Spirit Wolf (4 page)

THE SARK HAD BUT ONE THOUGHT
in her mind — to get back to her cave in the Slough. That was all she cared about. Her flank was ripped, a bad wound, and it would turn rancid, give her blood poisoning, and undoubtedly kill her, but she had to get back to the Slough and her encampment before then. She wanted to die on her own terms, in her cave within sight of her kiln and all the memory jugs she had made over the course of her very long life. If she could not die with those pots, with the scents they contained that she had collected over a lifetime … she dared not finish the thought.

She still wasn't sure what had happened. One minute she had been standing beneath a blue spruce tree in the Shadow Forest with Gwynneth, and the next there was a rumble, and she felt herself heaved a great distance by the
convulsions of the earth. The gash in her flank was bleeding heavily, but she had packed it with snow and some precious rabbit-ear moss. This had stopped the flow of blood and she had no broken bones. So the Sark, an ever-practical sort, kept repeating practical words and phrases that ordered her body to continue, to endure.
My legs still work, my sniffer is keen. Praise Lupus, I am still a wolf. Nobody lives forever, but I can and I will make it to the Slough!
Over and over, she repeated these words and urged her broken body on.

The Sark knew that some wolves would say the earthquake was Lupus's revenge on the faithless. But the Sark did not believe such nonsense. She wasn't even sure she believed in a Cave of Souls, Skaarsgard, or the Great Star Wolf Lupus himself. She was too practical to ever subscribe to the elaborate codes of tradition and laws that guided every aspect of clan wolf life. The only thing truly sacred to the Sark was memory, which she considered the very marrow of a decent life. And the key to her memories was scent.

The Sark's sense of smell was legendary in the Beyond, and she was using it now to guide her through the ruined landscape and back toward her home.

The scents had been disturbed because of the sulfurous odors wafting across the Beyond from the eruptions
at the Ring. It seemed, the Sark reflected, as if the earth had a bad tummy ache. What was the wonderful expression the owls had for that? She tried to remember for a moment
Ah, yes — the “yarpie barpies.”
Sometimes the owls really did strike the right note with language. “Tummy ache” was such a weak, pusillanimous phrase. But it was as if the earth needed a gigantic dose of her special mixture of henbane and mint, which she often gave to wolves with the scours.

Time stopped having much meaning for the Sark. Although the sun tracked against the sky, there was a veil of ash in the air that made it seem as if she were moving through a perpetual twilight. She didn't feel hunger or pain, but she made herself eat the leg of a dead marmot she had come upon. She knew she had to keep up her strength if she wanted to make it back to the Slough alive.

What she needed even more than food was rabbit-ear moss. The wound in her flank had opened up again and she could not sustain too much blood loss. But she soon came upon a stand of birch trees that had been upended and it gave her an idea. Well-chewed birch bark was something she kept a good supply of in her cave for the wolves who sought her out after sustaining an injury from an elk or moose in a
byrrgis
.

And so the Sark paused to chew the birch bark into a pulpy mass, which she then stuffed into the angry hole in her side. As she chewed, she wondered about Faolan. She'd taken a liking to him ever since she had first encountered him as a young pup. Because of the odd tracks left by his splayed paw, the clans had thought he had the foaming-mouth disease and had tried to track him down and kill him.
What a wolf! By my stars
, she thought,
I hope he's survived. A wolf like him only comes along once in a thousand years.
The thought set the Sark's
cag mag
eye to spinning.
Once in a thousand years
, the words rang in her head like distant chimes. A long time ago, the Sark had whispered into a memory jug a strange question.
Could Faolan be a
gyre
soul?

She remembered the exact pot she had pressed her muzzle against. It had a green glaze made from the silt near the south bend of the big river and its shape was so fetching and slender. A keening coursed through her.
I must get back to my pots!

Faolan and his sisters had made shore in the early morning and spent the day picking their way across the fractured landscape on shaking legs. The thought of
Edme and the Ring drove Faolan on, but as night set, his sisters protested. The three wolves were exhausted and needed rest. Still, sleep could not come easily on broken ground that still quivered now and then with aftershocks.

