Lone Wolf

what?" Faolan asked. Thunderheart looked troubled and didn't answer. "Someday we'll go back?"
    "Perhaps. But I am not sure if it is good for your kind."
    "My kind?" Faolan felt his heart race. "But the Outermost, it is good for your kind? If it's good for your kind, it's good for my kind."
    "Never mind, never mind. Eat up." She was about to say more, but Faolan interrupted.
    "I know, I know," Faolan said wearily. "I must grow fat for winter."
    "Yes, eat that liver." She yanked out the bloody organ and tossed it to him.
    He obediently began eating, but his mind turned over what Thunderheart had said. I am not sure if it is good for  your kind. He didn't like the way it sounded and didn't want to hear it again, out loud or in his mind. He would simply seal up his ears.
    ***
    Together the grizzly and the wolf pup would often hunt late into the summer evenings until the stars broke out. Faolan liked to sleep near the opening of the den, where he could see the stars and hear the star stories that Thunderheart told him. By now the words and the hidden language of bears beneath the words had become completely transparent to Faolan.
    Thunderheart would point her paw toward the sky and trace the star picture of the Great Bear constellation with her longest claw. "He leads the way to Ursulana," she whispered. It was to Ursulana, the bear heaven, where Thunderheart was sure her cub's spirit had traveled.
    Every star seemed to have a story, and every animal a constellation. Faolan was impressed that Thunderheart knew so many. She pointed to the west of the Star Bear to the Wolf constellation. "It's disappearing now in the middle of summer. It shines the brightest and rises the highest in spring, but look, there are the Great Claws."
    Faolan blinked as a clawlike figure began to creep up over the purple horizon. "It's late, but it stays the longest, arriving in early winter and staying through summer. If you go to the banks of Hoolemere, you can see the young owls of the Great Ga'Hoole Tree practicing their navigation exercises by tracing it. The owls call the Great Claws the Golden Talons."
    "Hoolemere? Great -- what do you call it -- Tree? Navigation?" Faolan asked. He was completely bewildered.
    Thunderheart made a snuffling sound, which was the way she laughed sometimes. "You're young and you haven't seen much! Hoolemere is a vast sea, and there is a group of owls who live on an island in a huge tree in the middle of that sea. These owls are called the Guardians of Ga'Hoole. They are very intelligent owls."
    "You mean smart?" Faolan asked.
    "Yes, very smart."
    "As smart as you?"
    "Oh, much smarter! They can find their way to many places just by looking at the stars and how they move. That is what navigation is -- finding one's way by the stars."
    "But you told me about the star to the north. You find your way by it."
    "That's easy. That star never moves. It only sits high in the sky. It's my only guide. But the owls use all the stars -- the whole sky."
    "That's probably because they fly and know it better."
    Thunderheart gave the pup a little squeeze. What a smart little wolf he was!
    Faolan yawned and said sleepily, "Someday maybe I'll go to the banks of Hoolemere and maybe even swim to the island. Such a funny word, 'Hoole.' What does it mean?"
    "Well," Thunderheart sighed, "some say that it is actually a wolf word and that it is their word for 'owl.'" But by this time Faolan was fast asleep in her arms.
    ***
    With the waning days of summer, Thunderheart had but one thought: Eat! Eat all one could for the winter! The cold sleep was coming and the two of them must have enough fat. But beyond her overwhelming obsession about Faolan's size and the question of fat, there was another more elusive fear -- that of the cold sleep itself. Soon she would have to find a winter den farther away from the river. She was not sure if wolves went into their dens and slept for endless days. How would she know? She had slumbered through every winter of her life. She knew  nothing of the winter world and what other animals did. How would she explain this to Faolan? She knew that she changed during this sleep. She grew thinner and if she did rouse herself, her mind was foggy. If she slept and he didn't, how would she protect him? Perhaps she should warn him. But not right now.
    Right now, the salmon were swimming up the river to their spawning ground. Thunderheart and Faolan had waded out to the shallows on the upstream side of a small rapid