Frost Wolf (3 page)

“HAS IT OCCURRED TO YOU,” Winks asked Edme in a raspy voice, “that with one eye we often see more than those with two?”

Edme could barely stand to look at her dear old
taiga
. Winks’s once lustrous brown pelt had turned almost white in the short time Edme had been gone. It made her think of that moment when Faolan had appeared in their scouting cave, covered in frost and snow. She had taken him for the ghost of a very old wolf. But while Faolan had loomed large and radiant although ancient, Winks seemed nothing more than a pile of bones, a sort of living cairn. It made Edme shiver to even compare her beloved
taiga
to such, for the cairns were made from the bones of Watch wolves and other animals. And Winks seemed a hairbreadth away from joining them.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure if Banja sees that much with her one eye,” Edme replied.

“Oh, Banja! Don’t pay her any heed.”

Edme was about to sigh and say it was hard not to, but caught herself in time. How could she whine to this beloved wolf? Edme had brought Winks some meat, but Winks said that she was not hungry. Edme felt death crouching like a dark shadow in the cave. “Are you sure you aren’t hungry, Winks? I’ve got some nice ptarmigan here for you.”

“No, not at all, dear,” Winks whispered. “Not hungry in the least.”

“Are you cold, then? Let me get you another pelt.”

A sudden energy seemed to course through the old wolf, and she slapped her paw onto Edme’s with surprising force.

“Listen to me, young’un. I sense that you do see things.”

“What kinds of things?” Edme asked.

“When you came in here, there was shock in your eye when you saw my pelt — all white now. But you weren’t upset simply by my transformation. I think I reminded you of something. Something or someone that has disturbed you.”

Winks was right. Edme had been haunted by the vision of Faolan ever since they had left the Shadow Forest.

“I am not one to pry,” Winks continued. “You need not tell me. I only ask you to open that intelligent eye of yours and ponder.” She weakly lifted her paw and tapped her face near the eye. “I sometimes call this my outside eye, and on occasion it seems to connect with an inner eye, an eye deep inside my head, a kind of spirit eye. Together they guide me. That is what guided me back to the MacDonegals when I was a pup on a
tummfraw
. I know you are to go to the Blood Watch to check on the border guard. Finbar told me of the mission. So I am just saying be alert, be aware that the eye on your face is not the only eye you possess, my dear. Now run along and get your rest.”

Winks sighed deeply. The talk had worn her out. Edme crouched down closer to her old
taiga
to nuzzle her ruff before she left. She was shocked to see how thin Winks’s undercoat was. In this never-ending cold, most wolves had kept their thick winter fur, but Winks’s undercoat was as thin as if it were a warm summer. Edme got up and pulled another caribou pelt over her friend. She did not want to say good-bye. She did not want to utter
those two dead-sounding words. She turned to look at her
taiga
.

“It’s never good-bye, Edme,” said Winks. “It’s merely
slaan boladh
.”

“Slaan boladh?”
Edme repeated.

“Old Wolf for ‘until the next scent post.’ ”

“Slaan boladh,”
Edme murmured, and turned and left her
taiga
to sleep.

By the time Edme returned to the den, Faolan was already asleep. She collapsed on a caribou pelt beside him and fell into a deep sleep, entering a dreamscape of swirling mists. The frost wolf that Edme had seen in the den near the Shadow Forest began to wander through the dream rivers in her mind.

Who are you?
Edme heard her dream self asking.

Who are you? You have two eyes,
the frost wolf replied.
But I only see one.

And Edme answered:
I have eyes enough to see you, to see through you to what you already know. The snow is dissolving. I see you in another pelt — a pelt within a pelt.

You speak nonsense,
the frost wolf answered.

The inner eye of Edme blinked.
It’s not nonsense, Faolan.
She began to see something more. A wind riffled the pelt. Where there had been fur, feathers rose, mottled with flakes as white as snow. Green eyes turned a yellow that was as bright as gold.

My name is not Faolan.

Edme’s inner eye blinked.
You’re right. Your name is not Faolan.
Edme was riveted by the transformation occurring in front of her. The creature was standing at the mouth of a cave that seemed to yawn out of the mists, its darkness beckoning. She watched as it drew nearer to the opening.

