The Blood Spilt

YELLOW LEGS

Yellow Legs trots out of her own territory. She can’t stay there. Over the border into another pack’s territory. She can’t stay there either. It’s extremely dangerous. A clearly marked area. Fresh scent markings are like a barbed wire fence between the tree trunks. A wall of scents runs through the long grass sticking up through the snow; they’ve sprayed here, scratched with their back feet. But she has to get through, she has to go north.

The first day goes well. She’s running on an empty stomach. Urinates low, pressing herself to the ground so the smell won’t spread, maybe she’ll make it. She’s got the wind behind her, that’s good.

The next morning they pick up her scent. Two kilometers behind her, five wolves are sniffing at her trail. They set off after her. They take turns to lead, and soon make visual contact.

Yellow Legs senses their presence. She has crossed a river, and when she turns she can see them on the other side, less than a kilometer downstream.

Now she’s running for her life. An intruder will be killed immediately. Her tongue is hanging outside her mouth. Her long legs carry her through the snow, but there is no well-trodden track to follow.

Her legs find the tracks of a scooter, going in the right direction. The others follow it, but not so quickly.

When they are just three hundred meters behind her, they suddenly stop. They’ve chased her out of their territory, and a little bit further.

She’s escaped.

One more kilometer, then she’ll lie down. Eat some snow.

The hunger is gnawing at her stomach like a vole.

She continues her journey northward. Then, where the White Sea separates the Kola peninsula from Karelia, she turns northwest.

The early spring keeps her company. It’s hard to run.

Forest. A hundred years old and older. Conifers halfway to the sky. Naked, spindly, bare of needles almost all the way to the top. And right up there, their green, swaying, creaking arms build a roof. The sun can hardly penetrate, can’t manage to melt the snow yet. There are just patches of light and the drip of melting snow from high in the trees. Dripping, trickling, dribbling. Everything can smell spring and summer. Now it’s possible to do more than merely survive. The beat of heavy wings from the birds in the forest, the fox out of its den more and more often, the shrew and the mouse scampering along the icy crust of the snow in the mornings. And then the sudden silence as the whole forest stops, sniffs and listens to the she-wolf passing by. Only the black woodpecker continues his constant hammering on the tree trunks. The dripping doesn’t stop either. The spring is not afraid of the wolf.

Bog country. Here the early spring is a torrent of water beneath a mushy, sodden covering of snow that turns to gray slush under the slightest pressure. Every step sinks deep. The she-wolf begins to travel by night. The icy crust on the snow will bear her weight. She settles in a hollow or under a pine tree during the day. On her guard even when she’s asleep.

Hunting is different without the pack. She catches hares and other small wild animals. Not much for a wolf on a long journey.

Her relationship to other animals is different too. Foxes and ravens are quite happy to be with a pack of wolves. The fox eats the pack’s leftovers. The raven prepares the wolf’s table. He shouts from the trees: There’s prey over here! It’s a rutting deer! Busy rubbing his antlers against a tree! Come and get him! A bored raven can sometimes plump down in front of a sleeping wolf, peck its head and take a few hops backwards, looking slightly ridiculous and clumsy. The wolf snaps at it. The bird takes off at the very last second. They can entertain each other like this for quite some time, the black and the gray.

But a lone wolf is no playmate. She doesn’t turn down any prey, doesn’t want to play with birds, isn’t willing to share.

One morning she surprises a vixen outside her earth. Several holes have been dug in a slope. One of the holes is hidden beneath a tree root. Only her tracks and a little bit of soil on the snow outside gives away its location. The vixen emerges from the hole. The wolf has picked up the acrid scent and taken a slight diversion from her route. She moves down the slope into the wind, sees the fox poke her head out, the spindly body. The wolf stops, freezes on the spot, the fox has to come out a little bit further, but as soon as it turns its head in this direction it will see her.

She pounces. As if she were a cat. A fight through the bushes and the branches of a fallen young spruce. Bites the fox right across her back. Snaps the spine. Eats her greedily, holding the body down with one paw as she rips the flesh, gulping down what little there is.

Two ravens immediately appear, working together to try to secure a share. One risks its life, coming dangerously close to make her chase it so that its companion can quickly steal a morsel. She snaps at them as they dive-bomb her head, but her paw doesn’t leave the body of the fox. She gobbles every scrap, then trots around all the other holes, sniffing. If the fox had cubs and they’re not too far down, she can dig them out, but there’s nothing there.

She returns to her original route. The legs of the lone wolf move restlessly onward.