Spirit Wolf

by Kathryn Lasky

  One of the sobbing cubs looked up. “Edme?” His great shining eyes glistened. “You said Edme? Edme, the one-eyed wolf?”

  “Yes,” Gwynneth said. She took a step closer to the little cub. “Great Glaux. You’re the cub — the cub that was nearly the cause of the war in the Darklands, the Black Glass Desert.”

  “Edme saved me!” the cub said. “She saved me and brought me back to my mum and my brother, Burney, here.” The words came rushing out of the cub. “And now our mum is gone! Ever since the quake and … and …” Both cubs were sobbing now.

  “I told them that I’m an orphan, too,” Myrr began to speak.

  “Don’t say that word!” the cub named Burney screamed.

  “I’m sorry!”

  “She’s not dead. She’s not!”

  Gwynneth stepped forward. “Now, stop this quarreling. It will get you nowhere. First of all, what are your names? You’re Burney?”

  “Yes.” The cub nodded.

  “And you must be Toby?”

  “How did you know that?” said the other cub, who was somewhat darker and slightly smaller.

  “You’re not exactly unknown. You almost started a war in the Beyond, the first ever between the wolves and the bears.” Toby nodded. “You’ve become separated from your mum?”

  “Yes. That’s it,” said Toby. “We’re NOT orphans.”

  “Did you lose her during this fog? That’s how we lost Myrr here.”

  The two cubs looked at each other, then at the ground. “No, it was before that,” Burney said in a small voice.

  “It was right after the quake. She just disappeared,” Toby offered.

  “So that was a while ago and you have been looking for her ever since?” Gwynneth said.

  Both cubs nodded, staring at their feet. Gwynneth knew where the bears came from near the river, and she also knew that this was a region where the glacier had been riddled with cracks — wide crevasses that could have easily swallowed a full-grown grizzly. She had seen a dead grizzly in one of the crevasses not far from where Oona had fallen. Gwynneth didn’t think it was the cubs’ mother, but then again, it could have been.

  Gwynneth turned to Myrr. “Myrr, please explain how you found Toby and Burney.”

  “Well.” The pup cocked his head. “I know I’ll probably get into trouble for this. But I had just wandered away, just a teensy-weensy bit away because I thought I saw a snow hare. I’ve never killed a snow hare. I’ve never killed anything, for that matter. I wanted to prove to Edme I could hunt.” The pup frowned. “I wasn’t that far away when all of a sudden the fog came in. I couldn’t see anything! And I think I would have found my way back, but I hit this patch of ice and started to skid down a pretty steep slope. When I got to the bottom I … I … don’t know. I was sort of all mixed up and couldn’t figure out which way to go. I tried going up but it was pretty slippery so I thought well, I’ll just walk along the bottom for a while. This is where I came out and I found Toby and Burney. They were, uh … crying, and well, I just knew right away that … uh, they were sort of like me. Sort of missing.”

  “All right, that’s enough for now. I think I know what we need to do.”

  “We need to find our mum!” Toby broke in.

  Gwynneth nodded. “Yes, of course. We need to find your mum, but don’t you think that if you would come with us, six wolves, two pups, and myself — all of us very good trackers — you’d have more of a chance of finding her?”

  “Will you really look for her?” Burney asked.

  Gwynneth hesitated before answering. She wanted to be truthful.

  “Our plan is to head west. That’s where we think there is the best chance of surviving. The Beyond is destroyed.”

  “We can’t go anywhere without our mum,” Toby replied.

  “She’s looking for us,” Burney said.

  “Yes, yes, of course, dear. But your mum might be thinking the same way that we are. That the best chance for surviving now is to go west.”

  “You think so?” Toby asked.

  “I am sure. So come with us. I can lead you back to where the other wolves are waiting for us. You can see Edme again!”

  “That would be nice,” Toby said. “But she’s not Mum.”

  “Nobody can be your mum except your mum.” Gwynneth came up and stroked the cubs’ shoulders with her wing. “We know that. But please come along now.”

  The fog had almost cleared when Gwynneth arrived with the pup and the two cubs.

  “Myrr! Myrrglosch!” Edme barked and hurled herself toward the pup. Myrr buried his face in Edme’s withers.

