The Doe De La Coeur is a woods walker, unused to heights. The thin air causes lights to dance before her eyes.
Again the poor Hens require rides. The Otters oblige.
The Mice and the Cobbs are fine. So is Least, the Plain Brown Bird. Ferric Coyote has almost no meat on his bones, but happy living has given his daughters heft, and they don’t climb well. The White Wolf’s energy is bottomless. Wachanga’s intensity is her strength.
At times Pertelote soars as high as she can fly, trying to mount above the clouds to see what might lie on the other side, but it’s no use. They boil up to the very threshold of heaven, and though Wachanga’s word for their future is “Home,” Pertelote has no word of her own. Her future, her band’s future, remains a mystery. And how can living souls prepare for a mystery?
But the snow below affords her some comfort. It seems to pillow purity and poverty. It covers the sins and the sorrows of the world. And the little freckling of her Animals on the snow below her strikes the Hen with affection. Strikes her too with disquietude. They are so small. Little Creatures unconcerned, waiting for her return in order to set out again. Oh, but they look like apple pips that might be eaten.
Pertelote descends and takes strength from her Creatures’ familiar smells. The bandy-tiffs between the Weasel and the Raven amuse her. And the Brothers Mice have ever, ever been her consolation.
One more day on Wachanga’s road, and then it is the night again.
Everyone ready? Think you can stay awake for chapter two? Mice? Okay, babes and brothers, let’s go.
So, the Snake was just tickled to be shed of old fat Mizz Possum. Freedom! Freedom, (as my Double-U buddy might say) by Gaw!
And what did the Snake do with his freedom?
He wound through the tree roots. He crawled the highways and the byways until he came upon Sir Little Tiny Mouse sitting on a mushroom.
Well: the sly Snake raised up his head and grinned down on Sir Mouse and hissed, “Glad to make your acquaintance.” And he hissed, “What do you think of our winter? A bit chilly, wouldn’t you say?”
Sir Mouse, of course, lived in a hole. “Chilly above,” he said, “but warm below.”
“Indeed, indeed,” Snake hissed quite civilly. “But I see an icicle as long as a sword hanging over your door-hole. What’ll you do when it drops? Tell you what, friend. Let me live with you and block the door with the folds of my body. What do you say to that?”
Sir Mouse set himself to frowning, trying to think about swords and icicles.
The Snake interrupted his efforts. “I got fire in my belly,” he hissed, “hot enough for both of us.” And he blew a little smoke to prove it. “All I ask in return,” he hissed, “is for the consideration of a little food now and then. Bring me Beetles. Bring me Grubs. Bring me little eggs, and I’ll heat our home—like an oven.”
Now, Mice are persons of virtue, isn’t that right, my little bros?
So Sir Mouse said, “No, no—go off and get your own food,” thinking he would run to warn all the Beetles and all the Birds he knew.
Snake started to rattle his tail. He made a scurrilous sound. “Scares you,” he hissed, “doesn’t it?”
To tell the truth, it did scare Sir Mouse a bit—just a bit. He looked at his hole, but there was no hiding where Snakes can crawl as well as Mice. He looked up a tree but, you know, Snakes climb trees.
The Snake opened his mouth. Two fangs flipped out, dripping fire.
Oh, Sir Mouse busted out of there as fast as he could run.
And if Snake hasn’t caught him, well, he’s running still.
Goodnight. Goodnight. Tomorrow is another night.
“Wait,” says Wodenstag.
“Hush,” says Pertelote. “It’ll come out right in the end.”
Indeed, tomorrow would be another night, but the Brothers Mice don’t sleep until tomorrow comes.
At noonday Wachanga brings the Animals to the side of a river, wide, fine, frozen and swept smooth.
The Otters and Mrs. Cobb (not Mr. Cobb) and Twill and Hopsacking (not Ferric) and even a Hen or two sport themselves by scooting and skidding over the ice.
John Wesley is no fool, certainly not like his frivolous Mad House cousins. He stands back beside Pertelote, rubbing his chin and wondering what might be troubling Pertelote.
The Weasel says, “Stupid story.”
