Lone Wolf (10 page)

It was uncanny how the motion of the wolves had been captured by the blurring of their legs. However, it wasn’t simply the depiction of the movement that impressed Faolan but rather the sense of joint action, the combined effort of many wolves working together for the sake of one another and the pack. This was completely the opposite of the outclanner wolves he had witnessed in the Outermost. And this was only a fragment of a larger story that he began to piece together in the Cave Before Time.

FAOLAN REMEMBERED THAT THUNDERHEART had told him of the superior navigation skills of owls. Whereas most animals only used the North Star, the polestar, the owls used all the stars. So that was what he understood first. The wolves were migrating from the far east to the west and the misty owl was guiding them. Then other parts of the story began to become clear.

The wolf in the point position of the
byrrgis
was a great dire wolf called Fengo, who was the chieftain of what was then called the Clan of Clans and eventually came to be known as the MacDuncans. There were other images throughout the cave of the wolves in this traveling formation. He had seen it perhaps half a dozen times so far. Usually the formation had been for hunting, but now it was clear there was another purpose as well. Faolan
could see that the wolves were on the move. He could tell from the paintings that they were leaving a place of ice—Great Ice was how he came to think of it. Over the years, a fierce cold had set in to the country from whence the wolves came and each year stole more and more of the warm times, lengthening the wintertimes, until ice began to creep over the land and cover it for every season of the year. These ancient wolves called this period the Ice March of the Long Cold. The Ice March seemed to follow them everywhere they went in their territory. Fengo, as the leader of the Clan of Clans, decided they must leave. They wandered for many moons, but it was unclear to Faolan when or how they first encountered the spirit of the strange bird.

Faolan suddenly realized that this owl had been called Hoole. He remembered Thunderheart telling him about the extremely intelligent owls who lived on the island in the middle of the Sea of Hoolemere in a tree called the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. He also remembered her saying that
Hoole
was an ancient wolf word for “owl.” The name did not seem strange to him but had an oddly familiar ring. As he traced the paintings on the cave walls that twisted and turned down often into deeper recesses and then rose once more, opening into huge galleries with soaring spaces, he followed the spirit of Hoole, who led the wolves
to a land he began to recognize as the Beyond. It was a land as wild and desolate as the wolves had ever seen and strange, too, for there was both fire and ice. Hoole had guided them into the eastern region of the Beyond where there was a ring of volcanoes. That was where Fengo and his Clan of Clans first settled.

The cave itself was a maze of tunnels and passage-ways. It was easy to get lost. And Faolan did for several days. He was never aware of being very hungry. There was water but precious little food. A rat or two, and bats as well. He became quite proficient at plucking off the bats as they slept in their curious upside-down positions. What really fed him were the stories and the paintings themselves, which he found extraordinarily beautiful. He began to develop a discerning eye and a deep appreciation for how the artist expressed the sensations of motion, speed, and weight all on a flat surface.

What still perplexed him, however, was the spiraling design, the same as that on the pad of his splayed paw. He had spotted this design intermittently during his explorations.

Sometimes the passages were blocked. The first time this happened Faolan was quite upset because he was just getting to an interesting part in Fengo’s story, after he and
his clan had been in the Beyond for several years and he had met an owl who was said to be the first owl to dive for coals, the first collier. The spiral design had also been appearing with greater frequency. Just as he was about to turn back, he felt a slight draft of humid air. Since he was so deep in the cave, it was hard to imagine where it came from. He nosed around a bit and it was not long before he realized that what he thought was a dead end was really a pile of rock chunks that most likely had caved in during the earthquake.

He began digging fiercely. With every clump of rubble that his splayed paw cleared, he thanked Thunderheart for swatting what he had considered his good paw and thus making him use and strengthen the splayed one. He was in a fever now to find out the secret of this spiral design that had marked him.

