Lone Wolf (12 page)

At the same time he wanted to find Thunderheart. Could he live in both worlds—that of his beloved grizzly and that of the wolves? he wondered. The thought of Thunderheart dying was unimaginable to him. He could not even permit himself to think such a thing. For this reason, when he had scanned the skies for the constellation of the caribou each summer night he would not let his eyes rest on the Great Bear. He knew his instincts were selfish. But as much as he missed Thunderheart’s presence beside him in a den or out hunting or fishing, it was quite another thing to imagine her not sharing this earth with him. The distance between here and Ursulana was simply too great. Thunderheart had called Ursulana “heaven,” but for Faolan, it felt like the dim world.

Faolan knew that he must leave this place now, before
the horizon swallowed the last star tips of the caribou antlers. So he began walking away in the direction from which the river flowed. He looked back one last time at the mound of bones burnished by the moon’s light.

He traveled around a big bend in the river. The bend was one he did not remember at all, but he soon found a good place to cross. Upon climbing up the steep bank on the other side, he smelled a familiar scent in the breath of the river. He began to run. He recognized this odor and saw the water boiling with the silvery bodies of fish leaping in the morning sun. It was the salmon spawning run and just ahead were the same rapids where he and Thunderheart had stood catching fish after fish. He cringed now when he saw another grizzly in the spot, standing with three cubs. The cubs did not notice him, but the mother did and looked at him warily. Faolan’s heart seemed to skip a beat. He felt a strange mixture of disappointment and relief. Disappointment that it was not his beloved Thunderheart but also relief, for he could not have borne the thought of Thunderheart with new young ones. He wanted no other cubs sleeping close to that great booming heart.

The grizzly gave a soft snarl of warning. Faolan lowered his tail and dipped his head to signal:
Don’t worry. I will not harm your cubs.
The bear understood perfectly.
She had blinked because for just a moment the small movement of the head was so essentially bear that it was hard to believe that the wolf was not one despite his appearance.

It had been a long time since Faolan had tasted salmon, but desolation chased away his hunger. He yearned for Thunderheart more than ever but was glad to know that now he was truly back in the Beyond. The rapids of the salmon run confirmed this.
This is where I belong,
he thought.
I am a wolf of the Beyond.
But there was little conviction in his heart that accompanied this thought.

He moved on through another day and two more nights. He began intermittently to hear the distant howl of wolves, as welcome as they were intimidating. He understood them, but they served to remind him of how different he was. When the grizzly at the salmon rapids had blinked at him, he had seen the confusion in her eyes.
What are you?
she seemed to say.

Faolan had to ask himself the same question. He was a wolf of sorts, but would other wolves accept him? The farther he traveled, the more uncertain he became.

He saw signs of the devastation that the earthquake had wrought. Indeed the course of the river seemed to
have been altered, as many new creeks ran from it where he had never remembered them before.

He sensed that the summer den that he and Thunderheart had shared had been flooded by one of these countless new creeks, for there was no sign of it. The thicket of alders now stood in water halfway up the tree trunks. There was no sign of the glacier lilies or the blue drifts of irises. And yet there was a familiarity about the woods that made him ache with those first memories of Thunderheart.

The woods became denser but were riddled with small streams and creeks that had gurgled up since the earthquake. Faolan was about to step into the shallows of a stream when the sunlight glinting off a polished black stone caught his attention. He lowered his head to poke it with his muzzle, for he thought it looked pretty. He quickly noticed that there was a spiraling pattern almost exactly like the one on the pad of his forepaw. He stopped and gripped it in his teeth to pick it up, but carefully, so as not to mark it. He dropped it on the bank and stared at it for a long time. There was an odd comfort in discovering this design, such a part of him, inscribed on stone.

He gently placed the stone back into the stream, then turned and walked on.

The sun began to sink, a cold blue light stealing through the forest and strips of milky mist swirling around the dark pines. There was an eerie paleness to the woods, as if Faolan had entered a region that was neither earth nor sky. He could feel the ground underfoot and yet wraithlike swags of fog wrapped the dark tree trunks so that they seemed to float. He proceeded warily, his ears forward, his tail slightly raised, and his hackles straight up and bristling.

