Wolves of the Beyond 02 - Shadow Wolf

a high ridge near the salt lagoons. It was a spot a fair distance from any of the wolf packs. Faolan had not wanted any wolf to see the bone he had carved. It was his story, his memory, and to him it was sacred. The wolves had a code, a law, a rule for everything. This was Faolan’s code. And by my marrow, he thought, it is right!
     
    He arrived just as the first thin, red slash of dawn light bled above the horizon. The sun rose, then faded to pink and dissolved into the flawless blue sky of morning. It did not take Faolan long to find his bone. When he heardthe first click of his dewclaw against the bone, he began to dig delicately with his mouth, sheathing his teeth, and finally using just his tongue to lift the bone from the earth. He licked off the dust, and his eyes filled as he saw the markings on the bone that told the story of what had been his life. He swung his head from the paw of Thunderheart to the bone of shame that Heep had carved. He wanted to fling that horrid bone of shame into the deepest part of the river, throw it into a fire, throw it straight down to the Dim World. But he felt a calm steal over him suddenly. It was as if a phantom paw stroked the fur just beneath his jaws, the most sensitive region on any wolf.
    Faolan licked the paw bone, and his finely etched lines stood in beautiful relief against its whiteness. He felt almost outside his own skin, his own pelt, hovering just above himself. He watched himself swim just behind Thunderheart in search of fish, then saw a tiny pup who was supposed to be digging for roots and bulbs begin nosing instead at a small hill of sandy dirt. Seconds later, the cub had uncovered an ant’s nest and was yowling his head off. His muzzle was stinging ferociously. Thunderheart raced toward him and scraped off the nasty creatures with her own rough tongue. He would welcome back the stinging fury of those ants ifit meant he could be with Thunderheart and feel the rasp of her tongue, hear the thunderous beating of her great heart.
    O Thunderheart, I long to see you,
    feel your booming heart in my blood.
    O Thunderheart, you’re always with me,
    though far away beyond the river
    in the stars of Ursulana.
    O Thunderheart, I’ll seek you always,
    when my time comes.
    In a night long away
    we’ll meet in the heavens of wolf or bear.
    By my marrow I shall find you there
    no matter where you may wander.
    I am your pup, your cub, forever!
    And though he sang to Thunderheart, all the while he also thought of Duncan MacDuncan, the wolf who had told him he had no sense but did have a chance—a chance to be a better wolf.
     
    Later, as night fell far from where the lone wolf keened his song for his milk mother, the chieftain’s mate,Cathmor, wailed her grief into the northern wind. On this the second night of the morriah, she saw a luminous gray mist at the very top of the star ladder of the spirit trail that led to the Cave of Souls.
    “The lochin ! Lochin! ” she called. She knew in her marrow that there was now a gulf between her and the luminous spirit of her mate as deep as any sea, as wide as the distance between the earth and any star. But she would look for that mist every evening as the iridescent spheres of dew drifted down through the pearly light of the moon. The lochin was how the spirits of the dead lived on in the hearts of the ones they had left behind, making their marrow tingle until the time when they, too, climbed the star ladder to the Cave of Souls.

CHAPTER EIGHT
T HE T RAIL OF S HAME
    THE MACDUNCAN CLAN WAS comprised of five packs of wolves. Faolan had already performed the ritual of contrition at the pack of the Carreg Gaer in front of Elpeth, Stellan, and Mhairie, the outflankers. But there were three other packs he must visit with the bone of shame before returning to his own. They were the River Pack, the Pack of the Blue Rock, and the Pack of the Fire Grass. The Blue Rock Pack was on the border with MacDuff territory. It would be a whole day’s run at half press-paw from where he was, and then if he started early the next day, he would be able to travel west to the River Pack. Faolan really wanted to get that over with fast, for he could just imagine Heep’s pleasure in seeing Faolan having to grovel with the bone of shame in his mouth.
    Faolan had been thinking all this as he traveled the trail of shame. Soon in the long blue dusk, a raggedy wolf trotted out toward him. The wolf made a strange noise that was neither a bark nor a