Page 96 of Blacktail

There were many gates between him and the monkey’s voice—some wood, some metal, some a tough, thick substance that was clear like water but strong as metal in his jaws. He ripped them away each in their turn, tossing them about like living prey. There was no effort to this; he was awakened from his long dream. Nothing might stand against him. But the gates were things of men. He needed to give voice to his rage.

When he stood before the final gate he paused a moment, breathed, made an effort to calm himself. The wards on the gate were not as strong as those he had already passed through. He lifted it away with not much clatter. Inside, a small pack was caged.

His eye went first to the monkey. Only a few clumps of fur remained on his skeletal body. He sat hugging himself, trembling with fever. Blacktail sniffed him and knew that he still dreamed of the jungle sometimes, the moist scent it had at sunrise and the taste of fresh fruit. But the monkey had been caged here so long that he had come to suspect that such places existed only in his imagination, come to believe that in all of creation the only real thing was this hell.

Beneath the monkey was a white cat, her face crisscrossed with the shadows of her cage, her eyes flashing and gold. She stared hard at him, blinked twice as if to clear her head, then buried her face in her paws. She would not look up again.

Off to her right, a dog called out from some drugged hell akin to sleep. Blacktail padded over and saw her in the cage—she was a Doberman pinscher, large and fair of face. Her belly was white with new stretch marks, and the sight of that, more than anything, filled him with fury. Wherever her puppies are, Blacktail thought, it is not here.

Her paws twitched as she slept. Blacktail furrowed his brow, then knelt and joined her in her dream.

—

Joy-Hop Was the Name Her Mother had given her, but it was long and long since she felt joy, and there was no room to hop in her cage. She had dim memories of playing with her brothers and sisters in a green field, but she had been in this place so long that she no longer remembered their names.

Every night Joy-Hop had the same dream, this dream. In her dream she was in hell, and hell was a place of cages. Here and there the two-legs danced in the air. Their madness had freed them from gravity. They fluttered through the sky like autumn leaves. Over it all hung a snot-yellow skull—a dog skull, or perhaps a wolf’s. It hung low in the sky, gazing down on them, glowing pale and phlegmy. It was the closest thing to a sun that this place knew.

A long acquaintance of men had convinced Joy-Hop that they were not so deaf as they seemed, not all of them at least. Deep in their hearts, they remembered the truth of life, understood the language of her screams, knew what it was that they did. She had learned little of life in her cage, but that much she was sure of. She had seen it in their eyes.

“We will cut you, Joy-Hop,” a man said, flying by her like a bird, its metal fangs flashing as it spoke. Joy-Hop moaned, for she knew what came next.

In the moonlight outside the dream, Blacktail moaned with her.

“When the cutting is done, you will be burned,” it said with horrible good cheer. “When the burning is done, we will infect you with the blood curse, and you will drown in your own snot. Here!” it continued, poking her eye with a sharp stick. “Call out if you like. It makes no difference. We will carry your Leaper to the death box, the cage no one ever leaves. We will drown him there, and when he comes out, his fur will stink of poison. You may watch that as well, if you like, watch it now and forevermore. You will see it again, I think, each time you close your eyes. You will—

“Enough!” Blacktail barked, perhaps louder than he had intended, for Joy-Hop started in her cage. He had moved closer to her as they dreamed together. Their eyes were only inches apart.

“Get out while you still can,” Joy-Hop whispered. “This is hell’s blackest pit.”

“Yes, begone,” said the monkey. “The two-legs prowl here always, even at night.”

“Are you all blind as well as foolish?” asked the white cat from beneath her paws. “Hide your eyes before he turns your paws into little mice, and they run away and hide from you in the walls—Oooh.” In her terror she was trembling so hard that her cage door rattled. “That one is—”

“I am called Blacktail,” he said, cutting the cat off. “None of you have anything to fear from me.”

“And the two-legs?” the monkey asked softly, his voice trembling. “What of them?”

“I have killed those ones,” Blacktail rumbled. His eyes flashed in the darkness. “Just as I will kill the rest when the time is right. There is nothing to fear from them, either. Not anymore.” He paused, then went and stood before the cat.

“You, cat. Look at me.”

Slowly the cat unburied her head and opened one eye.

“How are you called?”

“I am Silence,” she said softly.

He gripped the white cat’s cage in his jaws and ripped it away. “Come out, Silence,” Blacktail said. “Your time in this place is ended.”

Silence opened her other eye and looked up at the wolf. She stood looking down at the floor, but would not jump.

“Go on,” Blacktail said.

Silence leapt down, and, finding herself out of the cage she thought to die in, made a little mewling sound. She stood on her hind legs and stretched up to Blacktail. He bent his head. The little cat licked his jaw, just once.

One by one, Blacktail went through the den, ripping off the walls of the cages and freeing each of the creatures in their turn. When he came to Joy-Hop, he looked at her for a moment with tilted head, and scented her deeply. “Look at me,” he commanded.

The dog slowly lifted her head.