“How come we’re going slower?” Morag asked.
“The fog. We can’t see much.”
“Maybe I should lead.” Morag chuckled good-naturedly. Katria and Airmead gasped.
“What are you gasping about?” Morag asked.
“You made a … a …”
“A joke?” Morag asked.
“Yes. Is that what you call it? A joke?”
“Yes. Great Lupus, haven’t you ever heard anyone make a joke before?”
“No,” Katria and Airmead answered at once.
“Not in the MacHeath clan,” Airmead clarified.
“And certainly not about one’s self,” Katria added.
“Well, that’s … that’s too bad,” Morag replied. She could think of nothing else to say.
A short time later, the fog rolled out again and they caught sight of two wolves coming toward them. “Scouts!” Brangwen exclaimed. “They must be scouts from the MacNamara clan.”
“You mean we’ve arrived?” Morag said.
Brangwen began to howl a greeting and when the scouts drew close, the four traveling companions fell to their knees and began the submission postures.
They were cut short as Brangwen had cut short Katria and Airmead. A large she-wolf with a creamy gray pelt that looked almost like her own private fog stepped forward.
“Welcome. You are welcome. We have seen you coming since dawn. I must apologize for the Namara. She regretted that she was unable to greet you personally. She usually does, but I am afraid you have arrived on the eve of what might be a catastrophe.”
“A catastrophe?” Brangwen asked.
“Oh, dear,” whispered Morag.
“What is the trouble?” Katria asked.
“The bears — the bears near the Ring are rising up against the wolves.”
“But we’ve always lived in peace with the bears, especially in the territory of the Ring. This is impossible!” Brangwen said.
“Let’s hope,” said the other scout, a dark gray male. “Let’s hope,” he repeated.
Katria and Airmead exchanged glances, and Katria began to speak. “We know something of this. I’m ashamed to say that we did little to stop it. It’s the MacHeaths’ doing, and it’s why we finally gained the courage to leave.” Katria paused.
The scout shoved her ears forward. “You must come with me directly and tell what you know to the Namara. Perhaps you can help us avoid … this … this …” She was hesitant to say the word that hung unspoken in the air. “Please just follow me.”
Morag in her blindness sensed a deeper darkness — the shadow of war.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
GRAYMALKIN
IT WAS FAOLAN’S SECOND DOUBLE shift, and then he had been promised two nights off entirely. Something was going on at the Ring, but neither he nor Edme was sure quite what it was. As new members of the Watch, they were not included in the gaddergovern, the meetings in which business matters of the Watch were discussed. But tempers were short, and even the ever-patient Twistling was snappish with Faolan.
The She-Winds had abated and fewer owls were streaming in. It was mostly Rogue smiths who had stayed to tend the temporary forges they had set up.
Gwynneth had stayed, and for this Faolan was deeply grateful. He and Edme had learned almost as much from Gwynneth as they had from Malachy, the taiga who specialized in owl studies. It was Gwynneth who really made them feel what it was like to live an owl’s life, even though she was a hermit and lived mostly in the Beyond.
But Gwynneth seemed to know less about what was going on at the Ring than they did.
“Double shifts?” she had asked with mild surprise. “Now that the She-Winds are lessening, I can’t figure out why that would be necessary.”
“Yes. See, there’s Edme. She’s just leaving her cairn by Morgan — and late at that. Her replacement must have been delayed. It seems like the taigas are always in a gaddergovern with the Fengo or some other high-ranking Watch lords.” Faolan paused. “Could you find out anything, maybe?” Faolan asked in a beseeching tone that Gwynneth had never heard him use.
“Absolutely not! You’re asking me to gizzle!”
“Gizzle? What’s that?”
“To sneak in and hear something. Thus the name slipgizzle. In short, spy!” Gwynneth spat out the word. “Their stock-in-trade is information. I have no time or trust for such owls. I am no slipgizzle!”
“I didn’t say you were,” he replied. “I have to get back to my jumps.”
“Don’t be angry,” Gwynneth said, suddenly contrite. “I tend to go off a bit about slipgizzles. They have their place in owl society. And they’ve done a lot of good. The Great Tree is very dependent on them.”
“All right. I’m sorry I asked you.”