Who am I?
the creature asked desperately. The Spotted Owl that moments before had been a frost wolf began to melt away, dissolving into the shadows of the cave.

“Wake up, Edme. Wake up! We’re half past moonrise. We need to be on our way.”

Edme’s eyes flew open. Faolan was nudging her with his muzzle to rouse her. She stood up.

“Sleep well, Faolan?” she asked.

“Oh, yes, and you?”

“Yes. Very deeply.”

Edme remembered nothing, not even the slightest wisp of a dream.

THE SLOUGH TERN WAS THE ONLY bird in the Beyond that laid its eggs underground. It buried them in earliest spring and awaited their hatching in the Moon of the Flies. But the Moon of the Flies had come and gone, as had the parents of the clutch of eggs. The eggs were not going to hatch. And so the Sark of the Slough did not feel too bad when she decided to dig them up for food.

This had not been as hard as one might imagine, for though the marshy ground of the Slough was frozen solid, the Sark had transported some coals from her kiln to thaw the spot where she knew the eggs were buried. Once the ground had softened from the heat, she dug in and extracted two eggs.

Several hours later, the Sark of the Slough belched and reflected that she probably should not have eaten the
eggs.
As if I am not disgusting enough
, the Sark thought as she got a whiff of her own recent digestive activities. Her blighted eye, given to skittish twirls, spun madly as she tried to suppress another belch. Her one normal eye wept cold tears that quickly froze on her muzzle, hanging like a second set of fangs. Her fur, always in disarray, was shingled with icicles.

The Sark had spent most of her time recently near her kiln and was relatively warm. When she had ventured out on brief forays into the cold, she rarely built up quite enough snow to form icicles. But the fires in her kiln had dwindled as the herds had moved off to Lupus knew where. The Sark depended on their droppings for fuel.

On this particular day, the Sark had gone to her favorite perch on an escarpment to survey the Slough and see if she could spot any herds in the distance. Her stomach rumbled with the memory of meat. Real meat!

Normally at this time of year, three herds had passed through the Slough with the Blue Rock Pack of the MacDuncan clan hard on their heels. The marshy land clicked with the
tock-tock
of the caribou’s march across the Beyond, a distinctive clicking sound made by the caribous’ tendons. The wolves formed hunting
byrrgises
and kept after the caribou at a steady speed, known as
tock-tock pace, until they could identify a weak member of the herd and take it down.

The Sark often joined the
byrrgis
, taking any position she was assigned and then receiving her share of the kill. But so far, only one small herd had come through. Two packs of the MacDuncan clan had joined together for the hunt, the Blue Rock Pack and the chieftain’s pack, the Carreg Gaer. It had not gone well. The
byrrgises
of the two packs argued the entire time. Liam MacDuncan, the new chieftain, was running as a turning guard, but leadership was decidedly absent. The Sark had been running on the opposite side of the
byrrgis
, waiting for the chieftain’s signal to begin packing the herd. Janna, the Blue Rock tight end packer, kept glancing the Sark’s way to see if she had received a sign. But Liam was hesitant in his signaling. He would begin to signal, then stop midway, as if he couldn’t quite make a decision. A line wolf, key to the passing of signals, stumbled and became so frustrated that he actually yipped out a signal, even though signals were never called out loud except to order a cease chase. At that point everything began to crumble. Wolves bumped up against one another, snapping and nipping. Within a matter of seconds, the
byrrgis
had disintegrated into utter chaos. The Sark broke
away and watched the collapse in a kind of horrified fascination.

It had pained her to see this happening, for a
byrrgis
was usually a beautiful thing. Signals were passed flawlessly to alter pace, sometimes racing to attack speed, other times shifting to press-paw speed or slowing even further to deceive the herd that the wolves were wearing out. There was a silent splendor about the endeavor, an unmatched grace as the wolves wove in and out of their positions to maneuver the herd and isolate its weakest member to bring it down for the kill. It took cunning, cooperation, and perfect communication.

