Fish Tails (65 page)

The mumbling became momentarily louder. He raised his head. Two new stinkers. That made eight . . .

He went back to thinking about burrows. Coyote remembered being with a man—­long before he knew Abasio—­a man who had been sent to find the coyote cubs who had grown up able to talk. They had spent the night in a rock cavern. In the middle of the night, Coyote had wakened to find his own front paws working at the stone, trying to make it comfortable. The man was watching him and writing something down. That night he had given Coyote a blanket, and the next day he had taught him to do recipes. Recipes were chains of words you stuck in your head about doing things that weren't instinctive. “Instinctive” was like howling, hunting, or mating, but creatures—­even humans—­needed recipes to remember complicated stuff. “Complicated” was a bunch of main things with a lot of branches going off in all directions. The thicket he'd hidden in was complicated.

Coyote's first recipe had been “making a bed.” “Making” meant putting things together. Birds and mice and rabbits were born with instinct for “making a bed.” They used twigs and straw and fur. Coyotes had to learn the recipe, then do it: bite off bunches of grass and low-­growing twigs of pine; carry them into a cave or hole among rocks, or into a hole in the ground after you had dug a long tunnel to it. Grass made a softness on the rock, and fleas didn't like the smell of the pine sap. Once he had the “making” idea, he could do other things with it.

Coyote had taught “making a bed” to Bear, even though Bear didn't really need it. Bear had his own bed, a nice fat layer under his fur that didn't get sore no matter how long he slept on it. Coyotes ran with their noses to the ground a lot of the time, smelling the way, so coyote heads weren't high above the ground, and it was hard to carry things very far in their mouths. Carrying a rabbit home to the pups was about it. With Coyote, it was more dragging than making. Bear hibernated in winter, which Coyote did not, but warmth was a good thing no matter where the warm came from. In winter it was good to be curled up against Bear's furry, warm hide, listening to the weird dream sounds Bear made while his belly rumbled.

Lost as he was in such musings, more than half asleep, his head and ears came up at the sound of a shout from up the hill. He counted. There were now eleven stinkers, and the shout had come from a thing standing outside the tunnel—­a thing completely covered, arms, hands, face, body. The face had eyeholes with . . . something in them. Glass, maybe. Under all that, it was the right height and bulk to be a human. The stinkers shifted and muttered. They didn't want to do whatever the human wanted them to. Finally one of the ones Coyote had followed shambled up the hill with the others following, one at a time. Another human had come out of the tunnel; he held a small, probably black thing in front of him. Abasio had told him: “Just say dark-­colored. Or medium, or light. That's enough to give us the idea.” As the stinkers approached, the second man pointed the small dark thing at the stinker and the second man fiddled with something he was holding. When somebody did twitchiness, that's what Abasio said: “he fiddled with it.” That was how Coyote got language. Someone had fiddled with him.

“Where's babble babble babble?” one of the humans said, nasty-­voiced.

The front stinker mumbled something.
“Godair nodair ghohn.”

What was it saying?
Go dare node air gun?
This was one of the ones that had come to the place where the Griffin was, where Bear had killed a stinker. Coyote mouthed the sounds. “Go dare . . . there, no there, gone”? Yes! “I go there, it was not there, gone.” The killed stinker was gone, all right! Precious Wind had jumped it all the way back to ­Artemisia.

The human did a quick fiddly thing, like . . . writing something. Abasio and Xulai did things like that, put recipes down so they could remember them. Recipes and lists. Recipe words went across; list words went down, one under the other. This one was probably a list of the stinkers because this man knew one was missing. If it knew one was missing, then it could tell the stinkers apart. The other man kept on talking as the other stinkers went past, one at a time. Coyote could barely hear him, but it was definitely a human male voice. When all of them had gone inside, the two humans followed them.

Coyote heard no door or gate closing. No sound of anything shutting. The opening was just that. Open. Open or not, he wasn't going in there. Nothing the stinkers had done had told him anything worth reporting on, not yet. Even though he needed to find out more, he still wasn't going to do a stupid and use a human hole into that mountain. If the mountain was a dead volcano, there was probably another way in.

