It’s worth admitting: Qawiaraq was a challenging language.
It took me nearly a mortal month to learn, which was a fact I’d lie about if ever pressed for an answer.
But when I learned that her name, Yuka, meant “Bright Star,” for the third time in my existence, I was prepared to cry.
I was not an innate omnilinguist, but rather one of time and exposure.
I’d stolen a fish from a seal and dropped it at her feet on my second day.
“Thank you, Fluffy.” She scratched behind my ears. Before knowing the language, it was something soft, something sweet, and something only for me.
I knew she could feel my smile.
This was my first time in the Arctic, and I had yet to adapt to the newness of the ways consonants and vowels met before they wrapped around one another. But I was able to communicate more than enough as a wolf. No man came near her, and she was given the sort of accommodations I could have only hoped for in Macedonia or along the Dead Sea. It wasn’t the Grecian palace of yore, but the whale bones and animal hides and furs warmed with a bright fire were hers and hers alone. Yuka was revered as the girl who’d summoned a spirit wolf—respected as one who’d served as guardian and protector of her, and the village.
Here, she was left alone.
Despite a frostbitten land destined to slay the weak, she was the safest she’d ever been.
Bright days filled with long treks, snow blindness, wind-chaffed skin were guided by the sun. We hauled the tents of hide and fur when we needed to move for shelter or food. The people bunkered down with the insulation of carefully crafted homes made of ice for weeks or months at the time, should we discover a prosperous source of fish and seal.
The ties that bound us tightened.
She’d speak to me during the day as if talking to herself, sometimes upon my back, sometimes walking beside me, sometimes wrapped up in my fur as I lulled her to sleep. “Wheredo you think we’ll find game?” “The fire is getting low. If we don’t find a new forest soon, we’ll freeze.” “My, the stars are bright tonight. Thank you for watching them with me.” “Fluffy, come outside! The sky is singing. Green, pink, purple, blue…can you hear it? The colors sing.”
That they did. There was an other-worldly sound to the lights this close to the Arctic Circle, though as someone other-worldly, I could attest to the phenomenon belonging to the mortal realm. Even for me, it was magic.
“It’s time for bed, Fluffy. Cuddle with me?”
She slept against my fur at night, her head on my chest as five years passed, then ten. She marched with me during the day. We hunted together. We’d run under the daylight for moments of joy. She’d cry into my fur in moments of weakness. She was my world, and I was hers, though I’d never imagined it could take such a form.
Her people became my people, if by accident. I protected the nomadic tribe, as their pain brought her sorrow, and their victories brought her joy.
I didn’t give a shit about the others, but I supposed my intentions were irrelevant, so long as I remained a guardian.
I would never forgive the tribe for standing by as a father beat his daughter in broad daylight. The only one I didn’t hate, aside from my human, was Yuka’s surrogate mother. That said, what was good for the many was also good for the one, and that’s all that mattered.
I helped them hunt because it meant feeding her.
I offered warmth, healing, and led the way time and time again as they continued their south-bound journey, because it would keep her warm, keep her healthy, and get her someplace safe. I wasn’t particularly fond of the howling winds, the white-out blizzards, or the grueling frostbite, but my human was here, and that made it all worth it.
I’d felt love since arriving in the Arctic. I’d felt anger. I’d felt annoyance.
My first brush with fear came the day one of her gods came to see who had intruded upon his territory.
Despite my trepidation, Igaluk, their lunar deity, visited only twice with idle curiosity.
He treated my presence with indifference, which was neither good nor bad. It wasn’t the camaraderie I’d felt with Athena, but it was better than any sort of territorial hostility. I was quite sure I was ready to take Hell to war with any pantheon if they challenged my claim to my mortal, and perhaps they sensed it wasn’t worth the bloodshed.
I should have saved my apprehension for the true test of my mettle.
My guard was down when Nanook appeared.
In my tenth year, the god of bears, the apex northern predator, was not apathetic to my presence.
I smelled him before I heard him.
“Fluffy?” Yuka sat up in the middle of the night. She shot a look at her now-mother, and I shook my head.No. Don’t follow.
