Lone Wolf

sharp pebble, once an irritation, became smooth and settled in her being like a polished river stone -- there not as a reminder of failure, but simply as part of her character, her charge, her duty as an Obea.
    As she carried the pup, she glimpsed again the odd spiraling mark on its footpad. She felt a tremor in her heart. She could have killed the pup, but the Obea was very superstitious. It was against the law to take shortcuts, and she wanted to climb the spirit trail to the Great Wolf, Lupus, and the Cave of Souls.
    Ahead, Shibaan saw the gleam of the river under the gray skies that pressed down. It was there she intended to leave the pup. The river was just beginning to break up in the spring thaw. And when that happened the level would rise suddenly, torrentially, and the pup would drown. She would leave it on the edge, where it would be caught by the surging waters.
    She arrived at a spot where the bank had been undercut by the course of the river. There were already signs of thaw, so she placed the pup on an ice ledge. It was a spot certain to be swamped, especially when the storm rumbled in.
    The Obea was careful as she put the pup on the ice -- heedful, precise. The pup was an it, neither a he nor a she, nor even a wolf. Just an it that squirmed, mewling and whining weakly. But all that would be over soon. If the storm didn't take the pup, an owl would. The river was on a major flight path of collier owls who flew into the Beyond for the coals spewed from the volcanoes. They were always hungry when they got to this point. This malcadh would not be the first seized by an owl from the kingdom of Ga'Hoole. There were smith owls, too, that set up temporary forges near the volcanoes. Smithing was hard work. Those owls ate a lot. Despite the close  relationship between owls and wolves, a malcadh was fair game.
    There was a tick-tick sound as the pup attempted to grip the cold, smooth surface with its tiny paws. The mewling and whining escalated to weeping, but the Obea didn't hear it. Her ears were sealed as effectively as the pup's. There were no vague stirrings deep within her. If anything, she felt only the cold, smooth weight of that stone that had become synonymous with her duty, her charge, her identity. I am the Obea. That is all I need to know. All I need to be. I am the Obea.

CHAPTER ONE
    ***
    THE RIVER ROARS

    HE COULD NOT SEE, HE COULD NOT hear, and vainly he poked out his tongue to lick, but the smell of milk was gone and with it the warm teat. He could feel only cold, nothing else. It filled him until his small body was racked with violent shivers. How had everything changed so fast? Where was the stream of warm milk, the soft fur, the squirming presence of the other pups? In his brief life, he had known little, but now he knew less. Smell, taste, and feeling, the only senses he had, were starved. The pup felt himself drifting off into a void that was neither life nor death, only a terrible nothing. And with this great void came numbness.
    Something stirred -- a vibration -- and with it a new element entered his barely pulsing life. The terrible cracking and booming as the river ice buckled was so loud  that it penetrated the pup's sealed ears. Then suddenly, a roar surged through his head. There was a great lurch, and he began to skid off the ice shelf, but digging in his sharp little claws, he gripped hard.
    It would seem a cruel trick that the lone pup gained two vital senses, sight and sound, as the winter-locked river ruptured and broke free. It was perhaps the shock that caused his eyes to unseal and his ears to open.
    The final thaw of the river unleashed immense cataracts of water that tore at the banks, uprooting trees, dislodging boulders and rocky outcrops. The shelf on which the Obea had placed the pup creaked, then tilted, and at last, there was a sharp crack that splintered in his ears. Light flashed brutally in the pup's eyes as the moon scorched the ice floes sweeping down the river.
    Dim in the pup's memory was a previous violence. Birth. He had been launched from the warmth of his mother's womb into the grip of forces greater than himself. His small body was nothing against the intense contractions that expelled him. And now it was happening again. But instead of going from the inviolable warmth of his mother's womb, he was sliding into the frigid waters of the tumultuous river. He dug harder with that splayed paw, which seemed to have a better grip than the  others. He clung,