The Book of the Dun Cow (7 page)

The raining never stopped. From horizon to horizon, the clouds were locked in place, and the earth was shut up. An east wind—an odd wind to command the weather—brought this wetness and never stopped bringing it.

But perhaps God looked down from his heaven and had pity upon the Coop, for a merciful change occurred in the rain. It became snow. And where water as rain was mere misery, the same water as snow was a soft delight: A hard freeze made the ground bony and firm; snow followed to whiten and to reveal the gentle contour of that ground; the cold air snapped life into the creatures who ventured forth to walk on it; the forest greeted them, tinkling and clinking as if its great trees had tiny voices—and more than any of that, the Coop became muffled in its warmth, because snow drifted up the outside of its walls.

Now the place was no longer strange to the Beautiful Pertelote, and she sang some clear, haunting melodies. Her singing was like the moon in a wintry night—sharp edges, hard silver, slow in its motion, and full of grace; so it took the place of so much that was missing in those days, for there was no moon. And in this season of the snow, one other fine thing happened. Chauntecleer and the Hen of the blazing throat were married.

Early one morning, before lauds and before any sleeper had awakened, Chauntecleer had crept to Pertelote's side in order to talk with her. He heard the wind outside; and he heard, from a great distance, the ice on the river shooting off its mighty guns, for the night was very cold.

“You are a singer,” Chauntecleer said in a low voice.

The Beautiful Pertelote moved in order to show that she was awake. She raised, then lowered, her head.

“Some of God's creatures sing. Some very few are singers. You, Lady, are among those very few.”

Bang!
went the river ice; and Chauntecleer was suddenly pleased to hear it, because it made him feel all the more snug with her who listened to him.

“Will you sing a melody for me now?”

She hummed for him a quiet melody like ringing crystal, neither clearing her throat nor raising her head first. It was as if the melody had always been on the rim of her soul, waiting for the touch to release it. And Chauntecleer was moved. This melody was for no one but him; it was offered at his request; it was so immediate, so ready, but altogether new. So he felt a little more bold to ask the thing which had long been on his mind.

“My Beautiful Pertelote,” he said about the melody, when it was done, and he held his peace for the moment.

And then he said, “Don't be angry for my asking this; but listen and then answer me. It's not a hard question. It's an important one.” He waited. “My Beautiful Pertelote, are you afraid of me?”

She raised her head and looked at him. “No,” she said.

Chauntecleer waited, then blinked; and then
he
cleared his throat. He thought there would be more to her answer than that, since there had been so much to the question. “But there was a time,” he began again, “when you
were
afraid of me, isn't that so?”

“No, never,” she said easily.

“So, you say,” he said lamely, searching for words, “never.”

“Since I have lived in this Coop, Proud Chauntecleer,” she said, and his heart leaped to hear her speak of her own accord, “I have looked at you with wonder. I have never been afraid of you.”

Bang!
went the river. “Does wonder,” she said, “look like fear to you? That would be foolish.”

“Oh, no,” he said. “I know wonder and I know the difference. But I don't know what to
do
with wonder when I see it in you. Wonder is also different from respect—greater than respect—because I know what to do with respect when I see it in the other Hens. I command it. And I draw away from it. But wonder . . . You are not like any other Hen to me.”

The Beautiful Pertelote smiled and said nothing.

Bang!
The ice exploded, grinding against itself. And Chauntecleer went back to his earlier question, because it truly bothered him.

“Forgive me: Was there
ever
a time when you were afraid of me? Even before you came to my Coop?”

He was trying to focus upon a particular time without actually naming that time. He was afraid that if he said, “When we first met on the shore of the river,” he might resurrect dangerous feelings all over again, and then everything would be lost. Such a delicate game he played.

Pertelote said, “No, never.”

Chauntecleer popped. “But you screamed at me!” There was his great anguish and the memory that knifed him. And immediately when he had said the thing aloud, he held his breath to see what she would do. Maybe, remembering, she would begin to scream again, and then what?

But she only said, “Yes, I screamed at you.”

“Oh, Pertelote,” he went on in spite of himself, “you ran away from me. And when I held you, you tried to blind me. Do you remember that?”

“Of course I do. Yes, I did those things to you.”

“Then you were afraid of me.”

“I'm sorry about it, Chauntecleer.”

“But you
were
afraid of me!”

The ice cracked and rumbled; the rumbling came even through the earth. She waited until it was done, and there was pure, dark silence.

“No. I have never been afraid of you.”

