Spirit Wolf Read online

  She remembered the exact pot she had pressed her muzzle against. It had a green glaze made from the silt near the south bend of the big river and its shape was so fetching and slender. A keening coursed through her. I must get back to my pots!

  Faolan and his sisters had made shore in the early morning and spent the day picking their way across the fractured landscape on shaking legs. The thought of Edme and the Ring drove Faolan on, but as night set, his sisters protested. The three wolves were exhausted and needed rest. Still, sleep could not come easily on broken ground that still quivered now and then with aftershocks.

  The Great Bear constellation seemed to sway overhead, drawing Faolan back to those summer nights he spent under the stars with Thunderheart. Thunderheart had first pointed out the Great Bear constellation to Faolan when he was just a pup. Odd he had not thought about that in years. What was it she said? Suspended halfway between sleep and dream, he struggled to recall the conversation. She had been telling him something about how to follow the last claw on the Great Bear’s paw to find the star that never moves. The Outermost is in between that claw and the star the owls call NeverMoves. I once had a den there. Someday …

  Someday what? Faolan had asked. Thunderheart looked troubled and didn’t answer.

  Someday we’ll go back? he’d persisted.

  Perhaps. But I am not sure if it is good for your kind.

  My kind?

  My kind, my kind … The words rumbled through his head, his bloodstream, his marrow, and then through a heart as huge and sonorous as that of his grizzly bear Milk Giver.

  His pelt was no longer silver, but a thick rough brown — the pelt of a bear. He saw himself clearly now, not as a little wolf pup but as a huge grizzly swimming in a golden river in the time of the Salmon Moon.

  He heard the alarm roar of a female grizzly. Her cubs were being threatened. He dropped the fish clamped in his jaws and clambered onto the banks to see the standoff between the mother grizzly and a moose. He roared, his whole body trembling with the great noise. But the moose stood there unmoving, then suddenly lowered his head. The full rack of immense antlers rushed toward him. If he reared, he would give the moose a larger target, so he crouched, rolled, and shot out his immense forepaw just as the animal passed by. The moose’s front leg popped from the shoulder socket, and the moose let out a terrible bellow. His leg flopped on the ground as if it belonged to another animal entirely.

  Eo, for that was Faolan’s bear name, came up to the moose and tore the limb from its shoulder with one swift stroke. He lashed out with his paw and slashed open the moose’s chest, tearing out its heart. The animal felt no more pain.

  There is something else I must do, Eo thought. He had a vague recollection of some other rite, a ceremony, but it was too late for lochinvyrr, the gratitude of the predator toward its prey. And why did he even think of lochinvyrr? Lochinvyrr was a wolf ritual, not one for bears. “I am a bear,” he said. “A bear.”

  The wisps of Eo’s memories rose up in Faolan, enveloping him like wraiths from another lifetime. They were real and not imagined, he had lived the life of a bear.

  I was a bear! I chose to be a bear! That was part of my secret, I chose to be a bear. He was not Thunderheart. He was not Faolan. It was Eo who killed the moose. I am Eo! I was Eo!

  “Faolan, wake up! It’s time to get moving again. Wake up.” Mhairie nudged him gently.

  He blinked, then looked at his sisters and wondered if they knew what he had dreamed. What he had been. Did they see the wolf, or the bear that lived within him?

  ALL GWYNNETH’S OLD LANDMARKS were gone, erased. The night of the earthquake, she had used the stars to navigate. But the stars were soon enough swallowed by the daylight, and it was a daylight like none Gwynneth had ever seen, for the air was filled with ash and bits of dust. It was as if the most enormous grizzly bear imaginable had been seized with the foaming-mouth disease and had run amok across the world.

  She flew low over the land, swooping into the huge gashes that plunged to enormous depths. “Sark! Sark!” she called. “Where are you?” But she heard nothing and she was so disoriented she knew she might be flying in circles.

  Her first task was to orient herself in this new landscape, for she would have no guides or signposts until the stars came out again. Unlike a wolf, she had no sense of smell that might give her clues. She knew that the sun rose in the east and set in the west, but the scrim of ash was so thick it was hard to determine where the light was coming from.

