Lone Wolf

by Kathryn Lasky

  “Yes, I might.” For the only privilege a gnaw wolf had was to name the account he or she inscribed on a bone. Heep had entitled Faolan’s bone of shame “The Sins and Humiliation of the Gnaw Wolf Faolan.” Then he had gone on to subtitle it “One Gnaw Wolf’s Horrifying Violations of the Byrrgnock.”

  “Well,” Mhairie said, looking up at Faolan through the blood mask of her fur. “I just wanted to say that, you know…you let me do what I wanted to do. I know you can run fast, really fast”—she paused—“for a male, that is. So, thanks.” She turned and walked away.

  “‘So, thanks,’ she says. I’m fast for a male—Urskadamus!” Faolan muttered. He hardly felt it merited his saying, “You’re welcome, Mhairie, for your overwhelming gratitude.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ONE TINY BONE

  THE SETTING MOON GLOWED RED, as if it had been dipped in the blood of the cailleach, and slipped down behind the western horizon. The stars were out, and the first paw of the Great Wolf was beginning to show again, which always was a cause for celebration among the clans of the Beyond. The second of the spring moons, the Moon of the Singing Grass, was when the gaddergnaw was to be held. But as Faolan set himself on course to travel to the tummfraw, he was not thinking about anything but finding the bones of the little tawny wolf.

  He had come to a decision. He planned to make a drumlyn to honor the pup. When he found enough bones, he would take them and arrange them in a mound, the drumlyn, from which the little pup’s spirit could spring to the first rung of the star ladder and run to the Cave of Souls.

  Faoloan climbed to the very top of the ridge where he had seen the little pup on a table rock. He looked around for a bit, and then it struck him that if indeed the pup’s bones had been left behind, they would most likely have slid down the slope. It had not snowed as he had prayed it would, but he remembered that it had rained heavily after he left the dying pup.

  Faolan looked down the slope and tried to figure out where tiny bones might have traveled. The winter had been the coldest in memory, but there had not been many heavy snowfalls, and now at the end of the last of the winter moons, there had been more rain. So he decided to look for bones in the small rills made by the rain.

  He searched long into the night until the sky began to lighten. Just as the horizon turned a dusky pink, he saw something very white poking from the soil. He carefully dug around it with his claws, then sheathed his teeth, using his lips to clamp on to it and pull it out of the ground. He set it down and stared at it. Was it a tiny rib? As he looked closer, he saw deep gashes that made his marrow tremble. A low growl began to rumble within him, a growl of anguish and wrath.

  The hackles on his ruff stiffened. Whatever predator had taken this tiny wolf pup’s life had done so in a most violent manner. The surface of the bone was obliterated behind a blizzard of slashing marks. It was almost impossible to make out which animal had been the predator. Well, Faolan thought, it does not matter anymore. He had the bone. He would safeguard it and then come back to find others.

  The only place he could think to leave the bone was with Thunderheart’s paw bone. It would give him ease to know that this tiny rib was resting with Thunderheart. He decided to take the bone there straightaway. Now he knew for certain that the little pup was done with her terrible agony, although it pained him to think of the violence of her end. But surely with the Star Wolf returning, the pup could climb the ladder to the Cave of Souls. And Faolan vowed that he would return to the slope beneath the ridge to find more of her bones—her bones. Faolan refused to think of the pup as an it, the way the Sark always spoke of malcadhs.

  The following evening, he returned to the ridge. When he first arrived, he experienced a vague sensation that there might be another animal nearby. He lifted his nose to the wind but could not detect a scent. It was very possible that other wolves were around, for he was not that far from the Fire Grass Pack. There might be hunters out tracking the other half of the red deer herd.

  The evening was dark and moonless. There was no light for casting shadows, and yet Faolan felt shadows all about him. He scolded himself for being so jumpy. I’m becoming as superstitious as these clan wolves, he thought, and set himself to his task.

