The Second Book of the Dun Cow: Lamentations (4 page)

The Animals filed south from the maple tree.

Tick-Tock the Black Ant led his troops in the vanguard, a military parade to honor Lord Russel the Fox of Good Sense, troops like a carpet cleansing the route for the funeral procession behind.

Ten Hens did duty as pallbearers, four to one side, four to the other, and two to carry Russel’s bushy tail. His corpse was heartbreakingly light, the sickness having wasted him to fur and bones. He was covered in a mantle woven of breast feathers, and the mantle had been sweetened by the Queen of the Honey Bees and by her Family Swarm. Behind the Hens came Pertelote, singing verses as she went. And then the Mice. And John Wesley, frowning mightily and stepping wayward, as though he had nothing to do with funerals.

Over the entire procession flew Chauntecleer. The sun made him magnificent: his coral comb like the crenels of a castle wall; his feathers proudly golden, his beak black, his nails white, his legs azure, his flight commanding, his manner unapproachable.

Perhaps the Animals were going to bury war forever. No. The Keepers of universal Evil can never retire into a quiet insignificance. The good order of the whole creation requires their labors, and what they are gives heaven pause.

A funeral? A small communal ceremony? Yes, of course, but so much more. It was a quasar, a deep and soundless pulse in space, a signal of the end and of a beginning.

Let no one wonder, then, that Wyrm himself saw fit to attend this funeral. His future stratagems demanded it.

Lazara the Beetle met this procession on the near edge of the earth scar. Chauntecleer alighted beside her. To him her lumpish crouch seemed premonitory, and her blackness forbidding. Therefore he flew forward alone.

He spoke to her in private tones. “There’d better be a reason why you’re waiting here, Beadle Lazara. I told you where to dig the grave.”

“Aye,” said Lazara. “But … come and see.”

She led the Rooster toward an obvious hole and beside the hole a mound of stone-chips heaped up.

“I’ve digged you a crypt, but…”

“But
what?”

“Oh, sir, I digged it in solid stone, and no crack nor fissure in it. I swear it as a surety. But…” She cowled her face.

Chauntecleer was on the verge of a crow. “
Out
with it!”

“How it chanced, I don’t know. I cannot say. Sir Chauntecleer, there’s a treachery in its bottom.”

Chauntecleer strode ahead of the Beetle. At the crypt he was hit by an odor of stinking corruption. His eyes burned. Yet he peered over the edge. As Lazara had said, the sepulcher was well scooped, the sides of it carved and smooth. But on its floor lay a long extrusion, a thick ooze slick and passive.

The Rooster hissed, “A turd! Lazara! Who would shit in Russel’s grave?”

“Oh, no! No, sir!” The Beetle seemed unaffected by the stench. “‘Tis a living thing. Come of its own self-choosing.”

Chauntecleer turned his face toward the sea. “Wyrmesmere!”

“Well, I don’t know nothing of this Wyrmes-whatchoo-call-it, no I don’t. Only just, I looked and the thing was there.”

The Rooster crowed a crow so angry that the whole procession went stark still.

Braving the stench, Chauntecleer leaped in Russel’s crypt, clawed the loathsome coil, and with his beak scissored it into two parts. Then he rose from the hole bearing the pieces in his talons, and pitched them into the endless sea.

“This is
my
doing! Wretched Wyrm—
choke
on your works!”

If such a thing is possible, the waves smiled to receive the divided slug.

“There will be a grave!” Chauntecleer shouted. “And it shall
not
be defiled!”

He called the Queen of the Family Swarm and commanded that she and her Bees line the sepulcher with an impermeable wax, and then to sweeten the wax with a honey as with myrrh. Even so the Rooster sanctified the tomb

When the grave was cleansed and waxed, Lord Chauntecleer scattered his own golden feathers as a bed for Russel. Then he stood back and held himself in royal self-control.

“It is done,” he said. “Bring my brother. Lay him to his rest.”

And so they did.

Gently the wings of ten Hens lowered the Fox, quiet under his shroud and featureless, except for his red tail whose tip was inked in black.

The Mice selected stone shavings the size of their hands and dropped them like pebbles upon their uncle. “Earth to earth.” Tick-Tock said to his troops. With sand and stone-dust the Ants covered the corpse. Pertelote sang an elegy, to which the Animals sang a choral refrain.

