Lone Wolf (Wolves of the Beyond) by Kathryn Lasky

Author:Kathryn Lasky
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Published: 2013-01-26T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

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THE CAVE BEFORE TIME

FAOLAN STEPPED CLOSER TO THE strange wall with the animal figures. Were these creatures real or imaginary? Does the wall breathe or is it merely rock? Do I dream or do I wake? These pictures were somewhat like the star pictures that Thunderheart used to point out for him with her sharp black claws, but they were so much more real. He thought he had actually heard the animals panting as they pounded across the stone. He even went right up to the wall of rock to sniff it. But it was merely rock -- silent, cold, and unmoving.Faolan raised his muzzle and began to explore for scent, any odor that might betray that this was the place a bear had lived. He would know Thunderheart's smell anywhere although it differed according to what she was eating. In spring, there was the wet green fragrance when

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she had gorged on plants and bulbs. But there was not a trace of that odor. Nor was there the dry clover smell of summer, or the scent of fish that saturated Thunderheart's fur in late autumn when the salmon ran. It seemed odd to Faolan that so many animals appeared on the walls, looking so real, when the cave was uninhabited.

Uninhabited but not lifeless. Faolan scratched his paw on the hard surface and the glands in his foot released his own scent. Am I the first animal ever to mark here? How could that he? He caught sight of another picture and stepped closer to see that it was a spiral -- exactly like the one on his splayed paw! He felt his heartbeat quicken and he looked around, folding back his ears. He lowered his tail and began to sink onto his belly in the classic posture of submission. It was the ultimate gesture of respect to a superior power. Although there were no other living animals in this cave, there was a spirit that saturated the very air. It was to that sublime spirit that reverence must be paid.

When Faolan rose up and looked on the cave walls again, he saw there was a picture of the Great Wolf constellation on the ceiling, but with a trail of stars leading up to it. Faolan wondered if there was a place, a sky cave for wolves to travel to after they had lived their lives on earth, like that of Ursulana, the bear heaven where

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Thunderheart had said the spirit of her cub had gone. He looked about. This, too, is a cave. Yet it does not feel like an end, but rather a beginning.

He felt as if he were on some earthly star trail, a passage to a time before time, when the history of the wolves and owls first became intertwined.

Faolan felt all this, not in the way that he knew how to track an animal or corner a wolverine, or to wait on the upriver side of a rapid during salmon spawning time. No, he knew this

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