Orphan

 

Fila

            I must have had parents. I don’t remember them. Maybe I remember a little while dreaming. A vague sweetness, then nothing. Even when I was very small I knew that no one lives who didn’t come from a mother. The birds had mothers and fathers. All the small furred things came from mothers and fathers. Deer, and bears, and mountain cats had mothers and fathers. I knew that. But mine were lost somehow.
            My animal mother was a wolf. She must have found me lying alone with my dead family and carried me away from the house of death to her den. The urge to mother must have been very strong in her. She removed my filthy clothing with her mouth and cleaned and fed me with her own children. I owe her my life. We still know one another.
            I called her Fila. I hadn’t learned much language yet, but I called her this word. Fila. She knew that I couldn’t live naked in the forest. It’s too cold and wet for too much of the year. But she couldn’t dress me. For as long as she could she kept me in her den, in a bank in the forest, covered in loose grassy matter and leaves and snugged in with her children.  It was summer, so that was alright for a while.
            I had no name. No one spoke to me. Fila used little yips mostly, and nudges.
            The summer became old. Nights became chilly and the wind blew through the trees and there was rain. I was a problem to the wolf family.
            One unknown to me came walking down the forest path on a certain day that early fall. This one made songs, but much stronger than Fila’s. Fila’s children and I peered out of our den, to watch him come toward us, singing all the while. He was the biggest living thing any of us had ever seen. Then he saw us watching him. We didn’t fear him. We were charmed somehow. Maybe it was his song.
            He stopped to look at us looking back at him. Four furry grey faces and one white smooth one gazed in fascination. Fila sat nearby.  I saw no sign of fear in her either.
            I didn’t know laughter. But this one must have been laughing, for he made a huge rumbling sound. He came closer and saw that one child was not a wolf.  He rumbled again. He looked at Fila and she looked pleased, sitting on her haunches and panting in a watchful way to see what would happen next like any cheerful canid.
            He knelt before the den, reached in with great huge hands and pulled me out, all naked and a bit chilly. He stood looking at me, then looking at Fila with a question in his eyes.  She ducked her head, and closed her eyes, and then sat up again. I didn’t understand, but she was handing me over.  She had kept me alive until that day. I think that I must have been somewhat over two years old, because I had named her, and small infants don’t name others.
            The huge one, pelted in soft dark brown hair, held me up to his eye level.  His dark brown eyes looked into my blue ones, and he said the first word that I ever remember hearing spoken. “Soosha.”
            Soosha I became. He had named me right there.
            He held me in the crook of his left elbow, then laid a large hand flat on his own soft chest and said, “Hofel. Hm? Hofel!” He nodded and rumbled a bit more. That was the second time that I heard speech. He spoke to Fila. I don’t remember those words.
            Carrying me, nestled deeply in his brown hair, he turned around and began walking back the way he had come as if he had changed his mind about the purpose of his walk through our part of the forest.
            I had never been carried before or in such comfort and warmth. Soon I was drifting off to sleep in his arm. There was such sweetness in being carried and hearing him singing and rumbling as he went. We moved very quickly, entering parts of the forest that I had never seen. This was the beginning of time for me.
            We traveled deeper and deeper among the trees, uphill, until we were surrounded by stone outcroppings.  I could hear water running somewhere nearby as I dozed.
            There were voices. One was higher than Hofel’s, questioning, but sweet.
            Hofel handed me carefully to another.  He said, “Soosha!”