And in the end, Chauntecleer did his part. As was proper at eventide, he sang:

“Guide us waking, O Lord,
And guard us sleeping.
That awake we may watch with thee,
And asleep we may rest in peace.”

In the great northern forests, crouched on a carpet of brown needles under a canopy of tall pine trees, a Coyote is hiding. His forelegs are low, his butt high behind, and his narrow snout seeming to grin with all of his teeth.

Well:
thinks
he is hiding.

In fact, his skinny, rust-red self is in full view. But this is the way the Coyote hides: he freezes. Poor Ferric, convinced that perfect stillness effects perfect invisibility. But he isn’t grinning. He’s scared. His cheeks go back to his ears, and his eyes narrow into two darts whose points point to the bridge of his muzzle. Fear turns Ferric Coyote into one long, taut nerve, like an arrow fixed mid-flight, or a bowstring which, if it is touched, would hum at a high pitch:
Eeeeeeee!

Ferric has frozen this way often in his lifetime, ever since life itself became for him a dangerous proposition. The Coyote is cursed with senses too keen for a fainting heart; or,
volte-face,
keen senses have caused his heart to faint.

His ears are dishes; they hear everything. The pads of his paws are raw, and his bones are hollow tubes, and his skin is tympanic; they feel everything, and everything is magnified. He eyes are perpetually frightened; they see the least twitch in nature, for any twitch may be malicious, for there is no twitch he knows that doth love him.

Except for Rachel. She loves him. But the woman is inexplicable.

Lately the dangers have multiplied tenfold, and he’s begun to ache with hiding. This is because of his wife, whom he loves in return, but who has
no
fears whatsoever—none. So Ferric yelps often and hides for two. And, the worser of worst, three weeks ago his wife took a notion to travel.

All at once summer was winter. All at once the land and the forests were locked hard against his busiest scratching. At the time Ferric thought that this was the reason why she began to trot away and away from their home into alien territories. But she wasn’t seeking the heat of the south. Happy as a Plover (who, incidentally, were gone after warmer climes) Rachel has for twenty-one days been cantering
north!—
while he’s been skittering and dashing and creeping and freezing and dashing again after her. Nor has he the slightest idea where they are going, or when they will get there.

“Rachel, where?”

“I’ll know it when I see it.” Careless. A woman without a care in the world. “And you will know it,” she says, “when I tell you.”

“For God’s sake, Rachel,
when?”

“When you’re able,” she says, and she laughs, and she goes.

Wel, Ferric can’t allow her to travel the world undefended. Therefore—
zoooom—
he shoots ahead to scan the forests for disasters and to save her life, to freeze for two.

“Rachel!
Why?”

“Oh, you’ll see. Soon you will see.”

Poor, poor Ferric. His speed has not rewarded him. For suddenly he finds himself crouch before the most perilous sight he has ever seen, and he is paralyzed in a freeze of spectacular petrification. He never imagined that such scenes could exist. And he almost bolted into it, but was saved at the last instant by instinct, quickness, and a skidding stop.

Ferric Coyote has come to the end of the forest.

Ferric Coyote is staring at open spaces!

There are no trees on all the vast land before him. Sweeps of frozen muskeg, low hillocks, stunted spruce, bald and blown stones, and sky, and sky, and sky, and—nothing! Infinity! Why, one more step and he would have exploded. The Creature who ventures into such an immensity would feel stark naked.

Ferric behind a stunted pine; Ferric, frozen beyond his capacities; Ferric cannot control his gullet. He swallows and swallows at the sight.

Then comes Rachel, and Ferric’s heart fails.

Does she fear the diabolical fraud that nature has played by coming to an end? And is she duly buffaloed? No! No, no, no,
no!

That woman! That red, relaxed, and reckless woman! When she draws close beside him, she looks out beyond the trees, and nods, and smiles, and murmurs, “Lovely.”

He says the only thing he
can
say in his freeze:
“Tssssst!”

She kisses his wooden jaw and trots straight out and onto the unholy blank.

He huffs. He puffs. He hyperventilates. And through his toothy grin he produces a steam of extreme alarm. Ferric is a petcock:

“Tssssssssssst!”

Rachel hears and recognizes the intensity of Ferric’s sibilance, if not the sense of it. She looks back. Gently she returns to her husband, all her joints loose and her expression content. She nuzzles him—and he as sharp as a drawn arrow.

