Connor: the Last Assassin 7

Chapter 7

“He did not wish to kill that wolf.”

The old man looked up sharply from his carving, his whittling knife held in a callused rough skinned hand. The boy – Sparrow’s Wing his name was, he’d said – was sitting across from him, watching the carving take shape. It would be a wolf, he thought. The old man had a certain lupine affinity. His eyes were those of a wolf: keen, penetrating, steady. They held you and did not let go.

“He did not?” the old man asked mildly, his hands immobile on the rough table surface. It was evening, a week after he’d met the boy. Tomorrow or the day after Connor should be back. He had felt the wolves moving, coming closer, their thoughts and dreams bent on home. Among them, a troubled human yet lupine soul.

The boy shook his head. His face was so open, so free of guile or ill intent that it was easy to believe his words. They rang with sincerity, conviction – just like the Assassin’s. Both were certain of their words and their course. Although, for Connor, now, the path was dark, it seemed.

“You are right,” the WolfMan set aside his carving and got up to make himself a cup of tea. He offered the boy some. Sparrow’s Wing accepted with a disarming smile. Unexpectedly the old lonely man smiled back. It was hard not to. “That wolf…” He shook his head and thumped into his chair. He pushed a plate of freshly baked biscuits at the boy who took one and bit into it. “Now, why is it you have the wolf dreams, boy?” he asked, peering across the table.

Sparrow’s Wing had known this question would come. The old man had not asked it before preferring to wait for the boy to say something himself. However, Sparrow’s Wing was not a talkative boy by nature, and much as he liked the WolfMan, he could not tell him everything. It was clear that the WolfMan knew who Connor was so hiding everything from him made no sense. Telling him all, though, would be dangerous too – to them all.

“It…” the boy paused and shook his head. This was hard. “Connor helped me,” he said finally. He swallowed the last of the biscuit and looked off into the dancing flames. The old man listened intently to his tale as the boy unfolded it. Once more the disappointment he had felt at the colonials’ treatment of their fellow human beings reared its sleeping head. The kind of men that had captured a Native boy for sport was exactly what he’d escaped here to live without. The casual brutality of being dragged behind a running horse… damn the bastards!

“He attacked them,” Sparrow’s Wing said dispassionately, the pain old and scarred. “He killed them – some of them. They became angry and came after us. We hid in the forest.”

“How did you escape from the fight?” the old man asked, hushed.

“We stole one of their horses. Connor had killed the rider with his tomahawk – leaping from a tree.”

“He’d do that for sure,” the old man remarked, a wry smile twisting his mouth.

“We got away from them,” the boy shrugged, absently taking another sip of his cooling tea. “But… he had been shot. In the leg.” The boy blinked and wiped at his eyes. He was tired. He’d spent the day helping the old man in the garden which was gradually coming back to a semblance of its own self. They had weeded and watered it. Then there had been minor repairs to the house itself and checking of the snares. Two fat rabbits and some smaller game. Enough for a few dinners. Connor would soon return with the elk meat, though.

“He passed out after he got the bullet out.”

“Is that when you saw the wolf dream?” the old man asked, whittling again but slower this time so he could hear the story.

“No, that was later – at his hideout. The wolves came and sat by him. Like guards.”
The wolves had chosen him, the old man concluded. In his delirium he must have called out to his animal spirit – or maybe it was to any animal spirit. Perhaps he had never gone through the vision quest. Not all Native tribes practised this hallucinating attempt at self-discovery. Whatever the case, the wolves had found him or he’d found them and they had bonded. For good, it seemed. Even now, the WolfMan sensed, if he reached out with his thought along the lupine links with his four-legged friends, that one connection between his Assassin friend and the wolves, that imprint on the spirit world that was uniquely Connor’s. Each person’s spirit or soul depending on how one looked at it left a trace behind, in the waking and the unconscious world. Some people were brighter, stronger and so left a more immediate trail – each was special in its own way. Connor fairly blazed across the spirit world which included human as well as animal spirits. The old man had sensed few people like that in his life.

“You actually saw them?” he pressed the boy. “They were real?”

The boy nodded and explained his fear at first. He had thought he’d been asleep – he HAD been asleep. When he woke up, Connor told him that he had felt the wolves. Two people surely could not have the same dream if there was not some measure of reality in it?
“Maybe,” the old man said doubtfully. “In a sleeping state, reality and dreams come together in a very strange mixture – half one, half the other… the explanation depends on a man’s ideas, his views, his beliefs.” He tapped the butt end of the knife on the table in thought, then resumed his whittling. “That’s my opinion anyway.”

“What about you?” the boy asked after a few minutes’ silence. “Why do you live here? With the wolves?”

“I like them,” was the immediate reply. “I like the solitude and their understanding of nature. It is a simple life – until your friend ended up on that riverbank.”

“You dreamed him,” the boy stated confidently.

“Aye, I did,” replied the startled old man. How had the boy known this? Who was he? To know such things?

“When the wolves sent for me, they told me – about you and Connor,” the boy explained as if reading the other’s mind. “They wanted me to find you and so find him. They thought it important.”

“No doubt,” the old man said slowly, setting down the knife and blowing the wood dust from the carved figure. He put it on the table between them. Sparrow’s Wing smiled. It was indeed a wolf, as he had thought. The wolf was carved lying down, forepaws stretched forward, ears alert as if listening. His eyes had a dignity to them, pupil-less though they were. The entire posture conveyed relaxed confidence in the lupine skill of the hunt.

“What do you think boy?” the old man asked with the quiet pride of a master carver.

Sparrow’s Wing smiled, stroking the figurine’s back. “He is beautiful. Alive.”

“Indeed,” the old man approved getting up and approaching the hearth. He stirred the embers and put more wood on the fire. The hut was warm now, even with the door slightly open. Sparrow’s Wing felt safe and tired – contented. It had been a long day. And it was late now.

“Go sleep, boy,” the old man said to him returning the table. “You will not do him much good if you fall over from fatigue tomorrow.”

The boy rubbed his eyes and yawned. The WolfMan was right. He would not be very coherent in his explanation to Connor if he kept yawning like this. Slowly sliding off the bench he tottered towards his bed in the corner, made up of spare blankets and furs. The bedding was warm and he was asleep in minutes.