Lone Wolf

spot these avalanches from a distance, and even if one couldn't see them they could certainly be heard. So it was profoundly shocking when a moon cycle after the boom and crack of the last avalanche, she saw the twisted-legged pup stagger into camp. Duncan MacDuncan named him Hamish, an ancient wolf name derived from the word hamycch, which meant "to leap." Despite his twisted leg, Hamish had leaped over the avalanches, or through them, and somehow survived.
    Shibaan now spotted the perfect tummfraw directly ahead, on a trail used by migrating moose. She would deposit the pup on the flat so it would be crushed by the weight of the huge beasts. And if the moose didn't come, the owls would, for this trail was directly beneath the flight path of the colliers who came to the Beyond to  fetch coal from the fires of the Ring of the Sacred Volcanoes. The colliers were expert at diving in the coal beds on the flanks of the volcanoes, and were always hungry. A half-dead pup would be easy prey.
    So she dropped the mewling pup. And although in all her years as the Obea she had never turned back to watch a pup, she did now. For the first time, she tried to imagine the moment this creature would die -- the sound its tiny bones would make when trampled flat by a long line of migrating behemoths, or its mewl of pain when caught by the grip of an owl's talons. That was a worse thought, a death that would take a long time. First the awful feeling of leaving the ground and then the rip of the owl's sharp talons and beak. The hackles on the Obea's back rose high, and her tail stood straight out from her body. She abruptly swerved off the trail and took the fastest way down a steep slope.
    The Obea had not gone far when she felt a slight tremor coming up from the ground. Not again! she thought. More aftershocks. But this was worse. Suddenly, the slope opened up before her. There was a great rent in the earth. She stumbled and heard boulders crashing down behind her. And then there was another sound, that of her own bones being crushed.
    The Obea was not sure how long she had been unconscious, but by the time she woke, the moon had risen. She looked up into the summer sky that was dusted with stars. She searched out the constellation of the Great Wolf, Lupus, that walked the night toward the Cave of Souls. I am dying, she thought, but will I go to the Cave of Souls? Or -- and she shuddered -- to the dim world? She had taken those pups all these years to the tummfraws because it was clan law that she do so. She did not make the laws. She merely had to follow them, and as Duncan MacDuncan always explained, it was for the well-being of the clan. The bloodlines would be ruined if malcadhs were allowed to live without a real fight for their lives. The ones who made it, who came back, were exceptional pups and often grew into extraordinary wolves. But wolves were not to grieve over the ones who did not survive. This was the law of the wild. And she had not grieved until now ... now when she was clearly dying. Will I be punished? Is there some chieftain higher than Duncan MacDuncan who will turn me away from the Cave of Souls?
    Shibaan was suddenly very frightened. Although the lower half of her body was numb and she felt no real pain, she realized that there was something much worse. It was  this new sensation: grief. Grief mixed with fear. Every one of those pups she now began to remember -- the first one with the milky eyes, born blind. The one born with only three legs, the earless ones, and tailless ones, and the ones with crooked hips so they could never run. And then there was that one from just the year before with the splayed paw, and the peculiar design on its pad, a swirl of dim lines. For some reason, that pup had unnerved her like none other. She could not get rid of that one fast enough.
    There was nothing unnerving or frightening about the little half-paw pup she had abandoned this day. As the numbness crept through her body, she imagined trying to go back and rescue that half-paw pup.
    It was as if she were outside the boundaries of her own body. She leaped up the steep slope agilely, hopping over boulders, heading for the moose trail. She was on the trail now, remembering every bend, every pebble. She saw the tiny creature just ahead. Relief swept through her and at the same moment she was conscious of a peculiar sensation, a feeling she had never experienced in the withered teats on her belly. They no longer felt shrunken