“Don’t worry,” Gwynneth said as she began to spread her wings. Effortlessly, she lifted into flight.
As so often happened when Faolan stood close to owls or watched them take off into the sky, he seemed to feel stirrings deep within him, whispers from another time or another world. But it wasn’t just when he watched owls. These whispers had started coming to him during his Slaan Leat, his journey toward truth. There was a truth out there still waiting for him, and every once in a while, he caught a glimpse of it. Sometimes when he did his leaps, especially the high ones where he rode the warm drifts to wolf’s peak, he felt as though he was coming close to catching mists or wraiths from the past.
Owls called them scrooms, wolves mist or lochin. These mists from an unreachable past seemed to seep through his mind. He felt sometimes as if he were trespassing on someone else’s memories or dreams. But it was not his fault. He could never quite figure out what prompted these moments. And when they occurred, he felt as if he were a wolf out of time.
When he had completed his scanning jump and landed back on the cairn, he looked down and spotted Edme.
“Going off duty?” he asked. Edme looked up at him.
“Yes, finally!”
“I’m on until dawn. Why aren’t you back in the den already asleep?”
“I don’t know. I find it hard to sleep. It seems like the whole Ring is holding its breath and nobody is telling us anything.”
“It’s not just us. Gwynneth came by and she doesn’t know any more than we do.” Faolan tipped his head skyward, scanning for graymalkins. From the corner of one eye, he caught sight of a Spotted Owl lingering low in the sky on the southeastern edge of the crater. He felt a funny twitch in his marrow. Was this owl cratering? Should he howl the graymalkin alarm? He listened for the brittle crunching that was said sometimes to emanate from the crater when a graymalkin approached, but he heard nothing. False alarms were not looked upon kindly. Besides, it was not really the season for graymalkins. They usually came with the She-Winds, flying under the camouflage of the throngs of colliers and Rogue smiths streaming in. Still he was nervous.
“I’m going up!” he said to Edme. “Wait here.”
Edme was so tired by this point that she could not have managed a hop. So she settled herself on the cairn’s platform and tipped her head to follow Faolan’s jump.
He was a magnificent jumper, no doubt about it. The tales of when he leaped over a wall of fire had swept across the Beyond. She had not witnessed it, but those who did had said they’d never seen anything like it. That alone should have qualified him for the Ring.
“What in the name of Glaux!” Edme muttered as she looked up. She had begun to take up many of the owl expressions and milder swear words. She watched Faolan reach out and grab what looked like an ordinary Spotted Owl. Before she could wonder, Faolan was back on top of the cairn.
He dropped the owl and quickly pinned it down with his starboard forepaw.
“I didn’t mean to! Honest, I didn’t mean it!” The owl was hysterical.
“Faolan, a graymalkin!”
“I think so.”
“Well, why didn’t you howl the alarm?”
Faolan looked at her blankly. “I’m not really sure.�
��
“That’s unconscionable! You could get into a lot of trouble.”
“I didn’t want to send a false alarm. I just thought there was something —”
“Don’t, don’t, don’t! Please don’t sound any alarm,” the owl pleaded.
“Why were you hanging around over the crater? There weren’t any coals shooting out. The She-Winds are gone. What’s your excuse?” Faolan’s voice was rising.
“All right, all right. I just … I just …” the owl sputtered.
“You just what?” Edme stomped down on his other wing.
“I did it on a dare,” the Spotted Owl blurted out.
“A dare!” Faolan said. “Are you yoicks?”
“Yes, definitely. I am completely, totally, eternally yoicks.”
“But why?” Edme asked.
“I was sick of them making fun of me. I wasn’t really going to take the ember if I saw it. But Skylar said that sometimes after the She-Winds blow out, you can see the ember float to the top.”
“Skylar is full of wet poop!” Faolan said. This was one of the nastier owl curses because owls prided themselves on their discreet and noble digestive systems, which allowed them to produce neatly packaged pellets, unlike other birds who excreted white splats.
“Probably, but I just wanted … well, you know, for them … to like me. I fly funny. You saw it. That’s why you caught me so easily. My port wing tip is turned funny.”
“That is no excuse! Look at Edme. She has one eye. Look at me.” Faolan shifted his weight so he could hold down the Spotted Owl’s wing and lift up his splayed paw. “Have a look, idiot!”
