Hunters of Wolves, in Ancient Times
In the meadows of the Siret, in a place on the edge of the plains, wanderers had appeared, coming from the north, from unknown distances.
That was deep in the past, in ancient times and in the youth of the world.
The men were large, with a high forehead and blue eyes. The women, lithe and agile, brought water to the half-buried pit houses in clay pitches, which they wore on the crown of their heads, holding them upright with their left hand. In winter they put on coats of wool or skins of sheep or wild beasts.
From the dark places they had escaped, they had brought little fortune on the backs of their tamed buffalos. They had also brought a few sheep and powerful dogs. And especially a mysterious craft, to melt and boil the bronze to make new weapons, in the blades of which the sun flashed brightly.
These runaways had been looking into the gentle water of the Siret only for a few generations, and had few settlements on the streams and along the river, in places as strong as fortresses. After the first clashes with the locals from the south, peace was settled. The wanderers were few, but they had weapons that the people near the great waters did not know. But, though they had invincible weapons and stormy manners, they were usually calm and peaceful.
Slowly, after some years have passed, they had been able to reach the edge of the plains, to a large water like a sea where their river Siret was flowing: and there, at the end of the summer, now they used to meet people who had different eyes and spoke different languages; and in exchange for their bronze tools, they brought to their homes in the hills wheat for their bread and donkeys for their expeditions in the darkness of the mountain, to the brass baths.
In this land, at the mouth of the White Creek, there was also the settlement of the old bald man and his tribe.
They had huts on the hillside, in a glade, and the Siret surrounded them on three sides. To their backs, they had the mountains, with the night of the fir trees woods. And closer, between meadows, beech and birch forests. Up on the hill and down the valley, small groves and sparkling waters. And over the wide luster of the Siret, a wide plain in the grasses of which the wind flowed.
The old and balding grandfather had few men left behind at the huts, all of them also old and grizzled, and women with children. The young men, as soon as autumn had fallen, had gone up in the mountains, with other companions and their donkeys, on paths that only they knew in the world, to start again the fire in the stoves in the secret place.
Other men burned charcoal in the beech forest. Women were preparing winter skins and coats; others were damning up streams to catch fish and smoke it. The youths and the children were leading small flocks of sheep through the meadows, and, in the evenings, they brought them back to tightly locked pens, where the big dogs, the companions of humans, guarded them against thieves.
Before the sunset, on that day, came to the hut of Bald Grandpa his youngest grandson. He had brought the sheep close, had left them under the guard of his four dogs, and had made a quick run to the village. He was barefoot, as the weather was still warm. His long blond hair was held by a sheepskin cap, and on his body he wore a goatskin, tightly wrapped with a strap. He came leaping, balancing in his right hand the hazelwood rod. The old man was sharpening his hatchet on a stone slab. He put down the hatchet, pushed back behind his ears the thick white tresses below his bald spot with his fingers, and, raising his forehead, smiled at the child as to a memory of his youth.
“What is it, Micu?” (“Little One”)
“Grandpa,” the child answered gravely, “tonight, they will come stealing again.”
“How do you know that?” the old man asked slowly, looking carefully at his grandson.
“I know; for in the night that passed, they didn’t come, and contented themselves with the remains of my little ewe lamb, which they have gnawed down to the bone, there, up the stream. Now they are hungry, and they will come again. I have seen fresh tracks of paws, in the mud, when I went down to the mouth of the stream, to water the sheep. They are close by, but during daytime they are afraid. When darkness comes, they will come again to take my lambs…”
“Alright; then let us go and take their skins…” the old man decided, and the child smiled, showing his sharp white teeth. “Today, I have no one else at home, so I have to take you with me to help. If you’re afraid, go call your mother.”
“I’m not afraid,” the child retorted. “Mother is smoking fish on the river shore, with the other women. You have to give me the spear you have promised me this summer, and let me kill the wolf. I have dogs and I am not afraid.”
“I believe you,” Bald Grandpa agreed, smiling to his grandson with love. “However, I don’t have much faith in your dogs. They are too young. I will give you mine, who is old and wise and has put down many thieves in his life. He is not afraid of the wolf either, for I have burned hairs from a fresh wolf skin over him when he was a new-born puppy, just like I have done when you were born. So we won’t tell a word to anyone, – we take what we need, we lock the sheep in the pen, and we keep watch…”
Micu smiled, happy and proud, and threw away his rod. Bald Grandpa came back out from the hut with their hunting spears. The smaller, lighter one, made from ash wood with a sharp bronze tip, he gave to his grandson.
Then, he whistled twice and called out his old dog.
“Nea! Heavy-as-Earth*, come here!”
The great shepherd dog appeared from behind the hut in the slanting light of the sun, shaking out his reddish fur. He looked at his masters with wise, calm eyes, his ears straight and pricked up. He came, tall on his legs and strong in the chest, wagging his tail.
"Come here, so I can put on your spiked collar…“ Bald Grandpa told him. And the dog, seeing the collar with large spikes on it, started to move quicker.
"Well,” the old man told him, “I can see you know where we’re going, and we understand you like the hunt. But now you will be keeping watch with the boy, and you must be even more careful than usual…”
Heavy-as-Earth received his spiked collar around his neck, whining joyfully, – and Micu was certain that the dog understood all the words of Bald Grandpa.
The old man gathered tight around his body the roughly hewn skin coat with a wide leather belt and at his back he put his hatchet. He put in a leather pouch a chunk of bread baked in the earthen pot and, with the spear on his left shoulder, went to catch up with his grandson, who had started ahead, impatiently.
The dog sniffed along the path, and from time to time he ran back to them, leaping playfully.
