Lone Wolf

out of iron and metals."
    "What kinds of things?" Faolan asked.
    "I'll show you. But first we should introduce ourselves." Gwynneth wanted to hear this wolf speak some more. His howling had been unique, and so was his speaking voice. There was a curious roughness to it, not unlike the soft trilling burr of the clan wolves. Yet there was something different. No one, however, would ever mistake him for an outclanner. His ways were somewhat formal. He had a grace, a dignity that usually came with  being raised in a pack where one was taught to respect rank, order, and, most important, one's elders.
    Gwynneth had noticed the malformed front paw immediately and surmised that he had been cast out from the pack yet had survived. So where had he acquired these qualities, these manners that were so much a part of the wolf world? The two Milk Givers? A reference, even an indirect one, to these Milk Givers would perhaps open the conversation. That could be her "first strike," as they said in the parlance of Rogue smiths -- the first strike was the first blow of the hammer when the metal had been heated sufficiently.
    "My name is Gwynneth. I was named for my mother because she died before I hatched. Another owl had to sit the egg. She also helped raise me. She sometimes called me Gwynnie. And what is your name?"
    The wolf was suddenly alert. He dropped the bone for the first time and peered hard at the owl.
    "Faolan. She called me Faolan." Gwynneth did not have to ask who "she" was. It was the grizzly bear. He moved a bit closer, with his paws still on the bone. "Your mother died? Another took care of you?"
    "Helped care for me and taught me the craft of smithing," Gwynneth replied.
    "So you had a father and a second mother?" Faolan asked.
    "Yes, I said we had a lot in common."
    Faolan crept even closer now to the fire with his bone. He had never felt this kind of warmth before. The fire itself was a landscape. The flames danced in a wind of their own. Like trees, they grew out of the bed of glowing coals that were their earth. The snaps and crackles of the fire often were accompanied by explosions of starry sparkles. It was not just a landscape, but a world -- an entire universe.
    As he stared into the fire, Faolan began to speak slowly in his rough, lilting voice. It sounded to Gwynneth as if he had not conversed in a long time. His voice scraped, creaked a bit like the rusty hinges the Masked Owl sometimes pried from the doors of the Others' ruins to melt down for her fires.
    "I don't know who my father was. I think I have a milk memory of my mother. Just her scent, that is all. But there is more than a milk memory of Thunderheart."
    "Thunderheart?"
    "Yes, she raised me." Faolan paused a moment and then began to speak again, but now it was as if the hinge broke in two. His voice cracked. "She left... I don't know why."
    "Thunderheart was a bear, wasn't she? A grizzly."
    Faolan dragged his eyes from the fire and nodded. Something touched him deeply when Gwynneth spoke the grizzly's name out loud. He had never heard it spoken aloud by any creature other than himself. His paws rested on the bone and then he laid his head atop his paws and gazed at Gwynneth. "She left. That was her skull and now I only have this ... this bone." He licked the bone. "She would hold me in her arms while I nursed, hold me close with her huge paws and I could hear her booming heart."
    "And so you called her Thunderheart," Gwynneth said quietly.
    "Yes." He raised his head now. "Did your father leave you? Did your second mother as well?"
    "My father died in war. My second mother was murdered."
    "What is murdered?"
    "She was killed for no reason -- not prey for food or for a cause."
    "But she didn't leave you. Not your second mother or your father. Neither one of them left you."
    "And I don't think either your first mother or Thunderheart left you."
    "But my first mother did leave me," Faolan said  stubbornly. "And I was found by Thunderheart. If it hadn't been for Thunderheart -- : "
    Gwynneth interrupted. "You were taken from your first mother."
    "Taken!" Faolan, suddenly alert, raised his head. Every hair in his ruff stood out.
    "Faolan, I learned the craft of smithing from my second mother. But I learned the ways of wolves, the wolves of the Beyond, from my father, Gwyndor."
    "Tell me then. Tell me about the wolves and why I was taken," Faolan pleaded. The burr in his voice thickened. His gleaming green eyes were fixed on the bone of