Lu Is Dead

“Lu is dead.” 

The words fall out of my brother’s mouth like an anvil on my neck. Lu is my best friend. Lu can’t be dead. Before I can think, before I can cry, Bo continues, “he’s up the mountain, by the fallen tree.” I take off running. As my feet fly over the snow, I let my tears free. I howl for my friend, hoping to hear him respond.  All I hear is my breath, heavy and concerned.  I start thinking about the last time I saw Lu.  We were running and playing in the snow, howling at the moon just last night. 

“What happened?” I wonder.  I remember us getting to the top of the mountain by the fallen tree when I started following a delicious sweet little scent down the mountain.  That was the last time I saw Lu.  In the same place I’m headed now.  He was full of life.  Howling at the brilliant bright moon from the top of the highest peak in the forest. “He can’t be dead.” I try to think it so it will be true, but it is too late.   

I smell it.  Lu’s blood.  I am almost up the mountain.  I can not see him yet but I can smell his death. “No!” My feet propel me even faster up the mountain, through the trees, into the clearing where I begin to see red in the snow. My feet don’t stop until my body is up against Lu’s. I nudge his body with my nose and wine.  My whimper, that usually evokes a loving nussle from Lu, was greeted with cold stillness.  I wine, I whimper, I cry while pushing Lu’s rigid body. “Get up, get up, please get up! You have to get up Lu!” I beg and plead through my tears until finally I sit back on my hind legs and let out the loudest, most piercing cry that has ever left my throat.  The trees shake in remembrance as the wind carries my message through Lu’s favorite passages. 

I lay on Lu, crying on him and the red snow. “Give her a minute,” I hear Doc say to the others.  Now, I’m surrounded by the pack, and the elders begin to handle the scene.

“This is fucked up, bring the cubs over here, they need to smell this.” Detecting an attack from another predator, Tauntie sends for the cubs.  The young need to learn to avoid whatever it is that killed Lu.  It was clearly not an accident. “Get up Al, come help us care for Lu.” Tauntie gives me orders.  Not yet the alpha, I still do whatever Tauntie says, everyone does, not for long.  She is a wise old wolf.  But the pack is full of young, strong ones, ready to challenge her and take the lead at any moment.  Lu was always helping me train and cheering me on.  I don’t know if I can lead the pack without Lu.  It doesn’t matter now.  Right now, we need to know what killed Lu.  

“He was here, look.” Tauntie says to me, motioning to a foreign object in the fallen tree. I take a few deep sniffs.  Searching for that particular smell, it’s pungent and unmistakable.  It calls itself, The Shepherd.

“The Shepherd? He was not here. He walks so heavy, there are no tracks and there was no snow last night. And he smells like shit, there’s no smell of him at all.” I correct Tauntie.

“You’re right, he smells so bad and walks like an ogre, there’s no sign of him except for that. I’ve seen him with one of those.” Tauntie replies as she motions to the strange object sticking out of the fallen tree.  It still drips with Lu’s blood. We walk over and smell it. No sign of The Shepherd. Under the smell of Lu’s blood is a faint sweetness, so light I hadn’t previously detected it. It smells so good, I’ve never smelled it before. I have to lick it. I lick it. My mouth fills with the familiar delicious flavor of blood. I drink and take a second, bigger lick. Yum, I go in for a third lick when Tauntie throws her jaws around my neck.  She pulls them closed so fast I can’t think. I let out a yelp and she releases me. 

“Tastes good don’t it? Your own blood. Stupid pup. Don’t lick the death stick.  That’s what killed Lu.” Tauntie explains.  It clicks.  That delicious blood was my own.  That death stick made Lu lick and lick and lick and drink his own blood until he died. “Don’t lick the death stick.” I burn it into my memory.

“Good, we know how Lu was killed.  Now, we need to find who killed Lu.” Tauntie tells the pack. “Damn, I have a lot to learn.” I think.  I lean in, analyzing and learning from what Tauntie is doing with her tone, her hair, her eyes, her everything, down to the amount of pressure she clasped down on my neck with and the speed with which she released me. “The Shepherd,” she continues, “he was not here, I need the pack to stay here and smell for who was, look for tracks, then follow them! Al, come with me, we’re going to see The Shepherd!” 