There was something white ahead, whiter than the swaths of fog. Blazing white. At first he saw only fragments of this whiteness. As shapeless as the fog that swirled around him. But as he drew closer, the whole of it revealed itself, and he realized what it was—the skull of a majestic grizzly. He staggered briefly and then rushed toward it—the skull of his beloved Thunderheart rose in the blue milky light of the forest with a majesty that made Faolan drop to his knees.

For long minutes he stared into the empty sockets, his own eyes thick with tears. He did not see death, only grandeur in that skull of the great grizzly, that skull that had breathed life into him. He saw only beauty in those bones. Then he tipped his head up to the sky, now indigo and splattered with stars, and searched for the Great Bear.
When he found the constellation, he threw back his head and began to howl. He howled her to Ursulana. All night he howled and watched the stars and the sliding spectacle of the blue night.

In the Cave Before Time, Faolan had seen that time spiraled back into an unimaginable mist with no beginning and no perceivable end. Now, scanning the starry path to Ursulana, he began to realize that the earth on which he was standing was simply another star in what might be an infinity as vast as time.
In all that time, in all the stars, Thunderheart and I came together for one moment in this never-ending cycle. There are other stars, other universes, and so much time, and yet…

Cycling, cycling forever

bear, wolf, caribou.

When had it all started, where will it end?

We are all part of one,

from such simple beginnings

and yet all so different.

Yet one.

One and again,

Thunderheart eternal

now and forever!

GWYNNETH, A MASKED OWL, TURNED the tongs in the fire. This was her third attempt to make a metal replica of a willow leaf. There was not a willow leaf, nor a willow tree, anywhere in the Beyond. And it was not the kind of item for which there was much of a demand. Rogue smiths mostly set their hammer and tongs to making practical articles—pots, kettles, battle claws, and various weapons. But there had been a decline in the need for weapons since the end of the War of the Ember. Her late father, Gwyndor, who had died as a result of wounds in that war, had been a highly regarded smith specializing in double-action battle claws. Gwynneth had a more artistic turn of mind and had learned much of her craft from her auntie. Not her real auntie, but a Snowy Owl who refused to use her talents for military purposes,
and devoted herself almost entirely to artistic endeavors. It would have perhaps served the Snowy well to have made a few claws to keep around her forge, for she had been murdered by Nyra, the vicious leader of an empire of hellish owls known as the Pure Ones.

Gwynneth would have taken over her auntie’s old forge in the ruins of a walled garden, but it felt odd to her after the Snowy had been killed. Almost as if the Snowy was looking over Gwynneth’s shoulders every time she took up the tongs.

Rogue smiths were known for their solitary ways. They liked living apart. On occasion they came to the Ring of the Sacred Volcanoes to barter for coals from the volcanoes. And if a forest fire broke out, Rogue smiths might set up temporary forges on its fringes. But for the most part, they sought out desolate places. It was unusual for Rogue smiths to have mates, or children for that matter. Gwynneth never knew her mother, but her father had had a close relationship with the Snowy and would leave his daughter with her for great stretches of time.

And Gwynneth had grown to love them both, although each was very different. When her father worried about her “going all artsy on him,” he would take her to the Beyond. Over the years, Gwyndor had developed a
very close relationship with wolves. He had learned their ways and, most important, his ear had grown finely attuned to their howling. He had come to realize that his daughter, Gwynneth, had an even sharper ear for wolf songs and had decided to teach her all he knew. She was an apt pupil. She knew the pitch of every
skreeleen
, the lead howler. But the
skreeleen
varied depending on the situation. Whereas Gwyndor could only pick out the gist of the message, Gwynneth could decipher much more. She was close to fluent in the songs of the wolves.

Gwynneth was in the midst of her third attempt at the willow leaf when she heard the eerily beautiful howling. She withdrew the tongs immediately and set them on the stone rest.

