My name is Ibukaina. When I was very young, my mother would say, “Ibu, you are special. The Moon Mother has given you a gift to help our people.” It took many moons for me to understand those words.

My story starts almost fifty moons ago. I was the youngest of eight children, the smallest by far. For a time, my mother wondered if I would even survive my first year. When the Moon Mother has a plan for you, however, it is not likely that even the worst of sicknesses will take you from this world. And with the tender care of my family, I grew strong as any of my brothers or sisters.

Our family was much larger then. We occupied the northernmost lands of the forest, and our clan was nearing one hundred members. Of course, we lived in separate family groups, but every spring, the groups would come together, and we would have a reunion, a chance for the old ones to get reacquainted and the young ones to get introduced. Then we would go our separate ways, distanced until the next spring, very seldom crossing paths.

I was fourteen moons old, however, the first time this changed. The clans came together at the end of summer, near the harvest moon. My mother hadn’t explained much on the journey, but I noticed she was saddened and wary, and I was old enough to understand that many of our people were gone.

That meeting changed my life forever. It was here that Mother explained to me what had happened and how important my gift was. The river, she said, had brought a new hunter to the forest, a creature whose eyes were empty as the creeks with no rain, whose hearts were as dry as the snowless winter air. Ferocious, ravenous beasts these were with claws and fangs that bit into our flesh like no other, and a scent that was enough to cause the bile to rise in one’s throat.

These beasts were the culprits for our missing kinsmen. They were a threat to our kind everywhere, and the Moon Mother had left it to me to stop them before our forest, our home, our people were destroyed.

Alone, I was sent to spy upon these creatures. I was terrified, I assure you, but Moon Mother had kissed me, and I would be safe. My snowy hair and icy blue eyes were evidence of that kiss, I was told many times, but just then, I didn’t feel so secure. Especially not when I first saw the monsters with my own eyes.

I crouched in the shadows of the forest, listening to the pounding of my heart, for that was all I could hear in that moment. The birds, the monkeys, even the crickets had gone into hiding from these terrors that didn’t belong. Twisted they were with crooked hands and smashed faces, tiny, flattened ears that looked as if they’d been half removed. And they smelled of death beyond anything that could be produced by the natural.

As I sat there watching them, I suddenly realized that I could understand them. Their snarls and growls shifted in my ears until they became words that I could understand. I thought I had been afraid before, but when the clarity found me, a new sort of terror ate at my soul, threatened to consume me. I must have gasped quite audibly, for in that moment, those monsters turned their hideous, lifeless gazes upon me, and I was frozen.

All their talk of hunting my people until we were no more ceased, and they stared wide-eyed at me. Not until a familiar scent touched my nose was I able to shake from my stony perch. I wasn’t sure if the smell of fear was coming from them or from somewhere else, but it overpowered that decaying, rotting scent that hung on their camp, and so I ran back into the forest, back to my people and told them everything I had heard.

That day, my people went into hiding, fighting our war from the dark of night, struggling against these beasts which, with my gift from Mother Moon, I discovered called themselves 'humans'. We learned to raid their camps and steal their belongings, always one step ahead of them by the grace of the Moon Mother. We even occasionally managed to steal one of their young. These at first we tried to raise ourselves in the hopes that a single young would grow up with an understanding he could carry back to the rest to stop our war. In the end, we learned we were better off eating them to prevent them from breeding more, for the human young lacked the mind to understand and speak the words of our kind, which they called 'wolf'.

I am old now, and my time here is almost done. But I will never truly be gone. This is my one prayer to the Moon Mother that my spirit will live on forever, in the minds and hearts of my people that I may continue to guide them and protect them, and in the nightmares of the humans, the great white wolf spirit that stalks them with eyes of the coldest winter skies sending fear upon them that they may leave our forest and let my people live in peace.

Tonight I lift up my voice to the Moon Mother, joined by my family in a haunting melody to honor those that have gone before at the hands of our enemy.