Lone Wolf

by Kathryn Lasky

  “Oh, I am humbled by your remarks.” Heep began to screw his face into the ground and writhe in submission.

  “Oh, please, dispense with such formalities. We would much prefer to watch you gnaw.”

  Faolan had stopped gnawing entirely and was oiling his bone by rubbing it between the webbing of his paws. Oiling had two main functions. First, it marked the bone with a wolf’s distinctive odor, and second, it cleared away the bone dust from the gnawing. For Faolan, there was now a third function to be served. It offered silence.

  Dearlea and Mhairie should be able to hear the click of that nick. He could tell that they were both concentrating very hard, with their ears shoved forward. Did they see the nick in the bone that Heep’s tooth made? Soon, the two moved off. Heep slid his green eyes toward Faolan. Then he whispered as if to himself although everyone in the gnaw circle could hear him, “I can’t imagine why two such high-ranking wolves, wolves from the Carreg Gaer, would stop to look at my humble work.” No one said anything.

  The gnaw wolves went on gnawing, and there was no sound except for the scrape of teeth on bone until Edme lifted her head. “Uh-oh! Here comes the Fengo Finbar,” she said.

  Heep immediately dropped his bone and started to twist not just his face, but what seemed like his entire body, into the ground.

  “Up, up!” Finbar was a handsome brown wolf with a lustrous coat. One of his back legs was twisted so that the paw was actually reversed. “Veneration and obeisance practices are suspended during the games. They are a waste of time when such important business is being conducted.

  “I am here to remind you all that you should be thinking about your story bones. In the old days, it was permitted to gnaw three, even four bones to tell a story. But during the time of our late and venerable Fengo Hamish, it was decided that it was even more challenging to be concise. So for your stories, my advice is to keep the focus narrow, prove a single point or follow a single idea, but develop it with specific examples and facts. Try to avoid clichés.”

  Edme raised a paw, “Pardon me, Honorable Fengo, but might you give an example of a really good story bone that a gnaw wolf from the past has carved?”

  “Aah, very good question. Undoubtedly, the very best bone ever gnawed was that of our late Fengo Hamish, telling the story of how he and the late king of Ga’Hoole, Coryn, first met when Coryn came to the Beyond as an outcast from his mother’s hollow. It was not so much the events of the story but the deep feelings he expressed. It was an outcast’s story of another outcast. It was as if Hamish had to get outside himself and his own agonies before he understood them and the world in which he lived. Hamish showed Coryn’s agony in being an outcast, unloved, nay hated, by his tyrannical mother, Nyra, and yet cursed with a face so similar to hers that, in his wandering, he provoked fear wherever he went. The high point of the story occurred when Hamish first meets Coryn. He described the spark between them that kindled their long friendship. Simply gnawed, this bone—a tibia, I believe, from a musk ox—told a tale of profound friendship.”

  It was as if he had to get outside himself and his own agonies before he understood them and the world in which he lived. The words of the Fengo Finbar resonated deep in Faolan’s marrow.

  The Fengo cocked his head to one side and closed his eyes until there was just a slit of green light from each. He seemed to be contemplating something in the distant past. “A bone gnawed with such compassion seemed to touch the marrow of all wolves. Classic. A true classic.” Then the Fengo walked away without saying another word, as if he was still in the thrall of that memorable bone.

  The gnaw wolves of the circle all looked at one another, undoubtedly with the same thought. How will I ever match that? But Faolan was not thinking of bones or the competition at all. It was as if he had moved outside his own body. He was on that ridge again where the pup had been murdered. Murdered by a wolf!

  He was trying to imagine the killer winding up that steep incline to the flat rock on the top. How long had it been after Faolan had left? If he had stayed and just kept watch over the poor little pup, would she have died before the murderer could get to her? But if he had stayed, would he have been tempted to save her? Questions whirled through Faolan’s mind as the other wolves gnawed. He had thought there was more to the pup’s story, but never had he imagined it would be so complicated and so gruesome.

