Frost Wolf by Kathryn Lasky Read Free Book Online Page B

Beyond. Of all the owls, Gwynneth knew and understood the ways of the wolves best.
    She could have taken over the forge when her auntie died, but she never wanted to. She thought it would feel as if the old Snowy were looking over her shoulders everytime she took up the tongs. But this had not happened during the three moons she had passed in her auntie’s old forge in the Hoolian empire — not until this evening.
    Gwynneth felt the slightest ruffle pass through from her mantle feathers to her plummels, those softest and most delicate feathers that edged her wings.
Great Glaux
, she thought, and immediately flattened all her plumage to grow instantaneously sleeker and taller. This was the fear reaction in owls, known as
wilfing
. Gwynneth had grown as slender as a sapling limb. She stood perfectly still, but the feeling did not go away. The woods were mystical in the time just before twilight. Vapors floated eerily through the tall pines and fir trees, draping the branches like cloth.
Was it … ?
She tried to repress the thought.
    Was Auntie not at rest? Did the old Rogue smith of the Silverveil have — as the owls said of scrooms who wandered the earth — unfinished business? The vapors that twined around the trees like white ivy had coalesced into a shape — the shape of a Snowy Owl.
    Scrooms were given to muffled and mostly incoherent speech. It was often very difficult to understand what they were saying, what messages they were bringing. It became particularly difficult to understand them if one resisted, as Gwynneth was resisting deep within her gizzard. But finally her auntie’s words became clear.
    “Disturbed!” The word rang out crystalline and sharp. Gwynneth felt a quiver run along her wing feathers. The mist of the Snowy Owl appeared to tremble and glitter under the light of a fullshine moon. Gwynneth had been clutching a pair of tongs over her fire, but now she dropped them. She felt something slip out from her and rise in the darkness to join the bundle of mist that perched on a limb of the fir tree. And yet she had not twitched a feather — not a plummel, not a covert nor a primary. But still she looked down and saw herself standing by the forge. Her body had
wilfed
to a thinness that was alarming, and her long shadow stretched across the pool of orange light that spilled from the flames of the fire.
    Disturbed?
she said, but her voice was as muffled as the scroom’s once had been. Words floated out of her like bubbles. She wondered whether she was speaking or if her thoughts were simply appearing before her.
    It is not I who is disturbed
, the scroom replied. Gwynneth felt the voice rather than actually heard it. And it felt just the way it did when Auntie used to scold her.
    What disturbance, Auntie?
    A … a … helmet. A visor.
    Whose?
    Your … your …
The clarity began to dissolve, the words to blur.
    Don’t go! Don’t go!
Gwynneth thought.
    Then the answer stirred deep in Gwynneth’s gizzard.
Da’s. Da’s helmet?
    A mark was made for him … a hero mark.
    But hero marks are for wolves —
    A hero mark for a warrior owl beloved by wolves!
    Questions boiled in Gwynneth’s mind, but Auntie was fading away.
    A hero mark for an owl? Even for an owl beloved by wolves, it was peculiar! More troubling, however, was the thought that some creature had disturbed her father’s helmet and visor. In the world of owls it was unthinkable. Rogue smiths’ helmets, visors, and battle claws were always treated with utmost respect, especially the ones they made for their own use and not for barter. How would her father’s scroom ever rest if his helmet had been disturbed? How would he ever perch peacefully in Glaumora by the heavenly forge, where the most beautiful objects were wrought with hammers and tongs made of stars, where the sparks from the fires forged new constellations? Gwynneth almost wept when she thought of her da. How could this have happened?
    At that moment an icy draft cut through the