  He found several more bones from the little pup, all with deep gashes. Despite terrible lacerations, one in particular had a lovely shape and seemed almost to beg to have the pup’s short little life recorded on it. So Faolan began to gnaw on it. He had not been carving for long before he felt for the first time ever a discomfort with incising a story on bone.

  I can’t do this yet, he thought. The little pup’s story is not complete. It seemed wrong to carve it, almost as if the violence that had been wreaked on this bone tangled the poetry of his marking. He had to stop.

  Faolan found several more bones, too many to be carried in one trip to Thunderheart’s paw. He would go now with the first load, and by the time he came back for the second, perhaps he would feel differently and finish the carving.

  But when he came back, the partially carved bone had disappeared. An uneasy feeling swept through him. Had another animal seen him here? And why would it take that bone and not any of the others he had left behind?

  When Faolan returned to the clan, merriment was still swirling from the hunt two days before. The smell of the blood had receded somewhat. There were piles of bones to be gnawed by the three gnaw wolves. Faolan turned his attention to the femur that Mhairie had presented.

  The Moon of the Frost Stars had slipped away now for good. The first thin wisp of the Cracking Ice Moon was rising. Alastrine joined Greer, the skreeleen of the River Pack, in baying to the rise of the first spring moon and celebrating the end of the hunger moons of winter. And then, at the height of the night, a torrential rain began, and the sky crackled with lightning that looked like the splinters of hundreds of tiny white bones.

  The two skreeleens began to howl the ceilidh fyre, or the sky dance of fire. Tonight, they cried out the story of Skaarsgard, the leaping wolf who helps little ones up the star ladder. Was this not a sign that indeed the tiny pup was on her way? Faolan hoped it was an omen that all would be well and he could sleep peacefully, lulled by the little pup playing with her mates in the Cave of Souls.

  But the skreeleens told the story of a stubborn little wolf pup who kept scampering down the star ladder. It was an old favorite, a call-and-response tale in which the little pup was not a malcadh but one who had simply died. Alastrine sang the part of Skaarsgard, and Greer the part of the little pup.

  Skaarsgard calls: “Why do you go, little pup, little pup?”

  Little pup responds: “I go to eat the meat of the fox my mum will catch come spring.”

  Skaarsgard calls: “But you need no meat in the soul cave, little pup, little pup.”

  Little pup responds: “But I have not tasted the salmon that swim in the river.”

  Skaarsgard calls: “But you have left your teeth behind, little pup, little pup. You are a spirit so free, your soul has risen, little pup, little pup. Leave your meat dreams behind, little pup, little pup.”

  Little pup responds: “I can have no dreams because I have not tasted meat. Let me eat. Let me eat.”

  Skaarsgard calls: “But you cannot be starving, for you have no hunger. You have no teeth. You have no stomach. You are a soul on the star ladder.”

  Little pup responds: “But I am hungry.”

  Skaarsgard calls: “For what can you hunger?”

  Little pup responds: “For dreams I’ll never have. For meat I’ll never eat. For rivers I’ll never swim.”

  It was the first time Faolan had ever heard this tale. He did not find it as amusing as the other wolves did. And the sleep that he thought would come to him upon finding bones from the tiny malcadh did not. Instead, his sleep was ragged, shredded with visions of the little pup on the ridge falling back down to earth, not for the meat of a fox, not for the salmon in the river, but for vengeance.

  When he awoke near dawn, his foo
tpads were damp and encrusted with salt. Salt from night sweat. Foul-dream sweat. Fear sweat.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE HAZE OF MORAG

  BRANGWEN WATCHED HIS MATE, Morag, walk out stiff-legged from the large cave they shared with their three yearlings in the westernmost part of the MacDonegal territory. They belonged to the Pack of the Dancing Giants, named for the dozen or more large stone formations that stood upright on the high plain near where they had their dens. Morag had gone out to chase after Brecco, the middle pup of her three-some, who had brought a bleeding hare into the cave. This was against all the rules. It was good that Brecco had become a proficient hunter, but his manners were deplorable. Did he want to invite a larger, fiercer animal right into their den?

