Before long, the rainwater collected in the bottom of the boat again. Soon, the water submerged her legs, and she remembered the first time the Old Man took her to a pond near the ranch so she could swim. It was summer then, a season that seemed impossible now. Mort(e) watched from the edge while she paddled across, unable to believe the buoyancy. Every time she splashed, she tried to catch the columns of water in her mouth as they rose and fell. She asked him to join her. When he said no, she clapped her hands on the surface and soaked him. He spent the next few minutes rubbing the fur on his head until it dried.
The rain lightened, and D’Arc leaned forward to cup the water in her hands and toss it over the side. It was the best she could do without a bucket. Her coat opened slightly, allowing some of the rain in. The pup slipped away from the nipple and cried out. She saw his tiny face, a beautiful little angel who screamed in terror.
“I know,” she said.
She kept bailing until she could no longer lift her arms. The pup bawled the entire time, his tinny voice like a child’s toy with a low battery. Once the puddle reached an acceptable depth, D’Arc huddled at the bow and tried to coax the pup to take another nipple. He refused, choosing instead to scream at her some more. In a panic, she jammed his face into her chest. The pup bit her and screamed some more.
A song. That’s right—parents sang songs to their children.
She didn’t know any.
Wait—she did! She did! But the lyrics . . . what did those beavers sing?
We will meet again
In the darkness,
Where you and I
Will be the only light.
The pup stopped crying for a moment, then started again as she searched for the lyrics. “Right, right.”
And by our light
We . . . call everyone home,
Where in the darkness,
We are the light.
“A mean old beaver taught me this song,” she said. The pup murmured. D’Arc started over. Around the third or fourth time she said that they would meet again in the darkness, she stopped. Part of her didn’t like it. The pup halted his feeding and whined at her again, so she kept going until the rain clouds at last drifted farther out to sea.
The shoreline appeared as a looming blackness, a slit in the horizon that her tiny boat would pass through on her way to the land of the dead. D’Arc nearly screamed when she first spotted it. The sleeping pup on her chest reminded her to keep quiet. By then, the beavers’ song played in her head on an endless loop. She absently hummed parts of it, her dry tongue sealed to the roof of her mouth. Her empty stomach gurgled. Her limbs shook.
To the east, the clouds lifted, unveiling more of the shoreline. It may have waited there for days without her noticing it. She removed her coat and gently wrapped it around the baby. The pup stirred, its little tongue poking out and then retracting. She set the bundle on the deck and crept to the front of the boat. With her chest resting on the bow, she paddled the water along each side until she felt the small craft moving forward. Delirious, she mumbled the words to the song, sometimes adding her own. “Where you and I . . . will be a beacon of light.”
Behind her, the pup awakened and cried out, his voice piercing her ears. She could not comfort him. D’Arc giggled maniacally as she imagined herself dropping dead in the seconds before the boat made landfall. Her son would climb over her corpse and be on his way to his destiny. Sure, that made sense. That was what her life amounted to. What all life amounted to: a stepping-stone for the next generation by any means necessary. This is what should have happened the last time, when she survived and her children died. There would be no passing of the torch, no ritual, no sentimentality. The living would discard the dead, over and over, while pretending to find meaning in it somehow.
Her hands grew numb while her shoulders burned with a fire that crept all the way to her tail. The medallion swayed, sometimes bopping her nose. The baby’s squeals began to sound like fully formed sentences. When the pup screamed so loud that he lost his voice, D’Arc could have sworn that he asked about his brothers and sisters.
“Gone,” she replied, gasping. “They’re gone.”
The pup cried louder. It meant, Where?
“They’re nowhere,” D’Arc answered. “And everywhere. They’re all around us. All the time. Can’t get away.”
Come back here with me, the pup said. Keep me warm.
“I can’t, sweetie.”
A gap opened in the land mass, revealing a bay of some kind.
Come back here with me, the pup insisted.
“We’re almost there,” D’Arc said.
Why are you leaving me? the pup said.
