The Second Book of the Dun Cow: Lamentations (12 page)

Pertelote, weary and eternally awake on her roost, heard small scratchings at the base of the Hemlock. Then she heard Mouse-whisperings, tiny calculations like thieves preparing a raid.

It was night. What she saw below looked like nothing so much as purposeful hair-balls, yet she recognized Wodenstag by his manner and Donnerstag by his leadership.

Six of the Brothers stood semi-circle, staring straight up with their mouths hanging open, while the seventh, Wodenstag, began to climb the tree’s trunk. All four of his little limbs were extended as wide as they could no. He was a daddy-longlegs clinging to the bark. And he was trembling so violently that he looked like a plucked rubber band. Yet his expression was earnest, and somewhere inside of him was the conviction that a Mouse could climb a tree.

The Brothers whispered, and Pertelote heard them whispering, “Are you going to fall, Wodenstag? Should we get out of the way?”

By a grand effort the mighty Wodenstag stuck to the trunk. He chin was drumming it like a woodpecker—and lo! His eyes lit up. It must have been the chin-drumming that presented him with a solution for climbing better, for he whispered to his Brothers, “Bite the bark.” Six Mice cheered scarcely audible cheers. (“Hoo-ray.”)

Wodenstag planted his teeth in a bit of wood, which allowed him to reach higher and grab new bark with the nails of his paws. Up a step, up a step.

Six Brothers began to attempt the climb themselves, making a constant buzzing of grunts. A string of thieves up a tree. And how they encouraged Samstag, the youngest of them all.

One by one they gained a tough limb above. Whisperingly they congratulated Samstag when he arrived beside them. In unison then they turned and looked down the limb to the Lady Hen who was roosting maybe ten feet away.

“Shhh,” said Wodenstag. “Shouldn’t wake her.”

Pertelote experienced a true consolation. Of all the Creatures it was the Brothers Mice who remembered kindness.

Then here came brave Wodenstag, balancing along the limb, picking his inches with monumental care. After him came Donnerstag, frowning severely. And Sonntag, and so forth, all staring at the precious limb as if to stare was to grip.

Then this is what they did: they lined up next to Pertelote side by side, sitting on two legs—which was the peril, sitting on two legs only.

Independently of one another, the Mice began to rock. Forward and backward like round-bottomed pepper shakers. Too far forward (“Whoa!”), too far backward (“Whoa! Whoa!), but all with the greatest solemnity and an air that it was proper to be right here, that there was no other place to be, Amen.

Pertelote, the Hen for whom they came, felt a pressure in her breast which might have been laughter, or it might have been sobbing, either one.

“Tags,” she whispered.

“Ah, Lady, we didn’t mean to wake you up. Wodenstag began to pat her wing.

“But you are here.”

“Yes. All of us, one, two, six, seven.”

“Whoa!” said Samstag. Then Freitag said, “Whoa!” spinning his forelegs like whirligigs.

“A very hard thing,” said Pertelote, “to climb a tree.”

“But we,” said Wondenstag, “tricked it.”

“Whoa!” cried Dienstag, and he fell of the limb.

Pertelote said, “I don’t suppose it’s easy for a Mouse to sit this way.”

“Roosting,” said Wodenstag.

And Pertelote said, “Roosting.”

“Whoa!”
One by one the Brothers dropped.

Wodnstag said, “But we agreed that this would be an excellent wasy to sleep sometimes.”

Plop, plop, plop.
Mice hit the ground. And
Plop—
Wodenstag might have followed, except that he grabbed a Pertelote-feather and dangled over emptiness.

“So,” he said, “we said, ‘We should keep the Lady company.’ We have us, but you have nobody.”

Pertelote sobbed. It was
both
laughter
and
tears inside her breast. The sob felt very good, but it did no good for Wodenstag, who lost his grip and dropped right past Diestag, already on his way up the trunk again.

“The carefulest,” Pertelote sighed, “and the kindest friends I know.”

She spread her wings and sank to the ground. Instantly every Mouse that was ascending became Mice descending.

Pertelote said, “Do you think that we could all sleep on the ground tonight?”

Wodenstag said, “A very fine idea.”

Soon, under her wings, seven separate paws were patting the down upon her breast.

And Pertelote sang, as if her husband had come and were sitting beside them all.

“Chauntecleer, remember laughter.

Chauntecleer, let your long langour

Cease.

O Chauntecleer, your Creatures weep.

They beg you Crow and you safekeep

Them each.”

At the first flush of the dawn a mighty Lauds, a brassy reveille went far and wide across the land.

The Animals gaped into wakefulness.

