The points of Jasper’s vestigial comb and her wattles have been pinched black by the subzero cold. Her neck seems to have grown too long, her legs and her eyes too big.
As Lord Chauntecleer once named and numbered his three children the “Pins,” so Jasper has named hers: One-Pick and Two-Pick.
They know their names. They come when she calls, though they themselves, as hard as their mother has tried to teach them, cannot shape their own first words.
Oh, but Jasper loves motherhood! At night she gathers her Picks under her breast and sings them to sleep with lullabies in her unpretty voice: “Lu-lay.”
Soon she thinks she hears responses to her singing. But when she stops singing, all is silent. When she sings again other words follow immediately upon her verses so swiftly and so softly that she can scarcely make them out.
Perhaps it is the souls of her stillborn Chicks that echo her lullabies. Those that lay dead in their shells with their dark, bulging eyes closed under transparent lids—these too Jasper has never ceased to love.
“Lu-lay, lu-lay—
And Lu-lay
Little children mine
Mother shrine
Lie and rest a while.
A while.
Lu-lay, lu-lay
Lu-lay
Both boy and girl
Ma pearl
There is no Wolf so wild
So wild
That I will not
Will not
Keep both your hearts
Ma star
Safe and mild
Mother of smiles
From the first to the last of your lives.
Mother lullabies.”
[Seventeen] In Which Aggressions Begin
John Wesley Weasel has a bad feeling.
He darts among the sleeping Animals, rousing them, counting them. It’s just as he thought. One is missing.
He repeats the count.
“Lady Hen! Lady Hen! Is a White Wolfie gone!”
Pertelote shakes sleep from her brains.
“What?”
“White Wolfie! He’s up and gone!”
“No need to worry, John. Boreas is often gone. It has always been his habit to run ahead and survey the land of our going.”
“No, Lady Hen. Is backwards gone.”
“How do you know this?”
“John, he dreams it, does John.”
“Don’t trust your dreams.”
“You does when you dreams, Pertelote.”
There it is again, her given name in the Weasel’s mouth. He’s changing. Or he’s truly troubled. And he is right. She carries her dreams into the daylight and acts upon them.
“Exactly what did you dream?”
“Buzzardies! Black Buzzardies, one, two, fifteen, wing-flying that-a-way!” John gestures to the east whence the Animals have come. “White Wolfie ups and trots where Buzzardies go.”
At that moment Wachanga passes the Hen and the Weasel, her nose to the ground, her nostrils flaring.
John says, “Pretty She-Wolfie! What’s the what?”
She says nothing. The Cream-Wolf has caught the White Wolf’s scent. Suddenly she bounds twenty feet, also toward the east.
John Wesley throws himself into a warrior’s posture. “Do,” he murmurs to himself, and scrambles down the bank of the frozen river, and skims high-speed after the Wolves both white and cream.
A dozen Vultures are circling. In order to find the object of their interest, Boreas the Watch-Wolf trots toward the center of the morticians’ flight.
If Death is lurking apace behind the band of Animals, then Death might be trailing them, seeking a slaughter.
The Marten Selkirk likewise has spied the Vultures. Ever ashamed of his yearnings, he gauges the distance between himself and the corruption the Vultures mean to feed on.
Winter has reduced the number of beastial Creatures prowling the earth. Therefore the opportunities to find carrion have also been reduced—except for those whom winter has killed.
Selkirk’s natural haunts have always been the forests. But hunger has driven him out onto the naked plains, into foreign regions which distress him and where he is himself vulnerable to a violent attack.
Why couldn’t he simply lie down and die? He would welcome the punishment. His loathing of his own compulsions would finally be over. But compulsion overcomes death.
Pertelote is torn in two directions. Everything within her wants to follow John Wesley. But the band of the Meek requires her to stay with them.
Statim.
Oh, that constraining lowing! Fly from her Animals after John and Boreas and Wachanga. Or fly toward the mountains and the organ-call ahead of her.
Statim, statim, Gallina.
Te insequitur perfidia.
