Watch Wolf

terror that he could create. But he didn’t know what to do without a true name. So he walked back and forth in front of the rock wall where the pup who was not a pup had hidden himself in a crack.
    Old Cags’s job was either to scare a pup to death or into a kind of mute insanity. Sometimes the pups who came to him died of hunger if they couldn’t find the mice and rats that lived in the Pit, and sometimes they just plain gave up and ran directly at him. Then he would bite at them with his back teeth, which was actually hard for him to do since he had no fangs left, and the pup would die foaming. Cags had not died for some strange reason, and that made him special. The chieftain told him so. He was almost like a god in the eyes of the MacHeaths, a god who must live separately in his stone heaven.
    It was no fun for Cags when a pup charged him and he bit it. It was all over too quickly. Even their dying became boring if it lasted too long. Sometimes Cags envied their death throes — their lives had ended, their fear was finished, and their loneliness was over. They could begin to climb the star ladder, which he seemed never to reach in his living death.
    The best was when a pup became what Old Cags called stony-eyed and he could make it do his bidding. The pup could chase red squirrels and kill them so Old Cags could eat. He much preferred the taste of red squirrels to rats. And then when the chieftain came, he would praise Old Cags. “You always turn out an obedient pup,dear Cags,” he would say. “No more trouble from this one.” The pup would leave, his eyes as smooth and lifeless as river pebbles.
    Toby peered out from the crack he was squashed into. If he retreated to the rear of the slot, there was more room and he could be more comfortable. But he had to keep a watch on the foaming-mouth wolf. He had found a few mice to eat, but he was too frightened to be hungry. He shook so hard with fear as he watched Old Cags coming closer to the rock wall that he thought his fur might fall off. In fact, his pelt had begun to shed and he simply hadn’t noticed it, until a breeze blew into the cave and he saw filaments of his own dark brown fur swirl up into the dim light. He looked around and inhaled sharply. The small stump of his tail was bare, with pink skin showing through. First he was shocked by the stupid pink stub that looked as if it had been tacked to his butt with sticky gum from a pine tree, and then he got mad. And when he got mad, it was as if something inside him broke in two. Part of him was still a baby seeking his mother’s comfort, and the other part was not a cub any longer.
You have to grow up! Grow up! Don’t cry. Think!
In his mind’s eye, apicture formed of his baby self saying good-bye to the cub he was becoming.
    Toby pressed his face against the crack and looked out at Old Cags, who was staggering about, muttering something.
It’s just me and Old Cags,
Toby thought to himself.
No,
he corrected with a sudden burst of inspiration.
It’s not just me and Old Cags. It’s me, Old Cags, and fear.
Fear was as much a part of their small company as anything. Fear was alive, with a heartbeat of its own. There were three living things brought together in this stone prison, and one of them had to die. Toby decided to kill fear.
    His first task was to listen carefully to try to understand what Old Cags was muttering about. He tried as best he could, but all he could decipher was something about names. Dare he step outside just a bit?
    He inched out from the crack for the first time since he had found it. A blade of moonlight sliced across the ground, and he felt the cold, harsh wind on his ridiculous pink stub. Just thinking of his tail made him mad.
    Old Cags regarded him with a dazed look. Toby held his breath, but Cags did not charge.
    “Whazz name?” The words slurred.
    “I told you already.”
    “They said two names.” He swung his head back and forth, his eyes spinning and a small cataract of foam spilling onto the ground. “Need name.”
    If he needs it, I’m not giving it to him,
Toby thought. That would be his first move. So he said simply, “I have no name.”
    Confusion swam in the sick wolf’s eyes. He lay down and buried his muzzle in his paws.
    Toby had just put the first nick in the pelt of fear.

CHAPTER TWENTY
B REAKING R ULES
    “HOW DID YOU FIND THIS OUT? Who told you about the impending war and the cubnapping?” Finbar was fuming, but Faolan could tell that the