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Spirit Wolf
Spirit Wolf
Author Kathryn Lasky
Publication Order
Preceded by
Frost Wolf
Followed by
Star Wolf

Spirit Wolf is the fifth book in the Wolves of the Beyond series. Like all the other books in the series, it is written by Kathryn Lasky. The hardcover was released on May 1st, 2012.

Preview[]

The Beyond has broken.

A cataclysmic earthquake has shattered the land and flattened even the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes. Most of the wolf clans are gone, lost in the giant tremor. What the survivors need now is a leader--a wolf to show them the way to a better place.

Young Faolan's destiny has arrived. He's been a marked wolf since birth, with a strange, splayed paw and an uncanny connection to the bears. There's something about Faolan that inspires certain wolves...and leaves others deeply suspicious. Now, with survival at stake, the remaining wolves must make a choice. Will they trust the silver outsider to lead them to safety? Or will the wolves of the Beyond disappear forever?

Plot[]

The book starts off exactly where Frost Wolf left off. Faolan is struggling to contemplate a dream he was just having, about an old wolf who had lived many lives. He steps out to watch Mhairie and Dearlea carve bones for Morag's drumlyn. All at once, a massive earthquake strikes, shattering the glaciers on the Sea of Hoolemere and collapsing the faraway Ring of Sacred Volcanoes. The H'rathghar Glacier breaks loose from its fastenings and shoves across the land. Broken Talon Point breaks in half, dumping Mhairie and Dearlea in the ocean.

Meanwhile at the Ring, Edme comes off her shift, thinking about all the sadness of this time and all the wolves she lost, either forever or temporarily, and starts to cry. Twistling passes by and for a second thinks that Edme is crying blood, but it turns out to be just the light. Twist brings up the peculiar behavior of the volcanoes when the earthquake hits, dropping Twist into a crack in the ground. The Ring falls apart around Edme as she loses consciousness. In the Shadow Forest, the Sark, Gwynneth and Liam MacDuncan are returning Gwyndor's mask just where they were replacing it in the last book. The earth begins to shake here as well and Liam is crushed by a boulder. Gwynneth struggles to find the Sark, going yeep in the confusion. In The Cave Before Time, The Whistler is spending the night while off the Blood Watch. He finds a painting of a bear and studies it, thinking it looks familiar, when the earthquake hits and the Whistler is caught, fainting while silently pleading for Skaarsgard to help him.

Back on Broken Talon Point, Faolan is trapped on an ice floe in the heaving bight. Faolan howls for his sisters, and then hears Dearlea calling to Mhairie. Just in time, he finds them on the sinking carcass of the musk ox they ate the previous night. He tells them to swim to him, and they do, clinging to the ice floe while he pulls them up. Suddenly, his sisters notice something about his paw. Faolan realizes that his splayed paw has been mended following the destruction of the Ember of Hoole in the earthquake. He glances down at it, and finds it suddenly normal, feeling stunned by the sight of it. The young Watch wolf feels oddly incomplete without his splayed foot, and nearly falls off the ice floe. Meanwhile, the Whistler awakens and realizes that his throat is healed as well. He decides to get out of the cave quickly.

In the Outermost, Heep has established himself as the leader of a rout, with a mate, Aliac, and a son, Abban. To cap it off, he has recently grown a tail and is extremely proud of it. It is told that when the earthquake struck, Heep is in the middle of having a dead wolf's tail given to him, when the earth shakes and the outclanners flee their lair. Heep stops when he realizes a white tail tip is growing from his rump, and is overjoyed to find himself growing a tail. After the earthquake, Heep cannot get enough of his tail, which makes the other outclanners laugh as they watch his vanity consuming him.

At the Ring, Myrrglosch looks around at the devastation, and is so shocked he faints. When he wakes up and realizes that he is not dead, he explores the ruins, finding the horribly burned, crushed, and mangled bodies of dead Watch wolves and owls. Silently he begs for Edme to have survived, even if she is the only one. Suddenly, he hears Edme whimpering in her sleep in the remains of her and Faolan's den, and though he is delighted to see her, he realizes that all the Watch wolves' deformities have healed in death except hers, not realizing she is a malcadh made.

