permission.

Permissions and Corrections: Send requests for publication permissions or information corrections to "jaxxx@well.edu". Also include an e-mail address to which I can send requests for more information.

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