Now Chauntecleer heard more than the words. He heard the tone of her voice. More than that, she was talking straight to the frightful moment and still confessing her peace with him. Therefore Chauntecleer—who simply could not let it lie—took courage and probed further:

“If you weren't afraid,” he said slowly, “what then?”

“Proud Chauntecleer,” she said so softly, “you always think more thoughts than someone has said to you. I was afraid. But I was not afraid of you. I was—” Pertelote broke it off. This was the first time since she had come to Chauntecleer's Coop that she was talking about herself. It was difficult to do.

“I was afraid of what I saw in you,” she said.

The Rooster's head came up erect and he knew a chill. “What you saw in me. You saw something in me to terrify you? What?”

There was a long silence. Then Pertelote spoke very carefully.

“Chauntecleer, what I thought I saw in you was not there. What I saw I should not have seen. My seeing was not true: The thing was not there, nor could it ever be there in you. I know that. My imagination made me afraid. But I was not afraid of you.”

So kindly she tried to reassure him. But reassurance without a fact or two left the poor Rooster in a fit of his own imaginings about himself and about the monster in him that might one day make her scream again.

“What
did
make you afraid?” he pleaded.

“It doesn't matter,” she said. He could hear by her voice that her head was down. “It wasn't there.”

“Tell me what it was. Tell me. I will judge.”

“It doesn't matter—sir,” she said.

“Tell me, Pertelote,” Chauntecleer cried, almost angry. “Tell me, so that I never become the thing you fear. Pertelote, I should despair to be the thing that makes you afraid!”

“Lord Chauntecleer!” Pertelote spoke with so much authority—more than that, there was such a choking pain in her voice—that the Rooster swallowed and fell silent. Then she continued: “Lord Chauntecleer, you are something to me. But you're asking me to remember things I don't want to remember. You want me to name a name which suffocates me. I don't want to go back, Chauntecleer. Not even in my mind do I want to go back.” She was beseeching him, and leaving pauses in her speech so that he might say something. “I don't want to ruin the peace which your Coop has given me. I don't want to die again.”

Then don't, Chauntecleer said in his mind. But he didn't say it out loud, and a long time passed by. Then:

“You looked like Cockatrice.” Pertelote breathed the words so very softly, and Chauntecleer began to hate himself.

“I thought there were scales on your stomach; but it was only mud. I thought that I had not gotten away, that there was nowhere in the world to hide—but it was you, with a bleeding wound. And your name isn't Cockatrice. It's Chauntecleer. But I didn't know that, and I screamed. So. So. So.”

In the silence that followed Chauntecleer almost didn't breathe. He held himself in utter contempt. He wished that he could hold her now, to comfort her; but at the same time he felt that he had lost that right forever by forcing her—for his own petty foolishness—backward into such an obvious pain. And after all of this, he had not the slightest idea who Cockatrice might be. So it was a worthless triumph. His was a damn hollow victory. In return for a name which meant nothing to him, he had separated himself from the Beautiful Pertelote. In return for what?—a Cockatrice—he had caused her a nameless hurt all over again.

“Lady,” he managed to say, scraping the floor with a fat and stupid claw, “I'm sorry.”

She said nothing.

“I'm not even something fearful,” he mumbled. “Just cheap.”

Still, she said nothing. And that was, he thought, as it should be. But he heard a stirring where she was; and then she came very close to him and laid her head upon his shoulder.

Immediately every thought of apology fled from his brains. Immediately he was breathing very much. Immediately he stretched his wings around her for the second time, and held her tightly, and gurgled.

She had come to him for comfort. Why, then, what a comfort he would be to her! But—now that he wanted them—the poor Chauntecleer had absolutely no words to say. They had all gone away, and he was left with an empty head, all on account of her willing touch. Out of his empty head there stuck a beak; and upon that beak there began to dance a silly smile. He turned his neck, and in the half-light he smiled at everyone in the Coop, one at a time, though every last one of them was sleeping.

And when the river ice exploded its most remarkable gun, a splitting crack which made the Coop to tremble, Chauntecleer thought it to be a most charming and meaningful sound.

So they were married in the snow. It was a snow wedding, for they made their procession through the snow, and the snow fell on them as they went. In the front of a long line of dancing animals, there strutted a proud golden cock and next to him his bride. And the feathers at her throat were a flame so crimson and so intense that they warmed the cock beside her.

“WHEE-YA-HOO!”

This amazing cheer came from the middle of the procession. Animals turned around when they heard it; but when they looked, they couldn't tell for sure who had made it. For in the middle of the procession was Mundo Cani Dog; and, riding on his nose, Tick-tock the Black Ant. Now, Mundo Cani Dog was weeping so helplessly that no one thought the cheer had come from him. And surely the dignified little Ant on the tip of his nose couldn't have . . . wouldn't have . . . But there, on his tiny black face, was a tiny black smile.