Tauntie and I take off down the mountain towards The Shepherd.  “Al,” Tauntie warns, “be…cool.” I remember the day the pack made the agreement with The Shepherd.  This silly human made a farm in our forest then filled it with sheep.  We would go and eat the sheep whenever we got hungry. Sheep are delicious! And The Shepherd put them all in a little fence for us, so they could not even get away when we went hunting! It was awesome.  Then, The Shepherd got a loud stick and started killing us in masses.  Elders, babies, friends, it didn’t matter, he was out to kill all of us.  He would come up the mountain with his loud stick, point it, and kill every wolf he saw.  The wildest aspect of this human’s behavior was that he killed more than he could eat, but didn’t eat any of who he killed. 

He was trying to take our mountain.  It is the only logical explanation. Other packs have tried this, none have prevailed.  We did to him what we did to the last pack, organized an attack to eliminate the threat.  When we went down to ambush and decimate The Shepherd’s pack, he was the only one there. I’ll never forget it, Tauntie went in for the easy kill when The Shepherd yelled, “wait! They’ll kill you all if you kill me! There has been talk of killer wolves in these mountains and if the town in the valley stops getting wool and meat from my herd then they will know that you are here and come kill you!”

“Why!?” I yelled.

“Fear!” he replied, “They’re terrified of what you will do if you find the village. Leave me be, please, I won’t hurt you, I just need you to stop killing my sheep.”

“But they are delicious!” I replied. “Why do you get the sheep and we don’t get the sheep? If you are afraid of us, give us sheep!”

“I can’t. I’m The Shepherd. The villagers need the meat to eat and the wool to stay warm.  And I need the sheep for money to eat, I’m already starving trying to survive.” The Shepherd explained.

“Starving…eat the sheep!” My impatience turned to rage.  I did not want to hear any more outrageous Shepherd babble.  It clearly wanted to die and give us sheep, and I wanted to kill it and eat its sheep. But TAUNTIE, had another idea.

“Ok Shepherd, we will spare your life, and your sheep.  In exchange, you must stay off the mountain and give us the loud stick.  No more loud sticks, and no more shepherds or things in your pack on the mountain.  Do that, we will leave you and these sheep alone.” With that, Tauntie had made the agreement.  We hadn’t seen The Shepherd or heard any loud sticks since.  I never asked why, but I assumed that the fear of The Shepherd, his pack, and their loud sticks was greater than the fear of starvation.  Or Tauntie doesn’t really like to eat sheep.  She does love rabbits. Lu loved sheep.  I miss Lu. I’m sure we are descending the mountain to see if this was some sort of retribution for Lu violating the agreement every now and then.

Within an hour, Tauntie and I reach The Shepherd.  We howl on the way down, alerting him of our arrival.  The Shepherd greets us in front of his fence, holding a loud stick. He points it at me. POW! I jump at the sound as I hit my breaks.  The snow flies in front of my feet. “You a real ho!” I yell in anger.

“Put your loud stick down and come talk to us or we’re going to eat you and all of your sheep asshole.” Tauntie yells, throwing the hair on the back of her neck up as she dips her head in a threatening growl. I take note of how she routes her anger and follow.  Long foamy spit drips from my teeth, I see The Bitch Ass Shepherd looking at it.  I smell him pee. I want to laugh and pounce, knowing that Tauntie would kill me, I hold it in and keep face.  The Shepherd puts his long stick down in the snow. 

“You know why we’re here. Talk or die.” I yell. I can tell from Tauntie’s nod that I finally said something good for the pack. 

“I, I, I, don’t know what you’re talking about.” The smelly Shepherd emits a strange odor as he says these words.”

“Liar!” I yell.

“Al,” Tauntie calmly says, “Go get a sheep.”

“Fuck yes!” I yell as I run to grab a snack. I hop the fence.  Immediately I’m surrounded by hundreds of scarred sheep.  Hungry and fatigued, I don’t feel like chasing, so I charm my snack, “Don’t run little sheep, I won’t hurt you. Come here, I just have one little question.” I watch the confused sheep herd themselves towards me.  I search for the fattest one. “Yes, yes, closer, good sheep, that’s right, come closer.” As they come closer, a question really does come to mind. “So…my little sheep friends, why do you all stay here with The Shepherd when you could easily kill him and be free?  Strength in numbers little snacks!!!”

