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possible, the waves smiled to receive the divided slug.
    “There will be a grave!” Chauntecleer shouted. “And it shall not be defiled!”
    He called the Queen of the Family Swarm and commanded that she and her Bees line the sepulcher with an impermeable wax, and then to sweeten the wax with a honey as with myrrh. Even so the Rooster sanctified the tomb
    When the grave was cleansed and waxed, Lord Chauntecleer scattered his own golden feathers as a bed for Russel. Then he stood back and held himself in royal self-control.
    “It is done,” he said. “Bring my brother. Lay him to his rest.”
    And so they did.
    Gently the wings of ten Hens lowered the Fox, quiet under his shroud and featureless, except for his red tail whose tip was inked in black.
    The Mice selected stone shavings the size of their hands and dropped them like pebbles upon their uncle. “Earth to earth.” Tick-Tock said to his troops. With sand and stone-dust the Ants covered the corpse. Pertelote sang an elegy, to which the Animals sang a choral refrain.
    And in the end, Chauntecleer did his part. As was proper at eventide, he sang:
“Guide us waking, O Lord,
And guard us sleeping.
That awake we may watch with thee,
And asleep we may rest in peace.”

PART TWO

PART TWO
In Fimbul-Winter

[Six] In which Rachel Coyote Discombobulates her Husband
[Six] In which Rachel Coyote Discombobulates her Husband
    In the great northern forests, crouched on a carpet of brown needles under a canopy of tall pine trees, a Coyote is hiding. His forelegs are low, his butt high behind, and his narrow snout seeming to grin with all of his teeth.
    Well: thinks he is hiding.
    In fact, his skinny, rust-red self is in full view. But this is the way the Coyote hides: he freezes. Poor Ferric, convinced that perfect stillness effects perfect invisibility. But he isn’t grinning. He’s scared. His cheeks go back to his ears, and his eyes narrow into two darts whose points point to the bridge of his muzzle. Fear turns Ferric Coyote into one long, taut nerve, like an arrow fixed mid-flight, or a bowstring which, if it is touched, would hum at a high pitch: Eeeeeeee!
    Ferric has frozen this way often in his lifetime, ever since life itself became for him a dangerous proposition. The Coyote is cursed with senses too keen for a fainting heart; or, volte-face, keen senses have caused his heart to faint.
    His ears are dishes; they hear everything. The pads of his paws are raw, and his bones are hollow tubes, and his skin is tympanic; they feel everything, and everything is magnified. He eyes are perpetually frightened; they see the least twitch in nature, for any twitch may be malicious, for there is no twitch he knows that doth love him.
    Except for Rachel. She loves him. But the woman is inexplicable.
    Lately the dangers have multiplied tenfold, and he’s begun to ache with hiding. This is because of his wife, whom he loves in return, but who has no fears whatsoever—none. So Ferric yelps often and hides for two. And, the worser of worst, three weeks ago his wife took a notion to travel.
    All at once summer was winter. All at once the land and the forests were locked hard against his busiest scratching. At the time Ferric thought that this was the reason why she began to trot away and away from their home into alien territories. But she wasn’t seeking the heat of the south. Happy as a Plover (who, incidentally, were gone after warmer climes) Rachel has for twenty-one days been cantering north!— while he’s been skittering and dashing and creeping and freezing and dashing again after her. Nor has he the slightest idea where they are going, or when they will get there.
    “Rachel, where?”
    “I’ll know it when I see it.” Careless. A woman without a care in the world. “And you will know it,” she says, “when I tell you.”
    “For God’s sake, Rachel, when?”
    “When you’re able,” she says, and she laughs, and she goes.
    Wel, Ferric can’t allow her to