On the sea, Faolan is struggling to adapt to his new paw. Looking out at the land, he notices that the Ring has been completely crushed by the H'rathghar Glacier. Desperately wondering what could have happened to Edme, he realizes his love for her. Faolan sees a piece of driftwood and has an idea of how to get on course. He gnaws it into a strange shape and explains to his sisters that he wants to create something like an owl's tail, in order to steer them to shore. After several attempts to hook it into the ice, Faolan is near to giving up because his new paw is proving difficult. With his sisters' encouragement, he tries again, and manages to get it in a good position. As the ice floe begins to head back to the land, he thinks of Edme all the way, worried sick about her.

Meanwhile, the Sark is badly wounded by the quake and realizes it will kill her, but drags herself resolutely toward her den and the memory jugs contained within. While stopping to treat herself, she wonders if Faolan survived, and suddenly remembers asking into her memory jugs if Faolan might be a Gyre Soul, renewing her desire to get home. That same day, Faolan and his sisters travel across the ruins of the Beyond. While stopping for rest, Faolan thinks about a conversation he had with Thunderheart, when she had said the Outermost might be bad for his kind. He slips into a dream about being a grizzly bear called Eo, who rescues a mother grizzly from a moose. He stops as the animal lies dying, having an urge to perform lochinvyrr, which only wolves do. Faolan wakes up, realizing that he chose to be Eo in a past life. His sisters call him to get moving, and he wonders if they can see Eo's spirit in him.

Meanwhile, Gwynneth flies through the destroyed Beyond, trying to find the Sark, when she is startled by the whimpers of a newborn wolf pup coming from her forge. Much to her surprise, she discovers Banja resting inside with her new pup, whom she calls Maudie. The red wolf appears to have changed completely and become much nicer. Banja tells Gwynneth of her plans to go to the Fengo and explain that she broke the law that forbids Watch wolves to mate, but Gwynneth reveals that she has been unable to find the Ring and thinks it destroyed. She also notices that Banja has grown her second eye. The Watch wolf is shocked by the news, and admits that she doesn't know where to go next.

Faolan and his sisters arrive at the crushed Ring and search the wreckage, finding numerous dead wolves and owls. Edme and Myrr arrive from the den and greet them. The five wolves catch up on the recent events, with Faolan comforting Edme over her single eye. Edme later reports that all of the other Watch wolves and collier owls are dead, including the Fengo Finbar. Noticing that the cairn of the Fengos is intact, they put him to rest. Faolan keeps the traditional watch over the Fengo's bones, and has a vision of the first Fengo and Grank at the Ring. The name Grank feels familiar to Faolan. The vision changes until long after Fengo's death, and Faolan finds himself in the body of a female Snowy Owl, whom he realizes was another of his past lives. As the owl, a gadfeather named Fionula, Faolan flies to the Great Ga'Hoole Tree to visit her friend, Madame Brunwella Plonk. During the visit, the conversation turns to wolves, and Fionula becomes defensive when Madame Plonk comments on the strange ways of wolves, displaying knowledge of the Bone of Bones that surprises her friend. The next morning, Faolan tells the others that they have to leave the Beyond and travel west to a far-off land he glimpsed from the Blood Watch, which he calls The Distant Blue, and look for the Sark and the Whistler along the way.

Gwynneth flies out to look for her friends, but finds the Beyond utterly ruined and riddled with deep crevasses, where much to her horror, she finds the dead body of Oona in one. When she finally manages to bring food back to Banja, the Watch wolf asks Gwynneth if she would look after Maudie if anything should happen to her. Banja confesses that she was so cruel to Edme because she was missing an eye like her, and she was bitter about it, then ashamedly says that she would not dare ask Edme for any favors. Gwynneth assures her that she would take care of Maudie, and Edme would as well. With Banja's encouragement and trust in her, Gwynneth leaves to find the Sark again, leaving mother and pup to rest. The Masked Owl flies to the remains of the Sark's den.