The sheep look back and forth at each other.  I see confusion in their eyes. Eventually, one sheep, the sheep I want to eat, the fattest of the sheep, pokes it head up from the group and says, “We love The Shepherd, we would never kill him.   He feeds us and he keeps us safe from…you.” The sheep all baaaahhh in agreement.  I wait for the punch line. They are serious. I can’t contain my surprise and amusement anymore.  I bust out laughing.  The sheep jump in fear as I roll on the ground, holding my belly, laughing with my entire body just like Lu used to make me do with his hilarity.  If only he were here to hear this, he would be laughing with chunks of sheep falling out of the corners of his mouth. 

Before I go in for my snack, I repeat their explanation, to make sure I’m not misunderstanding. “So you give up your freedom and spend your entire lives staying in The Shepherd’s house because he feeds you and keeps you safe from..haha..from being eaten by me, all to be shaved, murdered and eaten by The Shepherd?” 

“Hurry up!” Tauntie yells.

“Who’s ready?” I ask. A little old sheep with a limp hobbles forth from the crowd.  I jump on its back and devour my dinner. I save a leg for Tauntie and go see how she is doing with The Shepherd.

“Grrrrrr” I let out a growl and assume the “I’m going to fuck you up” position.  I see The Shepherd holding a death stick in front of Tauntie.

“It’s okay,” she assures me, “he says this is called a knife.  He has them but doesn’t use them to hunt wolves, he uses the loud stick.  The Shepherd thinks that the knife used to kill Lu is from a different village.  An old village.” While I was talking to the sheep, Tauntie had been talking to The Shepherd.  We tell each other of our interactions with a few twitches of our ears. “Haha, stupid sheep,” Tauntie replies to my story, “strange, why would someone from the old village want to kill Lu,” I reply to her story simultaneously. 

“Ahhhh,” our pack minds connect to the truth at the same time. “Bitch!” I exclaim in excitement, “It’s time!” Tauntie pounces on The Shepherd, grabs him, and rips him in half.  He smelled like shit alive but he tastes even shittier as we tear him apart.

The confusion surrounding Lu’s death is erased.   Tauntie licks her bloody fur, sits back on her haunches, and lets out a bellowing call.  I join her.  Within what feels like seconds we are surrounded by the rest of our pack. 

Our agreement with The Shepherd isn’t unique.  Before The Shepherd, there were the people from the old village.  I had forgotten about our agreement.  Until a moment ago when my mind connected with Tauntie’s and the truth of it all became clear.  

The agreement with the old village.  One day, a long, long time ago, when my grandmother was just a pup, an agreement was made with the old village.  The old village was far from the mountain, in a land that I have never seen, far past the valley of the new village.  To be honest, I don’t even know if the old village is real.  The agreement with the old village just says that the mountain is for us, if we even see a villager on the mountain, we can kill them, if they even see a wolf near the village, they can kill us.  Kill a villager, they kill a pup.  No one is allowed on the mountain besides us…and no one is allowed in the valley besides them. 

I forgot about this old agreement.  It has never been an issue.  Aside from The Shepherd, no one has come to the mountain besides the last representative of the old village.  Who, now that I think about it, smelled sweeter than candy.

Fuck the past. What does their past mean for our present? What does our future mean for this now? “Well,” our shared consciousness explains before action can be taken, “in the past, present, and future, we…are…wolves.  In the past, present, and future they…are…sheep. They might call themselves humans to hide from consequence.  They might taste like shit to hide from death.  They certainly smell worse every time they tell their lies to dodge the two. It doesn’t change the truth.  And it doesn’t change our nature, or theirs.  

Surrounded by the pack, Tauntie and I now breathe deep, sharing the understanding of what happened, what is now, and what must be with our family.  In.  And.  Out.  All is known.  Tears stream from my eyes as we all set off to the village, knowing how much Lu’s life ment for the pack, for this moment.  We arrive at the new village.  It is clear that the villagers have no idea that we are coming.  We tear through the town, leaving no one alive.  They taste like straight ass, so bad that Tauntie howls, “don’t eat these sheep, let them bleed for the ground!”

We leave no one.  It’s our nature.  Wolves kill sheep. Scarred? Then… you’re a sheep.  Don’t be. Or do.  And pray to your shepherd.