When the dwellings remained behind with their thin trails of smoke and the waters of the Siret could no longer be seen, the old man and the boy entered the large meadow beneath the woods. There they found the flock of sheep grazing peacefully and the dogs keeping guard on all four sides, sitting on their tails.
From far away, at the other edge of the meadow, came the sound of bells from other sheep flocks, which were heading to their shelters with the approach of evening.
A lazy peace reigned over the edge of the beech and birch forest, and towards the ravines fluttered in the setting light leaves burnt by the first brumes.
Lifting his wide forehead, the old man searched the horizons with his eyes like the sky and the breeze brought to his nose the scent of withered flowers.
“Tonight, the half moon will be out in the sky,” he said, “and she will be full in seven days, and then she will diminish again, and then the winter wind will start to blow from the north. Then your father will come back from the mountains. You will show him the skin of the wolf and he will be glad and he will remember the first time I put a spear in his hand too.”
“Yes, grandpa,” answered the boy, pushing the tip of his spear into the ground. “Now we have to drive the sheep to the pen.”
“I see that you are in a hurry, Micu”, the old man smiled. “When I was like you, I have also waited for this hour with great joy.”
After they locked the sheep inside the tall pen made from hard, thorny branches, the bells fell silent and the sun had set in the forest.
“My boy, take your spear,” said Bald Grandpa, “and come with me. We have to search all around the pen, to find the place where the thieves can get inside. We’ll leave three dogs in with the sheep. The fourth I will take with me. Heavy-as-Earth stays with you.”
“You think that they are getting in through a hole in the fence, grandpa?” asked Micu.
“Yes, because I know the height of a wolf’s leap and I have made the fence taller. The wolf, my boy, is a cunning beast, and men have long been at war with him. If he made a hole, he did it in a place hidden from sight by thorny bushes. And after he got in and throttled the sheep, he pulled it out carefully, so his passing will not be noticeable. And he will not go through the same place twice so that he won’t lose his own skin. But when he understands that the shepherd is a child like you, with young dogs, he dares more than he usually would somewhere else.”
The grandson listened carefully. The old man found in the thorns strands of sheep wool and the tracks of the wolf. He plugged the hole in the fence, which was low to the ground and hidden in the dry tall weeds.
“You, Micu, stay here,” decided Bald Grandpa. “I go looking for another hole. If I don’t find any, know that I am back, close to you, but you will not know where. When night comes, the moon will be out, – but the wolf you will not see; so you must keep your guard up at all times. Heavy-as-Earth stays with you and does not move. When the thief comes, only he will be able to see him. He will charge forward and throw him to the ground. Then you will see him too, and you must spear him immediately. If you are too late, he might get up from the ground and if he jumps at your throat, there’s nothing you can do. I am leaving you with the old boy, and remember what I told you. Don’t sit down on the ground; stand still like a bush, with your eyes wide open and your spear ready.”
"I understand, grandpa; I will spear him,” answered the boy in an anxious voice.
The old man left along the fence and the boy stayed behind with the dog.
“Keep watch, Heavy-as-Earth,” murmured the boy, moved deep inside. “I see that you heard what grandpa ordered us and you have hunched down to the ground. I am not afraid and I have faith in you, for I know that you are our friend. The stars start to shine and the moon must come out soon. When she appears at the edge of the meadow over there, I can see it from our home on the hill as it shines on the bottom of the water. And you may know that the moon in the water shines for the spirits, who come out of the woods now, at night. When the wind passes, you can hear them howling, and sometimes they come near to humans and frighten them. But grandpa taught me how to use the flint and make fire; and this God protects us from spirits and beasts. Now the moon must come out, for the mists are settling over the meadow. We must listen to the solitude and be silent.”
The child remained unmoving and watchful. Then, slowly, his thoughts turned back to Bald Grandpa and his stories about fights with the great beasts of the forests: the bears, the wild boars, and the aurochs. Of these hunts, which were done by the great, bearded men, he also dreamed in the lazy warmth of summer, in the murmur of the meadows, amongst the sweet eyes of the flowers
In the pen of the sheep, a bell sang from time to time, soft and sleepy.
Suddenly, as if the earth had quaked, the old dog sprang from his feet. With his heart beating frantically, the child opened his eyes wide and, through the veil of darkness, saw the wolf going down, thrashing under the collar with bronze spikes of the shepherd dog. His arm grew tense and he gave one blow with his spear, true and terrible. The beast let out a ferocious howl; Heavy-as-Earth growled menacingly. Panting, Micu pressed down on the spear and he felt through the ash wood the spasms and the death of the thief.
Immediately, he heard the voice of Bald Grandpa near him; a hot wave raised to his eyes; he felt happy and as strong as the tall young men who started to have the first down of beard.
Over the traces of this happening have fallen the leaves of thousands of autumns, on the bank of the Siret, and have stormed sands and ashes. The traces can be seen in the mismatched bones and the remains of the dwellings. Caving in a tall river bank, the waters have given them back to the light and I have read them or dreamed of them, on a night at the beginning of autumn, while the wind was howling in new generations of forests and I was out with my comrades, to hunt wolves in the solitudes at the mouth of the White Creek.
(from the volume of short stories “The Land Beyond the Mists”, written by Mihail Sadoveanu, 1926. The translation is mine.)
*Heavy-as-Earth is a name often given in Romanian fairytales to a dog or other animal (like a bear) that helps and saves the hero. Usually has as companions other dogs or animals, with names like Swift-as-the-Wind, Sharp-Ears, Sharp-Eyes, etc. If it’s not dogs but other animals, usually raised by the hero since they were cubs, it will commonly be a bear, a wolf and a fox or lynx.
