Free Frost Wolf by Kathryn Lasky Page B

prophet is just an ordinary wolf.”
    “An ordinary, starving wolf,” Mhairie added, “whose brain has become addled from starvation and his marrow thinned. He might not even be a bad wolf. Just a stupid wolf with some idiot idea.”
    Edme lifted her muzzle into the breeze. “The wind is coming our way. I think we’ve found a dance circle!”
    “I am already picking up the stench of the outclanners.” Mhairie wrinkled her nose.
    “Yes, the wind favors us, so they might not pick up our scent. And that fox den gave us a good cover scent if the wind should shift. Let’s see what we have. But we’rejust going to watch, and not
engage
.” Faolan said the last word with emphasis.

    They made their way as close as they could to the source of the whispers. As they crested a small rise, they spotted a broad circle with several wolves dancing.
    “Look!” Edme said.
    “Are they really moving? It seems so slow,” Dearlea whispered.
    “One is falling down,” Faolan said.
    They had no idea how long the wolves had been dancing, but they seemed to be in a deep trance. They moved unthinkingly through the steps as if almost asleep. It was the oddest thing any of the five travelers had ever seen. The dancing wolves were twirling slowly, their steps somehow freakish. In the wasting light of the moon, under a sky reeling with stars, these creatures looked as if they had lost their essence, their defining marrow. They had the bodies of wolves, but inside, it was as if a different animal inhabited their pelts. Their movements were palsied, involuntary jerks and twitches. While dancing they emitted strange wheezes and gurgles so dissimilar to a wolf’s normal vocal range that they were incomprehensible.
    Edme wondered aloud, “Lord Adair and Lord Jarne were bad, but would they go this far?”
    “Hush, let’s listen,” Faolan ordered. “They’ve left off those other sounds they were making. They’re starting to howl.”
    The howling began with a warbling ululation similar to the
glaffling
or mourning cry of grieving wolves. At first the words were incoherent, but soon the travelers could make them out.
    Kill … kill … kill the body. Release the soul
    We are waiting souls wrapped in our sacred pelts
    Skaarsgard, your apostles await you
    Gather us to your star fur
    Let our marrow join yours
    Bring the Cave of Souls to earth
    Where we will live again
    Death is our life
    Dying our meat
    Our spirits will feast.
    The morbid howling festered in the night air, and yet there was something seductive in the sound. Despite the deep weirdness of the dancers, the five wolves felt asudden vulnerability stir within their marrow. They knew they must stand strong together. Faolan put a paw on Mhairie’s shoulder, and Edme raised her paw and placed it on Dearlea’s withers, while the Whistler nuzzled his head protectively on top of Edme’s. There was something insidious in the darkness. Insidious and yet enthralling.
    So easy, so easy,
Faolan was thinking.
So easy to give in. Will I fall in love with death when it finally comes? Does a starving wolf fall in love with famine?
    Some of the dancers, nearing the cusp of exhaustion, collapsed on the ground unconscious.
    Dearlea blinked as a caribou pelt fell off of one of the wolves in the dance circle.
    “Mum!” she yelped. “It’s Mum!”
    And it was Caila — Caila, the once proud turning guard of the MacDuncan clan. She stood still as the remaining wolves continued to dance around her. Her eyes were clouded and reflected nothing in the darkness of the night. But there was no stopping Dearlea and Mhairie. They raced down the embankment toward their mother. To Faolan, Edme, and the Whistler, the she-wolf they had known as Caila was barely recognizable. Her unfocused eyes seemed to spin in her head as madly as the Sark’s. Her once lustrous blond pelt had turned dulland brownish. In many places there were bald patches with old blood and dark yellows and browns that came from tree bark