READ: Mountain Challenge 5
Aleyku dreamed of painful things. He howled through the green boughs of his pack’s forest home, cursing the Moon with his song. At his feet lay Ursa, strong mother of all his pups. Unmoving. Not yet gray in the muzzle, as Aleyku had become, she had been taken from him too young. He pawed fearfully at her cold neck, could not bear the way she lay there. She would not growl, would not move. In despair, he howled at the Moon and even Chetan, bravest of his children, dare not come close enough to mourn his mother.
Then the dream changed. Gray now streaked not only his muzzle, but all through his coat. He crouched and growled in warning to a new challenger seeking to lead the pack, ignoring the blood dripping from scratches on his face and pulsing from the tear on his left haunch. He’d sat too long in the woods, as food had dwindled and drought worsened, unable to leave where Ursa had fallen the season before.
She’d nourished her pack, bones and all, and returned to the ground. Soon enough, he was sure, the ground would turn rich again, and Aleyku would not lead the pack away until he’d seen something good come from her death. Chetan snarled, and Aleyku watched his own blood dripped from those teeth. Chetan wanted to lead the pack to the wet plains, and he had challenged Aleyku to decide the matter. Aleyku stumbled, feeling his leg weaken, but could not back down. It was too late for that, and even if it weren’t ...he didn’t want to leave her. Not yet.
The dream changed again. Aleyku was limping from the forest now, as the howls of the pack rose and fell in celebration of their new leader. He stood at the edge of the forest, shocked from loss of blood but more shocked from the loss of his pack. Mother Instinct had betrayed him, sent him scurrying from what could have been a proud death beneath his son’s jaws. To fall where Ursa had fell. It was a mistake he could not bring himself to turn around and correct. Aleyku jumped about on three legs, terrified to leave the shelter of the trees and unsure of even where he was going ... until he saw the mountaintops glowing white in the distance.
The cold woke him, a slow rousing accompanied by crushing weight pushing in from all sides. Then a lack of feeling, a numbness that seemed to have cloaked the fur, flesh, and sinew along one side of his body. Slowly at first, but then with greater urgency, Mother Instinct again rescued Aleyku, forcing tremors through his body, setting his legs kicking and heart pounding. He snapped back to himself, alert, instantly terrified to find himself blind and immobile, buried in ice.
Body spasming out of his control, kicking as if the snow were a thing of flesh hecouldkick away, his uppermost front leg caught painfully on something warm, very hard, and scaly.
The dragon.
Aleyku kicked again, but the snow packed all around him was unyielding. He could only claw back toward the warmth of the rough skin. Both front paws found a perch around a massive limb and he climbed. Wriggling along the blazingly warm dragon-flesh, stabs of pain blossomed as Aleyku’s frostbitten skin warmed despite the crush of snow all around him. Hardpacked ice fell back into empty space behind him as he burrowed higher up the immobile frame of his adversary. Aleyku whimpered as pain lanced along his back, but with each whisker-length he dragged himself, the motion came easier. Night-scent reached his nose: the snow was giving way!
Aleyku thrashed and kicked and crawled, and an old wolf rebirthed itself into the Moon-bright world. Crawling a long dragon’s-arm’s length away, he fell, nose to tail, panting and freezing and Alive!
Time passed, and the Moon fell behind the last high cliff high above him. In all that time, Aleyku’s eyes never left the red and gold flesh of the dragon, unsure of even an avalanche’s ability to slay that magical beast. All the time, as he waited for morning, for the strength to stand and to run, Aleyku watched it carefully. Boulders pinned one of its front legs, snow and more stone hid the rest. So much mountain had come down, Aleyku wondered his fur still held him together. He thought of the powerful dragon’s body so very nearly buried, and how he’d woken caught between heat-snatching cold and the dragon’s warmth. Aleyku cocked his head, snow-glazed whiskers twitching in confusion.
He relived Varas’s final angry leap in the moments before the ice caught them, his defiant refusal to let the snow rob him of his victory. No, Aleyku thought, that’s not right.The dragon had never sought his victory!The chill of night retreated from Aleyku, remembering how Varas’s claws had hurried to close around him before the mountain slammed over them. Yet its powerful grip had not victoriously crushed him, they had protected him from the onslaught of snow and ice.
Aleyku owed Varas his life.