Lone Wolf (8 page)

An image flashed in Faolan’s mind. The looming figure of Thunderheart rearing up against a dazzling sun, bright green leaves caught in the last rays as they fluttered down. He leaped now, as he had with Thunderheart. He leaped so high that the cougar made a sound halfway between a snarl and a scream. It was a sound of alarm. But Faolan had clamped on to the cat’s paw and dragged him from the limb.

Stunned, for never had a cat been felled in this manner, the cougar could not react quickly enough. Faolan
sank his teeth into the vein just beneath the cougar’s jaw, the vein that Thunderheart taught him pumped the life-blood and must be cut in order to kill. The cougar twitched once, then again. He was dying.

An instinct rose within Faolan that surprised him. He unclamped his long teeth, and he laid his own head down on the ground so he could look directly into the eyes of the dying cat. They stared at each other for several seconds, and Faolan did not think of Thunderheart. Nor did he think of this animal as a killer of cubs. He thought only of the cougar’s grace and speed. And he said, “You are a worthy animal, your life is worthy and shall sustain me.”

The cougar peered back into the green eyes of the young wolf. The light in his own amber eyes was growing dim, and yet there was a flicker of recognition. It was as if a coded message passed between them:
I give you permission to take my life. May my meat sustain you.

FAOLAN HAD BEGUN TO RIP INTO the flank of the dead cougar when he heard a rustling in the brush. He raised his head, but no longer in expectation of seeing Thunderheart. As soon as he had looked into the eyes of the dying cougar, he had realized that he was mistaken to think that killing the cougar would avenge Thunderheart’s cub.

Two wolves stepped out of the brush, the first wolves Faolan had ever seen other than the reflection of his own face in the water. He was stunned.
They are like me, but so different.
He was bigger, much bigger than they were, although they looked older. And they were disreputable, raggedy and unkempt, their coats bearing furless patches that revealed old scars. Both were males, one a dark gray and the other russet. The russet one was missing an eye.
His face was nearly bald on the side with the missing eye, and Faolan knew that the claw marks on it had been made by another wolf. What animal attacked its own kind?

Saliva in long silvery threads dripped from the dark edges of the wolf pair’s mouths. They edged closer to where Faolan stood snarling over the carcass. Several things became apparent to Faolan as the trio eyed one another. The two wolves were trying to edge each other out as they moved toward the cougar. Although they had tracked him together, the two were not working as a team. They were not cooperating, maneuvering as he and Thunderheart had in the defile, combining Faolan’s swiftness and the grizzly’s might to bring down the caribou. They had no strategy.

But Faolan did. The strategy came to him in a quick little burst of insight that flashed in his mind:
They want my meat, but I am not going to let them have it. They will have to fight me, but they don’t know how to fight together. Greed means I can distract them.

Faolan tore out a chunk of cougar meat and tossed it into the air. The two wolves scrambled to pounce on it and fell together in a snarling, tumbling mass. Faolan jumped straight into the air and crashed down on top of
them. There was a loud popping sound, then a scream. The dark gray wolf appeared to break in the middle, his lower half skewing to one side and a jagged bone pushing through his pelt. The impact had snapped his spine.

The russet wolf growled and retreated, swinging his head to see with his single eye, which was now darting frantically from the gray wolf to Faolan to the chunk of meat.

Faolan’s hackles were raised, his head held high, his ears upright and forward. He took a step toward the russet wolf. The wolf cowered, peeling back his lips in a grimace of fear. But still his one eye kept darting between the chunk of meat and the dead wolf. Faolan was growing impatient and tensed himself to spring, but much to his surprise, the russet wolf ran at the dead wolf and dragged the body into the brush.

Faolan knew he had nothing to fear from the one-eyed wolf, but at the same time he was mystified by his behavior. Why would the wolf drag the body of his friend away? He pricked his ears forward as he heard the rip of flesh.
It can’t be!
He walked quietly toward the thicket of brush and peered through the tangled thorny branches.

