Wolves Of The Beyond: Watch Wolf Part 1

KATHRYN LASKY.

WOLVES OF THE.

BEYOND.

WATCH WOLF.

PART ONE.

THE JOURNEY.

THUS SAYETH THE FENGO.

TWO WOLVES STOOD ON A WINDSWEPT bluff overlooking an encampment where, two days before, a contest had been concluded. Faolan, the larger wolf, had a silver pelt and a malformed paw. The second wolf, Edme, was a dusty, rather pathetic-looking creature with one eye. But against the odds, they had won the contest and would now become members of the most elite wolf group in the Beyond a" the wolves of the Watch at the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes.

At last, after years of abuse as gnaw wolves, the lowest-ranked wolves of all, they were able to stand tall, their ears shoved forward and their tails stretched high into the wind. But before they traveled to the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes to begin their new lives, there was one last journey to be made. The Slaan Leat a" the journey of farewell, the journey to make peace. It was a journey toward truth and understanding, toward reconciliation with their fate to be born malformed, a malcadh, a cursed one.

All malcadhs were cast out of the wolf clans at birth, left to die in the wilderness. Only if they made it back on their own could they win a place with their clan. And they only won honor if they gained a seat on the Watch at the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes. But from the time the first wolves arrived in the Beyond, it was decreed that all gnaw wolves must seek out the tummfraw where they were abandoned, before traveling to the Watch. By confronting the place where they were abandoned as pups, they would know that their days of humiliation and desolation as gnaw wolves were finished. Faolan and Edme had each been told the place of their tummfraw. Faolan had been abandoned on the banks of the big river that sliced the Beyond in two. For Edme, it was the northernmost peak of Crooked Back Ridge.

A bitter wind cut through the two wolves' pelts. The weather was unseasonably cold for a spring moon, the Moon of the Shedding Antlers. Both wolves looked up. The sky was sealed with roiling storm clouds, as if a blizzard was about to be unleashed. But weather did not concern them as much as this last journey. Through each wolf's mind coursed the same questions. Will my desolation dissolve? Will I truly find peace? Will I finally belong?

Their Fengo's words still rang in their ears. Go forth, find your tummfraws, and know that you are cursed no more. You are malcadhs no more. You are wolves of the Watch and ready to serve. Thus sayeth the first Fengo who led us out of the country of the Long Cold and into the Beyond over one thousand years ago.

CHAPTER ONE.

UNDER THE STARS.

"FAOLAN, DID YOU HAVE A SENSE of where your tummfraw was before the Fengo told you?" Edme asked.

"Well, I knew it had been on the banks of the river. Thunderheart told me so, but I was never sure where exactly."

"But now that you know, does it seem right?" Edme peered at him intently with her single eye. They had set out together for the first part of their journey since their tummfraws were in vaguely the same direction. When the sun rose tomorrow, they would each go separate ways, and then after they had found their tummfraws, they would meet up again and travel together to the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes.

"Why do you ask if it seems right, Edme? The Fengo must know."

"I suppose so, but I can't explain it. That peak on Crooked Back Ridge just doesn't seem to fit. I've heard that every gnaw wolf carries a sense of the place they were left to die. That the gnaw wolf has a hunch."

"And you don't?"

"I'm not sure." She paused. "But if I had, it wouldn't be the north peak on the ridge. That just seems entirely wrong to me." She shook her head, as if she was trying to figure out something disturbing.

Faolan looked at her. Their acceptance into the Watch was supposed to mark the end of their desolation and despair, but Edme seemed more hopeless than ever.

Edme was a small wolf. Of all the gnaw wolves, her outward appearance was the most wretched. Yet her bold spirit dispelled pity. She possessed a natural optimism, a good cheer that was all the more remarkable because her clan, the MacHeaths, was known for their brutality. Even now, she tried to muster some of that good cheer, which made Faolan feel sorrier for her.

"Look, Faolan a" look at the stars. There's the Great Wolf pointing to the Cave of Souls. Now, what did you say Thunderheart called it?" The question was so like Edme a" full of curiosity, so ready to be interested in someone else and not absorbed in her own worries.

"She said the bears call their Cave of Souls Ursulana."

"What a lovely word a" Ursulana." Edme repeated the word as if to savor every syllable.

"I wonder sometimes if all heavens are really one, if there are no borders in the sky."

