Chapter 4 The God of the Lost #3
“You seem to do well enough,” Blacktail said. He scented the body on the ground. The groin was so badly mutilated that it was impossible to tell whether it had been male or female. The meat was fresh, though.
“Yes,” the two-legs agreed. “How is it you say? ‘My teeth are sharp’?”
“That’s what we say,” Blacktail agreed, his stomach rumbling. “And they are sharp.” Blacktail ripped a chunk out of the dead beast’s haunch. Still warm, he noted with approval. “This one is a big meal.”
This presented a question of etiquette. To wolves, eating the flesh of your own kind was an abomination. With men…who could tell? Anything seemed possible. Also, he thought, it’s his kill. It would be rude not to at least ask. “Care to join me?”
“I am thanking you,” the man said. He settled in across from Blacktail and tore off a piece.
They ate in silence for a long time. When Blacktail was full, he looked up at the man and licked his chops. He wagged his tail once, grudgingly. “You have given me much aid, two-legs.”
The man swallowed what he was chewing. He glanced at Blacktail, smiled, but said nothing.
With some effort, Blacktail stood. With some doubt—am I really going to do this?
—he limped around the body to the two-legs.
He made the greeting of equals. First he sniffed the man’s hindquarters, then turned and presented his own.
But the man did not sniff. After a moment Blacktail turned back, not understanding.
Small waters were leaking from the man’s eyes, which struck Blacktail as odd. “My Lord Hunter honors me. Never such honor have had I. But I cannot,” he said. “I am…am…deaf in my nose. Scent-blind.”
“Oh?” Blacktail rumbled. “I am sorry. To be this way is a terrible thing.”
“Perhaps,” the two-legs said. It smiled then, in a way that made Blacktail feel cold. “But many terrible things am I.”
“Is that why you kill your own kind? Why you remember the true language? Did being scent-blind make you crazy? Something like that?”
“No. All our noses are this way.”
“All of you?”
The man wagged his head up and down.
“That explains quite a bit,” Blacktail said. “Why, then? Surely not all two-legs eat their own kind?
“No, in that way I am strange.” He struggled to find words. “Do wolves have crazy-from-being-alone?”
“We do,” Blacktail said. He did not think he himself was crazy-from-being-alone—not yet, anyway—but it had occurred to him more than once that he might get that way if the Forest God didn’t turn up soon. “Yes, we have that.”
The man wagged his head up and down. “That’s me. Crazy-from-being-alone.”
“When a wolf becomes this way, he is shunned. Cast out.”
“The same with us. I must hide what I am. Hide what I do. Hide the dead.”
Blacktail’s ears perked up. “Oh? Why hide them?” he asked.
“Eh?” the Hider said. “Oh. If they find them, find these dead ones, much fury. Then I am hunted.”
“Yes,” Blacktail said. “I’ve some experience in that. But if they are not found, there will be no hunt?”
“Maybe some. But small.”
“And if they catch you?” Blacktail asked, honestly curious.
“When they catch, they kill me. Maybe some time in a cage first, but they kill.” He smiled. “But first they must catch.”
Blacktail swished his tail in acknowledgment. “Perhaps we have more in common than you think.” He paused, weighing courtesy against curiosity, then decided it couldn’t hurt to ask. “Tell me, if you will—how did you come to be this way? To speak the language of the hunt?”
“God teach me. I learn from God.”
Blacktail’s ears perked up. “You’ve spoken to the Forest God? He’s awake?”
“No. My god is not the Forest God. He is below that one. But my god faithful to the hunt, to Him, just as we are.”
“I see,” Blacktail said. “I had not heard of such. I thought only the Forest God remained, that the god of men had destroyed all the others.”
“Most, I think. Not all. Not my god. My god is of the lost things.” He smiled again. “Not such a big god, maybe. But when the god of men move to strike down the old ones, my god not can be found.”
“Interesting.” Blacktail thought on this for a moment. “If you don’t mind my asking, how did you find him? Or ‘Him,’ rather—no disrespect, you understand. I myself have some interest in finding lost gods.”
“Me?” The man laughed. “I not find,” he said. “No one find Him. No one find me. He come to me because I am of Him. Because I am lost, you see.”
“I don’t understand.”
The man looked at him cautiously. “I can tell, but is long tale….” he said without much hope.
“No, it’s fine. Please go on. I’m not going anywhere tonight. Anyway, I’m curious.”
“I will! I will tell.”
Blacktail could tell that this pleased the man greatly.
He thought he knew why. He is crazy-from-being-alone, he thought.
He thinks I am his friend. Blacktail paused for a moment, reflecting on his full belly, his slaked thirst, and the diminished pain in his hip.
