A Wraith in Winter

Ghost dug the rabbit out of the snowy burrow with slow, deliberate strokes of his paws. The rabbit hissed and tried to retreat further, but Ghost’s snout crashed through the hole and clamped around its neck. It did not have time to react. The direwolf’s powerful jaws broke the neck with a single twist and pulled the rabbit out of the snow, crunching down on fur, meat, and bones.

Ghost learned not to waste a meal in the cold forests with his other-half. The death in the wind had driven every creature into hiding, but his nose was powerful. Once, he laid beneath tables in a stone place—home—and was fed pieces of seared flesh with his brothers and sisters, but now he had to hunt. Ghost finished the rabbit, swallowing it whole, and resumed prowling through the snow fields again; his white coat blended in perfectly and his light steps were silent. Only his red eyes could give him away, even in the light of day. The sun warmed his thick fur and bushy tail.

Ghost stopped and sniffed the air. He smelled more of the not-men; the strange four-legged creatures that smelled like men but resembled the things men rode. Ghost learned to avoid them with his brothers and sisters when he was still little. The hooved-things panicked and struck out their legs at the smell of a direwolf, now matter how the men barked. It took too many days for the hooved-things to calm down and trust the wolves. They were not worth the effort. Ghost turned in the other direction and inhaled. It was bitterly cold, though his fur kept him warm enough to move. There was a faint scent that made his lips curl.

Dead things.

Not the kind to scavenge from, but the kind that still moved. Ghost and his other-half knew of them; they had fought them together. Ghost sensed them in the forest and snows around his other-half, and led him deftly around them. The men had brought them inside their stone place once, and Ghost had torn into it to save his other-half. The flesh wriggled in his teeth. He was not yet hungry enough to hunt them, but their scent was always in the winter winds.

Ghost felt his other-half move away again. His tail drooped into the snow, but in his heart he was happy. They were alive. Ghost never howled, not until he felt the sharp things pierce his other-half and throw him into the ground. His other-half did not understand the warnings, how the scent shifted around the men and their eyes betrayed their thoughts. Ghost knew, and so did the fiery woman. It was plain in her eyes.

They had lost their sister long ago, then their brother. Now, Ghost couldn’t feel his grey brother who smelled of summer, nor his wild brother in the islands. His little sister and her smaller cousins were beyond his ears. He couldn’t hear her howl to them and lead them through the rivers.

The lone wolf dies but the pack survives. It was a thought from his other-half, but Ghost knew it to be true. Once they were all together, all small, suckling at the teats of their dead mother with the antler in her neck. Ghost had been the first to open his red eyes to the world; he had left the pack to stumble into the shade. He had always been different. His white coat and red eyes marked him as such. His other-half found him under the tree, though Ghost made no noise. They were meant to be together.

Here, they were alone. Ghost had laid with his other-half's form, sharing his warmth and licking the blood from his face, but nothing the wolf did stirred him awake. The fiery woman and her metal-clad men arrived, moving through the screams and cries of dying men. She offered Ghost heat and promise, but the wolf still awoke alone in the snow. He stood on his four paws and howled again into the night, and the wind answered.

Find him. The direwolf felt his other-half again.

It had been a long, hard day of crawling through the snow on frosty paws, and Ghost was still no closer to his other-half. The air and sky smelled strange, thick with some scent that tickled his nostrils. It nearly blocked the scent of the dead things, but Ghost was accustomed to smelling them in the cold winds.

Ghost turned on the snowbank and stared back towards the scent of the not-men. His other-half was that way, away from the dead things in the wind. It was an easy choice to follow. Ghost bounded through the snow on silent paws. Find him.