Wolves of the Beyond 02 - Shadow Wolf

terrible night when he had found the skull of Thunderheart and howled his grief into the darkness. He remembered how he had taken some solace in the thought that, for one moment in the infinite loop of cycling time, his and Thunderheart’s lives had come together. His glaffling , as the wolves called the howls of mourning, was as much a prayer of thanksgiving as a song of grief. The words of his mourning howls came back to him now.
    Cycling, cycling forever
    bear, wolf, caribou.
    When had it all started, where will it end?
    We are all part of one,
    from such simple beginnings
    and yet all so different.
    Yet one.
    One and again,
    Thunderheart eternal,
    now and forever!
    But the song soon faded as he crossed the border into sleep and entered a dreamworld in which he trotted across the starry night, looking for the little malcadh pup to see if she was safely climbing the ladder to the Cave of Souls.
    I am a star walker! he dreamed as he walked throughout the constellations, looking for the little pup. He knew he dreamed, and yet this was much more tangible than any dream he had ever had. The night air seemed billowy beneath his paws, and his silvery fur captured the flickerings of the stars until he felt wrapped in a radiant mist of light.
    It is all so real! So real and so familiar. Have I been herebefore? But that was impossible. What living wolf had ever walked the stars? And he was not dead. A long shadow began to stretch itself across the nightscape of his dream. A shiver passed through him and it was as if the marrow in his bones shifted ever so slightly. Just then, he heard a click … click … click … Not here. Surely not here!
    He awoke with such a start that he almost pitched himself from the tree. His ears were pricked up. But there was only silence, not the clicking of that nicked slashing tooth. “It was in the dream I heard the clicking,” he whispered softly to himself. In the dream!
    He looked straight up through the branches to the star-dusted night he had just walked in his dreams. He squinted his eyes so he could see the stars between spruce needles. And then it came to him, the image of those tiny bones bristling with needle-like slashes. He must look beneath the fury of the marks. Something else was there that he had not seen before. All these days that the gnaw wolves had been carving their story bones, there were bones out there on the slope with the little pup’s story already told.
    He could almost see the pup leaping down from the star ladder, snarling in vengeance at her killer. She would have no rest until the murderer was known. In thatmoment, Faolan knew what he had to do. He had to go and retrieve the bones he had buried with Thunderheart.
    Quietly, he crept down from the tree. He looked up. The moon was very bright, so he worried he might be seen leaving. But he spotted an immense cloud rolling in from the east. He waited a few minutes, and when the cloud began to obscure the moon and the land darkened, he set off at a brisk pace.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
G HOST W OLF
    HEEP HAD BECOME SUSPICIOUS during the last moon, the Moon of the Cracking Ice, that Faolan was up to no good. As the close of the gaddergnaw approached, he was becoming more and more desperate. He knew in his marrow that his destiny was to be a wolf of the Watch. If the present king of Ga’Hoole died and a new monarch retrieved the Ember of Hoole, all the Watch wolves would be released from their duties, and, like Hamish, the great Fengo whose twisted leg turned around, their deformities would disappear. And finally, finally, Heep would have a tail. What had been broken in their bodies was mended; what was twisted was made to grow straight; what was crippled gained strength. This was no dream, this was no legend. This was true.
    But Heep was worried and desperate, for despite Faolan’s low score, there was still a chance he mightredeem himself with his exquisite carving. Heep did not worry so much about the other gnaw wolves. He was a MacDuncan, after all. MacDuncans started the Watch, and every wolf knew they were favored, despite all the talk about all contenders being equally treated. It just wasn’t so.
    Heep had to knock Faolan out of the competition for good, and an ingenious idea had come to him a few days before. Why had he never thought of it before? He watched Faolan slip off into the night. By the time Faolan came back, the game between himself and this loathsome wolf would be over. He watched that