The Sark finally returns to her den the night before, but finds that all of her memory jugs are destroyed. Immediately seized by grief, she falls in a near faint on a pile of shards. The scent of sweet grass drifts from the pile, triggering her memory of her young days. The Sark remembers that time as being a lone wolf, certain that she was not carried off by an Obea, but assumes she was abandoned for her ugliness. When she was a yearling, she followed a MacNab pack with a strikingly beautiful amber-colored she-wolf, whom she nicknamed Amber. The male wolves all flirted with Amber, who did not discourage the attention, and was terrible at minding her new pups and often harsh. One night, while Amber was staring at her reflection in a lake for hours on end, one of her pups came over, wanting to nurse. Amber threw him, breaking his spine and killing him instantly. Much to the Sark's horror, she recognized Amber's scent for the first time as the scent of her own mother. The Sark remained hidden as Amber dropped the body in the lake, stopping for one last look. On her own once again, the Sark swore never to become like her mother, whom she now saw as a malcadh for her twisted soul, nor to mate and risk passing on Amber's instability. Meanwhile, Gwynneth finds the Sark close to death and bleeding horribly, and screams her heart out.

While traveling to the Slough, Faolan's group hears Gwynneth screaming and follow the sound to the den, where they find the grieving owl. She yells that she tried everything, but the Sark wouldn't wake up. The group enter the Sark's den to see the old wolf on her deathbed. While watching, Faolan tells Gwynneth his plans to travel west. Much to everyone's surprise, the Sark speaks up and refuses to leave her bed of shards. Despite the others' protests, the Sark insists that she will die with her memory jugs, and after sharing one final moment with Gwynneth and Faolan, she expires. At Faolan's instruction, they leave quietly and respectfully.

On the journey, the survivors come upon the surface of the H'rathghar Glacier lying across half the Beyond. Faolan warns that the snowy surface may conceal dangerous crevasses, instructing them to walk carefully as they set off. Gwynneth explains how she found Oona's body, which leads her to tell the others about Banja and Maudie. Faolan and Edme are shocked by the news, but happy for Banja, and Faolan tells Gwynneth to retrieve them and meet up at the Cave Before Time. Edme, meanwhile, senses that Faolan will meet the frost wolf she saw at the beginning of the last book, if he only goes to the cave. She feels a pain in her starboard femur, and has a strange sense they are going back before time. Faolan gives Gwynneth directions to the cave, and after she flies off the group begin a game of tag with Myrr, but Edme falls into a hidden crevasse.

Back in the Cave Before Time, the Whistler hears the voices of Faolan and the brigade from a singing rock. At the same time, Edme assesses her situation carefully. Trapped on a ledge not far from the surface with pawholds leading up, the one-eyed wolf starts climbing back up, but is stopped by a section of ice with no pawholds, leaving her dangling by her claws. After some time, the Whistler arrives to help, and Gwynneth soon follows with Maudie, telling them Banja will come that evening. Faolan gets an idea and decides that when Banja comes, they will form a rescue chain - which, in his excitement, he calls a Great Chain. The other wolves are stunned to hear him speak the name of The Great Chain in this way. Banja arrives and is let in on the plan in the midst of the drama. Faolan finally ends the debate by explaining that times are different and the time has come for a new Great Chain, and the plan is set in motion.

They begin to climb down to rescue Edme, but the steepness forces them to dig their claws tightly into each other's skin. As Faolan grabs Edme, Dearlea, just behind him, weakens and slips. Gwynneth digs her talons into Edme's head to help pull her out, and she is overjoyed to see the black night after the endless blue light inside the glacier. Edme profusely thanks the others for their efforts. While listening to Faolan talk about his plans, Edme wonders if he is truly leading them to a new land, or the land the frost wolf came from. The group finds a den for the night, but Edme decides to sleep outside after being confined in the glacier for so long. Edme asks Gwynneth if she will travel west with them, and the Masked Owl agrees, as everyone she has ever loved is now dead. Edme feels the pain of her femur, and realizes it is an old, familiar pain. That night, she dreams about a mysterious limping wolf who seems to know her, but is woken by Myrr.