In the middle of a white field, all the dancers formed a wide ring around Chauntecleer and his bride. Then they stamped the snow down in special places to write words in it and to draw pictures there. The pictures were blooming flowers, snow lilies and the winter rose. Someone drew a magnificent stallion in the snow, with its mane wild in the wind. Someone else drew the midnight sky and filled it with all of the stars which had not been seen for months. Another one drew a map of Chauntecleer's land, and drew an iron fence all the way around it—to say, This land is protected. Beryl was the last to draw. She came forward shy and delicate, and she drew her picture with much love. When she was done, the entire congregation said, “Ah!” though hers was, perhaps, the simplest drawing of all. Yet it was the most perfect. She had drawn three fair eggs, one beside the other in the snow. Chauntecleer said, “I will name them now.” The animals fell silent to listen. “I will name them Ten Pin and Five Pin and One Pin. And they shall all be sons!” The animals cheered, and Chauntecleer burst into joyful laughter. The Beautiful Pertelote put her head down and was happy.

These were the gifts which his animals had brought him on his wedding day. And the words which they wrote in the snow were these:

“OUR LORD AND LADY STAND IN THE EYE OF GOD. LET HIM BE KIND TO THEM.”

Here ends the first part of the story about Chauntecleer the Rooster and his Coop, Wyrm's
Keepers
.

Cockatrice never buried the bones of his father, nor ever again seemed to think of them. Senex lay ragged in his little heap to the left of the Coop door day and night untouched. Blowflies saw an opportunity and took it: They slipped underneath his feathers and massed their tiny yellow eggs by the thousands against his ancient flesh; and when the right time had passed, maggots lived in his body. They ate through his eyes, until Senex was sightless before heaven; they ate his tongue, and Senex was speechless; they squirmed through his old wooden heart; they dwelt in the little sack of his stomach. They were the only life left in the Rooster—and that for but a little while, because Senex had died exhausted, with remarkably little meat on his bones.

A stench arose in the land. The poor animals whined and scraped at their noses. Everywhere they gagged and vomited. Eating became impossible. And the smaller and the weaker among them took sick and began to die. The very smell itself was so oppressive, like grief, that small hearts simply could not bear it and stopped beating. This was no plague, because there were no symptoms with the dying. Incredibly, this was just an odor—foul, thick, blighting, and horribly rotten.

So those animals who could think most clearly formed a committee in order to carry a petition to Cockatrice; they had no other Lord.

They found him not in the Coop. He had not again entered that building after Senex had dropped down dead before it. They found him idle below an enormous Oak which grew near the bank of the river. Next to him was squatting Toad, the same who had brooded over Cockatrice's leathery egg. But neither one greeted the Committee as it approached, nor gave them leave to talk.

“Well,” said a Hog, nuzzling the ground, “we have come.”

Toad blinked hugely, but silently. Cockatrice merely turned his red eye upon the Hog and slowly twisted his serpent's tail.

“Well,” said the Hog again, shifting his barrel weight from side to side, “we have something to say. To
ask,
” he hastily caught himself: “To ask.”

Low down among the Committee was a Mouse, unnoticed. He was darting his eyes from the Hog to Cockatrice and back again, fiercely anxious that the meeting be neither lost nor wasted.

“Well,” said the Hog again; and the Mouse quickly set his teeth, fighting an urge to cut through the Hog's fat obsequiousness and to talk himself. Trees grow slowly. Hogs talk slowly—but they didn't have a whole season now for polite—and stupid—conversation!

“It would be the hon-or-able thing to do”—the Hog snuffled slowly at the ground—“if you, sir, granted your per-mis-sion that we form a pro-ces-sion and take him out of the land, to bury him in some right and distant place. Hon-or-ably, to be sure.” The Hog took a moment to overturn a stone. “Lord Senex, we mean,” he said.

“No!” The word came in a loud bass voice. Everyone had been looking at Cockatrice, expecting the decision to be his. But he hadn't spoken. He only continued to twist his tail and to regard them all with his red eye as from a great distance. With astonishment everyone glanced from Cockatrice to Toad; and then it was clear that
he
had spoken.

Nevertheless, when the Hog began to speak again, all eyes were back on Cockatrice.

“ ‘No,' you say,” said the Hog. “But surely you un-der-stand custom, and surely you are com-mit-ted to the good purpose of very old custom, and it is our custom to bury our dead. Lord Senex, the Rooster with his Back to the Mountains.”

