Star Wolf Read online

  “Yes. We’ve been shadowing them for a few days,” Zanouche replied. “They are not as organized as you. Heep is a poor leader, but he inspires with false promises. The way has been hard for them, but the wind has now shifted. It’s behind them, and they are making good progress. Some of the ridges that you have encountered have been scraped down by this new wind.”

  Eelon interrupted, “They are bad wolves. We know. When the famine struck, we went far beyond our home nest in Ambala to hunt. We saw these wolves and their routs. You do not need them in this new place you are going.”

  “Not at all!” Zanouche nodded her head. “Savages all of them.”

  “And you?” Faolan asked tentatively. “You came from Ambala?”

  “What was Ambala is gone,” Zanouche said. “The immense nest of our ancestors has fallen. It had been there hundreds of years. There is nothing to go back for. The few owls and eagles left decided to cross the Sea of Vastness to the Sixth Kingdom.” She paused, then sniffed. “To each her own, I suppose.”

  “We decided to fly west,” Eelon said. “Even though the wind was against us. But it finally changed.”

  “This new wind has not had the grace to reach us yet,” the Whistler said, coming by on his watch.

  Faolan cut in, “Tell me, what do you think of our leaving the bridge and striking out across the Frozen Sea?”

  Eelon and Zanouche exchanged glances.

  “It seems solid,” Eelon began. “But one can never tell when a lead might open.”

  “Airmead and Katria might be all right in the water,” Gwynneth said. “All the MacNamara wolves are good swimmers. They live near the Bittersea. It’s been part of their training forever.”

  “But it hasn’t really been part of ours,” Edme said. “Except for swimming after fish in the river. That’s not quite the same thing.”

  “True,” Eelon said. “But if the ice cracks, there is usually a period before a lead really begins to open up and you’d have time to make it back to the bridge.” He looked at Gwynneth. “You have a good navigator here. Owls are known for that. Your aunt, the Rogue smith of Silverveil, was excellent.”

  “Y-y-yes. That she was. But, uh, the stars are different here. It … it can be quite disorienting.”

  “Gwynneth, I can help,” Faolan said.

  “How, Faolan? I don’t understand.”

  “I have been studying these new star pictures.” Faolan stepped up very close to Gwynneth’s beak and peered into her black eyes. “Come with me to the edge of the bridge. The wind is down. I want you to look with me. See with me.”

  He knows, Edme thought. He knows she is going blind. He has known. But he will not hurt her by admitting it. Was there ever a wolf so fierce and yet so tender? Edme felt her heart swell.

  The wolf and the owl stood close to each other on the very edge of the Ice Bridge. Faolan stooped low so he was level with Gwynneth’s starboard ear slit. “Look to the east, Gwynneth. Just above the horizon.” He was whispering.

  “Yes.” Her voice was slightly tremulous. “What is it you want me to see? There is a constellation that has a fluked tail, right?” She squinted. “Yes indeed, like that of a fish.” The tremolo in her voice grew fainter.

  “And a sort of bulbous head.”

  “Juglike almost, but not like any jug the Sark would make.”

  “Yes, juglike. Precisely, Gwynneth.” He lifted a paw and tenderly patted her shoulder. “And now what do you see on the end of that juglike head?”

  “It could be a scimitar like one my father once forged for the War of the Ember.” Then she gasped. “Oh, Glaux in Glaumora! I see it now. It’s the tusk of a narwhale!”

  “Yes, and the scimitar points west. And the flukes of the tail point toward where we now stand on the Ice Bridge.”

  “Faolan.” Gwynneth turned to her friend. “We’ll never get lost if you keep the head to starboard and the tail, the port fluke of the tail, behind you. The bridge is perhaps two points off the port fluke.”

  “I don’t understand points and all these … these …” Faolan stammered.

  “The yonder?” Gwynneth asked softly.

  “Yonder?” Faolan said.