“Be at peace,” she says. “Where we are, Ferric, is right and proper. Give me a little while to look—”

“Tssst!”

“—and I’ll be back, and then what? Then I will tell you the good thing soon to happen for us.”

Off again, with her fine bushy tail, as healthy as Ferric is horrified, Rachel trots sixty yards away, one hundred yards across the faceless landscape—and vanishes.

Ferric blinks. His hairs stand up. A rash of needles prickle his face.

“Rachel?”

Ferric is on his feet.

“Rachel!”

The Coyote gathers his strength and springs. He runs dead-level over the ground.

“Rachel!”

Then, as smoothly as she disappeared, she reappears, head, breast, and legs above the ground. And what is that? She… Rachel is laughing.

So Ferric drives his forelegs to a stop. He executes a quick turn and dashes back into the forest.

“Oh, Ferric, Ferric,” the woman exults. “Can you believe our good fortune? I have found it!”

What Ferric has, he has a headache. He has a wife.

Rachel is breathless. So is he. But hers is merriment, and his is terror. His wife doubles back and finds him hiding. She puts a paw to his ribs and tickles him. He will not be tickled.

“Oh, be at peace,” she laughs. “I have found the perfect den.”

“Hmph, woman. Hmph.”

“It’s warm. Steam comes out through cracks in the stones below. Isn’t that wonderful? It is exactly what I hoped for. It’s why we’ve come.”

“Good,” mutters Ferric. “Let’s go back.”

“Back? Oh, Ferric.”

Rachel nuzzles him. “No, not back,” she says full kindly. “The whole purpose is, we’ve come to stay.”

It is at this point that the Coyote’s eyes water, and he starts to mew in his throat.

“Shhh, my dear, brave husband. What I’ve been looking for is a home is a home for a home for our family.”

“Family?
Rachel, did you say
family?”

“You,” she says—and he notices a sheen of tears in her eyes. “You and me and our babies. I am soon to bear a batch of little Coyotes.”

The world skipped autumn and winter clicked it cold. The grass in the fields withered, yellow and sere. Roses were blasted on the bush, and its soft stems turned brittle. Touch them and they cracked. The wind that blew in from the sea produced an evening fog.

It was in a thick twilight fog that Chauntecleer heard a wheezy word arise from the ground: “Willows” was the word. “Willows.”

The Rooster lowered his head and cocked one eye and saw a solitary Woolly Worm making slow haste to parts unknown. Her coat—rings of burnt umber and sienna—was as dense as Sheep’s wool.

“Willows,” the worm wheezed. “The willows are froze, and where will I find a tender one now?”

Chauntecleer said, “Pardon me, grandmother. I couldn’t help but overhear—”

Though it was hard to tell, given her slowth, the Woolly Worm stopped. “Bless me,” she said. “The fog talks.”

“No, ma’am. I’m Lord Chauntecleer. It’s Rooster talking.”

“Never did hear of a Lord Chauntecleer.”

This set the Rooster back a bit. “Well,” he said. He would have drawn himself up to his full dignity, except that the mists would have rendered dignity invisible. “Well, it’s time you met a Chauntecleer. I am he.”

She said, “No force to it, nor no thrill to me.” Then she continued her slow-motion crawl. The imperturbable Wooly Worm.

“What,” said Chauntecleer, “is your intention, crossing my land? Where do you think you’re going?”

“From winter. Into winter.”

“Aye, winter indeed,” he said. “But what’s this about willows?”

“Willows are eatables,” she said. “Eatables and sleepables, and here am I, caught in the cold unhoused.”

The Rooster kept his eye an inch above the bunching unbunching, bunching unbunching woman. “You ask me,” he said, “you’re going in the wrong direction. There are willows clustered along the Liver-brook, but the Liver-brook’s back the way your came.”

“And haven’t I been there? And isn’t your brook frozen at the edges?”

“Already?”

“Already. Take me as a sign, laddy. In all my days I’ve never grown so thick a coat. It’s a winter of rack and ruin upon us now. It’s a winter as never was. To put a name to it,i t’s Fimbul-winter that’s come to kill.”

Chauntecleer considered the matter. Actually, there was no reason not to believe the Wooly Worm. Woolly Worms predict winters. But this was a winter he’d never heard of before.