The Great Bear constellation seemed to sway overhead, drawing Faolan back to those summer nights he spent under the stars with Thunderheart. Thunderheart had first pointed out the Great Bear constellation to Faolan when he was just a pup. Odd he had not thought about that in years.
What was it she said?
Suspended halfway between sleep and dream, he struggled to recall the conversation. She had been telling him something about how to follow the last claw on the Great Bear's paw to find the star that never moves.
The Outermost is in between that claw and the star the owls call NeverMoves. I once had a den there. Someday …

Someday what?
Faolan had asked. Thunderheart looked troubled and didn't answer.

Someday we'll go back?
he'd persisted.

Perhaps. But I am not sure if it is good for your kind.

My kind?

My kind, my kind …
The words rumbled through his head, his bloodstream, his marrow, and then through a
heart as huge and sonorous as that of his grizzly bear Milk Giver.

His pelt was no longer silver, but a thick rough brown — the pelt of a bear. He saw himself clearly now, not as a little wolf pup but as a huge grizzly swimming in a golden river in the time of the Salmon Moon.

He heard the alarm roar of a female grizzly. Her cubs were being threatened. He dropped the fish clamped in his jaws and clambered onto the banks to see the standoff between the mother grizzly and a moose. He roared, his whole body trembling with the great noise. But the moose stood there unmoving, then suddenly lowered his head. The full rack of immense antlers rushed toward him. If he reared, he would give the moose a larger target, so he crouched, rolled, and shot out his immense forepaw just as the animal passed by. The moose's front leg popped from the shoulder socket, and the moose let out a terrible bellow. His leg flopped on the ground as if it belonged to another animal entirely.

Eo, for that was Faolan's bear name, came up to the moose and tore the limb from its shoulder with one swift stroke. He lashed out with his paw and slashed open the moose's chest, tearing out its heart. The animal felt no more pain.

There is something else I must do,
Eo thought. He had a vague recollection of some other rite, a ceremony, but it was too late for
lochinvyrr,
the gratitude of the predator toward its prey. And why did he even think of
lochinvyrr? Lochinvyrr
was a wolf ritual, not one for bears.
“I am a bear,”
he said.
“A bear.”

The wisps of Eo's memories rose up in Faolan, enveloping him like wraiths from another lifetime. They were real and not imagined, he had lived the life of a bear.

I was a bear! I chose to be a bear! That was part of my secret, I chose to be a bear.
He was not Thunderheart. He was not Faolan.
It was Eo who killed the moose. I am Eo! I was Eo!

“Faolan, wake up! It's time to get moving again. Wake up.” Mhairie nudged him gently.

He blinked, then looked at his sisters and wondered if they knew what he had dreamed. What he had been. Did they see the wolf, or the bear that lived within him?

ALL GWYNNETH'S OLD LANDMARKS
were gone, erased. The night of the earthquake, she had used the stars to navigate. But the stars were soon enough swallowed by the daylight, and it was a daylight like none Gwynneth had ever seen, for the air was filled with ash and bits of dust. It was as if the most enormous grizzly bear imaginable had been seized with the foaming-mouth disease and had run amok across the world.

She flew low over the land, swooping into the huge gashes that plunged to enormous depths. “Sark! Sark!” she called. “Where are you?” But she heard nothing and she was so disoriented she knew she might be flying in circles.

Her first task was to orient herself in this new landscape, for she would have no guides or signposts until the stars came out again. Unlike a wolf, she had no sense of
smell that might give her clues. She knew that the sun rose in the east and set in the west, but the scrim of ash was so thick it was hard to determine where the light was coming from.

She settled for flying in ever-widening circles around the uprooted spruce tree. It helped her get her bearings slightly and she felt fairly sure she knew the direction of the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes. But as she tipped her head toward what she thought was north, she couldn't see the crowns of the volcanoes. When the quake had happened, the sky had ignited with volcanic flames and flashes. There were sparks and plumes of smoke still in the air in that direction, but she couldn't make out one of the distinctive profiles of the volcanoes.

Aftershocks and tremors were still trembling across the land, and she could hear the rumbles and belchings of the earth. But her ear slits caught another sound, a tiny one that seeped through the earth's growlings. Gwynneth tipped her head and angled her ear slits to catch these faint noises. It was as if she were sifting through the din of the catastrophe to capture a sliver of feeble mewlings.
This cannot be!
she thought.
That could not happen at a time like this!
But Glaux, if it didn't sound like a newborn wolf pup!

