Spirit Wolf

by Kathryn Lasky

  But the real shock was that the wolf before her was not a lochin come down from the Cave of Souls. It was Faolan come in from the blizzard, his pelt stiff with frost. Nevertheless, she had sensed a secret, a visit from a presence older than time.

  “Faolan, you should be the one to stand the watch.”

  Faolan said nothing, but nodded. He knew she was right.

  So, in the trickling light of the sickle moon, the four wolves and the pup, Myrr, transported the bones of the last Fengo of the Ring from the drying beds to the cairn of the Fengos.

  “Give Myrrglosch that bone,” Faolan said. “Let the bit of a miracle place the Fengo’s last bone.” He nodded at the cairn of the Fengos, which still stood erect and whole despite the earthquake.

  As soon as Myrr placed the last bone, the five wolves sank down to the ground and covered their eyes with their paws, a gesture of utmost submission to the highest authority. Then, rising, but with their tails still tucked and their eyes still shut, they tipped back their heads and howled at the dim splinter of the moon. As Watch wolves of the Ring, Faolan and Edme were the only ones who knew the howls that had been incised on the Bone of Bones. But little Myrr listened carefully. He would not howl, but he whispered the phrases to himself.

  “Lupus, guardian of the Cave of Souls, Skaarsgard, keeper of the star ladder, here lie the bones of your humble servant Finbar Fengo, watcher of the Watch that was begun in the time of the first Fengo, who led our clans out of the Long Cold on the Ice March. Guide Finbar’s spirit now to the star ladder to follow in the tracks of Hamish, Fengo before Finbar, and then that of O’Meg and that of Pegoth.” Faolan and Edme continued reciting until they had named all the Fengos for a thousand years. By the time they had finished, the sliver of the moonlight had slid away to another world and all was dark.

  Edme, Mhairie, Dearlea, and Myrr went to a new den nearby that Edme had dug out from the rubble, and Faolan settled down to guard the cairn of the Fengos. He was not tired at all, but his mind was divided. While one part kept watch, the other slipped into a kind of waking dream that had started when he and Edme had begun to recite the names of the Fengos.

  In his dream, Faolan saw a Spotted Owl perched near the wolf. The owl was battle weary, yet listened with rapt attention to what the old wolf was saying. There was a closeness, a compelling confidence between the two creatures. Their heads were bent toward each other so they nearly touched. Faolan could almost catch threads of their conversation.

  “You came to learn about fire, did you not? I can help you,” the old wolf was saying. “I can teach you some things, but not everything, Grank.”

  Grank! The name reverberated in Faolan’s head and his marrow quickened.

  The owl named Grank seemed puzzled at the old wolf’s words. “How can that be, Fengo? How can you help me learn more … about fire?”

  In his dream, Faolan was dimly aware that Fengo was the wolf’s name, not his title. What was he witnessing in his dream? Had he gone back to the very origins of the Ring, more than a thousand years ago?

  The owl addressed the wolf as an equal with no honorifics. Faolan was so far back in history that there was no Watch at the Ring. The only wolf was a plain old gray named Fengo.

  “You are able to fly over craters from which the fire leaps. You can look into the heart of a volcano. On the wing, you could catch the hottest coals.”

  Soon the voices dwindled and the mournful strand of a wolf’s glaffling wove through the night. The old wolf was sitting alone on a ridge, his head thrown back howling the strange mad music of grief. There was no trace of the Spotted Owl.

  Where is he? Where is he? Where is Grank?

  Never gone so long.

  Has he been killed?

  Does he now climb the spirit trail, Lupus?

  When the song ended, the mists rose and the wolf on the ridge had changed again and appeared older. An owl that was not Grank flew off with an ember in its beak — a green ember with a lick of blue at its center. The Ember of Hoole! The first king had been anointed. The old wolf could rest now.

  But though Fengo’s spirit longed to slip from his pelt, it was not quite over. Faolan felt the marrow leaking from him, a cool wind whistling through his bones. They were becoming hollow. Deep in his belly he felt a small spark, a kindling. I have a gizzard! I am becoming an owl! I chose to be an owl — a Snowy Owl!

