Star Wolf Page 4

  “I doubt that the thought of more lemmings would be a thrill, seeing as that is all we’ve eaten for days,” Edme said. “Well, at least until the last couple of days, because we haven’t come across many recently. A little diversity to our diet would do wonders for the spirits. There’s really no need for you to fly back over to announce lemmings.”

  Gwynneth had felt her gizzard flinch when Faolan had said yours is the view from the sky. The problem was that in this terrible landscape, she could hardly tell the sky from the ground. Everything was white — the Ice Bridge, the Frozen Sea from which it rose. White, just white. And though they drew closer every day, the Distant Blue seemed to fade for her until it was just a blur on the horizon.

  ALL OF THEM, ALL FIFTEEN CREATURES, safely made it to the top of the ridge and slid down the far side. Neither pup nor cub was scraped off by the ferocious winds. Faolan had decided that they would camp there for the night, burrowing into the soft snow that had been blown up by the eddies swirling on the Frozen Sea. The animals were exhausted, and the drift of snow that had kept building throughout the day offered their first soft bed since they had begun their journey on the Ice Bridge. In the future, they would learn where to look for these drifts on the bridge. They discovered that it was easy to hollow them out, and they were so comfortable that the animals began to call them “snugs,” or “snow snugs.” And thus a new word came into their language as they made their way across the Ice Bridge to the Distant Blue.

  Mhairie and Dearlea were on watch. They did not patrol the ridge, as it was too dangerous with the sudden gusts of wind and it was unimaginable that Heep or any other creature could steal up and over it while the travelers slept. But they had realized quickly that the Frozen Sea itself could serve as a way around this particular ridge if it had not been cracked by too many leads. So they kept a sharp lookout over the sea.

  “You know,” said Dearlea, “although we’re worried about a rout sneaking up on us by coming over the Frozen Sea, we should think about it as a way for ourselves to travel.”

  “Out there? You mean on the ice?” Mhairie asked, looking toward the vast icescape that stretched around them endlessly. The ice was not flat, as river ice was in the Beyond, but had been frozen into rhythmic undulations that mimicked the swells of a sea. It was as if a single moment in the coldest depths of winter had been captured, as if a movement had been arrested and the sea ice was sculpted into soft, billowing waves. “Yes. If we could be certain that there were not cracks in the ice, it would be possible to go out there. It looks a bit easier. There are no ridges to climb over.”

  “But the Ice Bridge also looked flat when we first saw it,” Mhairie replied.

  “That’s true, but we’re closer to the Frozen Sea than we were when we first glimpsed the Ice Bridge.” Dearlea paused a moment. “Odd, isn’t it, how when we first started out we called the sea the western sea but now we always call it the Frozen Sea.”

  Mhairie reflected a minute. “Gwynneth said that in the Hoolian empire, before the owls crossed the Sea of Vastness and discovered the Sixth Kingdom, they called that ocean the Unnamed Sea, and there was a place in the northern kingdoms that has been called the Nameless Region for centuries.”

  “Interesting, very intriguing,” Dearlea said pensively. Mhairie was quiet. She recognized from her sister’s tone that she was thinking deeply. “It’s as if,” Dearlea continued, “before we know, before we experience something, we can’t really name it. To name it is to know it.”

  “I wonder what we’ll name the Distant Blue when we get to it,” Mhairie asked in a musing voice.

  Dearlea swung her head about, her eyes bright and eager. “Now, that’s an excellent question! What will we name the Distant Blue when we finally get there?” She blinked, and a sudden shadow seemed to flit through the luminous green of her eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” Mhairie asked.

  “Oh, dear.”

  “What is it?” Mhairie asked again, and then turned in the direction her sister was looking. She inhaled sharply. Their little brother, Abban, was walking below them, stiff legged.

  The pup’s eyes were wide open, but there was an enormous vacancy in them.

  “He must be sleepwalking. But … but … it’s like he’s gone by-lang.”

  In the language of wolves, by-lang literally meant “deeply away.” Often, pregnant female wolves, particularly if they sensed they might be giving birth to a malcadh, went by-lang. Troubled wolves who wandered off were said to go by-lang. But Abban appeared to be sleepwalking and not running as a by-lang wolf would.

