still haven’t figured it out. It makes you sound kind of old…but in good way. Like Nava.”

“About my question…” Aleu persisted, pleased with the compliment but wanting answers.

Linder sighed. “Nava talked about how our destinies and our lives are like a grand design. When he said that, it made me think of a giant tapestry with mile after mile of patterns and colors. The design starts out simple, but things wolves do and their ideas change the patterns in the Tapestry of Life just a little, and as time passes there are all sorts of changes, big and small, in the tapestry until it’s much more extravagant and colorful when it started out, and hopefully more beautiful…What you’ve done has changed life for the pack a lot, Aleu. Before you came, our pattern was always the same: wolf leads wolves, no dogs except in the most dire circumstances, and a dog would never lead. You changed that pattern, and it’s such a huge change in the design that no wolf knows what to think, or they shut their minds. They think it’s ugly because it’s so different and sudden, and want to start over, and precious few see beauty in change and originality. The others who don’t know what to think, they follow the crowd. This change you’ve made in our design, Aleu, shook us up and in being so surprised a lot of wolves started to hate the change. Sudden, unexpected change can weaken the best pack, and look what it’s done to all the wolves on this island…I think you could be a great leader, Aleu, but some wolves are too shocked to believe that.”

Aleu had never heard Linder talk about something and make it sound so deep. Still, she wanted to yell, “It’s not fair!” but she knew that would make her sound like an ignorant pup, which she was next to Nava and Linder’s older wisdom. But she didn’t have to act like one. Instead, she contemplated what Linder had said in thoughtful silence, then said slowly, “So it would pretty much be a miracle if I won a war against the Golden River pack, or any other pack besides.”

Linder nodded. “Pretty much,” she said gravely.

Shouts and a stampeding patter of footsteps at the edge of the field caught Aleu’s attention, and she swiveled around to see a blur of furry colors hidden behind three aspen trees twisting and yelling out what could have been battle cries. Aleu and Linder jumped up and raced over, but as they neared someone shouted, “Go, go, go!” The attacking wolves dashed away, leaving a small red wolf lying motionless on the ground, surrounded by droplets of scarlet spattering the dry grass.

Aleu rushed over and put her face close to the wolf’s. His yellow eyes opened, and he managed to cough out a few words as his heart died inside him. “Lupus…didn’t reason. War is…declared. Pride and strength-Aleu.” His eyes deadened, but they stayed open in a blank stare as he passed on.

Aleu looked on, horrified. “Rufus!” She felt her throat close, and she struggled not to cry out as she gently closed his eyes with her paw. Linder came up behind her and nudged her. Aleu hung her head and turned with an empty gaze. “What?”

“Look,” the gray and white wolf said, pointing with her nose. Aleu looked, and on the middle tree of the three aspens that had hid Rufus’s murder from her view was a huge bloody pawprint. Aleu padded over and studied it, the smell of blood making her nostrils twitch and shudder. “It’s the Mark of War,” Linder explained, “Lupus left it.”

Without being told what to do, Aleu stepped over to Rufus and wiped her paw down the side of his broken body. She padded back over to the tree, and with Rufus’s blood dripping from her leg, she smacked her paw down beside the red print. Tiny streams of the fresh blood flowed down through the cracks in the rough bark, and Aleu spun around to see some of the early risers of the pack looking on in astonishment and anger. She herself felt nothing except a deep, dark, dutiful sadness that carved down into the core of her spirit. She faced them, and as a cold wind blew wisps of her brown-gray fur she commanded, “Get the rest of the pack up and moving. There are only eleven of us now, but we don’t have a choice. Prepare yourselves for battle.”

Aleu grimly led her pack across the plain to the moist bank on the side of the river that marked the beginning of the Golden River pack’s territory. Quicksilver stood to her right and Linder to her left, and as Aleu neared the river she saw the Golden River pack of wolves waiting on the opposite bank. They were led by a shaggy, older wolf with mixed coal black and mud brown in his fur.

Aleu stopped at the river’s edge and glanced at Quicksilver. “Are you with me?”