Lord Chauntecleer was crowing from the topmost crown of the Hemlock tree.

“Get up!” he crowed.” We have a war to wage!”

Even the Wolves and the Marten Selkirk responded, so absolute was the command.

Chauntecleer’s substance had swelled. His hackles, his cape, the feathers on his back showed muscles rolling underneath.

“My Creatures! Gather as armies before me!”

Pertinax Cobb stiffened.

“Pack up, Mrs. Cobb.”

“Why, Mr. Cobb?”

“I am a peaceful Squirrel.”

“None more peaceful than you.”

“Armies, Mrs. Cobb. Warfare. I don’t like warfare.”

Still as a golden flag above the, Chauntecleer the Rooster thrashed his wings. “We cannot wait. Wickedness blows abroad. Once more, one last time more, we must assault the pernicious presence.”

Pertelote was blindsided. Chauntecleer had returned to his old power. But there was no joy in it. His dominance quivered with something like wrath. And the amber worms? She saw none of them. On the other hand, she
did
see something like smoke blasting from his throat. It was as if his words were visible.

The Animals dithered in confusion.

“There is an island in the sea to the south. Flames dance its surface. Fire that turns the ocean and he sky above it lurid. And Surt is that fire! But Surt, I swear,
is
the fire! And Surt is the off-scourings of the body of Wyrm! Therefore, Surt is wickedness of Wickedness, and the hatreds of Hate. It is a crusade! It shall be a holy war! Armies upon armies, who will go with me?”

Apparently, no one. Animals heard Lord Chauntecleer’s commanding voice and were troubled—both by the fear of slaughter
and
by the ineluctable manner of the Rooster on his pinnacle. They had loved him. But this was an iron Bird, a Vulture with talons.

Chauntecleer trebled his volume. “What?” he roared. “Have all your spirits withered? Have you become a weak-kneed rabble? Tick-Tock, reveal yourself.”

The Black Ant appeared. “Sir!” He snapped both feelers to attention. His polished eye gleamed.

“Rouse your battalions.”

Tick-Tock was by nature a warrior. He pivoted with a military kick. “Battalions! We defeated Wyrm once before. Are you keen to have at him again?”

Regiments of Black Ants massed the ground before their Commander. “Yes
sir!”

Tick-Tock bellowed, “I can’t hear you.”

The troops boomed, “Sir! Yes
Sir!”

Chauntecleer left his perch and sailed above Tick-Tock’s regiments, reviewing the thousand boot-black Ants.

“Even so!” he crowed with satisfaction. “Who is next? Who will set their store by me? Rise up, my armies, and march!”

March? Away from the high tower and security?

Pertelote was as transfixed as the rest of the Animals, but more disquieted than they. She had ceased to believe in her husband. March? He was suicidal.

Chauntecleer alighted beside her. “Hen, stir up these mollycoddles! I am boldness itself. If they are not mine they must be yours. “

No, it wasn’t smoke that blew from his throat. Specks. A horde of Midges. And less than Midges, they were pinpoint-Insects on the wing.

And what was the Rooster doing now? Heaping mountains onto mountains until their summits breached the heavens.

He flew up and circled, brass-banging the multitude with his crowing. “Those not with me are against me.”

The sheer menace in Chauntecleer’s threat knocked Ratotosk Bore-Tooth, the Grey Squirrel from his nest. But a Squirrel lands belly-down. He dashed for a root hole at the base of the Hemlock.

Chauntecleer swooped to the woods. He strutted to the three Wolves there.

“Your kind can kill,” he declared. “It was one of your grandfathers raped my mother. He killed her, and I killed him. I had that right then, and I have it now. Join me and you shall know my mercy. I want you for my shock troops.”

Boreas the White Wolf stood on a rise. Eurus and Nota stood directly in front of the Rooster, Nota glaring with her red eyes. She lowered her head and retracted her lips. This was not submission. Her tail sprang up like a flag.

She growled, “I don’t know you. You have no authority over me.”

Eurus circled around the Rooster. Each Wolf was thrice his size. These two formed a pincer at his back and his breast.

Chauntecleer dilated his body. “You have no choice,” he said in a silk-smooth voice. He bent the knee of one blue leg and with the point of one spur cut a line across the ice. “Submit or I will slash you one by one.”

Nota and Eurus answered with rumbling growls.

Chauntecleer crowed, “Behold!” The crow blew a dust of Insects from his throat. He jumped and cut Nota’s ear, then whirled and scarred Eurus in the lip. Their tails dropped. They began to rub their eyes, red and yellow. They sneezed and sneezed.

Chauntecleer said, “There they are, my shock troops bowed before me now.”

