How to Raise a Dumb Wolf - Chapter 6

What Aisha had said—the words Les failed to hear—was, “Wait here for a moment. I’ll be right back.”

Of course, Aisha knew perfectly well that the gray wolf could not understand her. So when she hurried back carrying a basket full of medicine and medical instruments, only to find the giant wolf truly waiting in the same place with his wounds already washed clean, warmth bloomed in her heart. Somehow, it felt as if an understanding had formed between them.

She smiled and lifted the gray cloth covering the basket. It was packed with gauze, bandages, medicines, and several small, gleaming silver instruments. Trying her best to appear friendly, she said, “I brought everything I need… Will you let me treat your wounds?”

Les stared. He had assumed the girl had simply left. He had not expected her to return, much less to bring medicine.

For one fleeting moment, he wondered whether His Majesty’s strategy truly had worked.

Before he could make sense of the situation, he felt something strange happening to his body. Les turned his head. The human girl had already moved to his side and set the basket nearby. She was studying a deep gash on his lower leg with intense concentration. She held her hands protectively over it, and then…

Golden light appeared between her palms.

Les went still.

The instant the light emerged, he felt a warm current flow around the injury, gentle and soothing, easing the pain enormously. Then, before his eyes, the ragged wound began to heal. Dead flesh sloughed away. New tissue grew with miraculous speed and knitted itself together. Severed blood vessels reconnected…

Was this girl a mage…?!

No. Wait. This healing art was plainly unlike the ordinary kind. Could she be… a mage with an innate gift?

Les’s brow drew together in surprise.

Apart from elves, those born with magical aptitude were a minority among every race. Mages with innate gifts were rarer still. Even Wold—widely recognized as the world’s most advanced and prosperous place, home to its finest education system and leading scholars in every field, and known as the Heart of the World—could not possibly have more than one gifted mage in a hundred thousand. The entire island might hold only a few dozen.

If such mages were that rare in the Heart of the World, the odds of finding one in a remote town like this were negligible. And yet…

The healing art employed by ordinary mages was a compound spell built on transformation magic and supported by several other spells. It required a considerable foundation of knowledge and years of practice. What the girl used was clearly nothing so elaborate. She had neither wand nor spoken incantation. Everything about her power marked it as an innate gift.

Such gifts were, in essence, mutations of ordinary magical power. A gifted mage could absorb unaligned magical elements and transform them into elements bearing a particular property. The resulting magic might display an unusual quality, or the mage’s own perception might differ from that of others. Some possessed overwhelming destructive power. Some could control temperature, reshape objects with ease, or understand the speech of living creatures…

The girl’s gift, Les had to admit, was extraordinarily practical.

Just then, Aisha repaired the wound as far as her ability allowed. She stopped pouring power into it and swiftly drew what she needed from the basket. With deft, practiced movements, she applied medicine, laid gauze over the injury, and bound it tight. Only after treating the wound as quickly as she could did she let out a long breath.

Then she looked up—

Straight into the gray wolf’s blue-gray eyes.

Aisha’s heart jumped. She had to admit that the wolf’s massive body and unreadable face exerted considerable pressure. For an instant, panic overtook her again. But once she remembered that he had never meant to attack her, she managed to calm down.

She smiled. “What is it?”

Les hesitated. His Majesty had ordered him not to reveal that he was beastfolk—both because of the treaty and for his own safety as a beastfolk major general. In truth, several things he had already done could easily invite suspicion. From this point on, he would have to be more careful…

The giant wolf gave an idle flick of his tail and looked away as if he had understood nothing.

Fortunately, Aisha had never expected him to understand. Her smile deepened, and she reached out to stroke a patch of uninjured fur.

…

People often came to Aisha for treatment, so in addition to relying on her healing ability, she had learned a modest amount of ordinary medical knowledge. Wherever possible, she used her power on the giant wolf’s wounds; she treated the rest with conventional methods and bandages. Since her father was a hunter who often came home seriously injured, their house kept a broad assortment of medicines. The treatment presented no major difficulties.

Healing so many injuries at once was more exhausting than Aisha had expected. Before long, sweat covered her brow. When she stood, her body even swayed for an instant.

She caught herself in time. Meeting the wolf’s steady gaze, she smiled and said, “I’m fine.”

She knew it was foolish to project human emotions onto an animal, but she chose to read concern in the wolf’s expression. It made him seem very gentle.

By now, nearly every wound that could be treated had been tended. Only one remained…

The arrow.

Aisha’s heart tightened with anxiety. She pressed her lips together, nervous.

She had never treated an injury this severe and had little confidence in her ability. She could imagine the blood that would surge out the instant the arrow was removed, leaving an enormous wound punched straight through his flesh. If she pulled too slowly, the wolf would suffer terribly. It would also prolong the wound’s contact with both the arrow and the open air, increasing the risk of infection.

Aisha swallowed and rose. The giant wolf had lain with remarkable docility while she worked. Standing now placed her at just the right height to grip the shaft. Her palms damp with nervous sweat, she looked into his eyes and forced a strained smile.

