Spirit Wolf (7 page)

EDME FELT HER MARROW CURDLE
and little Myrr stopped in his tracks and began to shiver. “What is that screeching?”

The five wolves had decided to head across the Slough, determined to find the Sark although their hopes were dwindling with each dead animal they encountered. Faolan was desperate. Ever since he had stated with such certainty that they must go west to the Distant Blue, he had become deeply apprehensive. What if the blue land that he had once glimpsed had been some sort of delusion? When he had stood on that cairn on the Blood Watch, he had been exhausted, weak from hunger, weak from fighting off vicious outclanners. The Distant Blue could have been a figment of his imagination, a hallucination brought on by famine. Yet in his marrow, Faolan
felt there was a truth to that looming blue place and it beckoned strongly. The Sark would know for sure. Faolan would find his dear friend, and they could set off for the Distant Blue together. He would never leave her behind, not with the whole of the Beyond broken and dying.

The terrible screeching seared the air again. There was something almost hauntingly familiar about it —

Faolan was seized by sudden fear. “We have to travel fast.” He set a pace approaching the press-paw speed of a
byrrgis
. A sense of urgency coursed through him and the others could barely keep up. Poor little Myrr lagged so far behind that Edme turned around and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck the way a she-wolf carries her youngest pups.

This is so embarrassing!
Myrr thought as he swung from Edme's jaws.
What would my mum say?
The thought shocked him.

He had not thought of his mum or his da in a while, not since he had been brought to the Ring almost a moon before. He couldn't bear to think of how his parents had turned away that last time. It was as if his parents had stared right through him, and then just turned their backs and walked away. But he remembered them now. Before his parents had gone
cag mag
, his mum used to carry him this way all the time.

I shouldn't think about her
, he told himself.
It will only make me sad. Edme is kind, Faolan and his sisters are kind. Don't think about Mum ever, ever! Not even the good memories. We're going west now. Things will be better. We're going west!

Faolan had climbed up onto one of the few promontories in the Slough. Now he could see that the source of the terrible screaming was, just as he'd feared, an owl. Gwynneth was flying in circles over the Sark's encampment, her head tipped back as she shreed her grief to the sky.

“She is dying, dying! What can I do? I bring her food and she will not wake to eat. I would carry her in my talons to the ends of the earth, but she sleeps on.”

Now Faolan understood. The Sark was close to death! Faolan turned to the others and howled the terrible news, “The Sark! The Sark is dying.”

Gwynneth lighted down when she saw her friends approaching the encampment. “You're safe! You're here!” She was about to say, “Thank Glaux,” but then she remembered she was angry at Glaux and angry at Lupus. “I've tried everything. I killed a wing-lame grouse and tried to squeeze the blood into her mouth. I found some
of her ointments for the cut on her flank, b-b-but … I can't explain it. The bleeding has almost stopped, and yet I cannot seem to bring her back. She's someplace, someplace where she cannot hear me or see me. She's away.”

Faolan and the others followed Gwynneth into the cave.

“Look,” Gwynneth whispered. “You can tell that her eye still spins beneath her eyelid, just as it so often does when she's awake.”

“She must be seeing things,” Mhairie said softly.

“Or smelling things,” Faolan replied as he looked about at the thousands of pot fragments. He turned his gaze back to the Sark. The pool of blood around her had dried. “Despite her twirling eye, she seems, well … I don't know. At peace.”

“Her breathing has eased some, I think,” Gwynneth said.

“If we could get her well, we could take her with us,” Faolan said.

“Where are you going? Where is there to go?” Gwynneth asked, recalling Banja's words.

“West. We're going west.”

“To the Blood Watch?”

“Beyond that,” Faolan replied.

“To the Outermost?” Gwynneth asked in a hushed voice.

“Beyond even that.”

Gwynneth's beak dropped open. “Faolan, what have you seen?”

“NO!”

The five wolves and the owl startled.

“Who said that?” Gwynneth asked.