The song went straight to her gizzard. It was a song of grief, yet also one of acceptance, being sung by no
skreeleen
she had ever heard.

Gwynneth damped the fire in her forge and put her tools away. She fought an urge just to toss the tools into a heap, for she was nearly desperate to find the source of this song. But such behavior was unthinkable. Her father and auntie had taught her that a smith is only as good as her tools. Rusty tools led to rusty skills and rusty skills made for
skart
, which was an owl obscenity that covered
many things, including inferior products made by poor smiths.

But it did not take Gwynneth long to tidy up, and perched now on the stone rest where her tongs had been, she spread her wings to take advantage of the warm drafts coming up from the smoldering coals in the forge. On these crisp autumn nights, having a boost for takeoff from a thermal draft was nothing to sniff at.

Seconds later, she was skimming the treetops. Taking a bearing on the second star in the Golden Talons, she veered and flew a course two points to the south. The howls rose through the night, a filigree of sound inscribing the wind. Gwynneth had flown a league or more when she spotted the young wolf in a funnel of moonlight. She alighted deep in the branches of a tree to listen.

Though Gwynneth understood the phrases of the song, something confused her. From behind a screen of pine needles, she could see that the wolf, a male, had stationed himself by a large skull of a grizzly. It was to this grizzly that the wolf was singing with such passion. But what was the meaning of that phrase that he howled? “We are all part of one…”?

Gwynneth listened carefully as the wolf launched into a second
gwalyd
:

Milk Givers, Milk Givers,

do you both walk the sky,

climb the ladders to starry caves

and wait for me to die?

When my time comes to leave

where shall my spirit walk?

For am I wolf or bear?

I know not where to start.

When the wolf’s howling ended, Gwynneth saw him slide the side of his face into a patch of earth near the grizzly’s skull and begin to rub his head and his neck vigorously. Gwynneth recognized it as a scent roll, in which the wolves announced a territorial claim. But this wolf did not plan on hunting. Far from it, especially if one considered the keening lament at the heart of his song. By this time, the wolf was dashing about the skeletal remains and rolling wherever he could, as close as he could to the bones. She began to suspect that the wolf had detected perhaps a second aroma. And then it came to her in a sudden flash—two Milk Givers. Two mothers.

“WE HAVE MUCH IN COMMON,” Gwynneth said, swooping down from the tall pine and alighting a respectful distance from the skull. Faolan looked up. He held a bone from what had been the paw of Thunderheart in his teeth and stared at the Masked Owl.

“Put the bone down, dear, and follow me.” Almost as soon as Gwynneth said the words she realized her error. Faolan shook his head vigorously.

“No, of course not. Your milk mother’s bone. Bring it with you, but follow me.” She spread her wings and lofted herself into the air.

Faolan looked up. When the owl had first appeared, he had been confused by his overwhelming grief. But slowly he realized that an owl, possibly an owl from the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, had actually spoken to him. He rose on wobbly legs and began to follow her flight.

Faolan was amazed at how quiet she was even as she flapped her immense wings in takeoff. So much quieter than the ravens. This was perhaps what drew him to her. Her quietness. It soothed him in his grieving. He wanted to be near her. It was Thunderheart who had first told him of the intelligent owls of Ga’Hoole.

Tipping his head up, he watched the dark silhouette of the Masked Owl’s wings printed against the full moon. He began to slip through the blue shadows of the trees and every few paces he would lift his head up to follow the owl’s flight against the sweep of the stars. It was not long before he picked up the scent of smoke from her smoldering forge.

When he first saw the fire in the Masked Owl’s forge he backed away. He had only seen fire once, from a distance, when he was first learning to fish with Thunderheart. It had been an immense forest fire. The smoke had turned the day to night, and the flames, like red claws, shot up as if to tear the sun from the sky. This fire was hissing and spitting sparks. There were crackling sounds as well that reminded him of the small bones of prey he had caught in his jaws. The crackling noise was punctuated by an occasional loud snap and a hiss.