Pine Ridge
an excerpt

Amy was nearly there, and her heart thundered with the excitement as much as with the effort.
She found the last toehold and pulled herself up by the root of a proud pine. Then the sheer slope abruptly flattened, and as long, thin ridge comparable to that of a mountain plateau opened up in front of her. Amy ran forward, and letting the rucksack slip down to the ground threw her arms wide. She stopped just short of the lip of the ridge and gave a long whoop of triumph. The beauty of Pine Ridge was laid out before her, in all its grey-green glory of layered slopes and valleys, crevasses and glens. Her hair came a little loose from her tress, tossed by the playful hands of the breeze that always dwelled up here. She stood for a while in bliss, and the world held a perfect tableau for a few moments. Then the peace and serenity was shattered by two loud successive gunshots, which echoed across the forest. Amy jumped in shock, and immediately turned her head, tying to locate the source of the profane noise. Her mind filled with outrage, and an anger as old as the trees themselves rose within her. How dare they. How dare they. Without thinking, she picked up her pack and ran towards the noise. Judging from how loud they had been, it had probably happened quite close by. The echo told her that it was almost due West from the point where she stood. She half-ran, half tumbled down the slope opposite the one she’s just climbed, and kept going, powered by the force of her rage. She tore through bushes. Brambles clung to her clothes and scratched at her face. But she went on and on. She’d been going for half an hour at least, and still she denied the dawning feeling that she would not find what was in all likelihood poachers or hunters of some sort. She gave little thought to what she would do if she found them. Her anger enough seemed to be a reason. Hunting was prohibited, damn them, prohibited! When would they learn? She’d almost given up when she ran into a clearing in which the smell of smoke hung heavy on the air. There was a definite feeling of unrest here. No birds sang. There was not so much as a rustle. Amy’s anger rolled up afresh in her heart as she saw a kind of primitive wooden construction, and on rough wooden poles strung together hung the skins and pelts of various animals. She saw fox and lynx. She saw martin. There was even wolf. She looked on bitterly for a moment, and then she knelt down in the clearing and inspected the ground. Unsurprisingly she found human tracks, but also something else. Perhaps a large dog of sorts. The ground itself was a scene of chaos to an amateur tracker such as Amy was. If the whole of Pine Ridge Reserve had congregated and held a dance here it could not have been more confused. One thing Amy did glean from the ill-fated clearing was that a struggle had taken place there. She saw blood on several leaves. The human tracks led off into the woods on her right, but something told Amy that what she sought lay to her left, in the direction of the river. She ran off, listening for the sound of running, trusting to her instinct. She ran on. There were no visible tracks for her eye to follow, but she knew she was hot on the trail. She had the distinct feeling she was following someone –or something- that knew how to hide its tracks. After a good ten minutes or so, she came across what confirmed her fears. Blood lay spattered on the rocks and leaves. She ran through a dark patch of forest and emerged into a thinner patch with gentler trees, beech and rosewood, and tender saplings swathed in log grasses. The ground sloped downwards softly until it reached a small brook, gurgling and lapping against its banks. She stopped, leaning again a nearby tree to catch her breath. She was almost thinking of giving up when something shiny caught her attention. Something white was lying on the other side of the brook, catching little rays of light with its brilliance. For one crazy moment Amy thought that some of last winter’s snow had somehow been preserved on the banks of this stream. Then she realised that what she saw was actually alive and breathing. Even from the distance she could see its flank heaving. Drawn by some great fascination, Amy stepped carefully forward. She made sure she did not make a sound. As she moved forward she became aware that she could hear the beast’s laboured breathing, deep and thick with pain. Her heart tightened. She reached the bank of the stream, the water milling and playing at her feet. It was a wolf. Such a beast Amy had never seen. Oh, she had seen them before, small dark shapes in the distance, running free and wild. Never in her wildest dreams could she have ever hoped to be this close to one. But Amy was entranced by the sheer girth of the animal. She knew for certain that no wolf ought to be this size. And its coat! Such a perfectly white coat Amy had never seen on any animal before. It lay on its side, the pure white fur folding into silver shadows around the ruff that adorned its powerful shoulders. Every time the wolf moved even slightly the light sparkled into myriads of little drops of gold and silver all over its body. It clearly was not aware of her presence yet, so carefully had Amy approached it. One of its forelegs hung limp over the lip of the bank, and the water rushed around the submerged paw, pasting the fur close to the wolf’s strong muscles. Amy’s eyes ran up from the paw to the shoulder and she gasped as her eyes met the sight of blood staining the fur as shockingly as blood stains snow. The wound was clearly quite severe, the blood having spread to the animal’s grass bed. The poor wolf must have run this far in terrible pain, and then collapsed here out of sheer exhaustion. The same mood that always came to Amy when faced with a patient now grew on her as horror at the animal’s fate overpowered her awed contemplation of its beauty. She walked some way long the stream until she was no longer directly opposite