“Custom, crap!” the Mouse cried out suddenly, unable to stand it any longer. “He stinks, and it's killing us!”

“And besides ev-ery-thing else,” continued the Hog, “his body is in a state of decay, no fault of his, of course—nor any fault to you, sir.”

(“Damn!” said the Mouse.)

“He is pu-tre-fying, sir, and you yourself may have noticed that he sends up a ter-ri-fic odor, and that odor, if you please, is un-healthy. It is hurting us.”

“Killing us! Killing us!” cried the Mouse.

“No!” It was Toad again, burping answers out of his thick throat, while Cockatrice looked on with his mouth closed.

“And so again you say ‘No,' ” said the Hog. “But perhaps you do not un-der-stand the pe-ti-tion—”

“The body stays where it is. No honorable,” burped Toad, “no end to the smell. No burial. Get out of here!”

It was astonishing to see how the members of the committee so easily hunched their shoulders, and turned, and left, each in his own direction; for with that last word the committee had abruptly dissolved, and it was no more. All except for the Mouse. He remained with burning eyes and a vibrating chest, so quickly was he breathing, so full of hatred was he.

“Murderer!” he squeaked at Cockatrice; but Cockatrice, with one lazy flap of his wings, ascended to a branch in the oak, found a perch, and looked out over the land. “Murderer!” the Mouse shrieked again; and Toad, suddenly left alone, bounced round to the other side of the tree trunk to hide himself.

From there Toad burped: “You heard Cockatrice. Get out of here!”

After the failure of the committee, the animals of the land broke apart. Each began to make his own way in the world. Each family created its own remedies against the terrible, killing stench—but then kept those remedies to itself and grew narrow eyed and suspicious over-against its neighbors. Each family sought its own food, stored it in secret places, then wept in frustration upon finding that the stench would always rot it, wherever it was hidden. But there had to be a blame for such a continuous disaster; so every family blamed the next, with dire threats and menacing looks as they passed one another. The animals of the land descended from speech to snarls, barks, roars, and bleated accusations. And the children, those left living, feared to leave their homes.

Almost as evil as the stench was the silence. Senex, however poorly he had ended his rule, had always remembered the canonical crows. He sang them, to be sure, in a disoriented manner; but he did sing them, keeping his animals that way, banding them, unifying them. But Cockatrice never crowed the canon. So under him the day lost its meaning and its direction, and the animals lost any sense of time or purpose. Their land became strange to them. A terrible feeling of danger entered their souls, of things undone, of treasures unprotected. They were tired all the day long, and at night they did not sleep. And it was a most pitiful sight to see, how they all went about with hunched shoulders, heads tucked in, limping here and there as if they were forever walking into an ill wind, and flinching at every sound as if the wind carried arrows.

And their confusion became dreadful when one day the Mouse ran among them, screaming for them to come and see Senex's body.

“You thought it was one thing,” he cried. “But you've got to know! You have to know that it is something else, something worse! Don't blind yourselves! Come and see!”

For the last time in that land, all of the animals did one thing together. The Mouse's intensity moved them. Together they went to the Coop and looked.

And Senex was only bones. Dry bones with a scrap of feather here and there. A sad little skull, ribs needle thin, and strange yellow claws—colored as if they alone were left alive. The animals blinked.

“Don't you understand?” the Mouse cried. “Senex doesn't make this stink, and it will not go away with him. Something else makes it. Something else is killing us! And we will be nothing until we find out.” He lowered his voice and glared at the ring of animals around the bones and himself. “I'll give you a name,” he said. No one encouraged him. No one discouraged him. “The name,
Cockatrice
. The stench came with him. There is nothing left of Senex
to
rot. But Cockatrice sits in his Oak, and the stench remains. He is no Lord. He is an enemy.”

At the first mention of Cockatrice, the animals on the outer edge of the circle simply turned and began to walk away; and as the Mouse continued his desperate pleading, the circle shrank altogether—until the Hog was the last to leave. The Mouse skittered after him and bit his leg.

“Damn fools!” he squeaked. “Ignorant, mindless, stupid, sloppy, mad, damn fools!” But the Hog spun on the Mouse, nearly killed him with a snap of his jaws, then lumbered on.

Shaking with frustration, the Mouse turned back to the bones of the old Rooster. Then he saw that one creature yet remained: Toad, hugely blinking his eyes.

“The name of Cockatrice in vain,” Toad burped. “Useless, little bitty Mouse. All your chatter—useless. Cockatrice sends me to say: No more meetings. No more gatherings. No more talk among the animals! Hush,” whispered Toad, a green foot in front of his mouth as if warning a child. “Hush. Go about your own business and forget the others. Oh, and the Oak, she has a name. She is the Terebinth Oak.”

