The Third Book of the Dun Cow: Peace at the Last (6 page)

The Brothers Mice sit like an audience of seven, their eyes fixed on this improbable black Bird.

The daylight sun is strong. Animals are nibbling the dirt from their fur. Hens are grooming their feathers. Creatures have swept several areas clean of snow. Cold bones are growing warm again.

The black Bird strolls off in a slovenly circle, his beak up as if he’s whistling and thinking of nothing but nothing at all. He passes behind a snowdrift and disappears from the Mice’s sight.

What? They were waiting for a show. Is the show over already?

Suddenly the Raven is behind them. “Boo!”

Instantly every Mouse breaks into giggles. What a thrill! Boo. What a funny thing to say!

The Raven says, “I eat Mice for dessert.”

Well, that’s even funnier. And funniest of all is his next word: “Quork!”

Straightaway, Freitag Mouse practices his talent for mimicry. He throws himself into a Bird-strut. He fiddle-flaps his forearms and squeaks, “Querk!” And all his brothers fall down laughing.

Next Freitag pounds his paws together like a double beak clacking.

“It’s him to a T!” cry his brothers. “Freitag! That’s the ruffly Cinder-Bird to a
T!”

Kangi Sapa cocks an eye.

The Brothers Mice jump up and form a circle around the Raven. “You’re a pretty good joke for a Cinder-Bird,” they say.

Kangi Sapa says, “Quork!’ and the Mice cry, “Hooray!”

“Not a Cinder-Bird, my cute little sirs. A Raven. Kangi Sapa, please you, brothers, is a right glorious
Raven.”

“Hip hip hooray! Hip hip for Mr. Raven, and hooray!”

Kangi Sapa makes a dump of a bow and presents his credentials. “I’m the guy that flies the skyways north and south faster than you can say, ‘East!’ You can count on me. I’ve seen the place where the sun gets up and the place where he goes to bed at night. I’m your oceangoer, and a teller of tales to boot.”

“Three cheers for Mr. Cinder-Bird Raven!”

It is a good day after all.

Kangi Sapa flies abroad, then drops branches of frozen berries, stores to take the edge off the Animals’ hunger. He loads the snow with vines of grapes that have dried to raisins. He is a cargo of good things.

After dinner Twill and Hopsacking dash to and fro, yipping with pleasure.

Least collects fallen fur and barbs of feathers and knits booties for the Mice, which booties they accept with many gestures of thanksgiving and, knowing not what to do with booties, stick them on their ears.

The Otters, of course, tumble and run. They wind themselves into knots, then bust apart and go skimming across the snow like tears on mirrors.

Pertelote smiles.

Wachanga dozes after her long night of traveling.

John Wesley sits close by her, watching.

He tries to quiet his otherwise cacophonous voice. He tries to croon like Lady Pertelote.

“Is a prettysome name, is Wachanga,” he croons. “Might-be a Wachanga wants little sips of water? John, he goes gets it for her, okay?”

Suddenly someone nips the tip of his tail.

The Weasel whirls around. Damn! It’s Boogaloo Crow!

“Double-U’s hates buggar-bites!”

(Besides, he’s been caught in an act of tenderness!)

He lowers his head and bullets the Raven. But the Raven rises on a flap of wings, and John shoots under him.

“Oops!” caws Kangi Sapa. “I’m a trickster, buddy! Quick with my wit.”

“Buddy? John, he ain’t no Rat-Bird’s
‘buddy!’”

“But you
are
my buddy, Double-U. I heard you offer Wachanga a drink. Friends of my friend are my friends too, get it?”

Mrs. Cobb is sweeping snow from a small space using a broom made of the brambles she found at the bottom of the cutbank. In the center of that space is a very neat hole.

“Mr. Cobb?” Mrs. Cobb calls down the hole. “Mr. Cobb, why not come out and sit with me and tell me a joke or two.”

“I can’t tell jokes.”

“You said you
could
, Mr. Cobb. And I’m a pretty good laugher.”

Behold! Ferric Coyote has cracked his face into a genuine grin!

Boreas stands on an outcropping rock. The Watch-Wolf switches his tail, surveying the wide white plain all around. Snow twinkles under the sun. Sometimes he bends his eyebeams down upon the Cream-Colored Wolf.

In the evening Boreas descends the rock and walks through the nesting Animals until he arrives by Wachanga, and there lies down. He begins to lick the scar at the base of her tail.

Even so have Pertelote’s spirits fallen and risen through her long, purposeless wanderings. Weeks of confidence, months of desolations. Her life too long, her life lived more wholly in the present.

But after sunrise the following day, Pertelote is as heartened as anyone else in her community. For now there is a way. A direction. The Cream-Colored Wolf has granted her a focus and a where to go. Wachanga is not wandering. She is following. And Pertelote follows her.

Wachanga trots swiftly ahead of the Animal Band. Pertelote on open wings sails above her. The rest are neither weary nor hungry any more. They chat and laugh. Pertelote’s fresh assurance has freshened them too.

