Spirit Wolf

by Kathryn Lasky

  The Distant Blue loomed azure and cloudless like another sky. It had always been unreachable because of that western sea that was too vast to swim, but through his gyres, Faolan sensed that there might be a way. Was this not how the first wolves of the Beyond had arrived out of the Long Cold on the Ice March?

  It came to him then as he thought about the Distant Blue that his third soul was a wolf. He was not sure how he knew this, but the knowledge struck him with such conviction that it was impossible to doubt.

  He was sure his wolf gyre soul was needed to lead them out of the Beyond to this new place, the Distant Blue. And of course it wasn’t a truly new place. It was the place from which they had all come — the place the wolves had left when they had arrived in the Beyond on the Ice March, more than a thousand years ago. Once there had been a wolf, an old wolf, who had led them. Faolan must meet that wolf tonight, right now while his companions slept.

  He looked over at Edme before he stood up. She was lovely in her sleep, lovely in her bones. It was as if that shimmering spirit of hers shone through from her marrow to her pelt. She was the best of all things a wolf could be, a container for all grace. Despite her missing eye, she was a wolf so lovely in her marrow that she made the rest of the world seem dim and shadowed by comparison.

  Faolan raised up onto his legs. They felt slightly wobbly, as if he were much older and weaker than his age. He limped off to follow the moon crack. He knew it ran all through the winding tunnels and heals of the Cave, this Cave Before Time. And he knew that when he came to the end of the last passage, he would meet his final gyre soul — the frost wolf.

  As he walked, Faolan felt his two other gyre souls fall in on either side of him and thought what fine company they were. Though they didn’t speak a word, there was a kind of communion between them that made talking unnecessary. They would pause to gaze at the drawings in the flickering thread of the moon’s silvery light. Here and there, Faolan spotted a swirl of spiraling lines, just like the marks on his paw. But it was the other drawings that fascinated him the most. The rock seemed to breathe with the panting of animals and the stamp of their footsteps. Their wing beats made gusty sounds that echoed from the stone walls. Faolan stopped in front of what had always been his favorite picture in the Cave — a flowing line of wolves on the hunt. He had been mesmerized by the image as a yearling. He had not known then that a hunting formation was called a byrrgis. At the time, all he wanted was to join in that flowing line of wolves, to belong, to be a part of something larger than himself.

  And now a truth broke upon him as he stood closer. The point wolf in the painting! His stride was so familiar. I know a wolf who runs like that! He inhaled sharply as recognition exploded in his head. I am that wolf! He blinked. It was as if he were standing with one paw in the now and another in the before, where he was leading a byrrgis. He could hear the pounding of the feet of hundreds upon hundreds of wolves behind him. He was the leader. This was the third gyre! Beneath the drawing was the spiraling mark from his paw. It had been placed with a deliberation, unlike the others which had been randomly scattered throughout the cave. He realized what that placement in this particular spot meant. It was his signature, his sign. He had been the one to make this drawing!

  Faolan continued down a winding, sloping incline and came to another drawing with bold marks made by a black rock. He recognized it immediately. Ah, yes, he thought. The picture showed the first night he had seen an outclanner come feed on a wolf who had collapsed into unconsciousness from famine. The spirit of Eo, the grizzly gyre soul, had risen within Faolan and struck the outclanner dead with one blow of his paw. Beneath the drawing was a bear claw, the swirling marks on its pad. He felt the thunderous heart of the grizzly rumbling within his own chest.

  Faolan squeezed through the narrow passageways and channels of the Cave that opened on to new heals with drawings he had never before seen, all rendered by his gyre souls, some with the mark of the bear claw, some with Fionula’s mark, the claws of her talons twisting into a swirl. But it was the oldest pictures, the ones made by the wolf, that were the most mysterious to him and somehow the most familiar. He stopped in front of one that depicted a wolf on a well-known ridge near the ring of Sacred Volcanoes. It showed a wolf whom he knew to be a Fengo in an intimate conversation with an owl — a Spotted Owl that must have been a collier, for a bucket of embers rested next to him. Faolan had dreamed about just this scene half a moon before, on the night that he had slept at the cairn of the Fengos. It was Grank the first collier, and the first Fengo. They had been best friends.

