Spirit Wolf

by Kathryn Lasky

  And where had Faolan gotten this idea about heading west? Certainly he had not experienced a scroomly visit from her dead father, Gwyndor. Had a lochin come to Faolan and told him to go west? Whatever the reason, Faolan was now a wolf with a purpose.

  She watched as he set a steady pace, cocking his head slightly to starboard as a northwest wind blew across the high plains. He was a magnificent wolf. Huge. His silvery coat seemed to sparkle in the sun. When he waved his tail to indicate a slight course correction, it flashed like a comet streaking down to earth. His gait had altered slightly since his paw mended. She noticed that he bore down heavily on it every few strides, leaving a blazoned mark in the snow as if to declare unequivocally, A wolf named Faolan has passed this way!

  But why, Gwynneth wondered, did Faolan still have the spiral mark on his paw pad? Banja’s second eye had been restored perfectly; the Whistler’s twisted throat had straightened and the hole repaired, patched so there was no longer the sibilant hiss when he spoke. Faolan’s paw, too, had mended. It was like any other normal wolf’s paw except in this one respect. Why was the spiral left? There must be a reason.

  The shadows on the ground had slid across one another into a new configuration. Now the shadow of her wings spanned either side of Faolan’s elongated body. Gwynneth inhaled sharply.

  A flying wolf! The sun went behind a cloud and the shadows vanished. But the image lingered in Gwynneth’s mind’s eye.

  As she was contemplating it, she caught a disturbing sound in her ear slits. It was a tiny crackling coming from beneath the snowy surface deep in the earth.

  Oh, no! she thought. It can’t be. She had heard that sound before — a prelude to the last earthquake when she was in the Shadow Forest at the blue spruce. Not again! Should she alert the wolves below? She didn’t want to alarm them unnecessarily. They were going at a fairly good clip. Banja had slowed down some. She was carrying Maudie, who was sound asleep in her jaws. Perhaps she could relieve her. Gwynneth swooped down. “Let me take the pup, Banja. You look tired.”

  “I’ll do it,” Edme offered. “Best you keep scouting, Gwynneth.”

  “Oh, you are both too kind,” Banja said and shook her head slightly as if she could hardly believe this generosity. It was not the first time Banja had looked upon kindness with astonishment. Ever since she had joined them with her pup, she seemed overwhelmed when the wolves were nice to her. Why had she never been this way at the Ring? Did she have to give birth to learn that the world was not a stingy place?

  The glare was exceptionally fierce as they headed into the setting sun. Faolan soon noticed that Banja was not the only one who had grown tired; the others’ energy seemed to be flagging as well. He was determined to reach the border and the Cave Before Time by evening. He knew now that this was where he would meet the third gyre. There had been Eo, and before Eo, Fionula. Who would be the third?

  He slid his eyes toward Edme, who was trotting beside him. She had handed off the pup to Mhairie. Sometimes he felt that Edme perceived more about him than he did himself. He wondered about the nightmare she’d had in the spirit woods. What had she seen as he had walked with his gyre souls? Did she sense who that third soul would be?

  Impossible!

  “You’re thinking about the Cave, aren’t you? The Cave Before Time,” Edme asked.

  “I’d — I’d just like to get there by dark.” He tried to sound casual.

  Edme said nothing. He noticed that her gait was rough. At first he thought it was because she had been carrying Maudie. But now he turned and looked as she walked a bit ahead of him. Her starboard leg was striking the ground unevenly.

  “Edme, are you lame?”

  Edme wheeled around. “What? No! I’m perfectly fine.”

  “You’re walking as if you have a pain. Pain in your starboard femur.”

  Edme laid back her ears, barely disguising a snarl. “My femur is perfectly fine.”

  Her femur was not perfectly fine. Faolan knew it. He could feel that it was twisted. He wasn’t sure why he had never noticed this before. Perhaps it hadn’t affected her when she was younger. It could have been bone freeze, a condition that often afflicted elderly wolves. Gradually the bone twisted and became gnarled, which made for an uneven gait. But the condition never occurred in a wolf as young as Edme.

