The Second Book of the Dun Cow: Lamentations (9 page)

Benoni Coyote has stopped his life of play and has grown more serious than is natural for one so young.

His father’s refusal to go with the Weasel (as Benoni himself would gladly have gone) gave the little Coyote pause. The Weasel was a Creature filled with hilarities and good will. Coyotes should trust such a someone—as Ferric seemed to do when he first came. But when the Weasel suggested that Ferric leave the den, Benoni’s papa’s spine went rigid. He crouched in alarm. And now that John Weasel has taken off for the south, Benoni sees an odd collision of feelings in his father. A guilty Coyote, maybe? For not having braved the journey? A troubled Coyote? For not finding food? A desperate Coyote. Benoni’s papa seems to want to protect his family more fiercely than ever before—on account of what?

Twill and Hopsacking are losing weight. They drink the steam’s water, but the bush has withered, and they have nothing left to eat. Even his mother doesn’t smile. She stays with her daughters inside the den. She tells them tales to distract them. Sometimes one of his sisters will nip at her mother’s cheek, begging for food, and Rachel will try to regurgitate some little something and fail. There was nothing left in his mama’s tummy.

With a mother’s love she conceals her worries.She ends each tale with a prayer. “Rest, my children. God will bless you, and I’ll be here in the morning.”

Actually, Rachel is doing more than comforting her daughters. She is watching her son too, and feels his burden. What was the boy-cub thinking these days?

“I’m going to lose him,” she thinks, “too soon.”

For he doesn’t tease his sisters anymore. When the plain Brown Bird (whom the children call Auntie) comes to visit, Benoni doesn’t greet her. He seems oblivious of her presence.

Rachel asks, “Do you think your Auntie is too silly for you?”

“No’m.”

“Do your sisters annoy you?”

“No’m.”

“What’s happening, Noni?”

“Nothing.”

Rachel gazes at his soft, earnest face. “I don’t think that it is nothing. I think you want to grow up before your time.”

Benoni looks away from his mother’s gaze. “I,” he mumbles. “I have jobs to do.”

Comes the morning when Rachel hears the sound of a little Coyote gone. She springs from the den.

“Noni? Benoni?”

Her immediate fear is that he’s run down the decline again, braving the tunnel and the denizen below.

“Benoni! You’ll kill yourself down there!”

The plain Brown Bird flies down and says, “Zicküt!”

She flutters in front of Rachel. “Zicküt! Zicküt!”

The boy is not by the portal again.

“Please,” Rachel cries, “watch my daughters.”

The icy tundra is grand and deadly. Rachel dashes into the dark interior of the forest.

“Benoni!”

Echoes laugh. Ice cracks. A load of crystal crashes to the ground, and Rachel runs headlong.

“Benoni!”

As she goes she noses the ground, trying to find her baby’s spoor.

“Benoni, tell me where you are!”

She hears a faint wail to her left. She stops and holds still. Again the wail. It sounds so vulnerable. Rachel breaks in that direction. She takes extraordinary leaps over hillocks and across ditches. Quick, efficient arcs around the pine.

“Mama!”

Benoni! It’s you!”

Then here comes her son like a red pellet with serious eyes. They thumps into his mother’s bosom and pushes and pushes as if to crawl inside.

“Benoni, what
is
this? Why did you run away?”

The young Coyote mews in her fur.

She steps back. “Were you lost?”

He nods and bursts into tears: “Hoo, hooooo.”

Oh, how tightly Rachel gathers her son to herself, under her chin, against her breast.

“Oh, Benoni, I was so afraid for you.”

Ice slides from the treetops and smashes the ground like bones and glass. Benoni shivers.

“Why did you run away? Didn’t you know that this is a lonely world?”

The child beneath her neck says, “Yes’m. I knew.” Gravely he explains, “It’s why I came.”

She sees her son in her mind: his face-fur standing out like a soft sunburst, his tail no more than a trigger cocked. But he is a deep Coyote.

“What? To be hurt?”

“No’m. To help papa.”

“Whisht. So you think your papa needs help?”

She feels his small head nod.

“You think papa is weak?”

“No. Not weak. He is…. Mama, he is afraid. I came to help him fight enemies. But I got lost.”

“Benoni, Benoni.”

Soon,
she thought behind the wash in her eyes.
Too soon.

There stands at the edge of time the Eschaton-Bull. His head hangs low from a muscled hump. His nostrils blow a red smoke. The horns that curve from his shaggy hair seem to be too small for one so big and so mighty.