  She settled for flying in ever-widening circles around the uprooted spruce tree. It helped her get her bearings slightly and she felt fairly sure she knew the direction of the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes. But as she tipped her head toward what she thought was north, she couldn’t see the crowns of the volcanoes. When the quake had happened, the sky had ignited with volcanic flames and flashes. There were sparks and plumes of smoke still in the air in that direction, but she couldn’t make out one of the distinctive profiles of the volcanoes.

  Aftershocks and tremors were still trembling across the land, and she could hear the rumbles and belchings of the earth. But her ear slits caught another sound, a tiny one that seeped through the earth’s growlings. Gwynneth tipped her head and angled her ear slits to catch these faint noises. It was as if she were sifting through the din of the catastrophe to capture a sliver of feeble mewlings. This cannot be! she thought. That could not happen at a time like this! But Glaux, if it didn’t sound like a newborn wolf pup!

  The masked owl realized that she had unwittingly come close to her own forge. Indeed the sound was coming from her forge. It was hard to recognize at first because the place had been flattened. The den she had excavated for her living space and tools was partially blocked by fallen trees that had been uprooted just like the blue spruce in the Shadow Forest. But still, the mewling was coming from inside.

  Gwynneth had been away from her home for some time before the earthquake. There had been so few caribou herds passing through to provide caribou scat for her forge that she had temporarily taken up residence in her auntie’s old place in Silverveil. She supposed she should not begrudge another creature availing itself of the comforts of her home, but she sensed the creature had been there for some time.

  Gwynneth fluffed her feathers. She was uncertain how she should announce her presence. Several of her tools were scattered about — her coal bucket, her tongs, and one of her two favorite hammers. She wondered where the other was.

  There was a sudden intake of breath from the inside. The mewling continued, but whoever gasped was aware of Gwynneth’s presence and didn’t dare come out of the den. Gwynneth cocked her head to one side, then the other. She picked up two heartbeats, one from a very tiny heart, the other beat stronger and accelerated. Tree branches had been purposefully dragged across the burrow to camouflage the entrance.

  “Hrrh hrrr,” Gwynneth made a polite clearing sound in her throat. “Pardon me for intruding — although this happens to be my home. Would you like to come out or should I come in?”

  “I can’t come out right now. I hope you’ll understand, Gwynneth.”

  The Masked Owl swiveled her head almost entirely around and then flipped it upside down and backward, as only owls can do because of the extra bones in their necks. She recognized the voice, but the tone was entirely different!

  “Banja!”

  “I know, I know!” Banja looked up as the Masked Owl entered the den and stood dumbfounded before a scene that struck her as not simply odd, but almost miraculous. To think that in a land plagued for over a year by famine and then cursed with an earthquake, this could have happened! The nastiest she-wolf at the Watch had at her teat the most darling little she-pup. Banja, of all wolves, was a mother! Gwynneth blinked in dismay. Watch wolves were not allowed to find mates for fear their affliction would be carried on in their offspring.

  Like Edme, Banja had but one eye. There the resemblance ended; the red wolf was as nasty as Edme was kind. Spiteful, jealous, a
lways eager to cast blame or fight — and now here she was, cuddling a newborn pup whose pelt was as gold as autumn grass.

  “Whhh-wwhhh-what’s all this?” Gwynneth’s beak trembled.

  “This is Maud — Maudie, I call her. And I am her mum.” The way Banja said these words was enough to make Gwynneth’s gizzard melt.

  “May I come closer?” Gwynneth asked.

  “Yes, of course. Come take a peek.”

  Gwynneth hopped closer and peered down at the little creature. “She’s lovely, Banja. Just lovely.”

  “And look, Gwynneth. She has two eyes! They’re still sealed now. But I peeked beneath both lids and they’re both there! She’s not like me at all!” Banja’s head drooped. “The Fengo will forgive me. I know I have broken the most serious of all the codes that govern the Ring. But even if he discharges me, that’s okay. I really just want to be a mum.”