  A light breeze seemed to stir Fionula’s feathers, as if to confirm the answer to the question. The gyres moved through a narrow passageway where there was barely a trickle of moonlight. To what depths does the cave plunge? Faolan was not sure which of his gyres asked the question, but they all moved forward. There was still the last gyre to meet and it was waiting — waiting for them.

  They passed into a very small heal. Faolan stared at the wall ahead, which was covered by the most beautiful of all the drawings in the Cave. The wall curved as if it were made for just this story. But it cannot be! Faolan thought. No! No one would dare make a picture of the moment of death, the moment of separation from clan, from pack, from one’s own body. The sacred act of cleave hwyln!

  And yet the picture showed a wolf lying on the ground, so limp that he seemed almost boneless. His pelt looked like a discarded piece of fur. A starry ladder hung down from the Great Wolf constellation and the dim figure of an ancient wolf, a chieftain, was climbing up with the help of Skaarsgard, the Star Wolf guide to the Cave of Souls. The old wolf was clinging to the ladder as if he could barely hang on — or as if he didn’t want to leave his pelt behind.

  Faolan began to shiver and he felt the air beside him turn tremulous with the shuddering gyre souls of Eo and Fionula. The third gyre awaits us. The words quivered in the air. The thread of light through the moon crack brightened, illuminating the base of the wall. Faolan gasped as his eyes fell upon a bone — the loveliest of bones polished by a thousand years or more of time. It was a femur, a twisted femur.

  IN A SPIKE OF MOONLIGHT THE twisted femur beckoned Faolan. He walked forward, yet his own legs felt boneless. His heart hammered and the pounding of Eo’s heart nearly deafened him. Fionula had wilfed until she was thinner than a filament of moonlight. The carving on the bone was more beautiful than any Faolan had ever seen. It began to tell a story, but Faolan knew instinctively that unless he picked up this bone, the story would never be complete, nor would he have the courage to continue through the stone passage following the curved wall. I am about to meet the frost wolf. And yet something seemed slightly wrong with those words — “frost wolf.” He picked up the bone and crept close to the wall to follow its curve.

  It was a continuation of the story of cleave hwlyn, but where it would end he was unsure. He had heard this story before, when he was just a yearling, on a stormy night streaked with lightning. A skreeleen had begun to howl the tale of a dying chieftain from the time of the Long Cold. Slipping his pelt, his bones lying silent and cold in the moon’s pale light, the chieftain had begun to climb the star ladder to the Cave of Souls.

  The next picture on the wall showed a silent howl and a look of complete confusion on Skaarsgard’s face as the old chieftain began falling, falling, his paws scratching the air as he tried to grab the rungs of the star ladder. And there the story appeared to end. But in a sense, the story was simply beginning anew, for now Faolan understood that the chieftain was reborn as the first Fengo, the wolf who led them out of the Long Cold and into the Beyond.

  Around the final bend of the wall, Faolan would meet the third gyre. He clenched the femur tighter in his jaws, feeling the carvings on that lovely bone caress his tongue. There was something familiar about the lines in his mouth. This is a story older than time, they seemed to say. Written in bone, a story of a journey and a love lost, a spirit forgotten and then met again and again. Your story, your story,
all of your stories. Wolf, owl, bear, and wolf again. Now and forever.

  Faolan felt himself growing older, his heart slowing. Cleave hwlyn awaited him, but there was no turning back now. He was too curious. He must meet the last of his gyres and the first of his souls.

  The moon crack suddenly widened into an immense aperture. White light poured through it and ahead a glistening figure appeared. It spoke and yet the voice seemed to be Faolan’s own, to come from within his own throat.

  Faolan felt as if he were looking in a mirror and the mirror image spoke back to him with his words, his voice. His body began to merge with another being much older than himself.

  “I am Fengo! Fengo is my name and always has been. I am the Fengo of Fengos — the first Fengo!”

