The Third Book of the Dun Cow: Peace at the Last by Walter Wangerin Jr. Read Free Book Online Page A

bubbles. They pulled themselves out of themselves. Green, tender bodies emerged and stood up on the dead exoskeleton. They began to vibrate their packs of untried wings. The wings unfolded, transparent and veined. The veins contained a green blood, and the blood stiffened the Cicadas’ cellophane wings.
    Ree-err, they sang. Ree-err, ree-err, they announced themselves to the world. The volume of their song increased until it became a buzz saw chorus so loud that the forest itself seemed to have given voice to destiny.
    “Demon-screams! Look out for me, you crackerjacks!” screamed Jasper. “I’m the pecker who’s going to peck the poo out of you!”
    She drove her beak at one dumdum Cicada, breaking the network of veins in his wing. The blood wept down inside the cellophane sack until it became an emerald jewel in the bottom.
    Jasper gave no heed to beauty. She ripped the wing and drank the drop and smiled. “Tasty.”
    She swallowed the Cicada whole.
    Then she gorged herself on Cicadas, glad for the food, gladder for the slaughter.
    Since then the fat Hen has been feeding on Ants and Caterpillars and baby Snakes and the eggs of small Birds.
    In the false dawn of the morning, the Hens begin to raise an anguished cackling. They scratch savagely at their necks and shoulders. At the same time the Doe De La Coeur scrambles to her feet and drives her flank across the harsh bark of a walnut tree. The Brothers Mice and both the Cobbs burrow down as fast as they can throw dirt. The Otters dash for water.
    John Wesley Weasel leaps and twirls as if to escape his own hide. He is suffering sharp stings in the skin of his bunghole. Stings in his earholes, stings on his eyeballs. Even blinking can’t wash them away.
    Sunrise reveals huge, dark clouds of Black Flies.
    Can’t beat a cloud with a stick. Can’t threaten it. Can’t spit at it—beg, bargain, or run from it. And since every Animal is afflicted, no one can help the other one.
    All day long the poor Creatures roll on the ground, run in circles, dash into the stream, whimper, chitter, yip, bark, weep, and moan most wretchedly.
    Night falls. Pertelote perches in a gum tree above her poor band of Animals. Her spirit breaks. Hearing their muted, restless wailings, the Hen suffers their distress more than she suffers the stings beneath her feathers. The stars themselves look like stings in the sky, and the moon is a welt.
    Suddenly Pertelote hears a series of infinitesimal beeps and swift pingings beyond the gum tree. Something—some one —is striking through the night. It whirls up, and she’s able to see a winged somebody blotting out small clutches of stars. Down it careers again, a quick shadow, a Creature the size of a Mouse—flying! It flits past her. Light wings shiver the air. A fan of slender bones gives the wings their spread. Quick as a windblown leaf the Creature corners, dodges, swoops—and Pertelote comes to the conviction that he works with a purpose.
    Indeed! He’s catching Black Flies!—and these so fast he seems to be carving holes through their dark cloud!
    In a wink he flits to the gum, snatches a twig on Pertelote’s branch, and hangs by his hind claws upside down.
    “Harassed?” he twitters.
    Pertelote says, “Who are you?”
    “Bat,” he answers.
    The Hen loops her neck in order to get a close look at him. His snout is pushed back into his face. He has wrapped his hairless, leathery wings around himself so that he looks like a package wrapped.
    “Bat,” he says, “1052 of the Bats Multitudinous. Here to ease discomfort.”
    All at once Bat 1052 drops and returns to business.
    Whoa! Suddenly here is a fusillade of small shadows, beeping and pinging after Black Flies. The entire company of the Bats Multitudinous has arrived. They whiz the crowded air, picking and eating Flies, one hundred in a single plunge, yet never so much as bumping into one another or hitting an obstacle. Wizards of the air!
    Oh, what a wonderful sunrise follows! Not a