Three days later, Gwynneth is flying ahead when she comes upon the end of the glacier with a destroyed spirit wood gathered on its edge. Frightened, Gwynneth begins to go yeep, but is saved by Gwyndor's scroom, who shows her the clearest path west. She reports her findings back to the wolves. That night, they arrive at the spirit woods, and are forced to camp there for the night. Faolan has a dream about meeting Fionula and Eo, and now has a name to call them: gyre souls. The silver wolf at last understands the meaning of the spiral markings on his paw: his different lives over many years. Together, the three of them decide to go west. Edme enters the dream as well, and sees the bear, the owl, and a wolf she is not sure is Faolan, who seems old and weak. Terrified, the one-eyed wolf is woken by Faolan from her nightmare, and describes the vision to her shocked friend. Faolan then realizes he encountered another spirit, one he does not know but might be the old wolf Edme saw.

While traveling the next morning, the group encounters a ground fog, and are forced to stop. Edme suddenly realizes Myrr is missing, and begins to panic. Gwynneth takes a roll call and leads the wolves to a safe spot while she searches for Myrr by sound. She finds two young bears crying, and hears Myrr talking with them. When she flies down, she recognizes the cubs as Toby and Burney, who tell her their mother, Bronka, got lost in the earthquake. After promising the group will look for Bronka, Gwynneth brings the three young animals back. The two cubs cry for their mother all night, and Edme and Banja insist to Faolan that they look for Bronka. Four of the wolves set out with Gwynneth to explore the gorge where she found the cubs. Gwynneth hears Bronka's heartbeat growing slower and tracks down the mother bear, weakened by a broken ankle, torn to pieces by outclanners, and barely alive. Gwynneth whispers in Bronka's ear that her cubs are safe with Faolan and Edme before Bronka dies. Faolan and the other wolves arrive and are shocked at the condition of the grizzly's body. Searching for a way to bring back proof of her death to her desperate cubs, they roll on her body to infuse her scent into their fur. Gwynneth gets it all over her feathers as well, and they return to tell the devastated cubs the horrible news. Gwynneth gives each of them a feather to wear so they still have their mother's scent.

While traveling to the Cave Before Time, Gwynneth reminisces about her early days as a rogue smith, and the beginning of her friendship with Faolan, causing her to wonder about the spiral mark remaining on his paw. Her musings are interrupted by a sound that warns of another earthquake coming. Meanwhile, Faolan is aware now that at the Cave Before Time, he will meet his final gyre soul. He notices that Edme is walking oddly and asks her about it, but she is uncharacteristically bad-tempered about it. At first, he thinks it might be a hidden defect, but suddenly realizes the night of the earthquake, he dreamed of carving a twisted femur similar to hers. The silver wolf is suddenly frightened of what might come to him in the cave, slowing the group down and severely annoying Edme. Just as she might be about to fight Faolan for the first time, Gwynneth warns the others about the second earthquake. They run for their lives, Gwynneth guiding them through a maze of new crevices, until they reach the cave.

Inside, Faolan discovers the crack in the ceiling letting the moonlight in, allowing the group to spot Katria and Airmead taking refuge. The Whistler asks what happened to the other Blood Watch wolves, and it is revealed that Airmead was badly injured fighting a rout. The two Blood Watch wolves explain that Galana the Namara was helping out on the Blood Watch when she was killed in the first earthquake. The outclanners attacked and tried to drink her blood, which started the battle and killed Brygeen and Alastrine. Faolan suddenly asks them if Heep had been in the rout, and Airmead states that he had injured her and had grown a tail.