"Splendid!" Edme exclaimed and began a baying song that she made up as she howled. Long resonant yowls curled into the night as constellations rose in the east, and the blackness of the night tingled with stars. Faolan listened. He hoped a" oh, how he hoped a" that he was right, that what Edme howled was true, that all those heavens were one. Then someday he would be united with Thunderheart, the grizzly bear who took him in when the wolf clan abandoned him and raised him as her own.

They had camped for the night near a small marsh sprigged with tiny bright yellow blossoms of beewort. The two wolves had found a place to sleep under an outcropping of rock. Across the top of the rock, a spider had woven a web, and its silk threads trembled in the night breeze. Faolan was taken by its delicate beauty. "I've heard that the silk of a spider's web is much stronger than you could ever imagine."

"Really?" Edme's eye sparkled with interest. "Wherever did you hear that, Faolan?"

"The Sark. The Sark of the Slough. She told me. She uses it to stop bleeding and bind wounds."

"You're close to the Sark, aren't you?" Edme asked in a taut voice. Faolan knew that the mere mention of the strange old wolf, whom many regarded as a witch, often provoked this response.

"Yes, she understands me in ways others don't."

"Do you suppose your mother visited her a" you know, after a" Edme didn't finish the thought, but Faolan knew what she was asking.

After giving birth to a malcadh and being cast out of their clans, many she-wolves went to the Sark to recover. She had them drink potions that she brewed to help with what was called the Forgetting, so the she-wolves could move on, find a new clan, a new mate, and birth healthy pups.

"My mother, whoever she was or is, did not visit the Sark. The Sark told me so. Do you think your mother went to her?"

Edme hesitated before answering. "I have no idea, just as I have no inkling about this tummfraw." Faolan noted that Edme did not say "my tummfraw." The peak on the ridge had no more meaning for her than the most distant star.

Shortly after the two wolves set off, they picked up a trail of elk headed back north with their young calves. Caribou shed their antlers during the frost moons, but elk shed theirs during the spring moons. Thus this time was called the Moon of the Shedding Antlers or sometimes the Moon of New Antlers.

Mice populations made short work of the antlers, which were rich in nutrients. But Faolan and Edme had found a few still intact and had begun to gnaw them, inscribing them with designs that told the story of their Slaan Leat. This desire to gnaw designs was instinctual in Watch wolves. It was not required that they bring a Slaan Leat bone back to the Ring. But there was a compulsion that urged them to record their journey. It did not matter if the antler was ever seen or read; they needed to mark this milestone in their journey from gnaw wolf toward a life of service at the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes.

And so they gnawed designs of the constellations floating above them and tried to describe the haunting scent of the beewort that drifted across the marsh, the quivering beauty of the spiderweb sparkling with night dew, and the low, gentle song of the gra.s.s as the wind stirred it on this late spring night.

CHAPTER TWO.

WINTER DREAMS ON A SUMMER NIGHT.

WHEN THE MOON SLIPPED AWAY, the wolves fell asleep and huddled against each other as the night became colder. Faolan dreamed of fire a" a particular fire in the meeting cave of the MacDuncan clan when he had been brought before the raghnaid, the wolf jury, for having violated hunting law. It was not the warmth of that bright fire of which he dreamed a" a foil to the cold stares of the jury. It was a pattern of sorts that flared into his mind, a swirl of bright orange and yellow buried deep in the base of the flames. The spiraling flame echoed an odd mark on Faolan's splayed paw. In his dream, the spiral became larger and larger and seemed to devour him in a spinning madness as the late chief Duncan MacDuncan's face loomed immense behind the flames.

"He knew! He knew!"

"Faolan! Wake up!"

Faolan leaped instantly to his feet, towering over Edme. She looked up, concern filling her eyes. "Who knew what?" she asked.

"Did I say something in my sleep?"

"In your dream more likely a" a bad dream at that."

"No! No! Not really bad. At least I don't think so. I dreamed of fire, of warmth," Faolan said.

"I dreamed, too, of warmth, a winter dream," Edme replied.

"For a summer vanished. Look!" Faolan peered out from their shelter.

A thin coat of ice skimmed the shallow water of the marsh. To the east, the rising sun splintered on jagged points of gra.s.s now stiff with frost.

"What in the world is going on?" Edme said. "Look, the spiderweb is still here, all frosty, and the wind blew hard last night a" but there isn't a tear in it! You said it was strong."

