| "It was the nothingness of it that I found frightening. The nothingness and the blueness." |
| — Edme to Faolan in Spirit Wolf, page 128. |
| Edme MacHeath | |
|---|---|
 | |
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Gender |
Female |
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Species |
Dire Wolf |
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Eye Color |
Green |
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Fur Color |
Russet and White |
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Family Members |
Akira MacHeath (Birth Mother) |
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Clan |
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Appearances |
|
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Current Status |
Alive |
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Previous Status |
Gnaw Wolf, Watch Wolf, resident of The Distant Blue |
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Deformity |
One Eye |
Edme MacHeath is a female Dire Wolf from West Pack of the MacHeath Clan. She is one of the earthquake survivors that now resides in The Distant Blue. Before that, Edme was part of the Watch. Even though she has one eye, Edme isn't actually a malcadh, as her eye was torn out when she was a pup by Dunbar, the Clan chieftain, so that makes her a malcadh made, not born. It was revealed in Watch Wolf that her mother was named Akira. She is the first incarnation of Stormfast, Fengo's mate.
Description[]
Edme is a small dire she-wolf with reddish fur, a white underbelly, and a black nose. Edme has one eye due to her left eye being torn out when she was a pup by Dunbar, the former chieftain of the MacHeath Clan, in hopes that she would be chosen as a wolf of the Watch. Her single remaining eye is an intense green, like all other wolves in the Beyond.
Family[]
- Akira - Birth Mother
- Faolan - Mate
- Myrrglosch - Adoptive Son
- Maudie - Adoptive Daughter
- Morag - Mother In Law
- Kinnaird - Father In Law
- Dearlea - Sister In Law
- Mhairie - Sister In Law
- Brangwen - Step Father In Law
- Brecco - Half Brother In Law
- Unknown Pup - Half Sibling In Law
History[]
Dunbar MacHeath ripped out Edme's eye.
Before The Books[]
Edme was born to Akira and an unknown father in the MacHeath Clan. Upon her birth, Dunbar tore out her eye in purpose of placing her in the Watch. She has lived her life as a gnaw wolf, abused by the MacHeath wolves, including two she-wolves Kyran and Ingliss.
Shadow Wolf[]
Edme was the only female gnaw wolf to compete in the gaddergnaw games. Her physical malformation is apparent, being a missing eye. Representing the MacHeath Clan, Edme was the first to notice Faolan's carving of the Great Wolf constellation that was made from a bear's point of view, and she liked it. After she compared wolves' language to cougars, Heep bit her ear and made it bleed because she had just said something which Heep thought of as an "insult of their species". This action makes the other gnaw wolves upset and angry, and resulted in them all, including Edme, despite her size, showing dominance over Heep by standing on him and pushing on his shoulders.
In the gaddergnaw games when the gnaw wolves formed a byrrgis, Edme attacked the deer after Faolan fell. This way she won in second place, for her smart and quick thinking.
When they were carving stories on bones, Edme carved about her missing eye, and how she felt as though it was a guide to her. Edme is one of the two wolves that wins the gaddergnaw games, but at first she is not sure if she deserves the position. The other gnaw wolves help to convince her otherwise, and in the end, she becomes part of the Watch, along with Faolan.
Watch Wolf[]
Edme (Watch Wolf part 2) playing with ...
Edme realizes that on her Slaan Leat, a journey towards truth, that the tummfraw she was told to go to by the Fengo, is not her tummfraw. It is later revealed by two she-wolves, Ingliss and Kyran, that she was never born a malcadh, but was made a malcadh made by the chieftain of the MacHeaths, Dunbar MacHeath.
After being told this she travels to the MacHeath Clan to announce that she will go to the Watch as a free-runner, a wolf who does not represent any clan at the Watch. She arrives at the clan on Litha Eve, there for most of the wolves are tipsy on the litha rose's juice. As she enters the camp the wolves around her stop their howling and stare at her in dismay. She walks towards the gadderheal and sees that Dunbar MacHeath, the chieftain of the MacHeaths, is tipsy. Dunbar's muzzle was thick with his own blood from the Litha thorns.
Dunbar calls her a cursed one and asks if they've rejected her already, In response Edme raises her hackles and commands him to call the raghnaid. There Edme confirms that Dunbar tore out her eye and she isn't a real malcadh.
Edme travels to the Ring with Faolan. While traveling, they see a mother bear, her cubs and a Watch byrrgis sharing a kill. The Watch wolves head back to the Ring, while the mother, Bronka , leaves her two cubs Toby and Burney to play in the river. Edme and Faolan eat the remaining kill, and Faolan slumbers off. He wakes up to find his companion teaching the cubs the game of Hidey Bone. He shoos her away, before Bronka can wake up.
At the Ring, Edme tells Finbar that she is a malcadh made and Finbar lets her stay anyway. Another Watch Wolf, Banja, objects this and thinks Edme should stay a gnaw wolf for a while. At this point Finbar raises his voice at Banja and she falls back, shrinking in her pelt.