“What, John? What did you say?”
“Is hot coals what does burns through Possums’ pockets. And Snakes doesn’t swallows fires.”
“Give the Raven his due,” says Pertelote. “He can make up what he wants. And he does know how to tell a tale.”
“Why-come a Crow gots to talk about John Double-U’s talkings!”
John goes off in a terrible huff.
But it isn’t Kangi Sapa’s fiction that weighs on Pertelote’s soul. It’s the Cow—and her mood is bleak again.
Pertelote, tu Gallina:
Gallinae albae filius…
In these last days Wachanga has herself gone silent. Perhaps Pertelote has been begging too persistently for more information. Why the clouds? What’s in the clouds? If it’s a home, then what is this home? Haven’t the Ancestors offered any other detail? What are we in for? What’s ahead of us?
The Cream-Wolf has ceased answering. What Pertelote reads in her is exactly what she is herself losing: Faith.
Pertelote, tu Gallina:
Gallinae albae filius…
There is a fearsome majesty in that sentence, spoken in the Language of the Powers. Grandeur and dread together.
Going to the Cow’s “holy mountain.” This does not feel like anyone’s “home.” Holiness is not a habitation. It can be—can’t it be?—an immolation. What happens when a Creature comes face-to-face with her God?
Pertelote knows only three possibilities. Stay. Go back. Go forward.
But there is no Back. And there can be no staying here. Pertelote’s compulsion has always been forward. She and her band were wanderers, wayfarers, nomads on earth. But, really? Go forward? Now?—when forward means hazarding holiness? There are certain dyings worse than common death.
So, here I am back with my chapter number three. Anyone have to pee before I start? Double-U?
Of course, of course, I’m only kidding, bro. A Weasel can hold it till his eyeballs float.
Kidding, kidding.
So: the longer the winter, the more was the Snake troubled. You know already that he didn’t want to do for himself. Far as he was concerned, it was his turn, you know, to be served. A coal is good in the belly, but it isn’t nourishment, after all.
So he wound around ice humps and over snowdrifts, and it did most irritated him when the snow blew and he couldn’t shut his eyes because, as you recall, a Snake has no eyelids.
Well, then he came upon a hot-to-trot Weasel.
Hot to trot. A Weasel with some natural heat and a fine, soft, winter-proofed den for himself.
Mr. Snake coiled around Hot-To-Trot’s door-hole.
“Let’sssss Sssssssssee,” he hissed. “Let’s see. I think I smell a bargain in the air.”
Hot-To-Trot said, “I don’t smell nothing.” No, Hot-To-Trot didn’t say “Nothing.” He said “Nothings.” “Nothings” being the way the Weasel talked.
Whoa! No offence, buddy. Tell you what. I’ll call him Captain Weasel, what about that? That work for you?
So then, the Snake said, “Why not let’s make a little exchange, you and I?”
Well, Captain Weasel didn’t think a Snake had anything a Weasel wanted. But he was a canny Creature, the Weasel, so he said, “What for what, Cable?” By “cable” the Weasel was mocking the Snake. Get it?
The Snake tipped his head as if he was wearing a fine cocked hat. “Watch,” he hissed, and he blew out a little smoke.
Captain Weasel said, “I know a Coyote can fart better than that.”
So the Snake hissed, “Watch now!” and h
e blew out a mighty blast of fire that singed the Weasel’s whiskers. “So,” said Snake, “you bring the meat and I have the fire to cook it.”
Captain Weasel said something like, “Don’t eats no meat.”
The Snake hissed, “I’ll boil our eggs.”
“Don’t eat no eggs.”
Snake hissed, “I’ll scorch your face!”
“Mr. Cable,” said the Weasel, “you’re a terrible, frightsome monster. Me,” said Captain Weasel, “I’m a meek little feller, most mildest feller in the woods. No trouble to you. You can catch me any time you want. Only, show me your fire. Go on. Just a flicker to scare me to the roots of my hairs, and I’ll be your slave.”
The Snake figured he had the advantage now. So he flicked out his tongue with a double fork of flames shooting from the tip of it.
