Crashing through the brush, half-staggering, half-hobbling over rocks and fallen logs, Helga came upon a most startling sight. At the side of a beautiful mountain lake, a Wolf was hanging upside down by his feet, playing a flute! Helga stopped in amazement. She was speechless. Aahhhooo...oooooo...aaaahhhoooo...ooooo...ladoooooo...ladoooo...The music from the flute was simple and softly cheerful. In deep concentration of his playing, the Wolf had not noticed her, despite the noise Helga had made barging through the brush.
The Wolf was hanging in a perfectly vertical position, with his feet hooked over a tree branch, about ten feet above the ground. He was dressed in a loose-fitting, light green shirt and trousers, each with ruffled ties around the wrists and ankles to keep the garment in place while he was upside down. He wore a dark green sash around the waist. Helga noticed what appeared to be another dark green garment and some sandals on the ground under the tree. The flute was perhaps two feet long.
Helga stood for a time listening to the soothing music. She dropped her pack to the ground and sat down. It seemed wonderful that so strange a musician, with so simple an instrument, using nothing but air, could have such power over the heart. Helga felt as if the beauty of the scene and the melody of the flute were drawing all the struggles and pain of her days since leaving the Hedgelands away from her mind. Hunger and weariness vanished, and only as the sun fell lower in the sky did the flutist at last stop his playing. How many hours had passed? Helga did not know.
Suddenly, in one somersaulting leap, the Wolf had swung free of the tree and landed before her.
“And now yor best coome along with me,” the Wolf said. “Where have yor coome from? The mounts, those awful mounts, I’ll be born. What were yor doin’ there? Aiean, moony a poor body has been lost in those tumbled, coold, wildy mounts and never been foound.”
When Helga began to explain how she had come to be there, the Wolf raised his paws to stop her. “Aiean, it’s enough to know by the mercy of the Ancient Ones yor ever got oout. Comin’ along with me.” The Wolf slipped on the sandals and the dark green habit-style garment that had been lying under the tree.
While he did so, he let Helga hold his flute. It was beautifully made from aromatic red cedar. It had a long fringe running its entire length—the fringe was made of tassels strung with beads. She admired its beauty and longed to play it herself, but the Wolf said, “Wherever yor find there be music, the music be comin’...yor don’t need the flute. Findin’ the music first, then the flute be comin’ to the music!”
Slipping the instrument in a special pocket in his habit, the Wolf said, “My name be called Ola. Comin’ aloong now...Give me yorn pack. We’ll be getting’ you out of these mounts.” Helga handed her pack to Ola. He led her some distance through the rugged, but beautiful land. After a scrambling climb up a long hillside, they reached the top of a high ridge, and looked out over a vast reach of wetland valley reaching to the horizon. The end of the mountains!
They went a short distance down the far side of the ridge, leaving the high wall of the Don’ot Stumb Mountains to their backs. Ola walked slowly, allowing Helga to set the pace with her hobbling gait. He said nothing more, but walked with a dignity and kindly spirit that gave Helga more and more confidence in his goodness. As they walked along, Helga’s curiosity overcame her and she said, “Ola, where is your home?”
“The world bein’ such a wide-big world, the robe and the flute is my home, Misst Helgy,” Ola replied. Helga learned that Ola was a Gateless Wolf novice. The Gateless Wolf was one who practiced the ancient Wolf art called Enigma. Enigma was a nonviolent martial art in which the warrior used the power of riddles and anomalies to defeat an enemy, sometimes engaging in intense duels with an adversary using riddles as the only weapon.