"Yes, and you can see that the frost must have doubled its weight. But it's all in one piece."

Edme's teeth were chattering as she stepped close to Faolan. "It's almost the summer moons, the Moon of the Flies. It makes no sense for it to be this cold!"

"Those elk and caribou, all the migrating animals, are going to turn right around and head south if this keeps up," Faolan said.

"If this keeps up, it's going to be the hunger moons of winter all year round."

The two wolves, both carrying antlers carved with their Slaan Leat stories tucked beneath their chins, parted ways at the edge of the marsh. Faolan was heading farther south toward the river, Edme heading north toward Crooked Back Ridge. They would meet at the beginning of the Moon of the Flies, the first of the true summer moons.

"Let's hope the flies don't become snowflakes," Edme said with a touch of her old familiar cheer, which relieved Faolan. Perhaps she was not as downcast about this tummfraw business as he had thought. Surely she would feel something when she arrived at her peak.

The sudden frost of the previous night had melted away, and the sun shone bright in the blue bowl of the sky. Edme had expected the ridge to be capped in snow but was surprised at how low the snow line fell. Nevertheless, there was an abundance of tiny flowers flecking the slopes. The flowers that grew at this time of year were called Beyond Blossoms and were known for their toughness and ability to thrive in a harsh land with more rocks than soil and with abrasive winds that scoured away anything that could not cling fiercely. Their blossom time was short, but a night of frost had not discouraged them. Edme paused and set down her antler to study the tiny face of an ice violet. They were the first of the Beyond Blossoms, popping up at the end of the Moon of the Cracking Ice. As she peered into the purple cup with tiny little branching filaments at its center, she marveled at how the flower survived. It was no higher than half the length of one of her claws, and appeared to be growing straight out of the rock. It's so fragile and yet so strong, like the spiderweb after the frost.

I must be strong, too, Edme thought as she plodded on toward the crest of the ridge. But with each step forward, she felt an increasing sense of unease. She was anxious, anxious to be done with what she felt was a travesty of some sort regarding this tummfraw.

By the time she reached the crest and headed toward the northern peak, it was high noon. Get it over with, she told herself. Just get it over with. The peak, of course, was not a pointy mountaintop. She knew it wouldn't be. From a distance, all peaks appeared sharp and seemed to p.r.i.c.k the sky. But it was just a distortion of perspective. The greater the distance, the sharper the profile of a peak, but when approached, the land flattened. The tummfraw loomed up before her now, a flat table rock. She felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. I was never here a" never, ever here. This is not my tummfraw!

CHAPTER THREE.

THE SCENT OF THE RIVER.

THE SCENT OF THE RIVER DOESN'T change much, no matter the season. Even when the ice is thick upon it, somehow the river's tang seeps through. After the Moon of the Cracking Ice in spring, the river unlocks; the deep ooze of the bottom mud mingles with the woody fragrance of tree roots that grow on the banks and are scrubbed by the coursing waters. Faolan felt a quickening in his marrow as he pa.s.sed the summer den and then the spring den where he had spent his infancy tucked in the embrace of his second Milk Giver, the great grizzly Thunderheart.

He knew the den as soon as he saw it. There was a steep embankment and just above it a large cave, where Thunderheart's last cub had been murdered by a pair of cougars. Faolan stopped. After all this time, there were still signs of a skid path down from the higher ground of the cave to the water. Stumps from broken trees stood witness to the grizzly's rage as, wild with grief, she had hurled herself toward the roaring river, only to find that it was too shallow for her to drown. There she had sat for hours, keening into the wind, begging Great Ursus to take her life, until something snagged on her foot. At first she thought it was a clump of river debris torn from the bank in the river's spring tumult. But it was not. It was a tiny wolf pup.

So often Thunderheart had told this story to Faolan. Her words came back to him now as he stood on the spot where Thunderheart had found him, half a league from the tummfraw where the Obea s.h.i.+baan had left him. He would go to his tummfraw soon, but he needed to stop here for a spell and think. I sought death, he remembered Thunderheart saying, and you sought life. You were a gift from the river. There were no more stories now, for Thunderheart was dead. There were only bones left to gnaw to her memory.