  The beak opened and a beautiful sound ribboned the air. Song! It was at that moment the owl realized something else was very different. I am female! I chose this, too. I am back … I am back, she thought. The wind ruffled through her feathers. She felt so light, so free. She angled her wings steeply and swept into a deep banking turn. The sky tilted and the moon winked from behind a cloud. The constellation of the Little Raccoon was rising and she could almost brush its forepaws with her wing tips. The wind shivered through her delicate face feathers. She blinked her eyes and a thin membrane wiped across them clearing her vision. As she flew, it felt as if she were embracing the whole world, the entire universe.

  She looked down. She was flying over the Sea of Hoolemere. Over the spreading crown of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. Fengo had long been dead. The first king long dead. A new king ruled.

  She alighted in the Great Tree and quickly found her way to Madam Plonk, the Great Tree’s renowned singer. Madam Plonk was poring over her “collectibles,” as she called her vast assortment of silly doodads she got from Trader Mags.

  “Brunwella?”

  The Snowy Owl wheeled about as she heard her name.

  “Fee!”

  “Yes.”

  “What a surprise, but do call me Madam Plonk, dear. It’s a bit more formal around here. Now, I hope you’re coming with good news?”

  “If you mean am I going to stay, no,” the owl replied.

  “But, Fionula, I am going to need your help. This is a big job. They have let the job of tree singer go vacant for too long. The grass harp needs to be tuned. The blind snakes instructed.”

  “I can stay for a little bit, but you know as well as I that in my gizzard I am and always shall be a gadfeather.”

  Madam Plonk sighed. “You gadfeathers can’t keep still. Restless creatures, the lot of you.”

  What Madam Plonk had said about restlessness had more than a grain of truth in it. It was, however, not simply a matter of place. There was something deeply restless in Fionula’s gizzard. I have a restless soul. Something flashed in her mind’s eye. The figure of a wolf with a tattered pelt. “Brunwella, I mean Madam Plonk, have you met the new Fengo of the Watch yet?”

  “No. You know I don’t get on with wolves that well.” Fionula winced. “It’s not that I don’t like them exactly, I just … I can’t explain it. All that business they do with bones. Why don’t they just swallow them like we do? Get them wrapped up in a nice little pellet and yarp the whole business? But, no, they make such a … a …” Madam Plonk was searching for the right word. “A fetish really, carving them and all that. Seems silly.”

  “Not to them!” Fionula replied sharply.

  “Now, don’t get huffy. You’d think you were a wolf or something. I just have to say that I don’t care a bit for their odor.” Madam Plonk had now plucked up a strand of black pearls and was draping them over her shoulders.

  “What about their odor, what’s wrong with it?” Fionula said.

  “Meat. Too much meat in their diet.”

  “We eat meat.”

  “Yes, but not big meat like they do. And we cook a lot of ours.”

  “Well, we have fire, or here at the tree you do at least. And the wolves don’t.”

  “They have plenty of fire over at the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes. More fire than they know what to do with.”

  Fionula felt her gizzard stir. Her feathers puffed up. “It would be against the gaddernock for them to cook their meat using embers from the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes. They guard those volcanoes. The Bone of Bones, third gwalyd — ‘No embers from the coals of any of the five volcanoes sh
all be used by wolves for the purpose of cooking meat. Only owls may use these coals for their iron mongering. If owls wish to cook meat, they must bring to the Ring coals from forest fires.’”

  “Now, how ever do you know that, Fionula? Bone of Bones, what’s that all about?”

  Fionula shook her head and blinked several times. Her yellow eyes grew dim. “I don’t know how. I just do.”

  The sun was just bleaching the eastern sky when Edme came out of the den.

  “Did you sleep at all, Faolan?”

  “Not really, but I’m fine,” he answered.

  Edme cocked her head at him. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, but …” Faolan hesitated. “Edme, there’s nothing left here. We have to move on. Go.”

  “Go?” Her pelt bristled in astonishment. “Go where?”

  “West. We have to find the Sark, if we can. And the Whistler at the Blood Watch.”

  Edme met his eyes steadily, and Faolan knew she understood. “But that’s not all you have in mind, is it?”

  He shook his head. “We’re going much farther west.”

  “Farther west?” Dearlea had just come out from the den, her sister right behind her.

