I caught a glimpse of the not-so-metaphorical wolves as one tried to grab hold of my ankle.  I’m not particularly tall or athletic, but adrenaline is the body’s method of giving even the most average of us superpowers.  In this case, the surge of the natural magic juice helped me climb up onto a shelf of the red rock, just outside the snarling teeth of an inky blackness with the growling and snapping of an unsuccessful predator.

Instead of jumping up and down and singing (once I could catch my breath) something about, “Nanny-nanny-boo-boo, grow some opposable thumbs and evolve to catch me,” I continued my upward climb, still a little hurried as I was not convinced that they weren’t just drawing straws as to who got to make the jump.  It was a little slippery and the angle wasn’t good for anything without hands, but I remember a trip to the Cheyenne Mountain zoo and a little discussion that you could expect a dog to jump twice its height without much trouble.

Then I saw it lean down and look at me, with a smile in its teeth and a friendly wag of its tail.  It was met by another, and then a third, curious, and I was entirely happy to see them.

They’re called Borzoi.  You might know the breed as the Russian Wolfhound.  You see them in a lot of fantasy films. I could have been a bit happier to see a Rhodesian Ridgeback (you know, the ones that take on lions) but this wasn’t the right… I don’t know the word – genre?  Dimension?  History? It felt kind of like the cavalry coming in, although that doesn’t usually happen until the last part of the film.

“Good doggies!” I said, making sure my voice sounded chipper.  They probably didn’t speak English, but since we’ve already gone over the deficiencies in my foreign language training, I figured tone and expression were what I’d be working with anyway.

I got a licked nose for it, and one of the others seemed quite curious at the ruckus down below.  (I’m sure there was another term for it that was more appropriate to the milieu… aha!  That’s the word I was looking for! …but ruckus is what my mom would have called it.  I think that was even her venery: a “ruckus” of canids.)

I moved up a little further.  My climbing method was more a grabbing at something solid and wriggling (what’s the difference between that and wiggling?) over with lots of grunting and dirt getting ground into my jacket.  It was working, but it probably wasn’t the kind of method used by anyone who wasn’t desperate.   If I was going to be an action adventurer, I probably needed to learn something more dignified.

I finally was able to stand up and brush myself off.  The dogs were very curious, and I let them sniff me.  They made a lot less noise than I was expecting, but I think that’s part of the breed.    I didn’t actually know anything about wolf hunting with hounds, but I’d heard of it, and I think humans were involved in it.  They did not have collars, but they could have more subtle forms of ownership I couldn’t see in the dark.

I looked up towards the bowl of flame.  It was still far up the mountain, but I could see behind it now – there was some sort of facade constructed there, a building presumably behind it, but it was the same colour as the mountain, perhaps Al Khazneh style.  (Except with more of those onion-dome cupolas.)  I kept heading towards it, if for no other reason than to have some more light to see by.

I saw multiple pawprints in the reddish dust.  From here, the occasional heartbeat of the land was easier to hear with the ears rather than the feel of it, like bass heard from far away.

“I see you have been found.  My hounds clutch many victories from the wolves.”

I looked up at the shadow that appeared on a ridge above me.  “I did not know I was missing.”

“Ha!  You should not be here at all, which is how we knew you were coming.  Come closer to the fire, so we can see your face.  And if we like it not, we will show you how well my hounds are fed.”

I managed not to shiver.  “A man’s face is not his to choose.”

“No, no!  We disagree.  A man’s face shows his journey, his choices.  Are you the kind of man who would be born from a sapling, like young Ivanko?  Or are you a man of steel?”

“I am no Superman,” I protested.

“Steel, I said,” he barked.  “Not fairytales.  Skazka.”  He made it sound like what a dog might deposit after it ate my face.

I headed further up the mountain, hoping I would at least give the friendly wolfhounds some indigestion.