It is the Bull’s slow molting that numbers the years. For every one hair shed, one year passes by. One hundred haiars are a century, one thousand a millennium.

When one of his legs break, that marks an eon gone.

At the end of three ages, the Eschaton-Bull must balance on a single leg. This is his last leg.

And that is the saying the Animal’s know.

The StagBlack-Pale stands at the edge of a rocky defile. The crown in the forest of his antlers is the golden Chauntecleer. Chauntecleer gazes down at the family before him and greets the male with a grave formality.

“Ferric, I presume?”

Straightway the rusty Coyote suffers lockjaw.

Chauntecleer thinks,
What ails this red poltroon?

John Wesley dashes happily to the female.

“Salue-bretations, Mama! Is a tried-and-blue-true Double-u what’s come back again!”

John jumps about and spreads food on the ground: a bundle of honey-soaked reeds. “Sweet, sweet,
sweet!”
For the kids he opens a bag of ice cream.

“Isn’t only-est a Fox what knows tricks,” John exults. Oh, he is so glad to be with the kids again. “Is a John Double-u, too!” He puts on the face of a serious instructor and instructs. “Is in springtime, cubby-kids. Bark of a cottonwood—rip it off! White of the woodiness inside—scrape and scrape the pretty white sap-foam! Pretty white sap-foam—bag it! Is in wintertime—freeze it! Hoopla! Ice cream!”

Black-Pale keeps his own counsel. His motive for allowing the Rooster to ride the tines of his antlers has had little to do with the Rooster wishes because that one has been imperious, scarcely acknowledging the Stag’s nobility. No, it was for the sake of the Weasel that he has come. For John Wesley, who brought cheer to the Fawn De La Coeur and who persuaded Black-Pale to carry his daughter south to a healing ward where she was brought back to health again. And isn’t it the better part of nobility to serve good heart without expecting a return?

The boy-cub—Benoni?—neglects the ice cream and trots to Black-Pale. He says to the golden Cock, “Papa’s tired.” Then the little Coyote bows his little head, and the Stag recognizes honor in the gesture.

Chauntecleer says, “I have been informed, boy, that you have found, and yourself have half-entered, the tunnels that open the way to the Wickedness that dwells in the earth. Is this true?”

Benoni nods.

“A hero, then, of the first waters.”

Two reactions: the boy-cub grows sober and pulls himself up to full height. The female Coyote whispers, “Don’t believe it, Benoni.”

John Wesley seconds Chauntecleer. “John,” he tips, “he’s seen a kid’s dauntlessnesses, yes! Yes! And John, he
knows
. Tough little Benoni! Brave little Benoni!”

Chauntecleer’s voice grows suddenly strident. “Enough of banter. I’ve come to enter the netherworld. Benoni, Coyote! Show me your tunnels.”

“Yessir.”

Rachel cries, “
No
sir!”

“Silence, woman! Benoni, go.”

At the Rooster’s command Benoni drops over the cleft onto the den-ledge and prepares to scramble the steps into steam.

Rachel leaps after him and shrieks, “No! I will not lose you!”

From nowhere a Brown Bird appears and flies into the boy-cub’s face.

“Auntie!” Benoni tries to slap her away “Let me go!”

“Zicküt!” With her long bill the Bird yanks hairs out of his ears.

“Ouchy!
Ouchy!”

Chauntecleer touches Black-Pale’s neck with the points of his spurs. “Go!”

John Wesley shouts to everyone, “Is okay! Woody-Coyotes, the Rooster, he
gots
to go down. Is to murder Wyrm, and nobodies, nobodies ever hurts again.”

Rachel pleads, “Let
me
show the way.”

“Zicküt!” the Brown Bird insists through her scorched voice. “Zichűt! Zichűt!”

Rachel, I will go. You watch out for the children.

Least flies urgently back and forth between Chauntecleer and the rocky defile. It’s not long before the Rooster understands that she has become his guide.

The Rooster drives both spurs into Black-Pale’s neck. The Stag wants to rear up and shake the Cock from his antlers, except that John Wesley is tumbling after the Bird and crying everyone forward. And the Cock has, in fact, almighty strength and an ineluctable purpose.

So three Creatures plunge into the vomiting cloud. Black-Pale is as sure-footed as a Bighorn Ram. He never falters on the stones. Chauntecleer strikes the rocky sides of the defile with Gaff and the Slasher, who spark and ring and are sharpened.