“I’m right here!”
Sing me the beaver song again.
D’Arc tried, but the song came out in gasps and wheezes. Every time she flubbed a line, the pup ordered her to start over.
The land rose higher in the sky. The beach became textured, sprinkled with dormant brown grass. They passed an ancient metal buoy, its once-red paint bleached pink from the sun. She continued to make progress until, frustrated with the paddling, she gripped the docking rope in her teeth and jumped into the water.
No! the pup screamed. But this was the best way a dog could do it. At last she felt her foot touch sand. The sudden gravity of it made her dizzy. She hauled the boat onto the beach, pulling it as far as she could. Once the boat was secure, she crawled back in and cuddled with the baby. The pup went quiet and scrunched his body against his mother. He squeaked a few times. And she heard another question.
Who am I? What’s my name?
“I don’t know yet.” she yawned.
The sunlight burned through her pink eyelids. She tried to sleep, but her empty stomach would not let her. She opened her eyes to the cold blue overhead. The tide came in, digging a channel in the sand that allowed the boat to sway in either direction. The pup still slept on her chest. He must have been grateful for the stillness of land. The predictability of it.
D’Arc heard movement outside of the boat. Grains of sand crunched. There was a whisper, then a conspicuous silence. She pulled the pup in tighter and tugged the coat over his body to hide him. Then she searched for her sword, which rested at the stern of the boat.
Cradling the pup, she peeked over the side. She saw the tracks first, stretching over the nearest sand dune. They led to a pair of deer—two bucks—standing on all fours. She had seen their kind before, once while living on the ranch, again while living in Hosanna. Their eyes carried an innocence, like two marbles on the sides of their heads. But the eyes hid a brutal nature. These bucks could kill without changing the expression on their faces.
They were scouting her.
When D’Arc sat up quickly to reach for the sword, she saw a third buck, waiting right beside the boat, his antlers twisting and curling in every direction like petrified snakes.
“You’re a pilgrim,” the buck said.
She could not answer yes or no.
“You seek the Mudfoot,” the buck added, his voice so nasal she wondered if he could breathe through his nose at all. “No Mudfoot here.”
She sensed the other deer getting closer, ready to surround her with a forest of pointy antlers. About two hundred feet out in the water, the old buoy tilted back and forth like a toy.
“I’m from Hosanna,” she said, her voice shaking.
“All pilgrims’re from Hosanna.”
“I was on board the SUS al-Rihla.”
“And now you’re here. You seek the Mudfoot. No Mudfoot here.”
“No Mudfoot here, right,” she sighed. She had no idea what a Mudfoot was.
When she saw for the first time their chiseled teeth, she recoiled. The bucks got closer. She smelled their breath, which carried a tinge of rotten meat. Her pup must have smelled it as well, confusing it for food. When he wriggled
against her, the deer noticed the squirming lump under her coat. Their elaborate antlers rotated as they glanced at one another. One of them placed his hooves on the side of the boat, rocking it toward him.
“Give,” the buck said.
D’Arc could not get to the sword, nor could she fight the deer with one hand holding the baby. She would have to settle for distraction. So she let the pup’s head poke out of the opening in her coat. On this day, of all days, the dog’s eyes finally opened, just in time to meet the creatures who would kill him. And somehow this made him luckier than his siblings.
The deer backed away. The boat rocked in its divot when the buck removed his hoof. “Wolf,” one of them said. The other two repeated it. Yes, this pup is a wolf, D’Arc wanted to say. Almost a wolf, like his father. Oh, you should have seen him. So beautiful. So noble. He would have killed you all.
“The Mudfoot have no young,” the first deer sputtered. “Where you find it?”
They did not realize she was the mother. Could they not smell this pup? Could they not see the terrible ordeal at sea had carved into their faces?
“Damnable take the young,” the other deer said. “Mudfoot are cursed.”
“They find a way!” the other said. “They survive.”
“Not this one,” the first deer said.
