Watch Wolf

clan — no, I shall go as a free runner. I reject you. I deny you, I refuse and repudiate you as my clan.”
    Confusion swam in Dunbar MacHeath’s eyes, his jawhung open in disbelief, and threads of saliva, stained deep magenta from the Litha grog, fell to the floor of the
gadderheal.
Edme turned and left before the MacHeath wolves could grasp what she had said. By the time her words sunk in, Edme was gone.
    The world swirled with snow. A blizzard! A blizzard on Litha Eve and the beginning of the summer moons!
    A clamor broke out in the
gadderheal.
    “Kill her!” someone howled.
    “Tear out her other eye!” said another.
    “No, rip out her tongue so she can’t speak!”
    Dunbar MacHeath barked the command for silence. He had regained his wits and now assumed a baleful and terrifying demeanor. Every hair in his pelt bristled until he looked twice his normal size.
    “Listen to me, wolves of the MacHeath clan. Listen to your chieftain. There will be no killing” — Dunbar paused dramatically and eyed his sublieutenants — “until I say so.” Again he paused. “But when the time comes, there is going to be something worse than death for the traitorous wolf Edme. Far worse than mere murder!”
    “What’s worse than murder?”
    “We shall watch her carefully.”
    The lieutenants exchanged uncertain glances, as if to say,
Watching her? That’s worse than killing?
For in their small minds, pinched by violence, it was hard to imagine alternatives that did not involve bloodletting.
    The chieftain continued, “We shall watch her and find her weakness, and when we do, then the punishment will begin.”
    The chieftain shook with fury. He had waited too long for the MacHeaths to have a member of the clan on the Sacred Watch.
But why stop there?
A new idea began to brew in Dunbar’s quickly sobering brain. The chieftain felt a shiver of excitement pass through the assembled wolves. He waited and let several seconds pass. If there was one talent that Dunbar MacHeath possessed, it was the gift of manipulation. He spoke his next words so quietly that every wolf had to strain to hear them.
    “My friends, you might just be looking at the next Fengo.”
    There was a collective gasp followed by a long hush.

CHAPTER SIX
T HE O BEA S PEAKS
    WITHIN THE WHITENESS OF THE swirling blizzard was an even brighter patch at the center of the spinning frenzy of snow. The Obea had followed Edme into the storm. She now began to howl, “Stop, Edme. Stop! It’s me, Airmead!”
    The very name split the fury of the storm. Seldom was an Obea’s name spoken out loud, and it was unthinkable that an Obea would refer to herself by her given name. If gnaw wolves were the lowest-ranked wolves in a clan and the objects of physical and verbal abuse, Obeas were wolves of no rank at all. They were barren, and existed in a social purgatory that was beneath the contempt of any wolf in the clan, almost as if the Obeas were invisible. Airmead had heard that in other clans this purgatory was not as harsh, although she-wolves who werepregnant shied away from them as if Obeas could hex their unborn pups.
    The time had come for Airmead to explain the dark, dirty secret of the MacHeath clan, whispered about for so many years. Airmead felt as if something deep inside herself had cracked open. And oddly enough, it felt good.
    When Edme heard the Obea’s name ring out, she stopped short, spreading her toes wide so she would not sink into the snow, which was piling up fast. Airmead was soon beside her.
    “Follow me,” Airmead said. “We’ll dig a snow pit, though I think the blizzard is stopping.”
    Dig a snow pit — with the Obea?
Edme thought. When in the history of the Beyond had a
malcadh
and an Obea ever spoken to each other? Share a snow pit with the very wolf whose task was to take
malcadhs
to their
tummfraws
to die? It was beyond astonishing to Edme. “What is it?” Edme demanded. “What do you want from me?”
    “You need to hear the truth.”
    “I know the truth. I know what they did to me. I know that you never took me to that
tummfraw.”
    “In all the time that I have been the MacHeath Obea, I have never taken any wolf pup to a
tummfraw.”
    “What? Never?” Edme was astounded.
    “Never!”
    Almost as soon as they had settled into the snow pit, the blizzard ceased and the sun began to shine. By the time Airmead finished her story, large patches of bare ground had appeared from under the melting snow. “So you see, it’s a