Knowing that Heep was still alive, Faolan almost forgets that he needs to meet his third gyre if he can guide the survivors to the Distant Blue. That night, while the others sleep, he sets off to follow the moon crack, knowing it will guide him to where he will meet the frost wolf. Fionula and Eo join him and admire the paintings with him. When they stop in front of the painting of the byrrgis, Faolan realizes his third gyre was the lead wolf, and he later made the painting. He continues to find more paintings made by his gyre souls. Finally, at the end of the passages, they find a chamber painted with scenes of a wolf's death. Suddenly, he spots a wolf's twisted femur. All of the gyres are shocked to see it, and Faolan realizes it is carved, and its story is connected to him. He takes the bone and examines the paintings, which end when the wolf falls off the star ladder. Faolan then realizes this is the third gyre.

As the moon crack opens wide, Fengo reveals himself as the third gyre. All four gyres gather together as one and realize that after Fengo saved the wolves from the Long Cold, he deserved to live several lives and so he chose two animals he admired, and finally another wolf. Faolan leaves the cave secure in the knowledge of his three other souls.

When Faolan returns to the others, they realize he has changed, but only Edme figures it out when she senses Fengo's spirit now sharing his body, realizing she was his mate in a past life. Faolan too notices that she can feel his gyres. At Fionula's instruction, he guides the others out of the wider moon crack.

The group comes across the Crystal Plain, which Faolan declares too bright to cross safely in daylight. On their first night on the plain, they encounter the spirits of their lost loved ones. The next morning, they stop and Faolan instructs them to build their first snow cave. They continue in this way for their whole trip across the plain. Edme takes charge of the bone on the trip, and also senses its incomplete story is connected to her as well, and her leg pain.

Back at the Cave Before Time, Heep leads his rout through the tunnels, with Aliac confused and complaining bitterly. Heep detects the scent of Faolan in the cave and follows it. After a while, his scent changes suddenly. Heep becomes frightened of the new scent, and when he finds Faolan's paw print with a spiral mark, he loses the scent entirely. When Aliac contradicts him, Heep strikes her. Aliac defiantly snaps at him, threatening to rip off his tail. Suddenly, she remembers who she was: Caila. Recalling that she once nursed Mhairie and Dearlea, and that Abban is all she has left, she snatches Abban, leaps from the cave, and bolts away to freedom.

Now with the brigade on a beach at the edge of the Frozen Sea, Caila and Abban catch up and Caila asks Gwynneth about Mhairie and Dearlea. The Masked Owl reminds her of how she denied her foster daughters while out of her mind. Caila reunites with them and apologizes for what she has done, and they forgive her. That night, the group discover a new constellation and name it the Sark, for its appearance similar to a memory jug. Edme looks out at an ice bridge over the Frozen Sea, thinking their true journey is about to begin.

Release Date[]

The hardcover of Spirit Wolf has been released on May 1, 2012.

Excerpt[]

(Excerpt from the Prologue: Dream Shards)

Faolan stepped toward the cave opening and saw his two sisters limned in the light of a full moon. They were diligently gnawing the bones of their mother, Morag, in order to honor her. When they were finished, they would place the bones with the others that Faolan had carved on a cairn, a drumlyn, on this lonely prospect of Broken Talon Point. Faolan had selected this specific place because on a clear night he would be able to see the drumlyn from his watch at the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes. And from here, on this peninsula of land that hooked out into the Sea of Hoolemere like the broken claw of an owl, he could see the jagged ring of flames that shot from the volcanoes.

Tonight, every volcano was active, so the five crowns appeared like a circle of glowing rubies against a sky roiling with silver-lit clouds. The snow of Broken Talon Point had been scoured by the sea winds, leaving a sheath of ice. As Faolan stepped from the cave, he felt something shiver beneath his paws. The ice began to splinter. Beezar, the small constellation known as the blind wolf that stumbled across the night, gave a great lurch and seemed to crash. The stars shuddered and the sky began to slide as the earth convulsed. Mhairie and Dearlea stood locked with fear. There was a deep rumbling that burst from the very center of the earth and then a shattering crack that threw the two sisters onto their backs.