  “Don’t make a fuss, Edme,” Myrr whispered. “Look who else is here.” He tipped her head toward the cubs. “They need you, too.”

  Edme disentangled herself. The single eye opened wide. “Toby! Toby and Burney! I can’t believe it.”

  “Bits of a miracle, I think they are,” Gwynneth whispered to Faolan.

  ALL NIGHT LONG THE CUBS WHIMPERED and called out in their sleep for their mum. Edme finally got up and nudged Faolan with her muzzle. “Wake up! Wake up, Faolan!”

  How could he sleep so soundly? she wondered. Hearing those cubs crying was torturing Edme. Banja was awake, her two green eyes glistening in the night.

  “It’s the saddest thing I ever heard,” the red wolf said as Maudie nursed contentedly. “We’ve got to go look for her.”

  “I know!” Edme almost sobbed.

  “What? What? What is it?” Faolan sprang to his feet. He was suddenly fully alert. “Who’s crying?”

  “The cubs!” Edme and Banja both said at once, their voices tinged with a huff of disbelief.

  “Who do you think?” Edme said. “Look, Faolan, we have to go out and look for their mum. If it slows us down, it slows us down. But I won’t be able to look into those sad brown eyes if we don’t try. And that’s that!” She pawed the ground with her foot for emphasis.

  “Of course,” Faolan agreed. He paused a moment and shook his head as if to clear it. “Banja and Dearlea should stay behind with Maudie and Myrr. You, me, Whistler, and Mhairie can go out. We’ll have two teams of two wolves each, with Gwynneth for air surveillance.”

  The four wolves and the owl set out just as dawn was breaking. The joy with which the cubs had greeted the news that a search for their mum would begin was heartbreaking. No matter how much Faolan and Edme cautioned them not to hope for too much, it was of no use. The cubs were sure that the four wolves and the Masked Owl would find their mum.

  The search team backtracked to the place where Myrr had first encountered the cubs.

  “I think we have to trace that gully where I found Myrr with the cubs,” Gwynneth said. “I didn’t take the time to explore it once I had found them, but I think it’s a wandering defile and leads into a bigger gorge. There’s a branch of the river there, and Bronka might have gone looking for her cubs near a fish hole.”

  The two teams of wolves split at a fork in the defile, with Faolan and Edme following one branch and Mhairie and the Whistler another. Gwynneth flew ahead to where the two branches rejoined in a wider gorge. The rock walls were so steep that the entire gorge was cast in shadows despite the bright morning sun. But Gwynneth didn’t need her eyes. It was her ears that caught the beat of a slowing heart.

  Thump …………… thump ………………………… thump. The intervals between heartbeats lengthened until she thought each beat might be the last. Gwynneth folded her wings against her side and plunged down through a latticework of shadow and pale sunlight. A huge mound rose up like a mountain in the stream. Blood and chunks of raw meat that had been torn from the bear’s body lay on patches of snow on the creek’s banks. Gwynneth gasped. Only a rout of outclanners could have done this. Vultures could never tear flesh in that way — in such huge chunks and never from a creature whose heart still beat!

  Gwynneth alighted by the immense head of the bear. It was most definitely Bronka, the mum of Toby and Burney. Gwynneth had seen her once before, on that
night on the Black Glass Desert before the war with the bears. She would never forget Bronka’s roar of joy when her kidnapped son was returned to her, and now this! The great mother grizzly lay dying. Gasping for air, her eyes rolled back in her head.

  “Great Glaux!” murmured the Masked Owl. Wolves had done this to her. But how? It was unimaginable that even a full pack of wolves could bring down a grizzly. But perhaps this time it wasn’t completely impossible. Bronka was painfully thin and Gwynneth noticed that her hind paw was turned backward at a peculiar angle. She blinked. Something white poked through — bone! Bronka’s ankle had broken and a splinter of bone pierced through the thick skin.

  A terrible sound rattled out of Bronka’s chest and blood began to ooze from her mouth.