  A sleeping den was reserved for the competing gnaw wolves, but Faolan preferred to sleep alone. For even after a day of working, the gnaw wolves often talked long into the night, and the constant discussion of the competition put Faolan on edge. Although everyone was careful not to reveal too much about the story he or she was carving, they loved to discuss certain challenges they were encountering. Faolan had yet even to come up with an idea for his story, so he had nothing to reveal. He wasn’t worried. He knew that, sooner or later, he would think of something. Many of the stories focused on the gnaw wolves’ deformities and how they overcame them. Edme’s was particularly affecting, describing how she began to understand that she did not necessarily miss the eye she was born without, but thought of it instead as hovering above her in the sky, looking down upon her and giving her courage.

  Creakle insisted that although he was missing a paw, he possessed what he called a lochin paw that served him well and had forced the muscles in his leg to become much stronger. Therefore, he was gnawing a bone about his great leap in the kill rush that brought down the caribou.

  Heep was rather reserved about his own bone, but, when pressed by Tearlach, replied quickly—a bit too quickly, Faolan thought—that he was gnawing a bone about the unexpected joys of humiliation. “It’s really a philosophical story about the strange fulfillment in understanding one’s place as the lowliest of creatures and the reverence it gives one for the Great Chain that orders our existence on earth.” Heep slid his eyes toward Faolan. Edme felt something seize in her marrow when she caught the treacherous glint in Heep’s gaze. Had Faolan seen it?

  The Whistler yawned loudly during Heep’s explanation. He was gnawing a story about an early memory of when he had first found his way back to the MacDuncan clan and wondered whether it was better to live as a lone wolf. It seemed to Faolan a very honest tale, but he heard Heep snickering. “If I might humbly ask the Whistler how he could ever consider abandoning this noble clan for life as a lone wolf?”

  “No,” snapped the Whistler. “You may not ask. When I finish my bone and you see it, perhaps your humble mind will understand.”

  Tearlach seemed to prefer not to discuss his story, although he gave small hints on occasion. Faolan, however, had not given the slightest indication. When he had finally decided what he would carve, he was careful to go to the pile to pick a bone when no one else was around. He had selected a pelvis of a marmot because there was a beautiful gray crack that ran diagonally across it and reminded him of the river from which Thunderheart had rescued him. There was also a spot on the surface that was slightly discolored and in the shape of the cave that had been their summer den. It amazed Faolan that the other gnaw wolves did not take more time in looking at their bones and discovering the interesting designs that occurred naturally on the surface—small fractures, shadows, slight depressions. Heep had used the natural crack in a bone once, but only once, when he carved the image of Faolan jumping the wall of fire. That crack was so obvious, it was hard to miss. But as far as Faolan could tell, neither Heep nor any of the other gnaw wolves had looked for these features in the bones they were incising.

  There was a landscape that already existed if one looked carefully, and then all one had to do was arrange one’s carving around that landscape. In the pelvis of the marmot, there was river, sky, a summer den—only Thunderheart was missing, but that was what Faolan’s teeth would inscribe. The story seemed to press to get out, so that Faolan’s teeth almost ached with the story they held.

  Late one evening a few days after the story bones had been started, Faolan saw a tree with forking branches that he felt might m
ake for good sleeping. The last time Faolan had leaped into a tree was when he was chasing a cougar in the Outermost. This leap looked about the same distance and certainly did not require the kind of leap he had made jumping the wall of fire.

  He did not even have to take much of a running start before he was in the tree with his legs draped over the fork. He had not realized it, but there were two other branching limbs that joined these from the back of the tree. It formed a sort of basket similar to the ones that Rogue colliers and smiths carried their coals in, although much bigger. It was the perfect den, if one could call such a place a den.

  Faolan looked up through the black embroidery of the fringed spruce branches against the sky. The stars were just breaking, and he could see the first antlers of the caribou’s constellation. It made Faolan think of the drumlyn he had built for the caribou he had caught nearly a year before. How different it was from the violated little bones of the pup on the ridge, he thought. Faolan shivered in his sky basket, as he had come to think of this tree den. He felt high enough to reach out and touch the stars with his paw. Those starry antlers of the rising caribou constellation were a sign that the Great Star Wolf was returning to guide the mist of the murdered pup to the Cave of Souls.

