Spirit Wolf

The creatures soon became proficient in building the curious domed caves. Toby and Burney became skillful snow packers and Myrr and Maudie were excellent at squeezing in on either side of whoever was the “tunneler.” Gwynneth, too, with her long, sharp talons, became an excellent excavator.

  “And to think,” she said one dawn as she furiously flung back talonfuls of snow, “that burrowing owls used to be the only ones trusted with digging. What would they say if they saw me now!”

  All day, the companions slept in the snow caves and then, when the sun dropped down below the horizon, they crawled out and began their nightly trek across the Crystal Plain. Faolan took the lead, leaving his clear swirling print in the sparkling snow.

  Edme, who had known Faolan better than any of the other wolves, felt a myriad of sometimes confusing feelings and emotions as they traveled farther and farther west. She sensed spirits that seemed to stir in the radiance that emanated from Faolan. And the bone that she carried with her both troubled and comforted her. The incisions in it were beautiful, but she could barely understand them. They were incised in Old Wolf, a language of which she only knew a few expressions that had lingered on among the wolves. However, she sensed that it was part of a very old story that had been left untold. Edme slid her eyes toward Faolan as she trotted alongside him. He often blurted out Old Wolf phrases, phrases that no wolf of their time should have known.

  Although the mysterious pain in her hind leg still troubled her, Edme was walking better. She sensed the pain was connected with the bone she carried. If I set it down, would I begin to limp again? she wondered.

  They were nearly across the Crystal Plain. The snow became coarser as they approached the western sea, and building the snow caves was trickier.

  One evening, soon after they had left what was to be their last snow cave, Gwynneth was flying above the somewhat straggling line of creatures. Banja was carrying her own pup and helping Myrr along as well, entertaining him with some of the lively shanties that the Watch wolves used to sing when the She-Winds blew and all the colliers and Rogue smiths would come to collect bonk coals from the surge of erupting volcanoes. For some reason, these old shanties made Gwynneth think of her earliest days in the Beyond, when she had first come there with her father, Gwyndor, and met the Sark.

  The Sark! How Gwynneth missed her and with each league away from the Beyond and toward the Distant Blue, the more keen the feeling. If the Sark could have only held on, perhaps they could have gotten her well enough for this journey. If only … Gwynneth supposed that life was filled with regrets and if onlys.

  More than once, Gwynneth’s auntie had said that the world is not fair. Certainly it had not been fair that the MacHeath clan had tried to start a war between the wolves and the bears. It wasn’t fair that Edme was a malcadh made and not born. If fairness were the rule, the good would not die young, as Coryn, the king of the Great Tree, had. The vicious and the depraved would be immediately swept away to the eternal flames of the Dim World.

  The world was not fair. However, on this cloudless night of crisp, clear air high above the Crystal Plain, it was beautiful. And Gwynneth, who could travel so much faster than the wolves, decided to take a moment to trace a constellation. This was how all young owlets learned to navigate, by tracing the season’s constellations. She did a banking turn and flew off toward the east — the hatching sky as the owls called it. This was where the constellations were born each night, just as the Deep Purple began to settle and the stars began to rise. Like chicks clambering over the edge of a nest to explore what was out there, like wolf pups impatient to see the white light at the opening of a whelping den, stars, too, scrambled over the rim of the new night to take their place in the big world.

  “Ah!” Gwynneth exclaimed as she saw the first claw of the Little Raccoon. “But, Beezar!” she said suddenly. “Beezar, what are you doing here?” She addressed the first stars of the constellation as if they could hear her.

  Gwynneth realized they were Beyond the Beyond, beyond the Outermost. She was the farthest west she had ever been, and the farthest south. And now the poor staggering blind wolf Beezar had left the Beyond and was following them toward the Distant Blue.

  New land, new territory! the Masked Owl thought. But the things we leave behind!

  The thought was as sharp as a blade hot from the forge. She could not help but think of the Sark, her bones now mingled with the shards of pottery on the floor of her cave.

