Spirit Wolf (6 page)

“You mean to the Outermost? Surely not!” Mhairie gasped. But she saw a faraway look in her brother's eyes.

“I mean beyond the Outermost,” Faolan replied. “I mean … I mean …” his voice began to ebb.

“Faolan?” Edme whispered. “What are you seeing?”

When he answered, his voice was strong again. “Once, on a very clear day when I stood on the Blood Watch, I turned west and I saw beyond the Outermost, almost all the way across the western sea.” He paused. “I saw the Distant Blue.”

“The Distant Blue?” Dearlea echoed.

“I don't know its true name, but I call it that. The Distant Blue is where we must go.”

The wolves fell silent as they looked at him. The Beyond was broken, the earth fractured beneath their feet. But where was Faolan taking them?

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
BANJA'S
question thrummed in Gwynneth's head as she flew. She had promised Banja that she would return, but Gwynneth needed to search for the Sark, and for Faolan and Edme. Was there any chance they could still be alive?

She was shocked when she looked down on what used to be Crooked Back Ridge. It was not simply flattened by the glacier, but the earth had been gouged out to an enormous depth. Parts of it were no longer a ridge, but a deep valley. The glacier, only half a league past the ridge and slowing now, had left an immense cleft in its wake.

A galloping glacier!
Gwynneth thought. She had heard about them when she was in the northern kingdoms but never actually seen one. And then there was the old
skreeleen
tale of the White Grizzly.

Everywhere there were deep cuts, deadly crevasses. Being an owl, Gwynneth could swoop down into many of these and she saw that they had become death traps for elk, moose, marmots, and many wolves. The crevices were a carrion feeder's delight, but the sight of these birds revolted Gwynneth. She remembered her father speaking of the vultures who had scoured the battlefield after the last of the Great Owl wars, the War of the Ember. She could not abide the idea. She plunged now into a crevice and with an ear-shattering shree flew directly at two vultures who were feeding on the body of a wolf.

She attacked with outstretched talons and managed to rake the eye of the smaller vulture. That was enough to scare them both off. But it was only after the vultures had flown away that Gwynneth recognized the wolf whose carcass they had all but destroyed. “Oona,” she whispered. “Great Glaux, it is Oona!” The black wolf had been a fearless lieutenant from the MacNamara clan. She was most likely on her way back to her clan from her duties at the Blood Watch.

“To think, Oona dead, who had survived so much!” Gwynneth wept over the ragged body of the wolf. Oona's long history fled through her mind.
She marched with the MacNamara expeditionary force, the greatest fighting force in
the Beyond. She fought in the War of the Ember. And now,
thought Gwynneth,
to be swallowed by the earth, then pecked upon by vultures.
Gwynneth screamed. The sound slammed back at her from the walls of the crevasse as she flew madly about, battering the wind with her wings. It was as if she wanted to punch every god from its heaven, for truly this was hagsmire, hell on earth!

In the midst of the storm that roiled her gizzard, she once again heard the soft mewling of that tiny pup Maudie.
Banja needs food to make milk for her pup.
There was new life in this Glaux-forsaken land and it needed to be sustained. With that thought, Gwynneth pulled herself together. She focused in on a slight scurrying sound and picked off a vole she had seen scampering about. It was owl food, but sustenance nonetheless. Banja would not complain.

“Oh, this is so kind of you, Gwynneth. I can't express my appreciation.” Tears now streamed from Banja's old eye and her brand-new one, making Gwynneth think of Edme. Would Edme have a new eye? She was after all a
malcadh
made, not born.

How remarkable. I am looking at Banja and thinking of
Edme!
Banja had once been the nastiest wolf at the Ring, and now she evoked thoughts of the kindest.

Gwynneth
wilfed
. Where were Faolan and the Sark? The dear old Sark.
She's hardly the gentlest wolf
, Gwynneth thought, but the Sark had been her first friend in the Beyond.

“Is something wrong, Gwynneth?” Banja paused, then ducked her head in embarassment. “Well, of course, everything is wrong! How stupid of me. But you suddenly look so sad.”

“I was just thinking of my friends — Edme, Faolan …” She gulped. “And the Sark.”

“You and the Sark were very close, weren't you?”

“Indeed! The Sark and my father, Gwyndor, were the very best of friends. She and my auntie both looked after me at different times in my life. My mother had died and I really never knew her. So when I was very young my auntie took me in, though she was not an egg relation.”

“Egg relation — is that what owls call it?”

“Yes, I guess it sounds odd to wolves. And when my auntie was murdered, I went to the Beyond and to the Sark. So I more or less had two foster mothers — an owl and a wolf.” She sighed and closed her eyes. “I don't think I could have done any better.”

Banja was silent for several moments. When she spoke, her voice was slow, as if she were choosing every word carefully. “Gwynneth.” She paused. “If something were to happen to me, would you consider taking care of Maudie?”

