Free Secrets of the Wolves by Dorothy Hearst

took a breath. Of all the humans, he spoke most easily with us, as if we were other humans or as if he were another wolf. It never seemed to bother him that he couldn’t understand us. It was almost a real conversation. A one-sided conversation.
    He buried his face deep in Marra’s neck fur. “I have to leave, before they see I’m gone.” MikLan threw his arms all the way around Marra’s chest. She grunted as he squashed her ribs. He let her go, nuzzled the top of her head, and ran off into the woods, as clumsy as a bear cub.
    Marra looked after him, satisfaction on her face.
    “Now can we go back?” I asked.
    Marra continued to watch the place where MikLan had disappeared, and for a moment I feared she would follow him.
    “Yes,” she said at last, “we can go back.” The contentment on her face was replaced with defiance. “But I’m not staying away from him while the two of you are at TaLi’s homesite. I won’t do it.”
    “You can’t go if Ruuqo says you shouldn’t,” Ázzuen argued. “You know that. If he thinks we aren’t responsible he might decide none of us pups can go.”
    Marra lifted her lip at him. I’d had enough.
    “Listen,” I said, “we will all get to be with our humans. It may take some time, but I’ll convince Ruuqo that you have to come, too. You have to trust me.”
    To my surprise, Marra’s fur settled on her back in a way it hadn’t when Ázzuen promised her earlier. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll wait. But I won’t wait for long.” She licked the last of the firemeat from her muzzle. “I’m hungry. I didn’t get much of the deer meat.”
    “Because Yllin had to sit on you to keep you from going after the humans,” Ázzuen said with a grin. “There are squirrels digging up their caches at the scrub meadow. Let’s go there. I don’t think Ruuqo is going to let me have much to eat right now.”
    The two of them set off for the meadow. When they saw I wasn’t following them, they stopped.
    “Aren’t you coming?” Marra asked.
    “No,” I said. “I want to sleep.”
    “When there’s good hunting?” Marra asked, blinking at me in disbelief. Then she grinned. “That leaves more squirrels for me,” she said, and bounded off.
    Ázzuen looked after her and then to me. Then he shot me an apologetic look and pelted after Marra. I waited until I was certain they were gone and set off in the opposite direction. I hadn’t forgotten the pine-acrid scent from the Great Plain. There was only one wolf who smelled like that, and I needed to talk to her.
    I returned to the Great Plain and tried to find the scent again, but the air was still, and the scent was gone. I sniffed around the spot where I had last picked up the scent but couldn’t find it. I still had several hours before I had to return to the pack, and I wasn’t ready to give up. I left the Great Plain and headed west.
    If I were looking for an ordinary wolf, I could sniff out her scent in her own territory, or look for her pack, but Lydda was no ordinary wolf. She was a youngwolf who had lived long ago—a wolf who, like me, had hunted with the humans. She had come to me when I was a smallpup and helped me against the Greatwolves, and again after the battle at Tall Grass. That had been three moons ago, and she had not been able to come to me since. Entering the world of the living weakened her. I had looked for her everywhere, in the early mornings and in the shadows of the dusk. I had tried to find the place she had told me about, where the world of life and the world of death came together. But I never found her. Now her scent blew through the valley once again, and if there was ever a time I needed her advice, it was now.
    I stopped when I reached a cluster of boulders set in a circle in a patch of dirt and grass. It was where the Greatwolves and human krianans held their Speakings, and the place where Lydda had first told me of her time with the humans. It was as good a place as any to try to look for