Lone Wolf

by Kathryn Lasky

  He would not touch her, but from the top of the ridge, Faolan began to howl a prayer to Great Lupus, a prayer for snow.

  The night has come on, the stars walk the skies,

  now let the snow fall where a dying pup lies

  on this tummfraw, left with no mother, no milk,

  so cold in the night, so all alone,

  with only the nothingness to call its home,

  with only an emptiness as wide as the sea,

  with no place to go and nothing to be.

  Oh, where have you gone, Great Wolf of the night?

  Oh, where have you gone, as this pup fights for her life?

  Oh, what do you see from your den in the sky?

  Oh, what do you see where this sweet pup does lie?

  Like a tiny gold star her light grows dim,

  her breath grows shallow,

  her whimpers grow thin.

  Spare her the tearing teeth of the fox,

  spare her the ripping talons of the owl.

  If take her you must, then do it so sweetly

  for she cries now so softly

  and her heart beats so weakly.

  Let a snowy pelt cover her so thick, so white.

  Then let her soul take its very last flight,

  where she’ll frolic and play with pups in the stars,

  where bellies are full and malcadhs are fair,

  where there is no hunting and hunger is gone,

  where you stand on a star and can touch the sun,

  where the wolves and the bears and the caribou are one.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE SARK OF THE SLOUGH

  THE SARK OF THE SLOUGH WAS outside her cave building up the fire in her kiln when the bedraggled she-wolf staggered up the trail. “Oh, my!” the Sark sighed. “I’ll be with you in a moment, dear.”

  She tossed her head toward the cave. The Sark’s skittish eye, which some said was the color of a spoiled egg yolk, slid in the opposite direction. She saw a shudder pass through the she-wolf. Well, thought the Sark, at least she has enough strength to be a wee bit frightened of my stupid eyeball.

  The she-wolf walked stiffly toward the mouth of the cave. She was desperate for comfort but half afraid to enter the den of this strange wolf living outside the clan, who toyed with fire and who some said was a witch. But it was the fire the Sark used to brew her potions. The forgetting potions. And the she-wolf needed to forget.

  The she-wolf let her eyes adjust to the darkness, found the pile of pelts in the back, and, circling tightly three times, sank down to rest. She sniffed the fur and picked up traces of the scent of the last malcadh mother who had slept on the pelt. It was old, more than a year. The she-wolf was utterly exhausted, but she couldn’t sleep.

  Her eyes darted about the cave. It was the oddest wolf den she had ever been in. Skin bags hung on protruding spikes made from antlers, and on some ledges, there were clay pots and jugs. She had heard that the Sark knew the magic of turning earth into objects—things that could be used. The Sark was like the owls in that way, but the owls mostly used their fires for metals, not earth and clay. On the cave walls were also skins with marks that looked as if they had been scratched in with a shard of burnt wood, but the she-wolf had no idea what the marks meant. Some of them were rather pretty, however, and made pleasing designs. There were also bundles of feathers—no owl feathers but ptarmigan and other grouse arranged in bursting sheaves. The Sark even had clumps of dried grasses, herbs, and mosses hanging upside down.

  The Sark came into the cave and with her teeth took a stopper from a jug lying on its side, to let a thin trickle of water spill into a small clay container beneath it. Then she shook some leaves from one of the hanging clumps. From another container she got lichen and sprinkled it over the top of the water.

  “Drink that,” the Sark said, pushing the mixture toward the she-wolf. “It will start the forgetting.”

  As soon as a malcadh’s mother was driven from the pack, the forgetting began. In the wake of forgetting, for a time there was a darkness deep within her where the pup had grown. And then eventually, that darkness faded to gray, so it became just a shadow of her loss, allowing her to go on, find a new clan, a new pack, and a new mate. But for some, the forgetting took longer. They teetered on the brink of the deep darkness without ever really allowing it to fill them.

  The she-wolf looked gingerly at the clay bowl. It was all so odd—the bowl, the water from a jug, the bits of grasses and herbs floating in it.

  “Go on, dearie, take a good swallow. Now, you’re not one of those she-wolves”—the Sark avoided using the word “mum” or “mother”—“You’re not one who went by-lang, are you?” Some pregnant she-wolves seemed to sense they were carrying a malcadh and went deeply away to try and escape the Obea.

  “No, there wasn’t time,” she sobbed. “She was perfect.”

  “But it”—the Sark used the word “it” when referring to the pup—“it was early. No chance, my dear, and lots of problems. Now drink up.”

  She was careful not to say the darkness will come, for sometimes it only made the mothers resist. The Sark knew about resisting. She knew about not forgetting. But it was too late for the Sark, too late. Indeed, her whole life was dedicated to remembering. And so now, as the she-wolf became drowsy and fell into her long sleep, there was a whiff of something that stirred a dim memory for the Sark.

