Spirit Wolf by Kathryn Lasky Page A

It was at that moment the owl realized something else was very different. I am female! I chose this, too. I am back … I am back, she thought. The wind ruffled through her feathers. She felt so light, so free. She angled her wings steeply and swept into a deep banking turn. The sky tilted and the moon winked from behind a cloud. The constellation of the Little Raccoon was rising and she could almost brush its forepaws with her wing tips. The wind shivered through her delicate face feathers. She blinked her eyes and a thin membrane wiped across them clearing her vision. As she flew, it felt as if she were embracing the whole world, the entire universe.
    She looked down. She was flying over the Sea of Hoolemere. Over the spreading crown of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. Fengo had long been dead. The first king long dead. A new king ruled.
    She alighted in the Great Tree and quickly found her way to Madam Plonk, the Great Tree’s renowned singer. Madam Plonk was poring over her “collectibles,” as she called her vast assortment of silly doodads she got from Trader Mags.
    â€œBrunwella?”
    The Snowy Owl wheeled about as she heard her name.
    â€œFee!”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhat a surprise, but do call me Madam Plonk, dear. It’s a bit more formal around here. Now, I hope you’re coming with good news?”
    â€œIf you mean am I going to stay, no,” the owl replied.
    â€œBut, Fionula, I am going to need your help. This is a big job. They have let the job of tree singer go vacant for too long. The grass harp needs to be tuned. The blind snakes instructed.”
    â€œI can stay for a little bit, but you know as well as I that in my gizzard I am and always shall be a gadfeather.”
    Madam Plonk sighed. “You gadfeathers can’t keep still. Restless creatures, the lot of you.”
    What Madam Plonk had said about restlessness had more than a grain of truth in it. It was, however, not simply a matter of place. There was something deeply restless in Fionula’s gizzard. I have a restless soul. Something flashedin her mind’s eye. The figure of a wolf with a tattered pelt. “Brunwella, I mean Madam Plonk, have you met the new Fengo of the Watch yet?”
    â€œNo. You know I don’t get on with wolves that well.” Fionula winced. “It’s not that I don’t like them exactly, I just … I can’t explain it. All that business they do with bones. Why don’t they just swallow them like we do? Get them wrapped up in a nice little pellet and yarp the whole business? But, no, they make such a … a …” Madam Plonk was searching for the right word. “A fetish really, carving them and all that. Seems silly.”
    â€œNot to them!” Fionula replied sharply.
    â€œNow, don’t get huffy. You’d think you were a wolf or something. I just have to say that I don’t care a bit for their odor.” Madam Plonk had now plucked up a strand of black pearls and was draping them over her shoulders.
    â€œWhat about their odor, what’s wrong with it?” Fionula said.
    â€œMeat. Too much meat in their diet.”
    â€œWe eat meat.”
    â€œYes, but not big meat like they do. And we cook a lot of ours.”
    â€œWell, we have fire, or here at the tree you do at least. And the wolves don’t.”
    â€œThey have plenty of fire over at the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes. More fire than they know what to do with.”
    Fionula felt her gizzard stir. Her feathers puffed up. “It would be against the gaddernock for them to cook their meat using embers from the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes. They guard those volcanoes. The Bone of Bones, third gwalyd — ‘No embers from the coals of any of the five volcanoes shall be used by wolves for the purpose of cooking meat. Only owls may use these coals for their iron mongering. If owls wish to cook meat, they must bring to the Ring coals from forest