The Captain wasted no time. He grabbed that tongue and Pop! pulled it right out of the Snake’s head and dashed off swinging the tongue like a lariat.
The smoking Snake, however—the coal burning the hotter for the fury he felt—did not choose to leave the vicinity. He hid among the trees and the crackling-cold bushes, and began to plan revenge.
It is on the following night that Kangi Sapa’s story takes a turn for the worse. More than the Mice’s discomfort, more than John Wesley’s outrage, this time it brings Pertelote herself close to terror. A story has that power, to become a very world for those who believe it.
So, the Snake couldn’t talk any more. Couldn’t even hiss. Dumb as a bump, sly as a stone, and uncunning as a vegetable. The only thing left was vengeance.
The Snake curled himself in a Woodpecker hole in the trunk of a tree. He waited till everyone who slept under the tree would come and fall asleep. Trees and trees make up a forest, and this tree was in the middle of one.
So here came Mice and Weasels and Wolves and Chickens. A whole host of Creatures, tired and ready to rest under the Snake’s tree. And that’s what they did: they fell asleep. And then the forest was as still as the sleepers.
The Snake figured that his time had come. He uncoiled himself and slithered out of the Woodpecker’s hole and slowly surrounded the sleepers with piles of dry leaves and branches and bracken. “Vengeance is mine,” he said to himself.
Then he spat sparks into the dry leaves. He vomited the hot coal out. In a flash the leaves and the branches, and then the trees, and then the forest were in flames. Flames became the furnace that walled the Animals in so there was no way out. Flames became the sky, so there was no way up—
Pertelote cries, “Stop! Stop! Kangi Sapa, stop!”
But the Raven can’t stop ("Shit! Shit!") not here, at any rate. Breathless, he drives on. “Chapter five,” he cries.
So the earth was a lump of char. The wind blew great clouds of ashes into the air. The sun went black…
Wait a minute, wait a minute, let me think…
Okay. Listen. I mean, listen to the cinders on the ground. Listen hard. Do you hear that little whispering sound?
The small bones of a Mouse were starting to stir. They became pebbles. And the pebbles grew big as boulders. Many Mice, many boulders, until they were mountains.
Hens’ feathers became white fluffs of clouds, so the sun began to shine.
Coyote fur turned into red soil.
Otters’ teeth became seeds.
A little Bird flew. Her beak poked holes in the earth and she planted the seed. She flew up the to the sky and poked holes for stars.
A most lovely Wolf wept tears of happiness, and her tears were the small rain down that rained, and they watered the seeds, and the seeds grew.
And two Ground Squirrels harvested the wheat.
And everyone, everyone ate a feast.
[Fourteen] Enmity
“I named you,” the yellow-eyed Wolf says to the saddled-backed female. “You are mine.”
Rutt stands with a paw of possession on the unstrung corpse of a Grey Fox, glaring pale-eyed at Eurus, a motor rolling in her throat.
“What I kill,” she growls, “I eat.” Her tail vibrates menace.
The rest of the pack is wary, but watching. Only one Wolf can dominate.
The Grey Fox’s guts steam on the snow. Hence the blood on Rutt’s muzzle.
Eurus steps toward her. He drops his shoulders and wrinkles his snout, revealing his dagger-fangs.
When he is within two feet of Rutt, she begins to clack her teeth together.
Eurus drives his hind paws into the snow and lunges. She rises to meet him. They rise up and grapple chest to chest, then explode into a violent slashing. Blood colors the white snow. The pack creeps backward.
Eurus closes his jaws on Rutt’s windpipe. He tightens the bite. Her tongue is forced out of her mouth, and she begins to mew.
As quickly as the fight began, it’s over.
Eurus releases the She-Wolf. He clamps the Fox corpse in his teeth and carries it ten feet away and slants a yellow eye at the female.
“I named you,” he says, “and I can unname you, bitch.”
Crook and Skoll retreat to the scoops of snow that had been their beds last night.