the wolf and then she waded across the shallow brook. The sound finally brought her existence to the wolf’s pained-filled awareness, and it raised it head sharply. Then she saw the eyes. They locked on her with a fearless fury that rooted her to the spot by the side of the stream. She read in those eyes that she would be torn apart if she came any closer. She became aware that she was shaking ever so slightly. She had never had to tend a wild animal before, and that there was absolutely no fear in that gaze as hard and blue as ice rocked her to the core. So she stood in silence, her eyes riveted to the wolf’s. Then it began to growl. It was a sound such as she had never heard before. It began deep in the beast’s throat and gathered forcefully until expelled with such rolling volume that it reached deep into Amy’s mind and put fear into her every nerve. Some hidden strength of hers kept her still, and she held her ground. Maybe she knew that without her, the wolf would surely die, and that more importantly than anything, the wolf had to live. Not because it was the most beautiful thing she had ever laid eyes on, but because no animal deserved to die because some bastard fired lead into its body. An idea came to Amy. She lowered herself slowly to the ground where she had been standing, some two or three meters from the wolf, which brought its gaze level with hers. For a brief moment the growling intensified as she moved, and her heart almost stopped when the wolf clearly made an attempt to stand. It pushed its back legs into the ground, the claws grinding into the earth, but its uninjured front paw could not do the work of two and the animal collapsed on its weakened flank with a grunt. But those blue blue eyes never left Amy’s, daring her to come closer. She knelt demurely, hands folded out of sight, making no move whatsoever. The hostility in the eyes wavered ever so slightly. Amy thought she almost saw curiosity, and behind that, something even stranger still. She thought that now would be the right time to speak.
“I’m sorry.” She said simply.
“I’m sorry they did this. I hate them. I hate them as much as you do. They killed those animals. They hurt you. May they burn in hell.” Tears stung her eyes. The unending, wintery depths were still upon her.
“I can help you. I won’t hurt you, I’m not like them. I want to help you.”
The wolf looked on.
“I’ll have to come closer. I’ll have to touch you. It may hurt. But I’ll make you better.”
The eyes were unfathomable.
“Please let me help you!”
Amy put her hands on the ground and crawled on hands and knees, and with measured breaks came closer to the wolf. Her heart hammered, and she knew herself to be in great danger. But she thought as the eyes continued to consider her, that it was much the same for the wolf. She was another human, possibly as snide and dangerous as the others. But as she sat a mere foot or so from the animal, some exchange happened between them. Her fear vanished, and she saw more apprehension than she’d guessed in the animal’s eyes.
“Don’t worry. You can trust me. I will make you better.”
As a final show of good will she straightened and fully exposed her throat and chest. She knew that if it had so chosen it could have killed her then and there. But all the wolf did was make a small rumbling noise in the back of its throat and Amy saw now how hard it had tried to conceal its pain.
“You poor thing. Show me.”
As she slowly brought her pack down from her shoulder she broke eye contact, and the wolf got up painfully and lay back down on its right side.
“Thank you.” She breathed. “I won’t betray your trust. Now, let us see what we can do.”
She raised her hand and in a second that seemed to last forever, let her hand settle ever so gently of the intact portion of the wolf’s left shoulder. It sank a good inch or two in the luxuriously soft fur. It was so lovely that the sensation reached through her skin and travelled up her arm. The eyes were back on her face again, thinking their invisible thoughts.
“My… I can safely say that you are the most beautiful thing in the world. It would be a crime for me to let you go. But this will definitely hurt I’m afraid, so you must stop yourself biting, even if you want to. We have to check whether the buggers have left some lead in you or not.”
She took out the dock leaves and other herbs and crushed them hurriedly together onto a tissue which she placed beneath the wolf’s muzzle, and it was promptly investigated by a slightly twitching nose. Then she pulled scissors and a small scalpel. She gave the wolf a small injection of pain killers, which she hoped would diminish its suffering somewhat. She washed her hands in the brook and pulled some gloves on. Taking up the knife and scissors she said again, “I’m sorry”.
Half an hour later she’d found and extricated the bullet. The wolf had been very good. Amy could have sworn it had understood every word she’d said. She sewed up as much of the wound as she could, disinfecting it as she went along. The wolf made small whining noises every now and then. She was almost finished when she realised she had nothing long enough to dress the wound with. She rummaged anxiously in her pack under the fatigued yet curious eye of her patient. She found nothing, yet she could not let the animal go without the wound dressed properly. She stopped. Hardly thinking, she untied her mother’s scarf from her throat and soaked it in the brook and wrung it dry. Lilies drifted through the air. Her heart only ached a little as she tied the beloved scarf around the wolf’s shoulder, and fixed it there.
“You’re big and strong. You should be ok now.”
Without warning the wolf struggled to its feet in a single movement that brought its eye close to her own. She saw something move in there, but before she could react in any way the wolf bounded off with such speed that she nearly fell over. Without a backward glance, the blur of white was swallowed by the darkened trees.
“Just like that? Fine then!”