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

Pertelote spread her wings and sailed down calling her sister Hens to follow—while the adversaries held lively conversation with one another, pointing out the absurdities in each other’s characters, and promising mighty promises, each to be fulfilled at an early date.
    But the sounds of their bombastic chatter was music in Pertelote’s ears. She had been successful. Such contention was good after all. A Weasel and a Rooster were doing what they had always done, and order was restored.

HERE BEGINS THE BOOK OF LAMENTATIONS

PART ONE
PART ONE
Russel, the Fox of Good Sense

[One] In which the Fox Strives to Talk
[One] In which the Fox Strives to Talk
    Russel had fought as bravely as any other Creature in the battle against Wyrm and all his evil Basilisks. Serpents were the Basilisks, three feet long, as black as licorice, thick and dimpled when they writhed. They crawled the ground like little kings with their heads raised up on the loops of their necks. Their eyes were fiery and their flesh moist with poisons. Russel had dashed among them, cutting sharp corners with the snap of his bushy tail, talking, talking, challenging the enemies with a babble of well-constructed sentences. The Fox had rolled in the oils of the rue plant whose stench caused the Basilisks to tighten into helpless balls.
    “I route, not to say route you by the tens and the twenties, for I am clever and hearty and vulpine, am I!”
    But then he bit a fat Basilisk. His canaines burst the serpent, and the serpent wrapped itself round the Fox’s snout, and though the Fox dispatched it altogether, its poisons burned him, mouth and tongue and lips and his pointy nose back to the eyeballs—and that was that for Russel’s hostilities.
    He rubbed his snout with the joints in his forepaws, but only succeeded in smearing the poisons deeper and deeper into his fur, down to the flesh, and then it was that all the flesh of his face stung and, because of his furious rubbing, began to bleed.
    “No pity,” Russel managed to say. “No cause to pity a Fox, because his wounds, O dear Lord Chauntecleer, they are the wounds of his own folly.” Blood scored the gaps between the Fox’s teeth. But he could not stop talking. His words sprayed mists of blood. His sentences stretched and wracked his lips. But his love of talk was greater than his pain. For Russel, to talk was to be alive—was to be. By talk he had taught tricks to Pertelote’s three little Chicks. By talk he had instructed Mice in the ways of Coop-life. Russel was ever a charming orator.
    “Fight on,” he called to the warrior Creatures of the Coop. “Glorify the day, and triumph by the moonlight!”
    Then, when the war had indeed been won, the beautiful Hen Pertelote found the Fox lying inert in the grass, his jaws and his mouth and his muzzle swollen and hardening. Puss and a watery blood seeped through the scabs.
    “Russel,” Pertelote said with genuine compassion. “What did they do to you?”
    The Fox rolled his eyes up to the Hen. He said, “Umph,” and “Pumffel.”
    “Don’t talk,” she said. “I’ll get some salve for—“
    Russel said, “No pity, not to say pity, for a Fox who lost good sense.”
    When he spoke the scabs cracked and the blood gushed.
    “Please!” Pertelote begged, wiping the blood with her white wings. “Don’t talk! You’ll infect yourself.”
    “All is well,” Russel said. “Everything is well. The victory, why, the victory—“
    Chauntecleer crowed, “Shut up, you idiot! What’s the matter with you?” He leaped into the air, beat his wings, and alighted directly in front of Russel’s nose. “Do you want to die?”
    “But, you see, if I can’t talk, well, that‘s a sort of dying.”
    Chauntecleer took the Fox’s jaws between his talons and shut them in an iron grip.
    By the second week of his convalescence Russel wore a carapace from his eyes to the tip of his nose. “Mmmm!” he mewed, his eyes like boiled eggs. “Mmm. Sss,” and