Wolves of the Beyond: Shadow Wolf (16 page)

GWYNNETH RETURNED TO HER FORGE.
Faolan returned to the Carreg Gaer to begin the journey to the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes, where he would be inducted into the Watch. The Sark returned to her cave.

She fetched a newly fired memory jug and began to whisper into it softly, so softly that the words were barely audible.

“I am a rational being. I do not believe in magic, nor do I believe in mist, or what the foolish wolves call
lochins
and the owls call
scrooms
. But tonight under the fullness of the Moon of the Singing Grass, I felt the ghosts of wolves past. I believe they were summoned by the wolf we know as Faolan. I believe that he does not know his power or the cause of the odd spiraling marks on the bottom of his splayed paw. Could he be what the
skreeleens
of old called a
gyre
soul?”

The Sark drew her muzzle from the memory jug and stuffed a wad of Slough clay in its opening to plug it tightly. She did not want a single word slipping away. She poked at the fire in her cave hearth, then circling tightly three times, dropped onto her fox pelt for the night. It had been a long day. She was dead tired, and as she heard the sweet lament of the singing grass rise from the Slough, her last thought was not of Faolan but of the she-wolf Morag. How proud she would have been of this son she never really knew and now seemed unable to forget.
I hope she is well and I hope when her time comes, her end will be peaceful
.

And then, for perhaps the first time in her life, the Sark of the Slough sent up a small prayer. “May the Great Star Wolf be shining when she goes. May her journey to the Cave of Souls be short and straight. And may Skaarsgard help her climb the star ladder swiftly.”

I HAVE OFTEN TAKEN INSPIRATION
in writing my books from history and from literature. I want to acknowledge my deep debt to some of these sources now. The gnaw wolf Heep’s literary ancestor was none other than the fictional Uriah Heep, created by Charles Dickens in his masterpiece
David Copperfield
. Known for his insufferable humility and cloying obsequiousness, Uriah Heep truly is one of the most obnoxious characters in fiction.

Duncan MacDuncan’s speech in Chapter Five, in which he explains why the wolves of the Beyond need laws, was modeled after Sir Thomas More’s speech in the Robert Bolt play
A Man for All Seasons
, in which More says, “This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast—man’s laws, not God’s—and if you cut them
down—and you’re just the man to do it—d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?” (act one, scene seven)

I owe a huge debt to the musician Bob Dylan. The rhythms, rhyme schemes, and phrasings of many of his songs and ballads permeate the poems in the narrative. Most particularly at the end of Chapter Nine, the song that Faolan howls is derived from Dylan’s classic “The Times They are A-Changin’,” as well as Gwynneth’s mournful prayer at the end of Chapter Twelve.

I have always thought that writing is not a solitary performance, but a collaborative one between an author and the past—what she has read, listened to, and absorbed. The shoulders of giants are not just reserved for scientists as Newton suggested, but writers and artists perch there as well. If I have overlooked in my acknowledgments any giants, I apologize.

K.L.
Cambridge, MA
June 2010