  If it was bone freeze, it seemed grossly unfair to Faolan. Poor Edme! Because she was a malcadh made and not born, her eye had not been restored, and now a twisted femur that could not be detected at birth and probably had not troubled her until this long journey had flared up. Faolan could tell that Edme was angry, especially when he mentioned her femur. This all seemed oddly familiar to him. Her annoyance with him, the funny way she walked, her defensiveness when he said the word “femur.” He had to think of something quickly to placate her.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing. We would all be walking a bit peculiarly if we had fallen into a crevasse and had to hang on to that ice ledge such a long time.”

  “Exactly!” she mumbled. “Now please drop the subject.” She picked up her speed as if to prove she was fine.

  Faolan watched her as she moved off. There was something haunting about the way she was walking, something that scratched at the back of his brain, like an old dream. Dream! That was it! He’d had a dream the night before the earthquake on Broken Talon Point.

  While his sisters were carving the bones of their mother, Morag, he had fallen into a deep sleep in a den nearby and dreamed of carving another bone, a twisted femur.

  He stopped in his tracks. But how could that be? He could not have carved Edme’s femur. He hadn’t even known it was twisted. She had never before betrayed a trace of lameness. Suddenly, Faolan was frightened of what he would find in the Cave Before Time. I can’t go there, he thought. I can’t! His legs refused to move.

  “Faolan, what’s wrong?” the Whistler asked.

  “I … I think I need to rest. Right here. I think we should stop here for the night.”

  “What!” Edme roared. “Have you gone cag mag?” She raced toward him, her ears shoved forward, her tail raised, and her hackles bristling. Her single eye gleamed and seemed to pin him to the ground as Faolan sank down into the most abject posture of submission.

  There was absolute silence. One could have heard a feather drop or a strand of fur shed. Never had the wolves seen Edme and Faolan face off in such a display. To see Faolan, of all wolves, sinking down as if he were once again a gnaw wolf, and Edme rigid, her ears shoved forward as if her marrow was about to boil over with anger … There had been many strange things that had occurred in the Beyond during the last moon, but this was the strangest of all.

  All the creatures, the six wolves, the two pups, and the two bear cubs froze in their tracks. This standoff was a spectacle that not one of them could have anticipated. They all knew, even the young pups, that Faolan and Edme had a profound respect for each other. They had both been gnaw wolves in their clans. They had both competed in the gaddergnaw and earned themselves coveted positions on the Watch at the Ring. To see them fight was as peculiar as the unseasonable moons that had brought blizzards in the summer.

  Faolan felt a shiver course up his paw right through the swirling marks on its pad. He saw Edme’s hackles bristle up and a frightened light in her eye replaced the glint. Her tail dropped. At just that moment Gwynneth lighted down.

  “What are you standing here for? We have to move. I think —” There was a shudder from deep inside the earth.

  “We have to move now!” Gwynneth said. “This ground could crack. There’s softer ground ahead — a bog.”

  “The Frost Forest! It’s at the edge of the bog. And then the Cave — the Cave Before Time. We have to get there.” Faolan’s voice was firm and an urgent new energy streamed through him.

  He raced forward. Edme and the rest of the little company fell in on his port flank. The earth was shaking, but the motley brigade of creatures raced on, confident that even if the land cracked, order had been restore
d for them. Faolan was in the lead, Edme beside him, then his sisters with Myrr between them, the cubs next. The Whistler carrying Maudie, and Banja at his side.

  “Crevice opening to port!” Gwynneth shreed. The raspy call cut like a blade through the lavender twilight that was beginning to stain the land. Faolan headed a few points off course to skirt a gash that was opening up.

  A minute later, Gwynneth sounded another alarm. “Press starboard now! There’s another dead ahead!”

  They were traveling at press-paw speed. “It’s like a byrrgis,” Mhairie whispered to Dearlea, “except we’re the prey!” The ground fractured all around them, like a furious beast that would swallow them if they made the slightest misstep. Immense slashes opened up to the front of the wolves, behind them, and on all sides. The land was a deadly maze.

  “Bear two points off to port, three! Now three to starboard! Quarter off the wind!” Edme had taken the lead and Faolan fell back. It was uncanny, but the one-eyed she-wolf seemed to sense the cracks before they opened. They ran on and on until the land finally stopped heaving.