“That’s, uh, some paw!”
“It certainly is. And I’ve learned to live with it — very well, I might add — as Edme has learned to live with one eye. And guess what else?”
“What?” the owl asked in a trembling voice.
“We were never accepted until we came here. We were gnaw wolves, bitten and beaten up, the last ones at the kill allowed to eat.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“Sorry!” Edme exclaimed with contempt.
“Are you going to howl the alarm?”
“We should,” Faolan replied.
“No, you shouldn’t,” the owl said quickly.
“Why not?” Faolan asked.
“Because I know something … something important.” His yellow eyes had a sudden crafty shimmer. “I know about a cubnapping!”
As the moon moved across the night and began its slide down the western sky, the owl, whose name was Arthur, told the story of what he had seen.
“I was just minding my own business, flying with a Fish Owl over the river, looking for trout. And I saw this little cub — a cute little fellow.” Edme felt her legs begin to wobble, as if her bones had sprung a leak and her marrow were dribbling away. Faolan, too, felt a darkness run through him.
“Go on,” Faolan said. “You saw a cub.”
“Well, yes, and a wolf stepped out from behind a rock, and the little cub trotted right up to the wolf and wanted to play! Play, I tell you! A baby cub and a wolf.”
“The wolf — what did he look like?” Edme asked weakly.
“It wasn’t a he. It was a she. She was gray with some patches of black.”
“Did she have a white-tipped tail?”
“Yes! Yes, as a matter of fact!”
“Fretta.” Edme whispered the name. “She’s a scout for the MacHeaths.”
Arthur squirmed a bit. “Hey, how about letting up a little with that foot of yours? You’re squashing my plummels to bits!”
“Go on!” Edme said impatiently.
“So this she-wolf steps out, and at first she seems really nice, but suddenly three more wolves step out from behind the rock. One was pretty ugly. Uglier than you,” he said, glancing toward Edme. “Ouch!” Faolan had pressed down sharply on the wing. “You want to break my wing or what?”
“Don’t call her ugly! You’re the ugly one, to take a dare! Great Glaux!”
“Oh, be quiet, Faolan!” Edme snapped. “I don’t give a white splat of seagull poop what this creature calls me. Go on with your story.”
“Sorry,” Arthur said. “Anyhow, it all happened so fast. Two of the wolves pounced on the cub, the other two rushed in, and before you knew it, the cub was being carried away. And … and …”
“And what?” Edme asked.
“Well,” Arthur said hesitantly, then just blurted it out. “The Fish Owl, Skylar, he was really courageous and he started to dive-bomb them. But I was scared. I was a coward.” It all became very clear now to both Faolan and Edme.
“Because you were a coward and didn’t attack as your friend Skylar did, you felt you had to prove yourself. And so you took the dare to find the Ember of Hoole,” Edme said.
The Spotted Owl remained silent.
“That about sums it up, Edme,” Faolan replied with contempt.
“No, not exactly,” Arthur said in a small voice.
“What do you mean ‘not exactly'?” Edme asked.
“The bears know about it now. There’s talk of a war between the wolves of the Beyond and the bears.”
“No!” Faolan gasped. “It can’t be.”
“I think he’s right, Faolan. That’s the answer to the double shifts and all the meetings in the gaddergovern. Arthur, when did you see the cubnapping?”
“Two days ago. The wolves here probably just found out yesterday.”
“It doesn’t matter — yesterday, today, there can’t be war. There just can’t be,” Faolan whispered hoarsely.
“Why wouldn’t the taigas tell us?” Edme wondered aloud. Then it dawned on her. She looked at Faolan. “It’s you, Faolan.”
“Of course it’s me,” he replied in a low voice. His eyes filled with tears. “They were trying to protect me.”
“Why?” Arthur asked.
“My second Milk Giver was a grizzly. Her name was Thunderheart.”
“What?” The Spotted Owl could barely get his beak around the word.
“Yes. She saved my life. A grizzly bear saved my life.”
Arthur was silent for several seconds as he attempted to digest this extraordinary information. Then pulling himself up a little taller and squaring his shoulder feathers, he spoke: “I might be able to help you — just a bit.”
“You? How? You’re a coward, remember?” Faolan snapped. Edme nosed him in his flank.