  At just that moment, Gwynneth spied the top of a new constellation that seemed to be clawing its way over the dark edge of the eastern night in a most determined manner.

  What could that be? she wondered. It looked vaguely familiar, but she was sure she had never seen it before.

  “JUST FOLLOW THE TIP!” HEEP called out and flicked his tail.

  “This is the first sensible thing he has ever done with that loc na mhuice thing,” Heep’s mate, Aliac, muttered.

  “Ma, did you curse?” Abban said.

  Aliac turned around in the dark tunnel of this strange cave and blinked at her little son. “Why do you call me “Ma”? That’s not a proper name.”

  “What do you mean?” Abban asked. “Every wolf calls their ma … Ma. What other word is there?”

  “Mum,” she said and blinked again. Where in the world had that come from? The word seemed familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it. “Call me Mum, but perhaps not around your father. And, yes, I did curse.” She paused. “Don’t be like me!”

  She felt a shudder pass through her. Because I really don’t know who I am. “Come along now. We have to follow the others. Your father has hopes of us getting out of here.”

  “You mean this cave?”

  “I mean this whole terrible place of endless winter and no food and earthquakes and Lupus knows what else.”

  “Pa liked the earthquake. It gave him his tail back.”

  “Yes, so I’ve noticed.”

  There was a sneer in her voice that Abban had never before heard. But he trotted along, looking around the rumps of the other wolves for the flickering tail his father raised so proudly. They were traveling through a beautiful cave with strange drawings on the walls. Abban had never seen anything like it before.

  Heep had picked up a familiar scent early on in the cave. There had been a mixture of scents from other wolves and possibly bears, but he had teased out an old familiar smell. What would Faolan do when he saw Heep with a tail? And not only with a tail, but with a handsome mate and a son! His old adversary, the very wolf who had caused him to be chased from the Beyond, what would he say or do now?

  Faolan was clever, smart. Heep knew that if anyone could find his way to another place, it was the splay-pawed wolf. He supposed that Faolan had also been mended now, his paw turned right and that distinct print with the spiraling marks erased. Faolan had learned how to walk in a way that disguised his track, but he couldn’t disguise his scent and Heep would follow it.

  Heep stopped. Faolan’s scent began to grow dimmer as he rounded a long curved wall. At the end, it simply vanished and there was a new unfamiliar scent, mingled with the older ones of the other wolves and the bear cubs. He caught sight of a feather blowing through the darkness.

  “What’s this?” he said.

  At that moment Aliac came up to him. “It’s a feather.”

  “Of course it’s a feather,” he snarled.

  She rolled her eyes at him. “It’s an owl feather, a Masked Owl, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Heep shoved his ears forward and bared his teeth, lifting his tail straight out. “Tuck it, Aliac! Tuck it!” She quickly folded her tail between her legs in a gesture of submission. Heep relaxed. “We’ll continue now.”

  He tried to maintain his confident stride, but he was nervous. This new scent made him uneasy.

  Soon the rout came to a heal where there was a large opening to the sky. They tipped their heads up and saw rafts of stars scudding by.

  “Look at this!” Abban said.

  ??
?What?” his father snapped.

  “This print — a swirling star!”

  Heep felt his blood run cold as he looked down at the paw print.

  “But there’s no scent!” he roared. “No scent!”

  “What are you talking about?” Aliac said. “I smell the scent of at least five wolves, one nursing pup, and some bear cubs.”

  Heep lunged at Aliac and struck her above the eye with his claws.

  But Aliac did not sink into the expected postures of submission.

  “Down! Tail tuck!” Heep growled.

  “Strike me again like that, you fool, and you will have no tail to tuck or wave. I shall tear it from your bony old rump!”

  “Aliac!” The yellow wolf Heep was stunned. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Oh, yes, I would. I can lead this rout as well as anyone,” she turned to the others and glared. Rags was the first to sink into a posture of submission. Then Fynoff and Bevan. “I was a turning guard. One of the best. I can press a byrrgis at attack speed and reverse them in the blink of an eye if a bull moose goes rogue in a run.”

