FARHAYVEN: VENGEANCE (53 page)

     Spirit opened his eyes. There was a loud rattling of his teeth. He was shivering. The sky had gone dark. He turned his head around. His mother and brothers were all cuddled together around him. He looked up at the sky. It was clear, with millions of tiny bright sparkles as decoration. So even in the darkness there existed the colour white. But this whiteness was of a different kind. It was not as monotonous as the white of snow. These sparkles were even quite entertaining to look at. It could almost make him forget about the cold and the huge void in his belly. Perhaps nature was trying to console him. Such a soothing consolation for a defeated hunter
!

     The morning sun radiated at the far horizon. Spirit was on his feet. So were his mother and brothers. Step by step, they moved forward, following the lingering scent of antelopes. Spirit walked with his head down, seeing only the whiteness of snow. Then the scents got stronger. He began to see patches of brown earth exposed on the ground. His sharp ears sensed the sound of flowing water. He felt the change. This place felt slightly warmer than the place where he had come from. 

     A branch moves. He sees it. So do his brothers. His heart beats faster. His ears stiffen. His vision sharpens and focuses. The branch moves again. Spirit quickens his trot. So do his brothers. They split up, with Spirit moving down the centre and his two brothers flanking him. They move closer and closer to the branch. The branch moves yet again, this time exposing the head of a stag to which it is connected.

     The male deer looks around. He can hardly see the snow-white shapes advancing towards him but he begins to sense their smell, and this is all the warning he needs. Like a flash of lightning, he sprints away. The three wolf brothers give chase.

     Spirit begins to bark and so do his brothers. They hope to scare the male deer and to cause him to panic. The stag accidentally steps into an open crack in the ground. He falls to the ground, and dislocates one of his limbs. As the stag struggles desperately to regain his footing, Spirit leaps into the air with his sharp fangs bared and lands with these deadly fangs planted deep into the stag’s neck. First the stag feels the shock, and then the pain. The stag screams out as loud as he can. Then comes the feeling of hopelessness as reality sinks in. He realises that he is doomed. As the stag struggles to throw off the predator from his back, Spirit’s brothers land on the poor creature and sink their fangs in as well. Then slowly, the cold becomes more apparent. The dizziness becomes more acute. Then the darkness comes. Then the silence comes. And then the darkness and the silence stay, permanently…

     Spirit sank his teeth deep and reaped with all his might. Chunks of flesh separated from the stag’s torso. Spirit chewed as fast as he could and swallowed the half-chewed meat with the kind of desperation and excitement that he had never felt before. A week of starvation had that kind of effect on him, and perhaps, all other creatures as well. His brothers mirrored his every move and his every thought. His mother joined them shortly and she too, ate her meal with a type of intensity unseen before this day.

     The four exhausted, but well-fed, wolves lay on the ground in complete contentment. The flow of the nearby river provided a light visual entertainment while the family members of the recently departed stag looked at the quartet cautiously. They knew that they were safe for the moment, but for the moment only. Perhaps soon, they would receive the same fate as their departed relative. But this was a problem for another day, but for this particular day, they were safe.

     Spirit lay immobilised in the snow. Such was the cruelty of nature, he thought. One being’s existence must be terminated in order to sustain another. He hated to hunt. He hated to kill. But he had to eat. Was it all necessary
?
  Was there no better way
?
  Perhaps, or perhaps not
!
He knew that he had to survive
!
But to serve what end
?
What was the point of his survival
?
Spirit shook his head and closed his eyes. These questions were too complicated for a wolf to answer. Perhaps one day, if he were to meet a celestial being, or what was known as an ‘angel’, he could ask this question and obtain a reasonable answer. But at the moment, all he could do was lie on the ground contented with a full stomach.