The russet wolf’s head was buried up to its single eye in the ripped belly of the dead wolf. So busy was he
consuming the entrails that he wasn’t even aware of Faolan’s presence for some time. When finally he looked up, his face drenched in the blood and slime of the guts, Faolan saw only greed in that single eye. Laying his ears flat, the russet wolf stepped back, not in shame for his act, but in fear.
He thinks I want his meat!

Faolan turned away and walked back to the cougar with one thought:
I must eat to get fat. To get stronger.
He would need his strength more than ever.
What kind of savage world have I entered?

GUT-HEAVY, THE RUSSET WOLF made his way through a tangled web of scents. He was driven now by a dull sense of fear. He had never seen anything like the silver wolf with the splayed paw. It was not simply that the wolf was large, but he was strong. His chest was broad and the splayed paw, although not especially big, looked powerful. It was lucky that the gray wolf had been on top of him. If not, it would have been his back that snapped. He was frightened now to be alone. He had to find a rout of wolves and travel with them for a bit.

The wolves of the Outermost were unlike any wolves in the entire world. They defied all the common notions of wolf behavior; they were not simply abnormal, but an outrageous insult to the values and traditions that other wolves cherished. Lawless, abiding by none of the
elaborate codes of conduct that governed clans and packs, these wolves were known as outclanners.

Notions of honor and loyalty, which were central to the wolves of the Beyond, didn’t exist for outclanners. Viciousness and greed were the motivating forces of their lives. Survival was their only instinct. Dulled by generations of savagery, they could never conceive of the intricate strategies that clan wolves had evolved for hunting or living together in the pack spirit of
hwlyn,
nurturing harmony.

The one-eyed wolf known as Morb was no exception. He had swum across the river to rid himself of the gray wolf’s blood, for if he attempted to join a rout with the smell of wolf blood all over him, the other wolves might become suspicious. Perhaps if they did smell it, he could claim to have picked up the blood scent in a
craw,
or a fight to the death between two animals. Most times, the combat was between two animals of different species, perhaps a marmot and a wolverine, trapped in a circle formed by the rout, but occasionally the combat was between two wolves. It was peculiar that the only time the wolves of a rout worked cooperatively was not for hunting purposes, but for sadistic amusement. The wolf who won a wolf-to-wolf contest enjoyed a bit of notoriety for a while, but not
for long. It was difficult for the outclanners to hold much in their minds for any length of time.

As Morb made his way through the tangle of scents of the dense evergreen forest, he had almost forgotten the scent of Faolan. When the wind shifted suddenly, he did not even realize that the scent he detected was that of the silver wolf he feared. The smell mingled with some others, and Morb thought perhaps there was a rout nearby. Soon he heard some random barks and howls.

It was a
craw!
And a good one at that! A musk ox and an old sick female moose, a cow.

Faolan was a silent moving shadow, his paws soft as moss. He watched transfixed as the wolves pressed in around the musk ox and the moose, one or another darting out to nip at their legs and encourage the big animals to step forward and charge again. One of the musk ox’s horns had been broken and was dangling in front of its face, obscuring its vision. This seemed to delight the wolves. The moose was limping and had begun to crouch down. Faolan could see plainly that she was ready to die. But a large, skinny she-wolf with vicious fangs was on her in a minute, goading her to get up. It was a horror that Faolan
could have never imagined, even after watching the one-eyed wolf devour his companion.

Faolan stood in the shadows, shivering although it was not cold, his fur rising on his body. Had any of the outclanner wolves glimpsed him, they would have been shocked. Shocked by his size. Shocked by the ferocity in the brilliant green eyes and frightened by a light beneath the ferocity that they could never have named—intelligence.

Faolan considered charging in and busting up the
craw
in hopes that he might afford the moose a peaceful death. But he knew that, in addition to risking his own life, sooner rather than later this rout of vicious wolves would track her down for their own fiendish delight and perhaps kill her in an even more savage manner. And although he felt he could outrun any of these wolves if they did set upon him, it became clear to Faolan that he wanted nothing to do with them at all. He did not want them to know he existed.