The
byrrgis
— no matter how many wolves — always moved as one. Individuals were absorbed into a fluid whole. Pelts blended into a subtly hued wave of fur curling across the vastness of the waterless sea known as the Beyond. And in a night of boisterous winds, with the sky torn by racing clouds, the moon might shine down to cast a devilish brilliance upon their pelts. The shadow of the
byrrgis
slid across the hard land like a ghost ship. The wolves’ lungs merged into one immense pumping bellows. Separate hearts became one huge beating organ. The wolves’ marrows fused into a single mighty river. There was a splendid unity to it all. It was a sight that greatly
amazed the Sark, and there was nothing like it in the Beyond. No other animals could do what wolf packs did when they ran together on a hunt.

After Liam MacDuncan’s
byrrgis
had fallen apart, the Sark heard nothing but snarling wolves tackling one another and barking recriminations. The Sark’s skittering eye had twirled in mad disbelief. Driven by sheer hunger, these wolves had become absolutely despicable. In her long life, the Sark had observed more
byrrgises
than perhaps any other wolf in the Beyond. What she saw that day almost shattered her. She understood — better than any wolf — that a
byrrgis
was a microcosm of the whole wolf world and its clan system. The wolves depended on decisive communication. A leader, whether a clan chieftain or a turning guard, had to have strength of conviction to make decisions. That’s what the
byrrgis
needed and that’s what a clan needed. It was how a leader earned respect and could command. Without respect, discipline dissolved like morning fog in a noon sun. And that was precisely what had happened with the
byrrgis
that the Sark had joined a half moon before. The Sark would never forget the image of Liam MacDuncan slinking off after the humiliating failure of the hunt.

Normally, the Sark, known for her extraordinary sense of smell, would sniff out herds before she could spot them. But with the baffling weather of late, the winds had switched and she would never catch a whiff of caribou with the way it was blowing. Indeed, it was more likely that the herd would catch her scent — the stench of the two rotten Slough tern eggs — before she could smell them. However, she could see something glinting enigmatically in the distance. It wasn’t a low-setting sun, for the sky was shrouded in thick dark clouds. But from close to the ground came a metallic shimmer. Then she caught sight of some animals. Although they were blurry, they looked like wolves. Her sight was not as good as her sense of smell. “Calm down,” she quietly ordered her skittish eye. “For Lupus’ sake, let me see. Got to draw a bead on this.”
They look like wolves but they don’t move like wolves
, she thought. She decided to creep down the escarpment. It wasn’t far to another ridge where she could get a better look.

Despite the wind carrying their howls away, she could hear the wolves distinctly now. But their wailing made no sense. “The Prophet … the Prophet … and in my sacred
pelt I shall dance to the place of warmth and meat and everlasting game….”

Sacred pelt!
she thought.
They look more like bags of bones.
There were a dozen or more wolves dancing in a circle and crying out for a prophet. They appeared weak, and exhausted to the point that some of them were collapsing.

Suddenly, the glint that the Sark had spied from afar flashed from the center of the circle. A creature rose up wearing a mask, a visor of metal that was fixed to a helmet. The creature was the size of a wolf. It had the legs of a wolf but was like no wolf the Sark had ever seen.

She caught the glint of the visor straight in her bad eye, which set it spinning again. She clapped a paw over it for several seconds, as if the eye were a naughty pup trying to escape the whelping den. “Behave yourself,” she growled. Then slowly she removed her paw. She could see clearly now and she could hear clearly. In another few seconds, the wind shifted and she could smell as well.

“A MacDuff, at least two MacNabs,” she whispered to herself. But the thing that shocked the Sark the most was the creature in the metal visor. The wind had shifted and brought a scent, but it was indecipherable, for mingled with it was more than a trace of owl.
Corrupt!
the Sark
thought. But it was not simply the smell that was corrupt. It was the dance and what these wolves were howling. The wind blew harder and a new scent came to her.
Dream marks! How could they?
Dream marks were special scent signs left to indicate a place where a mate had died or a pup was lost. Were the wolves dancing on someone’s grave?
It might as well be their own
, thought the Sark as she watched them limp off into the distance.

“This is most foul!” she muttered. And with that, the Sark vomited up the eggs she had eaten that morning.