  “You mean to the Outermost? Surely not!” Mhairie gasped. But she saw a faraway look in her brother’s eyes.

  “I mean beyond the Outermost,” Faolan replied. “I mean … I mean …” his voice began to ebb.

  “Faolan?” Edme whispered. “What are you seeing?”

  When he answered, his voice was strong again. “Once, on a very clear day when I stood on the Blood Watch, I turned west and I saw beyond the Outermost, almost all the way across the western sea.” He paused. “I saw the Distant Blue.”

  “The Distant Blue?” Dearlea echoed.

  “I don’t know its true name, but I call it that. The Distant Blue is where we must go.”

  The wolves fell silent as they looked at him. The Beyond was broken, the earth fractured beneath their feet. But where was Faolan taking them?

  WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? BANJA’S question thrummed in Gwynneth’s head as she flew. She had promised Banja that she would return, but Gwynneth needed to search for the Sark, and for Faolan and Edme. Was there any chance they could still be alive?

  She was shocked when she looked down on what used to be Crooked Back Ridge. It was not simply flattened by the glacier, but the earth had been gouged out to an enormous depth. Parts of it were no longer a ridge, but a deep valley. The glacier, only half a league past the ridge and slowing now, had left an immense cleft in its wake.

  A galloping glacier! Gwynneth thought. She had heard about them when she was in the northern kingdoms but never actually seen one. And then there was the old skreeleen tale of the White Grizzly.

  Everywhere there were deep cuts, deadly crevasses. Being an owl, Gwynneth could swoop down into many of these and she saw that they had become death traps for elk, moose, marmots, and many wolves. The crevices were a carrion feeder’s delight, but the sight of these birds revolted Gwynneth. She remembered her father speaking of the vultures who had scoured the battlefield after the last of the Great Owl wars, the War of the Ember. She could not abide the idea. She plunged now into a crevice and with an ear-shattering shree flew directly at two vultures who were feeding on the body of a wolf.

  She attacked with outstretched talons and managed to rake the eye of the smaller vulture. That was enough to scare them both off. But it was only after the vultures had flown away that Gwynneth recognized the wolf whose carcass they had all but destroyed. “Oona,” she whispered. “Great Glaux, it is Oona!” The black wolf had been a fearless lieutenant from the MacNamara clan. She was most likely on her way back to her clan from her duties at the Blood Watch.

  “To think, Oona dead, who had survived so much!” Gwynneth wept over the ragged body of the wolf. Oona’s long history fled through her mind. She marched with the MacNamara expeditionary force, the greatest fighting force in the Beyond. She fought in the War of the Ember. And now, thought Gwynneth, to be swallowed by the earth, then pecked upon by vultures. Gwynneth screamed. The sound slammed back at her from the walls of the crevasse as she flew madly about, battering the wind with her wings. It was as if she wanted to punch every god from its heaven, for truly this was hagsmire, hell on earth!

  In the midst of the storm that roiled her gizzard, she once again heard the soft mewling of that tiny pup Maudie. Banja needs food to make milk for her pup. There was new life in this Glaux-forsaken land and it needed to be sustained. With that thought, Gwynneth pulled herself together. She focused in on a slight scurrying sound and picked off a vole she had seen scampering about. It was owl food, but sustenance nonetheless. Banja would not complain.

  “Oh, this is so kind of you, Gwynneth. I can’t express my appreciation.” Tears now streamed from Banja’s old eye and her brand-new one, making Gwynneth think of Edme. Would Edme have a new eye? She was after all a malcadh made, not born.

  How remarkable. I am looking at Banja and thinking of Edme! Banja had once been the nastiest wolf at the Ring, and now she evoked thoughts of the kindest.

  Gwynneth wilfed. Where were Faolan and the Sark? The dear old Sark. She’s hardly the gentlest wolf, Gwynneth thought, but the Sark had been her first friend in the Beyond.

  “Is something wrong, Gwynneth?” Banja paused, then ducked her head in embarassment. “Well, of course, everything is wrong! How stupid of me. But you suddenly look so sad.”

  “I was just thinking of my friends — Edme, Faolan …” She gulped. “And the Sark.”