“Behold, Wyrm! Behold, I come!”

Athousand hissings answer:
“Veni, mortalis. Et pere.”

Come, thou mortal. And die.

Then the Brown Bird comes to a fluttering hover. The tunnel is immediately beneath her. And the air therein, having not yet met the cold, is clear.

John Wesley cries, “Do and do and do!”

Chauntecleer responds with cold command, “This is mine.”

He wings down from Black-Pale’s antlers and passes through the portal alone.

Chauntecleer slits his eye, but sees nothing. The floor and the walls are path enough. They seem to have been carved in marble.

Saluto te,
a myriad spigots hiss in the depths of the earth.

Welcome.

Chauntecleer’s flight is not foreshortened. His energies do not abate. If it took ten days he would not rest.

Soon he spies a vague light ahead. An amber glowing. His heart beats wildly. His mind enters that zone of absolute focus, where the world slows down like a ponderous metronome, and he himself is speed, the thing itself.

The tunnel widens. Chauntecleer finds himself in a cathedral-like cavern, The amber light is now as round as a rose window. And lying like great cable upon the floor of the nave, Wyrm!

Chauntecleer murmurs, “I am for you now.”

The Lord Rooster spreads his mighty wings. He soars from the amber light into the pitchy heights, directly over the skull of his Foe.

Like the Hawk, Chauntecleer tilts and swoops down. Just before he hits flesh, the glorious Rooster catches air beneath his wings, doubles his hocks and, holds the points of his weapons foremost

“Damn you!” he cries spears the skull of Wickedness.

But there comes no cry of outrage.

And the spurs don’t cut tough, living tissue. Instead, they sink into a pulpy rot. Chauntecleer’s momentum takes him likewise into the mire of Wyrm’s dead flesh. Valiant Chauntecleer is enveloped by an oily putrefaction. When he struggles to find a way out, he falls instead into a chamber of amber light.

Chauntecleer guts spasm. Over and over again he vomits a bilious, fetid gore. Where his vomit splashes the ground, it puts out a host of the tiny amber lights. But other lights, a myriad of lights, cover the walls and the ceiling of the chamber.

Chauntecleer peers at them and realizes what they are. Maggots! Thin tendrils attached to every surface. All together, they mark the shape of the room in which the Rooster stands, and he realizes the truth.

The is Wyrm’s eye socket. Massy Wyrm is already dead.

Chauntecleer has been denied his glory.

A voice says,
Sing.

Voices say,
What shall we sing?

The voice says,
Of the hero who dared the depths of the earth.

Multitudinous tendril worms say,
Eum laudamus.

We do. We praise him.

The voice says,
O Galle magne, tu es filius meus dilectus.

O great Rooster, thou art my most darling son.

And again that singular voice says,
Si me filius mei liberavit, vere liber ero.

If my son sets me free, I will be free indeed.

Both John Wesley and Black-Pale-On-A-Silver-Field have obeyed Chauntecleer’s command to remain among the stones before portal that opens into the tunnel that leads into the underworld. They’ve waited a day and a night and now the half of a second day. And though the Weasel would have loved to share confidences with the Stag, Black-Pale has been keeping his own counsel and has not answered. Finally John shut up too and slumped into an anxiety on behalf of his Rooster.

Indeed, it is a tremendous undertaking, to slay ancient Hatred. And it surely must take time to complete. But this was too
much
time.

John believes in Chauntecleer. Didn’t the Rooster schooled him in social behaviors? And wasn’t it the Rooster who praised a Weasel’s guts and fighting? Do and do and do for you, slithery little Buggars. By which John meant the Basilisks. It was glorious Chauntecleer who led them in the war to victory.

But what if the Rooster were overcome? What if he lay dead…?

Not at speed, not dashing, but restraining himself, John Russel creeps down the long marble tunnel. If Chauntecleer is still engaged in his war for the world, John will not intrude.
Zoom,
he will shoot straight back and up.

Down the marble hallway, and counting the time as he goes. If it’s taking John Wesley this long, well, maybe that’s the reason for the Rooster’s malingering.

The Weasel listens for sounds below. But he hears nothing of battle. He hears no cries of victory.

Soon the tunnel begins to widen. John sees something ahead of him, but it is so vague it could be a dream.