Faolan made his way toward his tummfraw. It wasn't as difficult to find as he had thought. He looked down at the bank gouged out now by three winters of rampaging ice and water. A pulse seemed to quiver deep in his marrow, and his hackles rose. This was indeed the place. There was a weathered rut that could have been the very one made when the fragment of ice on which the Obea placed him had torn from the bank. So this was his tummfraw, this little spot of bank was where, as a mewling pup, he had been left to die.

He circled it three times. There was a familiarity to the spot that stirred the scent glands between the toes of his paws, and he found himself marking the ground. Then he settled on his haunches and looked out at the river flowing gently by. A mist began rising as the river water, still cool from winter, mingled with the warmer air. The mist became thicker, furling and unfurling into undulating patterns that were almost hypnotic. The roar of the river's torrential rampage during the night he was abandoned came back to him. He gripped the banks now as once as a tiny pup he had gripped the ice raft. All of the sensations of those moments came back to him a" the dizzying nausea as the ice shelf bounced in the turbulence, the terrible cold when icy water dashed over him, and the roar that grew louder and louder. His claws still digging into the bank, he looked deeply into the mist and saw a familiar pattern. The same design that had swirled through the fire in his dream the previous night now swirled in the mist before him.

In that moment, Faolan knew what he would do. He would bring some of Thunderheart's bones back to the cave high up on the riverbank and build a drumlyn, a small mound, to honor her. It had bothered him that he had never seen the lochin of Thunderheart climb the star ladders to Ursulana, the bear heaven. If he made this drumlyn, it might be a perch from which her spirit could leap. He would build Thunderheart's drumlyn not on the place of his abandonment but on the place where he had been found. This was the meaning of the Slaan Leat for him. The mist had cleared and the river ran on smooth and dark, like an amber ribbon. As Faolan trotted at a brisk pace toward the secret place where he had buried the bones of his second Milk Giver, another thought began to seep into his mind as if out of nowhere. My first Milk Giver! Who was she? What did she think of me? Did she feel cursed to give birth to such a pup? Were there others? Do I have sisters or brothers still in the clan?

CHAPTER FOUR.

A TRUE GNAW WOLF?.

AS EDME MADE HER WAY DOWN from the northern peak of Crooked Back Ridge, she could not help but wonder what Faolan had felt when he found his tummfraw. She was certain that he would not have experienced the same emptiness she had when she stepped onto the table rock at the peak. Whenever she thought about it, she wanted to blame herself, but she knew this made no sense. She was not to blame a" if anything, it was the tummfraw that was wrong, or the Fengo who had made a mistake. She was almost tempted to go to the Obea of the MacHeath clan and ask her point-blank if this was the right tummfraw. But Edme had to be honest with herself. She loathed the entire clan and had no desire to go back into MacHeath territory.

The MacHeath Obea was a white wolf named Airmead. This was a cruel name, for in the Old Wolf language, it meant "barren." Of course all Obeas were barren, but only the MacHeaths would choose to take away whatever the Obea's real name was to call her after her pathetic condition. The MacHeaths had a malevolent instinct that flowed through their blood like a treacherous current. They fed off it like vampire bats drink blood from animals, leaving just enough to ensure that the animals live and the bat can come back for more. MacHeaths who did not feed off cruelty either grew weak and died or left for one of two places a" west to the Outermost to live with the savage outclanners, or far to the northeast to the MacNamara clan. No, Edme had no desire to see any of the MacHeaths. She was already too close to their territory for comfort.

As she wound her way down and across the steep slopes of the ridge, Edme tried to imagine how a little one-eyed pup could have made her way down the precipitous slope and back to her clan. They said that all malcadhs who survived had an instinct that led them back to their clan's territory. But Edme found it hard to believe. Her urge had always been to put as much distance as possible between herself and her clan.

She was still occupied with these thoughts when she reached the bottom of the ridge, and a pair of yearlings, Ingliss and Kyran, from the chieftain's pack of the MacHeath clan appeared. She felt a twitch deep in her marrow. These two young females had particularly enjoyed abusing her when she was a gnaw wolf. They knew exactly where to attack to cause her the most fear as well as the most pain, and took pleasure in biting her as close as they could to her one good eye. She instinctively lowered her tail and began to sink into a submission posture, but suddenly stopped. I don't need to do this anymore. I am not a gnaw wolf. I am a member of the Watch. If anything, they should submit to me. Edme's hackles raised, she shoved her ears forward, and her single eye glinted bright green.