The Third Book of the Dun Cow: Peace at the Last (8 page)

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.

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.”

“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.

Boreas says, “Come.”

“Where?”

“Away.”

Wachanga considers the invitation.

“We can’t steal way, Boreas. These are our friends.”

“Hush. Away from prying eyes.”

Pertelote is not asleep. She hears the tread of the Wolves. An hour later she hears the moans of desires fulfilled.

In the morning Boreas is light on his feet.

Pertelote announces that it’s time to leave this place of convalescence.

With a new grace Wachanga takes the lead, ever snuffling the scent of her Ancestors. Boreas walks beside her, and because Pertelote knows what there is to know, she is not surprised that the White Wolf does not this morning dash ahead to reconnoiter.

Once John Wesley had feelings for Wachanga. Once he found himself mooning beside her and asking if she wanted a drink of water. Now the Weasel knows that it is not his place. Boreas has become Cream-Wolf’s beloved.

The Animals climb through a forest of pine among whose branches the wind moans. Each foothill rises higher than the last. Now and again the Animals tumble down a snowy decline, then pause, gasping for breath.

The mountainsides and the giant cliffs ahead are wrinkled with a craggy rock. In the spring the snowmelt roars down these mountain steeps. Now the water is frozen into colossal columns of ice which look like the massy pillars that hold up the domes of cathedrals.

This
is before them? This is what they must climb?

Ferric Coyote has suffered many tribulations in his life. Once he grieved the deaths of his wife and of his son Benoni. Once he feared the starvation of his daughters. After such trials the Coyote thought he was ready for anything. But not
this.

Fly she never so high, Pertelote cannot find a pass through the saw-toothed summits ranging north and south. There’s no help for it. Her band must keep climbing.

Eventually the Animals leave the green forest behind. They scrabble over rubbles of fallen rock. They mount steep slopes of grizzled snow. Wachanga is nimble. Moreover, she and Boreas walk on paws the size of snowshoes. But lesser Creatures slip backward. The Mice are fine. The Hens are not. They lose their footing and tumble in a rush of feathers. John Wesley takes it upon himself to urge them upward—by insults.

“Cut-cackle Chickies, they waddles like they can’t pop a poop! Cut-cackles is clueless!” he yells. “Roll, roll, roll, Biddy-Birdies, bubble-busters. Roll, roll, roll down snow and bye-bye to you.”

The offense agitates the Hens. They claw the snow and climb. They flap their vestigial wings, swearing that when they catch a Weasel they’ll peck his tail naked.

If only the Otters would stop tobogganing down the slope! John Wesley hates their hilarities in times of sober goings.

When the sun drops behind the western peaks the Animals are plunged into a sudden darkness. There is no twilight. Daylight dies in four short breaths, and no one moves.

Pertelote consoles them by singing Compline:

“Where has laughter gone?

With the sun.

Who are those that cannot run?

Everyone.

What shall I sing tonight?

Lullabies.

Tomorrow we’ll climb, tomorrow fly,

Unified.

I am, my children, yours;

You are mine.

Climb the seasons, climb the years,

However high.

Eurus is dead. Rutt is taking his place.

She walks the bare ridges as he did once, howling a general summons. More savvy than Eurus, Rutt utters her summons in the various tongues of the untaught Beasts.

The first to answer is Hati, the son who broke from the pack of his yellow-eyed father. He arrives strutting as the dominant Wolf of his own pack. In Hati Rutt recognizes an arrogant, self-confident male.

Therefore she leaps down the ridge, extending her four legs and using her body-weight to drive Hati to the ground. He tries to rear up, but Rutt is quicker and more determined. She catches his skull between her jaws. Hati struggles, powerfully at first, then weakly, until his body goes slack. Rutt releases him. She presses her right paw on his chest. When he regains consciousness, the pressure of her paw establishes her authority over all the Wolves.

Moreover Rutt elevates the second son, Skoll, above his brother. Hati once made Skoll’s life miserable. This is payback.

Rutt howls from dusk till dawn.

