Watch Wolf

that he must go out into the cold for the last part of his
Slaan Leat,
a final part of the journey he would never have anticipated ten moons ago.

E PILOGUE
    HE TRAVELED ALONE TO THE END of the peninsula, an icy point that jutted out into the raging Sea of Hoolemere. It was here that he had decided to build the
drumlyn
for his mother, Morag, with bones he’d found buried in the snow along the way.
    The Sark and Gwynneth said they would wait for him. “No matter how long it takes,” the Sark said. “And in the summer, if ever there is a summer again, you can come back and add her bones to the
drumlyn.”
    Faolan found a rough shelter in the lee of the point and set about incising the bones. He would add more, including some from his first Milk Giver, as the years passed. Perhaps soon the huge skeleton of Thunderheart might break apart, and he could carry one to this point. But he would not worry about that now. A small
drumlyn
was better than no
drumlyn.
He began his carving with what he thought might have been his first memories — those of the other wriggling pups beside him, their scent. He only remembered their scent for, as a newborn, his eyes were sealed shut and he would not have known the other pups by sight. The sensations of those first days came back to him one by one. Many of them were feelings of absence — the absence of the wriggling movement; the void of scent; the lack of warmth. Then these vacancies were filled with something unbearably cold — the sterile smell of what he presumed must have been the Obea.
    After a full night of carving, Faolan looked at the bones and realized that, although he had carved them eloquently, he had very little to say. In comparison to the bones he had carved for Thunderheart’s
drumlyn,
these seemed empty. But he knew so little about his first Milk Giver in comparison to Thunderheart. He was not sure what to carve next. From the first moment he entered the den where she lay dying, he knew he loved her. It seemed in a strange way as if he had never left her. Her pelt was familiar although much less lustrous than it must have once been. He had loved the feeling of her tongue tracing the spirals on his splayed paw. It was so alive, so intimate,so motherly.
I have a mum.
The words streamed through his mind. And so that was what he carved, over and over until it became
I have two mums. I grew with the milk of two mums in my blood. The milk of two in my marrow.
    A blizzard had been blowing for the two days Faolan carved, but on the night of the second day, as he began to build the small
drumlyn,
the snow began to fall more slowly. The wind ceased and each flake appeared like a jewel against the blackness of the night. The Great Star Wolf had just begun to climb out of its winter den on the other side of the earth to appear in the eastern sky along with the ladder to the Cave of Souls. Faolan howled as he built the
drumlyn.
It was the howling known as
glaffling,
the howl of grief and mourning. But as heplaced the last boneand looked up, he saw something astonishing. The mist of Morag was shimmering in the sky, and then not far behind it was a larger mist, an immensevaporous shape thatloomed at the base of the star ladder and followed his first Milk Giver. It was his second Milk Giver. Itwas Thunderheart! Finally, she had sprung from the
drumlyn
he had made by the river. Finally, she had left the earth. Finally, she knew he had grown up safely andshe could look down at him from Ursulana!
    His
glaffling
turned to joy. He began to howl louderthan ever. How often had he looked at the spiraling lines on his paw and felt as if they marked a larger pattern, a larger plan, one of endlessly swirling harmonies like the movement of the stars. For they, too, were part of something larger as the sky turned around the earth. Of all this, Faolan howled.
    The Sark and Gwynneth, waiting for him at least two leagues away, turned to each other. “What is he howling?” Gwynneth asked.
    “Ursulana, the Cave of Souls. Two heavens are one,”the Sark replied softly to the Masked Owl.
    So sayeth Faolan, Watch wolf of the Ring.

About the Author
    K ATHRYN L ASKY is the author of the bestselling Guardians of Ga’Hoole series, which has sold more than four million copies and has been made into a major motion picture,
Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole
. Her books have received a Newbery Honor, a Boston Globe—Horn Book Award, and a Washington Post—Children’s Book Guild