Edme continues her learning at the ring, meets Arthur, the owl, saves Toby from Old Cags, and kills Dunbar.
Edme's taiga turned out to be Winks.
Frost Wolf[]
Edme is first seen in the chapter "Frost Wolf". She and Faolan are out scouting for the Fengo and the Watch, looking for tracks of the herds or any animal. She waits for Faolan to return from scouting in their cave. It is revealed that they are in the Moon of Flies, but the flies too have vanished.
Possibly what Edme looked like before her maiming.
She is soon alerted to a presence just outside the cave. A glowing form appears and she thinks it is a lochin, but it's only Faolan.
Edme goes out for her turn but Faolan wants to show her something so they go out together.
Later, she accompanies Faolan to gather more Blood Watch wolves and meets Mhairie, Dearlea, Creakle, and the Whistler. It is revealed in the book, however, that Tearlach the gnaw wolf has died of starvation.
She then helps Faolan catch The Prophet and later picks up a pup, later named Myrr, and takes him to the Ring when his parents wouldn't stop dancing in the Skaars circles.
When she comes back from her adventure, Finbar tells Edme that Winks died, but said that she loved Edme like she was her own daughter.
Spirit Wolf[]
Edme was first mentioned in the first chapter of this book. Edme had cried because her friends were had gone where Faolan had made a drumlyn for his and his sisters' mother. Twist had came where he thought he saw blood in her eye, instead of tears. That was when a horrific sound came and the earth split; Twist had died and Edme had fallen.
Myrrglosch, or Myrr, had found Edme in her den whimpering. Faolan had found Edme when he had called out her name under rock fragments with Myrr.
That is when they found out all the Watch Wolves, but they were dead; including Finbar, the Fengo. Edme had followed Faolan, his sisters, and Myrrglosch to go find The Distant Blue.
They had found Gwynneth with the Sark in the Sark's encampment, where she was dying. They had continued their journey after the Sark died, when all of the sudden, while playing tag, Edme fell in a crevasse. Soon the "Whistler" and Banja (Gwynneth had already taken Maudie) came and helped Faolan and his sisters help her out. She had also felt a pain in her femur, not because of the fall, but because of some unknown phenomenon.
Edme and the others had traveled into the Spirit Woods. She had a terrible dream about Faolan in which he was old and weak. They had lost Myrr in a fog when then Edme started to panic. Gwynneth found Myrr along with Toby and Burney, the bear cubs.
Edme in the crevasse.
The cubs had cried, for their mother was lost, and it was decided that they would go look for her. They had found Bronka, the mother bear almost dead, but it was too late to save her. They had done a scent roll to bring her scent back to the cubs, along with Banja and Dearlea. The cubs were still depressed about their mother after they gave the news to them, but they had said Edme smelled like her. Gwynneth gives the cubs covert feathers from her back to remember the scent of their mother, Bronka.
While walking to the Cave, Faolan notices that Edme is limping. Faolan asks her if she is lame, and Edme is oddly defensive. Faolan remembers the dream at Broken Talon Point, where he carved a twisted femur. Edme gets mad at Faolan because he stops and wants a rest, afraid what he would find in The Cave Before Time. Edme assumes an aggressive posture and there is absolute silence. Edme is suddenly frightened, maybe because of Faolan's spiral mark. Order was restored as Faolan led the way to the Cave.
Dodging crevices, Faolan notices that Edme seemed to sense the cracks opening before it happened. The group gets to the Cave where they find Airmead and Katria, learn about Galana the Namara's death and find out that Heep is still alive.
Edme had noticed Faolan was different and saw that he was the first Fengo and that she was his mate before. When they had gotten to The Crystal Plain and built a den, Edme found that she was connected to the bone she carried which Faolan had asked her to take. It was then when they found Caila where she was forgiven. Then they had continued their journey to The Distant Blue.
Star Wolf[]
Edme's starboard femur developed a twinge of pain that made her limp slightly. Faolan thought she might be getting "bone freeze", a condition that afflicted old wolves, but never a wolf as young as Edme. She carried the twisted femur found from The Cave Before Time in her mouth, and somehow her leg felt better. She wondered that if she put it down, would the pain come back?
Later, when Faolan is thinking, Edme stops by and tells him to "not blame the blue". It was merely mirages that made the Ice Bridge look so smooth, without ridges. Then, they talk again about making a new byrrgis for traveling to keep the younger ones on the inside. The next day, they debate whether Abban is cag mag or not and Edme says that he is in another mind--the sea's.