When Faolan finally cleared away the rubble of the collapse, he passed through into a great bay area that revealed the most magnificent of all the paintings. It was a rounded space that seemed fitting for the subject matter, for he was surrounded by depictions of the five Sacred Volcanoes: Dunmore, Morgan, H’rathghar, Kiel, and Stormfast. Each volcano seemed, upon his first glance, more or less the same. But with closer examination, two
had subtle yet distinct differences. Those two, although he could not sense their names at the time, were H’rathghar and Dunmore. Around each one, owls flew, some diving toward rivers of hot embers that spilled down the flanks of the volcano. H’rathghar appeared to be almost translucent, and in its bubbling cauldron Faolan spotted an ember that appeared quite different from those that composed the ember beds of the flanks. This particular ember was orange with a lick of blue tinged with green at its center, the very same green as his own eyes. The ember was cradled in a pocket of bubbling lava. An owl with a white face and tawny feathers appeared to be plunging directly into the cone of the volcano to retrieve the ember. He gasped at the sight. Was this owl intent on killing himself? But then he saw another volcano directly across from this one. It was in a state of violent eruption, and flying out of a curtain of flames was a magnificent owl, this one with many spots, and in his beak he clutched that same enigmatic ember for which the white-faced owl had been diving. Two volcanoes, two owls, both diving through fire for the same ember. What did it signify? Faolan sensed immediately that these two owls were vastly separated in time. But their stories were linked to each other. And to the wolves.

Slowly, Faolan began to circle the space, trying to fit together the pieces of this painted puzzle. At first, he had not noticed the towering mounds of bones. Atop each one a wolf perched. He began to dimly perceive that the wolves were perched on those bone mounds as sentries of some sort. He thought their mission was to protect that ember from the shadow figures that were also flying through the sky. He sensed that these shadow figures were dangerous and treacherous owls. But most frustrating for Faolan, no clue was given as to what the mysterious swirling mark was. It was odd. The marks were scattered throughout but always over the head of an animal. Sometimes a wolf, but sometimes an owl or even a bear, a fox, or a hare.

Faolan exhausted himself trying to decipher the meaning of the mark and he finally fell into a deep sleep in this rounded bay, the vortex of the histories of the wolves and the owls in the Cave Before Time.

AS FAOLAN SLEPT HE DREAMED, and a scent spiraled through his dreams, entwining itself with the images he had seen in the cave. The scent seemed to flow like the silvery streak of the running wolves. But as it grew stronger he realized this had nothing to do with the runners on the rock wall. He could almost feel squirming soft bodies around him, all of them struggling, fighting toward the warm milky scent. Milk! Milk! Shoving, pushing, vying for a teat in a small dark space that was warm and silent. He could see nothing. He could hear nothing. He could only smell and feel. And when he finally clamped on to that teat he could feel something else. A heartbeat, not the giant pounding one, but a softer, quicker rhythm. He tried to press closer and closer to the light thumping and the milk. A Milk Giver, but so different in this milk dream. And then a cold draft and something pulling on him, the sensation of being wrenched from the teat, pried away from the other struggling, small furry bodies. Coldness, dangling in the air as some creature with no scent at all traveled with him, carrying him away from first warmth, first milk.

Faolan awakened with a yelping bark and stood up, trembling all over. He sniffed the air. There was no scent of milk, but it had been so real! So real!

Although Thunderheart had been very vague about that night she had found him, never mentioning a wolf mother, Faolan knew in one sense that he must have been born of a wolf because he looked so different from the grizzly. But deep within him, Faolan never truly believed it until now.
Is it possible to have two mothers,
he wondered,
the one who birthed you and the one who nurtured you?
The scent of that first one that he had smelled in his dream still lingered in his nostrils and his mind.

He knew that he must leave the cave. The cave was before time. He must enter his time, his territory. He must cross the border into the Beyond and follow the river. He would find his first mother, he would find those little furry
bodies that had pressed and wriggled beside him. Why had
he
been taken away and not
them?
He stopped short in his tracks and stared down at the splayed paw. He picked it up, then twisted down on his shoulder so he could fix his eyes on the swirled print of the pad. This was why!