John has always been fearless. But this subterranean cave makes a sound that is no sound at all. It is like the air in a vast cathedral which oppresses the ears. That amber light is ghastly. The air smells like candle-smoke when the monks have pinched their wicks and left the room in a monastic silence. Not fearful, then, but wary. Oh, how he admires his Lord Chauntecleer’s audacity!

John creeps across a rock-hewn floor toward a cavern where glows the soft amber light.

There! There! There sits the Rooster! Like a saint in a shell of sacred glory!

But he isn’t moving. And his feathers are no longer golden. They are slimy with the oils of corruption.

John Wesley begins to run to his Lord Chauntecleer. Just before he reaches the amber chamber, he kicks something that goes rattling away. A bone. John Wesley feels across the floor and finds more bones. He squints and makes out a skull. By the tissue where its nose once was the Weasel sees how gigantic that nose must have been.

He yells, “Mundo Cani!”

Now the Rooster moves.

“Who’s out there?”

“Me, Chanti-cleer! John Double-u.”

“You disobeyed me!”

“Is a John what comes, might-be, to help a Rooster.”

“You said Mundo Cani!”

The Rooster’s angry. Why should the Rooster be angry?

“Is fightings all done? Did the Rooster, he kill Wyrm?”

“Wyrm is dead.”

With little conviction the Weasel says, “Hoopla.” And with false bravado says, “Cut for cut. The Rooster, he won the day.”

Why then should Chauntecleer be angry if he did what he came to do?

“Weasel! You said Mundo Cani’s name! Why?”

“On account of….”

But this is such a sad thing to say, for John remembers that it was the Rooster’s purpose also to bring the Hound home again, alive.

“Dammit, Weasel,
why?”

“Is bones.”

“What? What did you say?”

John Wesley raises his sorrowful voice and yells, “Is the Dog’s bones down here.”

For the space of a minute Chauntecleer stands inside the glowing chamber with his beak open, stunned.

Then he roars, “Get the hell out of here! Leave me alone!”

John Wesley does not obey. He is bewildered. Uncertainly he says, “Rooster, he comes too.”

“I deny you, Weasel! I refuse to let pettiness look upon the disaster I have become! Run! Run before I tear pettiness to pieces!”

Again, John Wesley cannot obey. No matter disasters. No matter defeats. How can the Animals survive without a leader to lead them?

Old boldness takes hold of the Weasel’s heart again.

“So
tear
a Weasel to pieces!” he yells. “Try a Weasel! Is a Weasel what will fight you!” And he adds, “Bastard!”

Chauntecleer turns his head away from John Wesley. He withdraws inside himself. He sits, his wings slick oil. Miserably he says, “Oh, leave me alone.”

John is dancing on two paws, striking the air with his fists. “Fight and fight and fight a Weasel!”

But it does not rouse Chauntecleer.

“John, he says spit on a Rooster! He says
piss
on a Rooster! But John, he gots to stay here till a Rooster, he
don’t
stay here no more.”

Can it be? Is Chauntecleer weeping tears? Oh, no, no! Look at those tears. They are sliding tendrils of amber worms falling from his eyes.

John Wesley will not be done until it is good and done. He picks up a thigh-bone of the Dog and hurls it at Chauntecleer. It skids across a paste of worms. He throws pay-bones like dice. They rain on the Rooster, who does not move. Finally the Weasel heaves up Mundo Cani skull and runs with it into Chauntecleer’s chamber and drops it on the Rooster’s head.

Chauntecleer stands and looks at the thing. Then, slowly, he wraps his wings around it, sits, and begins to rock.

“I can’t,” he whimpers. “I can’t even confess my sin to you, nor can you cleanse my soul. Oh, Mundo Cani, Mundo Cani.”

Well, the Weasel has had just about enough of this. He thrusts his arms into the Hound’s eye sockets, runs out of the chamber and pitches the skull as far as he can. It bounces and rolls and stops.

Now
the Rooster is aroused.

“Bring that back!”

“Roostie-riddle, come and get it!” John kicks the skull like a ball, kicks it into the nether-tunnel. Need it be said that John does what he does for the love of his Rooster?

Chauntecleer breathes fury. “Sacrilege!” he screams.

“Prove it, Roostie-riddle! Fight a Douoble-u to gets it back!” John keeps kicking the skull ahead of him, up the marble tunnel.

Now he can hear Chauntecleer coming behind. He takes a quick glance backward. The Rooster’s wings are slopping on the ground. Their oils have rendered him flightless. John Wesley has the advantage.