  “I wouldn’t worry.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “A while now. I came before the earthquake. I know this sounds … terrible … but I had to eat. I had to eat so Maudie could be born. I did some hoarding, but for a good cause. For Maudie. I know it’s bad! But I’m going to tell the Fengo everything.”

  “I don’t think the Fengo will say anything,” Gwynneth said gently. “I can’t see the Ring. I think it’s gone.”

  Banja blinked. Her mouth dropped open. She tilted her head to one side, as if she were trying to comprehend the words that had just been spoken.

  “Gone?” Her mouth wobbled as if it were having trouble shaping the word. “Gone?”

  “And there’s more.”

  “Wh-wh-what?” Banja was too shocked to reply coherently.

  “Maudie is like you.”

  Banja’s hackles bristled. “How dare you?” Her voice scraped the air.

  “You, my dear Banja, have two eyes now, just like Maudie.”

  “What?” Banja blinked rapidly.

  “The prophecy, Banja! The ember has been released and the Ring has been destroyed. It is the time of the mending, the Great Mending.”

  Banja was stunned. She blinked her good eye and then slowly, as if it couldn’t possibly be true, blinked the eye that had always been missing. She immediately snapped both eyes shut and sat frozen for more than a minute.

  “Where do we go from here?” Banja asked when she was ready.

  “That’s a good question. It’s a different world out there now, Banja. A new world.”

  “And I am a new wolf.” She nuzzled her golden pup.

  Out of all this chaos, some good has come, Gwynneth thought, and sent a prayer out to her missing friends.

  IT HAD BEEN BARELY HALF A MOON since Faolan had been at the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes, but everything had changed. It was not simply that the volcanoes had collapsed. There were textures at the Ring that Faolan would always remember — the way the black sand of crushed lava felt between his paws, the gritty sound it made when blown by the wind, the plumy softness of the deep ash beds. But none of that remained. Faolan walked through the still-smoldering ruins of what had been the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes, his sisters by his side.

  “Be careful! That lava is running hot,” Faolan cautioned Dearlea as she veered close to the wreckage of Stormfast. Or was it Morgan? Faolan found it impossible to fix his bearings.

  They passed the scorched remains of two Rogue smiths, their blackened talons still clutching their tools. One held fast to his tongs, the other a hammer. Faolan stopped to study them, dread flooding his stomach. But neither one was Gwynneth. Faolan shut his eyes. Let her be safe. Let them all be safe, he prayed.

  He looked down again at the two smiths. In all the tumult, how had they managed to cling to their tools? The collier’s art was diving into forest fires to retrieve prize embers and coals. They knew how to negotiate tricky cross drafts, plunge between the tongues of flames for the freshest coals without singeing a feather. He hoped most of the owls, at least, had survived.

  But there was not an owl aloft in the sky and not a Watch wolf to be seen. The cairns on which the wolves had stood their watches were annihilated. An eerie silence enveloped everything. Gone were the deep rumbles of the quake and the pervasive gurglings of the boiling lava cauldrons; the sizzles of coals and embers were mere whispers now as they cooled with no colliers to retrieve them.

  “Malachy!” Faolan gasped as he spotted the body of the taiga with the crooked hips, who was the Ring’s expert on the owls and their ways. Malachy was pressed beneath a boulder, his head bashed in. But how odd that in death his hips now seemed straighter than they ever had in life. Near him was the body of Conny, a short-eared owl from the Great Tree, who was a distinguished collier. It was said that he had learned from King Soren, the best collier the tree had ever seen.

  If they are gone … if a strong flyer like Conny couldn’t escape … how could Edme survive? With each step, a dark dread rose within him.

  “Edme!” His bark scratched the air. “Edme!” He barked again. There was a rustling sound from a pile of rock fragments, then a small explosion of dust and ash hurled toward him.

  “Faolan! You’re safe.” And like a little whirlwind behind her came Myrr, yipping happily. “You’re here!” Edme exclaimed. Her whole body quivered with joy.