He swung away from the Wolves and flew to the top of a nearby pine.

“Selkirk,” he crowed. “I see you. I know where you nest.”

The Marten leaped from that pine to another. Chauntecleer was as nimble as he. The instant the Marten caught a new branch, there was a spur full in is face. “Try that once more, and Gaff will scour your skull.”

Selkirk froze.

Chauntecleer hissed, “You are my scout. You are my outrider.”

He left the Marten, who twisted and bit at the irritations in his anus.

The Rooster dropped and strutted toward the Hemlock. He stopped before the moribund Weasel.

“So,” he said. “The bone thief.”

John Wesley stood and glowered and said, “Bones is bones. Is a Rooster what steals a
Rooster.”

Chauntecleer flew to the hive of the Family Swarm, “Queen,” he demanded. “Honey Bees all! I want you to be my Killer Bees. Fly south with me.”

Then he bore down on the House of Otter. “I need water horses.” He thrust his head into their hapless faces. “I want distance swimmers, wet coats and stone slayers.” Those infinitesimal Insects blew like wisps to the moisture in the Otters’ nostrils and eyes.

Once again, Chauntecleer ascended to his topmost spire. This Cock was nothing like a weather vane. He
was
the weather. And who could endure his eye-beam? His right eye sent forth the torch of a refiner’s fire.

“Black Ants, henceforth
Army
Ants! Neither hills nor bodies will obstruct your going. March lockstep south to the sea. At the coastline make mats of yourself. Assemble rafts by which to float to the bonfires on the Island of Surt.”

This was a Rooster Pertelote had never seen before. No! She
had
seen one: the reptilian Cockatrice that once had attacked the true Chauntecleer!

“As for the rest of you puling, self-serving varmints,” Chauntecleer crowed. “Oh, how I detest betrayal!”

And, on mighty wings, he flew away.

Chauntecleer never again removed his weapons, not until the day he died.

“Bones is bones,” John Wesley said.

The Weasel’s sadness had resolved itself into a desolation of spirit.

Chauntecleer had berated Pertelote no less than he had the other Animals. His crow had stupefied her. She’d sunk down and covered her head with the feathers of one wing. And so she had stayed for the rest of the day.

And the Rooster had absolutely no call to chide
him
, John Wesley Weasel!

By evening John’s emptiness was filled with pity. And pity sent him to Pertelote.

“Lady Hen? Is Lady Hen asleeping?”

“Hush, John. Let the Animals rest.”

“Is awake, then?”

“What do you think?”

“Well. Okay. So: wants a Lady Hen, might-be, talk with a Double-u?”

“I am here.”

John coughed. It was difficult, this thing he had to say. “Is a puzzlement: a Rooster what is not a Rooster.”

Pertelote raised her wing back and looked at the Weasel.

John said, “Listen, Lady Hen. Is a Rooster what is not
the
Rooster. Is a monstrous sad truth John gots a need to tell. Worser and worser and worser.”

“What can be worse than what we have already witnessed?”

Before he lost his nerve, the Weasel hurried into his story.

“Rooster, he
is
hate.
Is
Wickedness. Is damn Hell on Critters!”

“Not damned, John!”

“Him what is the Not-Rooster.
That
Rooster. Lady: Was
his
hatefulness what murdered little Coyote Benoni. Murdered his mama too.”

“Oh, John, John, don’t say so.”

“ Sad papa. Sad little daughters. Is a Not-Rooster. Might-be is a true Rooster too.”

Pertelote was weeping.

“Something is smoldering inside him, John. I’ve seen the smoke—”

“No! Not smoke! John knows that Lady Hen, she knows same as John. But she don’t wants to be knowing.”

Pertelote had begun to rock like a child in fear of punishment.

If a Weasel can tame his voice to soothe another, John lowered his and strove for gentleness. “This Double-u,” he said. “This Double-u, he loves his Chauntecleer.”

Pertelote suffered an explosive sob.

“John goes now, John does the do what he can still do.”

When Coyotes howl long, plaintive wailings in the dead of night; when they round their mouths to the sky and utter shrill notes, this is what they are saying:

Son of my sorrow, what has heaven done to you?

They are the Voice, these Coyotes. They are themselves lamentation and bitter weeping. They are weeping for their children. And they cannot be comforted, for their children are not.

This is the way of the world.

Children die.

And when the Hen Pertelote cries in the night, this is what she is saying:

“That summer’s courtship’s long gone by,

Those evenings when my Lord and I

Were young.

Oh, take my tears on faith and I

Will stroke your neck—my lullabies

Unsung.”