Lone Wolf

by Kathryn Lasky

As if a flame had leaped from the fire pit, a streak of yellow smeared across the dark shadows of the gadderheal.

  “He’s gone!” someone cried out.

  “After him. Form a byrrgis!”

  Oh, no, Faolan thought. Let him go. Let us be done with him. For Faolan did not want to hunt Heep, nor did he want to be part of the tearing. He wanted to be rid of Heep, but he wanted no part in his death.

  Indeed, hours later, Faolan was relieved when the byrrgis returned that evening to report that they had completely lost the trail of the gnaw wolf Heep. It was, one of them said, as if the wolf had vanished.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  A WOLF OF THE BONE

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, FINBAR, THE five hundred and second Fengo of the Watch of the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes, stood on a drumlyn of bones carved during the gaddergnaw.

  “I stand before you today,” he intoned in a low, gravelly voice, “to announce the new members of the Watch of the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes.”

  “Members? More than one?” the wolves whispered in surprise.

  “Yes, I can see your surprise, for it happens only once in perhaps a decade that we find two gnaw wolves at once who demonstrate the outstanding abilities required to join our small fellowship. We are a small order of wolves and a select one, but we are joined in a trust that goes back to the beginning of our time. It was an owl who led our ancestors to the Beyond, and in gratitude we pledged to guard the Ember of Hoole that lies deep within the crater of a sacred volcano. We vowed to protect that ember from any foe of the Guardians of Ga’Hoole. This trust between wolves and owls is ancient and honorable.

  “Both the wolves selected were not the top point winners in the byrrgis, but their story bones exhibited a skill and depth of feeling that we have rarely seen. It is, therefore, an honor to introduce the two new members of the Watch.

  “Come forth, Edme, gnaw wolf of the West Pack of the MacHeath clan.”

  Edme staggered a bit with disbelief. Her single eye spilled a tear as Finbar began to speak.

  “Edme, you distinguished yourself on the byrrgis for your quick thinking and unerring aim in delivering the fatal bite. We see that you are not merely a quick thinker, but that your mind runs deep. Your bone made us feel the missing eye of yours that guides you like a spirit from the Cave of Souls. It was with tears in our own eyes that we read your bone.”

  Edme came forward, her tail held high and wagging as the Fengo placed a necklace around her neck with one small bone on it, the rest to be carved by Edme when she reached the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes.

  “And now,” the Fengo continued, “to announce the second member.” Tears had begun to stream down Finbar’s face. “On behalf of the taigas of the Watch, I call forth Faolan, member of the Pack of the Eastern Scree of the MacDuncan clan.”

  A great roar went up. Above all were the barks and howls of Dearlea and Mhairie.

  “He did it! He did it!” They leaped high into the air, their tails wagging madly.

  Such was the clamor, the Fengo had to bark a hush command. “Faolan, you came to the clan mistaken for a wolf with the foaming-mouth disease. You jumped a wall of fire. From the very first, there was talk of your extraordinary carving. There were baseless rumors, I am ashamed to tell you, that only a creature from the Dim World could have carved such bones.”

  The Fengo cut his eyes toward the MacDuff clan, long suspected to be the source of the rumors. “But we of the Watch know that such carving is a gift from the Great Star Wolf himself. Your story bone tells not simply a story of devotion but one of goodwill, conciliation, and understanding among the species with whom we share the Beyond. You have endured a level of abuse no other gnaw wolf has. You were impetuous and did not use good sense, but your dignity during these games, and your carving, make the members of the Watch feel it would be an honor to teach you and to serve with you at the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes.”

  Faolan walked forward and bowed his head so that the Fengo could place the necklace around his neck. There was a spark, and the spiraling marks on his paw swirled in front of him. This has happened to me before. There was something familiar, hauntingly familiar, about the weight and the feel of the bone around his neck.

  Edme and Faolan stood still for several seconds, staring at each other in disbelief. The other gnaw wolves gathered around them and seemed genuinely happy with their success.

