The Wind That Uncovers The Bones

This story is by Donley Ferguson and was part of our 2025 Fall Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here.

Graush’ka Half-Nose was hungry.

The ache in his gut coiled along his ribs like snakes slithering beneath wormwood. His tongue, dry and coarse, rasped against his teeth. He tasted the bittersweet tang of old pine sap clinging to the underbrush.

He raised a leg and marked wood and green leaves. Maybe the Unyielding Ones accepted his water. He’d never know. These eternal high priests never spoke. They endured, their prayers to the Great Blue Wolf hidden in root and bark. Still, he honored the old pledges, kept the faith. His scent steamed in the cool air, a declaration in the Pure Language—its syntax, scent, taste, temperature, sound, and texture. A clear message to the masters of this shibboleth.

My claim.

In his valley, damp earth whispered surrender beneath his pads. Somewhere above, a moth-wing flutter disturbed a branch; behind, silence oozed like mud and moss, other biters frozen, breathless, fearing the shadow of death.

A raven circled overhead. Half-Nose licked his maw, enticing it closer.

“Dead, she’s dead, she’s dead,” the bird shrieked in the language of wind and whistle.

The wolf dug claws in mud, black and byzantium fur bristling, glaring at the raven.

“Your distress is a trivial thing,” he growled, matching the dialect.

“Trivial, trivial? Killed by a thing—a man-thing!”

Half-Nose’s tongue dangled; he swished his tail, turning back to the hunt.

The raven persisted, “Its short feet tore roots, tore roots. An Unyielding One, blinded, blackened, broken.”

Graush’ka fought through the accent, understanding: man-thing, desecrated, priest.

His mother, Hraush’shlik, had taught him the hunt of man-things in the language of nips, claws, and hackles—three truths snarled and etched into his flesh.

“Beware the shine of false teeth in its short feet,” she had nipped, a scar beneath his left eye. “Divide them, break them,” she scratched into the snow and tail-swiped his ribs.

The final lesson, soundless, only the reek and feel of it.

She tore a gash in his neck and voided beside his bowed snout.  Her scent, hot and awful, seared the half-healed wound sagging under his eye. It was the Pure Language: Blood’s pepper-tang, the word for fear; Earth’s sulfur and iron, the word for waste. An irrefutable scripture. Hunting a man-thing required bravery.

“How?” he sneezed.

“Come see, come see!” the raven cried, looping westward. “By the feet, lay defeat, a tattered nest, a stinking mess.”

If a man-thing had slain a priest of the Great Blue Wolf, and his own mother lay dead, Graush’ka had to see.

Half-Nose brayed at the sky and followed.

The raven darted over wooded hills, coasting on updrafts, while the wolf loped over boulders and slopes.

Pink light thinned to tangerine and violet. The raven’s flight spiraled tighter until, beneath a dead tree, Graush’ka found a tattered nest and his mother’s carcass.

He grunted, conceding truth. The raven studied the wolf through one wet eye. Black rot gnawed the feet of the fallen Unyielding One—poison sown by man.

“What next, what next?” the bird chattered, hopping brittle branches. One cracked, fell, and struck the corpse. The raven flinched.

Graush’ka ignored it, stepped over bones, and pissed on her remains. By the single eye of the Great Blue Wolf, my hunt. The man-thing would die.

From a hole beneath the tree, a green snake flicked an applause.

Seeing his mother’s body, now matted fur and jaundiced bones, sapped strength; his back haunches dropped. He keened high and thin. The raven rustled above.

It’s laughing at me, Half-Nose thought. Later, I’ll eat it—feathers and all.

Graush’ka circled the bones, inhaled musk, and followed the blood backward. The wolf bounded south until he came to a lush grove. There, battle’s scent, an assault. A message even his crippled nose could understand: cooked blood,  hollow fur, man-thing musk. Half-Nose’s jaws slavered; he tasted mingled blood of man and mother.

The grass revealed struggle: her prints, his panic. The lightning smell of the killing blow. She fought standing, snout to snout, before falling, then fleeing.

Fury rippled along his spine.

Graush’ka returned to his mother’s carcass and found the raven pecking at her skull. He bellowed. The bird hopped aside.

“I protect, I protect. Flesh-eaters disrespect,” it chirped, stabbing worms from the spoiled roots.

“Shut up, shut up,” he told the worm before swallowing it whole.

