It hadn’t even occurred to Katria to leave false scents; her head had been too filled with leaving. “I should have thought of that,” Katria said. “I have been careful only to urinate in streams, though.”
“That’s good.” Airmead paused. “I think we can make it, Katria. I think we have a chance. The chieftains and the lords are all caught up in this notion of capturing a grizzly cub, setting off a war between the wolves of the Watch and the bears.” She sighed. “In my entire barren life as an Obea, I have never had to take a malcadh to a tummfraw. But I have to admit that the opposite thought did cross my mind.” She stopped and cast her eyes down toward the ground. Snow had begun to fall, even though it was the first quarter of the Moon of the Flies.
“What’s that?” Katria asked.
“I thought I might rescue that cub from Old Cags and perhaps stop a war.”
“A single wolf is not going to stop a war,” Katria said as she dug her claws deeper into the ground where the snow was beginning to stick. “Dunbar MacHeath will find another way. We must get to the MacNamaras and tell them what he’s plotting. We don’t have a lot of time. It is at least a four-day journey to MacNamara territory.”
“Yes, but it will take Dunbar at least two days to get to where the cub dwells with his mother and then back to the Pit. And remember, the prevailing wind will be against them for part of the journey on their way to snatch the cub, and it will be with us for all of ours.”
“True, but we have to move fast. Are you up to doing most of this journey at press-paw?”
“I’ll try. I’m not an outflanker like you, Katria. I’ve never had to run a byrrgis and press in on the prey for leagues on end. And now this weather …” She hesitated. “If it snows again, it’s going to be hard. But I’ll try.”
Airmead was right. It was going to be hard. Nearly impossible if there was another blizzard. Katria looked down. The snow was piled almost as high as the scar where her dewclaw had been. Why are snowflakes dropping instead of flies during this moon? Everything seemed turned around. Was there something worse than war coming?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE SHE-WINDS
“PYGMY!” FAOLAN SHOUTED.
“Burrowing!” Edme said.
“Boreal!” they both blurted at once.
“Great Gray!” Faolan leaped a bit as the elderly taiga Malachy held up the jump bone with the incised profile of an owl’s head.
“Long-eared!”
“No, Faolan,” Malachy replied.
“Great Horned!” Edme said.
“Well, it had to be the other if not a Long-eared,” Faolan said. “That was an easy guess.”
“True.” Edme nodded good-naturedly.
“It wasn’t that easy,” Malachy chided. “You forget Screech Owls have tufts as well. But now for the test,” Malachy, a brindled wolf with crooked hips, said slyly. “Edme, can you tell us the distinguishing characteristics between the so-called ears of the three species that sport them?”
“Uh … uh, I forget.”
Faolan cocked his head. “I think,” he began slowly, “that the Long-eared Owls’ feather tufts stick up more and are closer together.”
“Very good, Faolan. Yes, exactly, and the Great Horned Owls’ tufts are wider apart and stick out at an angle. And the Screech’s tufts are, well, somewhere in between.” He paused and squinted at the two young wolves, a merry glint in his green eyes that reminded Faolan of the green sparkles on the river on a clear summer day. “Now, here’s a tricky question for you.”
“What’s that?” said Edme, eagerly hoping to redeem herself with a truly challenging question.
“It has nothing to do with owls’ heads.”
“Uh-oh!” Edme and Faolan both said at once.
“Have a little faith in yourselves, young’uns. Which owl has featherless legs?”
“Featherless legs!” Edme said.
“Not a single feather!” Malachy snapped his jaws shut for emphasis. “Bare as a bear cub’s butt.”
Faolan and Edme inhaled sharply. “Uh,” Edme said, her voice taut. “Are you sure bear cubs’ butts are bare?”
“Oh, yes, indeed. When they’re first born. They hardly have a patch of fur on them. By the time they come out of the den, they’re little fur balls. The cutest things you’ve ever seen. But never go near them; never touch them.” Faolan and Edme grew very quiet, alarmingly quiet.
