Page 20 of Blacktail

“Back so soon?” she said. Her tone was cool. His heart fell for a moment. Then he noticed that her tail was swishing back and forth fast enough to create a breeze.

“I, er, brought you something,” he said gruffly.

“Oh?” She sniffed the rabbit. “Thanks, but I just ate.” She indicated the bowl of food-rocks beside her sleeping hole.

He poked his nose in the bowl, gave it a sniff, and stifled a gag. How can she eat that stuff? When he looked up, Renren’s eyes were fixed on the rabbit and a thick runner of drool hung from the side of her mouth.

“Well, if you don’t want it…” he said.

“No! That is, I, ah…Oh, give me that.” She shouldered him aside and snapped up the rabbit. “Not bad,” she allowed. “A bit crunchy”—here she snapped a leg bone—“but a good flavor.” She chewed the haunch, her eyes widening when its juices slipped down her throat. “Honestly, it’s better than good.” Then, grudgingly, “Thank you. You caught it yourself?”

“I did.”

“Do you hunter types always eat so well?”

“Well…the winters can get a little lean,” he admitted, “but mostly I do well enough. If you like that, you should taste the deer. Unbelievable.” He nuzzled her belly, sniffing playfully, and she giggled.

“Renren?”

“Yes?”

“Your scent seems different tonight. It is…more complex. Richer.”

“Is it?” She smiled. “I thought it might be my imagination. My mum said it usually takes longer.”

“Said what usually takes longer?”

“You really don’t know?”

He only looked at her, clearly baffled.

“I’m pregnant. In a few moons’ time little dogs will crawl out of me, as with my mother, and hers before.”

He blinked. “You’re making that up.”

She laughed. “No, not at all. This is how it is done, or so I am told. You are a father now, Blacktail.”

“What, me?” He thought about it for a moment, then wagged his tail. “Puppies, you say?”

“This pleases you?”

“Yes, it pleases me. Yes. Very much.”

“Then come to me,” she said, and presented herself to him again.

In this manner they passed the evenings of the autumn together. Most nights Blacktail brought her a mouse or a possum or a squirrel, and told her about life on his hill. Perhaps, he suggested, she might come to visit him there? She might find it to her liking. It was, he sometimes opined, a decent place to raise a family.

Renren always objected, saying that she could not climb the wall, or that she would be cold in winter, or it was an awfully long way to walk. But they both knew the real reason was that she had spent her whole life as a slave, and the world beyond the wall frightened her.

One afternoon, as Renren lay waiting for Blacktail in her garden, a squirrel ventured down from his tree to gather fruit. The fact that they were old acquaintances—his name was Fatcheeks—and he had often been her only companion did not, in Renren’s mind, relieve her of her fundamental duty to attempt to eat him when the opportunity presented itself. So she pretended to nap, and when he was close enough, she bounded after him.

There was never any real chance of catching him—if nothing else, she was by now very pregnant. But Fatcheeks was polite enough to run away as if truly frightened, and Renren bounded after him, her ears flopping in the breeze. It was a good game—until her chain snapped her back.

Suddenly and without warning, she was furious. Is this what you want for your puppies? she asked herself. Life on a chain? Afraid to go out into the world because they have known no other way? She turned and snapped at her chain, gnawing at it until her gums bled. You are contemptible, she thought. You deserve to be a slave.

Fatcheeks watched her from a safe distance, confused and, touchingly, a little worried.

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