Graush’ka inspected the remains. No flesh, no bite, no claim. He flicked his tongue across yellow bone, snapped a brittle piece, chewed, swallowed. The contract—sealed. Her territory, his. The man-thing’s death, his vow.

The wolf returned south to the grove, then east downslope towards the river. Above him, the raven screamed, “So close, so close!”

Half-Nose crossed the wafering stream, crested the hill, and saw firelight. The man-thing crouched beside smoke, fish on sticks. Its short feet, pale and pink, held no shine or false teeth. Graush’ka winked his left eye, remembering the scar—the first lesson. The scent surrounding the hill was minerals and sulfur, the man-thing sending its message. Beware.

Graush’ka scraped claws at the root of a thicket along the rise.

Blasphemy! he marked. This man lacked belief, yet dared speak the Pure Language. It profaned a high priest, killed without teeth, took no claim, and left her to rot. A waster, an infidel.

Graush’ka lowered his head, fur bristling, paws silent over loam.

The wolf split trees and charged. The man-thing’s eyes widened. It shouted and raised a shining stick. Thunder cracked. Earth spat fire. Half-Nose veered, circling.

“What is it saying?” he barked at the raven.

“A warning to its pack.”

Another, smaller, man-thing—a den-mother—burst from a den of false skins, clutching a pup. The wolf’s hackles quivered. Lesson two: Divide the pack.

He lunged—mother and pup his target. The man-thing hesitated. The wolf, sensing the opening, feinted. Leapt! The man fell, short feet raised, stick between them. Graush’ka bit, tooth chipping on stone. From his flank, pain flared, a deep bite from a single long tooth. The den-mother gripped a shining false tooth in her small feet. It dropped red. He yowled, turned, spitting and gnashing. A boom of thunder, a red ember seared his neck and snout.

Blood spilling, he scampered back toward the river.

“To the tree,” the raven cried. “Kill it there, for them to see.”

Half-Nose ran, wounded, through the stream. Another crack, his hind leg split, muscle shredding. He could smell his fear rise. Legs shaking, Graush’ka ground his teeth, praying to the Great Blue Wolf.

“Mother,” he roared.

Above, the raven sang, “It’s coming, it’s death.”

Graush’ka stumbled to the dead tree where his mother lay. The raven perched, chanting, “You’re next, you’re next.”

The man-thing appeared, thunder-stick raised.

“Bird,” growled Graush’ka. “Speak my challenge.”

“I, Graush’ka Half-Nose, wolfborn of Hraush’shlik, bite and tear for my mother’s honor.”

The bird stayed silent.

“Raven!” Graush’ka roared. The man came, panting up the trail, stick raised. Only one thing left to do: the wolf sprang at the man.

Thunder answered. 

Wolf and man collided, tumbling beneath the dead tree. The man gurgled, blood flooding his throat, his body offering water to the soil.

The wolf inhaled the sweet scent. Not prey, but its own burnt sacrifice. The blood soaked the dead roots and from the hollow a green snake emerged.

The raven glanced between wolf and man-thing, laughing small and sharp. “Hungry, weren’t you? For food, for honor. Like your mother—easy to fool.”

It flapped above the wolf and shat on his dark fur. “She bit and bled everything, even my family. I told her I would bring you here to die beside her bones.”

Graush’ka’s ruined nose flared. “You lie.”

“A lie with sharper teeth.”

The raven clicked. “Your mother killed my nestlings. I flew for days. Hunger brought me back to the earth and to the snake.” The bird hopped closer to the snake coiled near the dead roots.

“Snake saw my hunger and begged me not to bite. It pleaded and promised to feed my deepest desire. Convinced, I taught the worms to eat the roots of the Unyielding Ones. I told them they would live.”

The raven opened its beak and cawed with laughter. Graush’ka listened, looked to the Great Blue Wolf, and gathered the last of his strength.

“Told your mother, man was the heretic. Told you the same. I gave you both the taste of revenge.”

The snake’s laughter hissed from the hollow. “Wisest in the forest,” 

The raven turned, “Wisest in the forest,” it mocked, and struck, gobbling the snake whole.

Graush’ka lunged—too late. The bird winged upward, laughing.

Then a wind from the west, like a tail swipe of the Great Blue Wolf, slammed the raven into the tree’s rotten crown. It fell dead, a twisted clump of feathers among the bones and corpses.

For a long moment, only the slow murmur of roots remained. The Unyielding Ones drew taste back into soil, stitching bones to earth. The moon blinked its single, shining eye. The forest listened. 

Then, quieter than grief, it began to move.