  “Come on,” said the Whistler to Faolan and Edme, who were still too stunned to bark or yip or utter a single word, “show some enthusiasm here!”

  “But I can’t believe it,” Edme gasped. “I’m not sure I deserve it.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Creakle said, limping up. “With your one eye, you see more than any of us, and not only that, your story bone stirs our marrow more deeply than you can imagine.” Creakle paused and turned to Faolan. “And did not every one of us long for a second Milk Giver like yours, Faolan, when you read your story bone? How we would have loved to meet Thunderheart. You only read part of the story on your bone, but tonight I believe you are both to read them in full to all of us?”

  “Yes, that is the plan,” said the Fengo. “And what a night to read it is! For tonight is the first night the Great Wolf is fully visible. The Star Wolf will hear your stories.”

  And so it was as the first stars in the paws of the Great Wolf constellation clawed over the dusky purple horizon that Edme concluded her story, and Faolan began to read the last gwalyds of his.

  He began in a quavering voice, “This is the story of my second Milk Giver, a grizzly bear. The word ‘fao’ in both the language of the bears and wolves means ‘river’ as well as ‘wolf.’ The word ‘lan’ in the language of bears means ‘gift.’ She said I was her gift from the river.

  “I had no name for her in the beginning, but my very first memories were of being cradled in her arms and hearing the enormous thumpings of her huge and majestic heart. This sound wove through my milk dreams while I slept, and so the grizzly became in my mind not simply the Milk Giver but Thunderheart.”

  There were three more gwalyds, one for each season Faolan had spent with Thunderheart. When he finished, a hush enveloped the wolves, and oily tears ran from their eyes. Then, one by one, all of the wolves of all the packs of all the clans came up to Faolan.

  Liam MacDuncan was first.

  “May I lick the bone?” the chieftain asked.

  “And I, too,” Cathmor whispered. “I fear, young one, I have not treated you well. I will do better in the future.”

  “No, ma’am,” Faolan replied. “You need only treat me as a member of the MacDuncan clan.”

  Cathmor sighed softly. “But you are a member now of the Watch of the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes.”

  “But I represent the MacDuncan clan. I was born a MacDuncan and shall always be a MacDuncan.”

  “My mate believed in you,” Cathmor said, her voice breaking.

  And I still believe in him, Faolan was tempted to reply, for it was as if the mist of Duncan MacDuncan surrounded him as he accepted these avowals of faith. The bone of the marmot that Faolan had carved glistened now from the tributes of the clan wolves’ tongues.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  A CHURNING GIZZARD

  AS GWYNNETH FLEW FAR OVERHEAD, following the footfalls of the animals below, something in her gizzard did not feel right. Despite the thick cloud cover, she was sure it was wolves, from the sound and the rhythm of the footfalls. And she was sure there were more than two wolves. The Sark would laugh at her and tell her she was more superstitious than a wolf. But she did not like what she heard nor what she saw when she broke through the cloud cover.

  Her gizzard clenched with a deeper twinge. It was three wolves, all right! Heep with two ragged wolves from the Outermost.

  Outclanners! Why were they tramping down this trail? There was no game in this part of the Beyond at this time of the year. It seemed as if…No! Not possible! But Gwynneth carved a sharp turn in the sky. She must take no chances, for it seemed as if these
wolves, with Heep in the lead, were on a direct path to the site where Faolan had buried the paw of his beloved Thunderheart! Heep had been there when Faolan said where he kept the bones, and now he was about to exact the ultimate revenge! Gwynneth’s gizzard was churning. The wind was with her, and she flew like a hag out of hagsmire back to the gaddergnaw site. She had to alert Faolan.

  Gwynneth arrived just as the wolves were paying homage to Faolan and his bone story. Gwynneth knew she could not interrupt this ritual and so she watched impatiently from the branches of a spruce tree.

  As soon as the wolves had finished licking the bone, Gwynneth flew down to Faolan and took him aside.

  “Are you sure that’s where they are heading?” Faolan asked.

