Coyote Among the Wolves, Part 2

Moon Runner, more than any of the pups, was fascinated by what she had learned about Crazy Dance. She talked to him often, asking questions and pleading for more stories.
“If you’re a coyote, how do you know all these stories about Great Wolf?” she asked him one day. Even as she asked the question her eyes went wide and Crazy Dance saw that she had figured it out for herself.
The next time they talked, Moon Runner said, “If there’s a Great Coyote, there must really be a Great Wolf, too, somewhere.” She had clearly been thinking about this a lot.
“There must be,” Crazy Dance agreed. “Maybe your parents know some stories about Great Wolf.”
“The only story they know is one about the Nameless Animal.”
The Nameless Animal, so it was said, was everywhere and in everything. She had given life to all animals, even the humans. She gave each animal its place in the order of things, and its own particular gifts. It was said the Nameless Animal was like what happens when the sun shines on water. The sun is broken up by the moving water into many suns, but it is really one. We just don’t see it because our eyes are tricked by the dazzle and confusion of the many little suns. The many are all the living things of the Earth; the one is the Nameless Animal.
Every animal knew this as truth. The wolves, the coyotes, the foxes, the crows, the jays …. Probably the hares and the buffalo and the deer, too, though the predators never talked with their prey. Everyone knows this except me,Crazy Dance thought after Moon Runner had gone to play with her siblings. As a pup Crazy Dance had lost his family. He’d had to fend for himself most of his life. He didn’t believe anymore that there was an order of things. If there was a Nameless Animal, she seemed to have forgotten him.
Sometimes the pups’ mother liked to go out hunting rather than stay at the den. When that happened, one or two members of the pack would stay behind and watch the pups. One day in late summer it was Twice Call’s turn to stay at the den, and Crazy Dance, to his own surprise, volunteered to stay as well. He couldn’t have said exactly why; there was just something cold and indifferent in the way Twice Call looked at the pups. The mother, who was well aware how much the pups loved Crazy Dance, agreed.
The pups were now old enough to leave the den on short exploratory forays of their own. When the rest of the pack had gone, Twice Call and Crazy Dance led the pups out onto the grassy plain and let them run around. They wanted to play stalk-and-kill, and as usual Crazy Dance took the role of the prey. They all had great fun, except Twice Call. Crazy Dance noticed that he sat and watched the game without expression.
“Look, it’s another Crazy Dance,” one of the pups shouted.
They all looked and saw a coyote watching them. The way he stood there, twitching as if flies were bothering him, sent a jolt of remembered danger through Crazy Dance. The strange coyote began to descend toward them with an odd jerky gait, its head lowered, its mouth hanging open. There was no telling its intentions, or whether it had any at all. It had traveled outside its own coyoteness.
“The mad sickness,” Crazy Dance hissed to Twice Call. “We have to drive it away from the pups.”
But Twice Call had seen the mad sickness before, and knew what one bite of the coyote’s fangs could do to him. He had already loped well away, leaving Crazy Dance alone with the pups.
“Stay behind me,” Crazy Dance barked at the pups, and then he stepped forward, snarling, his hackles up. The strange coyote stopped and gaped at the unexpected sight of one of his own kind advancing slowly on him. His dull, glassy eyes seemed to take a long time to register what they were seeing. He sniffed, snapped his jaws a few times, made an eerie sound halfway between a growl and a whimper, then turned and bolted out of sight. A few moments later Twice Call came slinking back, and without a word he and Crazy Dance herded the pups back to the den.
Crazy Dance said nothing about the incident when the other adults returned, but of course the pups told the whole story in excited voices. The alpha couple thanked Crazy Dance, and turned their backs on Twice Call. He was now in the place Crazy Dance had been a few months before: the lowest of the low. He spoke even less than ever after that, and avoided looking at Crazy Dance.
“Maybe you’re really Great Coyote,” Moon Runner said to Crazy Dance that evening. He laughed.
