Wolfbrothers

Author: Gemela Ande

Wolf Brothers

Wolfbrothers are people who can communicate with wolves. This communicating happens mind to mind. There's not much known about wolfbrothers, and they themselves don't want to talk about it, as many people think talking with wolves a sign that the Dark One has touched them.

Wolfbrothers can be recognised from their wolflike golden-yellow eyes. Wolfbrothers have increased sense of smell, sight and hearing, more akin to those of a predatory animal than human.

In the Age of Legends there was a book that spoke about Wolfbrothers. Only a fragment of this book still exists. The writer said, that some who talked to wolves lost themselves, that what was human was swallowed up by wolf. This happened to a Wolfbrother named Neam, who lived in Jarra. Moiraine couldn't Heal him, cause Healing comes as much from the one being Healed as the Healer, and there was nothing in him that remembered being human. The writer didn't make it clear in that fragment, whether the number of those who are lost was one in ten, or five, or nine. Some Wolfbrothers can keep wolves out of their head, and this probably helps with keeping humanity. Mostly the writer spoke of dreams; dreams can be dangerous to wolfbrothers. Wolves live partly in this world, and partly in a world of dreams: the way wolves talk to each other or a Wolfbrother, is in some way connected to this world of dreams.

Wolfbrotherhood is something very ancient come again. Wolves remember hunting down prey side by side with men, so long ago it's more a shadow of a shadow than memory. Wolves remember things differently than people; every wolf remembers the history of all wolves, or the shape of it.

Wolves "speak" mind to mind. They don't actually use words, but rather feelings and pictures, to which mind gives words. Talking with wolves can't be taught; some can do it, some can't. It's always the wolves who find out about it, not the wolfbrother. Wolves are curios about Wolfbrothers: They can usually sense people, but not like they sense a Wolfbrother.

There are limits on how far a Wolfbrother can contact wolves. Even a mile might be too far. The same limits seem to occur on wolves as well: when they need to know something that's far away, they need to contact wolves who are nearer to the place, and those wolves contact others still nearer and so on.

Talking with wolves has nothing to do with the One Power either. Wolves can sense the ability to Channel in a woman, and they are surprised that a Wolfbrother can't. Wolves don't go near Aes Sedai. Wolves are great ones for formalities on first meetings: they send each other a picture of themself plus their smell.

Though some people think Wolfbrothers must be touched by the Dark One, it is not so. Wolves hate Shadowspawn more than wildfire: they would go through fire to reach a Myrddraal. It seems that Shadowspawn fear the glow of a wolfbrother's yellow eyes even more than they fear wolves.

Some words wolves use:

two-legs=people

two-leg shes who touch the wind that moves the sun and call fire=Aes Sedai

Shadowkiller=Rand, the Dragon Reborn

hard-footed four legs/hard-footed tall ones=horses

Small Thorny back=porcupine

hard skin=armor

the mountains the two-legs pile=houses

Twisted One=Trolloc

Neverborn=Myrddraal

Heartfang=Ba'alzamon

Moonhunter=Lanfear

Notdead=Gray Man

Shadowbrother=Darkhound

Wolves

Dapple: the leader of the pack Elyas runs with.(the way shadows play on a forest pool at a midwinter dawn, with the breeze rippling the surface, and the tang of ice when the water touches the tongue, and a hint of snow before nightfall in the air)

Burn: a member of Dapple's pack. Has an old scar on his shoulder, gotten from a Trolloc when he was a yearling.

Hopper: member of Dapple's pack. The cub who had watched the eagles soar, and wanted so badly to fly as the eagles did. Now killed by a Whitecloak when saving Perrin. Has gone in Tel'aran 'rhiod, where he now flies as he always wanted to. Helps Perrin in the Wolfdream.

Wind: a member of Dapple's pack.

Smoke

Two Deer

Winter Dawn

Morning Mist:(a frosty morning with the bite of snows yet to come already in the air, and the mist curling thick across the valley, swirling with the sharp breeze that carried the promise of good hunting)

Two Moons:(a night-shroude pool smooth as ice in the instant before the breeze stirred, with atang of autumn in the air, and one moon hanging full in the sky and another reflected so perfectly in the water that it was difficult to tell which was real)

Wildfire

Old Deer

Half Tail

Rabbit Nose

Three Toes

Cold Water

Twilight

Springhorn

The known Wolfbrothers are: Perrin Aybara, Elyas Machera and Neam

Perrin Aybara

A tall, curly haired young man who used to be a blacksmiths apprentice. He had to flee from his home in Emond's Field in the middle of the night. Has thick arms and wide shoulders, and golden yellow eyes. Carries an axe with a broad half-moon blade on one side and a curved spike on the other, gotten from Master Luhhan in Emond's field, and a blacksmiths hammer, which he got in Tear when helping Dermid Ajala, a blacksmith. He's now a full blacksmith, after the work he did to Master Ajala.

He was introduced to wolves first by Elyas Machera, another wolfbrother.