  They scrambled down to their brother. “What should we do?” Mhairie whispered.

  “I’m not sure. But I think it can be dangerous to wake a wolf when it is sleepwalking. Remember the tale that Alastrine told.” Dearlea had been a student of the old skreeleen of the MacDuncan clan and was due to inherit her title until the earthquake came and killed the few wolves who hadn’t died in the famine. There were no clans left, and no one left to skree for, no one to listen to the old stories.

  “You mean the tale of the mother who had become separated from her pup and began to wander in her sleep?” Mhairie asked.

  “Exactly, and her mate came up to her in the night and tried to wake her and she mistook him for a cougar she had been dreaming about, whom she suspected of killing her pup. So when her mate woke her, she struck at him and raked out his eyes.”

  “Oh, Lupus!” Mhairie’s voice was tight. Her hackles bristled as their brother Abban closed the distance between them. He was still much smaller than they were, but if he were startled, there was no telling what he might do.

  “I think we should stand here very still. Not move one bit,” Dearlea whispered.

  The pup walked by them. His body was there, but it was as if a thief had come in the night and stolen his soul. He looked glazed, untenanted. Abban walked the palsied gait of an old and feeble wolf, and though his green eyes appeared to register nothing, he seemed in some way wistful for something unrecoverable, something that haunted him.

  Lemmings they complain of.

  Lemmings here. Lemmings there.

  Lemmings crawling everywhere.

  But the riches of the deep

  Where puffins find a special treat.

  One by one they line them up,

  then take them in a single gulp.

  Faolan appeared and flicked his ears to signal that no noise must be made. The sisters realized that he had been following the pup on his sleepwalking expedition and must have guided him away from the edge of the bridge, where he could have fallen yet again into the Frozen Sea. He was herding Abban gently, like a mother caribou might herd her calf away from danger to safety. In this case, Faolan was guiding Abban back to the snow snug where Caila was sleeping soundly. Mercifully, Caila did not know her son had taken this nighttime wander. Mhairie and Dearlea watched the two wolves disappear around the bend in the ridge to where Caila slept.

  Soon Faolan was back, alone. “Don’t breathe a word of what you saw to anyone, especially not to Caila. She is practially out of her mind with worry about Abban. This will make her worse.” The sisters both nodded. “He is a deeply disturbed little pup,” Faolan continued.

  “Is that why she growled at Airmead?” Dearlea asked. “Was she fearful he was becoming like … like a malcadh with a twisted brain and Airmead would take him away?”

  “Possibly. But Airmead would never do anything like that. Never! She’s finished being an Obea.”

  “But … but …” Mhairie stammered. “Is … is … is he cag mag?” Mhairie asked.

  Faolan’s tail drooped. He seemed profoundly weary, depleted. “I’m not sure if I would call it cag mag. It’s very different.”

  “How would you describe it?” Edme asked. She’d just appeared for her watch and had caught a glimpse of Faolan as he had guided Abban back to his mother.

  “Perhaps he is out of his mind. But it is as if he has traveled to someplace else.”

&nbs
p; “This sleepwalking. It seems as if he was wrapped in some sort of delusion.”

  “But you see, that’s just the point. I don’t think it was a delusion. Abban has seen something none of us has ever seen. He’s been to the bottom of the ocean!”

  A flicker in the sky caught Faolan’s attention, and he tipped his head up. “Look at that constellation, Edme. Have you ever seen one like it?”

  “Not in the Beyond, never. But as you said, everything seems new here.”

  “How would you describe it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s kind of fish-shaped, I guess. And it has a kind of long …” She turned toward Faolan and opened her eye very wide. “A long spear sticking up. A narwhale?”

  Mhairie and Dearlea tipped their heads up as well, then turned and walked away toward their snug, leaving Faolan and Edme to their stargazing.

  “That’s it exactly!” Edme continued. “It’s like the ones we saw the other evening when the lead opened up in the Frozen Sea and the procession of narwhales came through.”

  Faolan turned and looked out at the wind-whipped expanse of the Frozen Sea. Edme cocked her head and studied him. She had seen this posture, this angle of his head, this expression in his eyes so many times before. She knew better than to interrupt his thoughts. He would speak when he was ready.

