Page 94 of Blacktail

Blacktail wagged his tail a final time, then turned and trotted away. This time he did not look back.

Chester sat for a time, pondering what he had seen. He took a long drink, then made his way up the river. He had not gone far before he came upon an enormous piece of flesh. It was carrion, but still fresh and warm—even bleeding in a few spots.

The shape of it was strange to him, partly because of the size and partly because it was away from the body that he had seen it on. But after a moment he recognized that it was the shoulder of a two-legs, enormous and fleshy, and from the back protruded a stub of white, feathery wing.

As Blacktail had said, the flavor of the meat was exquisite. Chester lay beside it all that morning, alternately gorging himself and napping. The buzzards circled overhead. Scavengers watched him from the underbrush. None dared approach. Sometimes the prairie dogs peeked out at him from their burrows. They called out no taunts or jests.

By the time the sun was high, Chester’s thoughts had turned to his two-legs, and how he had once loved her. She is not so far away, he thought now, perhaps three days’ travel, perhaps only two. And I am not so afraid as I once was. I might find her by scent or by sight, or perhaps, if I tried long enough, by simple luck. She sometimes steps out of the den after dark…would she be pleased to see me? I wonder. She with the soft meat-vines in the back of her legs, she with such corpulent flesh that a pack might eat for days? Would she be pleased to see me, I wonder, waiting for her there in the dark?

Chester wagged his tail a little at this thought. Yes, he thought. I will raze that place. I will rip it all down to bones and ash…but later. My duty is to help those like me. First the starveling and perhaps more besides. And who knows? After they’ve eaten, some of them might like to join me. He stood up, stretched himself, and set out of the Starving Rocks at a trot, heading toward the mountain just south of the sun.

His hunt had begun.

Chapter 8

The Place of the Skull

i

All of them knew where he was bound.

For as far as Blacktail could see, his path was lined with beasts. Overhead, the birds were as thick as leaves in the trees—vultures and robins, seagulls and doves, colorful birds with no name he knew of that had flown impossible distances to get here. They waited alongside the squirrel and tree-snake and opossum. Beneath the trees sat an ocean of faces—dogs, cockroaches, snakes, mice and deer, horses, a few cats, all manner of lizards, elk, and coyote.

Terror and appetite were not a part of this. Tomorrow the hunt would continue as it always had, but here, now, it was forgotten. A family of ducks sat between a coyote and a pit bull, and none seemed to notice the others. As he watched, a little mouse scampered up the body of a lynx, hoping to see better perched atop her head.

No one spoke. They only watched him, their heads turning silently to track him as he passed.

Some brought offerings. As he watched, a Chihuahua shouldered his way between a Alsatian and a brown rabbit, stepped over a hamster, and gently deposited a mouthful of food on the tarmac. When he was done, he scurried back fearfully, shivering in his lime-green sweater.

“Hold,” Blacktail called out to him, and the Chihuahua froze, eyes wide, cowering under the shadow of Blacktail’s approach. Blacktail bent down and sniffed the offering. “For me?”

The Chihuahua, mute with awe, wagged his tail once.

Blacktail snapped up the tiny morsel. It could be considered meat only by the dimmest, most abstract stretch of the definition. But when he looked in the little dog’s soul, he could see that this pathetic bit of food was the best that he could offer, the best that he could imagine to offer, and that he gave it with an open heart. “A fine meal,” Blacktail said. “Very fine. Tell me, little one, how are you called?”

“I…I…am Nugget,” the little dog whispered.

“I am Blacktail.”

The dog wagged his tail by way of answer—the most he could manage—then lay on his side in the road and spread his legs wide, offering his scent. Blacktail bent his head and sniffed the creature’s belly.

The scent of him nearly broke Blacktail’s heart. The dog’s bloodline was twisted in on itself like a knot of ancient roots. In their subjugation, mothers had been bred to sons, fathers to daughters, brother to sister, for so many generations that there was more poison in his veins than blood. Nugget’s mind was a blasted landscape of idiocy and terror, the memory of pride buried so deep that it surfaced only in his most secret fantasies. Not that his bloodline mattered—Nugget’s genitals had been cut from him when he was still a puppy, the scar now white and faded beneath a fine mist of fur.

In the moonlight, Blacktail’s eyes flashed.

He bent again, deeper this time, burying his nose in Nugget’s belly, then deeper, first through his flesh, then his guts, finally into the clear blue flame of faith that had called him out to Blacktail’s path with an offering in his mouth. Blacktail reached out his tongue and kissed the sad little dog, only once, in the very heart of him. Something happened inside. Nugget called out, a soft, wondering sound that he had not made before, even in his deepest dreams.

When Blacktail drew back out of him, Nugget’s mind was clear for the first time in his life. A moment later he opened his eyes and looked down at his genitals, which were now whole and healthy. He tilted his head back and looked up at Blacktail, massive and silent under the moon. The dog’s eyes were wide, yes, and confused, but not nearly so dull as they had been only a few breaths before.

“Your children will be hunters,” Blacktail said quietly. He pulled off the sweater and spat it to the side. When he saw that Nugget understood, he raised his head and scented the night air.

“Where is it?” he asked them.

“That way, lord,” answered a slave dog. “It is not far.”

ii

The animals would not come close to this place; it stank of death and of the piss you make only in the deepest terrors. He had passed the last of the pilgrims a shortrun ago. Now he walked alone and unwatched.