  Faolan twisted around to lift his splayed paw to the light of the moon just above. There it was, the malcadh mark, the dim tracery of spiraling lines like a swirled star. The print on his paw seemed to merge with a whirl of stars in the sky. Once again, the thought came to him that he was part of something bigger, a larger design that was just one fragment of a single piece, an endless cycle spinning around and around like those swirling lines on his paw. He recalled that terrible night when he had found the skull of Thunderheart and howled his grief into the darkness. He remembered how he had taken some solace in the thought that, for one moment in the infinite loop of cycling time, his and Thunderheart’s lives had come together. His glaffling, as the wolves called the howls of mourning, was as much a prayer of thanksgiving as a song of grief. The words of his mourning howls came back to him now.

  Cycling, cycling forever

  bear, wolf, caribou.

  When had it all started, where will it end?

  We are all part of one,

  from such simple beginnings

  and yet all so different.

  Yet one.

  One and again,

  Thunderheart eternal,

  now and forever!

  But the song soon faded as he crossed the border into sleep and entered a dreamworld in which he trotted across the starry night, looking for the little malcadh pup to see if she was safely climbing the ladder to the Cave of Souls.

  I am a star walker! he dreamed as he walked throughout the constellations, looking for the little pup. He knew he dreamed, and yet this was much more tangible than any dream he had ever had. The night air seemed billowy beneath his paws, and his silvery fur captured the flickerings of the stars until he felt wrapped in a radiant mist of light.

  It is all so real! So real and so familiar. Have I been here before? But that was impossible. What living wolf had ever walked the stars? And he was not dead. A long shadow began to stretch itself across the nightscape of his dream. A shiver passed through him and it was as if the marrow in his bones shifted ever so slightly. Just then, he heard a click…click…click…Not here. Surely not here!

  He awoke with such a start that he almost pitched himself from the tree. His ears were pricked up. But there was only silence, not the clicking of that nicked slashing tooth. “It was in the dream I heard the clicking,” he whispered softly to himself. In the dream!

  He looked straight up through the branches to the star-dusted night he had just walked in his dreams. He squinted his eyes so he could see the stars between spruce needles. And then it came to him, the image of those tiny bones bristling with needle-like slashes. He must look beneath the fury of the marks. Something else was there that he had not seen before. All these days that the gnaw wolves had been carving their story bones, there were bones out there on the slope with the little pup’s story already told.

  He could almost see the pup leaping down from the star ladder, snarling in vengeance at her killer. She would have no rest until the murderer was known. In that moment, Faolan knew what he had to do. He had to go and retrieve the bones he had buried with Thunderheart.

  Quietly, he crept down from the tree. He looked up. The moon was very bright, so he worried he might be seen leaving. But he spotted an immense cloud rolling in from the east. He waited a few minutes, and when the cloud began to obscure the moon and the land darkened, he set off at a brisk pace.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  GHOST WOLF

  HEEP HAD BECOME SUSPICIOUS during the last moon, the Moon of the Cracking Ice, that Faolan was up to no good. As the close of the gaddergnaw approached, he was becoming more and more desperate. He knew in his marrow that his destiny was to be a wolf of the Watch. If the present king of Ga’Hoole died and a new monarch retrieved the Ember of Hoole, all the Watch wolves would be released from their duties, and, like Hamish, the great Fengo whose twisted leg turned around, their deformities would disappear. And finally, finally, Heep would have a tail. What had been broken in their bodies was mended; what was twisted was made to grow straight; what was crippled gained strength. This was no dream, this was no legend. This was true.

  But Heep was worried and desperate, for despite Faolan’s low score, there was still a chance he might redeem himself with his exquisite carving. Heep did not worry so much about the other gnaw wolves. He was a MacDuncan, after all. MacDuncans started the Watch, and every wolf knew they were favored, despite all the talk about all contenders being equally treated. It just wasn’t so.