At nighttime, she woke up for no particular reason. Then she started thinking about Old Wolf words and then Winks, her old taiga. Edme remembers what Winks told her about her inner eye, and then looks through it to see a huge silver wolf hovering over her. She was talking to Fengo, not the rank, but his name. They have a conversation about dying. Edme then bit deeper on the bone she was holding in her mouth, and the ancient marrow leaked out. She thought the time was nearing when Faolan would know from where the twisted femur came from, why it was carved, and where the other bones remained.
Later, Edme had an impulse not to leave the Ice Bridge when Faolan decided they should avoid pressure ridges by jumping on the ice. She even swore, calling the bridge mhuic, meaning crow scat. She was afraid the bridge and the ice might melt and that they would be on one of those pieces. Later, Edme says that she's always known that Faolan had Starsight, that he understands the stars and how to navigate, like owls.
Out on the ice, a lead opens up. She runs like she never had before and was very frantic. "She must get to the Ice Bridge to find that life, that...that--gyre? ... But it was the right word." -page 114. Banja gave an agonized cry that Maudie had fallen into the water. Edme remembered that she would take care of Maudie if anything ever happened to Banja, so she turned around and jumped into the water. She saw two whales similar to Old Tooth holding Maudie up above the water so that she could breathe. Neither her nor Maudie came out speaking in rhymes. When Myrr and Maudie were talking about what their skin felt like--a soft air blowing on mossflowers during that moon-- Edme yelled at them for not even experiencing a summer in the Beyond. She asked herself why she would want to deny his imagination and what could be worse than disdaining it? Without it, they would have never survived the famine, never escaped from the Beyond. She was worried that they were attracted to that sort of adventure. Later, she apologizes to Myrr and he tells her what he fears--that she will turn his back on him. She tells him that is never going to happen and says that they are kin, not blood kin, but in a way that is unbreakable. He asks her if it is like paw fast; she says she is much too old to be his mate. But she does say that they are spirit fast, instead.
Later, when the eagles came back from scouting, they told the wolves about a fork in the bridge that rejoined within less than a league. Edme wanted to take the north fork alone, so she did. The pain in her hip worsened with every step towards "the place", as she called it. She thought of this journey as her true Slaan Leat. She finally arrived at her place of cleave hwlyn and entered an ancient dream of her talking to Fengo and her name was Stormfast. The last two words she spoke were "Slaan Boladh". The pain in her leg was also gone.
Faolan had come from the other fork. He asked if they could be paw fast again, a type of wolf marriage. They pledged themselves to each other under the constellation of Beezar and on the way back, encountered cocoons that looked like leaves at first. They met a woolly caterpillar moth named Bells that said "at last!" The two wolves asked more questions and then continued on their way.
When they came back to camp, they found that Abban was abducted. An ice tongue had appeared with the outclanners on it. Edme joined the slink melf through the water to rescue Abban because she found what she needed to on the bridge. As Banja was dying, Edme rushed to her side and told her that she would take care of Maudie. The last thing Banja said to Edme was "I...trust...you". When she came back, she told Maudie the horrible news. Edme told her of the morriah for Banja.
Edme was last seen telling Maudie that she was weeping wilig tears for her mum and that she was a beautiful jumper going up the star ladder.
Personality[]
Even with one eye, Edme is able to see more than other wolves, inside and out. She is a brave she-wolf and the most remarkable thing about her is her spirit, especially from being a MacHeath until she rejected them and became a free runner.
Despite coming from the brutal MacHeath clan and, as a gnaw wolf, frequently being the subject of abuse, Edme has a good cheer. She is also very kind and sweet, and is usually in a good mood. She is a nice and trustworthy wolf. In Frost Wolf, chapter 29, Goodbye to Friends, it says: "Edme, generally sweet and optimistic, had become somewhat of a cynic".
In Star Wolf, Edme seems to be apprehensive about leaving the Ice Bridge all the time until she finds her place of cleave hwlyn from 1,000 years ago. She is also a bit touchy, but then turned back into her old self.
Trivia[]
- Her name is pronounced Ed-may, not what some people think of Ed-me, Edma, or Edeem.
- Banja might have disliked her because she is not a true malcadh.
- When Banja's scorn for Edme dissolved, she felt guilty, and revealed that the reason she really did hate Edme was because she was like her.
- Edme, although being physically and emotionally hurt as a gnaw wolf, may be one of the nicest of the Wolves of the Beyond.
- She is a gyre soul along with Faolan - she is the original Fengo's mate, Stormfast.
- Edme was the only female gnaw wolf to compete in the gaddergnaw.
- Edme is an Irish name. It means 'esteemed' or 'loved'.
Mistakes[]
- On the cover of Star Wolf she has a blackish-blue color of fur, instead of the described rust red or tawny color. Her fur is that color because she is in a shadow.
- She is mistakenly described as dark gray in Star Wolf. This is confirmed to be a mistake by Kathryn Lasky: "I think a copy editing mistake was made. But really it was my fault and not the editor’s. In my mind Edme is sort of russet color."
- Even though she has one eye, in a few of the books it says that she has two.