“Me, you fool.” The Sark's eyes slid open. Her pelt had shrunk on her until every bone seemed ready to poke through.

“Oh, dear Sark, we thought we had lost you!” Gwynneth flew up to hover above the Sark's head and waft her with her wings.

“Quit batting your wings around my head,” the Sark rasped. Her breath was still and the words came out like the jagged shards of the shattered memory jugs on which she lay.

“You need to rest, get well.” Edme edged close to her.

“Yes, Sark, we'll get you some food. There seems to be
more small game about.” Faolan approached and kneeled close to her ear.

“Don't get me anything! I have all I need right here.” The Sark stirred slightly on the fragments of pottery.

“But those must be uncomfortable,” Edme said. “Don't you want us to move you to a pelt? We could find some of the old pelts from your bed, put them under you, and then when you're rested, we'll all head west.”

“West?” the Sark asked.

“Yes,” Faolan said. “It came to me that —”

But the Sark cut him off.

“I am not going anywhere, nowhere. I'm fine right here. I want no pelts, only my pots shards.”

“B-b-but —” Gwynneth protested. “That's impossible! You need to rest, to get better!”

The Sark looked up at Gwynneth, her gaze gentle for once. “Why is it impossible? I am doing the most possible thing.”

“You'll die!” Gwynneth wailed.

“Exactly, the most possible thing. I shall die right here, right here. None of you understand, do you, dear creatures?”

They all shook their heads.
Understand, dear creatures?
Now Gwynneth was truly worried, for the Sark
never used terms of affection or tenderness and her voice had lost its rasp and become quite tender.

“I am here with my pot shards, on a bed of fractured memories slowly coming back together. This is my heaven, my Cave of Souls.” She looked at Gwynneth. “My Glaumora.” She reached out with a palsied paw and touched Faolan's shoulder lightly. “And my Ursulana.” Her breathing became more labored and her eyes rolled back into her head. She shut them tight and then opened them once more, seemingly startled. Her spinning eye grew still as she framed Gwynneth and Faolan, the only two creatures in the Beyond that she was truly close to. Then she shut her eyes for a final time. A thin filament of wind blew through the cave as the Sark of the Slough passed from this life to the next.

They were all silent for a long time, the wolves erect with their hackles raised, Gwynneth
wilfed
to the slenderness of a sapling branch.

Finally, Faolan spoke. “Let us leave as quietly as possible. Heed where you walk. No shard should be disturbed. Not a one.”

As they were leaving, Myrr turned around for one last look. He had heard all about the Sark in his short life.
Wolves feared her and yet many went to her when they were sick. It was said she was a witch of some sort. They said she knew fire and that was wrong, dangerous, a violation of the Great Chain that linked the wolves to the Cave of Souls and to Lupus. Only owls, like Gwynneth, were supposed to know fire.

But Myrr saw that none of the wolves here feared the Sark at all. They knew her in a way others did not. No one in his clan had ever talked of the Sark's memory jugs, and that was what intrigued Myrr the most. What were these jugs and how did they work? The Sark was so bound to them that she chose to lay down on their sharp pieces. What were her exact words?
I am here with my pot shards, on a bed of fractured memories slowly coming back together. This is my heaven, my Cave of Souls, my Glaumora.
But how could that be? Myrr had only wanted to scrub every memory of his parents from his mind. He was determined to forget them. He hated them!

The Sark's chest was absolutely still. Why would she choose to die like this, on this pile of rubble?

“Come along, Myrr,” Edme said gently. “And careful not to disturb the shards.”

“I don't understand,” Myrr said, his voice cracking.

“What?”

“These jugs … these memories …”

Hearing this, Faolan turned around. “That's really all we are, Myrr — memories. Or call them stories. On the outside we look like fur and bone, or owls with feathers and wings and gizzards. But in the end, we're simply stories. Long, long stories.”

I want to forget my story!

“Come along, dear, I'll carry you like before if you like,” Edme offered.