  Heep had to knock Faolan out of the competition for good, and an ingenious idea had come to him a few days before. Why had he never thought of it before? He watched Faolan slip off into the night. By the time Faolan came back, the game between himself and this loathsome wolf would be over. He watched that luxuriant silver tail, like a furry comet across the night, flag out behind Faolan. Heep felt the phantom pain where his own tail should have grown. You’ll be done for by dawn, he thought.

  Heep raced some distance off in the opposite direction. There was a lone spot where three birch trees had grown together. Their trunks entwined, their roots entangled. The place where such trees grew was considered unlucky. Some said the seeds of the trees had been sown during moon rot, the time when the shadow of a previous night’s moon hung in the sky the next day. But Heep did not care. It was perfect for hiding his bone, the real bone that he had begun to carve, telling the story of the murder of a malcadh by a wolf. Not just any wolf but a gnaw wolf! He had another bone as well. A bone of evidence.

  “Wake up, Dearlea, wake up!” Mhairie nudged her sister’s shoulder, then gave a good hard shove to her jaw.

  “What? What are you waking me up for? Get your face out of mine.”

  “It’s about Faolan.”

  “What about him?” Dearlea said wearily. “Did he carve another profane bone? I wish you’d stop worrying. The MacDuffs have always been suspicious of him. They’re suspicious of everyone.”

  “It’s not about any bone.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “Faolan’s gone off in the middle of the night!”

  “He has a right to. As long as he shows up for all the gaddergnaw activities, he can do whatever he pleases anytime.”

  “In the middle of the night? It’s strange, you have to admit it.”

  “Great Lupus, you’re getting to be a MacDuff!”

  “No! I just worry. He’s tracking on thin ice with all these rumors. And he did it before when we were over at the Yellow Springs and I was running as outflanker.”

  “You saw him go?”

  Dearlea was now sitting up. She shook her head violently as if to clear her brain, and yawned, but not in boredom. She stared down at her paws. Then, in a gesture Mhairie knew well, Dearlea put one paw ove
r the other and scratched. It was a habit of hers when she was thinking hard about something.

  “I know what you mean,” Dearlea said. “I guess I worry, too. What is it about him that…that—”

  “That makes us want to protect him?” Mhairie asked.

  “Yes, I guess that’s it. For all his extraordinary strength, he seems…well, not weak, but vulnerable.”

  “I know. And when he goes off like this, I just think he could get in trouble somehow.” She paused a moment. “He goes far, too.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I tried to follow him once. But I saw how far he was going, and I knew I couldn’t make it back in time to help you and mum with the pups by daybreak.”

  “But he makes it!”

  “Yes. He’s fast. I’ve seen him come back, and he’s pretty tired when he does. But tonight I thought I saw the shadow of a wolf off in the trees when he left.”

  “Someone we know?”

  “I couldn’t tell. It was only a shadow. That’s what really got me worried. If one wolf saw him and knows something and with all these rumors flying around…It’s kind of scary. Some wolves are just waiting for him to fail.”

  “Or setting him up to fail,” Dearlea said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  TESTIMONY

  FAOLAN STARED DOWN AT THE TINY rib bone, and then at the fragment of jaw he had found. He crouched down, blinked several times, then tipped his head one way and another. He looked for the landscape of this bone, but it seemed to have been obliterated by the frenzy of teeth marks. He knew that every bone told a story, even the bone of such a young pup. But there seemed to be only one story here—that of violence, of murder. Parts of the bone had been crushed and the marrow had leaked out, leaving the rib as hollow as an owl’s. He looked at one of the pulverized edges and worked backward with his eyes toward the solid midsection of bone. Beneath the blizzard of marks, he saw something that froze his marrow. It was the first word of the uncompleted story—a nick. Not any nick, but the nick! The mark made by that broken tooth he had seen when Heep opened his mouth wide just before the kill rush began. Once again, the splinterish sounds crackled in Faolan’s brain.