Lone Wolf

and hard. Milk, she thought. Milk is coming! I will take this pup and nurse it. Joy flooded through her. The moose had  not come yet. The sky was clear of owls. There was only the spirit trail above.
    ***
    Duncan MacDuncan, the wise and revered chief of the MacDuncans, stepped out to howl into the night, and told the far-flung packs of his ancient and venerable clan that the Carreg Gaer, the chieftain's pack, was safe after the quake. He had forgotten about the Obea and the mission she had gone on; forgotten, that is, until he tipped his head back to howl. His eyes caught the constellation of the Great Wolf, Lupus, rising in the eastern sky. He watched as a tawny golden mist gathered near the Star Wolf's head. Instantly, he knew it was Shibaan. He had seen her once, long before she joined the MacDuncan clan, when she was young and golden. So he howled his farewell into the vastness of the night. "You have left us, Obea, left us stronger for your sacrifice. Now follow the spirit trail, Shibaan. You have served us well." And then he blinked and this time howled with sheer delight, for a dozen or more little star pups raced from the Cave of Souls to greet her. Another pup followed close behind the Obea, and where his hind paws touched the trail, there was only one little star, as if half its paw were missing.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
    ***
    THE CAVE BEFORE TIME

    FAOLAN STEPPED CLOSER TO THE strange wall with the animal figures. Were these creatures real or imaginary? Does the wall breathe or is it merely rock? Do I dream or do I wake? These pictures were somewhat like the star pictures that Thunderheart used to point out for him with her sharp black claws, but they were so much more real. He thought he had actually heard the animals panting as they pounded across the stone. He even went right up to the wall of rock to sniff it. But it was merely rock -- silent, cold, and unmoving.
    Faolan raised his muzzle and began to explore for scent, any odor that might betray that this was the place a bear had lived. He would know Thunderheart's smell anywhere although it differed according to what she was eating. In spring, there was the wet green fragrance when  she had gorged on plants and bulbs. But there was not a trace of that odor. Nor was there the dry clover smell of summer, or the scent of fish that saturated Thunderheart's fur in late autumn when the salmon ran. It seemed odd to Faolan that so many animals appeared on the walls, looking so real, when the cave was uninhabited.
    Uninhabited but not lifeless. Faolan scratched his paw on the hard surface and the glands in his foot released his own scent. Am I the first animal ever to mark here? How could that he? He caught sight of another picture and stepped closer to see that it was a spiral -- exactly like the one on his splayed paw! He felt his heartbeat quicken and he looked around, folding back his ears. He lowered his tail and began to sink onto his belly in the classic posture of submission. It was the ultimate gesture of respect to a superior power. Although there were no other living animals in this cave, there was a spirit that saturated the very air. It was to that sublime spirit that reverence must be paid.
    When Faolan rose up and looked on the cave walls again, he saw there was a picture of the Great Wolf constellation on the ceiling, but with a trail of stars leading up to it. Faolan wondered if there was a place, a sky cave for wolves to travel to after they had lived their lives on earth, like that of Ursulana, the bear heaven where  Thunderheart had said the spirit of her cub had gone. He looked about. This, too, is a cave. Yet it does not feel like an end, but rather a beginning.
    He felt as if he were on some earthly star trail, a passage to a time before time, when the history of the wolves and owls first became intertwined.
    Faolan felt all this, not in the way that he knew how to track an animal or corner a wolverine, or to wait on the upriver side of a rapid during salmon spawning time. No, he knew this in another part of his mind, a part that seemed not exclusively his but part of a consciousness that was larger than the mind of a single wolf. A peculiar kind of knowing that defied boundaries, that was larger than a pack, larger than a clan, beyond even a single species.
    This seemingly empty cave bristled with a history vital to Faolan's being. He had been born of a wolf mother and father whom he had never known, raised by a grizzly who had vanished,