  Brangwen’s first instinct was to chase after Brecco himself and give him a good cuff on the ears. But Morag had quickly jumped up and said, “No, I’ll go.” He knew he had to let her try. Ever since she had stumbled during the musk ox byrrgis, she had been out of sorts. She must be scared of falling, for she moved slowly, tentatively, like a very old wolf. This litter was probably her last, but many she-wolves, especially outflankers like Morag, still had a lot of chase left in them.

  Brangwen winced now as he saw Morag bump into one of the immense upright stones. Brecco looked back at his mum and saw what had happened. The look of shock in the yearling’s eyes was like a stab to Brangwen’s marrow.

  I must not rush out. I must let her do this herself. He watched Brecco approach his mother. Brecco’s ears were laid back, his tail tucked so tightly between his legs that Brangwen thought he looked like that loathsome yellow gnaw wolf from the MacDuncan River Pack. Morag snarled and commenced scolding the yearling. She cuffed him, but Brangwen could tell that her marrow wasn’t in it. Brecco stood there for several seconds as if demanding that she cuff him again, harder. But Morag turned away and walked back to the cave.

  When she entered, she said nothing but circled twice and settled on the pelt of a caribou. Her eyes were half closed. Brangwen could only see thin slits of green, and he realized the green was not as bright as before. There seemed to be a film over it. He settled himself on another pelt close by.

  The sun at this time of year flooded directly into the cave until it sank below the horizon. As the pale violet shadows of twilight seeped into the cave, Brangwen thought his mate had fallen asleep. But she had not. She had been thinking of how to handle the twilight that was slowly creeping through her and what she must tell Brangwen.

  It had begun long before the stumble in the byrrgis. It had begun when the pups were still in the whelping den and she had set out to find a new den for them. She had ranged farther than she had intended, and before she knew it, she was out of the MacDonegal territory and crossing the big river. But it had felt so good to roam after being penned up with those rambunctious pups.

  It was shortly after she had crossed the river that she found the skull of a grizzly bear, and seconds later, a scent came to her, dim but immediately recognizable as that of the beautiful silver pup with the stars in his fur.

  That was when the darkness began. It didn’t seem possible that memory should dim her vision. And to complicate matters, she had never told Brangwen about her life in the MacDuncan clan. She had not wanted to lie, but the forgetting had truly worked back then. She had no memory of that pup or his siblings when she met her new mate.

  It had worked. The words kept running through her mind. Worked. She had rehearsed so many ways how to tell her mate, but now she simply began.

  “Brangwen,” she said quietly. He started, for he had thought her asleep. “The forgetting has stopped.”

  “What? What are you talking about? Forgetting what?”

  She should have realized that males did not really know about this in the way females did, even if they had been the fathers of malcadhs. She closed her eyes tightly. It seemed that now she could sometimes see better with her eyes shut. “Brangwen, you must believe I am no double-tongued wolf. I would never lie to you.”

  “Of course not. How could you ever think such a thing, Morag?”

  And so she told him about what had happened to her before they met, when she had given birth to the silver-coated malcadh.

  “A malcadh,” he whispered with disbelief. “And our pups so healthy.”

  “Because we make good pups, you and I together,” she said softly.

  “We certainly do.” He came over, and began licking his mate’s face. He could taste the oily tears that leaked from her eyes.

  “I would have told you, but, you see, the forgetting works. It worked so well until, until—”

  “Until you found the scent of your son, the silver one.”

  Morag looked at Brangwen through her filmy eyes. He didn’t call the pup a malcadh. Not an it, but a son. “Oh, Brangwen, you called him my son.”

  “Of course. I might not be a female. I cannot claim ever to have birthed a pup, let alone one taken by an Obea to a tummfraw. But I can feel things.” He paused. “And I know that this silver pup you never named burns like a bright little star inside you.”

  “How can you feel all this?” she said in a trembling voice.

  “We are paw fast, are we not?”

  “That we are!” Morag replied vigorously.

  “We made our paw-fast vows—was it two autumns ago during the Caribou Moon?”

