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it go faster.” Faolan squinted into the distance. It seemed impossible, but there was no sign of Stormfast or Morgan, the two east-facing volcanoes. There was just an immense band of white against the dark horizon. He turned to Dearlea in astonishment. “We were spared, but Stormfast and Morgan were not.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about?” Mhairie said.
    Faolan was as confused as his sisters. His eyes scoured the horizon for any sign of the two volcanoes. One moment there had been a ring of fire and then the glacier just swallowed it. He felt panic rising in him. What about Edme? Edme often guarded Stormfast. She knew that volcano’s moods better than any other Watch wolf. But now there was absolutely no sign of it, not a thread of smoke, not a bump on the horizon. Only that loom of white like a band of fog in the distance. Could a glacier travel that fast?
    There was an ancient story told by the skreeleens called the White Grizzly, about an immense ice bear thatate the ground, the meadows, the mountains. But it was just a story and he never paid it much attention because he loved his second Milk Giver, the grizzly bear Thunderheart, and he disliked legends that made bears into monsters. Now it struck him that the White Grizzly had been a glacier and the story that the skreeleens told had really happened.
    The wind started to pick up, lashing in from out at sea and howling down upon them. The seas were building, waves cresting high over their heads and then crashing down, almost capsizing their small ice raft. The three wolves crouched low and gripped the ice with their claws so they wouldn’t be scraped from the floe. Above, the sky was livid and bruised with dark clouds. An immense wave erupted like a monster from the deep trying to batter the moon.
    â€œHang on!” Faolan shouted and they clung with all their might as the wave crashed. The ice floe plunged into the water then reared up. Miraculously, the three wolves had all managed to cling on, drenched but alive.
    â€œWe’re being driven off course!” Faolan shouted.
    â€œWhat course?” Dearlea yelled back at him.
    â€œI’m a Watch wolf. I must get back to the Ring.” And , he thought, I need to see if Edme survived. Life without Edme was almost unimaginable. The very thought madehim gasp. Overhead, the moon glowered and the stars bounced in the sky. Fool! they all seemed to rail at him. Watch wolves were not supposed to love, to have mates or families. But he could not deny that he felt something very deep for Edme.
    Now some maverick current was swirling them in a direction that would take them far from land. If they could get to the south, the water still seemed frozen, but was it solid enough for them to walk across? The glacier had left a violent track with all sorts of debris in its wake. Whole trees from the vast northern forests floated in the waves, and in shallower parts of the sea immense boulders broke through the water.
    â€œWhat are you thinking, Faolan?” Dearlea asked.
    â€œI’m thinking that we have to steer this ice floe. If we were closer, I’d say we should swim. But the currents are confusing. I’m not sure we’d make it.”
    â€œSteer?” Mhairie said. “What do you mean, ‘steer’?”
    â€œIs that an owl word?” Dearlea asked.
    â€œI suppose it’s sort of an owl notion. When owls fly they just don’t point themselves in the direction they want to go. They have to make adjustments for the wind. Gwynneth told me.”
    But as Faolan began to explain the idea, he wondered. He seemed to know more about flying than Gwynnethhad told him. How would he know, for instance, that an owl must angle its tail to make very small adjustments? “Ruddering,” they called it. Ice was buoyant and it could not weigh that much. If he could just “rudder” the ice floe the way an owl rudders its tail feathers and its wings to guide its