Chapter 2 The Son of Snow #3
“Who else? Look around you. If there’s another witch with even half the skill necessary to do…well…this…” The cat swished his tail in a broad circle, taking in the horrors of the room. “…I’ve never heard of her.”
From behind them the severed head spoke. The sound of it made Rex’s fur stand up—seeing such a thing was bad enough, but to be seen in turn by it, to have it speak to him, was almost more than his courage could withstand.
“What was that, two-legs?” the cat asked pleasantly. “I cannot understand you when you speak with your mouth full.”
The head carefully released its grip on the male’s stump.
Her mate hissed a sigh, perhaps of relief, and continued his slow, twitchy passage toward the recesses of the house.
The head teetered for a moment, then tilted over and lay on its side.
Much later, Cephus would wonder how long—through how many dry, dusty ages—it would remain that way.
“You’re trying to tell me a cat did this to us?” the head said. “That’s just impossible.”
“Impossible, perhaps, for anyone but the Old Kitty Mother. I see that you’ve returned to the language of the hunt. Interesting. Was that the Old Kitty Mother’s doing, I wonder, or is it simply because of your death?”
“Language?” the head said. “What?”
The cat answered slowly, as if speaking to a rather witless kitten.
“The. Language. Of. The. Hunt. It is the one true language, known to all beasts. Hunters speak it, prey speak it, now you do, too. Is it coming back to you? I’m told that your kind use it in the womb, and for a little time thereafter. ”
“But—”
“I know, I know. You thought yourself above us, with your reason and your gunshots and your lights…but the hunt is eternal. It can afford to be patient. And look!” he said, bright and cheery. “Now you are one of us again.”
“Who are you?” the head said. “I know you, don’t I?”
“Oh, do you remember? I’m so very flattered.
I am the one called Snooky-Ookums. You thought to chastise me once, for a small mess I made in your domain.
” The cat smiled. “Actually, I’m glad you mentioned that.
” He walked over to the head and raised his leg, then relieved himself briefly.
The head sputtered and spat. It managed to rock back and forth a bit, but the stream spattered against it, nonetheless.
“Ahhh,” the cat said. “That’s better. And, really, it’s a pleasure to finally speak with one of you as equals.
I think we shall converse again, when I’ve more time.
” He turned and stared into the dripping face, met its wide, horrified eyes.
“Yes,” he said. “We shall converse often. At great length.”
“But…but…how can this be?” the head whispered. “I didn’t do anything wrong, not really. Of course I’m sorry about Renren, but, well, she was just a dog.”
“Yes,” the cat said in a mild, pleasant tone that made Rex’s blood run cold.
“You can say ‘just a dog’ now, while your pain is young and the memory of life is still fresh. Perhaps you’ll still be saying it when this den has rotted away to dust, perhaps even when the ice rivers flow back to cover us all.
But will you still be saying it when the sun has gone dim and died?
Will you still be saying it when the last of the stars fade away?
When creation is ended, and you float here alone, still screaming, forgotten even by your god?
You are damned, two-legs,” the cat said.
This time his voice carried a hint of compassion.
Somehow that was the worst of all. “Show some humility.”
Ignoring the head’s protests, the cat turned back to Rex and Cephus.
“You have loyalty to your master. We understand that. Loyalty is the first virtue of dogs. But it is the will of the Old Kitty Mother that this wolf escape the hunt that is raised against him,” he said.
“Old Kitty Mother, who rewards her friends and punishes her enemies. Make your own choice.”
iii
For the moment he was safe.
Panting and exhausted, Blacktail hunkered down among a small cluster of icy boulders to consider his options, such as they were. The scent of men was thick in the wind. The bay of hounds echoed through the hills.
I’ll owe this Old Kitty Mother my life, he thought, if I survive at all. He had considered Snooky-Ookums’s warning alarmist at the time it was given, but now he realized that if anything, it had been too tame. He leaned against a rock to cool himself, heart thudding in his chest.
Following the cat’s advice, he had started out toward the south that morning.
Why not? he remembered thinking. I’ve never been that way before.
Maybe when I get down there I can eat a moose or something.
He spent a leisurely morning loping up the southern hill, cautious but not especially worried.
And really, what was there to worry about?
Men sometimes dabble in the hunt, but they are almost entirely without skill.
That was true enough, but when he crested the ridge and looked down into the valley, he froze, jaw hanging slack, unable to credit what he saw.