“Till the end,” he told her again, and when she looked at Linder the beautiful wolf bowed her head graciously and nodded.

Aleu took a deep breath and cried across the water, “There’s still a chance to stop this war, Lupus. Please, just forget your prejudice and give me a chance. I’m giving it all I’ve got.” She started when she noticed a black and white wolf standing at Lupus’s right side. Flint! But he gave no sign of recognition, and she felt a flame of hate for him for encouraging the other wolves to leave her pack.

“No,” Lupus said stubbornly in a higher voice than Aleu had expected, “You deserve nothing. I will preserve honor among wolves.”

“How can you be so stu- blind?” Aleu said, catching herself in time before she called Lupus an immature insult, “I’m doing what I have to do. You don’t need to start a war over it!”

“I will save these wolves from embarrassment,” Lupus said curtly, “…Plus gaining a few wolves and a bit more territory at the same time. This is the way of the wild. You don’t belong here, mongrel.”

“I do!” Aleu exclaimed with sudden abandon, “And I’m not doing this just for me. I’m doing this for anyone who’s been unaccepted and alone!”

“Get them,” Lupus said in gritty tones, and the wolves flooded down the bank and splashed into the water, fighting their way across the blue.

Aleu, seeing there was no way to stop the battle now, tilted her head back and howled. Quicksilver leaped down the bank with six Ravens Wing wolves running after him, and they plunged into the water and rocked the foaming waves back and forth as they fought the current and the enemy wolves. Aleu and Linder and two other wolves stayed on the bank for defense, as the river slowly stained brown and red. Aleu secretly knew this battle was pointless and that they were going to lose, but she wasn’t going down without a fight.

Aleu saw Lupus had arranged his battle plans differently than she. He was wading across the river on the edge of the fighting with a unit of four wolves packed around him so he was sealed in by four furry walls. One of Aleu’s wolves saw this and slid over to knock one of the protecting wolves down into the water. Aleu felt a thrill at such loyalty, but no sooner had the wolf’s head gone under the water than one of Lupus’s wolves flung themselves on top of Aleu’s wolf and pressed him under the waves. Lupus’s wolf then jumped and slid in to become the missing ‘wall’ for Lupus.

Aleu watched as Lupus reached the shore and pulled himself up, helped up the slippery mud by his four bodyguards. One of them was Flint, and Aleu glared at him as he took his place behind Lupus. Her glare was retaliated with a cold, blank expression, and then she felt Linder and the rest of the wolves back away as Lupus turned and stepped closer to her.

“This doesn’t have to be complicated,” he purred, “You back down, I win, we all go home happy.”

“Do you think I got to where I am now by backing down when things got rough?” she said, “This is my pack, this is my heritage. You can’t make me feel ashamed!”

“You have no chance to win,” he told her impatiently, “It will be easier if you just give up.”

“No way!” Aleu yelled.

Lupus sighed and raised his eyes to the heavens. “Females.” He began to circle her, and Aleu began the same pattern even though her mind was being gnawed by worry. Her fighting skills weren’t enough to brag about, and there were no trees to disappear into here; she was on her own, and the odds didn’t look good.

Shouts and shrieks emitted from the river below as the tide set wolf against wolf, but the real battle was here, between the alphas.

Suddenly Lupus thrashed and bit into her shoulder, taking away skin and fur. Aleu winced, but her eyes widened as she swung around to see many of Lupus’s wolves climbing up onto the bank. The river was littered with the dead and wounded, and the two wolves pulling themselves after Lupus’s pack turned out to be Quicksilver and Blake, the remains of Aleu’s army.

“Defense!” Aleu yelled at Linder, but Linder shook her head sadly.

“There’re too many of them. Fighting them would be suicide. Face it, Aleu, we’re going to lose.”

“Oh no we’re not,” Aleu muttered, and turned her attention back to Lupus. He snarled and flung himself at her, knocking her to the mud and swiping her back. Aleu heaved him off with her hind legs and stood up to punch him in the face. “Do you have any idea what I’ve been through?” She hit him again, and he growled and