Spirit Wolf by Kathryn Lasky Page B

fires.’”
    â€œNow, how ever do you know that, Fionula? Bone of Bones, what’s that all about?”
    Fionula shook her head and blinked several times. Her yellow eyes grew dim. “I don’t know how. I just do.”

    The sun was just bleaching the eastern sky when Edme came out of the den.
    â€œDid you sleep at all, Faolan?”
    â€œNot really, but I’m fine,” he answered.
    Edme cocked her head at him. “Are you sure?”
    â€œYes, but …” Faolan hesitated. “Edme, there’s nothing left here. We have to move on. Go.”
    â€œGo?” Her pelt bristled in astonishment. “Go where?”
    â€œWest. We have to find the Sark, if we can. And the Whistler at the Blood Watch.”
    Edme met his eyes steadily, and Faolan knew she understood. “But that’s not all you have in mind, is it?”
    He shook his head. “We’re going much farther west.”
    â€œFarther west?” Dearlea had just come out from the den, her sister right behind her.
    â€œYou mean to the Outermost? Surely not!” Mhairie gasped. But she saw a faraway look in her brother’s eyes.
    â€œI mean beyond the Outermost,” Faolan replied. “I mean … I mean …” his voice began to ebb.
    â€œFaolan?” Edme whispered. “What are you seeing?”
    When he answered, his voice was strong again. “Once, on a very clear day when I stood on the Blood Watch, I turned west and I saw beyond the Outermost, almost all the way across the western sea.” He paused. “I saw the Distant Blue.”
    â€œThe Distant Blue?” Dearlea echoed.
    â€œI don’t know its true name, but I call it that. The Distant Blue is where we must go.”
    The wolves fell silent as they looked at him. The Beyond was broken, the earth fractured beneath their feet. But where was Faolan taking them?

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? BANJA’S question thrummed in Gwynneth’s head as she flew. She had promised Banja that she would return, but Gwynneth needed to search for the Sark, and for Faolan and Edme. Was there any chance they could still be alive?
    She was shocked when she looked down on what used to be Crooked Back Ridge. It was not simply flattened by the glacier, but the earth had been gouged out to an enormous depth. Parts of it were no longer a ridge, but a deep valley. The glacier, only half a league past the ridge and slowing now, had left an immense cleft in its wake.
    A galloping glacier! Gwynneth thought. She had heard about them when she was in the northern kingdoms but never actually seen one. And then there was the old skreeleen tale of the White Grizzly.
    Everywhere there were deep cuts, deadly crevasses. Being an owl, Gwynneth could swoop down into many of these and she saw that they had become death traps for elk, moose, marmots, and many wolves. The crevices were a carrion feeder’s delight, but the sight of these birds revolted Gwynneth. She remembered her father speaking of the vultures who had scoured the battlefield after the last of the Great Owl wars, the War of the Ember. She could not abide the idea. She plunged now into a crevice and with an ear-shattering shree flew directly at two vultures who were feeding on the body of a wolf.
    She attacked with outstretched talons and managed to rake the eye of the smaller vulture. That was enough to scare them both off. But it was only after the vultures had flown away that Gwynneth recognized the wolf whose carcass they had all but destroyed. “Oona,” she whispered. “Great Glaux, it is Oona!” The black wolf had been a fearless lieutenant from the MacNamara clan. She was most likely on her way back to her clan from her duties at the Blood Watch.
    â€œTo think, Oona dead, who had survived so much!” Gwynneth wept over the ragged body of the wolf. Oona’s long history fled through her mind. She marched with the MacNamara expeditionary force, the