  “No, the Red Leaf Moon. I remember.” And then, in just a whisper, “I remember too much.”

  “We must talk now,” Brangwen said with his head nuzzled close to the ear he had just been licking. “You must tell me about your eyes. What is happening?”

  “The darkness that was in my womb where the silver pup grew has come back and spread to my eyes.”

  “And so you only see blackness. Is it like night always?”

  “No, it is more like sinking into a haze. But I am sinking fast.” She paused. “I have had time to think about this, Brangwen. I must go to the Sark of the Slough.”

  She could feel his hackles rise. Males were always more frightened of the Sark of the Slough than females. Her powers disturbed them. Morag had not gone to the Sark after her own loss. Perhaps she should have, she thought now. The Sark was said to have potions that helped with the forgetting, and tonics that healed the womb so it would be ready and eager for a new litter. But now she must go to the Sark to lift the haze.

  “I shall go with you,” Brangwen said firmly.

  “You are not afraid of the Sark?” Morag asked.

  “I am more afraid of you stumbling or becoming lost.”

  “But scents come to me more quickly now. More sharply than ever.”

  “You cannot smell a hole and you cannot smell your way to the Sark,” Brangwen said.

  “Yes, I suppose you are right. What about the yearlings? Who shall take care of them?”

  “Their auntie Daraigh, of course,” Brangwen answered.

  “She’s so strict.”

  He was about to say, Not as strict as you used to be. But he held his tongue.

  And so it was decided. They would leave at dawn for the Slough and the camp of the Sark.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE GIZZARD OF GWYNNETH

  AT THE SAME DAWN HOUR THAT Morag and her mate set out for the Sark of the Slough, Gwynneth lifted off from a ledge at the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes. Her harvest of bonk coals had been excellent. She had stayed through a full moon. But she was obsessed by the terrible scene she had witnessed on the ridge. The sounds of that malcadh’s terrified screams and the image of that torn little body haunted Gwynneth. It seemed like a scene from the darkest realms of hagsmire. Had Hamish, the old Fengo of the Watch, been there, she would have discussed it with him. But there was a new Fengo now, a wolf named Finbar, and she did not feel as close to him.

  I suppose, Gwynneth thought, I could visit the Sark of the Slough. Gwynneth was an owl—an owl with bonk coals. The Sark loved coals. Both Gwynneth and her father before her father had traded with the Sark. Some
said she got along better with owls than she did with her own kind.

  The Sark was just removing pots from her kiln when Gwynneth landed. “I have some very good bonk coals for you, ma’am.” Owls called the Sark ma’am when addressing her. She seemed to like it. If she hadn’t, she would certainly have let them know.

  “Any lesser-grade ones?”

  “Lesser grades. Why would you want them?”

  The Sark turned her head and looked slyly at Gwynneth. “I know conventional wisdom, at least from a collier’s or Rogue smith’s point of view, is that hotter is better. But you, my dear Gwynneth, deal in metals. I deal in earth, clay, glazes—glazes made from crushed bones, sand, borax, and any mineral I can pull from the river and grind down. But the real secret is not the recipe for the glaze but to fire it at just the right temperature. And to get the right temperature, guess what the secret ingredient is?”

  “What?”

  “Scat.”

  “Scat?”

  “You call it poop.”

  “You mean like white splatters, wet poopers?” Gwynneth was shocked. Owls were proud of their neat system of digestion; indeed some felt compelled to call it a noble process.

  “Sometimes, but those white splatters—the seagulls especially—are too far away for me.” The Sark bent down and kicked a pile of dried moose poop toward Gwynneth.

  “Eeew!”

  “Don’t eeew me. Owls can’t smell worth scat—pardon the pun!” The Sark began to mold moose scat into little rounds. “These little moose patties burn steady, burn slow. I can get the most gorgeous glazes you’ve ever seen.” She paused and looked up. The skittering eye was bouncing around as if it had a life of its own, but the other eye was steady as the Sark took in Gwynneth’s expression. “Hey, what’s wrong with you?”