The Mouse shot furiously at Toad; but in three fat hops he had disappeared safely inside the Coop and was gone.

Toad went into the Coop for more than safety. He had a mission there as well.

The hundred Hens sat quietly, each upon her own nest, fearful to move anywhere. The place seemed a most foreboding, dark, uneasy hospital.

“Let me see,” burped the pigeon-footed and ugly Toad. When no one offered to let him see anything, he commanded: “In the name of Cockatrice, let me see!” Then he squeezed underneath the nearest Hen. She leaped up with a painful squawk. Three eggs were discovered. Toad broke each of them, then ordered the poor Hen out of the Coop.

This he did with each Hen. Those who were laying he sent out; those who were not stayed in. Finally, the layers in a flock he forced toward the river and the Terebinth Oak, where Cockatrice awaited them.

Cockatrice was not altogether idle, in those days. He wanted children. Hundreds and hundreds, thousands of children; and, almost casually, he ignored the tears and the cries of the Hens, and he went about getting himself children—all in the open, all underneath the Terebinth Oak.

Soon the hens bore the blank look of despair upon their faces. Hope, self-esteem, life itself had been tortured out of them, and they had become feathered machinery, bent to Cockatrice's bloodless will. Cockatrice never looked them in the eyes. He offered nothing for an egg.

And so the space under the Oak was crowded with eggs, waiting to hatch.

For the first time Cockatrice roused himself. Let but one poor animal step too closely to this treasure, and Cockatrice would swoop so suddenly and so wildly from the tree that the creature would die of a faint heart.

Toad spent time moving among and turning the eggs.

“Over, my pretty,” he burped motherly. “The sun on your tummy, the sun on your back, to color your coming a poisonous black! I hear you, my pretty. But give it a little time. Time before you hatch.” He slept on top of the eggs. Cockatrice never slept.

When the first round of eggs did hatch, the Hens, even in their death walk, were horrified. Some had placed some expectation upon the next generation. Some had even conceived a distorted affection for what Cockatrice had borne upon them. But the creatures which crawled out of these eggs were in no way like chicks. Black, licorice long, damp, each with two burning eyes in its head and teeth already in its mouth, they were small, curled serpents. Basilisks.

Cockatrice swept into the hatching eggs. He roared a greeting which terrified every animal in the land. Then he opened his enormous mouth and swallowed up serpent after serpent. With his throat bulging, he took to the air, flew in great, triumphant circles, writhing his tail frightfully, and then passed low over the river water. There he vomited his brood, and the Basilisks fell like a black rain into the water.

With energy he drove the Hens to produce more and more eggs, even among the shells of the latter ones. He was obsessed; and Toad himself took no more joy in the high office of egg turner, but began to shrink from the watchful red eye above him. Oh, Cockatrice had his children! He had them by the thousands. And again and again he performed the ceremony of a flight and a black rain of Basilisks into the river.

But one Hen, even underneath her agony, kept life within her. She did it by a small plot which she carried out night after night, eternally. She had found a stone the size of an egg, and during the day she sat obediently upon this stone. But when night fell, she would push it to the lower end of her sitting, and then quietly beat herself against the stone, slowly, but with force and with pain. Every true egg inside of her she crushed this way before it was laid.

She had a patch of crimson feathers at her throat.

At the beginning of this borning process, it had been Toad's habit at least to chat and banter with the Hens. He played a middle road, doing service for Cockatrice, but at the same time searching for a little forgiveness from the Hens, who were being so sadly used. But the more earnest Cockatrice became about his children, the more irritable Toad became about everything. He was losing place. He, who had brooded Cockatrice into this world, was losing the favor of Cockatrice. Toad wanted something, then—something to win back the favor of his Lord and to prove his importance.

Therefore, he was not silent when he came upon the stone egg.

Toad still examined the Hens, searched their openings to see by the size of them whether this Hen or that one continued to be a layer. This without apology or grace: He crawled underneath them where they sat.

One day he pushed himself out from under the Hen with fire at her throat and began to scream:

“Now, now, here it is!” he cried, hopping among the Hens. “What I was looking for! What I knew would be! Treachery, Cockatrice! Oh, treachery! A stone egg that can never hatch!”

His cry turned Cockatrice's head. It also brought a small Mouse out of the fields.

As soon as Cockatrice was looking, Toad began to hop against the guilty Hen. While she did nothing to protect herself, he fired his fat body like a dumdum at her neck and head, and she began to choke and to cough. “Treachery! Treachery!” cried Toad with every attack.