D’Arc realized that she could stall them no longer. The two deer lowered their heads, aiming their antlers at her. The one behind her did the same.
“If you want this little one so bad, you can have him,” she said. “I can show you where I found him.”
It was enough to make the lead deer raise his snout and wait for her to continue. She took the opportunity to shift her weight and rock the boat toward him. Then, as hard as she could, she rocked it the other way, capsizing it. The deer hopped out of the way as the side of the boat slammed into the ground. D’Arc landed hard in the sand. The baby cried out. Clutching the child, she crawled toward the sword while the bucks slammed their hooves against the hull, each strike as loud as a gunshot. D’Arc gripped the handle as the deer lifted the boat away. She swung wildly, and the blade connected at the buck’s ankle, severing it. The deer dropped to the ground, its eye unblinking, its jaw hanging open in shock.
D’Arc rolled to her feet. One of the deer mounted the hull, ready to pounce on her. The other stalked around the side of the boat. She held them at bay with the tip of the sword while the pup squealed. And again, she heard the question: Why?
“Because the world isn’t fair,” D’Arc said.
The deer on the boat leapt at her. In her weakened state, she dodged too slowly. Her blade hit flesh, but the antlers cracked against her ribs. Her arm went dead. Her hand became like a claw around the pup, who shouted in protest. The deer limped as a red gash opened on his side, weeping blood on the fur. The buck stared at her stupidly, as if awaiting instructions.
The blade shot sparks as it connected with the antlers, sheering off some of the points. The wounded one limped around her. They meant to attack from both sides. As D’Arc got closer to the water, her foot sank into the wet sand. A few feet later, the first wave flowed past her shins.
The baby told her not to do it. But then two more deer crested the nearest dune, driven by the scent of dog. They were so ignorant of what she had seen. When the Alphas returned, none of this would matter.
The deer on the hill let out a low squawking sound. The bucks stopped and turned to the noise. Even the deer on the ground lifted his head to listen, ignoring his severed hoof. It was some kind of warning. Something was coming. Ignoring D’Arc, the deer tried to help their comrade walk. One of them stood on his hind legs to lift his friend.
D’Arc ran from the boat until her legs became like wood, and her heart flared like a torch inside her chest. As the adrenaline wore off, the cuts in her ribs pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat. She lifted the pup away from her chest to find blood on his fur. The little one licked it as he cried. It was somehow the sweetest thing she had seen in a long time. It was her blood. When she probed her wound with her hand, her fingertips brushed against something hard and sharp and sticky. Her stomach turned. She lifted her arm to find a broken antler lodged in her side. She tried to pull it loose, and a lightning bolt shot from the wound, nearly making her faint. She dropped to her knees, taking care to cradle the baby to the ground. The pup dug his claws into the cold sand.
D’Arc was so tired. She wanted to sleep more than anything. The pup tried to keep her awake by biting her ear. She could hardly feel it. Drop me in the sea, she thought. Let me join the others.
She could hear more words in the pup’s squealing. No! Don’t leave me!
“I’m right here,” she whispered.
A thick blanket slid over her. The world went black and silent.
D’Arc woke to the sound of a crackling fire and immediately thought that she must have died. The scent of it carried her to the ranch, where she and Mort(e) would spend every fifth night relaxing by the fire, reading. She would annoy him with questions. She never ran out of them.
No, that was all gone. She opened her eyes. A campfire burned on the sand. Above, the Milky Way spilled from one end of the horizon to the other. She tried to sit straight, and something stabbed her rib, a pain so intense it made her gag.
She lay on her coat. Footsteps shifted the sand around her. Walking on all fours, a pack of dogs circled the fire, their faces painted blue and green and gold and red. They sniffed her. One of them, with a long snout painted yellow, smelled her chest, noting the scent of milk. D’Arc covered herself but did not make a sound. These were wolves, she realized, not dogs. She knew then that her pup was dead.