  Aaah, yes, she thought. The she-wolf had eaten sweet grass from the high plains during the last of the summer moons. It had been during a late summer moon when the Sark had made her decision never to join a clan. It was the first time she had spotted what she felt sure had been her Milk Giver, her mother. She had been a yearling then. She resisted going to her memory jug. She was not in the mood for stirring up anguish.

  The Sark’s memory jugs offered their own kind of law, which was as important to her as the elaborate, complicated codes and traditions of the Great Chain or the gaddernock were to the clan wolves. She did not need some high-ranking wolf to tell her how to bow to rank. She felt that the veneration and submission rituals were excessive to the point of being ridiculous.

  Memory was sacred to the Sark, not empty rituals, and although she understood the need for the laws of the Beyond, they often seemed as dead to her as the bones they were carved on. Memory was alive in the way a river is alive and flowing. But this river was flowing not with water but with the tributaries of scent. It was the scent that brought the memories.

  The Sark believed that if there was no memory, the bones that contained the gaddernock would crumble to dust. Most of the rituals of the wolves made no sense to her. What the Sark sought were experiences, feelings, and colors. Too often, life for the wolves of the Beyond was only about hunting and the elaborate social codes of the clans. Without memory, there could only be indifference. Without memory, there could only be blind obedience. Without memory, there could be no true consciousness, and the wolves of the Beyond would live in a walled, colorless world without meaning. She peered into the deep shadows of the cave, where her memory jugs stood like sentries of her past. Then she glanced at the mother of the malcadh. The she-wolf was sleeping deeply and would for two days. She would awake ravenous and go out to hunt. She would leave, and she would not look back.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “SHE’LL KNOW ME!”

  THE SNOW FAOLAN HAD PRAYED for had not come. A foul, gusting wind had brought sleet and rain and then more sleet. But sleet was no camouflage. If only there had been a heavy snowfall! Faolan tried not to think of the tearing teeth and claws that might find their way to the pup. He saw a small herd of caribou with their rumps pointed into the weather and was not even tempted to chase one. He could not feel hunger. He could feel only deep sorrow for the creature he had left dying on the ridge.

  He made his way down a winding trail into the shallow basin that led to the Slough and the odd wolf who lived there. He was very curious about her. She lived alone and though wolves came to her for embers and t
onics, they were deeply superstitious about her powers. Did they see moon rot in her eyes? he wondered. He had a sense that, though she lived apart from the wolves, she was wise in their ways. He might learn something from her, something that would help him in the gaddergnaw. And he could talk to her about the malcadh. He had a compelling need to speak about the little tawny pup.

  At the entrance to the Slough, Faolan caught his first scent of smoke and then saw a thread winding up from what appeared to be a domed earthen lodge. He had found the Sark of the Slough’s camp. The cave in which she lived was surrounded by a cleared area where she kept her various fires. It was different from Gwynneth the Rogue smith owl’s open-forge fire. The Sark had built little dens to shelter her fires.

  The Sark seemed to be waiting for him. Faolan had been downwind of the Sark, so he was uncertain how she had caught his scent, unless she had caught it hours before when he had still been coming down the ridge, and the wind had been blowing in a different direction. His first reaction was one of shame, for he was walking up that path with Heep’s bone of contrition still gripped in his teeth. As the Sark stepped forward, Faolan set down the bone and immediately sank to his knees, then to his belly. He was profoundly embarrassed. The last time they had seen each other was at the wall of fire, where the Sark had defended his triumphant leap and fumed at the chieftains, calling them idiots for chasing him down without evidence that he had the foaming-mouth disease. And now what was he? Nothing more than a disgraced gnaw wolf sent on a trail of shame.

  “Surely”—the Sark began to speak in her raggedy voice, which seemed always to have a snarl embedded in its center—“you are not pulling that old V-and-O stuff with me.”

  “V and O?”

  “Veneration and Obeisance. The submission rituals.”

  “Actually, these are the contrition rituals. I violated the byrrgnock, the laws governing the byrrgis.”

  “I know, I know. You don’t have to explain to me what the byrrgnock is or what you’ve done. I could have predicted it,” she said scornfully, although Faolan wasn’t sure if the scorn was directed at him. “Get up, for Lupus’ sake. I have little tolerance for these displays.” She nodded toward the mouth of the cave, where another fire burned at the entrance. “Go inside. I have to get these pots out of the kiln.”

  The fire in the cave threw off a great heat. Faolan was just about to settle in as close as possible, when he noticed a sleeping she-wolf on the pile of hides and caught her scent. The mother of the malcadh! Faolan began to tremble. He stood stiff-legged, his ears laid flat, his eyes narrowed. He could not shift his gaze from the she-wolf.

  “Don’t worry; she’s asleep,” the Sark said, entering the cave.

  “I saw her pup on the ridge.”

  “I know.”

  “How?”

  “I smelled her on you.”

  “But I didn’t touch her. I swear!”