“A scent, you say,” Pertelote says.

“Yes, ma’am, since last spring.”

“Can you tell me whose scent?”

“The Ancient Ones. I’m going where my Ancestors have gone.”

“Your ancestors?”

“I can tell by the age of their scent. And by the comfort.”

Pertelote considers the Cream-Wolf’s words. They hold a deeper meaning than she can fathom.

“Wachanga, do you know where your ancestors are leading you? Can you tell me where we’re going?”

“What I know, ma’am, all that I know, is what my heart hears. Home.”

Wachanga bounds to a frozen bush and snuffles it. Pertelote flies above her, flies a little higher than before in order to seek anything that looks like a home. But from her height it isn’t a home she sees. It’s four Creatures standing in the snow ahead of her. Pronghorns, looking miserable.

The Hen sails toward the Pronghorns and lands among them. Her sudden presence frightens them. They yank back their heads and widen their eyes.

“Whisht,” she says. “Don’t be afraid.”

They don’t try to run. Perhaps the snow is too deep for their slender legs. But neither do they relax.

A Cream-Colored Wolf comes walking near.

“Hey, babe!” a gravelly voice calls, and Kangi Sapa drops from the skies. “What’s happening?”

The Pronghorns are delicate in stature, unable to defend themselves. Their eyes twitch nervously from the Raven to the Wolf to the Hen and back to the Raven again.

John Wesley arrives, a Creature scarier than all the rest. “Why-come girlies is so sad?”

One of the Pronghorns yips twice, then bleats a long cadenza. “Morrr!”

“Is
whats?”

But Kangi Sapa is a Bird of ten thousand tongues.

“Give me room, brother,” he says and moves past the Weasel. The car-crash of a black Bird says to Pertelote, “Excuse me, Mrs. P. This is my bailiwick.”

The poor Pronghorn says mournfully, “Mere, pere, morrr.”

The Raven translates: “Their parents are dead.”

Apparently, Pertelote’s sympathy releases the Pronghorn’s word-horde. “Loup,” she says. “Un jaune de oeils appel femine Root.”

In a sober voice Kangi Sapa repeats: “A Wolf with yellow eyes who calls his mate Rutt.”

Wachanga gasps. “No, no,” she whispers, “he’s back.”

“Is a yellow eye?” cries John Wesely. “Is
Eurus!
Is a bloody-teeths Eurus-Wolfie what kills Critters!”

After the Animals have lain down to rest for the night, a small group listens as the Cream-Wolf tells her tale.

Now and again the Weasel interrupts with an angry “By Gaw!”

The longer Wachanga’s tale, the greater the pity Boreas feels.

Kangi Sapa adds details to the Wachanga’s experience since he’s heard the story before.

The moon walks across a starry, velvet sky.

Pertelote responds to the tale. “So this,” she murmurs, “is what Eurus has become. Evil entered the world—once, twice, and now it abides in the souls of Animals. Lord God, shall we never be rid of evil?”

When Wachanga’s story ends, John Wesley moves away, uttering dark threats. The Raven shadows him. Kangi Sapa was sincere in his declaration of friendship with the Weasel, however splenetic the Weasel became. Likewise, the White Wolf trots off to post himself as the Animals’ nighttime guard.

Pertelote and Wachanga remain.

Who would look after the Pronghorns now? They chose not to join Pertelote’s company. Perhaps they’ve returned to the bodies of their parents. Pray God the yellow-eyed Wolf does not return as well.

Softly, Pertelote sings to herself:

“Before the morning, midnight.

Before the sun, the storm.

Before the last age, sacrifice,

Apocalyptic wars.”

Suddenly Wachanga is on her feet.

“Ma’am!” she says. “You make me remember! I remember those words. And after them comes ‘Arise.’ That word. Yes, and these words too:

“‘Arise

Before the next age overthrows

The stars and make this globe its own.’”

An electric charge passes through the cord that binds the women together.

Pertelote whispers, “Wachanga.”

The Cream-Wolf answers, “A cave. There is a cave. I am a pup in that cave. And another pup is beside me. Oh, ma’am!” Wachanga has begun to pace under the flood of her remembering. “Oh, Pertelote, ma’am, and it’s a mother … She is a great
Cow
offering us her milk. She is teaching us, and we three, the three of us are smiling together. Such a good time. Oh, such a sweet … I want, I wish I could be there again. Mother-Cow, she lows, ‘Children, children mine,’ and we are warmed. She breathes, ‘Forever and aye be kind.’ And then one day the Cow says—Oh, I remember the moment. I remember the word itself. She says, ‘Speak,’ and then both of us are talking. Ma’am Pertelote, she teaches us how to talk. Until…”

Wachanga pauses, crestfallen.

“Until we have to leave her.”

Finally, Pertelote has settled herself in a scoop of earth. Snow is banked around her, protecting her from the midnight cold.

Chauntecleer once spoke of a such a Cow. But she regarded it as a hallucination.