  “I can’t be sure. But do you want to take a chance?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “We must waste no time,” said Gwynneth. “You set off. I’ll go tell the chieftains. They will organize a byrrgis, but that takes a while, and I know how fast you run. You’ll get there sooner.”

  Faolan was off and Gwynneth soon followed, but the byrrgis was behind them both. Gwynneth could cover the distance much more quickly than any wolf, but as she looked down at Faolan, she was amazed to see his strong legs devouring the ground beneath him. He cut through the headwinds like a burning coal through dry leaves. The track must be hot beneath his paws, she thought. Great Glaux, had a wolf ever run this fast?

  The rising moon wobbled like an immense silver bubble on the horizon, spraying a lake of dazzling light across the Beyond. Gwynneth arrived first to find Heep in a shaft of moonlight, prowling with his nose close to the ground while two ragged outclanners—one russet and one brindled with dark gray patches mixed with brown—sniffed around behind him. On the other side of the hills were the salt lagoons, but it was on this northern side that Faolan had buried the paw bones of Thunderheart.

  Gwynneth went into a spiral dive at Heep with her talons outstretched. She did not intend to kill him. She knew she was too small for that, and the other two wolves would most likely attack, but she could frighten Heep or cause a ruckus, a distraction. Heep reared up, flailing his front legs. The other two wolves rushed in.

  “Stand off! Stand off!” Gwynneth screeched. “By the spirit of Lupus, get out!”

  All three wolves were dismayed. They had never heard an owl use wolf oaths.

  “What are you doing here?” Heep demanded.

  Gwynneth had alighted on a high rock. “No. What are you doing here? No civilized wolf comes down to this country this time of year. There is no game.” She gave a long look at the two outclanners, who were growling low. Their stench was horrendous, for these wolves were known to eat one another during the hunger moons, and it gave them a powerful stink that even an owl could smell.

  The wolves all bared their teeth, shoved their ears forward, and began to lower into attack posture. A signal was given and all three leaped toward the rock where Gwynneth perched, but the owl shot up into the air. How she wished she had brought her coal bucket. Drop one bonk coal on any one of these wolves, and their pelts would go up in flames like a sap tree in the dry season!

  Then Gwynneth spotted the long shadow of Faolan stretching across the slope. At last! The odds were getting more even. She rose higher in the air. How ingenious, she thought. He has come from behind. Within seconds, however, Heep spotted Faolan and spoke in an almost strangled voice.

  “Ah, so you come for the endgame, Faolan?”

  He’s mad, thought Gwynneth. The yellow wolf has gone mad.

  “It’s not my endgame. It’s yours.”

  “Not if I get the bones of your precious Thunderheart.”

  As she hovered above, it almost felt to Gwynneth that she had flown out of her own body and was observing a strange dance of tangled shadows in the moonlight. The four wolves moved about below her, growling and snapping their jaws.

  “Give them up!” Heep snarled. “Give up the bones of the grizzly.”

  “Never,” Faolan growled.

  “Frightened? Frightened to walk the earth without your second Milk Giver?” Heep said.

  “These are her bones; she is dead.”

  “And you are not, but you are nothing without them, am I right?” Heep snarled.

  “No, you’re wrong,” said another voice that startled them all. The Sark sauntered over the top of the hill and stood beside Faolan. The two outclanners crouched into an attack stance and pulled their lips back in a grimace. But Faolan took a step forward, and then another and another, his tail held high, his gaze steady.

  Like a cluster of silver stars in the moonlight, like a constellation coming down to earth, Faolan kept walking slowly but deliberately toward Heep and the two outclanner wolves. Behind him a mist loomed up. Heep and the two flanking outclanners began to tremble uncontrollably. They felt as if their marrow was leaking from their bones. For they saw not just Faolan, new member of the Watch, but a gathering of lochin, beginning with the chieftain Duncan MacDuncan and spiraling back in time to the very first Fengo, who led the wolves into the Beyond.