“Come to think of it, I haven’t introduced myself yet… Um, my name is Aisha. Aisha Byrd. I live in the village just ahead, and I study at Philray Public Basic School. We have these two days off for the Harvest Festival. Once the festival is over, I suppose I’ll graduate…”

Aisha kept talking to distract the gray wolf and, she hoped, reduce his suffering when she pulled the arrow. Instead, her own nervousness made her ramble. She could not decide how much force to use, either. The arrow was lodged more deeply than she had imagined, almost as if it had grown into the flesh. A gentle pull would never free it, but she was afraid that pulling hard would hurt him…

Les listened to her halting account of herself while feeling her apply a force roughly comparable to that of a hamster in tiny attempts to extract the arrow. He sighed inwardly.

Then he stood.

When the giant wolf rose without warning, Aisha instinctively backed away two steps and lost her grip on the shaft. The wolf turned his head, closed his jaws around the black arrow, and yanked—

As he had done with the steel trap, Les sent the arrow sailing into the river.

Dark red blood sprayed across the grass, the giant wolf’s own fur, and Aisha’s shoes. The raw strength and savagery of the sight made her heart leap in fright. The wolf showed no particular reaction. He merely glanced at her, then lay back down to await the rest of his treatment.

Aisha rushed forward. In a flurry of movement, she used her power to knit the flesh together, applied medicine, and wound bandages around his shoulder.

Then…

She ran out of bandages.

Aisha panicked at once.

She had packed bandages intended for humans. Under ordinary circumstances, what remained would have lasted at least half a year even if every patient who came to her had an injured thigh. But the gray wolf was simply too large and had far too many wounds. Her supply had not been enough.

And there was so little left to cover…

Aisha frantically searched her surroundings for something that could serve as a substitute. Then her fingers brushed the white ribbon in her pocket.

During the Harvest Festival, ribbons carried a distinctly romantic meaning. Girls tied them to invite courtship and hung ribbons bearing their beloved’s name as a private wish—but boys were not entirely without a part to play.

On the night of the celebration, the whole village danced around a bonfire at an outdoor ball. It was naturally an excellent opportunity for young men and women to draw closer, and it gave the boys a chance of their own.

Before the dance began, they had the entire day to roam the forest and search for the ribbon of the girl they liked. If a boy used a ribbon she had tied with her own hands to ask her to dance, she was not supposed to refuse.

Girls usually marked their ribbons beforehand so that they could identify them with certainty. Bolder girls secretly told the young men they favored where they had tied theirs and what marks to look for. If a boy found the ribbon of the girl he liked and discovered his own name written upon it, that was naturally a happy occasion worth celebrating.

Of course, this was only a game played during a small-town festival. The rules were hardly strict. Boys sometimes forged marks, and girls who clearly recognized their own ribbons sometimes refused to admit it under any circumstances. Romance had to be mutual, after all; no one could force it.

Aisha studied the ribbon in her palm for several seconds.

This was her first year old enough to tie one, and it had been a special gift from Mrs. Wesson. But then… she had no one in mind anyway…

After a moment’s thought, Aisha knotted the ribbon to the bandage, swiftly wound it into place, and tied it off.

At last, everything was done.

Looking at the giant wolf, every injury carefully bandaged, Aisha felt a sense of accomplishment unlike anything she had known before, along with a happiness she could not put into words. She sighed in satisfaction and examined the rather unusual “bandage” around his shoulder.

In a way, this counted as tying her ribbon in the woods before sunset.

Aisha told herself brightly.

And it was very high up, too.

Perhaps sensing that the treatment was complete, the giant wolf rose and walked several steps. He did not seem to have much trouble moving.

Aisha no longer feared him. She reached up, hugged his neck, and stroked the soft fur along his back.

“It’s getting late, so I have to go home. I’ll come see you again tomorrow… Ah, but you should hide deeper in the woods. Tomorrow is the Harvest Festival, and there will probably be many young men coming in here. They might not immediately realize how friendly you are…”

As she spoke, worry crept over her.

She knew the wolf could not understand her. If he truly encountered one of the young men searching for ribbons tomorrow… The gray wolf did not appear likely to attack first, but if someone attacked him, he might fight back. Aisha did not want either the wolf or a townsman to be hurt.

The safest solution would be to remain with the wolf, but she could neither sleep in the forest nor hide a creature of this size in her home.

It seemed she could only return to town and explain the situation. She did not know how many people she would manage to warn.

But…

Aisha’s expression dimmed.

Perhaps no meeting between the wolf and the townspeople would happen at all. He might simply return to the depths of the forest. He could not understand words like *I’ll come find you tomorrow*. Once he realized he could move again, he might leave…

The thought that this could be the last time she ever saw him saddened her. Aisha stroked the fur along his face.

“If only you could understand… I’ll come back tomorrow evening to change your dressings. I have to go home now. Please be safe… I’ll miss you.”

Then Aisha closed her eyes and gently kissed the corner of the giant wolf’s mouth. She smiled, ruffled his fur once more, picked up her basket, and waved as she left.

The kiss ended too quickly for Aisha to notice the giant wolf’s eyes fly wide or his entire body go rigid at the instant her lips touched him. Naturally, she had no way of knowing that after she departed, a certain twenty-year-old beastfolk major general—so chaste that this had been his first kiss—remained in beast form beside the river for a very, very long time, staring in the direction she had gone.

That day, even with no one around, the youngest wolf general in history never shifted into the human form that would have made moving so much easier.

It was not because changing forms while wounded would hurt.

It was because…

A human face could not hide a blush.