Lone Wolf

not noticed the towering mounds of bones. Atop each one a wolf perched. He began to dimly perceive that the wolves were perched on those bone mounds as sentries of some sort. He thought their mission was to protect that ember from the shadow figures that were also flying through the sky. He sensed that these shadow figures were dangerous and treacherous owls. But most frustrating for Faolan, no clue was given as to what the mysterious swirling mark was. It was odd. The marks were scattered throughout but always over the head of an animal. Sometimes a wolf, but sometimes an owl or even a bear, a fox, or a hare.
    Faolan exhausted himself trying to decipher the meaning of the mark and he finally fell into a deep sleep in this rounded bay, the vortex of the histories of the wolves and the owls in the Cave Before Time.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
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    FIRST MILK

    AS FAOLAN SLEPT HE DREAMED , and a scent spiraled through his dreams, entwining itself with the images he had seen in the cave. The scent seemed to flow like the silvery streak of the running wolves. But as it grew stronger he realized this had nothing to do with the runners on the rock wall. He could almost feel squirming soft bodies around him, all of them struggling, fighting toward the warm milky scent. Milk! Milk! Shoving, pushing, vying for a teat in a small dark space that was warm and silent. He could see nothing. He could hear nothing. He could only smell and feel. And when he finally clamped on to that teat he could feel something else. A heartbeat, not the giant pounding one, but a softer, quicker rhythm. He tried to press closer and closer to the light thumping and the milk. A Milk Giver,  but so different in this milk dream. And then a cold draft and something pulling on him, the sensation of being wrenched from the teat, pried away from the other struggling, small furry bodies. Coldness, dangling in the air as some creature with no scent at all traveled with him, carrying him away from first warmth, first milk.
    Faolan awakened with a yelping bark and stood up, trembling all over. He sniffed the air. There was no scent of milk, but it had been so real! So real!
    Although Thunderheart had been very vague about that night she had found him, never mentioning a wolf mother, Faolan knew in one sense that he must have been born of a wolf because he looked so different from the grizzly. But deep within him, Faolan never truly believed it until now. Is it possible to have two mothers, he wondered, the one who birthed you and the one who nurtured you? The scent of that first one that he had smelled in his dream still lingered in his nostrils and his mind.
    ***
    He knew that he must leave the cave. The cave was before time. He must enter his time, his territory. He must cross the border into the Beyond and follow the river. He would find his first mother, he would find those little furry  bodies that had pressed and wriggled beside him. Why had he been taken away and not them'! He stopped short in his tracks and stared down at the splayed paw. He picked it up, then twisted down on his shoulder so he could fix his eyes on the swirled print of the pad. This was why!
    But oddly enough, a great peace stole over Faolan. He did not know the word malcadh, "cursed one." But it was not cursed that he felt, nor was it blessed. Instead, it seemed as if he had a glimmering that he was part of something larger, a larger pattern, a larger plan, an endlessly spiraling harmony. Darkness was falling around him, and Faolan held his paw up to the new moon, which was rising. A low cloud swept out on either side of the silver blade like a great luminous bird hovering on the horizon.
    The stars began their stately climb in the growing blackness of the night. He watched silently and began to realize that the movement of the stars was like the flow of running wolves. They did not move separately; their transit was in concert. They were part of something larger, and it seemed as if the sky, too, turned around the earth, which might be just another star that also turned, a very small piece in a single sliding whole. Around and around, just as these marks on my paw. I belong to the endless cycle.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
    ***
    THE BYRRGIS OF ONE

    FAOLAN HAD BEEN TRAVELING for several days. The moon that had been a thin blade when he had come out of the cave had swollen to an immense silvery sphere. He had seen no other wolves, heard no howls. During the heat of the day he often lay down on a cool