Wolves of the Beyond: Shadow Wolf (7 page)

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 tonics, 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. “Those are my memory jugs.”

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

“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.”

“You’ll need a better reason than just getting out, dearie!”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean exactly what I said. Getting out is a stupid reason. Where are you going? I don’t need to stick my snout into any pot for that advice.” She raised a paw and tapped her head. “It’s right here in the old noggin. You’ve been in my den long enough. You must leave before she
wakes. It will be too painful for her if she smells her pup on you.”

“All right,” Faolan replied. He rose up, thinking again of his first Milk Giver. He had no hope of finding Thunderheart on this earth. He would not find her until he died and made his way to that place the bears called Ursulana and the wolves called the Cave of Souls. But his own wolf mother or wolf father could still be alive.

The Sark must have read his mind.

She gave a low growl. “Don’t do it, Faolan. Don’t go looking for your mother. She won’t recognize you, for one thing. And then how will you feel?”

“Oh, she’ll know me. She’ll recognize me,” he said with a steely certainty. “In her marrow, she’ll know it’s me when she sees this.” And he picked up his front foot and ground it into the dirt, once again leaving the imprint of his splayed paw with its spiral pattern.

THE WIND WAS NOT COOPERATING.
It seemed to be out of sorts, as could often happen during the Moon of the First Snow. Gwynneth, Rogue smith and daughter of the late Gwyndor, had spent the better part of the night tacking against it to go north toward the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes. As was also customary during this season, the volcanoes had become active. Gwynneth could now gather “bonk” coals, the old smithy term for the coals that burned the hottest, the ones with blue centers ringed with green.

Gwynneth had planned to get to the volcanoes early in this snow moon, ahead of the other owls from the Hoolian kingdoms to the south. She had taken a roundabout route to avoid stalling out in the cantankerous headwinds.

An updraft of slightly warmer air came out of nowhere and allowed her a brief respite in her battle against the shifting winds. She was able to soar effortlessly while being pulled vaguely in her intended direction. It was a welcome break for her wings, but as she soared, her ears caught a thin filament of sound weaving through the winds. The sound was curious yet slightly alarming—tiny mewling whimpers. She began to cock her head this way and then that. Masked Owls were members of the Barn Owl family, known for their exceptional hearing. Because of the uneven placement of their ear slits, they were able to scoop up the smallest traces of sound. Furthermore, these owls could expand and contract their facial discs, which allowed them to focus in precisely on the source of the sound.

The mewling had now become an agonizing shriek accompanied by a horrifying ripping.
Great Glaux! A pup is being murdered! By…by…by a wolf!
Gwynneth knew that of all the complicated codes and laws of these wolves, murdering a
malcadh
was the worst offense of all. It was an abomination!

And Gwynneth knew the killer was a wolf. She recognized the sound of the gnashing teeth. The long front fangs were for ripping, and soon she heard the slicing
sounds of the back teeth, working like blades to cut the flesh into tinier pieces. She could see nothing, for the cloud cover was thick, but she knew what was happening from the horrible noises and the panting of the murdering wolf.

Gwynneth fell into what owls called a kill plunge. Although it was now a life plunge, a rescue plunge, if she could save the little pup and beat off the murderer.
If…if…if…

But it was too late. Just as Gwynneth broke out of the clouds, the wolf raced off the ridge. By the time Gwynneth lighted down on the table rock, the pup was dead. Gwynneth looked in horror at its body. It was a tiny little thing, a female and not really a
malcadh
. “Just born too soon,” Gwynneth whispered softly. The pup’s body had been ripped apart.
Why didn’t the wolf smother her?
Gwynneth wondered. This death was unspeakably violent. The wolf had bitten all the way though to the pup’s tiny bones.

Gwynneth was seized by a sudden revulsion and had to yarp a pellet. Many owls came across
malcadhs
left on the
tummfraws
of their flight paths and ate them. Gwynneth had given up this practice when she had come to live in the Beyond. Never, however, would an owl tear
apart a pup so mercilessly, so brutally. Usually, a quick stab of the beak at the soft place in the pup’s skull finished them off quickly. This
malcadh
, however, had not died quickly but in unimaginable agony.

Oh
, she thought,
might it swiftly find its way to the Cave of Souls
. Gwynneth knew that the Great Wolf constellation was not visible, nor would it be for another two moons. But, surely, the Star Wolf would be moved not to let this poor little pup’s soul wander aimlessly.

Gwynneth’s first instinct, though irrational, was to take the pup’s bones and fly them herself to the Cave of Souls. But of course the Great Wolf constellation was gone, and who ever heard of any animal getting such a shortcut to their heaven? In the rational part of her mind, she knew that the
malcadh
’s suffering on earth was over and would not follow her in death. With the last breath the little pup took, her suffering ended and her soul was severed painlessly from her body, as painlessly as the shedding of the undercoat during the summer moons. But when Gwynneth looked upon the torn body of this pup, she experienced profound pain and revulsion. She felt her gut wrench and had the urge to yarp another pellet, but there was nothing left inside her. She felt as hollow as her bones.

Gwynneth told herself she must be practical. There was nothing she could do here. She still had a long way to fly to the Sacred Volcanoes, and she had to get there during the first flares. Otherwise, where would she be? A Rogue smith without two bonk embers to rub together!

Gwynneth began to spread her wings to lift off but then folded them again. In the high, piercing cries of the Masked Owl, she began to sing the owl song for when a nestling died.