  “Leave the bones of my Milk Giver, Thunderheart. Leave them now and go to the Outermost. I will not have your blood on my paws.”

  And Heep and the two outclanners sprang into a dead run toward the country known as the Outermost.

  By the time the byrrgis arrived, it was too late. “They’re gone, and Heep with them,” the Sark said.

  “Gone?” said Liam MacDuncan. “Gone where?”

  “To the Outermost,” Faolan replied. “Don’t follow them. They won’t be back.”

  Liam MacDuncan cocked his head one way and then another and finally looked up to see the Great Wolf overhead. “It’s odd, but I feel the mist of my father here.”

  “Perhaps,” Faolan said softly. “Perhaps.”

  A PRAYER

  GWYNNETH RETURNED TO HER FORGE. Faolan returned to the Carreg Gaer to begin the journey to the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes, where he would be inducted into the Watch. The Sark returned to her cave.

  She fetched a newly fired memory jug and began to whisper into it softly, so softly that the words were barely audible.

  “I am a rational being. I do not believe in magic, nor do I believe in mist, or what the foolish wolves call lochins and the owls call scrooms. But tonight under the fullness of the Moon of the Singing Grass, I felt the ghosts of wolves past. I believe they were summoned by the wolf we know as Faolan. I believe that he does not know his power or the cause of the odd spiraling marks on the bottom of his splayed paw. Could he be what the skreeleens of old called a gyre soul?”

  The Sark drew her muzzle from the memory jug and stuffed a wad of Slough clay in its opening to plug it tightly. She did not want a single word slipping away. She poked at the fire in her cave hearth, then circling tightly three times, dropped onto her fox pelt for the night. It had been a long day. She was dead tired, and as she heard the sweet lament of the singing grass rise from the Slough, her last thought was not of Faolan but of the she-wolf Morag. How proud she would have been of this son she never really knew and now seemed unable to forget. I hope she is well and I hope when her time comes, her end will be peaceful.

  And then, for perhaps the first time in her life, the Sark of the Slough sent up a small prayer. “May the Great Star Wolf be shining when she goes. May her journey to the Cave of Souls be short and straight. And may Skaarsgard help her climb the star ladder swiftly.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I HAVE OFTEN TAKEN INSPIRATION in writing my books from history and from literature. I want to acknowledge my deep debt to some of these sources now. The gnaw wolf Heep’s literary ancestor was none other than the fictional Uriah Heep, created by Charles Dickens in his masterpiece David Copperfield. Known for his insufferable humility and cloying obsequiousness, Uriah Heep truly is one of the most obnoxious characters in fiction.

  Duncan MacDuncan’s speech in Chapter Five, in which he explains why the wolves of the Beyond need laws, was modeled after
Sir Thomas More’s speech in the Robert Bolt play A Man for All Seasons, in which More says, “This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast—man’s laws, not God’s—and if you cut them down—and you’re just the man to do it—d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?” (act one, scene seven)

  I owe a huge debt to the musician Bob Dylan. The rhythms, rhyme schemes, and phrasings of many of his songs and ballads permeate the poems in the narrative. Most particularly at the end of Chapter Nine, the song that Faolan howls is derived from Dylan’s classic “The Times They are A-Changin’,” as well as Gwynneth’s mournful prayer at the end of Chapter Twelve.

  I have always thought that writing is not a solitary performance, but a collaborative one between an author and the past—what she has read, listened to, and absorbed. The shoulders of giants are not just reserved for scientists as Newton suggested, but writers and artists perch there as well. If I have overlooked in my acknowledgments any giants, I apologize.

  K.L.

  Cambridge, MA

  June 2010

  About the Author

  KATHRYN LASKY is the author of the bestselling Guardians of Ga’Hoole series, which has sold more than four million copies and has been made into a major motion picture, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole. Her books have received a Newbery Honor, a Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, and a Washington Post–Children’s Book Guild Award. She lives with her husband in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2010 by Kathryn Lasky

  Interior illustrations by Richard Cowdrey