Lone Wolf

the river, to a spot far from the fishing grounds frequented by animals during the salmon spawning season, and far from the shallow crossing points used by migrating herds. He knew that such places were favored by predatory animals for bringing down moose, caribou, deer, and musk oxen. He was determined that no creature should touch these bones while there was still meat on them. He would finish eating what he could, and then he would hide the bones.
    At last Faolan found a good spot high above a deep place in the river. The calm surface water concealed treacherous currents, making it a precarious place for migratory animals to cross. Furthermore, he had not picked up the slightest trace of scent. Fox families would have been frightened that their kits might fall off the edge. Wolverines preferred dens at the bottom of steep rock slides or at the very top of talus slopes. They were  skillful at finding sheltered spaces between the rocks. Martens and weasels liked the deep forest. This place was perfect.
    He was hungry again from the labor of dragging the caribou. Soon, he had stripped a few bones clean. He had even scraped the hide clean and then curled up on it to rest. There was a moment just before twilight when the moon rose in the east like a ghost of itself just as the sun set in the west. Then the night unfolded, first tingeing the air violet. The violet deepened to purple and then the purple to black as the constellations climbed in the sky. Faolan tipped his head up and began to howl, calling to the stars.
    Show me the shelter in the sky for the noble caribou.
    Show me the starry path she must travel
    Her way is the way of honor -- she is caribou.
    I am wolf.
    I live because she died.
    She is goodness,
    I am humble beneath this silver night.
    I beg -- show me the way, and I shall put her bones to rest.
    Faolan howled until late in the night. There was not a breath of wind and when he first spotted the antlers of the caribou constellation, it was not in the sky but in the reflection of the moon-polished river. The surface quivered slightly, like the spreading limbs of silver trees in a breeze. Faolan stepped closer to the edge and looked straight down. His pulse raced with excitement as the constellation rose in the night and he traced the familiar profile of the caribou -- starting with its antlers, then its head, dwarfed by the lofty height of those branching horns. He followed the slight scoop of the neck flowing back to the meaty hump that rose above the shoulders. It took six stars to make those large concave hooves. Faolan began to howl again.
    Follow! Follow!
    Follow the star caribou.
    Follow her to the spirit shelter.
    Find your mother who died in the winter, your father felled by the bear.
    Gather with the spirit herd --  they wait for you in the star-splashed night.
    And when he finished howling, he looked down on the stripped bones glistening in the moonlight. An urge thrust up from deep inside him. It was a new kind of hunger, not for food, not for blood, but simply to gnaw, to create something beautiful on these gleaming bones like the images inscribed on the rock walls in the Cave Before Time. This overpowering urge was one that all gnaw wolves, those pups who although abandoned had survived, seemed to possess -- a fierce compulsion to gnaw on stripped bones. Not all gnaw wolves, however, perceived so clearly the possibility of the beauty they could create, or kept it so firmly in their mind's eye as Faolan seemed to. He could envision precisely what he had to do to make these etch marks into a powerful design.
    The instinct was not only to gnaw but to inscribe on the bones designs that were sometimes stories and sometimes simply art with no beginning, middle, or end. If a gnaw wolf was selected for the Watch at the Ring of the Sacred Volcanoes, the bones they gnawed were piled on top of others from centuries before and the mounds that formed were called drumlyns. The wolves of the  Watch perched on these drumlyns in their vigils at the Ring of the Sacred Volcanoes. Faolan had seen such mounds in the painting in the cave. Whether he remembered them now did not matter. He had never gnawed a bone like this before but he instinctively knew what to do. For he was filled with this urge to gnaw a design, a message for the star caribou. And with this urge came a yearning to be with his own, to find wolves.
    By the time the dawn broke, Faolan had started his first drumlyn, though he did not know the