He got to his feet, stretched his legs carefully, one at a time, and descended the rock pile to take a closer look at the cliff. On this side of the ridge, it actually made a little . . . dip, a kind of curve away from him. Also, this side had holes in it that couldn't be seen from the other side of the ridge: holes not big enough to be human entrances but big enough for coyotes. He sniffed at one or two, no human smell. Good. No stinker smell either, which was even better. Now, if he just weren't so tired and thirsty. Very tired; very, very thirsty. He lay panting for a time, considering what else he might try. Around him the trees spoke with soft-­wind voices. As his panting slowed, the voices grew louder, not wind sounds but real voices—­much muffled by echoes. Definitely human.

He arose resentfully and tried to locate the sound source. It had no direction. It was as loud if he faced one way as the other. He closed his eyes and looked at the cliff again. This time a shadow on the cliff wall before him looked different. Part of it was behind the other part. There was an opening behind it. A man would have to stoop over to get in there. Then he'd have to keep going, because he wouldn't be able to turn around!

It was wide enough for Coyote, and he could turn around anytime he needed to. After the second turn, it was completely dark but the voices were clearer: no words, just the murmur of saying, asking, answering. Like chickens did.
Cluckety-­cluck-­cluck? Clu-­awcketty-­clawk!
When chickens did it, Xulai said it was conversation. “Nice grasshopper, warm sun, ooh, beetle. Yum.”

He pushed his left side against the wall and moved along it. The tube got larger the farther he went. A sudden pain in his foot stopped him, and without meaning to, he whined. The whine went off into the darkness, echoing.

He didn't have time for a curse howl. And this wasn't the right place! Instead he muttered one of Abasio's short curse words and lay down to investigate his left rear foot. A sharp stone. Something like a sharp stone. It hadn't cut him, yet. No blood.

“Thanks be to God,” he said solemnly.
That was a man-­saying, one that
Abasio, Bear, and Coyote had talked about. And Blue Horse, too. Not Rags. She said god-­talk bored her. Recently some of the talking animals had decided that if men had a god, then animals should have them, too. The humans' god was something like humans, only invisible, bigger, stronger, wiser, everything-­er than humans were. So now some of the talking creatures had created their own gods. Blue said some of the horses at the farms north of Wellsport had a horse-­god, a wind-­swift Stallion Lord that led his mares and foals across the sky, their hooves making thunder and striking lightning sparks from the sky. Abasio said hooves made sparks only if horses were shod, so the sky horses had to have a blacksmith up there somewhere—­a sky farrier. Humans, some of them, prayed to their god. Some ­people did it constantly. Praying was telling the god stuff. The animals had decided a long time ago that since gods were supposed to know everything, telling them stuff was a waste of time, so it must be that the ­people were just lonely. Xulai said that was the real reason most gods existed. ­People got lonely and scared and needed someone to talk to.

Coyote muttered; digging his teeth into the crevice between his toes, getting his teeth on whatever it was he'd stepped on. There. Not a stone, something metal-­tasting, small, sharp; no blood on it or on his foot, which was a good thing. The thing was mostly smooth, but his tongue felt rough places on it. He spat the silvery thing against the wall of the tunnel, picked up a few small stones to cover it, peed on them well enough to find it easily, and lay back down, still thinking of deities.

Horse-­gods. Blue said he'd never heard of an animal deity who actually helped any animal. Abasio said human gods didn't really help ­people either. When something nice happened, though, men said their god did it, and when something bad happened, men said they were being punished. But some men did bad things all the time and never got punished, so evidently the god got distracted a lot. No matter how useless gods were, men still made up lots of them, even evil ones. Animals had enough trouble without inventing a trouble god. Coyote had tried to create a picture in his head of a coyote-­god. He couldn't do it. He had thought up a good god howl that would sound like wind, a great wind with a . . . million coyote voices in it. Suppose he got a really big pack together and taught them the howl, would the coyote-­god appear? If it did, what would Coyote pray for? In-­visibility, in-­smellability, in-­hearability. Now, these would come in very useful! Think of the chicken coops he could raid!

