Spirit Wolf (15 page)

“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.