Free A Hero's Tale by Catherine M. Wilson Page A

clan gathered.
    I woke with a start and saw, across the circle, a wolf sitting among us. I was about to cry out a warning when I realized that it was a man asleep, his chin resting on his chest, so that the shining eyes of his wolf's head cap seemed to gaze directly at me. I peered out into the darkness. I saw no wolves, but I felt their presence, more than the three we had hunted with.
    Two of the men were dozing, as I had been. The others kept the watch. One of them saw that I was awake and caught my eye. He nodded, to pass his watch to me, then tucked his chin against his chest and closed his eyes.
    When I was a child, I used to lie awake at night in my familiar room, where even in the dark I could picture everything around me, the image in my mind's eye as faithful as that of ordinary sight. As I kept the watch that night, I beheld a picture in my mind of the forest all around me. It was not a picture left in memory or conjured by imagination, but a knowledge that came less through the senses than through the heart. I saw squirrels asleep in hollow trees, rabbits in their burrows and hunting cats in their dens, weasels and badgers curled up tight against the cold. A tawny owl drifted in the sparkling air, listening for the scurrying feet of mice and voles in their runways beneath the snow. While furred and feathered creatures stirred with life, the slumbering trees reached deep into the earth in search of dreams, their roots descending, deep into the dark.
    At the time I didn't think it strange that I should be aware of all these things. Even as it slept, the forest was aware of me, as it was aware of all the animals that sheltered there. It was the forest that had dreamed us into life, and I shared the forest's dream.
    In the morning the wolves were gone. Their pawprints in the snow showed us how close they had come. The day before, this evidence of danger all around us would have terrified me. Now, while I still had great respect for the power of the wolves, I no longer feared them.
    The journey home seemed endless. I think I must have slept through part of it. I fell into that strange waking sleep in which the body does what it must do while the mind steps through a veil into the land of dreams. I lost awareness of my body, as my dreaming self rose into the air and looked down on a band of hunters trudging homeward through the snow. Then I lost sight of them, as my dreaming self rose above the treetops into a dark winter sky. Below me I heard the forest sighing, as a woman sighs in sleep, while above me grumbling clouds blew by. This was the time for sleep, while darkness gathered.
    Through the dark of early evening, our feet guided us along the familiar path. It drew us on, as more and more we felt the pull of home, where we would be warm and welcome.
    Maara took me to bed right after supper, while the men were still telling the story of the hunt. I listened, half-asleep, to a tale so full of whimsy that if I had not lived it myself, I would have considered it no more than a dreamer's wild imaginings. The telling of the story mingled in my mind with my own dreams.
    I heard Worr say, "We had a good laugh over it," and knew he was speaking of the big wolf who had chased him, but he told the story in such a way that I saw him and the wolf sitting side by side at our hearth fire, as fond as brothers, sharing a joint of meat and an amusing tale.
    When I heard someone speak my name, my curiosity struggled against sleep.
    "And Tamara the Fast -- "
    "No, Tamara Clumsy Feet."
    "Yes, he fell."
    Someone made a whirring sound that brought into my mind an image of myself, arms waving wildly as I tried to keep my balance.
    "And the wolf -- " A whooshing sound and the shadow on the cave wall of a hunter's upraised arms. "Such a leap!"
    Maara's arms tightened around me. I tried to tell her that the story ended happily, but I found I couldn't speak.
    It was dark when I awoke. I was too warm. I tried to throw off the elk robe, but it