  “It’s an old nestmaid-snake term for the sky. I told you that all the nestmaids at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree were blind. But they had an uncanny ability to perceive things they could not see, like the sky. Their sensibilities were very refined. They were very intuitive and could pick up on things missed by ordinary creatures, creatures who could see. I have thought about them a great deal recently.” She sighed. “There was one very distinguished old nestmaid snake, Mrs. Plithiver was her name. She actually flew with Soren on occasion.”

  “King Soren?”

  “Yes, but it began long before he was a king, when he was just a youngster. It was said that she once commented that the sky does not exist merely in the wings of birds, an impulse in their feathers and blood and bone, but that sky becomes the yonder for all creatures. It is your yonder, Faolan. I can tell. You know the stars, Faolan, even if these are different ones. You know how to navigate, even if you’re a wolf. By Glaux, you’re a star wolf if I have ever seen one.”

  Faolan blinked. Gwynneth was right, of course the yonder was his and always had been. But she didn’t know just how right she was. She had no suspicion, no inkling of his previous life as a Snowy Owl who had wandered all of the Hoolian kingdoms, both those of the north and the south. Gadfeathers were the most restless of owls and ranged across Ga’Hoole singing and rarely roosting any one place for any length of time. Nestless, they cared not for hollows or the domesticity of life with a mate or rearing a clutch of young’uns. They prided themselves on their freedom, and though at times they were lonely, it was a small price to pay. Actually, they found their lonely conditions to be a great resource for their music and were constantly singing romantic ballads about their nomadic lives and the hope of finding a mate who shared their wanderlust and would never want to settle down or nest.

  Faolan shut his eyes, and a deep recess in his mind grew luminous with the glimmer of the Snowy Owl he had once been. Of course, he had not been a male back then. He had been a female whose white plumage was festooned with lacy mosses and the occasional molted feather from a Spotted Owl. How they dressed up back in those days, with strands of bright berries and ice flowers twined in their down! They were all beautiful, but it was their voices that made them legends throughout the kingdoms. At festivals, they sang songs ranging from achingly tender ballads to the liveliest of jigs. The strains of one came back to Faolan, the words twinkling in his mind like light from a distant star.

  Fly away with me,

  give my loneliness a break.

  Fly away with me,

  so my heart will never ache.

  Fly away with me this night.

  Fly away with me,

  I’ll find a feather for your ruff.

  Fly away with me till dawn.

  Fly away, then we’ll be gone.

  Hollows we shall leave behind,

  fly to places they’ll never find.

  Fly away with me right now,

  I can’t wait.

  Fly away with me,

  don’t hesitate.

  I want to soar the smee hole drafts

  where the steam rises from the sea.

  I want to cross the mountain ridge,

  I want to see the other side.

  Gwynneth looked at him, for he seemed to have gone someplace else for the longest moment. “Faolan, you’ll be fine. I will help you as best I can, but you know …” Her voice trailed off.

  “I know, Gwynneth.”

  “Please don’t tell anyone.”

  “I won’t.”

  “And I can still fly. I can feel the wind, you see. That’s how I found the eagles — it was their contrails. Owls feel a lot that they don’t see. Their gizzards, you know. The impulses that Mrs. Plithiver spoke of, they don’t really fade. They are just a bit dimmer.” She made a little hop and flew of
f the edge of the bridge to catch a maverick breeze that had just blown up. “Watch me, Faolan!” she called, and with great delight angled her wings into the night and went into a tailslide, then flipped over into a flat spin and concluded with a snap roll. Within seconds, she was back on the bridge.

  “How about that?” she said triumphantly. “They call them stunts. In the season of the Copper Rain at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, there was always a big festival, and we’d have stunt-flying contests. Oh, they were fun!” Gwynneth sighed wistfully. “As you well know, not much could get me out of the Beyond to go south to Hoole or the Great Tree, but the stunt-flying contests were irresistible even to a loner like me.”

  “I bet they were,” Faolan said.

  “I think I’ll go out for a flight now. I’ll try and take a closer look at the Narwhale constellation. If I get closer, I think I could count the stars in its flukes.”

  “Do that, Gwynneth. It would be helpful.”

