Wolves of the Beyond 02 - Shadow Wolf

the pup’s tiny bones.
    Gwynneth was seized by a sudden revulsion and had to yarp a pellet. Many owls came across malcadhs left on the tummfraws of their flight paths and ate them. Gwynneth had given up this practice when she had come to live in the Beyond. Never, however, would an owl tearapart a pup so mercilessly, so brutally. Usually, a quick stab of the beak at the soft place in the pup’s skull finished them off quickly. This malcadh , however, had not died quickly but in unimaginable agony.
    Oh , she thought, might it swiftly find its way to the Cave of Souls . Gwynneth knew that the Great Wolf constellation was not visible, nor would it be for another two moons. But, surely, the Star Wolf would be moved not to let this poor little pup’s soul wander aimlessly.
    Gwynneth’s first instinct, though irrational, was to take the pup’s bones and fly them herself to the Cave of Souls. But of course the Great Wolf constellation was gone, and who ever heard of any animal getting such a shortcut to their heaven? In the rational part of her mind, she knew that the malcadh ’s suffering on earth was over and would not follow her in death. With the last breath the little pup took, her suffering ended and her soul was severed painlessly from her body, as painlessly as the shedding of the undercoat during the summer moons. But when Gwynneth looked upon the torn body of this pup, she experienced profound pain and revulsion. She felt her gut wrench and had the urge to yarp another pellet, but there was nothing left inside her. She felt as hollow as her bones.
    Gwynneth told herself she must be practical. There was nothing she could do here. She still had a long way to fly to the Sacred Volcanoes, and she had to get there during the first flares. Otherwise, where would she be? A Rogue smith without two bonk embers to rub together!
    Gwynneth began to spread her wings to lift off but then folded them again. In the high, piercing cries of the Masked Owl, she began to sing the owl song for when a nestling died.
    May Glaux bless you and keep you always,
    may you leave your pain behind,
    may you fledge your wings so quickly
    and climb to the night sublime,
    may you look down and see we love you
    and though you never will grow old,
    but forever stay so young,
    may you know that it’s for you
    that this song is sung.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
T HE D ARK V ALE D ESCENDS
    BY THE TIME FAOLAN HAD COMPLETED the trail of shame and returned to his pack on the Eastern Scree, the Moon of the Frost Stars had already risen in the skies.
    Snow had fallen at last. The slopes of the Eastern Scree that ran down from Crooked Back Ridge billowed like snow clouds. The ridge was sheathed in ice and cut through the billows like a crystal knife slicing the flawless blue sky. Many claimed that the Moon of the Frost Stars was the coldest of all the hunger moons of winter, and because of this, tempers were short. Quarrels broke out frequently within the pack, and gnaw wolves provided a convenient vessel for other wolves’ frustrations. Faolan was sore from the bites and thrashings he had received. If the wolves were successful in tracking down prey, theanimals were so winter-thin that there was no meat to spare for a gnaw wolf. On this frigid day, they had managed to bring down a red deer. After they had eaten their fill, the pack wolves tossed the rumen, the deer’s first stomach with its cud of undigested grasses and lichens, to the gnaw wolves.
    The wolves scorned the rumen and loathed the taste of the fibrous vegetation, but Faolan had become accustomed to eating such foods. When he was a tiny pup, he went foraging with Thunderheart in the early spring for onion bulbs and anything else that sprouted from the earth and had slipped the lock of winter. Thunderheart would first chew up the bulbs or grasses very thoroughly, often swallowing them if they were especially tough and then regurgitating them for Faolan’s consumption, as wolf parents do with meat for their cubs. Faolan figured he could do this himself. He chewed until the partially digested vegetation of the rumen was a fine mash, then swallowed it. It tasted no different to him from when Thunderheart had done the same.
    For wolves, eating vegetation was unimaginable. It was not meat. When tossed the rumen, a gnaw wolf would eat only the intestinal tissue and leave the vegetation behind. But Faolan ate it all. And because he did, his coatremained glossy, and he appeared no thinner than before.