“Come on now, young’uns, the question isn’t that hard. Which owl has no feathers on its legs?”
Faolan broke the silence. “Can you give us a hint?”
“Well, if you insist. I know you haven’t seen that many owls because the volcanoes aren’t very active yet, but which one did I tell you is the worst flyer?”
“The Burrowing Owl because … because …” Edme started to speak but was distracted by the thoughts of bear cubs. Why did I play with that cub?
“Because they’re good at walking,” Faolan said in a tentative voice.
“Exactly!” Malachy boomed. “Who needs feathers for walking or running?” He paused. “Anything wrong, young’uns?” He peered at them curiously. Their enthusiasm, their wonderful keenness, had suddenly vanished. Just then, a strange whining seeped into the den where Malachy tutored new Watch wolves in the habits and customs of owls. He tipped his head. Could it be? It was strange it would come so early, but if that wasn’t the peevish complaint of the She-Winds, well, he didn’t have crooked hips.
“Hear that, young’uns?” he said softly but with great excitement.
At just that moment, a wolf came skidding down the chute into the den. “Hear that, Malachy?” It was Padraigh, wind scout for the Watch.
“Is it what I think it is?”
“It is, indeed. I’ve been as far south as the border of the Shadow Forest. It’s the She-Winds. They’re a-coming!”
“But it’s not the season!” Malachy swayed a bit on his crooked hips, as if the very idea had unhinged him.
“She-Winds don’t seem to mind none. They’re back, and you know the owls can’t be far behind them.” He looked directly at Faolan and Edme. “Now your real larnin’ begins, young’uns. No more jump bones. Real live owls on the wing!”
The She-Winds were unique to the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes. They seemed to arrive out of nowhere and go nowhere, but when they blew, they stirred the hot fluids in the deepest parts of the craters of all five volcanoes, and every Rogue smith and collier flocked to the Ring.
In the excitement of the moment, Faolan and Edme forgot their anxieties and followed Malachy and Padraigh out of the den. Twist and Winks came rushing up to them. “Your shifts are about to start. Get to your cairns.”
The gusts were so strong that Faolan and Edme had trouble even standing straight at first. The ground beneath their paws shook as the first quaking belches of the volcanoes rumbled up from deep inside the earth. Faolan couldn’t imagine how he was supposed to stay upright on his cairn, let alone perform the repertoire of scanning jumps they’d learned.
“Hang on to your fur, young’uns.” Padraigh laughed raucously as he trotted away, angling himself to the winds that were lashing about them.
“Don’t worry, we’ll stay with you through your shifts,” Twist said. “But regard Paddy — Padraigh — see how he is angling himself across the gusts.” But Paddy always walked oddly. Of all the wolves of the Watch, his deformities were possibly the most curious. On one side, he was missing an ear, an eye, and a paw. It was as if he had been born lopsided, and yet despite his odd gait, he was effectively cutting through the maze of gusting winds that seemed to blow willy-nilly across the Ring, first from one direction and then another.
“The thing is, Faolan,” Twist said as they reached the top of Stormfast’s cairn, “I know these winds seem very confusing. But there’s a peculiar order to them, which you’ll see.”
Faolan didn’t see any order in the least. The air swirled not only with embers but with the grit scooped up from broken lava flows.
&nb
sp; “Do you notice anything?” Twist asked eagerly.
“Yes, I notice that I’m having trouble standing upright.”
“Tuck in your dewclaw and dig in with your others. Look. There are four nice femurs on the cairn, placed just so. Wrap your claws around them. We didn’t place them that way just for the fun of it. Good gripping. Especially the bear femur.”
“Bear?”
“Yes, there’s a grizzly femur. Can’t beat it for gripping.”
Faolan’s splayed paw was drawn to it by an invisible force. He knew that the bones in the cairns sometimes shifted, but why had he never seen this one before?
“Has this bone always been here?” Faolan cried out over the screech of the She-Winds.
“Oh, yes. It’s what we call a keybone. It locks the whole cairn together. It never shifts.”
“How come I never noticed it before?”