“But I'm not a wolf, Banja.”

“You know so much about wolves.”

“Yes, but not as much as a wolf does. I'm not like Faolan or Edme.”

“I was awful to those two wolves when they arrived at the Ring, especially Edme because, well …” Banja began to stammer. “She was like me! Missing one eye. I took all my bitterness out on her.” She turned her two bright green eyes on Gwynneth. “I'm so ashamed … so ashamed I would never dare ask anything of her.”

“Of course I'd look after Maudie if something happened to you, but you underestimate Edme. If she's still alive, Maudie would do well by her.”

“If you find Edme, perhaps she might, too. Perhaps both of you could look after her together.” Banja paused for a split second, then rushed on. “Edme has every right to say no. I was so terrible to her. I wouldn't blame her one bit for telling me to be off to the Dim World.”

I think we are in the Dim World.
“Dim World” was the wolf term for hell. But Gwynneth held her tongue.
“Knowing Edme, I am sure she would agree to take care of little Maudie, and I will, too.”

“Oh, thank you, Gwynneth. Thank you so much.” Banja settled back and continued nursing her pup. “Do you know what I think?” Her voice was slow and drowsy. Gwynneth had seen other wolf mums become this way when they nursed their young. The act of giving milk seemed to have a calming effect on them. Banja yawned. “You know what I think?” she persisted.

“What's that, Banja?”

“I think you need to go and look for the Sark — your foster mum.”

“You're right,” Gwynneth agreed. “But don't worry. I'll be back.”

“I won't worry. I trust you, Gwynneth.”

Trust?
It was a word that Gwynneth thought she would never hear coming from the mouth of the red wolf. Shock stirred her feathers and this gave her away.

“Yes, trust, Gwynneth. Can you believe I said that?” Banja opened her eyes wide now, surprised at herself. “I tell you, feeling a sense of trust is almost better than seeing with two eyes.”

GWYNNETH SCOURED THE MUDDLED
terrain between her forge and the Shadow Forest, where she had last seen the Sark. She flew into the countless crevices that cracked the land and yielded the remains of many dead animals, from wolves to grizzly bears. But so far she had not found the Sark. With each dead wolf she encountered, she had to admit she was relieved that it was not the Sark. Was it possible that the Sark had made it back to the Slough? With its spongy marshland, the Slough might not have cracked in the same way the brittle terrain had in the rest of the Beyond. With that thought in mind, the Masked Owl began flying east by southeast. But Gwynneth saw nothing, no trace of the Sark even as she alighted in her friend's encampment.

The kiln, where the Sark had forged her memory jugs, had collapsed and was nothing more than a heap of
dried mud and the firestones she had collected from the river and used for reinforcing the kiln's foundation. A Slough grouse stalked about with a broken wing, as if trying to survey the damage. And unbeknownst to Gwynneth, inside the winding caverns of her cave, the Sark lay close to death.

The previous evening the Sark had staggered back to her encampment, weak and bleeding profusely. She collapsed just outside her cave and lay there unconscious until dawn. The morning light revived her slightly and she managed to drag herself into her cave only to confront a fresh nightmare. “It can't be … it can't be!” she moaned. Every single memory jug was shattered. The Sark felt an answering fracturing in her marrow and crumpled onto a mound of pot shards. To any other creature she would appear nearly dead or deeply comatose, her breathing shallow and irregular. But some part deep within her remained alert.

Was she someplace between earth and the Cave of Souls? she wondered. She felt she was in a different land, a different country, and yet there was a familiar scent she had saved from long ago and put in the jug with the blue glaze. It wafted out to greet her.

That blue glaze was the devil to figure out!
She had been explaining to Gwyndor how she had pulled borax from the old salt beds and mixed it with some moose scat.
Oh, forget that
, she told herself.
It's the scent inside the memory jug that's important, not the glaze. It's the scent contained, you crazy old fool!
Her marrow trembled as the first wafts of sweet grass came back to her.
Sweet grass!
Even in her insensible state, her skittish eye began to spin madly.

The odor of the sweet grass swirled up and flooded through her, taking her back to that moon so long ago, when she had just entered her second year. She had been born into the MacNabbys, a small clan with only two packs, but somehow she had lost them. She had not been born a
malcadh.
No Obea had come to take her away, she was sure of that. Obeas were said to have no scent because of their sterility, but the Sark had realized very soon how powerful her own sense of smell was. To her, the absence of odor was in an odd way as memorable as the most pungent scent. She would have remembered being carried off to a
tummfraw
by an Obea. She had therefore surmised that she had been some sort of embarrassment to her parents and had been left behind or
had been misplaced somehow, accidentally on purpose. Wolf pups, always curious, were known to wander off. Perhaps she had and no one had come to look for her or tried very hard to find her. After all, she had been born very, very ugly.