So with these thoughts in mind he turned away. As he traveled he remembered those long melodious howls that he had heard outside the winter den of Thunderheart and
wondered if perhaps he had heard wrong. The howls of these outclanner wolves were like shards of bone scratching the night. He could not believe that wolves who had howled that beautiful, wild music could ever be the same as these. They must be different, but perhaps they weren’t, and yet what did he know about wolves? He had been raised by a grizzly. Then Faolan was struck by an immutable truth, which was that he had more in common with a grizzly bear than any wolf. Surely there would be grizzlies along the river. Or perhaps he would find a lovely summer den above the banks dotted with glacier lilies and irises.

The loneliness that had for so long felt like an empty space within him, that emptiness that had made him feel hollow, grew now until it seemed his own body could not contain it. It seeped out of him and began to create an even bigger hollow, a void, a space that was always at his side. A space where Thunderheart would walk next to him were she still there, a silence that would have been filled had she been snorting and huffing as they made their way to hunt or graze, that unmistakable thump of her immense paws making a track next to his. He wondered how nothingness could feel so heavy. How could hollowness be so crushing? Could the wolves of the
Beyond, the ones whose howling he recalled as distant beautiful songs, ever fill this void? He began to evolve a simple plan. He would find the river, the river that led back into the Beyond. And so Faolan continued on his way, dreaming of summer dens and lazy afternoons fishing for salmon.
Maybe,
he thought,
I could even teach little bear cubs how to fish!

He had been traveling for a few days when he began to notice that the long light was seeping away little by little and night was returning. It was still high summer—he recognized the thickets of sweet blackberries that grew at this time. But if the endless days were vanishing and night was returning, he knew he must be approaching the border between the Outermost and the Beyond.

He had yet to reach the river when he saw a yawn of darkness ahead. A cave! It was a big cave, perfect for a large animal like Thunderheart. And yet, oddly enough, Faolan could not detect the scent of any creature. The moon was just rising as Faolan stepped inside, and a spike of pale light pricked the darkness of the cave’s interior. In the flickering of the moon’s silvery light, Faolan caught the image of a four-legged animal that seemed to be running directly out of the stone wall.
Above the animal beat the wings of a bird—a hovering owl. The wall pulsated with life. He could hear the breath of countless creatures. The pounding of hooves, the beating of paws, the stirring of wings. All on the rock of the cave wall.

HOW MANY? HOW MANY HAD IT BEEN?
 the Obea wondered as she carried this wolf pup in her mouth. This one wouldn’t live long. It had been born late in the season, almost midsummer, with just half a hind paw, and it wasn’t breathing properly. These late-season pups were rarely normal. The Obea was weary and bitter. She wasn’t sure why she felt this way. The winter had been harsh. The earthquake at the cusp of spring had disturbed more than the land; in some strange way the seasons also seemed disrupted. Spring was very late in coming, almost as if it feared to appear amid the aftershocks of the quake. Wildflowers and the moss blossoms that speckled the grasslands seemed to think better of showing themselves until they were sure of a reliable piece of ground that was not going to move. But now the weather was turning, and the Obea’s aches and pains were
disappearing with the heat of summer. The rancor that she thought had been smoothed away over time, however, began to stir again. Not simply a sharp pebble digging into her paw, it was more animate, coiling inside her like a serpent. She could feel its fangs with every step.
Why me? Why me?

The whining question over and over again. The Obea never grieved for the pups she carried away, only the ones that she had never given birth to.
Why me? Why me?
The refrain played again through her mind like the moaning of the north wind that swept down from the Outermost.

She began to recall the time when she had first suspected that she might be barren. One mate after the next had left her when she failed to bear pups. After the third mate left, she moved on to a new pack within the same clan. Once she had been considered a beautiful wolf. Her fur was a lustrous tawny gold and she had attracted a fair number of suitors. But as she grew older her pelt had lost its shine. Her teats shriveled until they were the size of hard little pebbles.