Page 46 of Blacktail

Blacktail, not used to the questions of witches, looked at her strangely. “I dreamed of a dog,” he said.

“Did you know this dog? Was it your Renren?”

“No. Not her. He was a terrier, a slave of men—not just a slave, though. He loved them. He thought of them as his pack. He could not understand why he must always be chained behind House. It was dark there. He was lonely. Often he was hungry. He could see the lights of House, smell hot food, hear the laughter of his pack…but his sleeping hole was cold, and he ate only if they remembered to feed him.” Blacktail snarled. “His love for them was starting to fade, I think.”

“Mrrr,” the Old Kitty Mother said. “I see.”

“Does that mean anything to you?”

“No,” she said. “Nothing.”

Blacktail smelled her lie, but chose not to speak of it. They say witches have always kept their own counsel, he thought. Even I know that much.

The Old Kitty Mother stood and stretched her back. “Well,” she said, “never mind that. Your journey is a long one, as I’ve said, and you should not think to make the whole distance on the contents of what is now in your stomach. When you are hungry, hunt. When you are tired, sleep. When you are thirsty, drink. But remember that the rivers of blood still flow, now thicker than ever.”

She walked over and stood next to his forepaw. “May I?”

He wagged his tail in agreement. She rubbed his forepaw with her shoulder, blessing him with her scent. She took a step back and craned her neck up to look at him. They regarded each other silently, her green eyes locking with his yellow ones in the moonless night. “Please,” she said, sounding for the first time small and kittenish, “please, Lord Hunter…tarry no more than you must.”

Blacktail did not answer, only wagged his tail to show he had understood. Then he turned south to seek out the Forest God.

Chapter 4

The God of the Lost

i

In his dream Blacktail was caged in Car, a great long one. It pulled a small herd of beasts behind it like an ox pulling a plow. It roared down a road at a speed even the fastest hunter could not hope to match. In his dream he was not a wolf. He was something else, something large and slow and dull-witted. Prey, he thought. I am a cow, of all things, I am a calf and I am prey. In thinking this, he fell into another life, swallowed whole.

I am young, he thought. My earliest memory is of the spring. I am young, and the foul breath of Car and the stinks of the black path are beautiful to me, because I have never been out of my pen, where the dung rises to the top of my hooves and splashes when I move. Before this morning I never suspected that there was anything more to the world. But now the wind has freed me from the scent of my dung. I know smells for the first time. I can see clouds.

But I am afraid. It is not the great speed or the strange scents that make me fear. I do not understand what is happening, but I know that my mother screamed when she saw me enter Car. She screamed, but she could do nothing. All our mothers screamed, because the herd has a long memory. It remembers back to the green pastures of used-to-be, when we grazed free and the bulls protected us and no one splashed in dung. All our mothers screamed, because in all that long memory no one who was summoned to Car has ever returned.

Car stopped. The cage clanged open. In this terrible place that was the best thing the calf had ever known, he and Blacktail cried out as one.

Men were coming for him.

Their hands stank of blood.

—

Blacktail jerked. Only half awake, he scrambled to his feet, snapped out at the air. But instead of crunching bone and sweet blood, his mouth snapped down on nothing. He blinked. Right. Another dream. Not real. Can’t hurt you.

In a way, though, it could. He slept on a thin crest of ridge bounded on both sides by sheer rocky drops. In his terror, he had jerked upright without thinking. Now the edge of the cliff lay a bare paw’s breadth away. Only luck had spared him. Blacktail blew out a long, slow breath and peeked over. He suppressed a shudder. He had learned a great deal of ridges since he and the Old Kitty Mother parted ways. To his now-experienced eye, this particular one seemed small, but only in the sense that if he fell off it he would likely die from the impact rather than starving to death before he hit bottom.

It was spring now, or near enough. The land of his childhood was far behind him, as were the foothills where he met the Old Kitty Mother. The horde of hunting men and their slave dogs had long since faded into the distance. Perhaps they have forgotten me?

Probably not.

Not long after his chat with the Old Kitty Mother he passed into the proper mountains. There he learned the shape and flavor of true misery. He remembered looking at the mountains from a distance and thinking that they appeared rather handsome—especially at sunset. But up close they were an endless series of frozen boulders overlaying drops sheer enough to make a falcon puke. He spent the winter picking his way across them and starving as he did it. He had been preoccupied with trying not to die, so most of his memories of the journey were rather vague. He considered this a great mercy.

He had never been this far south. Come to that, he had never known anyone who had been this far south. The land here was different from what he knew. Mostly what grew here were bushes, deep green and prone to prickly thorns. There were trees, yes, but not many—certainly not enough in any one spot to call it a forest. Those trees he did see seemed to his eye to be in a certain amount of pain. Their bare branches twisted skyward, grasping at a sun that blazed, but brought little warmth. Short, thick, and stumpy, they smelled dry. There were others like nothing he had seen before—stumpy and leafless, but studded with needles up and down the trunk.

Around the time of the last full moon, or perhaps the one before that, he had been forced to a halt. He remembered that day well enough. In the afternoon he glimpsed flat land through a mountain pass and rejoiced, thinking the worst was behind him. Then, just before dusk, the wind began. He took shelter in the shadow of a boulder that overhung a ledge barely wider than his body. The storm howled for three full days and nights, perhaps longer. The cold was bitter. Snow lay over him in drifts. Only occasionally did the wind lull enough for him to hear the rumbling of his stomach. If some witch had come to him then, offering to magic him out of the rocky plains in exchange for offering his hindquarters as a sanctuary for starving fleas, he might well have accepted. But the storm passed. He found a stream that was drinkable, if a tad salty. Desert rodents were stringy but edible.

Now it was springtime, or near enough. There were still hills, but the proper mountains were behind him, only their peaks visible over the horizon. Even the memory of that storm was enough to make him shiver, but this night was pleasant.

The question, though, is what to do now. The way down off this ridge was clear to him. It was easy enough and safe. Nonetheless, he had lain here for a day and a night, unsure what to do next.