  The frost wolf was unsure how long he had stood beneath the cataract of moonlight that poured down upon him. But something strange had begun to happen, as if time were curling back on itself. The light slid from black, to the glare of day, to First Lavender, followed by the Deep Purple before First Black. It was as if the frost wolf were accustoming himself to an old pelt he had forgotten. I’ll get used to it, he told himself. I’ll gain strength, too. For he knew he had done it before and would do it again.

  He felt the gyres gather around him and press closely. The feathery touch of Fionula grazed his withers. The thunderous pumping from Eo’s chest wrapped him in a cocoon as Faolan had once been wrapped up in the rhythms of his second Milk Giver’s heart. Faolan felt the spirit of the frost wolf press in upon him, as did Fionula’s and that of Eo. Three spirits to guide him to the Distant Blue.

  There was no mystery now as to why he had been granted these extra lives, these gyres of his soul. It was his due as well as his choice. Once, he had slipped off the star ladder, picked up his pelt, and gone on to save the clans and lead them on the Ice March out of the Long Cold to somewhere safe for them. He had picked up the spirits of animals he had come to know or to admire — not only their souls, but their kind. He had been Fionula, a Snowy Owl, with the lovely voice of a gadfeather, and Eo, the largest of all the animals in the Beyond. And finally he once again became a wolf — a wolf named Faolan.

  He had been blessed as no other creature on earth. He had felt the marrow of a wolf, the gizzard of an owl, and the heart of a grizzly. The frost wolf who was Fengo closed his eyes and saw all that he had been. He saw the gyres of his soul coming and going through the centuries that stretched over a millenium. And now it was time for farewell as the darkness dropped and the beginning of First Lavender settled a light mist in the air. Wind shadows shuddered through the heal. It was time to move out of this stony place. For Faolan to move on with the spirits of Fengo the frost wolf, Fionula the Snowy Owl, and Eo the grizzly at his side.

  “FAOLAN?” MYRRGLOSCH SAID IN a tiny voice and blinked up at the silver wolf. Faolan looked larger and brighter than before, his luminous pelt glistening like ice. He had never seemed more powerful.

  The other wolves were startled as well. They knew the wolf before them was Faolan, but he had changed in some inexplicable way. Edme took a step forward, and began to tremble as she saw the bone near Faolan’s paws. She sensed in Faolan a spirit that seemed to shine through him. Something familiar that had been lost to her through the millenium. There was a tingling of excitement in her marrow, the feeling of old souls reunited.

  Faolan felt Edme’s eye pierce through the ghosts of his many hearts, of the marrow and gizzard of all the creatures he had been. She sees what she cannot quite understand, he thought.

  A word bloomed in Edme’s head like an ice flower. Fengo! Fengo was what she had always called him — not the title of Fengo, but simply Fengo, for that had been her mate’s name.

  A calm had stolen into the heal. “It’s time for us to go now,” Faolan said. In his head he heard Fionula. You must leave immediately. Leave now when the Deep Purple hinges on the First Black of night.

  It was a fair jump out from the Cave and through the wide opening of the moon crack. Myrr scrambled onto Faolan’s back. Gwynneth gently took Maudie in her talons, but just before Edme was about to make her jump, Faolan called down to her. “Bring the bone, dear. It’s time we returned it.”

  AFTER LEAVING THE CAVE BEFORE Time, the animals spent nearly half a moon before they emerged on a high plain of sparkling snow. Under the dome of a star-scattered night it seemed as if millions of the stars had fallen about them into the snow. They felt engulfed in a tumult of starlight and began to nervously scratch the ground.

  “Is this a frozen sea, the western sea?” the Whistler asked.

  “No,” Faolan replied. “We still have a fair trek to the western sea.”

  “A glacier — is this what we are on?” Banja asked fearfully, pulling her pup close to her.

  “No.” Faolan planted his forepaw firmly in the snow and lifted it, making a mark of shimmering swirled lines, like a comet come to earth. “This is the Crystal Plain. Each flake of snow is so dry that it is a perfect prism for the light. During the day it will be too bright to travel across so we must make our way by night, or else be blinded like Beezar, the stumbling wolf of the night sky. So let us begin now and at dawn we’ll stop and dig in. It will take us several days to cross the plain, but we must never travel in daylight. It is simply too dangerous.”