     It had been several seasons since Spirit and the remaining members of his family arrived at this new place. They had been living quite contentedly ever since.  Then one day, his body felt warm and weak, his head ached and sticky liquid flowed from his nose. He tried to get up, but the whole world spun around him. His brothers were already out of the lair for the hunt. His mother stared at him, signalling him to stay and rest, then in a flash of white, she too was gone. So Spirit lay on the ground in their snow-covered lair and closed his eyes. Slowly, sleep overcame him and he welcomed it.

     Meanwhile, somewhere upriver, the three white wolves searched for a suitable prey. A large male buffalo attracted their attention. Slowly, they crept closer and closer towards him.
Snap!
  Spirit’s mother howled in agony.
Snap! Snap!
Spirit’s brothers howled in agony as well. The flow of red blood stained the white cleanliness of the snow covered ground. The three wolves struggled, but with no success. The metal traps that had clamped onto their limbs could not be shaken loose. The teeth-like surfaces of the traps had cut through the flesh of their limbs and were embedded deeply into their bones. Tears of pain and fear began to flow down their eyes. Their once ferocious barks turned into soft yelps of fear and desperation. Their visions blurred as their loss of blood increased and in that blurriness, they saw two human-like shadows coming toward them. Then something hard and heavy slammed into their heads and then into every other part of their bodies. First came the confusion, then the shattering pains. Many moments later, there came one last agonising exhale and then there was nothing but silence and darkness.

     Two plump male humans stared down at the remains of the three dead wolves with a cold indifference. Then the slightest of smiles cracked across their faces. Pretty soon, bursts of laughter echoed throughout the white wilderness. The men began to skin the wolves in a casual though precise and expert manner. The first topic of their discussion was about the price that they should set for the wolves’ fur and what they were going to do with the money. As the delusions of their fantasies became more excessive, they started to fool around with the bloodied fur. First, they wrapped the fur around their shoulders like a cape. Then they wrapped the fur around their head and pretended to strut down an imaginary runway. But while they entertained their wildest materialistic fantasies, little did they realise the pair of red, blood-soaked angry eyes staring down on them from a hidden distance. Spirit could not contain his anger anymore. These humans had murdered his family, and they were playing around with the skins of his mother and brothers in some weird human ritual
!

     A white paw steps forward in the snow, then is followed by another and another and yet another. The slow pace quickens into a sprint. As Spirit leaps into the air, he pulls back his lips and bares his sharp, deadly fangs. Spirit lets out a growl of brutal anger as his fangs sink into the neck of the first human. The man lets out no sound at all, but his eyes open wide in disbelief. Spirit, with his fangs buried deep, swings his head from side to side in order to tear wider holes in the man’s neck. Blood sprays forth like a fountain. The other human drops the fur that he is holding. His pants become moist as he loses bladder control. He tries to run but ends up stumbling to the ground. Spirit holds on tight to his first victim, driving his fangs deep and wide. The bloody fountain dries out and the first victim collapses lifelessly onto the red, muddy snow.

     Spirit steps forward. He stares deeply into the remaining human’s eyes. In his heart and in his mind, he tells his would be victim ‘You will die. You will die slowly and painfully. And I will hunt for you in the afterlife and I will kill you a thousand times over. Be it in heaven or in hell, I
will
kill you a thousand times over
!
’

     The living male human sees in the eyes of this white wolf an obsession, a burning passion, to torture and kill that he has never seen before even in the eyes of the cruellest of human beings. He turns and crawls in the wet snow, his legs too paralysed by fear to support him. He manages to crawl but a few paces before he feels the heavy weight of a full grown wolf on his back and its sharp fangs anchoring deep into his neck. The sudden sharp pain is quickly followed by a crushing pressure and the side to side movement that tears bits of flesh from his neck. Blood begins to flow down into his throat and he slowly drowns in his own blood. He tries to cough and vomit, a desperate though pitiful attempt to clear his throat of his own blood; but the pressure exerted on his neck makes this effort impossible. Then his pain stops. His body feels numb.