  Clouds streaked across the moon, quenching the light that silvered the ice. The wind stretched the clouds out until in her mind they took on the lean, fleet shapes of wolves — wolves in a byrrgis racing through the night at press-paw speed. And behind them, the new constellation of the Narwhale glimmered.

  “Edme,” Faolan said, turning to her. “What would you say if we went out there?” He tipped his head slightly to indicate where he had been looking.

  She was startled. “Out there? You mean on the Frozen Sea?”

  “Yes. It’s something that Dearlea mentioned to me. It might be easier. Fewer pressure ridges.”

  Edme clamped her single eye shut. She could think of so many reasons why this was a terrible idea. But she had to stay calm.

  Faolan regarded her. He knew exactly what she was trying to do. Whenever she clamped that lone eye shut, it meant that Edme was wrestling with her patience. And Edme was normally a very patient she-wolf.

  “Faolan, there aren’t as many ridges out there. But there are cracks, leads that we could fall into. The dangers are immense! What if we were on a piece of ice that broke? We would be instantly marooned on an iceberg. And if not that, suppose we get lost out there? Suppose we can’t find our way back to the Ice Bridge? Then what? We would be aimlessly wandering forever.” Edme’s posture was not that of a frightened wolf, but a determined wolf. Her tail stuck straight out, her ears were shoved forward, and her single eye glared green. But beneath the harshness of the glare, something else sparkled from her like the light from an ancient star.

  “We could navigate by the stars,” Faolan replied. “There is the Narwhale — look at it. His spear points west, to the Distant Blue, and Beezar, too, burns brightly. And there is Gwynneth. Owls know celestial navigation.”

  Edme felt a quiver pass through her marrow. She knew that Gwynneth was Faolan’s oldest friend, his first friend in the Beyond. When he had made his way back from the Outermost after a fruitless search for his second Milk Giver, the grizzly bear Thunderheart, only to discover that she was dead, it was Gwynneth who had found him howling his grief into the night. She had taken him to her forge, comforted him as best she could, and then told him gently that the time had come for him to seek out his clan. They had been fast friends ever since.

  Was Faolan ready to admit what Edme was already sure of? That his oldest friend, Gwynneth, was going blind. He had seen her crash-landing in the snowdrift. But he had been quite short with Edme when she had started to question him about Gwynneth. Indeed, he had actually snapped at her, which he had almost never done before. What do you mean she couldn’t see us? he’d said. That’s ridiculous! She saw us. It was the wind. I’ve heard about those Shredders. Those were the exact same conditions.

  Edme realized that this was not the time to bring up Gwynneth’s eyesight. She would put it to rest and try a different tactic. “Look, we might be able to navigate by the stars with Gwynneth’s help, yes. But those leads can open up quickly. We’ve seen it happen now at least twice. You hear a crack, and before you know it, you see a stretch of water.”

  “That’s just it, Edme.” He stepped closer to her and drew his muzzle to within inches of her own.

  “What’s just it, Faolan?”

  “Abban. I spent the better part of this night following that poor pup about. As I said, I don’t believe he is cag mag or out of his mind. It’s more accurate to say that he’s in another mind.”

  “What mind would that be?”

  “The sea’s.”

  Edme blinked with incomprehension. She was not following Faolan’s thinking at all.

  “Edme,” Faolan continued, “I’ve been watching him carefully, ever since he fell in. You’re right. Those leads open quickly with very little warning. But each time it happened, I saw Abban’s hackles bristle up and his ears flicker right before. He knows before we do, before anybody does, except the creatures in the deepest part of the sea.” Faolan paused. “And he knows other things as well.”

  “What other things?”

  “You heard when Gwynneth said it was the narwhales that saved him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, while he was sleepwalking, he kept talking about this one creature. Old Tooth he called him. It had to be a narwhale. We think he’s a fool, but he’s not. We think he talks nonsense, but it’s just another kind of sense.”

  “What did he say about this narwhale?”