  “Aliac!”

  “Don’t call me that. It’s not my name!”

  A vague look came into the she-wolf’s eyes. There was such stillness in the heal. A long, palpable quietness like grains of silence falling through the moon crack above began to fill the space. Abban spotted a glimmer in the deep green of his mother’s eyes. He nestled close to her forepaws.

  “My name is Caila. Caila, turning guard of the Carreg Gaer byrrgis of the MacDuncan clan. Mother of Mhairie and Dearlea and Abban.” And I have lost during the famine every pup I once had save for this one. And, by Lupus, I won’t lose Abban.

  The next thing Abban knew, he was in the firm grip of his mother’s jaws and seemed to be flying through the air and into the starry night.

  She had picked him up again in her jaws and streaked off across the dazzling plain of snow, away from the vicious rout and the half life she had been living.

  GWYNNETH WAS MOMENTARILY distracted from the curious constellation rising in the sky by a streak to the east. At first she thought it was a falling star low on the horizon. But then she realized that it was a creature — a body running stretched out, running as if …

  Gwynneth’s mind stopped, but her wings did not. Running like a turning guard! Caila! The name exploded in Gwynneth’s head. She carved a steep banking turn and began to plunge.

  Great Glaux, she’s running with a pup in her jaws!

  “Caila!” Gwynneth screeched.

  The wolf hardly broke stride.

  “Caila!” Gwynneth shreed this time, emitting a piercing shriek as she dived straight down. Caila had to swerve to avoid her, and skidded to a halt.

  “Gwynneth!” She softly dropped the pup in her jaws. “What are you doing here?”

  “I might ask the same of you! Everyone thinks you’re dead. Mhairie, Dearlea.”

  “Mhairie, Dearlea.” She said their names so softly as if she were caressing them. “My daughters.”

  Gwynneth regarded her gravely. “You denied them.”

  “I what?”

  It all came back to Caila. The terrible night when out of nowhere Mhairie and Dearlea appeared, her two second milk daughters. She had raised them and they had never known that she was not their first Milk Giver. One never revealed such things. Except on that night, her brain muddled, she had told them, and not only that, but denied them. The horrendous words she had spoken rang now in her head: I was never your mother. I deny you, I deny you, I deny you!

  This was the curse of a faithful mate to an unfaithful partner but was never uttered to children. And yet she had done just that, done the unthinkable. Seconds later, an outclanner had attacked her and shortly after, Heep had found her, staggering about, bleeding and in a daze. For Heep she was an experiment of sorts. Could a clan wolf be turned, be made useful to his rout? He thought he had accomplished it, until the moment she had regained her senses in the long winding tunnel of the Cave Before Time.

  She shook her head now in disgust and disbelief. “How could I deny my own daughters?” Could they ever forgive her? she wondered. It was probably too late.

  She looked up at Gwynneth, her muzzle trembling. “Are Mhairie and Dearlea dead now? Did they die in the famine?”

  “No, no, not at all. They are not too far ahead of you. But how did you get here? Across the Crystal Plain?”

  “I ran, ran like I never have before.”

  “In the day?”

  “Never! I found snow caves.”

  “The ones we dug.”

  Caila blinked. “I thought there was a familiar scent in those snow caves. It had to be that of Dearlea and Mhairie. A Milk Giver never really forgets, except — I did, didn’t I? For a long while.” Her eyes welled with tears.

  “Don’t cry. They are not far away. I can lead you to them.”

  “Who are Mhairie and Dearlea?” Abban asked.

  Caila leaned down to lick her pup. “Your sisters! And we are going to meet them!”

  “I’ll carry your pup,” Gwynneth said. “You’ll be able to run faster. Just follow me. We have to get to them before morning.”

  THE COMPANIONS’ LAST SHELTER wasn’t a snow cave, but the kind of shelter they might have found in the Beyond. So they called it the Last Den. It was more of a cliff’s overhang than a proper den, and it was at the edge of the western sea. Far behind them on the Crystal Plain, a new day was breaking, but they were safe from the glare. Ahead of them, like a glistening bow, a bridge of ice arced across the sea toward the Distant Blue.