Stranger still, he may not be entirely wrong.
If someone had told me yesterday that I’d end up being pack mates with a two-legs, even for a single meal, I wouldn’t have believed them.
He shifted so the weight was off his broken leg.
Likely I’d have given them a good biting, as well.
The Hider looked at him, concerned. “Is you well?”
“Hmm? Well enough, I suppose. I was just thinking. This is all…strange.”
The Hider furrowed his brow, confused. “This place? Here is where I live.”
I don’t doubt it, Blacktail thought wryly. “I only meant that I never expected to—Well. Never mind. Do, please go on.” He sighed. “I’m actually quite curious.”
Hearing this, the man fairly shuddered with joy. “Yes! Yes, I tell! Much time ago when I was very little, my father, he hunt himself—”
“What? To eat?” Blacktail asked. That seemed depraved, even for men.
“No. Not to eat. Only to die, I think. My father always very sad.”
“Oh.”
“Him cut his own neck, much times. Him die, but I not know it. My mother is gone before this, so now I am alone. Many nights I sit with him in the blood, sometimes playing, sometimes trying to wake him, sometimes watching the moon….” He trailed off for a moment, then shook himself and continued.
“Father not wake, no matter how I try. Later, someone comes. Them take him away, then take me away. I go to a place of many little ones, the ones who have no one to feed them. Is bad place. In the night, ones that are bigger, they prey on the little ones. Prey on me. Every night is same. Much pain, much screaming, but no one will help. This is my first lesson in the hunt. All of us little ones are prey. But before he die, my father, he tell me to call out to God. ‘If you are hurt, cry out to God and he will help.’ But there is no god in this bad place. I call and call, but no one comes.”
“Then one night, my god does come,” the man continued. “I see His face under my bed. He tells to me things. First I think is strange, for God to be under my bed. Then I remember that my father say, ‘He is everywhere.’ I think, Why not?”
“We talk many nights. Him tell me of the old age. Him tell me of the Forest God and of the hunt. Then one day, when I learned enough, God tells to me, ‘Rise up and be prey no more.’ I ask what this mean, but God is silent now. Him testing me, I think.”
Blacktail wagged his agreement. “Yes, gods will do that,” he said. “It is their nature.”
“I think on it for much. Then one day I steal a…how you say…a tooth-of-metal? From the eating place. When the big one is sleeping, this cruel one that makes me prey, I bury my metal tooth deep in him. I cut out his heart. Some I am offer to God-under-the-bed. Some I am eat. Some I am save for later.”
“Did you?” Blacktail said. He kept his tone neutral, but he was a little impressed. More than a little. “That is the way of the hunt, right enough…or so I’m told.”
The Hider seemed confused. “Are you not of Him?”
“Beg pardon?”
“Are you…not of Him? The Forest God? A believer?”
“Well…let’s just say I keep an open mind. My mother believed.” He sniffed the wind, thinking of Renren. “Sometimes I wonder, though. If the Forest God is out there, he’s been awfully quiet.”
The Hider looked at Blacktail with the species of pity the devout reserve for those infidels who perhaps should know better.
“What happened next?”
“The next day, much fury from the other big ones. The little ones like me, the prey, know me is a hunter now. They tell that I save us all. But no one care. Soon, me is taken away to a place of cages. No one listen about the pain in the night.
“I think, Maybe they kill me now. I go, be with Father again. Not so bad. But after much talk, they say not kill. They tell, ‘You too little.’ They tell, ‘We not kill. Instead you go in cage, forever in a cage.’ ”
“Kinder to kill you, I think,” Blacktail said.
“Yes. I think, too. But in cage is surprise. God has found me! Even there, God has found. After some nights, he talk again under my bed. Now He happy with me. Now He whisper secrets in the night.”
“What sort of secrets?” Blacktail asked.
“First is the language of the hunt. But I not learn it so good. I think this will make God mad, but God not mad. My god say I am of Him, that I am lost, not truly of the hunt. But I learn a little. Then He teach to me the language of the dead—in that, I talk better. One night my father comes to under-the-bed. God brings him. I speak to my father then. He tells to me I am his good puppy. He tells to me I strong now. He tells to me he am proud.”
“This god of yours…he is powerful, to summon the dead.”
“Oh yes, very powerful. Very wisdomful. Many winters I spend in the cage, hearing His secrets. Then one day, God tell to me is time to go out in the world and make His work. Not an easy thing. The two-legs have come to much fear me. My cage is very strong. I ask God how, but there is no answer—another test.”
“What did you do? The cages of men are strong, or so I am told.”