Lone Wolf

wolves and other animals. But within the classes there were other links in the chain extending down from Lupus.
    This Great Chain was first described in the gwalyds of the early gnaw-bones, in descending order:
    Lupus
    Star wolves (the spirits of dead wolves who have traveled to the Cave of Souls)
    Air
    Ceilidh fyre (lightning)
    Chieftains (clan leaders)
    Lords (pack leaders)
    Skreeleens
    Byrrgis leaders
    Captains
    Lieutenants
    Sublieutenants
    Corporals
    Packers
    Gnaw wolves
    Unranked Obeas
    Owls
    Other four-legged animals
    Other birds, excepting owls
    Plants
    Earth Fire
    Water
    Rock
    Soil
    This order had been inscribed on gnaw-bones from time immemorial. It was, indeed, the first exercise that young gnaw wolves were put to after their return to a pack. They were required to spend endless hours on repeatedly gnawing the design of the Great Chain of the cosmic order that ruled the wolves of the Beyond. Wolves of the Outermost had flouted this order and had descended into chaos and discord. Even their howling reflected the dissonance of their lives.
    But there was one creature who had not precisely flouted the order, yet dared to explore elements higher than she on the Great Chain. That wolf was the Sark of the Slough. She had become familiar with fire in a way that seemed to defy the order of things, and somehow neither commotion nor chaos had ensued. She was called a witch, or a Sark, for it was believed that she had special powers. She lived in a marshy region of the Beyond called the Slough. There, in a many-chambered cavern, she pursued experiments with what she called materials of the natural world.
    That, in the eyes of the wolves of the Beyond, was the first insult. Fire was not of the natural world. It was from  above and the only creatures who might consider it part of their world were owls, for they were also of air.
    Of the wolves, only the Sark of the Slough had set herself to learn about fire. However, as soon as she had learned the rudiments of ember, coal, flame, and fire, she had kept herself apart from the owls. She was reclusive by nature. No one was sure where she had come from, nor did they know her clan ties.
    There were, of course, rumors. Some said that she had been born so ugly, no wolf would mate with her. Considered barren, she might have been appointed Obea, but she had refused. It was then she had gone off to pursue her Sarkish practices and poke her snout into matters that were unnatural for a wolf. Others said that she had been born beautiful, so beautiful that her own mother, a she-wolf with Sarkish powers, had cast a spell upon her in a fit of jealousy that resulted in her hideous face.
    Her face was not pretty, blighted by one eye that seemed to skitter a bit to the side. And her fur was wild, as if not just her hackles but her entire pelt was in a constant state of alarm. If one could look closely at her eyes -- if indeed that one eye was not so skittish -- one would see that her eyes were not the same color. One was the true green of the wolves of the Beyond, but  the roving eye was amber colored, like the amber of an owl's eyes.
    She was, in short, a freakish sort of creature. Of course, if she had had these defects at birth she would have been deemed a malcadh and been carried away by an Obea to be abandoned, and had she survived she would have become a gnaw wolf. But she was none of these and thus it was decided that she must be a Sark.
    The Sark often muttered to herself as she pursued her experiments in her cave. She thought the other wolves' attitudes toward her a "grand silliness." There was nothing really witchy about her. She did not have powers. She had ideas.
    She did not deal in evil charms. There was not an evil bone in her body, not an evil thought in her brain. In truth, she was a rather gentle wolf, and perhaps her greatest regret in life was not that she had never mated, but that she could not perform lochinvyrr as tidily as she might have liked because of her skittering eye. It was hard to look dying prey in the eye and acknowledge their lives as worthy when her eyeball was jumping about all over the place.
    It would have been a shock to the other wolves that the Sark had any such emotions.
    The wolves needed a Sark, because if there was one thing that fed the imagination of wolves as much as meat, it was the notion of strange, inexplicable powers. They weren't stupid, nor were they mean-spirited. But they were credulous, from the skreeleens with their half-baked