Wolves of the Beyond 02 - Shadow Wolf

bit too quickly, Faolan thought—that he was gnawing a bone about the unexpected joys of humiliation. “It’s really a philosophical story about the strange fulfillment in understanding one’s place as the lowliest of creatures and the reverence it gives one for the Great Chain that orders our existence on earth.” Heep slid his eyes toward Faolan. Edme felt something seize in her marrow when she caught the treacherous glint in Heep’s gaze. Had Faolan seen it?
    The Whistler yawned loudly during Heep’s explanation. He was gnawing a story about an early memory of when he had first found his way back to the MacDuncan clan and wondered whether it was better to live as a lone wolf. It seemed to Faolan a very honest tale, but he heard Heep snickering. “If I might humbly ask the Whistler how he could ever consider abandoning this noble clan for life as a lone wolf?”
    “No,” snapped the Whistler. “You may not ask. When I finish my bone and you see it, perhaps your humble mind will understand.”
    Tearlach seemed to prefer not to discuss his story, although he gave small hints on occasion. Faolan, however, had not given the slightest indication. When he hadfinally decided what he would carve, he was careful to go to the pile to pick a bone when no one else was around. He had selected a pelvis of a marmot because there was a beautiful gray crack that ran diagonally across it and reminded him of the river from which Thunderheart had rescued him. There was also a spot on the surface that was slightly discolored and in the shape of the cave that had been their summer den. It amazed Faolan that the other gnaw wolves did not take more time in looking at their bones and discovering the interesting designs that occurred naturally on the surface—small fractures, shadows, slight depressions. Heep had used the natural crack in a bone once, but only once, when he carved the image of Faolan jumping the wall of fire. That crack was so obvious, it was hard to miss. But as far as Faolan could tell, neither Heep nor any of the other gnaw wolves had looked for these features in the bones they were incising.
    There was a landscape that already existed if one looked carefully, and then all one had to do was arrange one’s carving around that landscape. In the pelvis of the marmot, there was river, sky, a summer den—only Thunderheart was missing, but that was what Faolan’s teeth would inscribe. The story seemed to press to getout, so that Faolan’s teeth almost ached with the story they held.
     
    Late one evening a few days after the story bones had been started, Faolan saw a tree with forking branches that he felt might make for good sleeping. The last time Faolan had leaped into a tree was when he was chasing a cougar in the Outermost. This leap looked about the same distance and certainly did not require the kind of leap he had made jumping the wall of fire.
    He did not even have to take much of a running start before he was in the tree with his legs draped over the fork. He had not realized it, but there were two other branching limbs that joined these from the back of the tree. It formed a sort of basket similar to the ones that Rogue colliers and smiths carried their coals in, although much bigger. It was the perfect den, if one could call such a place a den.
    Faolan looked up through the black embroidery of the fringed spruce branches against the sky. The stars were just breaking, and he could see the first antlers of the caribou’s constellation. It made Faolan think of the drumlyn he had built for the caribou he had caught nearly a year before. How different it was from the violated littlebones of the pup on the ridge, he thought. Faolan shivered in his sky basket, as he had come to think of this tree den. He felt high enough to reach out and touch the stars with his paw. Those starry antlers of the rising caribou constellation were a sign that the Great Star Wolf was returning to guide the mist of the murdered pup to the Cave of Souls.
    Faolan twisted around to lift his splayed paw to the light of the moon just above. There it was, the malcadh mark, the dim tracery of spiraling lines like a swirled star. The print on his paw seemed to merge with a whirl of stars in the sky. Once again, the thought came to him that he was part of something bigger, a larger design that was just one fragment of a single piece, an endless cycle spinning around and around like those swirling lines on his paw. He recalled that