Wolves of the Beyond: Watch Wolf
Read Wolves of the Beyond: Watch Wolf Online
Authors: Kathryn Lasky
KATHRYN LASKY
OF THE
BEYOND
WATCH WOLF
CHAPTER TWO: WINTER DREAMS ON A SUMMER NIGHT
CHAPTER THREE: THE SCENT OF THE RIVER
CHAPTER FOUR: A TRUE GNAW WOLF?
CHAPTER FIVE: BLOOD AND THORNS
CHAPTER EIGHT: VIEW FROM A RIDGE
CHAPTER TEN: THE BONE OF BONES
CHAPTER ELEVEN: DUNBAR MACHEATH CONSIDERS
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: ESCAPE OF THE SHE-WOLVES
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE SHE-WINDS
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: A TWINGE IN THE MARROW
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: SHADOWS OF WAR
CHAPTER NINETEEN: KILLING FEAR
CHAPTER TWENTY: BREAKING RULES
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: DRUMS OF WAR
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: “EDME! EDME! EDME!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: THE BLACK GLASS DESERT
HUS
S
AYETH THE
F
ENGO
TWO WOLVES STOOD ON A
WINDSWEPT bluff over
looking an encampment
where, two days befo
re, 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 — 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
— 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.
U
NDER THE
S
TARS
“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 — 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 — 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 — 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 eas
t, and the blackness of the night tingled
with stars. Faolan listened. He hoped — oh, how he hoped — 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 — you know, after …” 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 m
other 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 o
f 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 grass as the wind stirred it on this late spring night.