A line of men stretched across the valley. They marched shoulder to shoulder, their dogs straining ahead of them. How can there be so many? Even in all the world, how can there be so many?
Far below him and across the field a red hound froze, sniffing the wind. Blacktail watched to see what he would do.
A moment later, gunshots.
Blacktail turned and sprinted back down the hill the way he had come. He was no longer leisurely. He suspected that the southern moose were safe for the time being.
About midmorning a flock of metal birds joined the hunt, swooping and diving low across the fields and open spaces.
The sight of them chilled his heart. Blacktail had long mastered the tricks of ground-hunting.
He felt hopeful about his ability to turn these skills around in his mind now that he played the prey.
But sky-hunting was new territory. Ah, crap, he thought, remembering his first few hunts. I’m a puppy again.
He took a breath, calming himself. The first thing is to always stay under the trees. The eye of a bird is sharp as my nose, perhaps sharper. No open space is safe. Maybe I could—
A twig cracked close behind him.
Blacktail snapped around, ready to kill…
but it was only a fox. Blacktail took a moment to size him up.
The little fellow was probably on the downside of middle age, mostly red with a white patch under the jaw and breastbone.
There were scars here and there, a missing notch in his left ear, but mostly he seemed healthy and well-fed.
“Whoa, whoa.” The fox offered a small wry grin, twitched his tail. “I’m not the one you need to worry about. And stay low. There’s a two-legs in the tree back there.” He lifted his hinder and gave the rock a brief squirt.
“What?” Blacktail poked his muzzle out from behind the rock. “Which one? The oak?”
“No, the pine.”
Blacktail squinted for a moment. “Ah,” he said. “There. I see him.” He pulled back, scowling.
“You shouldn’t worry too much. From the smell of that one, he’s been drinking. Wait a bit and he’ll probably fall out of the tree or give himself a gunshot or something. Problem solved.”
“Drinking?”
“They’ve got, like, a magic water. It—Well, never mind. You must be from up north? Fewer people around? You’ll know the stuff when you smell it.”
“Hmm,” Blacktail said. “Well, I’ll be cautious, nonetheless. I appreciate the warning.”
“No bother. Say, do you have any idea what all this is about? They usually don’t start blasting away until a bit later in the year.”
“Um…it’s my fault, I’m afraid. Sorry about the trouble.”
“What? Is this commotion all for you?”
“Yes.”
The fox waited, but Blacktail did not elaborate. After a long moment the fox sighed. “You don’t have many friends, do you?”
“Beg pardon?”
“Would you mind telling me what it is that you did to stir up the biggest hunt in three generations? I’d like to pass the word around after you’re dead and the fuss dies down. People will be curious.”
“Hmm? Oh. No, I don’t mind. A pack of two-legs angered me,” Blacktail said, “so I killed them.”
The fox blinked. “I’m sorry, what? You say you killed a two-legs?”
“Not just one. I killed the whole clan—male, female, and pup.”
The fox’s jaw hung open a little. “Well, I suppose that would explain it.”
“What do you mean?”
The fox blinked. “You don’t just kill a two-legs and hope to get away with it,” he said. “Not in this day and age.”
“The reverence shown those monsters makes my stomach churn,” Blacktail rumbled. The sound came from low, the depths of his chest.
The fox blinked. “Nice growl you’ve got there. I felt that in my little feets.”
Blacktail bent low so the fox could sniff what he had rolled in at the house. “Smell that? Two-legs bleed wet and red, just like everyone else.”
The fox gave a quick sniff, then a longer one.
He pulled back, considered for a moment.
“Well…perhaps. I wouldn’t know. But you and I can’t call light into the darkness.
You and I can’t bring down gunshots. You and I cannot bind Car to our will.
Because we have no wings, you and I cannot fly, a limitation that they do not seem to—”
“Oh, bite that!” Blacktail snarled. “All you say may be true, but if you or I were masters of this land, we would not kill those subjects that loved us and were loyal. We would not murder the prey beasts simply to hear them die! We would not—”
“Easy, easy,” the fox said quietly. “There’s no need to convince me. I’ve hated them longer than you’ve been alive. But what’s to be done? This world is theirs. The subjugation is complete and none may stand against them. You die today, I think.”
“You may be subjugated, but I am not,” Blacktail said. “And I’ll not die in these hills, not today.”
“We’ll see about that.”