“Maybe you never really needed it before. But you’ll see that it puts a spring in your leaps. Draw a bead on that bone. Fix it in your mind and it will keep you steady and your jumps true. Just feel it and picture it in your mind’s eye.”
And how he did feel that bone! It was as if he were experiencing a completely new way of seeing, as if his mind’s eye were in his splayed paw. His first jump was not the best. He landed fine but didn’t do the double inverted twist that would allow him to scan the entire rim of the crater and the sky above for graymalkins.
“I’m sorry,” he said upon landing. “I didn’t do that very well.”
“It’s challenging in these gusts. You see those owls flying in?”
“Yes, sir.” Faolan had never seen so many owls before. They seemed to be pouring in from all directions.
“See how they are flying just off the wind? ‘Crabbing,’ they call it.”
“Crabbing?”
“Yes, like a crab walking sideways, except they are flying. The wind is pushing them one way, away from their destination. So they angle their flight toward the direction of the wind. They are not really flying sideways, but instead of flying directly toward the slopes, they have slightly turned into the direction of the oncoming wind to compensate for the wind drift. The amount that the owls turn is called the wind correction angle. Now think about doing that when you jump.”
“You mean I should jump into a gust.”
“Yes, smack into it. And don’t start your twists, flips, or pikes too soon or you’ll miss the thermal drafts, and that’s the great treat of leaping when the She-Winds blow.” Twist looked up suddenly. “Look, Faolan! Look at that Masked Owl up there. By my marrow, I think it’s your old friend Gwynneth — a lovely flyer if there ever was one.”
“How does she do it?” Faolan was amazed. His dear friend appeared to be gliding effortlessly in the buffeting winds above, never even waggling a wing.
“She’s riding the thermals, those billows of warm air. They lift the owls up high. A free ride, you might call it. And you can do it, too. We can’t get as high as owls do, to ‘owl point’ as the term goes, but there’s a place at the very top of a lifting draft that is known as the wolf’s peak. Jump into a thermal and let it take you. It’s the closest we wolves ever get to flying. Ready to try it?”
Faolan was so excited that his paws were almost dancing on the bones.
“All right. Now let’s not rush this,” Twist said. “When I say jump, you jump.”
Faolan sensed the lead edge of a very hot gust.
“JUMP!” Twist shouted.
Suddenly, Faolan was rocketing into the air. It was so fast he barely had a chance to breathe. Embers whizzed by him like shooting stars. He had entered the sky, a peculiar firmament in which the constellations were composed of red swirling stars.
Faolan wasn’t flying and yet he might have been. He had fur not feathers, legs not wings, and yet he felt a strangely familiar sensation — a stirring just where his shoulders joined his backbone. The billowing drafts of warm air caressed his underbelly and lifted him higher still. He wasn’t as high as the owls, but he was in their world and it felt good. So good that he almost forgot to do any of the moves he had learned. So he drew up his hind legs for a backward walkover.
“Faolan! Welcome to the sky!”
“Gwynneth!”
She waggled her wings and flew off.
“Very nice, very nice indeed!” Twist said when Faolan landed back on the top of the cairn. “But you nearly forgot your scanning maneuvers.”
“I know! I know!”
“Don’t worry. It’s a common thing for young Watch wolves when they first discover thermals. Look over there at Edme on Morgan. She’s getting a lot of bounce out of them.”
Yes, Faolan thought, and she is managing several scanning moves — a double twist linked to a backflip. Edme was not nearly as easily distracted as Faolan.
“What a jumper you are!” Gwynneth exclaimed as she alighted on the cairn. “A natural if I ever saw one.” Faolan felt a surge of happiness stream through him.
“Well, I forgot to do any real scanning moves. It was just so … so … wonderful.”
“You looked like you belonged up there with us.”
“Really!” Faolan tipped his head to one side and looked deeply into Gwynneth’s shiny dark eyes.
“Yes, really, Faolan. I never saw anything like it!”