  Gwynneth bent down low and, pressing her beak to the grizzly’s ear, began to whisper. “Listen to me, Great Bear Mother. Listen closely. Your cubs are safe. They are with Faolan and Edme, the wolves who rescued Toby. They are safe, do you hear me?” She paused. Had Bronka’s heart stopped? But then she heard another beat. “Safe, your cubs are safe! Great Ursus speed you to Ursulana!” Gwynneth waited and waited and waited, but the great heart never beat again. The grizzly Bronka was gone.

  Gwynneth stayed with her for a long spell. She was not sure why. Perhaps it was only to guard Bronka from the scavengers that would show up sooner or later. Perhaps it was to give her soul time to travel on toward Ursulana in peace.

  Soon, however she caught the footsteps of her four companions entering the gorge.

  The Whistler gasped. “She was brought down by outclanners, but how?”

  “Her ankle, it’s broken,” Gwynneth explained. “They must have chased her until she collapsed, and then attacked.”

  The Whistler began sniffing around the carcass and then the tracks that the outclanners had left.

  “It’s not any rout I recognize. They must have ventured a fair distance from the border to come here.”

  “I would guess,” Gwynneth said.

  “What are we going to do?” Mhairie asked. “The cubs won’t believe us. They’ll want to come and see her, and it’s just too awful.”

  “No!” Faolan said firmly. “We can’t allow that.” He paused and thought for a second. “We’ll do a scent roll.”

  Of course, Edme thought. What else could they bring back that would be meaningful to the cubs and at the same time prove that their mother was gone to Ursulana?

  And so each wolf slowly approached the bear and pressed one side of its face and then its chest against Bronka’s thick pelt of fur. Gwynneth looked on. Normally, wolves scent-rolled in order to disguise their own odor when they set out on a byrrgis to hunt. Since she herself had such a poor sense of smell, she felt it would be inappropriate for her to engage in this ritual. She had no pelt. Besides that, how did a bird roll? As Gwynneth watched them, the wolves’ eyes began to stream with tears, and she felt an urge spring up inside her. They were experiencing a profound grief that was not just for the loss of the grizzly but for the cubs who had lost their mother. There was so much to mourn in this land and yet so few creatures left to do the mourning. Somehow this terrible passage in the long history of the Beyond must be marked, remembered. To stand at the edge of grief and not mourn with the survivors seemed wrong to Gwynneth. None of them could make jugs as the Sark had to hold her memories, but if a memory could be kept vital, that was important. What difference did it make if she could not smell? The important thing was that Toby and Burney could.

  Gwynneth spread her wings and lifted into a very low flight. Once, twice, three times, she flew over the hulking body of the mother grizzly. She kept going back and forth, lowering her wings with each pass so that the feathertips of her primaries brushed the pelt of the bear. The oil of the bear seeped through the downy plummels that fringed the leading edge of her secondary and primary feathers right up to her covert feathers. Soon she was as redolent with the scent of the grizzly as the four wolves.

  A wind drifted across the encampment where Toby and Burney had stayed under the watchful eyes of Banja and Dearlea.

  “They found her! They found —!” Burney leaped up.

  Toby, who had been snoozing, was suddenly alert. He stood up quivering. “It’s Mum.”

  Banja and Dearlea exchanged nervous glances. They, too, could pick up the scent of bear, but not the heavy footstep. Grizzlies made noise when they walked. But before they could stop the two cubs, they were scampering down the trail. They skidded to a halt when they saw the four wolves, and Gwynneth hovering a short distance above.

  “Where is she?” Toby shouted. “What have you done with our mother?”

  “She’s here!” Burney screamed. “I smell her. I know how my mum smells,” but his voice began to dwindle.

  Edme walked up to the two cubs. Gwynneth lighted down beside her. The smell of the mother grizzly suffused the air. The two cubs started to shake uncontrollably. “Toby, Burney,” Edme began, “we found your mother. Gwynneth actually found her, but …”

  “Don’t say it!” Toby shouted. The two cubs covered their eyes with their paws. “Don’t say it.” It was as if the words were not spoken, the death would be undone. She would live. Time would reverse. Everything would be made right again as long as the words were not uttered.