Only Eurus’s daughter remains standing, Freya, starkly beautiful. She walks to her father and nips his cheek until he places the liver before her, and she eats, glancing at Rutt in a cold superiority. She is what Rutt has never been nor will ever be: the beloved of the dominant Eurus. Freya too wears the dark saddle on her back. But the resemblance mocks Rutt.
Eurus sees the sharp constriction in Rutt’s face.
“A goddess, isn’t she?” he says, referring to Freya, allowing his eyelids to sink in a delicious contentment. “If my daughter should ever lose her father, she will weep tears of golden red.” Eurus shows his contempt by speaking in a manner high-flown, lyrical, and arrogant, something the She-Wolf can never achieve.
Rutt blanks her face.
“If,” he continues, “I ever have to leave to fight some aggressive pack invading my borders, Freya will search for me however harsh the regions until she finds me. Then I will string a necklace of polished shells and clasp it around her neck.”
Freya hums a sardonic tune. None of Rutt’s children has ever been able to form words. Nevertheless, Rutt knows the meaning of Freya’s humming.
Eurus persists in that highborn poetry that divides the mother from his daughter.
“When the Creator changes noonday into night, he will elevate Freya to shine as the brightest star in heaven. For your daughter is more willful than you. Every male will bow down before her charms, and she will bed them one by one at her good pleasure.”
Even so: there shall be enmity between these women as long as they both shall live.
Underneath Rutt’s black anger is the sense that things did not have to be the way they are. There was a time…
There was another humming…
But she must have repressed the memory so that the present outrages would not be worse for the contrast. Or else memory might weaken her hardness of heart. Or perhaps there’s been no repression at all. Perhaps a child’s memory is lost in her maturity.
But there was a time, there must have been a time, when humming communicated nothing so much as mercy. Nor was it the half snarl of her daughter. It was a lowing as lovely as the spheres.
Shit! Do not go there!
And there was…
There was a sister!
And they played and did not fight. And their nourishment was milk.
Innocence.
Innocence is pliable and unprepared It is to be reviled in this world and in these days.
Innocence was dismayed. Innocence was helpless before the shocks of wickedness. And its only response was to match hatred for hatred.
No, goddammit!
Reject memory!
Enough of this! Enough of humiliation. Rutt refuses to suffer the taunts and the constant hostilities of the yellow-eyed, the piss-eyed Eurus, nor the bitch-mockeries of her d
aughter. Rutt’s willfulness dominates, and hatred sets her free.
She lowers her body and streaks away, an arrow parallel the to ground. If Eurus is savage, she shall double his savagery. If Eurus commands others, she shall command a host!
[Fifteen] Revelation
The land in front of Pertelote’s band of Animals has begun to rise more steeply than before. Their going is slower. No one plays on the river-ice.
Here and there the snow lacks depth. There are patches of bare earth.
It is late in the afternoon. The western sun burnishes the clouds ahead. The Cream-Colored Wolf has never lost the scent she follows. Pertelote flies overhead. Every furlong increases her agitation.
Once her beauty shone most beguilingly in the scarlet feathers at her throat. Now they’ve withered into a drab sepia, and her comb has almost collapsed.
Below her, Wachanga stops midstep and tips her head as if questioning something in the distance. She glances up at Pertelote, again questioning. So Pertelote spirals down and alights beside her sister and trains her eye forward.
The clouds are lifting! What they hid is coming visible!
Foothills, the foundation of a mountain range.
Both the Wolf and the Hen watch the slow unveiling, and when the Animals gather behind them everyone is lost in awe.
Not only do the clouds lift. They are also dissipating. And then the mountains themselves appear, their heights mighty, their summits snowcapped. Their snowy crowns glow golden in the setting sun. Long, rugged crags score their faces. They wear skirts of green forest.
[Sixteen] Motherhood and Lullabies
Jasper has lost fat. This is due partly to the wintry lack of food, for which the Hen has been scavenging westward.
It is also partly due to the amount of time she spends with her two small Chicks. Jasper knows the dangers of the world, has met them, has been them. If she has anything to do about it, therefore, her children shall not go unprotected. Care and anxiety have sapped her substance. Such changes in the Hen!
The Third Book of the Dun Cow: Peace at the Last Page 7