  “You and the Sark were very close, weren’t you?”

  “Indeed! The Sark and my father, Gwyndor, were the very best of friends. She and my auntie both looked after me at different times in my life. My mother had died and I really never knew her. So when I was very young my auntie took me in, though she was not an egg relation.”

  “Egg relation — is that what owls call it?”

  “Yes, I guess it sounds odd to wolves. And when my auntie was murdered, I went to the Beyond and to the Sark. So I more or less had two foster mothers — an owl and a wolf.” She sighed and closed her eyes. “I don’t think I could have done any better.”

  Banja was silent for several moments. When she spoke, her voice was slow, as if she were choosing every word carefully. “Gwynneth.” She paused. “If something were to happen to me, would you consider taking care of Maudie?”

  “But I’m not a wolf, Banja.”

  “You know so much about wolves.”

  “Yes, but not as much as a wolf does. I’m not like Faolan or Edme.”

  “I was awful to those two wolves when they arrived at the Ring, especially Edme because, well …” Banja began to stammer. “She was like me! Missing one eye. I took all my bitterness out on her.” She turned her two bright green eyes on Gwynneth. “I’m so ashamed … so ashamed I would never dare ask anything of her.”

  “Of course I’d look after Maudie if something happened to you, but you underestimate Edme. If she’s still alive, Maudie would do well by her.”

  “If you find Edme, perhaps she might, too. Perhaps both of you could look after her together.” Banja paused for a split second, then rushed on. “Edme has every right to say no. I was so terrible to her. I wouldn’t blame her one bit for telling me to be off to the Dim World.”

  I think we are in the Dim World. “Dim World” was the wolf term for hell. But Gwynneth held her tongue. “Knowing Edme, I am sure she would agree to take care of little Maudie, and I will, too.”

  “Oh, thank you, Gwynneth. Thank you so much.” Banja settled back and continued nursing her pup. “Do you know what I think?” Her voice was slow and drowsy. Gwynneth had seen other wolf mums become this way when they nursed their young. The act of giving milk seemed to have a calming effect on them. Banja yawned. “You know what I think?” she persisted.

  “What’s that, Banja?”

  “I think you need to go and look for the Sark — your foster mum.”


  “You’re right,” Gwynneth agreed. “But don’t worry. I’ll be back.”

  “I won’t worry. I trust you, Gwynneth.”

  Trust? It was a word that Gwynneth thought she would never hear coming from the mouth of the red wolf. Shock stirred her feathers and this gave her away.

  “Yes, trust, Gwynneth. Can you believe I said that?” Banja opened her eyes wide now, surprised at herself. “I tell you, feeling a sense of trust is almost better than seeing with two eyes.”

  GWYNNETH SCOURED THE MUDDLED terrain between her forge and the Shadow Forest, where she had last seen the Sark. She flew into the countless crevices that cracked the land and yielded the remains of many dead animals, from wolves to grizzly bears. But so far she had not found the Sark. With each dead wolf she encountered, she had to admit she was relieved that it was not the Sark. Was it possible that the Sark had made it back to the Slough? With its spongy marshland, the Slough might not have cracked in the same way the brittle terrain had in the rest of the Beyond. With that thought in mind, the Masked Owl began flying east by southeast. But Gwynneth saw nothing, no trace of the Sark even as she alighted in her friend’s encampment.

  The kiln, where the Sark had forged her memory jugs, had collapsed and was nothing more than a heap of dried mud and the firestones she had collected from the river and used for reinforcing the kiln’s foundation. A Slough grouse stalked about with a broken wing, as if trying to survey the damage. And unbeknownst to Gwynneth, inside the winding caverns of her cave, the Sark lay close to death.

  The previous evening the Sark had staggered back to her encampment, weak and bleeding profusely. She collapsed just outside her cave and lay there unconscious until dawn. The morning light revived her slightly and she managed to drag herself into her cave only to confront a fresh nightmare. “It can’t be … it can’t be!” she moaned. Every single memory jug was shattered. The Sark felt an answering fracturing in her marrow and crumpled onto a mound of pot shards. To any other creature she would appear nearly dead or deeply comatose, her breathing shallow and irregular. But some part deep within her remained alert.