  Gwynneth alighted on the crescent of beach.

  “You’re here at last,” Edme said. “We were beginning to worry.”

  “What happened?” Faolan asked as he stepped forward and his paw made the distinctive print in the sand. He fell back in surprise as he took in the pup she carried.

  “I’ve found someone.”

  Caila stepped out from behind a beach boulder, her head down, her tail between her legs, her ears laid flat. Mhairie and Dearlea looked at each other and began to tremble. The little pup came up to them.

  “Mum says you are my sisters. I’ve never had sisters.”

  Caila raised her head. “He wants to be your brother and I want to be your mum. I so, so want to be your mum again. I am so sorry.” She crumpled to her knees in front of Mhairie and Dearlea.

  They both put their muzzles close to her head and began to lick her ears, her nose. First one then the other ever so gently took her muzzle in their jaws. These were the gestures of forgiveness, of absolution.

  “You gave us milk,” Dearlea said.

  “You loved us as well as our first Milk Giver,” Mhairie said.

  “You taught us to run in byrrgises. Mhairie became an outflanker.”

  “And Dearlea is a skreeleen.”

  Faolan stepped forward. “They never forgot you.”

  “But I forgot myself,” she sobbed. “I forgot who I was, who I had been. My world turned inside out, upside down, and backward. Even my name …” She blinked. “It was backward. I was Aliac.”

  “But now you’re Caila again,” Faolan said.

  “Yes, call me Caila,” she said softly, and rolled her shoulders as if she were pleased to be back in her old pelt again.

  Gwynneth launched into the purpling night and gave a joyous hoot.

  “Look! Look to the sky.”

  A beautiful constellation of at least a dozen stars was rising over the Crystal Plain in the last of the night.

  “I’ve never seen that one before,” Edme said. “What should we call it?”

  “The Sark!” Faolan exclaimed. “Look, it’s a jug of stars! A memory jug!”

  And for just a second it was as if he could see right through to the memories in that jug.

  “Yes,” Gwynneth said softly.

  “Yes,” Edme echoed. She tipped her head up, feeling as if her own story was just about to begin. She looked down at the twisted femur she had
carried across the Crystal Plain, knowing it carried a love lost and a journey.

  She looked out across the silvery bow of the ice bridge. Tomorrow their true journey would begin. Nine wolves, three pups, an owl, and two bear cubs would step onto that bridge to cross the western sea to the Distant Blue and a new world.

  A new beginning at the end of an old world.

  I WISH TO ACKNOWLEDGE MY debt to one of my favorite poets, W. B. Yeats. His two poems “The Second Coming” and “Sailing to Byzantium” were a particularly strong influence in writing Spirit Wolf. The phrase “no country for old wolves” was adapted for my wolf world directly from Yeats’s poem “Sailing to Byzantium,” in which the poet refers to the country of Ireland that the figure in the poem has left, as “no country for old men.” The notion of the gyre, a conical shape, frequently appears throughout Yeats’s poetry and is part of his complex philosophical system. He wrote about this philosophy in a book called A Vision. It was something that has intrigued me for years, ever since I first studied Yeats in college. I took this idea and adapted it for the notion of gyre souls. While gyre souls in truth bear no resemblance to Yeats’s theory, nevertheless I am indebted to this great Irish poet whose words have continued to haunt me in the very best of ways for over forty years.

  KATHRYN LASKY is the author of the bestselling Guardians of Ga’Hoole series, which has sold more than four million copies and has been made into a major motion picture, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole. Her books have received a Newbery Honor, a Boston Globe—Horn Book Award, and a Washington Post—Children’s Book Guild Award. She lives with her husband in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  Copyright © 2012 by Kathryn Lasky

  Interior illustrations by Richard Cowdrey

  Interior illustrations © 2012 by Scholastic Inc.

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