But now, now Pertelote is stirred by a very deep sound, a
lowing
sound, as if it were of the lowest tones of an organ, as if it were the voice of a vast Cow!

Pertelote, tu Gallina:

Gallinae albae filius—

Most highly favored lady,

Quit not the road continuous.

Matrona, venit in montem;

In montem sanctum meum.

Come to my holy mountain,

Tuum, tuum, tuum.

West-southwest the Animals travel. By now everyone knows about Wachanga’s scent path, and everyone jumps to help her, for most of her scent posts have been covered under thick snow.

The Brothers Mice burrow under the deep drifts and skitter the ground in search of the scent of her “Ancestors.”

“Step-papa Weasel. What are ‘ancestors’?”

“Ask Boogaloo Crow,” grumbles John Wesley. “Boogaloo Crow, he knows everthings. This, that and t’other. This, that and t’other.”

Mr. Pertinax Cobb burrows where the snow mass is too packed too tight for a Mouse’s whiskers.

Where the snow has hardened into a crust, the Doe De La Coeur punctures the crust with her long legs. (Her gracious legs, thinks Pertelote, worried that the Doe might break a bone.) Then with the points of her hooves she scrapes and breaks the soil below, and the Plain Brown Bird twitches down and brings up a bit of the dirt for Wachanga’s assessment.

Because their own progress has grown ever more laborious, the Hens realize more than the others that they are climbing a slow ascent. Pertelote knows her sisters. She is aware of their weaknesses. They are right, the band is ascending. But the future of that ascent is concealed by clouds that heap the western horizon from the north to the south.

Night after night Kangi Sapa, that raggedy Raven, that raconteur, entertains the tired community with chapters of a long tale, one chapter every night.

Okay. All right. Listen up.

Once upon a time this Opossum—Friend Double-U, do you know what an Opossum is? Oh, but you’re a sly one, bro. I expect you know her by her nickname. “Possum.”

So once upon a time this Possum lived in a pile of rocks. Warmed herself with a hot coal she kept in her belly pouch.

Now, now, brother Weasel, this is my story. In
my
stories coals don’t burn through belly pouches.

So then. Idle as a potato was Mizz Possum. Fat as a Pig…

Wait a minute. Mrs. P, you don’t have Pigs around here, do you?

Okay. So then. Old Mizz Possum required that coal for the heat. The body heat, you understand. She never did flex a muscle to work up a sweat. And a tail as naked as a snake, and ears as naked as leather purses shed heat quicker than a sticker. Worse than that, fat old Mizz Possum’s fur was coarse and unpettable. And
whew!
what a stink!

Gross Mizz Opossum was no coquette, I’ll tell you that. Would never win the affections and the warmth of a suitor. When she opened her long mouth and humped her tongue and hissed, her teeth looked like a crocodiles’. Bet your bottom dollar, the woman was a throwback.

Failing for suitors, Mizz Possum made a deal with a hobo Snake. Said if he’d work for her the summer through she’d give him her coal when winter came.

So the old hobo Snake would wind through Mizz Possum’s rocks and bring her food, then would wind on out again with her drippings and her droppings. He braved her killer odor. He sucked up and spat out scads of fleas. And sorry he was he didn’t have eyelids to blink with, or tears to wash away the sting of Mizz Possum’s stink.

Now, I’ll bet you little Mice have already guessed it, right? Yessir. Mizz Possum was a cheat and a liar. Never did plan to give her little hotbox away.

So when winter blew down hard and cold, and when the hobo Snake said, “Okay, it’s time,” well, Mizz Possum said, “Wait just a little longer. Wait till it’s zero outside.” She said,
“Then
my coal will be worth the wait.”

Hey, hey, hey, my tiny little Brothers Mice, fussing and fuming. I’m guessing you’re on the Snake’s side, right? And I bet you think you know what’s coming.

Snake, he went on and slaved for Mizz Possum till winter hit zero.

He came to her and said, “Now.”

Mizz Possum said, “I got a better idea. Let’s cuddle.”

Snake said, “You make an insalubrious stink!”

Well, he didn’t really say “insalubrious.” I’m a language hound, you know. I play with words.

Possum said, “I’m too old to have children. Come and be my baby boy.”

Snake said, “Watch out for me, y’old witch!”

The old witch opened her mouth, all fifty teeth marching back to her gullet. “You,” she hissed, “watch out for
me!”

Threat for threat and tit for tat.

Snake was streamlined. Possum was fat. Snake rammed his head into her pouch, snapped up that coal, swallowed it down, and slithered off.

I don’t know. Maybe Mizz Possum is sitting there still, frozen as cold as a statue.

Well, look at this. My little Mice with heavy eyes.

Mrs. Pertelote, I believe your family’s mostly asleep. I’ll pick up my tale tomorrow night.

Soon the whole band of Animals knows what the Hens have known. The proof is in their shortness of breath, in how often they have to stop on the way, resting, rubbing their muscles, preparing to go again. In a sense, the land is against them. The are climbing.

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 he 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.