The Book of the Dun Cow Read Online Free Page B

knowledge upon the animals.
    What purpose? Simply, the animals were the Keepers. The watchers, the guards. They were the last protection against an almighty evil which, should it pass them, would burst bloody into the universe and smash into chaos and sorrow everything that had been made both orderly and good. The stars would be no help against him; and even the angels, the messengers of God—even the Dun Cow herself—would only grieve before him and then die; for messengers can speak, but they cannot
do
as the animals could.
    The earth had a face, then: smiling blue and green and gold and gentle, or frowning in furious gouts of black thunder. But it was a
face
, and that’s where the animals lived, on the surface of it. But under that surface, in its guts, the earth was a prison. Only one creature lived inside of the earth, then, because God had damned him there. He was the evil the animals kept. His name was Wyrm.
    Deep, deep under the oceans and the continents, under the mountains and under the river which ran from them to Chauntecleer’s land, Wyrm crawled. He was in the shape of a serpent, so damnably huge that he could pass once around the earth and then bite his own tail ahead of him. He lived in caverns underneath the earth’s crust; but he could, when he wished, crawl through rock as if it had been loose dirt. He lived in darkness, in dampness, in the cold. He stank fearfully, because his outer skin was always rotting, a runny putrefaction which made him itch, and which he tore away from himself by scraping his back against the granite teeth of the deep. He was lonely. He was powerful, because evil is powerful. He was angry. And he hated, with an intense and abiding hatred, the God who had locked him within the earth. And what put the edge upon his hatred, what made it an everlasting acid inside of him, was the knowledge that God had given the key to his prison in this bottomless pit to a pack of chittering
animals
!
    Oh, it was a wonder that Chauntecleer the Rooster, that a flock of broody Hens, a Dog, a Weasel, and tens of thousands of suchlike animals—and even that Ebenezer Rat—should be the Keepers of Wyrm! The little against the large. The foolish set to protect all the universe against the wise!
    â€œSum Wyrm
,” he roared all the day long,
“sub terra!
”
    Yet so deaf were the animals to the way of things that even this dreadful announcement they did not hear. Chauntecleer went about crowing his canonical crows and planning his plans and blustering his Hens through another day, deaf to the cry and ignorant of his own purpose upon the earth.
    Dumb feathers made watchers over Wyrm in chains! It was a wonder. But that’s the way it was, because God had chosen it to be that way. A Rooster stood in the middle—and on one particular day, he was irritated by the fact that he couldn’t finish his sunbath. But that’s the way that it was.

[FIVE] Wyrm acts—Cockatrice is born
[FIVE] Wyrm acts—Cockatrice is born
    East of Chauntecleer’s land, upriver from him a good many miles, and near the mountains out of which the river flowed, was another land ruled by another Rooster. No communication existed between the two lands, because a forest stood between, and nations lay isolated in those days; so neither Rooster knew of the other, and what went on in either place went on unto itself.
    Senex was this Rooster’s name: Senex with his Back to the Mountains. In his Coop there were nearly a hundred Hens, because his rule had been a long one. He was very old; it was evident to everyone that he would soon die. His head was pink, bald around his comb; his toes, which had once been a source of pride to him, were thick and bent into four directions so that he walked with a peculiar shuffle and could not perch well on a roost. His eyes were failing. His crow had diminished to a henny kind of cluck, and he apologized a great deal—which infuriated him, but