“No!” Myrr could not let her carry him. It would bring back a memory that would be as sharp and painful as a snow thorn in his paw pads. “I can walk fine.”

THEY HAD BEEN TRAVELING FOR
some time in a northwesterly direction, and although the glacier seemed to have missed the Slough entirely, they could now see it quite clearly as they approached its ragged edge. Faolan called a halt. He peered out across the expanse of ice that seemed endless. The glacier did not appear to be moving at all anymore, but the vast stretch of it stood between the wolves and their destination.

“I don't think we have a choice. We're going to have to go across it if we are to get to the border, to the Cave.”

“It looks solid,” Mhairie said. “I don't see any cracks.”

“You never can be sure. It can be deceptive,” Gwynneth said. “I spent a fair amount of time in the northern kingdoms as a youngster. Snow can form a crust over the cracks and the crusts break. You can fall into a deep crevasse.”

“What's a crevasse?” Myrr asked.

“It's a deep open crack in a glacier. Deep enough to swallow a grizzly.” She
wilfed
before their eyes.

“What is it, Gwynneth?” Faolan asked.

“Nothing,” she lied. The memory of Oona sprawled in that deep crevasse haunted her. Faolan looked at her narrowly and she sighed. “Look, I didn't want to tell you. But before we met up in the Slough, when I was traveling near Crooked Back Ridge — well, what had been a ridge — the ground was riddled with deep cracks. I found Oona in one.”

“Oona!” Edme and Faolan both gasped.

Gwynneth shut her eyes tight as she recalled the image of the vultures diving into the crevasse, scavenging the remains of animals who had plummeted to their deaths. “It was horrible. The crevasse that Oona fell into was wide, wide enough for the wingspan of a vulture. Wide enough for a grizzly. There were so many animals dead at the bottom. It was a feast for carrion eaters.”

“Listen, all of you,” Faolan said, shaking the image from his mind. “We have to pass this way. There is no choice. But I tell you we are not going to become food for carrion eaters. Gwynneth, you fly out ahead and scout for any crevasses. We shall walk carefully. We've all been
taught to walk on river ice, testing it with our dewclaws. We shall do the same here. Do you understand?”

The other wolves nodded solemnly.

Faolan squared his shoulders, raised his tail, and then barked, “Let's go!”

The five wolves set off, Gwynneth flying above to scour the landscape for any dangerous breaches in the ice and listen carefully for any gaps in the wind as it swept over the glacier that might indicate a crack.

This scheme worked for a little while, until a ground fog rolled in and blocked her surveillance. She swooped down to her companions below.

“It's hard to tell what's below from up there. Before this ground fog rolled in it looked fairly clear. However there's something else I need to tell you.”

I am so bad at this kind of thing
, she thought. There was no gentle way she could introduce the subject that was troubling her. She wished there was the language equivalent of a slipstream, the partial vacuum created in the wake of another larger bird that allowed one to fly swiftly, barely stirring a feather. But there wasn't, so she just blurted out the news.

Edme gasped in dismay. “What? What are you saying, Gwynneth?”

“Banja has a pup. I found her in my old forge.” She ruffled her feathers. “I know this sounds strange.”

“Definitely!” Faolan said. “It chills me to think of that wolf as a mother.”

“Well, that's perhaps the strangest part. She's a very good mother,” Gwynneth replied. “It has changed her completely. She's a different wolf.”

“To put it mildly,” Mhairie sniffed. “She was a Watch wolf who was not supposed to mate, and here she has a pup.”

“Yes, she's a mother now. And anyway, I don't think anyone can consider themselves Watch wolves any longer. There is no Ring. There is no ember to be guarded.”

“Has she mended?” Edme ask. There was a slight tremor in her voice that no one detected except Faolan. He leaned in closer to her.

“Yes,” Gwynneth sighed. “She has a second eye. She didn't even realize it until I pointed it out to her.”

“But the pup is fine?” Edme asked.

“Yes. It's female. Banja named her Maud. She's perfect.”

