Wolves of the Beyond 02 - Shadow Wolf

other grouse arranged in bursting sheaves. The Sark even had clumps of dried grasses, herbs, and mosses hanging upside down.
    The Sark came into the cave and with her teeth took a stopper from a jug lying on its side, to let a thin trickle of water spill into a small clay container beneath it. Then she shook some leaves from one of the hanging clumps. From another container she got lichen and sprinkled it over the top of the water.
    “Drink that,” the Sark said, pushing the mixture toward the she-wolf. “It will start the forgetting.”
    As soon as a malcadh ’s mother was driven from the pack, the forgetting began. In the wake of forgetting, for a time there was a darkness deep within her where the pup had grown. And then eventually, that darkness faded to gray, so it became just a shadow of her loss, allowing her to go on, find a new clan, a new pack, and a new mate. But for some, the forgetting took longer. They teetered on the brink of the deep darkness without ever really allowing it to fill them.
    The she-wolf looked gingerly at the clay bowl. It was all so odd—the bowl, the water from a jug, the bits of grasses and herbs floating in it.
    “Go on, dearie, take a good swallow. Now, you’re not one of those she-wolves”—the Sark avoided using the word “mum” or “mother”—“You’re not one who went by-lang , are you?” Some pregnant she-wolves seemed tosense they were carrying a malcadh and went deeply away to try and escape the Obea.
    “No, there wasn’t time,” she sobbed. “She was perfect.”
    “But it”—the Sark used the word “it” when referring to the pup—“it was early. No chance, my dear, and lots of problems. Now drink up.”
    She was careful not to say the darkness will come, for sometimes it only made the mothers resist. The Sark knew about resisting. She knew about not forgetting. But it was too late for the Sark, too late. Indeed, her whole life was dedicated to remembering. And so now, as the she-wolf became drowsy and fell into her long sleep, there was a whiff of something that stirred a dim memory for the Sark.
    Aaah, yes, she thought. The she-wolf had eaten sweet grass from the high plains during the last of the summer moons. It had been during a late summer moon when the Sark had made her decision never to join a clan. It was the first time she had spotted what she felt sure had been her Milk Giver, her mother. She had been a yearling then. She resisted going to her memory jug. She was not in the mood for stirring up anguish.
     
    The Sark’s memory jugs offered their own kind of law, which was as important to her as the elaborate, complicated codes and traditions of the Great Chain or the gaddernock were to the clan wolves. She did not need some high-ranking wolf to tell her how to bow to rank. She felt that the veneration and submission rituals were excessive to the point of being ridiculous.
    Memory was sacred to the Sark, not empty rituals, and although she understood the need for the laws of the Beyond, they often seemed as dead to her as the bones they were carved on. Memory was alive in the way a river is alive and flowing. But this river was flowing not with water but with the tributaries of scent. It was the scent that brought the memories.
    The Sark believed that if there was no memory, the bones that contained the gaddernock would crumble to dust. Most of the rituals of the wolves made no sense to her. What the Sark sought were experiences, feelings, and colors. Too often, life for the wolves of the Beyond was only about hunting and the elaborate social codes of the clans. Without memory, there could only be indifference. Without memory, there could only be blindobedience. Without memory, there could be no true consciousness, and the wolves of the Beyond would live in a walled, colorless world without meaning. She peered into the deep shadows of the cave, where her memory jugs stood like sentries of her past. Then she glanced at the mother of the malcadh . The she-wolf was sleeping deeply and would for two days. She would awake ravenous and go out to hunt. She would leave, and she would not look back.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
“S HE’LL K NOW M E !”
    THE SNOW FAOLAN HAD PRAYED for had not come. A foul, gusting wind had brought sleet and rain and then more sleet. But sleet was no camouflage. If only there had been a heavy snowfall! Faolan tried not to think of the tearing teeth and claws that might find their way to the pup. He saw a small herd of