Suluk cowered in a small, moonlit clearing, shaking violently and whimpering disconsolately. His yellow eyes were stretched wide with fear as he watched the bare branches of the trees all around him dip and sway like enormous, black crooked claws in the moaning wind. The wolf cub’s mind whirled with images of places and wolves he had neither been to nor met, and of hundreds of giant wolves fighting in mighty battles drenched in gore. Somehow he sensed that these things had happened thousands of years ago, though why or how he was seeing them he didn’t know.
Then he saw a white capped mountain range and a pack of modern wolves trekking across them in a blizzard, heads down and shoulders hunched against the wind and snow. For days and days they traversed the thick white drifts, often sinking in up to their chins in them. Suluk could see their muzzles parting as they growled to one another, but could not make out the words. The sky was a flawless blue, and the snow reflected the sun blindingly, so that the wolves had to screw up their eyes in order to see. The day wore on. When the sun was high in the sky, Suluk heard a groaning sound.
The wolves on the mountain heard it too. Their ears pricked and they turned and gazed upward. The leader’s tail went up and his yellow eyes went from blazing with challenge to wide with horror as a terrifying roar filled the air. Suluk whined in his sleep when he saw the avalanche rushing down the slope. The wolves ran for their lives. They were gone, and Suluk was now watching a grizzled old white wolf with a grey face and lower legs hunt.
Then he saw a single eagle feather in the great jaws of an Ancient Wolf. The wolf was facing him, looking right at him. Suluk whined as the spirit dropped the feather at his feet. It glowed with the same yellow light as the wolf that faded away and disappeared. Suluk’s eyes flew open and he sat up. His heart slammed to a stop inside his chest when he saw the eagle feather lying on the ground in front of him...