  “More than happy.” Just as the Masked Owl was spreading her wings to loft into flight, Faolan caught sight of a tail feather she had dropped. It was a lovely tawny color with a few speckles.

  “Gwynneth, do you need this?” He picked up the feather.

  “Oh, Glaux no, it’s just an old feather. It must be my molting season coming on, though who knows what the season is around here.”

  The Whistler was still on watch with Banja. Mhairie and Dearlea slept with their little brother, Abban, between them, and the two great eagles were perched in the distance on a pressure ridge. Faolan went around the bend to where he had dug out a snow snug with Edme. She was sound asleep with Myrr beside her and Maud as well, since Banja was on watch.

  He watched her chest heave rhythmically. She usually slept so her single eye faced up. But tonight it was the crinkled pit of her missing eye that showed. Thin scars raked that side of her face, a testimony to the despicable mutilation wrought by the brutal chieftain of the MacHeath clan. Edme had been born a healthy pup, but she’d been mutilated so the MacHeaths could send a gnaw wolf to the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes. The fur around the wound had never grown back, so the seams of the scars were still deep pink and almost fresh looking. But Faolan saw only perfection. The bone Edme always carried lay beside her with its mystical carvings that seemed to call to something deep in his marrow that he could not quite grasp. He did not worry about that now. He took Gwynneth’s feather and tried to imagine what it might look like threaded through the dark gray fur of Edme’s ruff. But Edme was a she-wolf who needed no adornment. So he lay it down beside the bone for her to discover on waking.

  EDME AWOKE FOR NO PARTICULAR reason. It was a few short hours before the dawn but not time for her watch. She heard Faolan breathing next to her. It was never completely dark on the Ice Bridge, and a milky light, emanating from the luster of the fullshine moon outside, suffused the interior of the snug. The snow and ice were perfect reflectors, and the soft light poured around them. Faolan’s silvery coat was radiant with the reflected moonlight. Every filament of his fur seemed to sparkle as he slept.

  Edme caught sight of a long feather by her bone. It was mottled with a pale and a darker brown. Obviously, it was a tail feather molted from Gwynneth, and it had been placed very deliberately by Edme’s side. It had to have been Faolan who had brought it. Molted feathers did not simply blow into a snow snug. They couldn’t, could they? But why had he brought it? Was it an offering of some sort? An indication that perhaps finally he was admitting to Gwynneth’s deteriorating eyesight? Gwynneth and he had spent a great deal of time together huddled at the edge of the Ice Bridge looking at the new constellation — that of the Narwhale. The feather seemed to be a token of some kind, either bearing the burden or the solace of truth. Perhaps it had nothing to do with Gwynneth at all, even though it was her feather. But why had he placed it so that it touched the bone?

  She looked over at Faolan. There was something almost ethereal about him in the moonlight. I am looking for something so deep within him. Something stirs there as he sleeps. Is it a dream? An ancient dream? What is it that I sense about this … this old soul within him? What old tunes sing down his bones and lodge in his marrow? I swear sometimes I almost feel a harmony. But what is it?

  She was soon awash in that familiar array of confusing emotions she’d been experiencing since Faolan had first found the twisted femur bone and they had begun this journey to the Distant Blue.

  She quietly got up and reached for the bone with her mouth. The scent of the feather was distinct upon it though only its edges had touched the bone. She ran her tongue over the ancient markings and closed her eye. As often happened when she closed her single eye, another eye deep inside her seemed to open. I need you now, she thought, addressing the invisible eye. Her old taiga, Winks, who also was missing an eye, had told Edme about what Winks called her inner eye, someplace deep in her head, which she described as a kind of spirit eye. Winks had counseled Edme to tend to it carefully, as one might tend to a pup, to nurture and cherish it so it would grow sharper in its vision. Winks firmly believed that it was this inner eye that had guided her back to her own natal clan, the MacDonegals, as a malcadh. What was it that Winks had said one of the last times Edme had visited with the old taiga? Be alert, be aware that the eye on your face is not the only eye you possess, my dear. So Edme clamped her outside eye shut even tighter and concentrated on her inner one.