Make haste, Gallina!
The merciless age rages
At your back.
Come hither!
Pertelote lies on a shelf of air, her heart and her mind tearing in two.
The Vultures, smooth on their wide, motionless wings, wheel the sky above their carrion, but hesitate to descend. A Creature greater than they stands next to it, pawing small bones and a feathered carcass, and gazing at a decapitated Hen.
A powerful scent rides the steam of recent Wolf-scats. Boreas knows the stink. Boreas knows who slaughtered this Hen. He deeply, deeply despises him.
Moreover, a trail of blood-drops confirms the fact that Eurus still bears warm meat in his jaws.
The White Wolf pricks his ears. He’s heard a twitter of fear under a scrub oak.
Just then John Wesley, racing down the river ice, rams his claws down in order to stop, but whips on past Boreas, spinning away: “Gaw, Gaw, Gaw, Gaw!”
Boreas raises his head. He watches the Weasel come mincing back along the riverbank.
When John sees the victim at the White Wolf’s feet and the detached head of a Hen, he pauses. So uncharacteristic of the Weasel! He reaches out his paw and touches the Hen’s beak with one nail.
“Was a bad Cackle. Was a cussingest Cackle, what picked on sister Cackles, then was a Cackle of sinfulnesses. But John, he don’t think Jasper, she deserves…”
It seems that John Wesley is mourning.
Then, quietly, he says to Boreas, “Wolfie. We gots fightings to do.”
Apparently the Weasel’s river-speed outdistanced Wachanga’s ground speed by a lick, for now she too arrives.
There are three.
Wachanga turns questioning eyes to the White Wolf.
He says, “Aye.”
The scrub oak says, “Peep.”
“See to the Chicks,” Boreas says to Wachanga. “Take care of them.” And to the Weasel, “Yes. Fightings. Let’s go.”
The Vulture has a nude head, red and wrinkled from his black earholes to the base of is beak. There is a reason for such stupendous ugliness. The maggots that flourish in his putrefying dinners cannot attach to a face with no feathers.
The Vulture may be graceful in the sky. On the ground he is merely a fat foul on weak feet.
When, therefore, the dozen Vultures spiral slowly down to the dead and meal of warm corpse, Wachanga allows them to land, then dashes at them, bowling them over, one, six, twelve.
Boreas, trotting with John Wesley, had not expected a pack of seven.
As the scent warmed before his approach he calculated that he was closing in on Eurus. His martial instincts did not wait on the Weasel. Now he howls and bounds forward.
But the yellow-eyed Wolf stands on stiff legs at the point of a pack: four more males and two females. Only one Wolf hangs back, a female of pale and impassive eyes.
“Boreas,” Eurus growls. “You keen to join my pack?”
The White Wolf ignores the taunt. He is measuring the enemy, seeking weakness.
“No? You’d rather run with the Meek? Not a good decisi
on.”
Eurus addresses his pack: “Mine!”
Suddenly he hurls himself at Boreas.
Boreas skips aside.
Eurus whirls and lunges at the White Wolf. So does Boreas lunge. They rear up on their hind legs, baring their teeth, slashing at one another’s throats. They do not bark. They fight in a violent silence.
Boreas hooks a fang in his enemy’s jowl and rips the skin into two flaps. Blood spatters the White Wolf’s face and chest.
Both back off and lower their heads, grimly eyeing one another. At some undetectable signal, they leap again and slam together, clashing jaws. Eurus’s blood reddens both their snouts.
Boreas has always been the larger of the two. But Eurus has the greater hatred. He throws a shoulder at Boreas, who huffs and thumps the ground.
Eurus drives at the White Wolf’s loins.
Boreas rolls. Momentum pitches Eurus past Boreas, who claws Eurus’s left eye. The ball erupts from its socket.
Now Eurus is down. Boreas stands over him.
Suddenly Skoll takes up where his father left off. Fresh, young, and well-muscled, he has the advantage.
