Lone Wolf

where the glacier lilies grew and the banks of the river were thick with irises. The gilded summer mornings he spent swimming and looking for trout now felt as fragile and fleeting as the cloud pictures he and Thunderheart had loved to watch.
    The days started to lengthen, and as they lengthened, they seemed emptier. Faolan was diligent in his scent marking so that even if he could not find Thunderheart, perhaps she could find him. But she never came and she  did not fade from his memory. Still, Faolan never gave up hope.
    In the meantime, he had to go on with the business of living. He had to find meat. He must eat and grow fat as Thunderheart had taught him. Even though he did not sleep through winter, he must be strong and fat to keep the cold away when it came again.
    The loneliness of his life grew. Deep within him there was an emptiness that seemed to expand little by little until he felt almost hollow. One day he passed a tree that had been struck by lightning. Its trunk had been scoured out and all that was left was a deep black gash. Its limbs were gray and skeletal, barren of any needles. As he looked at it he realized that he was exactly like that tree. It still stood, but why? It was not living, yet it was not dead. He walked on, the hollowness inside him amplifying with every step. But the hollow steps brought him no closer to Thunderheart.
    ***
    Faolan continued to hear the howls of the other wolves, but they made no more sense than before. He knew they were wolves, and yet he felt no kinship with them. They might as well have been as different from him as  the marmot he had killed a few nights before. Was that what Thunderheart had meant when she said that this place might not be good for his kind?
    Faolan preferred to hunt at night, but the nights were becoming shorter and shorter. And when the frost forest seemed to tilt and turn full into the sun, the night simply vanished along with the last remnants of sparkling frost. Thunderheart had told him this happened in the Outermost. There would be no night, no darkness, only sun for the next few cycles of the moon.
    On the same day that night disappeared, Faolan began tracking a cougar. Cougars were dangerous. Thunderheart had told him how just before she found Faolan, cougars had killed her cub. They were big --- bigger than marmots or wolverines -- and fast and cunning. She had told Faolan that he would not be ready to tackle a cougar for a long time. But he felt ready now. And in the back of his mind a strange logic had started to haunt him. If I can kill the cougar, he thought, the cougar who took Thunderheart's cub, maybe she will come back to me.
    He had been tracking the cougar from the time the sun had first risen until it hung low in the sky and seemed to hover endlessly above the horizon like a vigilant golden  eye watching the earth. And so am I, Faolan thought as he entered the second day of tracking the cougar. The loitering sun inspired him.
    It was well into the second day when he began to sense the cougar was tiring, that he was actually closing the distance. But Faolan also became aware of another presence, one that had been following him for a shorter time but was persistent nonetheless. He was immediately wary.
    Faolan had developed a quickness of mind that allowed him to concentrate deeply and yet at the same time maintain his alertness. He had caught his first glimpse of his tracker, a tawny smear, behind a thicket of bracken. He was being followed closely now. But he would not be forced off the track of the cougar, nor would he rush the kill.
    He spotted the cougar settling down with a hare. The cougar was a bit larger than Faolan, longer and lower to the ground, but it appeared more slender and its chest seemed narrower. Faolan had been careful to maneuver himself into a position downwind of the cougar so his scent would not be carried. He had so skillfully tracked his prey that the big cat was completely unaware of his presence. He was certain, however, that there were two  other wolves tracking him. They want this meat, too. But I'm no raven! I'll not eat second.
    Faolan crept up on the cougar to almost within pouncing distance when a sudden shift in the wind brought his scent to the cat. He saw the flicker of the cougar's nostrils and then the cougar was off. But Faolan was not about to give up. The cougar seemed to be devouring the land in front of him. Faolan kept up. I will kill you and eat you. I shall grow fat on the