The Ordeal

an excerpt from a book I found

On a dusty shelf of some old store, a Baedeker, left in our universe by a traveler from another, waits to be discovered by that most patient and intrepid of explorers: the reader.

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When the boys of my clan can balance six stones on a plank, they must undergo the satica, the ordeal. Six stone is the weight of the average timber wolf. One would be caught and thrown into a freshly dug pit, there to remain with nothing but water until its sides grew lean and it began to pace relentlessly and everything in its eyes that resembled a dog was gone and only the beast remained. The boy would be stripped to his nethers—summer or winter—and given a single severed prong from a rack of red elk antlers shed in the last season. He would climb into the pit to come out a man or else to be buried where he fell.

It is something, I can tell you, to feel the dirt of your own grave crumble between your fingers. It whispers to you of your own mortality in ways no words possibly could. By the time you reach the bottom, you know it is not the wolf you must beat but your own fear of death, a fear that keeps you tiny and cowed.

I was not a large boy—more prone to imaginary adventures than chores or fighting. My brother was who the clan wanted, but we had lost him to the satica three years before. He had not been lucky. The wolf the men had trapped was an old male, once an alpha, too slow to outrun the hunters but too experienced to be bested by a mere child. I remember the sound he made when the men stabbed him with spears. I had stopped looking by then. I had covered my eyes—or perhaps I hid them in my father’s shirt. But I heard that awful yelp. It was a hurt beyond pain. I did not know if wolves had thoughts, but if so, I imagined he expected he had earned his freedom. To be killed like that, by men who would not even climb down to face him, was the final indignity for a creature that had, for all intents and purposes, been a king.

I was luckier than my brother. The wolf I faced was not especially large. But he was swift. I had heard the men boast of the chase, how my wolf had evaded them for five leguire and nearly gotten away. He growled and bore his teeth at me before I was halfway down. By the time my bare feet touched the dirt, already mixed with freshly falling snow, he had dropped to a crouch and the thick fur on his back was pointing to the sky. I could see the billow of his breath. I remember being surprised by how white his fangs were. That meant he was young. Like me. Would that make him easier to face or harder? I didn’t know. I was terrified, of course. But it wasn’t just the fear of pain or death. I learned then that you can be terrified of many contradictory things at the same time. As much as I was afraid of having my throat ripped out, I was equally afraid of doing the ripping. I did not want to kill this wolf. I did not want to kill anything. I did not want to be in that pit. But what I wanted did not matter.

I gripped the antler prong in my right hand and dropped to a crouch of my own. I raised my left arm defensively in front of me. I did not know how to hunt wolves. I had thought I wouldn’t need to know for many months. I would learn how to hunt wolves tomorrow, I told my parents. But I had reached the age where growth comes in jumps, and now the day had arrived and I had not bothered to practice. I laid awake the night before thinking what I might do. Mostly, I thought about running away. And I would have. But there was nowhere to go. So I tried to recall everything I knew about wolves. I had seen them hunt. I had watched from cover at the far end of a snowy field as four of them hounded an elk. The snow was deep, and it took all the wolves’ strength to bound through it. They did not pounce on the elk and rip it open, like a bear would. They simply wore it down. When the elk got ahead, it would slow to rest. When the wolves rounded the rise, the elk would pick up speed again, and on and on for a leguire or more.

As the pack drew further away, I wanted to follow, to see to the end of the story, but my father said no. The only reason we were safe was because we were silent and upwind. We were an easier target than an elk—slower and easy to down in deep snow. If we moved, the wolves might turn on us. So we watched across the open valley until hunters and prey were just ants in the snow. The elk turned at the tree line and was met by a flanking hunter. But his prey was easily six times as heavy. The wolf could not bring it down on its own, so it clamped with its jaws and hung from the elk’s heavy hide. As it was dragged along, the wolf rested a moment before dropping its feet and tugging hard. Terrified at the feel of being torn, the elk burst into a sprint, and that was its mistake. The wolf held, and the elk had to drag it through the heavy snow at speed. The prey began to tire. His sprint turned to a gallop and his gallop to a trot. The other wolves caught up. The elk crashed into the snow, and the hunt was over.