  Faolan shouted the order to halt. “We’re here!” The creatures skidded to a stop. The ground was solid but ahead there was a tumble of rocks. The entrance to the Cave was blocked.

  “Where are we?” Gwynneth asked, setting down on a large boulder.

  “This is the Cave … the Cave Before Time.” Faolan looked at Edme.

  “Lead us in, Faolan,” she said softly. “You know the way.”

  And he did. The swirl on the once twisted paw of his was drawn to an almost invisible passage, like a lodestone to a strong rock.

  “This way!” Faolan said. “This way.”

  THE PATH INTO THE CAVE HAD altered. It twisted and turned, then pitched quite steeply. Faolan proceeded cautiously. He was sure this was the Cave Before Time, but the quake must have rearranged its interior as it had the rest of the world outside. He wondered what had happened to the beautiful pictures.

  He stepped into a cavern, and though it was black as night, a filament of moonlight fell down upon him from above. The moon crack! Faolan thought. He had seen this crack before, so he now knew exactly where he was in the Cave. But how strange that the moon crack had remained just as it always was, no wider than before despite the two earthquakes.

  On his first visit to the cave, Faolan had thought he was entering a cavern of impenetrable darkness, but there had been a tiny fissure in the ceiling no bigger then the thread of a spiderweb. And through it fell a silken strand of moonlight. For most creatures this would not provide enough light to see, but a wolf’s night vision was truly extraordinary and the thin beam of moonlight offered just enough illumination. Now it caught the wolves’ eye-shine, first from Faolan’s eyes, and then those of the other wolves. Suddenly, the cave flickered with green light. The pictures loomed up on the mica-flecked walls, undamaged even in the latest convulsions of the earth. In a far corner, Faolan spied a mound of pure white fur. The mound stirred. The cave flashed as four eyes met in a lock of green shine.

  “Airmead!” Edme yelped. “Katria!”

  Airmead and Katria had belonged to the MacHeath clan, the only two noble wolves in a clan so heinous it had been expelled from the Beyond more than four hunger moons ago. Airmead had been the Obea of the clan and Katria the former mate of Donaidh, a high-ranking lieutenant. Before the clan’s expulsion, both Airmead and Katria had escaped the MacHeaths to join the MacNamara clan, where they had proven themselves invaluable. They had been dispatched to serve on the Blood Watch by the MacNamara chief and arrived soon after Faolan and Edme had left.

  The Whistler now stepped forward. “But the rest, the rest of the Blood Watch? Where are they?”

  Katria and Airmead looked at each other and Airmead tried to stand. It was then they noticed the huge streak of blood on her flank.

  “Down, Airmead!” Katria ordered. She turned to Faolan and Edme. “Airmead was wounded in a skirmish with the last rout.”

  “The last rout?” Faolan said. “You mean there are no more outclanner packs?”

  “Just the remnants of one. Lupus knows where they went.”

  “There were twelve in the rout. Now there are perhaps five — six at the most. Vicious! You can’t believe how vicious.” Airmead shook her head. She winced and Edme noticed that there was blood leaking from her neck as well.

  “Stay quiet, Airmead. Your wound is in a dangerous place.”

  “Don’t worry. It was worse last night and it’s getting better every day. I’m gaining strength. There is actually plenty to eat in this cave — mice, voles, even bats if you’re desperate enough.”

  “What about Brygeen?” the Whistler asked.

  “Brygeen and the Namara — they’re both gone,” Airmead whispered.

  They all gasped. Airmead seemed to know what passed through the wolves’ minds. It was unthinkable that Galana the Namara, the chieftain of the MacNamara clan, leader of the greatest fighting force in the Beyond, had been killed by a rout of outclanners.

  “It wasn’t the rout that killed the Namara,” Katria replied. “She had arrived to help out on the Blood Watch just before the first quake. She had hardly been here a day when it happened.” Katria closed her eyes and recalled the scene.

  First came the terrible growling that rose up from the earth as if a maddened beast had been set loose. The Namara was thrown from the cairn on which she stood watch, flung out into the air to land on a jagged rock. The tip of the rock impaled her, piercing right through her chest and into her heart.

  “What is it, Katria?” Edme asked as she saw the she-wolf’s hackles had risen and her legs were shaking.