  Gwynneth stepped closer to them. In a small voice meant just for them she said, “When I found her, she was still alive. She was breathing, but she was unconscious, not really aware of anything around her. I don’t think she was in any terrible pain. The pain part, the scary part was over. But I did whisper in her ear. And even though she was unconscious, I think she knew what I was saying.”

  “What did you whisper?” Toby asked in a tiny, almost strangled voice.

  “I told her that you were safe. That you would always be safe and that Faolan, Edme, the Whistler, Mhairie, Dearlea, Banja, Myrr, and even little Maudie, and I would take care of you.”

  “But Maudie and Myrr are so little. How can they take care of us?”

  “They can be your friends, can’t they?” Edme asked.

  The cubs nodded. “But you’re a wolf,” Burney said. “And so are the rest, and Gwynneth is an owl. You can’t be our mum!”

  “Of course we can’t,” Edme replied softly. “No one can be your mum except your mum. But we can love you, watch out for you, and keep you as safe as if you were our own pups.”

  “You smell just like her.” Toby pressed his nose into Edme’s withers. Big tears rolled down from his eyes.

  Gwynneth had to blink back her own tears. She suddenly swiveled her head around and plucked two covert feathers from her back.

  “Here!” she said. “One for each of you.”

  “To keep?” they both asked at once.

  “Of course to keep. You’ll always have her scent near you. Tuck them into those burrs between your shoulders.”

  “But didn’t it hurt to pluck your feathers out?” Toby asked.

  “Just a little bit. Wear them and remember your mum.”

  ORDINARILY, THE RIDGE FROM which the Blood Watch commanded its vigil could be seen from leagues away. It was a rocky profile that reared up like the jagged spine of some primeval beast, casting long sharp shadows across the high plains. But the spine had been fractured and the plains seemed to spread endlessly into the savage country known as the Outermost. The little brigade of motley animals — six wolves, two wolf pups, two bear cubs, and a Masked Owl flying overhead as scout, made their way to the west.

  With the sun just past noon, their shadow prints on the snow began to lengthen. The design of their silhouettes sliding across one another on the white blanket of snow was stunning. Occasionally, Gwynneth gave a quick spin of her head to take it in. It was, she realized, a kind of chain. She remembered what Faolan had said about the Great Chain — how they needed a new Great Chain — when they rescued Edme from the crevasse.

  Everything has changed in the Beyond. There is no more Ring, the Sacred Volcanoes have been smashed. There is
no more Fengo, no Watch wolves to guard an ember. The land has been disrupted and so has the order. Gwynneth looked down at the dark shadows gliding across the white snow — the two rotund bear cubs, the tiny wolf pups, the wolves, and her own broad wingspan. The design could make a beautiful chain. If she ever had the good luck to set up another forge, what a challenge it would be to make a piece with such wondrous shapes.

  Gwynneth felt a calm steal into her gizzard. There was a grandeur in this view, this design of these creatures moving away together from famine and death to seek new life on a new piece of earth. How magnificent these different creatures were that must have had life originally breathed into them by one creator, whether it be called Lupus or Glaux or Ursus. How many forms grew out of something so simple.

  It took Gwynneth back to those days at the forge in the Beyond when she would devote endless hours to making art pieces. The strong rocks, as the Rogue smiths called those stones and bits of stones that were full of the metals that they used for their smithing, were plentiful in the region where she had set up her forge. They seemed to cry out to be made into something beautiful, not merely weapons. Besides, most weapons were actually rather boring to make — the battle claws, the blades, the helmets — one could only vary their shapes so much. It might be challenging to make double-action retractable battle claws, but once you had done it a few times, it became rather tedious. Gwynneth’s preference for making art worried her father, Gwyndor, who had been known for his superb double-action retractable battle claws. But her auntie, the Rogue smith of Silverveil, had forged many items beyond the practical or those made for military purposes.

  As Gwynneth looked down and saw Faolan’s silhouette stretched out to an immense length across the snow, she remembered when she had first met him. She had been trying to forge a metal replica of a willow leaf. This might have seemed odd to some, as there was not a willow tree nor a willow leaf to be found in the barren landscape of the Beyond. Gwynneth could barely remember ever seeing a willow tree, even in Silverveil where she had spent much of her youth. Where had she gotten such an idea? she wondered.