When, as a yearling, the Sark had discovered a MacNabby pack, she followed them for a while but did not approach. Her fur was mottled and ragged, and her eye had begun to skitter in its socket. The members of the MacNabby clan were exceedingly handsome. She feared that she might not be accepted. It seemed to her better to remain separate. So she had gone off.

Not long after, the Sark caught sight of a MacNabby camp heading back east from the summer hunting grounds. There was a beautiful she-wolf among them with a pelt the color of pale amber, a wolf so stunning that she took the Sark's breath away. The she-wolf was everything that the Sark was not, with well-formed haunches, an elegant muzzle, and the greenest eyes the Sark had ever seen. She was traveling with her mate and three pups, but every male in the pack was excessively attentive to her. More than once, the Sark saw the she-wolf's mate take a nip at her admirers. He was the leader of the pack and it was not simply indecorous that these other males would flirt with their leader's mate, but a violation of the
gaddernock,
the laws that governed the clans of the Beyond.

The female, whom the Sark called Amber, did little to discourage the other males' flirtatious overtures, which seemed to the Sark another violation of some sort. But what puzzled the Sark the most was how inattentive she was to her new litter of pups. She let them scramble off this way and that and it was always some other pack member who went after them. They were unruly little fellows, all male, and when Amber disciplined them, she was very harsh. More than once, her warning nips drew blood. She was not a good mother; indeed, there did not seem to be a single maternal bone in her body.

Still, she fascinated the Sark. Amber was appallingly vain, so much so that she could hardly pass a lake or a puddle without pausing to stare at her own reflection. She would grow very still, as if her own beauty put her in a trance of some sort.

Then one night, when the pack had stopped by a pond to camp, the Sark had an astounding revelation about who exactly Amber was. The moon was full and the lake looked as if it had been gilded in silver. Not a breath of wind disturbed its surface. It provided the perfect mirror for the beautiful wolf's reflection.

The Sark hid in the grass staring at Amber, wondering why she was so fascinated by the vain wolf.
What is it about her?
the Sark wondered.

A breeze ruffled the surface, disturbing Amber's image, and one of her pups came up demanding to nurse. Amber snarled, spun around, and gave the pup a sharp whack with her paw. The pup went flying through the air, then hit the ground hard. Just then, the wind changed direction and the Sark picked up Amber's scent for the first time. It was painfully familiar, the scent the Sark had smelled with her first breath of life. This she-wolf was her Milk Giver! This was her own mother.

The pup remained motionless on the ground. The Sark could tell by the angle of its body that his spine had been broken and he was dead. Amber went calmly up to the crumpled body and sniffed it, then picked the little pup up by the scruff of his neck, carried him to the far edge of the lake where the water was the deepest, and dropped him in. There would be no trace of her crime.

So this is my mother!
thought the Sark.
And she is a murderer!
The Sark's skittish eye flooded with tears.
How can she be this way to her own pup, a beautiful, perfect pup, not a hideous, bobble-eyed, lop-eared pup as I must have been?

She had just witnessed by the bank of the pond an ugliness the Sark could have never imagined. The wolf she called Amber, whom until moments before the Sark thought the
most beautiful wolf she had ever seen, was grotesque. She had an ugliness inside that almost stank, it was so hideous. Her own mother — Amber — was a
malcadh.
Her form was perfect, but her soul was twisted. And for the first time, the Sark realized that although her own body was far from perfect — indeed grotesque — it was just the outside and had nothing to do with what was inside her, the place where her true wolf nature lived. She could not change her form, but she could make sure that her inside never became as deformed as that of her mother. It was perhaps a blessing that the Sark's appearance was slightly monstrous, as no wolf would attempt to mate with her. She dared not pass on her mother's twisted spirit to any pup.

The Sark watched as Amber stepped back from the water's edge and waited until the ripples retreated from the place she had just dumped her son's body. When the surface was still as glass, she bent her head to observe her reflection for one last time before heading back to the pack.

This was the Sark's strongest sweet-grass memory, one of the earliest she had whispered into a memory jug. And although the blue-glazed jug was broken, there was the whisper of scent from the shards, gurgling up as if from a
spring.
How can this be?
she wondered in her strange state. But the shards had reassembled themselves in her mind, pieces of a shattered puzzle that had once again come together. And then the Sark caught the scent of an owl nearby, a familiar owl.
I can smell her…. Gwynneth.
Something inside the Sark laughed.
But owls can't smell worth a pile of caribou scat. She'll never find me here with my beloved memory jugs, slipping my pelt at last.

The Sark was wrong. Gwynneth didn't smell her, but her sharp ears picked up the terrible ragged breathing and she entered the cave. When she saw the Sark, lying in a pool of blood so deep that the shards from her memory jugs almost floated around her, Gwynneth screamed. She screamed as no owl had ever screamed before.