October 22, 1868. Morning.
Phillips Harbour.
Miss Pau kept Yotee waiting a little over an hour the night before, until she returned with a map for Randall and -- more importantly! -- a generous amount of food for the coyote. He gave the map to Randall, practically intact, and the man looked happy to get it.
He slept in the kitchen beside the stove until wakening in the wee hours of the morning, feeling cold despite the heat of the stove. Then he padded into Randall's book-filled room and pulled Mother down from her shelf and curled up around her to go back to sleep. He dreamed then, of thundering horse's hooves going by, but Mother kept him safe and comfortable.
When Yotee awoke again, it was an hour or so after dawn. He felt well-rested, well-fed, and in good spirits as he rose and went outside. He was ready for anything.
Almsot anything, anyway.
Outside, the air smelled faintly of smoke, and a pall hung in the sky to the east. But to the north, the sky was clear and bright, the morning as windy as yesterday and the weather perhaps a little colder. It's not warm and inviting the way Mother is. But who wants to be safe all the time?
The coyote stands for a moment, squinting into the wind, his fur tusseled. His pelt twitches beneath the cold carress. He turns away decisively, as if to say he's had just about enough of that, and heads for the woods. Randall had imparted a good description of how to find St. John's lair, complete with landmarks and appearance though lacking in the all important scent cues, though still enough for it to be found. If the coyote wants to, that is.
Before long, the coyote is past the fields and narrow stands of the human world, and into the thick woods of the old forest. The bright sunlight of the day makes the shadows here even starker; black lines painted thick on a carpet of dry, rustling leaves. Much of the foliage hasn't fallen yet; many of the trees remain brightly dressed in crimson, orange, and gold. The Fall cannot be far off.
Doubts crowd around him, following on the shadows cast by the trees. He's not entirely sure he wants to find her. The stately boles tower above, reminding him of his mortality. To them, he is more like a leaf, mobile, transitory, passing. A brief presence that is soon gone. How can a small varment speak to their venerable wisdom? How can his experience can compare with their distillation of the ages, their lignified vigilance in this place. He is a passing mote, one that will soon be gone.
The exact method of that departure is what concerns the coyote, and his thoughts come as quickly as his feet. She's as big a bear, she could swallow me in one gulp! Oh, that might not kill immediately. I'm not sure I'd enjoy that trip. It'd be like squirming into a collapsing burrow.
This thought is immediately followed by a vision where she doesn't swallow in one bite: A huge maw, with steely teeth like a bear-trap, snapping shut across his mid-section. First head-first, then tail-first, both previsions showing half-a-coyote remaining after the deadly chomp, spilling entrails and twitching on the ground. Faster... but not better. I don't think that lesson would be fun.
He is briefly fixated by her teeth, which having never been seen, are accorded tremendous size and sharpness. Images of a canine tooth, piercing his skull, fill his mind. His ears twitch, he can almost hear the crunch. It would be just like the leaves compressing beneath his paws. Those teeth would be equally unforgiving on other parts of his body. His legs would be broken like twigs, his ribs... well they'd break like ribs, and no substance of him would be improved by having something that massive shoved through. He yips in self-sympathy, a twitch coursing body as he reluctantly proceeds.
These woods are familiar; he can hear the muffled trickling of a stream, not far away. He rescued a flower from these dark shadows once, but there are no flowers blooming here now.
Maybe I could get away with just losing a leg. Hopefully nothing else with that leg, such as his tail or nose. Yotee tries to decide which leg he could do with the least. A front one, or a back one, the left or the right. In case you don't make it out with me legs, I want you to know, you've been great and I'll really miss you.
Of course, he could lose all his legs, at which point getting away would be more like wriggling away. He'd be like some great, furry slug, sliding along on a cushion of ichor. That's not a cheering visulization, it's funny at first but swiftly deviates to horrid. He stops, shudders, and tries to shake off the shroud.
I shouldn't worry. Her bite is so big I could wriggle out between her teeth. It seems plausible. She is pretty big, as big as a house! If need be he could crawl up inside her nose and wait for her to sleep or sneeze. It'd be like that fellow in that fish from that story... except ickier. He shakes again, trying to throw off imaginary muscus and looking around. Or maybe I'll be even luckier and she won't be home at all. Is this the right place?
As he moved through the woods, mind preoccupied with gloomy thoughts, his eyes marked the signs Randall mentioned: here, a boulder with a crooked tree growing from a split in its side. There, a pond choked by round green lily pads out of bloom. Now that he's gone past the pond and beneath the hedge of bushes, he realizes that St. John's den looks just as Randall described it: a moss-covered fallen tree softened and hollowed by decay lies against a burm. Vines and and draping mosses hang from the living trees nearby and crawl over the burm. A dark hole in the fallen tree is partly masked by a curtain of vines, but signs of passing feet are evident on the worn earth before the gap, where holes show in the ground cover from the passing of feet. In the area, Yotee's nose marks three distinct scents: one of a human woman, another -- faintly familiar -- of a hart. The last is strongest: a deep, musky odor, not quite she-wolf.
