Lone Wolf (9 page)

She went from pack to pack, until the news had spread and she was forced to seek a new clan. The MacDuncans were good. She had caught the eye of a big black wolf, Donegal MacDuncan. He was an honorable
wolf, but it soon enough became apparent that she was not able to bear pups. It was Donegal who asked the clan chieftain, Duncan MacDuncan, if she might become the Obea. It was a kindness really, for at her somewhat advanced age to have to become a lone wolf would have been hard. Still, it was not easy to observe Donegal with a new mate who promptly bore a litter of five healthy pups.

The place of an Obea in the complex social structure of a clan was peculiar. She was rankless, neither high nor low. This meant there was no precise form of conduct for greeting her, for sharing food, or a particular position in the
byrrgis,
the traveling formation the wolves of the Beyond used when they hunted or explored new territory. Nevertheless, she existed on the fringes of the group in much the same way gnaw wolves did, at least until a gnaw wolf was selected for the Watch of the Ring of the Sacred Volcanoes.

The wolves of the pack avoided her. The females were the worst. Some of the females even thought the Obea smelled different, that her scent marks betrayed her barrenness. She knew they talked about her. And when they were heavy with a litter they would often steal furtive glances at her. Some even suspected that she could see through them, right into their wombs, and
knew if a pup they were carrying was a
malcadh.
They gossiped that the Obea could actually put a spell on them and cause a
malcadh
to form. The few
malcadhs
who did survive and made their way back to the clan to serve as gnaw wolves suspected that she resented their survival, and avoided her, as if fearful that she might pick them up and carry them away again. And the males, of course, had no interest in her at all. They seemed to look right through her as if she did not exist. She was like air or water, invisible. It had been no life at all for Shibaan.

Well, she must get on with this business. That was what it was for her—a business, a way to earn her keep in the clan. She did her job well, very well indeed. She was clever in finding ingenious
tummfraws,
the sites for abandoning cursed pups. The
tummfraws
that Shibaan found were places frequented by predators or vulnerable to natural disasters, such as river floods or avalanches. If a pup did survive and made it back to a pack in the MacDuncan clan, it proved that he or she was worthy and could become a gnaw wolf and a candidate for the Watch of the Ring of the Sacred Volcanoes. And didn’t the wolves of the Beyond owe her, Shibaan? The present chieftain, the Fengo of the Sacred Ring, Hamish was said to be the best Fengo since the original chieftain in the time of the Great King Hoole.

But what thanks did she get? None. She could remember clearly the day she had taken the pup Hamish, who had been born with a twisted leg, to the steep eastern slopes of the Beyond, where the late winter blizzards blew in. That particular winter there had been a sudden warm period following that last storm, and because of the steepness of the mountain, several avalanches crashed shortly after she had deposited the mewling pup. One could spot these avalanches from a distance, and even if one couldn’t see them they could certainly be heard. So it was profoundly shocking when a moon cycle after the boom and crack of the last avalanche, she saw the twisted-legged pup stagger into camp. Duncan MacDuncan named him Hamish, an ancient wolf name derived from the word
hamycch,
which meant “to leap.” Despite his twisted leg, Hamish had leaped over the avalanches, or through them, and somehow survived.

Shibaan now spotted the perfect
tummfraw
directly ahead, on a trail used by migrating moose. She would deposit the pup on the flat so it would be crushed by the weight of the huge beasts. And if the moose didn’t come, the owls would, for this trail was directly beneath the flight path of the colliers who came to the Beyond to
fetch coal from the fires of the Ring of the Sacred Volcanoes. The colliers were expert at diving in the coal beds on the flanks of the volcanoes, and were always hungry. A half-dead pup would be easy prey.

So she dropped the mewling pup. And although in all her years as the Obea she had never turned back to watch a pup, she did now. For the first time, she tried to imagine the moment this creature would die—the sound its tiny bones would make when trampled flat by a long line of migrating behemoths, or its mewl of pain when caught by the grip of an owl’s talons. That was a worse thought, a death that would take a long time. First the awful feeling of leaving the ground and then the rip of the owl’s sharp talons and beak. The hackles on the Obea’s back rose high, and her tail stood straight out from her body. She abruptly swerved off the trail and took the fastest way down a steep slope.

