Free Lone Wolf by Kathryn Lasky Page B

themselves until they were sure of a reliable piece of ground that was not going to move. But now the weather was turning, and the Obea's aches and pains were  disappearing with the heat of summer. The rancor that she thought had been smoothed away over time, however, began to stir again. Not simply a sharp pebble digging into her paw, it was more animate, coiling inside her like a serpent. She could feel its fangs with every step. Why me? Why me?
    The whining question over and over again. The Obea never grieved for the pups she carried away, only the ones that she had never given birth to. Why me? Why me? The refrain played again through her mind like the moaning of the north wind that swept down from the Outermost.
    She began to recall the time when she had first suspected that she might be barren. One mate after the next had left her when she failed to bear pups. After the third mate left, she moved on to a new pack within the same clan. Once she had been considered a beautiful wolf. Her fur was a lustrous tawny gold and she had attracted a fair number of suitors. But as she grew older her pelt had lost its shine. Her teats shriveled until they were the size of hard little pebbles.
    She went from pack to pack, until the news had spread and she was forced to seek a new clan. The MacDuncans were good. She had caught the eye of a big black wolf, Donegal MacDuncan. He was an honorable  wolf, but it soon enough became apparent that she was not able to bear pups. It was Donegal who asked the clan chieftain, Duncan MacDuncan, if she might become the Obea. It was a kindness really, for at her somewhat advanced age to have to become a lone wolf would have been hard. Still, it was not easy to observe Donegal with a new mate who promptly bore a litter of five healthy pups.
    The place of an Obea in the complex social structure of a clan was peculiar. She was rankless, neither high nor low. This meant there was no precise form of conduct for greeting her, for sharing food, or a particular position in the byrrgis, the traveling formation the wolves of the Beyond used when they hunted or explored new territory. Nevertheless, she existed on the fringes of the group in much the same way gnaw wolves did, at least until a gnaw wolf was selected for the Watch of the Ring of the Sacred Volcanoes.
    The wolves of the pack avoided her. The females were the worst. Some of the females even thought the Obea smelled different, that her scent marks betrayed her barrenness. She knew they talked about her. And when they were heavy with a litter they would often steal furtive glances at her. Some even suspected that she could see through them, right into their wombs, and  knew if a pup they were carrying was a malcadh. They gossiped that the Obea could actually put a spell on them and cause a malcadh to form. The few malcadhs who did survive and made their way back to the clan to serve as gnaw wolves suspected that she resented their survival, and avoided her, as if fearful that she might pick them up and carry them away again. And the males, of course, had no interest in her at all. They seemed to look right through her as if she did not exist. She was like air or water, invisible. It had been no life at all for Shibaan.
    Well, she must get on with this business. That was what it was for her -- a business, a way to earn her keep in the clan. She did her job well, very well indeed. She was clever in finding ingenious tummfraws, the sites for abandoning cursed pups. The tummfraws that Shibaan found were places frequented by predators or vulnerable to natural disasters, such as river floods or avalanches. If a pup did survive and made it back to a pack in the MacDuncan clan, it proved that he or she was worthy and could become a gnaw wolf and a candidate for the Watch of the Ring of the Sacred Volcanoes. And didn't the wolves of the Beyond owe her, Shibaan? The present chieftain, the Fengo of the Sacred Ring, Hamish was said to be the best Fengo since