The masked owl realized that she had unwittingly come close to her own forge. Indeed the sound was coming from her forge. It was hard to recognize at first because the place had been flattened. The den she had excavated for her living space and tools was partially blocked by fallen trees that had been uprooted just like the blue spruce in the Shadow Forest. But still, the mewling was coming from inside.

Gwynneth had been away from her home for some time before the earthquake. There had been so few caribou herds passing through to provide caribou scat for her forge that she had temporarily taken up residence in her auntie's old place in Silverveil. She supposed she should not begrudge another creature availing itself of the comforts of her home, but she sensed the creature had been there for some time.

Gwynneth fluffed her feathers. She was uncertain how she should announce her presence. Several of her tools were scattered about — her coal bucket, her tongs, and one of her two favorite hammers. She wondered where the other was.

There was a sudden intake of breath from the inside. The mewling continued, but whoever gasped was aware of Gwynneth's presence and didn't dare come out of the den. Gwynneth cocked her head to one side, then the
other. She picked up two heartbeats, one from a very tiny heart, the other beat stronger and accelerated. Tree branches had been purposefully dragged across the burrow to camouflage the entrance.

“Hrrh hrrr,” Gwynneth made a polite clearing sound in her throat. “Pardon me for intruding — although this happens to be my home. Would you like to come out or should I come in?”

“I can't come out right now. I hope you'll understand, Gwynneth.”

The Masked Owl swiveled her head almost entirely around and then flipped it upside down and backward, as only owls can do because of the extra bones in their necks. She recognized the voice, but the tone was entirely different!

“Banja!”

“I know, I know!” Banja looked up as the Masked Owl entered the den and stood dumbfounded before a scene that struck her as not simply odd, but almost miraculous. To think that in a land plagued for over a year by famine and then cursed with an earthquake, this could have happened! The nastiest she-wolf at the Watch had at her teat the most darling little she-pup. Banja, of all wolves,
was a mother! Gwynneth blinked in dismay. Watch wolves were not allowed to find mates for fear their affliction would be carried on in their offspring.

Like Edme, Banja had but one eye. There the resemblance ended; the red wolf was as nasty as Edme was kind. Spiteful, jealous, always eager to cast blame or fight — and now here she was, cuddling a newborn pup whose pelt was as gold as autumn grass.

“Whhh-wwhhh-what's all this?” Gwynneth's beak trembled.

“This is Maud — Maudie, I call her. And I am her mum.” The way Banja said these words was enough to make Gwynneth's gizzard melt.

“May I come closer?” Gwynneth asked.

“Yes, of course. Come take a peek.”

Gwynneth hopped closer and peered down at the little creature. “She's lovely, Banja. Just lovely.”

“And look, Gwynneth. She has two eyes! They're still sealed now. But I peeked beneath both lids and they're both there! She's not like me at all!” Banja's head drooped. “The Fengo will forgive me. I know I have broken the most serious of all the codes that govern the Ring. But even if he discharges me, that's okay. I really just want to be a mum.”

“I wouldn't worry.”

“What do you mean?”

“How long have you been here?”

“A while now. I came before the earthquake. I know this sounds … terrible … but I had to eat. I had to eat so Maudie could be born. I did some hoarding, but for a good cause. For Maudie. I know it's bad! But I'm going to tell the Fengo everything.”

“I don't think the Fengo will say anything,” Gwynneth said gently. “I can't see the Ring. I think it's gone.”

Banja blinked. Her mouth dropped open. She tilted her head to one side, as if she were trying to comprehend the words that had just been spoken.

“Gone?” Her mouth wobbled as if it were having trouble shaping the word. “Gone?”

“And there's more.”

“Wh-wh-what?” Banja was too shocked to reply coherently.

“Maudie is like you.”

Banja's hackles bristled. “How dare you?” Her voice scraped the air.

“You, my dear Banja, have two eyes now, just like Maudie.”

“What?” Banja blinked rapidly.

“The prophecy, Banja! The ember has been released and the Ring has been destroyed. It is the time of the mending, the Great Mending.”

Banja was stunned. She blinked her good eye and then slowly, as if it couldn't possibly be true, blinked the eye that had always been missing. She immediately snapped both eyes shut and sat frozen for more than a minute.

“Where do we go from here?” Banja asked when she was ready.

“That's a good question. It's a different world out there now, Banja. A new world.”

“And I am a new wolf.” She nuzzled her golden pup.

Out of all this chaos, some good has come
, Gwynneth thought, and sent a prayer out to her missing friends.