  “You’re alive!” Faolan said. His eyes were brilliant with his panic and relief. “You’re alive!” He began to sniff her all over, as if to convince himself the wolf before him was really his dear friend. His fellow Watch mate, but something else trembled in his marrow. She is more than that, much more than a Watch mate!

  “Edme, Edme!” He couldn’t stop repeating her name.

  “Faolan, your paw!” she gasped. “The time of the mending — it has come.” A tear sprang to her eye. She shrugged and gave a halfhearted chuckle. “But not for me. Remember, I am a malcadh made, not born.” Her face flinched and she looked away almost as if she were trying to hide her single eye. As if she felt embarrassed, as if the failure were hers. Faolan couldn’t bear it. He took a step closer and licked her tear away. She shivered at the touch of his tongue on her face.

  “Your eye was ripped from you when you were so young. It’s not your fault. And you see more with your single eye than any wolf with two. You are the wolf dearest to me.”

  “What’s this we’re eating?” Faolan said when they had settled into the makeshift den that Edme had organized.

  “Lemming,” Edme replied. “It’s odd to think that before the earthquake we were all starving. But the glacier dug up all these little rodents.”

  “I don’t understand,” Faolan said. “Half of the Ring looks like ice now.”

  “I think the glacier broke through here, ruptured or something. There was another tremor here last evening and Myrr and I saw a crack. The front of the glacier slipped off, just slid away from this chunk. We watched until it was almost out of sight.”

  Myrr came up wagging his tail. “It’s like the White Grizzly,” he said.

  “Oh, that story,” Faolan replied quietly. And what happens when old legends come to pass, when they come true?

  “As far as I can tell, it passed north of here,” Edme continued. “It crashed straight through the MacDuncan territory, shoved west right over Crooked Back Ridge. The glacier leaves a huge track and along its edges there were these little rodents. I finished off the dying ones and Myrr and I brought them back.” She paused. “It’s so awful. After all those moons of famine we find all this food and there’s only us to eat it.”

  “You can’t mean that everyone is dead?” He began to splutter, “I saw Malachy and Conny, but … but … All the Watch wolves?”

  “The Fengo is dead,” Edme said.

  Mhairie and Dearlea gasped. “The Fengo, dead?”

  Edme nodded. “I set out his body where the drying place for bones used to be. There are still vultures about and they have made short work of it. His bones are almost bare.”

  “He should be on
the cairn of the Fengos,” Faolan mourned.

  “But that’s the queerest thing of all. The cairn still stands!”

  Faolan met her solemn gaze. “Then we need to place Finbar’s bones there when they are ready. We need to do his final ceremony. Do you remember how it is done from the Bone of Bones?”

  Edme looked at Faolan. Her single eye shone brightly. “The Ring might be broken, but its spirit is not.”

  THE FIVE WOLVES STOOD IN A circle just as the curve of the moon slid up on the horizon like a thin, sparkling blade. The fog of their breathing misted the air of the circle as they huddled together. Their postures were those of grieving wolves, their tails drooping as if they lacked the strength to hold them properly. Their muzzles trembled. Their hackles were raised and their ears shoved forward just a bit as if perhaps they were waiting for the whispery drift that was said to pass when a lochin came one’s way. Edme’s bright green eye glistened with tears as she began to recite the Fengos’ ritual from the Bone of Bones.

  “Since the time of the first Fengo, it has been commanded that the weathered bones of the Ring’s chieftain be brought to the cairn, along with any bones he has carved during his lifetime.” Edme looked over at Faolan. “Do you think his bones are ready, Faolan?” He nodded, and she continued, “We stand watch the first night in case the bones attract a scavenger.”

  Edme closed her eyes for several seconds. She was recalling a night from three moons before when she and Faolan had been out scouting, taking turns hunting for tracks. While she waited for him in the den they had found during one of the worst blizzards, she had become aware of a presence. She looked up expecting Faolan, but instead she saw something that rattled her to the marrow. It was a huge but ancient wolf who seemed to glow like a lochin.