After his shift was over, Faolan trotted happily back to the den. “Wasn’t it fantastic, Edme?” he said, sliding down the slope into the den. “I mean, those drafts lift you right up. I felt it was as close as I’d ever come to flying like an owl —” He broke off mid-speech. “Edme?”
Edme was curled into a ball in a far corner with her muzzle buried between her paws. Absolute silence as loud as any noise engulfed the den.
“Edme, what is it?”
Without looking at him and with her muzzle still buried, Edme mumbled something in a muffled voice that Faolan had to strain to hear.
“You’ve been what?”
“Dalach’d,” Edme said again.
“Dalach’d? No!”
“Yes. I can’t jump for three nights.”
“But why? What did you do?” Faolan asked.
“You know that arrangement of bones that they make so you can grip better?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t show the proper reverence for the keybone.”
“And so you got dalach’d? I mean, Twist never said anything about proper reverence. Did Winks tell you that?” Faolan asked, totally bewildered.
“It wasn’t Winks. It was Banja. Winks wasn’t feeling well.”
“Banja — that old she-bag of a wolf!”
“She hates me, Faolan. I don’t know why. I mean, she’s missing one eye. If anything, she should understand me better, like Winks does. I’m not allowed on the cairn for the next three nights. How will I ever learn to navigate the She-Winds?”
“It’s wrong. Completely wrong. Winks would never have done such a thing. I think we should protest,” Faolan said staunchly.
“No, no. And it’s my problem, not yours. I’m just going to try and forget about it.” Edme circled her caribou pelt before she settled down again to try to sleep.
Neither wolf could close their eyes. They were both thinking about Banja and her unrelenting criticism of Edme. It was a mystery. Although Banja’s constant harping didn’t qualify as abuse, it was damaging.
“Faolan, you asleep yet?”
“No.”
“Do you ever miss them?”
“Miss what?”
“The old days.”
Faolan was on his feet in no time. “Edme, have you gone cags? Miss being a gnaw wolf? Miss the MacHeaths and the delightful time you had in that lovely clan!”
“No, not that. But you know, when we were all at the gaddergnaw. I think that was the best time of my life. Except for Heep, I really liked those other gnaw wolves — Creakle, Tearlach, the Whistler.”
“I do miss the Whistler. He was —” Faolan paused. “He was something special, I think. I
loved his voice. It was almost as if that hole in his throat … I don’t know, drew in a special kind of air that made his howls so much more beautiful even though he kind of croaked when he talked.”
Imagine, Faolan thought. Banja has driven us to long for the awful old days when we were gnaw wolves. And then he remembered two other wolves — Mhairie and her sister, Dearlea. By this time, Mhairie was probably a lead outflanker for the MacDuncans. Both of these sisters had come to his defense when he was wrongly accused of murdering a malcadh on the ridge, and then both of them cried with relief when he was exonerated of the crime and selected for the Watch. He was caught between the poles of two emotions — the sadness that comes when missing old friends, and anger at Banja that he was looking back with such wistfulness to a time marked by scorn and abuse.
“One last thing, Faolan,” Edme said in a small voice.
“What?”
Edme hesitated. She had vowed that she wouldn’t tell Faolan this, but it felt like a stone too heavy to carry alone.
“What?” Faolan asked again.
Edme sighed. “You know what she said when I didn’t hit the keystone at the proper angle?”
“What?”
“She said, ‘You and your friend Faolan are moldwarpy curs.’”
“What? She called us moldwarps?” Moldwarp was one of the most disparaging terms a wolf could use.
“Yes. I don’t know what she has against you except that you’re my friend.”
“Cag maglosc,” Faolan muttered, and then launched into what sounded to Edme like a string of Old Wolf curse words.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A TWINGE IN THE MARROW
TINY WHITE FLOWERS NO BIGGER than a pup’s dewclaw bloomed out of the moss that clad the rocks of the Beyond. At night it seemed as if both the earth and the sky blossomed with stars. But the moss-flowers didn’t last. The wind blew in an unseasonable snowstorm, which snuffed the flowers out.
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