Wolves of the Beyond 02 - Shadow Wolf

looking around himself.”
    “But he was doing something else, too. Have you ever seen his gnaw-bones?”
    “Not really,” Mhairie said. “He’s not in our pack.”
    “I’ve heard his carving is not very good. Kind of clumsy,” Dearlea said.
    “It isn’t very good, but there’s something else. One of his shearing teeth has a nick in it. You cannot only see the nick in his carving if you look closely, but if you sit next to him in gnaw circles, you can hear it.”
    “It’s like Taddeus, our little brother. I hate the way he smacks his lips when he eats,” Dearlea said.
    “He slurps, too, when he drinks,” Mhairie offered.
    They were getting it. “But this is much worse. It’s horrible. It can drive you cag mag . It’s like a mosquito buzzing in your ears during the moons of the flies in summer.”
    “But he wasn’t gnawing a bone, for Lupus’ sake, in the byrrgis !” Mhairie protested.
    “No, but he was making that sound. He was doing it to wreck my concentration. It has never wrecked it when I am gnawing. I’m not sure why. But when I was running, it did. And then finally, right before the kill rush, I missed my cue because he settled as close to me as possible and then opened his mouth and began slashing his teeth right in my ear. I tell you, it was like slivers in my brain. He hates me.”
    Mhairie and Dearlea exchanged glances.
    “You’ve got to believe me,” Faolan said. There was the heat of desperation in his voice.
    “All right, we’ll come to the gnaw circles,” Dearlea said. “They’ll be going on for the next three days.” She paused. “And, Faolan, the bones you gnaw count more than the byrrgis . You can make up for your sixth place, in the gnawing events.”
    “I hope so. As I said, it doesn’t seem to bother me when I’m gnawing, as much as when I’m running.”
    “You know why that is?” Mhairie asked.
    “No.”
    “Well, I know. It’s because you’re an artist, Faolan. A true artist.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
T O G NAW A B ONE
    FAOLAN WAS ONCE AGAIN IN A gnaw circle with Heep. But he knew he had been right in what he told Mhairie and Dearlea. The clicking sound of Heep’s shearing teeth, although just as loud as during the byrrgis , did not seem to annoy him nearly as much. Perhaps the simple act of sharing this with Dearlea and Mhairie had relieved him a bit. Even if they couldn’t hear it themselves, this was the first time he had really been able to share a feeling with another wolf since he had been in the Beyond. From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the two sisters approaching. They were coming just as they had promised. He tried to quiet his own gnawing so Dearlea and Mhairie could hear the click of that nicked tooth.
    Dearlea and Mhairie stopped on the other side ofHeep. “That’s interesting,” Dearlea said. “The natural shadowing of the bone might be an obstacle to some, but you carve deep.” She didn’t know what else to say. The lines were deep—deep and clumsy—and she did detect the nick. Now she wanted to hear it.
    “Oh, I am humbled by your remarks.” Heep began to screw his face into the ground and writhe in submission.
    “Oh, please, dispense with such formalities. We would much prefer to watch you gnaw.”
    Faolan had stopped gnawing entirely and was oiling his bone by rubbing it between the webbing of his paws. Oiling had two main functions. First, it marked the bone with a wolf’s distinctive odor, and second, it cleared away the bone dust from the gnawing. For Faolan, there was now a third function to be served. It offered silence.
    Dearlea and Mhairie should be able to hear the click of that nick. He could tell that they were both concentrating very hard, with their ears shoved forward. Did they see the nick in the bone that Heep’s tooth made? Soon, the two moved off. Heep slid his green eyes toward Faolan. Then he whispered as if to himself although everyone in the gnaw circle could hear him, “I can’t imagine why two such high-ranking wolves, wolves from the Carreg Gaer,would stop to look at my humble work.” No one said anything.
    The gnaw wolves went on gnawing, and there was no sound except for the scrape of teeth on bone until Edme lifted her head. “Uh-oh! Here comes the Fengo Finbar,” she said.
    Heep immediately dropped his bone and started to twist not just his face, but what seemed like his entire body, into the ground.
    “Up, up!” Finbar was a handsome brown wolf with a lustrous coat. One of