Watch Wolf

your chieftain.”
    “What?” the two wolves shrieked.
    “You’re telling him what we told you? We’ll get in big trouble!” Ingliss was running beside Edme now, pleading with her.
    “You should have thought of that before.”
    “But what’s the use of telling Dunbar MacHeath? What will you tell him exactly?”
    “Exactly?” Edme stopped short, and the beam from her single eye seemed to pierce Ingliss right to her marrow. “I shall tell him that I will serve at theRing not as a member of the MacHeath clan, but as a free runner!”
    The two yearlings collapsed and began crawling after Edme on their bellies, begging her not to go to the chieftain. But Edme closed her ears and trotted on toward the Carreg Gaer of the MacHeath clan. Now it all made sense. She felt nothing when she arrived at her
tummfraw
because she had no connection with it whatsoever. Had they gone through the rituals of kicking out her birth mother and sire from the clan? What did it matter? It was all a charade and nothing more.
    But she had not endured this life of violent abuse for nothing, nor had the
gaddergnaw
in which she had competed been for nothing. She had won that contest fair and square. She might not have been born a
malcadh,
but she was a true member of the Watch. She would serve honestly, although her origins were not honest. She would serve courageously, although for most of her life shehad cowered in the shadows of intimidation. Deep, deep within her marrow, Edme knew that she was meant to be a wolf of the Watch.
    While Edme was heading for the MacHeath clan, Faolan was dragging Thunderheart’s immense femur from where she had died to the place where she had first found Faolan and become his second Milk Giver.
    Thunderheart had been killed in an earthquake when Faolan was barely a year old. A gigantic boulder had rolled down on her, knocking her senseless. There she must have lain, bleeding to death. When he had first come upon her huge skull a few moons after her death, it loomed immense and pure white in the moonlight. But now, after two years, new life had taken root in it. Mosses and lichen crept over the cranium and down her long muzzle. And out of one eye popped a small constellation of starflowers. There was no way that Faolan could move her skull, nor did he want to. The skull itself had become a memorial to life. But he did transport as many of the smaller bones as he could. The
drumlyn
he would make would not stand simply as a tribute to life but to Thunderheart’s afterlife in Ursulana.
    Faolan wondered if Thunderheart had traveled to Ursulana. He knew she had died, but her spirit seemed to linger on earth. Did she have unfinished business? His friend Gwynneth, a Masked Owl, had told him it was that way with the scrooms of dead owls. They would not seek Glaumora in earnest until their business on earth was complete. By building this
drumlyn,
Faolan hoped to give Thunderheart’s spirit, or what wolves called her
lochin,
a sign. The
drumlyn
would declare that he, Faolan, was fine,that Thunderheart could cease her watch on earth. He had already carved the story of their life together on a paw bone he had retrieved soon after he had found her skeleton. He didn’t need to carve any more. The moment he placed Thunderheart’s femur on top of the paw bone he had incised so beautifully, it was as if a weight had shifted somewhere within Faolan’s chest. He looked up as the stars broke out, and began to howl:
    Thunderheart
    Go away
    Shut your eyes on this earth
    The time has come
    Leave your bones behind
    Climb high, then higher
    On the star rungs
    Claw your way to Ursulana
    That’s where you should go
    How I do long to look to the sky
    And see your deep glow
    Among the stars that rise in the night
    Go now, go now, join that constellation so bright
    There is nothing left for you here
    And know that your son has nothing to fear
    Though the pangs of your death
    Leave me forever stunned
    The taste of your milk is still sweet on my tongue
    The huge paws that cradled me
    Never betrayed me
    But held me so close to your breast
    That the beat of your massive heart
    Still echoes within my own chest
    Oh, Thunderheart, Thunderheart,
    Time to go away.

CHAPTER FIVE
B LOOD AND T HORNS
    ON THE CUSP OF SUMMER, WHEN the earth begins to tilt more steeply toward the sun, there is a day when the sun and the moon hang side by side in the sky. It is on this single day and night when the Litha blossoms in the Beyond. The tiny red roses