Perrin's wolf name is Young Bull (a faint picture of a young man with heavy shoulders and shaggy, brown curls, with an axe at his belt, overlaid by the image of a massive, wild bull with curved horns of shining metal, running through the night with the speed and exuberance of youth, curly-haired coat gleaming in the moonlight, flinging himself in among Whitecloaks on their horses, withe the air crisp and cold and dark, and blood so red on the horns...)

Married to Faile (Zarine) ni Bashere t'Aybara, daughter of Davram t'Ghaline Bashere of House Bashere, Lord of Bashere, Tyr and Sidona, Guardian of the Blightborder, Defender of the Heartland, Marshal-General to Queen Tenobia of Saldaea. Mother Deira ni Ghaline t'Bashere. Faile is Queen Tenobia's cousin, and a Hunter for the Horn.

Perrin is a ta'veren, a person around who the Wheel weaves the Pattern, and around him strange things happen. This has caused him to become Perrin t'Bashere Aybara, Perrin Goldeneyes, Lord of the Two Rivers. His banner is red bordered white with a red wolfhead.

In the Old Tongue, "Goldeneyes" is sei'cair

Perrin loves his Lady Wife more than anything else in the world, more than the world.

Elyas Machera

Elyas Machera is a former Warder. His Aes Sedai is called Rina. As he learned that he can talk to wolfes, the Aes Sedai wanted to watch him, and even gentle him. He ran away from them before they could do it and has been running with Dapple's pack since then.

His clothes all seem to be made from animal skins, with the fur still on, even his boots and the flat-topped round cap on his head. His cloak is a crazy quilt of rabbit and squirrel, his trousers appear to be made from the long haired hide of a brown and white goat. His graying brown hair which hungs to his waist, is gathered at the back of his neck with a cord. A thick beard fans across half his chest. He has a long knife, almost a sword, hanging at his belt. He runs with Dapple's pack: Burn, Hopper, Wind, and others.

Wolf name: Long Tooth (a faint picture of a man dressed in clothes made of hides, with a long knife in his hand, but overlaid, more central, was a shaggy wolf with one tooth gleaming in the sunlight as the wolf led the pack in a desperate charge through deep snow toward the deer that would mean life instead of slow death by starvation, and the sun glinting on the white until it hurt the eyes, and the wind howling down the passages, swirling the fine snow like mist...)

Wolfdream/Tel'aran'rhiod

Wolves live partly in this world, and partly in a world of dreams. The way wolves talk to each other, the way they talk to a Wolfbrother, is in some way connected to this world of dreams. This 'world of dreams'(or the Wolfdream) is believed to be the same as Tel'aran'rhiod, the Unseen World or the World of Dreams, which is the place Dreamers and dreamwalkers can enter. Way back when the White Tower still had Dreamers, they spoke of meeting wolves in their dreams, even wolves that acted as guides.

A Wolfbrother can enter the Wolfdream. Unlike any usual dream, Wolfdream can be extremely dangerous: if you die there, you die in the waking world as well. For wolfbrothers it is dangerous for another reason as well: wolves can get to him easier. And when a Wolfbrother is too strongly in the wolfdream, he can appeare as a wolf. What has made the place even more dangerous of late is, that the Forsaken walk there. There's a man called slayer, who kills wolves in the Wolfdream. And a wolf who dies in the Wolfdream, is dead forever. Wolves go there when they die; All are there, all brothers and sisters that are, all that were, all that will be.(said by a dead wolf Hopper)

Other things said by Hopper:

All is real, what is seen, and what is not seen

What is real is not real. What is not real is real. Flesh is a dream, and dreams have flesh.

Dream is not like the world of flesh. Here, the same hunt can have many endings.

Perrin's "windows" in the wolf dream:

Mat, rattling a dice cup. His opponent ia staring Mat with eyes of fire. Mat doesn't seem to see the man. Mat makes his toss...

Egwene and Elayne and Nynaeve standing looking at a huge metal cage, with a raised door held on a heavy spring. They step in and reach up together to loose the catch. The barred door snaps down behind them. A woman with her hair all in braids laughs at them, and another woman all in white laughs at her.

Rand standing amid swirling stormwinds, laughing wildly, even madly, arms upraised, and on the winds rode small shapes, gold-and-scarlet, like the strange figure on the Dragon banner: hidden eyes watched Rand, and there was no telling whether he knew it.

Nynaeve and Elayne stalking cautiously through a demented landscape of twisted, shadowed buildings, hunting some dangerous beast.

Mat, standing where a road forked ahead of him. He flips a coin, starts down one branch, and suddenly he's wearing a wide-brimmed hat and walking with a staff bearing a short sword blade.

Egwene and a woman with long white hair staring at him in surprise while behind them the White Tower crumples stone by stone

Egwene standing among a crowd of women, fear in her eyes, slowly the women kneel around her. Nynaeve is one of the women, and so is Elayne.

Mat standing naked and bound, snarling, an odd spear with a black shaft was thrust across his back behind his elbows, and a silver medallion, a foxhead, hanging on his chest

Rand wearing rags and a rough cloak, and a bandage is covering his eyes.