“Be quiet, Faolan. Let him speak. How can you help us, Arthur?”
“I know where they took the cub. Skylar and I followed them.”
“So where did they take him?” Edme asked.
“A box canyon with steep walls on all its sides. There’s a hidden trail through the brush down into it and …” His voice dwindled away.
Edme lifted her single eye to Faolan and spoke. “And there’s a crazy old wolf living down there with the foaming-mouth disease. The Pit. That’s where they took the cub.”
“Do I get to go, now that I’ve told you everything?” Arthur asked.
Edme stepped up to the owl and met his gaze directly. “Not quite yet, Arthur. This is your chance to redeem yourself and prove your courage. This is not a dare, this is an order. Think of yourself as a soldier in the first skirmish of the war between the bears and the wolves.”
“But I’m not a wolf,” he replied in a whiny voice.
Edme gave a resounding swat to the owl’s face, smacking off a few feathers, which drifted up and then settled on the cairn. Faolan had never seen Edme display such temper. “Let me knock some sense into you, dear,” Edme said. “The owls are going to be dragged into this war. So it doesn’t matter if you’re not a bear or a wolf or an owl. The important thing is not to be an ass. You’re going to fly cover for us. Got it?”
But first, Faolan and Edme knew they must go to the Fengo.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
KILLING FEAR
THE PROBLEM IS THE NAME, CAGS thought in his feverish and disorderly mind. Yes, that’s t
he problem. There were two names the wolves had called this pup who did not look like a pup. Was he really a pup? Cags needed a name. He liked to call out the pup’s name, hear it bounce off the walls. It was as if the name crawled around inside the pup’s head, and the pup’s brain got all twisted up, like Cags’s. It got foamy.
But if Old Cags didn’t have a name, he couldn’t focus. And if he couldn’t focus, his terror shrank to the size of a dried-up peaberry in the hunger moons. Old Cags fed on terror — the terror that he could create. But he didn’t know what to do without a true name. So he walked back and forth in front of the rock wall where the pup who was not a pup had hidden himself in a crack.
Old Cags’s job was either to scare a pup to death or into a kind of mute insanity. Sometimes the pups who came to him died of hunger if they couldn’t find the mice and rats that lived in the Pit, and sometimes they just plain gave up and ran directly at him. Then he would bite at them with his back teeth, which was actually hard for him to do since he had no fangs left, and the pup would die foaming. Cags had not died for some strange reason, and that made him special. The chieftain told him so. He was almost like a god in the eyes of the MacHeaths, a god who must live separately in his stone heaven.
It was no fun for Cags when a pup charged him and he bit it. It was all over too quickly. Even their dying became boring if it lasted too long. Sometimes Cags envied their death throes — their lives had ended, their fear was finished, and their loneliness was over. They could begin to climb the star ladder, which he seemed never to reach in his living death.
The best was when a pup became what Old Cags called stony-eyed and he could make it do his bidding. The pup could chase red squirrels and kill them so Old Cags could eat. He much preferred the taste of red squirrels to rats. And then when the chieftain came, he would praise Old Cags. “You always turn out an obedient pup, dear Cags,” he would say. “No more trouble from this one.” The pup would leave, his eyes as smooth and lifeless as river pebbles.
Toby peered out from the crack he was squashed into. If he retreated to the rear of the slot, there was more room and he could be more comfortable. But he had to keep a watch on the foaming-mouth wolf. He had found a few mice to eat, but he was too frightened to be hungry. He shook so hard with fear as he watched Old Cags coming closer to the rock wall that he thought his fur might fall off. In fact, his pelt had begun to shed and he simply hadn’t noticed it, until a breeze blew into the cave and he saw filaments of his own dark brown fur swirl up into the dim light. He looked around and inhaled sharply. The small stump of his tail was bare, with pink skin showing through. First he was shocked by the stupid pink stub that looked as if it had been tacked to his butt with sticky gum from a pine tree, and then he got mad. And when he got mad, it was as if something inside him broke in two. Part of him was still a baby seeking his mother’s comfort, and the other part was not a cub any longer. You have to grow up! Grow up! Don’t cry. Think! In his mind’s eye, a picture formed of his baby self saying good-bye to the cub he was becoming.
Watch Wolf Page 10
