“Love you too, Mom.”

Then Aniu shifted her gaze towards Balto. She frowned as she saw that he was still crying, head on the ground. She walked over to her son, touching her nose to his shoulder.

Slowly, Balto looked up, the occasional tear still leaking from his eye. “M...mom?” he whimpered. “Are we...are we dead?”

Aniu smiled. “No, Balto, we’re not dead.”

“But—but I thought we fell of the cliff.”

“You—you did,” Lyrie said. “And—and I thought…I thought you were dead. “But Mom said Dad saved you.”

Balto looked at his sister, puzzled. Soon he stood and rubbed the side of his head against Aniu’s fur. Then he touched Lyrie’s muzzle.

 

Lyrie found herself suspended above a massive cave, held by an invisible force that crossed her neck and chest. Hundreds of feet below her—far enough that she knew a fall meant certain death—she saw the indistinct form of some kind of struggle. The blurs of light and dark were caught in perpetual motion, flashing over each other in the blink of an eye.

The forms began to gradually come into focus, and she saw now that they were vaguely canine. They were still unrecognizable, but Lyrie could tell that the lighter-colored one appeared to be covered in blood. A few specks of red dotted the darker wolves’ fur, but they looked to be otherwise unscathed. Then the vicious, aggravated cried and sounds of the battle below reached her ears.

She heard yelps and snarls, grunts of pain and growls of blind rage. It was evident that it was a fight to the death.

As the battle raged on, Lyrie found herself cringing at every wound the lighter wolf suffered. She wanted it to win; she wanted it to somehow kill the dark wolves. But she knew from what she saw that it would be defeated, it would die.

The image finally became completely clear, and Lyrie gasped. She still did not know the dark wolves, but now she recognized the lighter wolf: it was Aniu.

Yet even as she watched, she saw one of the darker wolves slash at Aniu’s neck, and a fountain of blood erupted from near the base of her skull. She gazed on in shock as her mother collapsed to the ground, her blood staining the floor of the cave. “M—” she tried to call, but the words refused to come.

Then the force that held her vanished, and she plummeted toward the cold, hard, bloody stone floor.

 

It was night, but Lyrie could not see the dark sky through the hysterical tears that filled her eyes. Why was this happening? What was the meaning—no, what was the purpose—of these dreams?

Lyrie abruptly pulled herself out of her den, blinking away the tears. Guided only by the moonlight, she made her way over to the mound of snow she guessed concealed Aniu and bent down until her muzzle rested an inch above the soft white powder.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” she whispered, “but I just can’t take it anymore. I’ll never understand why all this happened. It doesn’t matter what you try to tell me—they died for no reason! Everything I ever did with them was pointless!” She broke down in hysteria and darted off into the woods. Her heartbroken sobs could still be heard long after her figure faded into darkness.

 

Aniu awoke nearly two hours later, her instincts telling her that something was not right. She pulled herself out of the snow and cautiously glanced around the clearing. The dim light of the moon made it difficult so see, but she instantly recognized Lyrie’s scent. She padded over to where it originated and gasped as she found nothing by a depression in the snow. She glanced to where her daughter’s scent led. Her heart sank as she realized it led away from the clearing and into the deep, dark forest. And there was no trace of it anywhere near where she was.

 

 

 

 

 

XXVII

 

“Lyrie?” she called. “Lyrie?” When she heard no response, she began to panic. She whirled around frantically, searching for any sign of her last daughter. She bounded away from the clearing, following the faint trail of Lyrie’s scent, but soon she glanced back over her shoulder. For a moment, she contemplated leaving Balto, but she had never been a good tracker—she would be sure to lose the trail very soon. Regretfully, Aniu turned back and returned to where Balto was sleeping. She gently nudged the sleeping wolfdog with her muzzle.

Balto stirred and opened his eyes. “Whaa...?”

“C’mon, Balto,” Aniu said. “We need to keep going.”