Almost as if in a dream, Boreas watches Skoll’s streamlined flight. He feels the blow his body takes, then feels as if he’s sinking in a warm, green sea.
Like the blaring of a distant trumpet, a raucous voice yells, “Do and do and do for you!”
How nice, Boreas thinks. The Weasel is here.
Skoll barks. John snarls. “Gots a pizzle?” All at once the force that knocked Boreas down releases him.
The Weasel cries, “Up, Woflie! Wolfie gots to get up!”
Boreas is amazed to find that he is actually getting up, is standing. The Weasel’s determination is worth the strength of ten Wolves.
Boreas shakes his head. His vision clears. John Wesley is dashing in circles around him. “Gots to go, Wolfie. John, he can fight three, maybe four, not six.”
There, at the head of the pack, her pale eyes flat with anger, is a third female.
Another Wolf with a dark scar from his eye to his jowl lays back his ears and retracts his cheeks. So do the two other males.
“Wolfie! We lickety splits!”
The female snaps at the three males: “Mine!” They back off.
“Rutt,” the one-eyed, yellow eyed Eurus mutters with relief. “It’s you.”
Once more the female cries, “Mine!” and throws herself powerfully forward.
The Weasel is beside himself. The White Wolf can manage only a few steps on his trembling legs.
The female lands not on Boreas, but on Eurus, her claws on his chest.
“Look at me,” she says. “Look at me.”
Eurus turns his remaining eye toward her and blows words through the flaps of his jowls, “Thank you.”
“I,” says the She-Wolf, “am vengeance.”
Slowly she opens her jaws and closes them on the wounded Wolf’s bloody muzzle, slowly crushes it, then holds on while Eurus thrashes, holds on until he suffocates and dies.
[Eighteen] In Which Selkirk Chooses Not To Eat
Before Fimbul-Winter, before his arrival at the Hemlock, while he still took good health for granted and solitude was a choice and not the consequence of shame, the Marten Selkirk cut a comely figure. His flights from tree to tree had always been pleasant performances. He had worn a beautiful, soft, glossy, orange-brown coat. His bushy tail was both an ornament and a practical snap for sudden turns. His ears were large and attentive. His eyes were shaped like almonds. His face and muzzle tapered into a flashing intelligence.
Then Savagery broke forth from the dungeons under the earth, and slaughter entered Selkirk’s soul. Since then he has eaten the meat of the murdered.
He has neglected to groom himself. He just doesn’t care. The Marten’s fur is whorled, clumped with frost and mud. His eyes are lusterless. He avoids a direct, focused sight, always casting his eyes to the side. His ears are clogged with wax, troubling his hearing. The dried blood of rotting carrion crusts his muzzle.
The Vultures have spiraled down. Selkirk creeps forward, downwind of the black-clothed undertakers. As muffled as his ears are, he nevertheless can hear their hooked beaks tearing flesh from the bones. In a moment he sees them, a circle surrounding the carcass of a Wolf.
Unaware of the changes in his soul, Selkirk is suddenly enraged at Creatures without a conscience.
He barks. He rushes in. The Vultures lift their naked heads. He barks again with an unchecked fury, and drives at them. At first they spread their drooping wings, but do not fly. Selkirk charges the Vultures one by one. They cannot scream. They have no voices. Silently, then, but terrified, they flap their wretched wings and fly.
Selkirk comes to an immediate halt and regards the Wolf’s corpse with pity.
Its skull is eyeless. Its tongue has fed the Vultures. Its jaws yawn as if the Wolf died on an anguished cry.
A wave of remorse engulfs the Marten. He seeks some way to honor the Wolf.
Though his strong nails were made for climbing tree-bark and not for digging, Selkirk claws at the frozen earth. He is determined to dig even to the last ounce of his energies.
He hollows out a shallow pit. The ground softens. He digs down for half an hour, throwing up piles of dirt. Finally he has dug a hole large enough to accommodate the Wolf’s riven corpse. This he carries to its grave then covers it with the loose earth.