A leopard slinks into view. Rutt growls and spits like a Wildcat, and the Leopard, subservient, joins the Wolves.

Then Snakes, then Wolverines, Rats, the Ferruginous Hawk who cements her nest with Cow shit, then a Linx.

Rutt, Hati, and Skoll attack the first Bear that answers her howl. They tear the Beast to pieces and force the rest of Rutt’s swelling pack to drink his blood and to eat his meat. Pale-eyed Rutt watches the Beasts’ bloody transformations. Stags follow and are slaughtered. Moose, Sheep, Pronghorns.

The Merlins learn to feed on Larks, on Songbirds and their nestlings. The Raccoon develops a taste for Voles and Mice and small Rabbits.

Rutt’s pack becomes a rabble.

By an iron will and the savagery to enforce it, by a dexterity of language—sometimes rude, sometimes elegant, persuasive, dire, promising punishment or delight—Rutt dazzles and commands a mob.

Only Freya is proof against her mother’s domination. She is her mother’s better. She follows, but does not serve.

Rutt refuses to let anyone veer off to hunt and eat on their own. Their hunger has a purpose.

The Animals find in the escarpment a cavern where they pass the night.

Kangi Sapa says, “I have another tale to tell. This one from the Cottonwoods.”

“Better than the last one, I hope,” says Pertelote.

“More important,” says the Raven. “Shorter.”

Wodenstag Mouse pipes up: “Nobody dies in this one, Mr. Sapa? Nobody makes fires?”

“Sorry, my little Mouse-friend. There is fire. There
has
to be fire.”

“Maybe,” Wodenstag whispers, “maybe you don’t tell it?”

“That, too,” Kangi Sapa says with pity. “I
have
to tell it, even if no one listens.”

Pertelote says, “Is this tale necessary?”

The Raven pauses. “Necessary, Mrs. P. All too necessary.”

Wachanga whimpers.

Boreas the White Wolf swallows a growl.

Then Kangi Sapa unfolds his story without humor. He speaks in tones the Animals don’t recognize as his. The Raven knows a thousand languages. This one is formal and foreboding. The Cream-Wolf scarcely recognizes the teller of the tale.

So. The Cottonwood Trees stood along the shores of brooks and streams, drinking the water through their roots. They were peaceful in those days.

They talked about the past when their ancestors were seedlings—as seedlings they still were. They talked about the Creator’s resting on the seventh day. The sky was new. The earth was breaking forth in flowers and in forests. The rains fell fresh from heaven. The soil was moist, and the sun was three days old. Generation after generation, the Cottonwoods taught their children their histories. In this way the traditions were never lost. The hand of God was upon them all.

One day the Cottonwoods saw a ball of fire streaking down the sky. Surely God would not have hurled it at the earth. The Trees became frightened. Their sap ran cold.

The fireball had a long red tail. It plowed the air. It was racing to a place not far from them. Its coming produced a continual roar. Its light was fire. The Cottonwoods expected death.

But the burning ball missed them. It exploded among the mountains. The earth shook. Its mantel rolled below them like a rug, and smoke billowed up. The mountains vomited clouds of dust. The dust darkened the sun and turned the moon to blood.

Five days, six days—it was a week before the winds had swept the dust away.

On the eighth day a Sharpshin Hawk, her feathers singed, fell into the river from which the Cottonwoods drank.

When she could speak the Hawk told them that the fireball was a massive stone, that it had punched a tremendous crater in the saddle between the shoulders of two mountains. She said that it glowed red with heat. That it had an odd, slender protuberance which reached ten yards away from its forepart. That great stone was cooling. And that the cooling cracked in its grounded side a cave.

Sharpshin had watched the event dumbfounded. In spite of her scorched feathers she believed it was her duty to carry the message abroad.

Is this story-teller Kangi Sapa? He seems to have been swallowed up in oratory. The Animals cannot sleep. Their cavern has shrunk to the size of a cup.

Even Wachanga feels that her friend has been replaced by an unhappy and premonitory prophet.