The Obea had not gone far when she felt a slight tremor coming up from the ground.
Not again!
she thought. More aftershocks. But this was worse. Suddenly, the slope opened up before her. There was a great rent in the earth. She stumbled and heard boulders crashing down behind her. And then there was another sound, that of her own bones being crushed.

The Obea was not sure how long she had been unconscious, but by the time she woke, the moon had risen. She looked up into the summer sky that was dusted with stars. She searched out the constellation of the Great Wolf, Lupus, that walked the night toward the Cave of Souls.
I am dying,
she thought,
but will I go to the Cave of Souls? Or—
and she shuddered—
to the dim world?
She had taken those pups all these years to the
tummfraws
because it was clan law that she do so. She did not make the laws. She merely had to follow them, and as Duncan MacDuncan always explained, it was for the well-being of the clan. The bloodlines would be ruined if
malcadhs
were allowed to live without a real fight for their lives. The ones who made it, who came back, were exceptional pups and often grew into extraordinary wolves. But wolves were not to grieve over the ones who did not survive. This was the law of the wild. And she had not grieved until now…now when she was clearly dying.
Will I be punished? Is there some chieftain higher than Duncan MacDuncan who will turn me away from the Cave of Souls?

Shibaan was suddenly very frightened. Although the lower half of her body was numb and she felt no real pain, she realized that there was something much worse. It was
this new sensation: grief. Grief mixed with fear. Every one of those pups she now began to remember—the first one with the milky eyes, born blind. The one born with only three legs, the earless ones, and tailless ones, and the ones with crooked hips so they could never run. And then there was that one from just the year before with the splayed paw, and the peculiar design on its pad, a swirl of dim lines. For some reason, that pup had unnerved her like none other. She could not get rid of that one fast enough.

There was nothing unnerving or frightening about the little half-paw pup she had abandoned this day. As the numbness crept through her body, she imagined trying to go back and rescue that half-paw pup.

It was as if she were outside the boundaries of her own body. She leaped up the steep slope agilely, hopping over boulders, heading for the moose trail. She was on the trail now, remembering every bend, every pebble. She saw the tiny creature just ahead. Relief swept through her and at the same moment she was conscious of a peculiar sensation, a feeling she had never experienced in the withered teats on her belly. They no longer felt shrunken and hard.
Milk,
she thought.
Milk is coming! I will take this pup and nurse it.
Joy flooded through her. The moose had
not come yet. The sky was clear of owls. There was only the spirit trail above.

Duncan MacDuncan, the wise and revered chief of the MacDuncans, stepped out to howl into the night, and told the far-flung packs of his ancient and venerable clan that the Carreg Gaer, the chieftain’s pack, was safe after the quake. He had forgotten about the Obea and the mission she had gone on; forgotten, that is, until he tipped his head back to howl. His eyes caught the constellation of the Great Wolf, Lupus, rising in the eastern sky. He watched as a tawny golden mist gathered near the Star Wolf’s head. Instantly, he knew it was Shibaan. He had seen her once, long before she joined the MacDuncan clan, when she was young and golden. So he howled his farewell into the vastness of the night. “You have left us, Obea, left us stronger for your sacrifice. Now follow the spirit trail, Shibaan. You have served us well.” And then he blinked and this time howled with sheer delight, for a dozen or more little star pups raced from the Cave of Souls to greet her. Another pup followed close behind the Obea, and where his hind paws touched the trail, there was only one little star, as if half its paw were missing.

FAOLAN STEPPED CLOSER TO THE strange wall with the animal figures. Were these creatures real or imaginary?
Does the wall breathe or is it merely rock? Do I dream or do I wake?
These pictures were somewhat like the star pictures that Thunderheart used to point out for him with her sharp black claws, but they were so much more real. He thought he had actually heard the animals panting as they pounded across the stone. He even went right up to the wall of rock to sniff it. But it was merely rock—silent, cold, and unmoving.

