Page 102 of Blacktail

She awoke before dawn to find the dog king standing over her, with his guards all around.

“Got your appetite back, did you?” she asked him with a yawn.

“No,” he said, his voice strange and ghostly. “Not appetite.”

“No? What, then?”

“I have a message for you.”

“Ah,” she said. “A message. I am eager to hear it, though perhaps not just this moment. Open your mouth, would you? I will be in your belly, freshening up. You may whisper the message to me when I emerge from the other end.”

“I will not eat you,” the king said. “Nothing could make me do that.”

The Old Kitty Mother looked inside him. She saw to her dismay that what he said was true. To bind another to your will, there must be some small part of him that wishes to do as you bid of his own accord. In most minds there are many conflicting desires, and this is easily accomplished. But the Old Kitty Mother saw that Chester’s image of her had changed in the night from a perfectly serviceable terror into something like religious awe, interesting but useless.

“Very well,” she said. “If not you, then another. I’ll be on my—”

“The God of the Hunt came to me as I slept,” the king said quietly. “He spoke your name, Night Dancer. Will you not hear what he has to say?”

At the sound of her name—which she had never spoken to anyone still living—the Old Kitty Mother’s curse woke yet again. “Very well,” she said, sighing. “Very well.”

The old dog was quiet for a long time before he spoke. The pack around him was silent and respectful, despite his age. His deeds must be fierce beyond telling, to command such respect in the young, she thought. The touch of God is on him indeed.

“I saw Him in his fury once,” Chester said at length. “I have never spoken of it.”

“If you had seen him in his full fury, you would not have lived,” the Old Kitty Mother answered.

“No. Probably not. But even the little I saw was enough,” he said. “It is easy to be a coward when you know no other way. But for those who knew Him when He walked among us…there are burdens.”

“Indeed.” She was a little interested in spite of herself.

“Blacktail was my friend, you know. I can’t imagine why, but he really was. He was the best friend I ever had. I miss him sometimes.” He paused. “Most times, actually.” Seeing how she looked at him, the king added quickly, “Oh, I know how presumptuous that sounds. I understand what he really was—well, not entirely, but I know more than most. Even before the plague came, I knew he would deliver us somehow. I knew he was more than a wolf.”

“Oh, but he wasn’t,” the Old Kitty Mother said.

“What do you mean?”

“It didn’t have to be him, you know,” the Old Kitty Mother said. “In the beginning he was nothing more than a wolf. Truly, nothing more. All that happened after and before flowed from him and him alone. It might have been any of us. It might very easily have been no one at all.”

“What? I thought you had made a spell, or—”

“Ha!” she said. “What, me? No. Were I capable of such a magic, why did I not do it long ago? No. I did nothing more than point Blacktail on his way. In truth, even that was not so much a spell as guesswork.”

“How, then?”

She swished her tail, then spoke the central lesson of her life for the thousandth time. “The secret,” she said, “is that there is no secret. The Forest God—or courage, if you prefer—sleeps in all places, all hearts. Some, I grant you, more so than others, but each of us must find Him all on our own. In truth, I think anyone might have done what he did. When I was young, I was certain that the tiger Nobununga would…Well, I was wrong. There were others after that. A shark that showed promise. Even a rat, once.”

“A rat? Really?”

“Oh yes. What is the might of a tiger against gunshots? When Nobununga failed, I realized that I needed to look elsewhere. To search not for teeth or claws, but rather heart.”

“I see,” Chester said, though he did not.

“All that was very long ago. Longer than you would believe. As the ages stretched out and men killed the hunt in the world, it seemed to me that they also killed it in the souls of beasts. I had almost—No, not almost. I had given up hope. Then came Blacktail, and we were delivered.” She paused. “He was a wolf, Chester. A half-breed wolf. He was fathered by a mongrel dog he never met, a mongrel dog that may not even exist anymore, may never have existed. He was nothing more than that, which meant that it was possible for Him to become everything.”

“I do not—” the king began.

“Of course you don’t. I don’t entirely understand it myself. But he never knew the name of his father. Don’t you see? Because he never knew it—because no one ever knew it—his thoughts and expectations and possibilities were never bound by that knowledge. From such a beginning all things are possible. And to find such rare possibility, together with such a hunter’s heart…well. I might have waited a thousand lifetimes and never seen it. It was phenomenally unlikely, to say the least. No. More than that. It was—”