The Second Book of the Dun Cow: Lamentations Read Free Page A

your transgression. A Dog will forgive you.”
    “I have confessed!”
    “Oh, Chauntecleer, he knew he had to go down. Don’t you understand? There never was a question about who must make the sacrifice. Leader or not, it just wasn’t your place to go. You had killed the Cockatrice. That was yours. But Wyrm’s eye was Mundo Cani’s. With neither fear nor hesitation, he knew what was required of him. He accepted his destiny. His last act was not your deepest transgression. If you keep swaddling yourself in the guilt of your lesser transgression, you deny the greater. Penance for what, Chauntecleer? Say it.”
    “Oh, Pertelote, stop.”
    “Say it!”
    “I can’t.”
    “But you know it?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then say it.”
    Chauntecleer could say it in a hole, perhaps. But to speak the thing to his wife? To risk judgment and the loss of her love—?
    Chauntecleer said, “I despised him.”
    “You despised him even while he was making ready to save us all.”
    “I cursed him as a traitor.”
    “You did.”
    “I did.”
    “Thank you. God bless you, my husband. Saying so is the beginning of a new life. And saying so to Mundo Cani himself will be the ending of the old.”
    Side by side in the clear, star-sandy night, feeling breezes blowing hither from the sea, they sat on the limb of the maple in silence, the Hen placidly, the Rooster miserably.
    Pertelote touched his shoulder.
    He shivered.
    “Chauntecleer?” she said.
    He knew no other word to say. He said nothing.
    Pertelote said, “I love you.”
    “Ahhhhhh.”
    Shortly before the morning broke, something began to tug at Chauntecleer’s mind. Something Pertelote had said, but which must, it seemed to him, be impossible.
    “Whoa! You said I should confess the thing to Mundo Cani? Pertelote! Mundo Cani is shut underneath the earth!”
    “He was that. The Netherworld Scar is a fearsome closing.”
    “The Dog is dead.”
    “You know this for a fact? What if he is alive? What if he is a living, clawing cur in the flesh of mighty Wyrm? What then? He had a nose for intuition. Only the bravest,” she said, “can go to him and see him again. Perhaps it will be you, my Lord.” She increased the volume of her voice and sang out: “I doubt that a Weasel has the stuff of bravery.”
    “What?” A little word burped in a stinking burrow.
    “Because a Weasel has given up.”
    “What?”
    “The Weasel has buried himself in his own little hidey hole, which is about as deep as a Weasel can go, nothing as deep as the tunnel that can lead bravery into the dungeons where Wyrm hides.”
    “What? What?”
    “No more adventures for a Weasel with half a head—”
    And now a clamoring bubbled out of the burrow: “Double-u’s, they isn’t Double-u’s on account of their ears! John mourns a Mouse, you cut-cackle! But John can find tunnels better’n any Roster can. Ha! And ha, ha!”
    “Because Mundo Cani was never anything to a Weasel but a carriage to carry him about. No friendship—”
    “Ha, ha, ha!” cried John Wesley. “What does a Hen think about that?”
    Chauntecleer ruffled his feather and let out a crow, “One more ‘Ha,’ John, and I’ll have your last ear for my pocketbook!”
    Dawn glowed on the horizon. Hens began to wake.
    “A Double-u, he’s a Dog’s friend too. Is more love in a Weasel than in a Rooster!” John popped up and stood erect beside his burrow.
    Chauntecleer leaned dangerously forward to spit his opinions at the Weasel. “You lost no love for him when he saved you!” thundered the Rooster. “I didn’t hear a Thank you then!”
    John spun in circles, so mad was he. “Speaks a Rooster, ha! A Rooster what was in a Dog’s mouth too. Ha, ha, to you, Rooster. Is Double-u’s what digs, but Roosters only flutter-gut about. Thinks a Rooster, he can find the Netherworld without a digger to dig?”
    “Just wait, you slow mope. I’ll find the tunnel before you scratch a grass-root!”
    “Ha!”
    As it happened then, at sunrise