Later that night, I heard howls in the distance, many more than four. The hunters had fed their entire pack.

A wolf’s instinct, I hoped, was to clamp down on its prey and hold. And that’s what my wolf did. It lunged at my arm, held weakly in defense. I remember hearing the sound of my bones breaking before feeling the pain. Perhaps it was the cold—or simply shock. Whatever the reason, once it hit, icy and hot, I could not suppress a scream. I wanted to. I did not care to impress my father, but for his sake I wanted to appear strong in front of the men watching from the rim of the pit above. But I failed. I let out a great welp, and the crowd just beyond my sight gasped in unison. Was it over already? Had I been killed?

As nature would have it, I was right in my observation. My wolf did not immediately rush for my throat, although in that instant he could have. He had tasted fear and held on just long enough for me to push the antler into his gullet. I knew his hide was thick, so I didn’t pause to see if I had even done damage. I just kept thrusting—over and over and over and over. One for fear, one for disgust, one for anger, one for sadness, one for pity.

Gradually the wolf’s snarl faded. He let go of my shattered arm. He turned, walked three paces, and collapsed to his side. I saw flecks of blood in his fur. He began panting then, heavily, like it was the hottest of summer days. And he glanced to me. Once. It was just a moment. Maybe he was looking to see if I was coming to finish him off. Who knows? All I can say is there was no recrimination in his gaze. There was no hate. Somehow, he understood we were both victims of the same barbarity. We could not both survive. We had fought. He had lost. That was the end of it. There was no shame. No ire. No blame. Would any human have felt the same?

As I stood there in my nethers, arm dangling limply at my side and draining life in drops on the snow, I was overwhelmed with a passion. I was swollen with it. It was the only time in my life I’ve had anything like a religious experience. Whatever happened to me, I was sure I wanted to acquit myself with even half the dignity of that animal. Nothing else in life seemed as important.

I’m not sure how long he hung on before he died. I know I grew faint from my injuries and collapsed to my knees. At some point, I recognized silence. There were no cheers. I had seen the satica many times. When a wolf was bested there had always been cheers. But not for me. I looked up and found nearly everyone had gone. None of the bearded men of my clan remained. None of them lowered a hand to me or raised me on their shoulders in praise. It wasn’t until later, when an old woman was wrapping my arm amid the distant chatter of the men, that I understood why. They were so indifferent.

Whatever was said about the ordeal, whatever grand reasons were quoted for its existence, it wasn’t to make men of boys. It was to raise warriors who could swing a falxiform axe for the greater glory of the clan. But I had sacrificed my arm. Whether I had beaten my fear of death, whether I bested a wolf and become a man did not matter. Whatever use of the limb remained, I would never join the others in battle. I was of no use. I may as well have lost.

To be rejected like that, in front of everyone, turned me hollow. I felt fake, less than human—inhuman even, as if I had been revealed as a changeling or wendigo who had crept from the forest and pretended to be a child. My whole life I had grown up at their feet. How could I mean nothing? I thought about my brother and how little any of us had really mourned. There had been tears and wails, of course. Men hung their heads and women pulled their hair. But in the weeks after his trace, the adults acted more and more as if his passing was part of the natural order of things. We mourned it the way we mourned the passing of the great herds every winter. I thought of my brother and my brothers—all the boys we had lost. No, not lost. We knew right where they were. A pile of six stones marked every filled pit. How many were there? How many had I passed in the brush on my imaginary adventures? How many girls did that leave to the men that remained?

That night, with an arm wrapped in musk hide, I sat in the shadows and watched them laughing in the hall. The hollowness in my heart filled with bile and turned black. I had no more fear of death. I suppose that made everything that came later all the easier. Someone had to do it. Why not me?

—from the diary of Holuphred I

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