Faolan raised his muzzle and began to explore for scent, any odor that might betray that this was the place a bear had lived. He would know Thunderheart’s smell anywhere although it differed according to what she was eating. In spring, there was the wet green fragrance when
she had gorged on plants and bulbs. But there was not a trace of that odor. Nor was there the dry clover smell of summer, or the scent of fish that saturated Thunderheart’s fur in late autumn when the salmon ran. It seemed odd to Faolan that so many animals appeared on the walls, looking so real, when the cave was uninhabited.

Uninhabited but not lifeless. Faolan scratched his paw on the hard surface and the glands in his foot released his own scent.
Am I the first animal ever to mark here? How could that be?
He caught sight of another picture and stepped closer to see that it was a spiral—exactly like the one on his splayed paw! He felt his heartbeat quicken and he looked around, folding back his ears. He lowered his tail and began to sink onto his belly in the classic posture of submission. It was the ultimate gesture of respect to a superior power. Although there were no other living animals in this cave, there was a spirit that saturated the very air. It was to that sublime spirit that reverence must be paid.

When Faolan rose up and looked on the cave walls again, he saw there was a picture of the Great Wolf constellation on the ceiling, but with a trail of stars leading up to it. Faolan wondered if there was a place, a sky cave for wolves to travel to after they had lived their lives on earth, like that of Ursulana, the bear heaven where
Thunderheart had said the spirit of her cub had gone. He looked about.
This, too, is a cave. Yet it does not feel like an end, but rather a beginning.

He felt as if he were on some earthly star trail, a passage to a time before time, when the history of the wolves and owls first became intertwined.

Faolan felt all this, not in the way that he knew how to track an animal or corner a wolverine, or to wait on the upriver side of a rapid during salmon spawning time. No, he knew this in another part of his mind, a part that seemed not exclusively his but part of a consciousness that was larger than the mind of a single wolf. A peculiar kind of knowing that defied boundaries, that was larger than a pack, larger than a clan, beyond even a single species.

This seemingly empty cave bristled with a history vital to Faolan’s being. He had been born of a wolf mother and father whom he had never known, raised by a grizzly who had vanished, but if he could learn the mysteries of this cave, he might learn who he really was. And what he was meant to be.

He began to follow the winding path that tunneled deep into the earth. The light grew dimmer and dimmer. But like all wolves he had excellent vision in low light and could see well into the darkest hours of the night.

He pressed closer to the walls, curious to study a silvery streak. He soon realized it was a picture of a luminous flow of wolves, wolves running against a horizon, flowing across a frozen landscape. He felt an overpowering desire to run with these wolves. There was a grace, a majesty as they moved together not as single animals but in this one elemental formation. They were like some earthly, terrestrial constellation. Not cold distant stars but flesh-and-blood wolves so beautifully etched on the rock walls that they seemed to breathe.

Overhead a bird flew. He thought it was an owl. He had not seen many, but when he had, Thunderheart would name them for him. He wished now that he had paid closer attention. For there were several different kinds of owls and Thunderheart had known exactly which kind they were. Some she called Spotted Owls and others Snowy. But the owl that passed over the flow of wolves seemed to be rather the essence of all owls, the spirit of an owl more than a feather and bone and blood owl—just a flash of white cutting the sky.

Faolan lost track of time. He would never know exactly how long he spent in the cave—the Cave Before Time,
as he began to think of it. He seemed not to need sleep or food. It was as if he fed on the story that unfolded before him. There were many gaps in the story and the paintings on the other walls did not seem sequential. The first paintings had been of caribou. The flowing line of wolves, which he would eventually learn was called a
byrrgis,
came in the middle, whereas it should have begun the tale. To Faolan, this particular painting was the core of the story. It was the painting that gave him hope, that reminded him of the beautiful howls of the wolves he had heard when he had ventured out from the winter den on those cold nights as Thunderheart slept. It made him realize that not all wolves were like the vicious, stupid ones he had seen in the Outermost.