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that Thunderheart knew so many. She pointed to the west of the Star Bear to the Wolf constellation. "It's disappearing now in the middle of summer. It shines the brightest and rises the highest in spring, but look, there are the Great Claws."
    Faolan blinked as a clawlike figure began to creep up over the purple horizon. "It's late, but it stays the longest, arriving in early winter and staying through summer. If you go to the banks of Hoolemere, you can see the young owls of the Great Ga'Hoole Tree practicing their navigation exercises by tracing it. The owls call the Great Claws the Golden Talons."
    "Hoolemere? Great -- what do you call it -- Tree? Navigation?" Faolan asked. He was completely bewildered.
    Thunderheart made a snuffling sound, which was the way she laughed sometimes. "You're young and you haven't seen much! Hoolemere is a vast sea, and there is a group of owls who live on an island in a huge tree in the middle of that sea. These owls are called the Guardians of Ga'Hoole. They are very intelligent owls."
    "You mean smart?" Faolan asked.
    "Yes, very smart."
    "As smart as you?"
    "Oh, much smarter! They can find their way to many places just by looking at the stars and how they move. That is what navigation is -- finding one's way by the stars."
    "But you told me about the star to the north. You find your way by it."
    "That's easy. That star never moves. It only sits high in the sky. It's my only guide. But the owls use all the stars -- the whole sky."
    "That's probably because they fly and know it better."
    Thunderheart gave the pup a little squeeze. What a smart little wolf he was!
    Faolan yawned and said sleepily, "Someday maybe I'll go to the banks of Hoolemere and maybe even swim to the island. Such a funny word, 'Hoole.' What does it mean?"
    "Well," Thunderheart sighed, "some say that it is actually a wolf word and that it is their word for 'owl.'" But by this time Faolan was fast asleep in her arms.
    ***
    With the waning days of summer, Thunderheart had but one thought: Eat! Eat all one could for the winter! The cold sleep was coming and the two of them must have enough fat. But beyond her overwhelming obsession about Faolan's size and the question of fat, there was another more elusive fear -- that of the cold sleep itself. Soon she would have to find a winter den farther away from the river. She was not sure if wolves went into their dens and slept for endless days. How would she know? She had slumbered through every winter of her life. She knew  nothing of the winter world and what other animals did. How would she explain this to Faolan? She knew that she changed during this sleep. She grew thinner and if she did rouse herself, her mind was foggy. If she slept and he didn't, how would she protect him? Perhaps she should warn him. But not right now.
    Right now, the salmon were swimming up the river to their spawning ground. Thunderheart and Faolan had waded out to the shallows on the upstream side of a small rapid where scores of salmon were heaving themselves forward. Thunderheart scooped them from the water or caught them on the fly.
    It was the easiest fishing Faolan had ever done. He paused for a moment and looked at Thunderheart. Facing west, the setting sun turned her eyes gold. He felt a sudden surge of affection sweep through him as he realized how different they were. He had put out of his mind that day months before when they had seen the grizzly mother with the two cubs. He had since then refused to allow such thoughts to enter his mind. Except he now remembered a few days earlier when they had brought down a caribou, and Thunderheart had first mentioned the Outermost and how it might not be a good place for his "kind."
    Thunderheart had mentioned wolves a few times, but  Faolan had never seen any, except for the Star Wolf in the sky. So the notion of a real wolf was vague. The thought of wolves did not trouble him, for when he looked into the golden eyes of Thunderheart, he felt his world