But no—someone had placed a bandage on her wound after extracting the antler. Her ribs felt tender, but she would live, if she avoided infection. Gently, she sat straight and let the wolves continue to sniff at her. The yellow-faced one grunted at her and flicked his snout. D’Arc tilted her head, unsure of what he was doing, but driven by instinct nonetheless. The wolf made a coughing sound, and a steaming hunk of soft meat fell out of his mouth and into D’Arc’s. It happened so fast she could not react other than to swallow it. The regurgitated food had no taste—instead, she felt only the warmth of it landing in her empty stomach. She opened her mouth and begged for more. Another wolf obliged. As she swallowed the meat, she wondered if it came from the same deer who attacked her.
“Where’s my baby?” she asked.
They heard her, though none of them answered. She realized then how young they were. And they had no leader, it seemed. Finally, one of them elbowed through the crowd—a female with red paint on her face, shaped like a skull. In a bizarre gesture, she rested her chin on the crown of D’Arc’s head. D’Arc wondered if she meant to show dominance. But it was some kind of cuddling, an act of sympathy.
“We found you alone,” the wolf said. “I smelled another. But the scent trail . . .” She flared her nostrils, then shook her head. D’Arc tried to stand, and a searing pain put her in place. The wolf huddled closer to protect D’Arc from her own body.
“I have lost pups too,” the wolf said. “Your milk is fresh. You will have more.”
D’Arc could feel nothing because she had nothing left. She had become an empty husk, scraped clean, disintegrating into particles. Soon, she would be spread over the beach, indistinguishable from the rest of the sand.
“You are pilgrims?” she asked robotically, still unsure what that meant.
“Exiles,” the wolf said. “In search of a new pack.”
“The . . . Mudfoot?”
“Yes. You seek them as well?”
D’Arc could not answer. She snuck a glance at the pocket of her coat, where the logbook stuck out. The wolves had not read it—maybe because they couldn’t—which may have saved her life.
The wolf introduced herself as Quay of the Opa clan. “You are from Hosanna,” she said. “Th
is I know.” She nodded toward D’Arc’s sword, which someone had wrapped in cloth.
“Do you know where the Mudfoot are?” D’Arc asked.
“A day’s march. They need soldiers. But they need you most of all.”
“Me?”
“Fertile ones. The Mudfoot nearly died out. Now they have life again.”
“Have you heard?” another wolf asked. This one wore green paint in a long streak that started at his eyebrows and traveled along his spine.
“Heard what?”
“The leader of the Mudfoot bore a son yesterday,” he said. Another wolf howled in response. Soon the others joined, but the skull-faced female shushed them with a bark.
“The packs will unite behind her now,” Quay said. “The humans are doomed. Hosanna will fall.”
A terrible calm settled over D’Arc. These wolves had her child. She was sure of it. And the world had already killed her, more or less. She could do whatever she wanted. She was a beacon of light, after all. Isn’t that what it meant? To burn so brightly that it scorched everything in its path?
“How soon do we leave?” D’Arc said.
Chapter 8
Quite the Stickup
Mort(e) waited in the wooden elevator that hung off the side of the dam. A tarp sealed him in, shielding against the early morning wind. The floor of the contraption was made of polished tree branches, stacked and glued neatly together, and suspended by a thick hemp cable. With no one to operate the hand crank, the elevator swayed in the breeze, the pulley squeaking a bit.
Mort(e) and the beavers had slipped inside before the sun rose, confident that no one saw them. Ten armed robbers in all, lying in wait. Sunday was a day off for the beavers, when they usually joined others at the temple to sing songs in praise of the Prophet. Any minute now, Mort(e) would hear the chimes and the droning voices. The city would stop moving for a brief time. That was when they would strike.
Beside him, Castor adjusted his armor, which consisted of two wooden boards hung with leather straps on his shoulders, covering his torso. It was completely useless and cumbersome, yet it represented some tradition for his people. A tradition less than a decade old, of course—though try telling that to the beavers. Castor had worn the same armor when they broke the siege at Lodge City. Though he’d never served in any military, the beaver enjoyed the trappings and costumes associated with it.
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