  “I know that, too.” The Sark moved around him, carrying something in a skin bag. Perhaps it was the pot she had mentioned. But he wasn’t interested. He couldn’t take his eyes off the mother of the malcadh.

  “Did my mother come here when…when…” Faolan felt as if he were tipping at the edge of the universe, about to fall into an abyss. But if his mother were still alive, he would have everything! He would find her. He would run beyond the Beyond to the farthest ends of the earth.

  “When the Obea took you?”

  Faolan nodded.

  “No.” The Sark was glad she didn’t have to lie. She would have lied if Faolan’s mother had come, but thankfully she hadn’t. The Sark was contemptuous of many of the wolf conventions, but she believed that the less a malcadh knew about his birth mother, the better. Still, the Sark knew she was in for a rough time with this young wolf.

  “Why do they do it?”

  “You know why, Faolan. Don’t be stupid! It’s one of the few things the clans do that does make sense. It is for the health of the bloodlines.”

  Faolan wheeled around and glared. “I’m tired of hearing that!” he growled. “None of this makes sense to me, and it isn’t just the laws for malcadhs. I…I…” he stammered, but then it all poured out. “I’m more alone now than when I was out on my own.” The Sark seemed to be only half listening, busy with something at the edge of the cave that he couldn’t see. He looked at her. She was different and alone and yet she seemed so content. He wanted desperately for the Sark to pay attention to him, to understand his pain, to—

  She could never wrap herself around him like the huge and gentle Thunderheart, and he was embarrassed that the thought had ever crossed his mind. He was too big for all that. But once he had been a small, furry pup, and comfort came so easily to him. Once he had been dear to someone, cherished. He looked again at the Sark. Had she ever been dear to anyone, cuddled, loved?

  He couldn’t stand being so close to creatures like himself yet feeling so apart. He was connected to a clan and yet not a member, connected to a pack yet scorned. He recalled that he had thought—before MacDuncan told him of the gaddergnaw—that it might have been better to leave, to go to Ga’Hoole. To start somehow all over again. He sighed loudly. “I am just so tired of them and their stupid ways.”

  “Well, go ahead, be tired!” the Sark replied. She was busy arranging her pots in a niche. Faolan cocked his head with sudden interest. The pots were curious objects, odd and beautiful. There were small, colorful stones embedded in some of their surfaces, and decorative markings. But he did not want to be distracted.

  “Did you know my mother? My father?”

  The Sark turned toward him, her skittering eye spinning madly. Her fur was always in some sort of disarray, but now her hackles rose up in a little private storm of their own, adding to the wildness of her pelt. She spoke slowly, as if she were addressing a pup who was not very bright. “Don’t you understand? I am packless. I am clanless. I have no friends, no associates. I don’t know any wolves.”

  “But they seek you out. The clans did when they came after me.”

  “Yes, and that was a big mistake. I should have demanded more evidence that you had the foaming-mouth disease.”

  Faolan nodded toward the she-wolf. “She came to you.”

  “It’s different. They come in need. Not to chew the bone, not to howl. Your mother did not come here. I did not know her.”

  Faolan whimpered and settled down with his muzzle buried between his paws.

  “Stop whimpering. I can’t stand whimperers.”

  Faolan snuffed. “I just want to know, that’s all. I had a Milk Giver, you know. A second one after the Obea took me.”

  “I know, a grizzly.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I picked up her scent when the byrrgis was tracking you. So did the others. Except they thought it was a foaming-mouth grizzly that had bitten you and given you the disease.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “I wasn’t sure, really. As I said, not enough evidence. But I did pick up the scent of milk—long-ago milk.”

  Faolan thought this strange wolf must have the most extraordinary sense of smell imaginable. “But if you picked up the scent of my second Milk Giver, why would you think she would ever bite me? I was like Thunderheart’s own pup. Even if she were crazy with the foaming-mouth disease, she would never have bitten me.”

  The Sark cocked her head, and for a moment the skittering eye grew still. She looked not at Faolan but at the ground. “Oh,” she whispered wearily, “you would not believe what a Milk Giver can do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The Sark considered for what seemed a long time and slowly turned her head toward the very back of the cave, where the darkest shadows collected and where some of her first memory jars perched in niches.

  She did not realize that Faolan had been watching her carefully.

  “What are those things?”

  She angled her head so that her skittering eye was pointed toward the jug and turned her steady eye on Faolan. “Thos
e are my memory jugs.”

  “Your memory jugs? Do you have any memories of gaddergnaws?”

  “No. Why do you want to know?”

  “There’s to be one when the Singing Grass Moon comes.”

  “If it ever comes.” She shook her head wearily.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Something is cag mag with the weather these days. The seasons. I’ve been trying to figure it out.” She sighed. “So they’re having another gaddergnaw? It’s been a while.”

  “Yes, and this could be my chance.” He hesitated to say that Duncan MacDuncan had told him this.

  “Your chance for what?”

  “To get out. To become a wolf of the Watch. I thought you might have some memories and some advice that could help me.”