Issue 1 Preview: Wolf-Being

With Issue 1 now circling the Amazon Kindle Store and due to hit the Apple App Store any day now, we thought you might like a taster of what’s to come.

Today we’re offering you an excerpt of Kim Falconer’s wonderful environmental reflection with a surprise sci-fi twist, Wolf-Being. You can find out more about Kim right here on her official website.

“An aging creature finds itself all alone at the end of its species, and the collective memories of life on Earth are threatened with being lost forever.”

Wolf-Being

by Kim Falconer

I am wolf being and I am of Mother Earth. My memories pass to you, my young ones, so that you may give them someday to yours, and they to theirs, as it has always been since the beginning of the world.

She sighed and rested her chin on her forepaws. She closed her eyes and the memories flooded her.

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In the beginning all the earth was warm to the touch. There was no ice over the ponds, no frost in the air and no snow in the highlands. There was barely a change of season between summer and winter, spring and fall. The oceans were shallow and covered much of Mother Earth. They lapped around a single continent, a flat land that drifted on an endless sea. The sun and moon and stars marked the passing of day and night though few beings observed them. The sun was fierce in his brightness and the moon translucent, her surface smooth like reflecting water. In these early days, the rain of comets had not fallen, no mountains were born and the lands were yet to tear apart. This was our Mother Earth long before wolf being lived.

One hundred thousand billion suns rose and set and still the land of our ancestors lay beneath the sea. Over it swam a myriad of creatures. Some were small like lacy winged gnats, some larger than rivers and equally fast. Near the shore, thin wisp worms poked out of rocks and slow moving snails bigger than wolves crawled along the muddy floor. Worms, sponges, mollusks, sea weeds and urchins, and the tiny ones, the plankton that fed them all, bloomed and lived on, and on.

The fishes were many, diverse in shape and nature, all with spines and fins and scales. Some learned to breathe the air and left the sea, swimming up the rivers and finding lakes and ponds, others stayed behind and breathed only water. Giant lizard beings swam with them. They breathed the air and ate the fish.

A thousand million more suns rose and set and the land began to break apart. The seas rushed in to fill the spaces between the shifting continents. Ferns and palms scattered the landscape, the hills and valleys covered with plants that had neither seeds nor flowers. No birds graced their branches. Insects and gliding reptiles were the only beings that took to the sky though many small creatures scuttled beneath the leaves and fallen trunks. Large beasts stomped across the land, leaving footprints behind – pools for others to drink from. Still the land of our ancestors slept under the waves.

The high Sierra Mountains, the backbone of wolf being land, lay deep beneath the sea, stretched out flat like a hot summer’s day. Sierra slept for another hundred million suns before stirring. When the shores spread wider and the vast oceans swelled between the lands, the edges of the sea floor met like two great elk. They locked horns and tore with their hooves, each pushing with all their strength. They did not stop pushing for over a million suns.

Finally the strongest elk won but at the last moment the other leapt high slamming down so hard upon its opponent that Mother Earth tore open. She bled freely and the red liquid rock rose to the surface of the sea. When it cooled it formed a mantle as long as all the land. One hundred million more suns rose and fell and the single rock mantel was pushed to the surface. Further and further it rose until the great mountain range towered over the lands of our ancestors. Because Mother Earth was sad for the shore that had suffered most, she leaned the mountain peaks towards the west, making the slopes to the sea smooth and gentle. To the east they were sheer and harsh as the land beneath them.

Eighteen billion suns rose and set, and Mother Earth grew cold. Seasons came in their order – spring, summer, autumn and winter. Ice formed in the far northern and southern caps of the world, drawing to them the seas. The land of our ancestors surfaced, feeling the cool sunlight for the first time. Glaciers formed, huge slabs of ice that dragged along towards the coast, knocking the mountains into new shapes, gouging out valleys and hills, leaving rivers to follow the path to the sea.

Giant ferns gave way to live oak, palms moved over for redwoods and sticky-sapped pines. Flowers came to Mother Earth and with them fragrances to draw the bees. Ancient bird beings clawed and flapped in the trees, their brightly cultured feathers matching the blossoms and buds. Much larger birds also walked the land. They were flightless, covered with feathers and bigger than Dire wolf who was yet to come. Rivers rushed endlessly back to the ocean, their frothy waves glittering red in the sunsets. They crashed like geysers when they reached the jagged coast, the sweet water mixing with the salt. Rains fell, and snow. Water filled every hollow in the land.

From one of those hollows, a creature appeared. She had come from the sea, as it is with all life, and she had learned to live in fresh water and breathe air. Her fish-fins fell away, replaced with sturdy legs, a long neck and tail. She walked out of the water onto dry land, and learned to run, to prey on the insects that filled the sky and to lay eggs – first in the water and then in nests of leaves and twigs. After a billion more suns rose and set, she learned to climb trees, hunt meat, and instead of laying eggs in her deep dens, she gave birth to live young. Her name was Canid, true ancestor of wolf being.

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Continue reading Wolf-Being in Issue 1 of Spectra Magazine, on sale now. And you can also check out previews of our other Issue 1 stories below:

When The Arizona Moon Meets The Arizona Sun, by Brian Dolton

A Distant Sound of Hammers, by S. Boyd Taylor

Songbirds, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch