saved from death by a female grizzly bear known as Thunderheart, who had just lost her most recent cub to cougars. She teaches him to use his misshapen footpaw so that it cannot be regarded as a weakness, but a unique strength. The young wolf is reared by Thunderheart for the first year of his life, until they become separated in an earthquake. While searching for his foster mother (or "second Milk Giver"), he meets Gywnneth for the first time, who convinces him that despite the hardships he will face, he must return to the other wolves and join a clan. Faolan is not well-received, and is often regarded with suspicion and fear because of his bearish ways and an odd marking on his deformed paw, a spiral, that further sets him apart from his fellows. He begins clan life in the lowliest possible position, a gnaw wolf, and is subjected to verbal and physical abuse, along with minimal shares of food. He befriends fellow gnaw wolves Edme and the Whistler, but his superior carving skills set him against Heep, a tailless gnaw wolf with a thirst for power. Faolan eventually earns a place as a Watch wolf of the Ring of Sacred Volcanos, where special dire wolves guard the Ember of Hoole (the sacred coal that determines the ruler of owls), along with Edme. Faolan eventually meets his wolf mother and discovers he has two sisters who were not abandoned, Mhairie and Dearlea. A year later, a neverending winter ushers in famine, and many wolves are driven mad by starvation, forsaking their clan history and sense of self under the thrall of a death cult that offers to speed them to the Cave of Souls (heaven). To further decimate the failing wolf population, both the Beyond and much of the Owl Kingdoms are mostly destroyed by a cataclysmic earthquake, flattening the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes, and ending the service of the Watch Wolves, whose natural deformities are miraculously healed. Guided by the presence of a spirit connected to his spiral mark, Faolan leads his friends Edme, the Whistler, two grizzly bear brother cubs named Toby and Burney, a mother wolf named Caila and her pup Abban, an abandoned wolf pup named Myrrglosch, former Watch wolf Banja and her new pup Maudie, and two mated bald eagles named Eelon and Zanouche (the latter is the great-great-great-granddaughter of Streak and Zan)