  All the while, she licked the faint incisions on the ancient bone. The Old Wolf words did not seem so strange to her now. She thought that Faolan was the only one to have spoken the ancient tongue, but she now recognized another voice, a very old one. Was it her own? She used to wonder why Faolan had known all these peculiar antique expressions, but now they did not seem peculiar at all. The sounds gathered meaning, infinitesimally small until they began to sift through the pathways of her mind, arranging themselves into phrases that melted out of the edge of her senses. Her hip began to hurt even though she was gripping the bone in her teeth. Usually, if she bit the bone, the pain eased. But this time it was not helping, and the pain grew worse. She knew she must not release the bone. To let go was to let go of meaning. She must try not to cry out, although her single eye leaked tears. But that inner eye, the spirit eye, was dry and clear. Winks’s words came back again. Be alert, be aware that the eye on your face is not the only eye you possess.

  I am alert, she thought through her pain. The eye on her face continued to weep, but she paid it no heed as the inner eye grew wider. She spied a figure hovering over her, a huge silver wolf.

  Stormfast, I cannot leave you.

  As a Watch wolf, Edme had guarded a volcano called Stormfast, but this wolf was addressing her as if Stormfast were her name. It fit as comfortably as her pelt. Stormfast!

  Fengo, you must go on.

  Fengo, she thought. Not “the Fengo.” It was as if the voices of two consciousnesses, two waking souls were streaming through her mind. But there was little doubt which one it was vital that she hear.

  Stormfast, I cannot leave you here to die alone.

  No one dies alone, Fengo. You know that better than any. Skaarsgard will be here soon for me.

  No! No!

  Listen to me, Fengo, my love, we are both old.

  I know, I know. I thought I had lost you once and then I fell off the star ladder and came back to you. Now must I lose you again?

  You did not fall off to come back to me. You were called back to them — to lead them out of the Long Cold. You will never lose me.

  She bit deeper on the bone, and she heard it crack. The dust of ancient marrow leaked out, but the meaning of the gnaw marks on the bone were inscribed on her heart, her mind, and, yes, her own living marrow. She opened her eyes from her waking dream and looked at Faolan, who still slept. The time was nearing when he would know, know from whence this bone came, why it had been carved, and where the other bones remained.

  THE TAILWIND EASING HEEP’S travel arrived just as Faolan’s brigade hit a stretch of pressure
ridges that slowed their progress to the point that there was little advantage in the wind. In fact, it presented a peril, for each time they reached the crest of a pressure ridge, they were in grave danger of being swept off it.

  And so it was decided that the travelers would depart from the Ice Bridge and strike out across the Frozen Sea, where the way was clear and the hard crusted ice would provide swift travel. The eagles would divide their efforts, with Eelon flying out across the vast frozen icescape of the sea to scout for any open water that might threaten to cut channels or leads into the ice on which they traveled. Meanwhile, Zanouche would fly east over the bridge to report on the progress of Heep and his rout.

  Edme, however, was adamant about not abandoning the Ice Bridge entirely.

  “I don’t think it’s wise, Faolan. We should travel out across the sea at night when the winds blow the hardest and it is the most dangerous to cross the pressure ridges. With the wind backing around to the northwest and east, it will give a tremendous boost to our speed. The nights have been clear, and the stars are brilliant, so you will be able to guide us. But most important, we will always be able to find our way back to the bridge.” She paused and stepped so close to Faolan that their noses were touching. “Promise me, Faolan, on your marrow: If the night is thick with clouds and there are no stars, promise me we will not leave the bridge?” Edme sounded almost desperate.

  Everyone else, however, had been terribly excited about leaving the bridge, if only for periods of time. Faolan could not quite grasp why Edme was so reluctant. There was an impulse in Edme that seemed to be driving her fear of the open ice. He must be patient with her.

  Near the end of their first night abroad on the Frozen Sea, the creatures were ecstatic with their progress. Gwynneth reported that they had avoided almost a half a dozen pressure ridges by taking the sea route. As they neared the pillars of the bridge, Eelon swooped down with a small seal in his talons.