Page 98 of Blacktail

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When he dreamed of the night his mother died, Doctor dreamed of Snow.

You might think it a trifle callous for him to sleep while his mother lay dying in the next room. Perhaps it was. But for this, at least, he might be forgiven. Hospitals were full. The blood curse had taken his wife the previous day. On the day before that, it was his son. The day before that, it was his daughter. He was not dying himself, not yet, but he had been days without sleep. He moved in a nightmarish haze of fever and loss that few outside things could penetrate.

There was one thing, though, that his mind returned to often. On the night their last child died, he looked into his wife’s eyes. He thought the look he saw there would be with him if he lived for a thousand years. The fact of it was bad enough, but worse still was that the look was familiar, somehow, though he could not imagine where he might have seen such terrible loss before. He worried on this for a time, but his memory never cleared, and the next day she was dead as well. He decided then that the memory could not be important, and thought no more on it.

He had made no connection between the bite wound on his hand and the spreading plague. Perhaps this was willful. Even so, the God of Reason would likely not have faulted him for it. The blood curse he had cultivated in his research animals was a tame thing. It killed very few. It had not grown fierce until it tasted the blood of the Forest God. It had not become almighty until it mated with the disease the witch-cat of Mercy had cursed him with. It had not become unstoppable until Doctor took his bleeding, infected hand and lay it upon his children, who carried it out into the world.

Now, in his grief, Doctor slept alone in the empty den of his mate and children, whom he had been unable to protect. In his dream he was trapped in an endless blizzard that had sprung from nowhere. He wandered alone and naked on a great plain. The place of safety and warmth was far behind him, lost in the storm. Somewhere his children screamed out in terror and pain. He could not help them or even himself. He wandered aimless and lost, his feet freezing in the snow, then feeling nothing, then feeling a seductive warmth that was somehow the worst of all.

Near the dream’s end, he came to the edge of a forest. He stopped there, too afraid to enter. After a little time three shapes appeared to him out of the trees. The first was a little fox—a male, Doctor noticed with his practiced eye, young and wild. Beside him walked another fox, this one older and female. In the manner of dreams he knew them to be mother and son.

He opened his mouth to say something, What is this place? perhaps, or How can I find my way back? But then something else walked up between them, something like a wolf, but huge, impossibly huge. It loomed over them all; it was above the mountains, perhaps above the sky itself.

The wolf carried something in its jaws. Doctor did not want to see what it was, but he could not look away. The wolf walked closer and he saw that it carried a person, closer again and he saw it was a woman, closer still and Doctor saw that it was his own mother, whom he loved above all others. She was plagued and sickly now, just as he had last seen her.

As Doctor watched, the great wolf dropped his mother facedown between the two foxes, her arms flopping limp and raising a small puff of snow. The wolf bared his teeth, dipped his head to the base of her neck. He peeled all the flesh from her back in a single bloody sheet. “For you, Snow, who was the mother of Slipper,” he said, laying it before her like a quilt. “God remembers you. Sleep on this tonight, that it may protect you from the chill of the ground. This one dies in your name.” The wolf turned back to Doctor. “The rest die in Mine.”

Doctor tried to scream, but his throat would make no sound. One by one, the three of them turned and disappeared into the forest—first the god-wolf, then the old mother fox, and finally the son of Snow.

Doctor woke screaming and knew that his mother was dead in the next room. Before the next night, so was he. Before the moon came full again, so were all that he knew, and all that they knew, and so unto the ends of the earth. The age of man’s dominion over the birds of the air and the beasts of the field ended with his scream.

Of all the teeming multitudes of men plaguing the earth when Blacktail first set out on his journey, only a tiny few survived to see the following spring. It is perhaps no coincidence that those included only those few who lived closely with beasts, who loved them well and were well-loved in turn. Perhaps they drew some immunity from close contact with their charges, or perhaps the Forest God saw something in them worthy of mercy. Even in those few, the blood curse burned away both reason and the poisoned words that supported it. They fell back into the true language and rejoined the hunt, now armed only with their bodies and such spirit as they could muster in themselves.

The long winter was over.

Chapter 9

The Far Hill

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Few animals can outpace a hunting pack, whether they be wolf or, as in this case, half-breed dog. The eye of the hunter is drawn first to the sick and the lame, but when need be, packs can run an animal until it grows lame or simply too tired to go on. Wolves call this “running winter into summer,” for the way the air grows hot in the prey’s chest. After the two-legs died off, dog packs took up saying it as well, which irritated the wolves mightily.

The Old Kitty Mother was borrowing strength from her cougars, but she thought it wouldn’t be much longer until there was none left to borrow. The pack had been close at their heels since midmorning. Now it was nearly twilight. The dogs were starving, and she thought they would run her all night if necessary. Food was becoming scarce. Not long ago, the desert in these parts was thick with bunnies and other prey, but no more. In the seasons that had passed since the end of men, many packs had splintered, and bred, and splintered again. The red wolves had spread out and covered the desert. In the north the last mountain kings were coming down from their hills.

As recently as last summer, the Old Kitty Mother had traveled here and felt no threat. But this time, eyes watched her from every mesa, and the night air was thick with howls. If she had been in the land of cougars or even set upon by one of the older wolf kings, there would be no danger. But these children did not know her by deed or reputation. Their ignorance made them capable of anything.

Now that she thought about it, that was pretty much what had killed off men. She looked back over her shoulder a final time. The pack had not relented.

“Hold,” she said to Anki and Enki.

They slowed and stopped beside a rusting metal hulk. Car had died with its master, it seemed, though its body was slower to decay.

“Mother, I think there are cliffs beyond the next hill,” Anki panted. “You might be safe upon them.”

“We can hold off many of them,” Enki agreed. “It is the best way.”

“Many of them, but not all?” she asked. She knew the answer, but it was best to force them to say it out loud.

“Mother…I am sorry, Mother, but they are too many. No. Not all.”

“Then I will stand here,” she said. “You are brave, but I have been through too much to pass my final hours hiding. Besides, not all of a fight is tooth and claw.”

“Will you make a spell, then?” Anki asked. He displayed no fear, other than the bare fact of the question.

“No,” she said. Just the thought of it made her cold. “Not this time.” With that, she settled down on her haunches to wait.