Not that he would. Of course. Not if anyone was watching. However, if there happened to be a coyote-­god listening, he, Coyote, would be grateful for water. And something edible!

He yawned, and the yawn woke him slightly and encouraged him to get his legs under him. This was not the time to go to sleep. He needed to see what was to be seen—­assuming there was light in here somewhere. At least he could find the voices and find out what they were all about. Then he could sleep. The tunnel was smooth-­floored. He could trot along it at a fairly good rate—­definitely one of those routes Abasio had called a lava tube. Though it curved, it did not seem to branch, not on the side he was staying on. His breathing had its own echo. If the way branched on the other side, the echo would be different. The way wasn't steep either, which was another blessing. It simply went on into the mountain, sloping very gently upward—­all lava tubes did, because the melted stuff had run downhill. The air was flowing in the same direction he was going, coming in from behind him, carrying only a tiny odor of the stinkers. Air was good, footing was good, but the darkness was absolute, so he went slowly, keeping his fur against the side of the tunnel as he walked steadily onward. That was another Abasio trick. If you were in the dark, keep to one side of whatever place you were in. If you had to get out, turn around and keep your other side in touch with the wall. And of course keep smelling and listening . . .

And listening! Had he heard a plink? And a trickle!
Maybe there was a god of coyotes!
The sound came from up ahead, in the direction he was going. Yes! His eager nose encountered a film of moisture sliding down the side of the tunnel, accumulating in a long, narrow hollow at the bottom of the wall before seeping out through a crack about a paw and a half above the bottom. He lapped it up, waited until it filled again, and drank it all, and three more times. That was better. Hunger would wait, but thirst didn't wait for anything. The water had a volcano taste. Sharp. It wasn't his favorite water taste—­that would be either
fish
or
frog,
preferably with green stuff—­but it wouldn't hurt him, he knew that.

His widely opened eyes caught a flicker, like a darkness gulping a lighter shadow. It came again. Firelight. He slowed, crept forward around a corner. What might be firelight and daylight, both, and then a suddenly glaring white light from something else, and a windy, rushing sound! Like a storm coming! The tunnel ended a short distance ahead at a coyote-­sized, egg-­shaped gap, little end upward, bottom nicely scooped for a coyote to lie in. He crawled the last little way, turning his head sideways to poke one eye over the edge without his nose showing.

He was looking down and across at a sizable cavern! On the floor was the thing he'd seen first: a flicker of firelight. ­People, fire, and . . . some kind of machines! Coyote shuddered, remembering machines from the war at the Place of Power! Some of them were wheel things that ran by themselves. Even after the Place of Power had died, there were some wheels-­by-­themselves-­runners going back and forth among the Edges.

The cavern was round, roundish. Not smooth round but like a huge, lumpy half bubble. If the floor was a circle, he couldn't see the part that was under him and behind him. So, his recipe would say it was like a very big bubble and he was looking down from more than halfway to the top of it. He could see the sky through a stone-­toothed, star-­centered hole to one side of the top. He could tell it was the west top because of the star. It was called the morning star, or the evening star, either one. Abasio had taught him why this crazy star stayed so close to the sun: it wanted to mate with the sun because it was in heat. That was a human joke that didn't make sense even when ­people explained it. It was the first star you could see at night and the last one to blink out in the morning. The strange white glare came from lamps on the lower walls—­that is, the ones he could see. The part he couldn't see might be empty. The men didn't even look in that direction.

A line of pens stood along the cavern wall, each pen holding stinkers, assorted sizes, none really small. Male or female? Some had hair on their faces; some didn't. Two of them were different, more like the one Bear had killed. They even had bows, like the hunter. Did that mean anything? He counted. Two paws equaled ten stinkers in each pen.

The three he had followed were just now entering the cavern. Coyote counted ten pens; that was one foot, twice on each toe, another foot of pens, and two more feet. Four double feet of pens, each pen with ten. He whispered it to himself, remembering it. A man came in holding a long rod connected to something he had strapped on his back. Abasio had a thing like it, made out of stiff cloth. A kind of bag to put things in, when he didn't have the wagon. To pack things in. He called it a pack. “Packing” was like “making,” only push instead of drag. Maybe push harder, too.