“And maybe you’re Great Wolf,” he said to her. She rolled over in delight at such a ridiculous idea, then scampered off to rejoin her siblings. Crazy Dance watched her playing with them, playing the games he’d taught them. Maybe I’m not a pretend wolf, he thought. Maybe, if there is an order of things, I’m something new in it.
During those times when the wolves weren’t hunting and stayed around the den, one or two members of the pack would go out on patrol, to watch for any threats or possible prey. One day it was the turn of Twice Call to go on patrol, and the alpha insisted that Crazy Dance accompany him.
As they padded along over the rocky hills and through the tall grass, Crazy Dance noticed that Twice Call was not going in a wide circle around the territory as they usually did, but instead was heading more of less in a straight line away from the den. Finally, as they were crossing a dry streambed, Twice Call stopped. Crazy Dance stopped, too. He waited for Twice Call to explain what he was doing.
“It’s time you had some lessons in proper fighting,” Twice Call said. “Since you’re a wolf now. Attack me, and I’ll show you how to fight back, the wolf way.”
“I’m not a wolf,” Crazy Dance said, with a cold feeling in his gut. “You said so yourself.” He realized now that Twice Call had been paying careful attention to his coyote tricks and games. Twice Call had learned about pretending, about concealing your real intentions. He’d learned very well.
“Attack me your way, then,” said Twice Call, as if it didn’t matter to him one way or another. “Let’s see how you coyotes fight. Who knows, maybe you can teach me a thing or two.”
“I don’t want to attack you,” Crazy Dance said quietly and firmly. “I’m not threatening you. We’re packmates. We should finish the patrol, don’t you think?”
For the first time since Crazy Dance had known him, Twice Call laughed. It was not a pleasant sound.
“Packmates,” he said. “Well, if you won’t take lessons from a packmate, then do your clown act. Go on. Amuse me. Amuse me like you amuse Alpha and the others.”
It was a hot day. Crazy Dance foresaw what would happen if he danced and cavorted in the sun on a day like this. He’d be exhausted before long. He wouldn’t be in any shape for fighting, or running. It was just what Twice Call wanted.
Crazy Dance thought then about Moon Runner. You are a wolf, she had said, and then she’d called him Great Coyote. Maybe he was both, and neither. There was no story he knew about what was happening here. But it was going to happen anyway. Crazy Dance laughed to himself and thought, Maybe I’m a nameless animal, too.
“No,” he said aloud to Twice Call. “No, I’m not going to do that. It’s too hot out here, and anyhow we should be getting back to the den.”
“I’m telling you to amuse me,” Twice Call said. “That’s why you’re in the pack, isn’t it? If you’re not going to do what you’re supposed to, then I guess you are just another coyote after all. And you know what the pack does to coyotes.”
“I know,” Crazy Dance said, bracing himself for what was about to come. “It’s the order of things.”
Later that afternoon a mountain of cloud climbs out of the west, its heights dazzling white, its underside a blue-black cave. The cloud drives a cold wind before it that kicks up the dust and leaf litter. The air chills as if an invisible river has flooded across the land, and then the cloud is overhead and the rain comes slashing down. In moments puddles have formed in the dry hollow places and raindrops leap and dance in them. Then the rain draws off and the cloud-mountain splits open, and the last of the sunlight turns the tops of the high ridges to gold. 
At dusk a coyote family -- a male, female and three pups -- come slinking quietly and cautiously along the streambed. They were driven from their old den by men with traps and they need a new home. They sheltered from the rain under an overhang of the sandy bank and now they’re searching for someplace a little safer and more secure for the night.
The coyotes stop when they come across the body of one of their own kind. Its throat has been torn out and the terrifying reek of wolf is all over it. The coyotes pause briefly to inspect the body and read the signs of the enemy. When they’re certain which way the wolf or wolves has gone, the coyote family gives up the search for a den in this dangerous territory and scampers away in the opposite direction.
The ants have already discovered the bounty in their midst, and soon the flies and the crows will, too. All of them will come to the body and take away some of its coyoteness, which will become antness and flyness and crowness. A story no one knew was being told goes on telling itself.

Illustration by T Wharton