“That's really good. I'm happy for her. I really am.” Tears glistened in Edme's eye.

Faolan cocked his head and looked at his dear friend. In truth, she was so much more than a friend. Those
feelings, those undeniable emotions that had racked him as hard as the turbulent waters of the bight, roiled within him again. He had been absolutely desperate when he had thought she might be hurt, or that he might never see her again. He had been prepared to throw himself into that raging sea and drown right then.

“I promised that I would go back for Banja,” Gwynneth continued. “Help her. And now that we know that we are going west …”

“You can't leave her alone!” Edme interrupted. “You can't! To think that there is new life after all … all this.” She swung her head about to take in the devastated landscape that had once been the Beyond.

“Go back, get her,” Faolan said. “We'll meet you at the Blood Watch.”

“But is there still a Blood Watch?” Gwynneth asked. “The cairns on those mountains … what could be left of them?”

Faolan swallowed. “We'll meet you at the Cave Before Time.”

“The Cave Before Time?” Edme asked. She and Faolan's two sisters seemed startled. They had all sought refuge in the Cave during a blizzard, and none had forgotten its strange paintings.

“Is that what you call it, Faolan?” Mhairie said.

“That's its true name, I believe,” Edme replied, turning to Faolan. The green light of that single eye was so intense it pierced his bones to the marrow.

“Yes,” Faolan replied softly. “We might find the Whistler there.”

There is so much more than paintings in that cave
, Edme thought.
So much more!
Edme sensed that at the Cave their journey west would truly begin. That was where the frost wolf she had glimpsed those long moons ago would meet the wolf she knew as Faolan.

She felt a twinge deep in her marrow, but there was another pain even deeper — one in her hind leg, somewhere between her hip and knee. Her femur? But her legs had always been fine, ready to spring forward in a kill rush, or leap from the top of a cairn at the Ring. She took soaring leaps, especially when she was on guard for Stormfast. There was something about that cairn — the keybone on it gave her purchase like no bone in the other four Watch cairns. Her leaps on Stormfast had given her a reputation for strong hind legs. The last thing she needed now was bone freeze. There were liniments that could ease the pain, but once bone freeze set in, there would be no jumping as before. Of course there was no Ring as
before either, so perhaps it did not matter. But she had to stay strong. She had to carry on west, Beyond the Beyond, on to … where? She was not sure, but she trusted Faolan. Hadn't she always?

The thought caught her up short.
Haven't I always trusted Faolan?
It was as if Edme's mind reeled back in time.
If there is a Beyond the Beyond, there must be a Before the Before. That's where we are going — somewhere before time.
Suddenly, she was frightened.

Faolan explained to Gwynneth precisely how she could find the Cave Before Time, even if the entire landscape had been disheveled. “The stars don't change, Gwynneth. You fly two points off between the port hind paw of the Little Raccoon and the first claw of the Golden Talons.” He pointed to the sky, using all the correct owl names for the constellations. “You'll find it. Remember, two points off the port hind paw and the first claw of the Golden Talons — paw to claw.”

“Yes, I'll find it. But …”

“But what?” Faolan asked.

“How do you know the owl names so well, Faolan?”

“It's a long, long story, Gwynneth.”

Faolan tipped his head and looked at his old friend Gwynneth, his first friend in the Beyond, as she took flight.

Myrr wagged his tail. “Is it a memory, Faolan, or just a story?”

“Is there a difference?” Faolan asked, then ruffed up the pup's pelt and rolled him. “Come now, you need some play. Everything might be a wreck, but when was the last time any of us played tag? Let's stay right here for a while. The fog isn't bad at all and we can see the ice is solid.”

“I'm it!” Edme said and began to scamper about.

“Be careful,” Faolan called. “Don't move outside this area.”

But there was a small explosion of snow and Edme vanished. A frightening howl curled into the air and began to dwindle, as if the sound were being swallowed by the earth as the one-eyed wolf plummeted down a deep gouge in the fangs of the glacier.