But oddly enough, a great peace stole over Faolan. He did not know the word
malcadh,
“cursed one.” But it was not cursed that he felt, nor was it blessed. Instead, it seemed as if he had a glimmering that he was part of something larger, a larger pattern, a larger plan, an endlessly spiraling harmony. Darkness was falling around him, and Faolan held his paw up to the new moon, which was rising. A low cloud swept out on either side of the silver blade like a great luminous bird hovering on the horizon.

The stars began their stately climb in the growing blackness of the night. He watched silently and began to realize that the movement of the stars was like the flow of running wolves. They did not move separately; their transit was in concert. They were part of something larger, and it seemed as if the sky, too, turned around the earth, which might be just another star that also turned, a very small piece in a single sliding whole.
Around and around, just as these marks on my paw. I belong to the endless cycle.

FAOLAN HAD BEEN TRAVELING for several days. The moon that had been a thin blade when he had come out of the cave had swollen to an immense silvery sphere. He had seen no other wolves, heard no howls. During the heat of the day he often lay down on a cool rock by the river and then in the late afternoon he would begin to swim in search of fish. But he was beginning to crave real meat. The woods along the river had grown sparser and one day he followed a trail up from the riverbank to a broad plain. It was twilight and an indigo glow began to fill the evening. Faolan rammed his ears forward. There was an odd clicking noise that he picked up on the breeze. He had heard it before with Thunderheart; he knew the sound. Caribou! The muscles in their legs snapped as they trotted along. They were moving to their calving grounds.

The juices in his stomach seemed to surge. He could taste blood already, but there was no Thunderheart to help, no defile in which to trap a caribou. The strategy that had worked so well in the past was useless here. But he had killed a cougar. It was just a single cougar and this was an entire herd. He would have to single out the weak one and then pursue it. His mind went back to the cave—the magnificent stream of wolves floating over the landscape, working together with great purpose. A river of scents now poured toward him, carried on the wind. He could do this even if he was alone.

Faolan began traveling toward the scent, careful to keep downwind. There was a sea of tremulous vibrations that began to rise from the ground and grow stronger, and soon he spotted the herd breaking out from behind a bluff. They were in the open now and moving into the central part of the plain that dipped into a shallow valley. It was not a defile but still it offered advantages. He could stay slightly above the herd and downwind. It would give him a view from which he could survey the herd and pick out a weak member. He felt sleeker and faster than he had a few moons earlier, for his winter underfur had begun to shed. Swiftly, he climbed a rocky ridge and, moving along it, studied the flow of caribou. Two ravens circled above him. He sensed they were waiting for him to attack the
herd. He was annoyed. He didn’t want the circling ravens to give away his location. But the herd moved along mindlessly, relentlessly, at a steady pace as inexorable as the course of a river.

Faolan soon caught sight of an elderly cow at the edge of the herd. He could tell that she was having trouble keeping pace. This was his target. Stealthily, he made his way down the slope. There was a sudden but slight wind shift. The clicking of the caribous’ tendons quickened as they picked up their pace.
They smell me,
Faolan thought. He watched the cow attempt to make her way to the center of the herd, but she was shoved once again to the edges. He was a good distance behind the herd, which had more than doubled its speed. The cow was running faster, too. She was perhaps not as infirm or old as Faolan thought. But he restrained himself from accelerating.
Not yet,
he thought.
I must keep a steady pace. Act as if I am not one alone, but one of many.

He loped along, keeping his eyes on the cow. Instinctively, he knew that in the
byrrgis
the females were the fastest and therefore ran in the front of the formation. But he would have to cover all positions and therefore he must carefully gauge not only the caribou’s speed, but also his own energy.

The herd had been heading up a slight incline and it
was here that the cow decided to split from them as she knew she could not keep up on a slope. She turned and picked up speed as she headed in another direction. Faolan veered to follow her. The flat of the terrain renewed the cow’s energy. She was pressing on at an admirable clip, but Faolan could hear the roughness of her breathing. She could not keep this up forever.