     Then a vague vision appears before the male human’s eyes. He sees figures, millions of human shaped figures, being tortured in the cruellest of ways. There are large human-like beings of great radiance, chopping off the heads or cutting off the tongues of many skinny human beings. There are so many more unimaginable tortures in this vision. He tries to close his eyes, to shut out these horrible images, but nothing happens. His eyes are already closed, he just does not realise it. The visions become more solid and real. Then he feels himself being grabbed by the back of his neck. As he turns around, he loses his breath as he realises that the being who has grabbed him is one of those beings of great radiance; and his feet moves unwillingly but surely towards a decapitation platform. He tries to speak, but the radiant being speaks first.

     “Human, you are here to pay for your transgressions. Welcome to hell,” says the radiant being in a very casual, yet professional tone.

     Spirit sat down on the blood-soaked muddy ground, in the middle of a circle of soggy redness surrounded by cold whiteness. His eyes had lost its blood-shot redness and his anger had subsided. He stared at the raw exposed flesh of his dead family members. A feeling of emptiness gripped his heart. It squeezed and squeezed until Spirit felt that his heart had totally disappeared into the void. Tears began to drip from his eyes. He held his feelings back. He held it further, then when he could not hold it back anymore, he howled out with all his might; loud, long howls of loss and mourning. The entire white wilderness seemed to be silent. Perhaps nature was trying to show its respect. The sun set over the horizon, yet Spirit sat there unmoving, statue-like. There was no reason for him to move. There was no reason for him to do anything anymore. There was no more reason for him to live. So he sat there, awaiting the reach of the cold arms of death. And he waited, and waited.

     Several seasons had passed. Spirit walked on aimlessly in the white wilderness. The cold blizzard wind struck hard against his body. Yet Spirit sought not for shelter. He walked and walked, with his mind lost in thoughts of hopelessness. Why is nature so cruel to him
?
Why did nature not kill him like it did all his family members
?

    
Suddenly, Spirit smelt a scent he had not smelt for a long time, the smell of wolves. He looked around, but the blizzard interfered severely with his vision. The scent, however, was strong. He was sure that it was the scent of wolves. He took excited and positive steps forward, seeking with his sensitive nose the source of the scent. Then, just as suddenly as it was there, it was gone. He paused and sniffed the cold air searchingly. But the scent was gone. Was this another cruel taunt of nature
?
  He did not know and he no longer cared. He collapsed onto the thickening snow and closed his eyes. He was so cold. He was so empty.

     The morning sun shines brightly even in this cold, white wilderness. Spirit opens his eyes and drew in deep, refreshing breaths. There is that scent again, the scent of wolves. He looks around. In the shortest flash of a moment, he thinks he sees white fur in the distance. He stands up and steps forward. There it is again, a flash of white fur. He runs forward. Then he sees them, a pack of seven snow-white wolves. He is excited. He barks his greetings to them. There is no reply. He runs after them.

     Then something white, large and heavy crashes into Spirit’s ribs. He falls sideways from the force of the impact. Then a pair of large white fangs greets his eyes. The large, dominant wolf of the pack, which makes the actual total of the pack to be eight, is giving him a stern warning. He is telling Spirit that he is not welcomed. Spirit bares his fangs in return. The two wolves face each other off. Both have their lips pulled back, baring their fangs and rows of sharp teeth. Like a flash of lightning, both wolves leap at each other. Jaws clamp shut and claws scrape fur and skin in this canine combat.

     It is over in a few heartbeats. Spirit acknowledges his defeat. He is too weak and his opponent is too big and heavy. Spirit backs away for the moment, but for the moment only, for he has seen a new prey. Though this prey is not the same as his other preys. This one is different. Her soft white fur calls out to him alluringly. Her soft ears stand up like tranquil snow-capped mountains. No, this is a different type of prey altogether. This will be a different type of hunt, the type that he has never done before. His heart beats fast. He has forgotten that it was still there, but now he is reminded of it. But he is patient. All forms of hunting require patience.