  A question hung in everyone’s minds, but they dared not utter it. How would they ever cross the western sea? If they could not cross the sea, how would they ever reach the Distant Blue?

  They had just taken their first steps onto the Crystal Plain. It was windless and an astonishing silence fell on the world. A blanket of stars billowed in the darkness and the creatures felt themselves wrapped in the pelt of the night. Suddenly, their hackles bristled and they each tipped their head up as mist swept down onto the high plain. From the youngest to the oldest, they all sensed that spirits moved among them.

  Narrowing their eyes until they were slits of green, amber, or coal black, they spied the familiars of their hearts and gizzards and marrows. There was the Namara, and beside her Oona and then Brygeen. Katria and Airmead began the howling known as glaffling, the howls of mourning. Gwynneth pressed her wings above her head and she bowed down midair to the scroom of King Soren in the owl gesture of mourning known as Glaux griven. “Mum!” The two cubs reached out into the spangled night to touch the lochin of their mother, Bronka. The feathers fixed in their withers quivered. Edme threw back her head, jewel-like tears weeping from her eye as she glimpsed her old taiga, Winks.

  The gathering of lochin sparkled in the night so brightly that it made the Crystal Plain seem dim in comparison. And soon there came a starry wolf with the powerful shoulders of an outflanker. Beside her strode a huge grizzly. They were creatures so different, yet they shared a precious bond. Both had offered their milk to sustain a pup, a malcadh who grew up strong, a malcadh who would lead the living out of the Beyond.

  “Mum! Thunderheart!” Faolan exclaimed. Mhairie and Dearlea pressed close to Faolan and together they sunk down on their knees for this last good-bye.

  But where is the Sark? Gwynneth swiveled her head, flipped it forward then back and swiveled it again. Oh, Sark, where are you? And then she recalled the Sark did not believe in lochin or scrooms. “Stuff and nonsense” she had called them more than once. The Masked Owl wept as if her heart were broken.

  As quickly as the spirits had come, they melted into the blackness of the night and were gone. The eight wolves, the two pups, the cubs, and the owl began their journey again in complete silence, for this was the end of the world as they knew it.

  The Beyond was behind them. Ahead was the Distant Blue.

  An hour before dawn, as the last evening star, known as Hilgeen, began to slip down in the dome of the night and the blackness shredded to gray, Faolan called a halt. “We must stop now. Soon the sun will come up and we must not see it!”

  “But there are no caves here, no dens,” the Whistler said, looking about.

  “We must build one.�
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  “Build?” Airmead asked and all the wolves looked at one another in complete bewilderment. Even the word “build” was an unfamiliar one to them. Birds built nests, but wolves — what could wolves build?

  “I’ll show you, and you shall soon be experts, I promise you.”

  Faolan began digging furiously with his paws. Snow flew up into the air, landing behind him. Soon there was a small pile. “Come on now, you see how I’ve done it. Start digging. Make sure all the snow goes into that pile.”

  “How much snow do we need?” Mhairie asked. Faolan stopped. He looked at the two bear cubs. “Stand up tall, Toby and Burney.” He looked at them. “The pile should be as tall as the withers on the cubs. For we must all fit in.”

  When they had amassed a big enough pile of snow, Faolan said, “Now we must pack it tightly. Cubs, your paws are the broadest. So begin to press the snow so it is firm. We shall help you. And, Gwynneth, your wings should be useful in patting the snow down so the walls are firm.”

  It did not take long. Faolan tested the mound. “The snow must bind before we make a tunnel.”

  “A tunnel?” Myrr asked.

  “Yes, of course. We have to hollow out the mound so there is room for us.”

  When the snow firmed, Faolan began the tunnel. “Myrrglosch and Maudie, you can help. This is where we need little wolves to squeeze in alongside me to make the opening wider.”

  By dawn the snow cave was complete. It was a peculiar structure like none they had ever slept in before, but it was snug. It protected them against the wind and most important, against the glare of the sun.