Lone Wolf

Did the pups of the wolves' packs toss their heads about this way? From what little she had seen of full-grown wolves, their gestures were nothing like these. Once she had watched a pack from behind a huge boulder as they tore at the carcass of a moose. There was an elaborate formality to their every move. Certain wolves ate first and then others crept up as if requesting permission to partake of the meat. She wasn't sure how they would deal with a whining, obstreperous pup like Faolan, who had just flopped himself on his back and was flailing his splayed paw dramatically.
    He wanted to go back to the den, to the cool, welcoming shadows, to its earthy coziness, to the smell of the river, to the soft moss pads that grew at the opening where he loved to take his morning nap. But most of all, he wanted to curl up against the grizzly and nurse. Even the thought of that sweet milk made his stomach growl. Bulbs had a horrible taste. There was no juice in roots. He had even complained that they were too hard for his teeth.
    He began whining loudly now.
    "Urskadamus!" The grizzly grumbled the ancient bear oath, which meant "curse of a rabid bear." Then she blasted him with a series of short huffs of intolerance.
    This was the first level of scolding. But Faolan continued to whine and roll on his back, wagging the splayed paw.
    Enough of this! she thought. He must learn not to give in to his weaknesses. He must, she realized suddenly, learn to make them his strengths. It would be a cruel lesson, but there was an even crueler world awaiting him.
    She growled for the first time ever at the pup and then with her own mighty paw whacked his good front paw. Now Faolan howled in real pain. His green eyes flooded with astonishment. How could you? How could you? he wondered.
    The grizzly did not have words for every occasion that a young pup would understand. Sometimes teaching or communicating by example was the best way, and then later the words would come. So she lumbered past Faolan and began digging in a patch of onion grass with her own paw, the one she rarely dug with. The message was clear: Use the splayed paw! Make it your digging paw.
    Meekly, Faolan began to scratch the dirt where the onions grew. It took a long time, but finally he dug one up.
    The grizzly was proud. She came up beside him, making low purring sounds, then nuzzled him gently and  licked Faolan under his jaw with her enormous tongue. She turned and began digging in another nearby patch of onions. Faolan stared at her in dismay. More? he thought. But he began scratching with the splayed paw. He did not want to risk her wrath again. What would hurt more than a whack was if she said he could not nurse.
    No milk, only onions! Unthinkable! He dug harder.
    ***
    The pup had done well. The grizzly had watched him out of the corner of her eye. In a very short time, he had turned the splayed paw in a special way so that he could get nearly the force he had with the other paw.
    Faolan was a quick learner, and not just quick, but inventive. Still, the grizzly constantly regretted that she knew so little about wolves. But bears and wolves tended to avoid one another. This was quite different from the owls and the wolves, who had formed a close alliance over a great span of time that reached back to when the wolves had first arrived in the Beyond. The grizzly often thought that if she had been an owl, she would have been a better mother to this pup. But it was stupid to waste time regretting that she was not an owl.
    Instead, she thought and thought, searching for every  scrap of memory she had of wolves. She vividly remembered once watching from a high promontory two packs that had come together to hunt. She had been quick to see that the way wolves hunted was very different from that of bears. Bears were much larger and more powerful, but wolves made up for their lack of power with their clever ways. Bears never formed packs. And perhaps because of that they had a different manner of thinking. The wolves' ways seemed complicated and mysterious.
    And owls, the grizzly continued her musing, owls are so clever! They knew how to make tools, weapons. They stuck things in the fires of their forges and made claws that fit over their talons. Perhaps, she thought suddenly, bears weren't so smart because they were so much bigger, bigger than wolves and so much bigger than owls. Then a really dreadful thought occurred to her: Perhaps I am not smart enough to rear a wolf