Watch Wolf

death ritual that was instinctive among wolves. An urgeflowed through them to acknowledge the dying animal’s value.
    The silent flyer will be gathered into the greater silence,
Faolan thought.
Speed you to Glaumora now.
And he wondered if, as for wolves, the owls’ Glaumora had a star ladder and a kindly spirit guide to help Arthur on his way. He looked toward the eastern horizon so bright with sun that the stars seemed far away, and then took one last look at Arthur. One wing was nearly torn off.
But surely there is a spirit owl who will help fly him to Glaumora, surely!
Faolan thought.
    Now there was not much time.
    Faolan knew that he and Edme must race with the cub to the Black Glass Desert, where the wolves and bears would battle. He had to get to the Fengo so the word could be spread that the cub was safe! Even from this vast distance, it seemed to him that he could hear reverberations of the drumming.
A day and a night … a day and a night.
That was how long Thunderheart said the bears massed. The very air seemed to throb with the sound of the pounding of the grizzlies’ feet. There wasn’t much time left now.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
T HE B LACK G LASS D ESERT
    SOME CALLED IT THE DARKLANDS after the black sand made of glass fragments that absorbed nearly all light and reflected nothing. On this night, the blackness seemed to devour even the stars, the sliver of the newing moon, the threads of lightning that didn’t flash or crackle but seemed to hang limply in the sky like gauzy cobwebs.
    Faolan, Edme, and the cub stood on a cliff overlooking the desert, the rock beneath their feet trembling with the drumming of the bears. They could see the massive silhouettes of rank upon rank of bears. A gap of perhaps half a league separated the bears from the wolves, who were far greater in number but appeared, in comparison, like dwarf creatures.
    Within Faolan a terrible war was already raging.
I am
as much bear as wolf. How can one part of me lift a paw against the other?
    He closed his eyes for a moment and pictured the spiraling lines on his pad — swirling in the night, like embers caught in the twisting hot drafts from a volcano’s crater. He sometimes imagined that the spinning tracery that had marked him as a
malcadh
spoke of something not cursed but sublime. That the swirling design whispered of another pattern, a larger one of infinite harmony. Faolan knew that deep within him, two elements, bear and wolf, combined to make his essence, make him who he was. Now his marrow was turning bitter; to kill a bear was unthinkable. He raised a paw and gently stroked Toby’s shoulder.
    “I can’t see my mum from here. It’s too dark.” Toby had flattened himself on the ground and was hanging his head over the edge of the cliff to peer out into the blackness.
    “We’ll find her, dear,” Edme said consolingly.
    How are we going to do this?
Faolan thought. There were hundreds of bears out there, maybe thousands, and in the thickening darkness they all looked like one big mass.
    There was an awkward fluttering in the airabove them. It was an owl, and she was furious.
    “Gwynneth!” Faolan shouted.
    “Are you
yoicks?”
she spluttered. “Numbskulls! You’re supposed to be back on your cairns at the Ring. You’re going to get in big —” Gwynneth stopped abruptly. “Who’s that?” she asked, looking at Toby.
    “I’m a cub. And I don’t like the way you talk to my friends, stupid!”
    “Now, now, dear.” Edme butted Toby gently on the neck. “She doesn’t understand.”
    “I certainly don’t,” Gwynneth said. She looked dumbfounded for a moment, but then a light sparkled in her black eyes. “No! The cub!” She gasped. “You’re the missing cub!”
    “I certainly am!” Toby growled.
    Faolan stepped forward to where the owl perched. “This is Toby. The MacHeaths snatched him and put him in the Pit.”
    “The Pit!” Gwynneth murmured. “Great Glaux, I thought the Pit was just a rumor — such a horrifying one that every owl is frightened even to fly over it. A foaming-mouth wolf! How did he survive —”
    “They rescued me!” Toby shouted. Gwynneth’s beak dropped open with astonishment. “And you called them numbskulls!” Toby growled low and deep. It was such a mature growl, it surprised all of them.
    “Calm down, Toby. Gwynneth meant no harm. She didn’t understand. She’s one of my oldest friends in the Beyond,” Faolan soothed.
    “How can she be your good friend if I