“A-again?” Balto asked. “We’ve been doing this for what seems like forever. It has to be time to stop.”

“Not yet,” Aniu said, sighing. “We both still need to complete our journey.”

Balto stood slowly and glanced around the clearing. “Is Lyrie up yet?” he asked, a hint of anxiety creeping into his voice as he did not see his sister.

Aniu was silent for a moment. “She’s gone,” the wolf replied bluntly. “She left last night.”

“Where is she?” Balto asked.

“She went that way,” Aniu told him, pointing to the south. “But how far, I don’t know. She could be miles away by now.”

“We need to follow her,” Balto said suddenly, his expression quickly hardening. “If she’s in danger, we need to try to save her.”

Aniu shook her head regretfully. “I’m sorry, Balto, but we need to keep going west. It’s—it’s just meant to be.” She paused and looked to the sky, willing him to somehow understand.

The power and knowledge that she had felt only twice before flowed through her, and she saw Balto’s aggravated expression change to one of acceptance and content.

“Let’s go,” Balto said after a long pause. He began to walk to the west, following a trail only he could see.

Aniu sighed again and moved to a position in front of her son.

The town of Nome was only several hundred yards away when Aniu came to a shocking realization: she knew she would not be able to go on much longer. Already she had struggled for weeks to take the remains of her single litter from the Shiok pack to this very spot, but much of her effort had been futile, in vain.

And she knew that soon she would die. She kept looking back to Balto, to the last of her family, to life, just to remind herself that all was not lost. But he was always there, just a few feet behind her, the steely nerve of determination not lost in his hardened expression. Every few minutes she would utter another word or two of encouragement to drive her only son father, and he would always obey her without question. She knew that Balto was still young; he was still shy, still dependent upon her to help him survive. But it was solely because of this that she worried for his safety. Sango was gone. Ara was gone, Galena was gone, and now Lyrie, the firstborn, the one who had always seemed to be the most mature of the litter, was gone too, driven to madness by the trauma and struggles that had defined the whole of her life.

But she, Aniu, had pressed on. Everyone else had gone, but she and Balto would complete their quest of life. Even as this thought reached her mind, a wave of weakness overcame her, and she knew her time was at hand. She was so close, and yet those feet seemed like miles to her, so unbelievably far.

Aniu carefully lay Balto down on the snow outside the town, pressing him against her chest in an effort to warm him from the blizzard that whirled around her. “My son,” she whispered, a frozen tear dripping down her cheek, “I have failed you.” For now she knew she was going to die.

Her thoughts momentarily abandoning Sango and her two daughters, Aniu began to recollect all that had happened to her. She tenderly lay over her only son, remembering her experiences from when she had been Adera.

 

“Deep in the night

The winds blow cold

And in a heartbeat

The fear takes hold”

 

Aniu softly sang this to her son, letting the pup know of the journey she had endured all her life. For these had been the circumstances of her own birth; she had been the only one of her litter to survive.

 

“Deep in the storm

There’s a place that’s soft and still

Where the road waits to be taken

If you only will”

 

Here, Aniu told of her father’s sudden death and of the subsequent encounter with that mysterious white wolf.

 

“The voices inside you

Can lead your soul astray

Believe in what you dream

Don’t turn away, don’t turn away”

 

Aniu had felt some degree of responsibility for her father’s death, and yet she knew it was right for her to become the goddess of wolves.

 

“Reach for the light

You might touch the sky

Stand on a mountain top

And see yourself flying

Reach for the light

To capture a star

Come out of the darkness

And find out who you are”

 

Aniu remembered what Soren had told her all those months ago, but she also knew that the pup was destined for greatness. Here she drew upon the old wolf’s advice while adding encouragement of her own. She knew he would face hate for his pedigree, but he would overcome it and achieve his dream.

 

“Somewhere in time

The truth shines thought

And the spirit knows

What it has to do

 

“Somewhere in you

There’s a power with no name

It can rise to

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