They scrambled to their feet again but the earth was still shaking too violently. They tried to wrap their paws and legs around each other, clinging to each other as they looked toward the sky.

“Look! Look!” Mhairie gasped, her eyes wide with terror. Flames swept through the night.

“It’s the Ring!” Dearlea cried. One by one, like stars dying, the volcanoes collapsed into themselves, shooting rivers of flame and smoke into the sky.

“What’s happening?” Dearlea shrieked. “Look to the east!” But once again the earth was seized with a deep and terrible spasm. A huge rock shot straight up into the air, almost crushing Faolan as it crashed to the ground.

Then there was a new sound. A jagged, tearing noise from the north. The three wolves wheeled about and caught sight of a white tide of ice advancing toward them, the leading edge jagged with frozen fangs. The H’rathghar glacier, anchored for centuries, had cut loose and was plowing across the open water. They felt another tremendous quaking beneath their paws and were thrown down again onto the frozen ground. It was as if the center of the earth could not hold.

On his back, Faolan saw the moon throbbing in the flame-ripped night. He began slipping on the ice and clawed feebly at the sky as if to gain purchase. Beneath him he felt the spasms of the dying earth. I am rocking in the cradle of my lost souls, he thought. The constellation of the Great Bear blazed above him, and Lupus and Skaarsgard had suddenly reappeared, in defiance of the season.

The earth had slipped its moorings and the constellations hung haphazardly in the sky without rhyme or reason.

His sisters screamed and Faolan whipped his head around to see the peninsula fracture. The two she-wolves scrambled and struggled, but slid inexorably off the edge into the sea. The last thing Faolan saw was Dearlea’s bright green eyes roll back into her head until they showed only white- the white of the glacier’s fangs that tore across that sea.   

Characters[]

Chapters[]

  • Dream Shards
  1. A Scarlet Rain
  2. Castaways
  3. A Strange Voice
  4. A Tail Reclaimed
  5. Water Wing
  6. Another Pelt
  7. Out of Chaos
  8. The Broken Ring
  9. The Cairn of the Fengos
  10. Almost as Good as Two Eyes
  11. Shattered
  12. The Offing
  13. "No! No, and No Again!"
  14. Beyond the Beyond, Before the Before
  15. The Long Blue Night
  16. Of Wolves and Metal
  17. The New Great Chain
  18. Blood and Stars
  19. The Toe of the Glacier
  20. Into the Spirit Woods
  21. The Wind of Her Wings
  22. Bits of Miracles
  23. Bronka
  24. This View of Life!
  25. "He Still Lives"
  26. The Moon Crack
  27. The Loveliest of Bones
  28. "Who Is This?"
  29. The Crystal Plain
  30. A Wolf Named Aliac
  31. Caila!
  • The Last Den

Trivia[]

  • Spirit Wolf was thought to be called Ice Wolf, but the real title was revealed by sites such as Amazon.com
  • The pages in the contents are off by two pages, starting on chapter 15, The Long Blue Night.
  • Starting with chapter 27, The Loveliest of Bones, the pages are off by four.
  • Spirit Wolf, along with Shadow Wolf, Frost Wolf, and Star Wolf, have no names for their parts.
  • In Spirit Wolf, along with most of the other books, the reader may be able to tell that Faolan has a great affection for Edme.
  • There is a hint on page 204 that Edme may have been the first Fengo's mate, in a past life.
  • There is an inconsistency with the location of Heep's rout during the first earthquake: Chapter 4 shows Heep and his rout in their den as the earthquake strikes, yet in Chapter 25, Airmead claims Heep and his rout were fighting her and several other wolves on the Blood Watch.
    • In addition, in Chapter 4 Heep's tail grows during the earthquake, while in Chapter 25 Airmead reports that Heep has already grown a tail, implying she didn't see him before it grew in.


Gallery[]

Covers[]

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