He Cried Wolf

“The Native Americans call animals the children of the earth.
The wolf they call big mouth. Legend says the wolf sent spirit messages to the world beyond.”

- Unknown.

…………..

My father was dead. He was dead, but I didn’t cry. The braves of our tribe never cried, not even in the face of disaster. I was only a boy then, but in a few more winters I would become a man and men never shed tears.

It happened while he was hunting, his horse had reared onto his hind legs and my father had been roughly thrown off, landing on the hard ground. The medicine man told us that my father was bleeding internally and that no amount of ceremonies or chants would be enough to heal him. So the other braves painted their faces and placed feathers in their hair and for one whole night they danced around the roaring fire, begging the spirits and asking them to have mercy on my father who was feverish and in agony as he lay in the medicine man’s tepee.

I couldn’t participate in this ritual because I was still young but I liked watching how our warriors jumped around the fire, their voices strong yet pleading as they implored for mercy from the spirit world. I felt a surge of pride for my father, who had all of this respect from our tribe, maybe even more than our Chief. My father was wise and he was brave, Mingan was his name and it meant ‘Grey Wolf’, and his strength matched that of a full grown horse. He was worthy of the tribe’s admiration, and mine, especially since I was extremely hard to control, but my father was astute and knew exactly how to handle me. He told me that on the day of my birth, he named me Hakan, meaning ‘like fire’, given the way I wouldn’t let myself be held because I kicked and cried so tirelessly. My mother had laughed then, and forced me to be still in her arms while she fed me. My mother was in the spirit world, she had died just a few days after giving birth to me.

Now, it seemed, my father’s spirit would join hers in the other life. The morning came when the medicine man emerged from the teepee wearing a sorrowful expression and I immediately knew what had happened. The people who had stayed awake with me during the silent vigil came and embraced me after the medicine man had uttered: “Mingan, the Grey Wolf has passed on into the spirit world.”

Their words of comfort seemed distant to my young ears and my eyes were glazed over with moisture, but I was fire, like my name and my father deserved respect and remembrance…not sorrow and tears. Especially not from the son he raised.

That night our tribe buried my father’s body in the woods beyond the fields of maize and as I watched the warriors perform their mournful Dance of the Dead, my grandfather (one of the oldest and wisest), Sicheii, sat down beside me and spoke;

“The spirits of those we love never leave this world. They become our guides, we must be prudent enough to sense them and humble enough to listen. We need to hear their voices on the wind and feel their presence in the air. But most importantly, Hakan…we must believe that what we see is real.”

His voice was aged and hoarse but I understood his words. I nodded silently and he smiled, the wrinkles on his face becoming more pronounced as he did so. He clumsily patted my head with a crooked hand, causing a few of the feathers from the leather head-band to slip into my long, black hair. My grandfather was the only family I had left now.

I stared through the flames that licked and flickered over the logs, and I caught sight of Yazhi, daughter of one of the tribe’s older warriors. She was crying, probably for my father…or for me. We had been friends since we were infants but now the time had come for her to be married. Then I would see her no more, and I hated that…she had become so beautiful, with her long raven black hair and large brown eyes, now filled with bitter tears. If I were old enough, I would have asked for her hand in marriage but I had not yet reached the official manhood of the tribe.

After the funeral rite, life carried on as normal. The hunts, the gathering of corn, the weaving…everything. The men went to the plains each day to hunt for food and the women stayed in the vast fields of maize as the children explored and played. Months passed this way and before we knew it, a harsh winter was upon us, cold and cutting like the edge of a warrior’s axe. The freezing nights meant that we were in need of plenty firewood and my task was to go into the forest and collect some. One afternoon, when the sun was slowly sinking under the horizon, I trudged to the forest in my deerskin moccasins in search of small logs and sticks for the tribe’s fire. The trees looked so sinister now that the sun had set, and the branches almost looked like thin arms, but I wasn’t scared. I was Hakan…I was fire.

I stooped low to pick up a bunch of dry sticks from the snow covered ground. After a few minutes I had a considerable pile in my arms. Suddenly I heard the snap of a twig behind me. I spun around and found myself standing feet away from the largest grey wolf I had ever seen. I was frozen like the ice on the ground. The wolf’s blue eyed glare was fixed upon me. Just then a strong gust of cold wind blew, whipping through my hair and the feathers that were in it. And I heard something…a voice, strangely breathy like a sigh. A voice in the wind.

Hakan….my son…

My heart was pounding like a battle drum and I stared at the grey wolf. For one fleeting moment, it looked like it was smiling at me. It turned around elegantly to leave and I reacted, dropping the bundle of sticks and throwing out my arm.

“Wait!” I cried. But the grey wolf had disappeared into the growing darkness. I practically ran back to the tribe, bringing only half of the wood I had found. I began shouting like a crazy person, telling anyone who would listen that I had seen my father, that he was alive in the form of a wolf spirit, but they only shook their heads and told me that it must have been dark and what I had seen was a shadow or a log. No one believed me. Yazhi was there, holding a pot of steaming corn. She gazed at me, and then nodded. I saw then that she knew I was telling the truth.

My grandfather had believed me but he died only days after and I still shed tears for him and for my father now, as an adult, as a husband and as a father. I often tell my little son that story, the one of the Grey Wolf Guardian and of many other spirits that guide us. I remember one night, when I sat outside our tepee after supper and my son was seated beside me, I told him all about the incident in the forest. He listened as I talked about the wolves who were the messengers of the dead and of the living and I mentioned many things my father and grandfather had said to me. Sik’is, my little son, laughed and embraced me, saying that those were only stories. He has seen but eight winters, yet he is as sharp as an eagle. Yazhi, my wife, called him into the tent to prepare him for bed and off he went, running into his mother’s arms. I remained outside, gazing at the glowing full moon in the sky. My grandfather had been right, the spirits were all around us, watching us and guiding us, we only had to listen carefully. And I knew my father was out there still, the Grey Wolf, my guide and my strength and I believed in him, even if no one else would.

I got to my feet and put out the fire with handfuls of soil. I took one last look at the starlit sky and the silence of the night was pierced by a single wolf howl, long and echoing. I smiled slowly and with one hand I pushed away the flap of the tepee, and stepped inside.