While he looks, a cloven white hoof drops before his nose. Well, a voice says, regal and familiar. We meet again.
Yipe! Startled, Yotee sits, and his eyes make the tortorous run from that hoof up the fetlock and leg, over the chest, along the neck to finish at the face of the stag. Hello! Your magnificence. I wasn't expecting you. Are you... safe here? He glances at the moss sheet and the darkness beyond.
I am not the one in danger. The stag's blue eyes glitter. Why are you here, Coyote?
I had a reason. The coyote can't think of it right now, but there was a purpose. His mind is unexpectedly blank. There was some good excuse for seeking out a wolf that could eat him, though it's been momentarily displaced by all the ways she might. Well, no reason to let on about that, I was looking for St. John.
From somewhere beyond that dark hole in the fallen log, Yotee's ears catch a faint sound. A snarl, perhaps -- but not a wolf's snarl. It's a very ... human sound.
The stag's ears flatten back. He lifts his forehoof and holds it in the air before the coyote. It occurs to Yotee that this hoof looks quite large, maybe as big as his own head. And why are you looking for this St. John? The stag sounds even shorter on patience this time than the first time they met.
Yotee's ears flick, swivelling towards the hole. His eyes are entirely occupied by the hoof. It's big, as big as his head, getting stepped on with it would probably hurt alot. Retreating back under the hedge is becoming a good idea. The visibility isn't great but the cover's not bad. Licking between those toes, now that would be bad. Yotee sniffs, inhaling scents, and answers. I was going to ask her not to eat me, then see how it went from there.
The white hart's scent is both old and fresh in this area; Yotee can tell by the air that the other animal has spent a lot of time here. The musky not-wolf scent is less recent; that third human smell seems a little fresher. She won't eat you. The stag's words aren't as reassuring as Yotee would have liked. Who knows where you are? He lowers his head to focus on the coyote, his antlers catching and bending the brush of the hedge.
Father sky, if he was watching between the leaves. Brother earthworm. Yotee crouches, getting closer to that brother and pushing back beneath the bush. Those antlers would likely hurt as much as giant teeth. Maybe the trees. I try not to let my whereabouts be known.
The hart draws back a pace. Another one of those little snarls emerges from the fallen tree, this time ending in a kind of whimper. The stag's ears swivel, flicking back. Will they miss you if you are gone, do you think, Coyote? What business do you have here?
No. An absence of a day or two would be unremarkable. A week or more would be seen as just a wide wandering. Longer would simply be mistaken as an extended capricious period, fitting a proven pattern. After years, the thought might occur that he hadn't been seen in a while, but the expectation would still be that he might turn up at any time. And all memories would have diminised to just the highpoints of his disruptions, leaving the feeling that it would be okay if that return delayed. Perhaps in some venerable decades hence, but certainly longer than the end of the month. They wouldn't. I came to see what I could see, and ask a question.
And your question? The hart has his head lowered; whether that's to bring his antlers to bear on the canine or merely to keep the low-lying Yotee in view is a matter of debate.
Yotee barks, Opener or Closer?
The hart responds to the bark with an involuntary jerk of his head and a step back. His hindquarters tense, and he brings his head down again. Opener. You?
Umm... Well he wasn't expecting that answer, nor the question to turn around so quickly. The duration of his non-response grows. Really? He yips again, expressing his surprise though it's more about having something to say as he twists underneath the bush and looks for someplace more substantial to bolt to. That makes no sense at all!
As he twists around beneath the brush, the stag charges with no further warning. Antlers tear through the undergrowth with surprising ease and catch beneath the coyote's stomach. The hart tosses his head back, lifting Yotee with the motion and hurling him across the clearing. The canine's body thumps with a meaty, crunching sound against a tree on the far side. Wrong answer. The stag crosses the clearing in pursuit.
Yotee learns what it feels like when his whole body screams, with some ribs and a leg rising above the chorus. Cracked, broken, he hovers at that thresehold beyond which there is no pain; not dead yet but hard pressed to go anywhere. Catch me tree, he begs, unsure even if he's fallen to the ground, hide me. The thundering hooves are not passing by this time and he struggles to accomplish... anything.
A human voice, querulous, penetrates the pain haze. "Alorn? What's going on out there?" A instant's hesitation in the thunder of hooves.
Then, Nothing, Sarah. A hoof smashes against Yotee's head. He hears a cracking, grinding sound unlike anything he's ever heard before. Then his body is airborne again. He can feel the rush of cold air through his fur, the weightlessness of flight. But by the time he lands, he can't feel anything at all.