  “She can’t stand to think about it,” Airmead whispered. “She is the one who saw the Namara’s death. She didn’t die at the fangs of the outclanners, but her death caused the skirmish in which I was injured and Brygeen and Alastrine were killed.”

  “Alastrine, too?” Mhairie moaned. Alastrine was the skreeleen and point wolf from the Blue Rock Pack of the MacDuncan clan. Both Mhairie and Dearlea revered her. There were very few she-wolves who had the lungs to run as fast as a point wolf needed to, and also serve as the skreeleen, the lead howler in a pack.

  “I don’t understand,” Edme said. “How could the death of the Namara cause a battle between the Blood Watch and an outclanners’ rout?”

  “Heart’s blood,” Airmead said softly.

  “What are you talking about?” Faolan asked.

  “When the first earthquake came and the Namara was thrown from her cairn, she landed on a splinter of rock that pierced her heart. There’s that stupid old superstition about the blood that comes from the heart of a chieftain. Some believe that if one drinks it, they become invincible. The Namara was the most powerful of all wolves. So the outclanners raced in to lap up her blood. It was an abomination! They were tearing at her pelt, going wild trying to devour her heart.”

  “But it’s cag mag,” Edme whispered. “She was powerful because she was intelligent, unlike any outclanner in any rout. She was of strong marrow. That same marrow that made her fight so well and inspired her as a leader also made her compassionate. So they tear out her heart, drink her heart’s blood to make them strong? They don’t even know what real strength is. Stupid, stupid superstitious wolves!”

  Faolan cocked his head toward Edme. She sounded exactly like the Sark, who had nothing but contempt for the old wolf superstitions. How often had he heard the Sark carry on about the submission rituals or the silly necklaces that the chieftains wore? But at the same time, the speech was pure Edme. He recalled vividly how Edme had defended him at the gaddergnaw against the loathsome yellow wolf Heep when they were in a gnaw circle honing their bone-carving skills for the final contest. Faolan had gnawed a picture of a constellation that Heep had said was blasphemous, for it resembled the Great Bear constellation more than the Great Wolf one. The conversation came back to him as if it were yesterday.

  It looks like a bear and not a wolf. Heep had scowle
d. But Edme had come to Faolan’s defense. Her voice so soft but her words so incisive they cut like fangs to bone.

  It’s beautiful, Heep, she had said. What difference does it make what one calls it? Stars all have different meaning for different animals, and heavens have different names. Her words had been so simple and yet so powerful.

  Then a terrible thought raced through Faolan’s mind.

  “Airmead, Katria, was there a yellow wolf in that rout?” Faolan asked suddenly.

  “Why, yes. Yes, there was.”

  “Was he tailless?” Faolan asked. Edme turned to him quickly, horrified understanding in her eyes.

  “But, Faolan, Heep was a malcadh — a true malcadh. He would have been mended.”

  “True,” Faolan said.

  How unfair. Here is Edme still with just one eye, and Heep’s tail has been restored. He turned again to Katria and Airmead. “It is also true that this yellow wolf was a murderer. He murdered a malcadh!”

  “What?” the two wolves gasped.

  “Yes, and he was a MacDuncan wolf, not a MacHeath. Tell me, was he one of the ones who survived? Does Heep still live?”

  Airmead and Katria both nodded. “He was the one who wounded me, Faolan. Of course it was Heep! I should have remembered him, but with his tail he looked so different. But yes, Faolan, he still lives.”

  HE STILL LIVES. THE WORDS ECHOED in Faolan’s mind, shivered through his marrow. The wolves had all settled down in the spacious first heal, or chamber, of the Cave. Although Faolan was exhausted, he knew sleep would not come easily. He looked up at the moon crack.

  Faolan realized that he had become so distracted by the story of Heep and the outclanners’ greed for heart’s blood, that he had completely forgotten about the third gyre of his soul — his brethren through time, through the centuries. He needed Fionula, the Snowy Owl, and Eo, the grizzly, and whomever the third gyre creature was, if he was going to attempt to leave the Beyond and find a new land to the west. The Distant Blue, past the farthest edges of the outclanners’ territory, where the western sea began.