Page 49 of Blacktail

The man swallowed what he was chewing. He glanced at Blacktail, smiled, but said nothing.

With some effort, Blacktail stood. With some doubt—am I really going to do this?—he limped around the body to the two-legs. He made the greeting of equals. First he sniffed the man’s hindquarters, then turned and presented his own. But the man did not sniff. After a moment Blacktail turned back, not understanding.

Small waters were leaking from the man’s eyes, which struck Blacktail as odd. “My Lord Hunter honors me. Never such honor have had I. But I cannot,” he said. “I am…am…deaf in my nose. Scent-blind.”

“Oh?” Blacktail rumbled. “I am sorry. To be this way is a terrible thing.”

“Perhaps,” the two-legs said. It smiled then, in a way that made Blacktail feel cold. “But many terrible things am I.”

“Is that why you kill your own kind? Why you remember the true language? Did being scent-blind make you crazy? Something like that?”

“No. All our noses are this way.”

“All of you?”

The man wagged his head up and down.

“That explains quite a bit,” Blacktail said. “Why, then? Surely not all two-legs eat their own kind?

“No, in that way I am strange.” He struggled to find words. “Do wolves have crazy-from-being-alone?”

“We do,” Blacktail said. He did not think he himself was crazy-from-being-alone—not yet, anyway—but it had occurred to him more than once that he might get that way if the Forest God didn’t turn up soon. “Yes, we have that.”

The man wagged his head up and down. “That’s me. Crazy-from-being-alone.”

“When a wolf becomes this way, he is shunned. Cast out.”

“The same with us. I must hide what I am. Hide what I do. Hide the dead.”

Blacktail’s ears perked up. “Oh? Why hide them?” he asked.

“Eh?” the Hider said. “Oh. If they find them, find these dead ones, much fury. Then I am hunted.”

“Yes,” Blacktail said. “I’ve some experience in that. But if they are not found, there will be no hunt?”

“Maybe some. But small.”

“And if they catch you?” Blacktail asked, honestly curious.

“When they catch, they kill me. Maybe some time in a cage first, but they kill.” He smiled. “But first they must catch.”

Blacktail swished his tail in acknowledgment. “Perhaps we have more in common than you think.” He paused, weighing courtesy against curiosity, then decided it couldn’t hurt to ask. “Tell me, if you will—how did you come to be this way? To speak the language of the hunt?”

“God teach me. I learn from God.”

Blacktail’s ears perked up. “You’ve spoken to the Forest God? He’s awake?”

“No. My god is not the Forest God. He is below that one. But my god faithful to the hunt, to Him, just as we are.”

“I see,” Blacktail said. “I had not heard of such. I thought only the Forest God remained, that the god of men had destroyed all the others.”

“Most, I think. Not all. Not my god. My god is of the lost things.” He smiled again. “Not such a big god, maybe. But when the god of men move to strike down the old ones, my god not can be found.”

“Interesting.” Blacktail thought on this for a moment. “If you don’t mind my asking, how did you find him? Or ‘Him,’ rather—no disrespect, you understand. I myself have some interest in finding lost gods.”

“Me?” The man laughed. “I not find,” he said. “No one find Him. No one find me. He come to me because I am of Him. Because I am lost, you see.”

“I don’t understand.”