So he aimed his Rooster-eye ather and said, “Grandmother, Fimbul-winter?”

She answered, “A winter as might never know an ending. And a winter that doesn’t end, that puts paid to everything. Best you take my meaning, lad, before the time runs out.”

The Worm’s apprehensions troubled Chauntecleer, and the fog began to feel unfriendly. He said, “Be plain, grandmother. What is your meaning?”

“Prepare,” she said. “Prepare.”

And,
Prepare, prepare
, he heard from a dozen wheezings left and right of him.

The Rooster nosed out these other voices and found a host of Wooly Worms, each as deeply furred as the first, and all of them crawling in leaden haste, and every voice premonitory:

Prepare!

And so it was that when the fog burned off the following morning, Lord Chauntecleer spread his golden wings and sailed in circles crowing his Animals into service.

There was a sun in the cold sky, and there was the bright golden Rooster.

He made a trumpet of his voice. “All of you, the Creatures who can, gather foods of every kind!”

Pertelote said to Chauntecleer, “When we lose a landed place, my Lord, we must create a spiritual place in which to live.” And she said, “Walls for tender hearts, a roof to enclose their spirits, a habitation in which the company of the Meek can lie down and survive hard times.”

So Chauntecleer took to his wings and sailed high above the earth in order to find a winter home for the Animals and for their harvest.

He scanned the standing trees, the clearings, the brambles, the meadows, the upland ridges. He had a gift, did Chauntecleer. Though his eyes were not slanted like the Hawk’s eyes, but as round as dimes, his daytime sight was keen.

An oily fog began to sweep the terrain below, concealing the small things and then the large. Finally one tree rose like a steeple out of the mists. Chauntecleer aimed his flight thither. A Hemlock, it was, its evergreen boughs furling itself like a robe.

Chauntecleer spiraled down the Hemlock—down and down the widening branches which cloaked a trunk as tall as a mast.

He landed. So wide was the tree’s circumference that it surely embraced a space as large as a rotunda. He walked inside and found himself in something like a castle hall. Here the fog was banished. The wind was shut out. The earth was soft. A natural warmth caused the cold in him to shudder. And the undersides of the needles glimmered silver.

Here was a home. Here was space to larder a winter’s full of foodstuffs. To this place Chauntecleer called the Animals.

The Mad House of Otter showed up without stopping to beg entrance. Slippery-sloppery, they scrambled in with caches of dried crustaceans, then they played and played, untroubled by Fimbul-winter. Whenever the notion took them, they humped through the woods until they found a fine, smooth slope. At the top of it they leaped, made streamlines of their bodies by folding their forelegs close to their chests, and tobogganed down at squint-eyed speeds.

Tick-Tock commanded one of his divisions to forage seeds with which to larder their underground chambers: wheatseeds, weedseeds, barleycorns, and oats. Another division of Ants gathered in baskets the last crystals of honeydew. Busy, busy, busily obedient, they marched in narrow pathways to and fro.

Busyness and work, sir; never shall we shirk, sir!

John Wesley Weasel stripped bark from the bases of trees: spruce, cedar, black cherry, birch.

Everyone scattered and gathered. Chestnuts, hickory nuts, chestnuts, beechnuts, walnuts, acorns, gumballs spiked and most unsavory, and the poor kernel of the sycamore. They harvested the meat of collapsing gourds, the rinds of squashes, turnips, beets, the blasted crabapple, the woody pear, cabbage hearts, the sweet fiber of young saplings.

The Queen Honeybee and her Family Swarm could no longer find pollen in the blossoms that had let down their hair. But they could, and they did, protect the honey they’d already manufactured in their hives. They stored their sweet-stuffs deeply against the winter.

So did the Mice dart here and there, finding the vinegar pulp of fallen apples.

Five Hens scratched more furiously than ever before. Pertelote taught the other five (save fat Jasper) to dig roots where the frost allowed it, to collect bulbs and fungi and lichens and mosses, as well as the leaves and the grasses of healing herbs.

Sheep arrived and sheared the frosted vegetation close to the ground. Better than these nibbled bits, they bore with them a wool to warm a shivering Creature.

In the end Chauntecleer had administered an effective unity of purpose, foodstuffs not for gluttony but for saving against Fimbul-winter.