Selkirk is exhausted. Nevertheless, he begins to dig a second grave, this one for himself.
[Nineteen] Under Sister Moon
The band of Animals remains four more days beside the frozen river.
Kangi Sapa flies abroad to bring back the medicinals Pertelote has requested for the White Wolf. The hardened sap from the bark of a spruce.
After the Raven returns with the sap, Pertelote directs her Hens to sit and brood on each piece as if it were an egg. Once the sap has softened, she works Hens’ down into the emulsified gum, then applies it as a poultice to the White Wolf’s wounds.
Twill takes one of the new Chicks into her care. Hopsacking takes the other.
Of feathers and fur Least weaves a sheet to cover two Wolves, for two Wolves lie together, Boreas and Wachanga. Lovely, lovely the warm proximity.
The Otters have never ceased to play on the ice. Their loud laughter eases the difficult times.
During the fifth night the Cream-Wolf sings a lullaby. The lullaby that springs to her mind is both unremembered and familiar. She sings:
“God ever grant thee goodness, child,
And laughter.
God keep thee sweet and undefiled
Hereafter.”
The verse was the Cow’s when Wachanga was a pup, when the scent in the cave was sweet grass and spring loam.
That memory encourages other memories.
The cave was opened in the side of an enormous, smooth, singular stone, a stone that seemed to the pup as large as a continent. The ground outside was perfectly flat, surrounded by a wide, precipitous wall.
Kangi Sapa sits some little distance from the Cream-Wolf, watching her.
“Hey, Wachanga.”
“Mr. Sapa.”
“The look in your eye. I think you are remembering.”
“I am.”
“Hum.” The Raven remains quiet a while. Then: “I don’t know what my darlin’s remembering, but I’m going to guess you think it’s all tucked back in the past.”
Wachanga does not answer.
“It’s not. The Willows say not. The Willows say memories live in the now. They say they are you. Say they are the particularities that make you you—the you who is singing lullabies to the Wolf you love.”
The Cream-Wolf has always been inclined to the Raven. But his last story seems to have engulfed him and driven him helplessly to fire and a desolation of the earth, troubles her. Now Kangi Sapa’s manner is cool. Melancholy. He doesn’t say “Babe.”
&nbs
p; “Wrapped in the center of a Cottonwood,” says Kangi Sapa, “is the sapling of her childhood. The rings around that first slender stalk are her youth, and all the rings that widen around the infant and the youth are the years of her growth. Today they are what she has become. There are rings in us, sweet Wachanga, of the good times past and the bad times too—but they have not passed.”
Wachanga remembers that there was a second cub living in the cave with her, both of the pups nourished by the same maternal Cow, each of them something of a sister to the other. But as they grew the cubs revealed wholly different natures: Wachanga docile, the other willful. This one wore a black saddle on her back. In spite of the Cow’s plea that she return, the young Wolf wandered outside in the night. Finally, when she had developed a full body, the She-Wolf left the cave without asking leave. Wachanga was wakened by a clattering of broken stones. She looked out and saw the She-Wolf standing as a silhouette on the wall’s high edge.
The sister—once her sister—raised her head and howled, “Freedom!” then vanished.
The memory ends.
Kangi Sapa is gone.
Wachanga nuzzles the White Wolf lying beside her: “God keep thee sweet and undefiled—”
Boreas murmurs, “Wachanga.”
He’s awake.
He says, “Pertelote has healing in her wings.” He pauses. The Cream-Wolf feels the joint of his paw upon her neck. “But you, Wachanga: you have healing in your heart.”
Wachanga whispers, “You’re talking.”
He says, “My poultice itches. Scratch it off.”
She does, then licks the scar that has formed.
“And the sheet,” he says. “No need for a sheet any more. We have each other.”
Each other. His words are so intimate that Wachanga’s heart swells.
Boreas stands up and shakes himself as if shaking water from his coat. His fur sheds the scent of a long sleep together with a scent of good health, and then the scent of a male invigorated.
The Third Book of the Dun Cow: Peace at the Last Page 8