  “Just before I got him back to Caila, he began again in that peculiar voice of his. It’s not quite a howl but like a strange music — watery music. He said, Old Tooth will warn, before it’s born, the cracks that break, the ice like cakes —” Faolan stopped abruptly.

  “What else?” Edme asked.

  The green in Faolan’s eyes deepened. “Abban said, The fool goes down. Comes back a clown, but from wondrous depths Old Tooth does sound. Can’t you see, Edme, that between the narwhale in the sky and the one who swims in the deep we might find our way safely across the ice to the Distant Blue?”

  “Faolan … Faolan …” She was at a loss for how to respond. Faolan was her dearest friend. They had gone together into the Gaddergnaw Games as gnaw wolves and come out as wolves of the Watch. And beyond that, they seemed to share some sort of mystical bond that neither one of them quite understood. No matter what, she had always trusted Faolan and he had trusted her. Their trust was like a living thing — a bone flowing and quick with marrow. But Edme was now completely dumbfounded. A rush of warm emotions seemed to be flooding through her, and she didn’t quite understand them. They were new and unexpected.

  “I know, it’s weird.”

  Weird. It is beyond weird, Edme thought.

  “So what do you think?” Faolan asked.

  Edme squared her shoulders. “Think? I think it’s dangerous.” She hesitated.

  “But not cag mag?”

  What a question, she thought. We’d be relying on a wolf pup who, if not cag mag, was awfully close to it. Edme inhaled deeply.

  “Are you asking me who’s more cag mag — you or Abban?” Edme asked. “I’m not sure if I can answer that.”

  Faolan wilted before her eyes. His tail drooped. He sank into an almost submissive posture. He suddenly seemed more pathetic than any gnaw wolf she had ever encountered. Edme could not abide this; she couldn’t stand to see him like this.

  Suddenly, Airmead and Katria both appeared. Their hackles were raised. An unexpected blast of moonlight bleached the ground and printed an immense winged shadow against the whiteness of the Ice Bridge.

  THEY CAME FROM THE EAST. THERE was frost on their tail feathers and patches of ice on their wings. Their white heads blazed bright in the moonlight. Eagle
s were not at all like owls — they were not silent flyers. In their wake, they left contrails of ice crystals and whirlpools of snowflakes aroused by their powerful wings, as if they carried their own weather with them. When they alighted, folding their great wings, there was a sudden brace of buffeting gusts. Edme noted with awe that the span of their wings was twice the length of a wolf from the tip of its tail to the tip of its nose.

  “They’re coming! The wind has shifted. It’s strong behind them. They’re closing the distance,” shrilled the larger of the eagles.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Edme caught another blur of feathers. It was Gwynneth landing.

  Eagles had been rare in the Beyond. And they spoke with a Hoolian burr that was hard for Faolan and Edme to understand. But why had they come here to them, these huge, majestic birds? The creatures of the brigade were almost too astonished to speak. Finally, Faolan found his tongue.

  “What? What are you saying?” Faolan had taken a step closer. “Who’s coming?”

  “The yellow wolf,” replied the smaller eagle.

  “Heep!” Gwynneth staggered to her feet after her bumpy landing. She looked utterly exhausted. Faolan and Edme exchanged glances. Had Gwynneth flown out and seen Heep, then found these eagles?

  The wind stopped, and a pocket of silence enveloped them. But if one listened carefully, the brush of snowflakes could be heard against the feathers of these immense birds.

  Gwynneth continued, “I went out tonight to scout easterly from this ridge. I found Eelon and Zanouche.” She nodded toward the eagles. “Friends of mine from Silverveil.”

  “And you say Heep is on our trail?” Edme asked. She seemed almost afraid to address the eagles directly. Although the owls of the Hoolian world had a long history with eagles, there had rarely been any exchanges between wolves and eagles in the Beyond except for the most tragic sort. Eagles were predators and had been known to pick off malcadh pups when they had been abandoned on tummfraws. This was natural and as it should be according to the wolf codes. However, these two eagles were standing before a wolf brigade that had three malcadhs — Faolan, Edme, and the Whistler. It was only by the grace of Lupus that they had not become fodder for these monarchs of the sky. It was an unnerving situation, to say the least. But the eagles were here to warn them of another danger — Heep!