Read The Third Book of the Dun Cow: Peace at the Last for Free Online

the rump and shivers with pleasure.
    Little things can feel so good.
    Now: what is it she’s trying to remember?
    “Quork!”
    Here comes that Raven again, this time with a rip of bark in his beak—and what a beak it is! Thick as a lumber-stick and black as coal. And there’s an unruly bunch of feathers hanging from his throat. The Bird is tramp-like.
    He lands on the top of the boulder. He thrusts his head down and scrutinizes the Wolf.
    “You’re a darlin’, babe,” he says. He takes a closer look. “Sick, are we?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Scared?”
    “Not any more, thank you.”
    The Raven draws back and throws out his messy chest, a bully-black Bird quite pleased with himself. “Hey, babe,” he says. “It was Kangi Sapa that saved your bacon yesterday.”
    The Cream-Colored Wolf casts her head to one side, considering. Then she says, “What is a Kangi Sapa?”
    “Me! That’s my name. Kangi Sapa, Bird of parts and many trades. Can tell a story, can feed the sick, can buck up the downhearted, can cadge your foreign languages. And I, babe, I say you’re sick.”
    “If I am, I haven’t noticed it.”
    “So, here’s a hunk of medicine. When a gut’s gone empty as long as yours, it’ll urp when you eat. Here. Suck on this.” He floops down from the boulder and waddle-walks close to her. “It’s the bark of the Black Haw. Handles diarrhea better than glue. It calms a pretty girl’s possible spasms and kisses the pain away. Chew it then suck it.”
    The Cream-Wolf obeys. His medicine tastes like a buffalo chip. Fibers catch in her teeth.
    The Raven prattles on.
    “Well, well. What folks call you these days?”
    Through a mouthful of slosh she says, “Snowtra.”
    “Snowtra! Snowtra? No, no, that’ll never do. Not for the loveliness of you. No, darlin’. Your name is Wachanga.”
    “Wha-choon-ha?”
    “Listen up. Watch my beak: Wah- chahn- jah. Wachanga.”
    As fast as he says it the Cream-Colored Wolf accepts the name. More than that, she seems to remember it as if it had been her natal-name. She shudders in gratitude, for it gives her a Who-I-Am and sets her free.
    “Now, babe, say Kangi Sapa. Call me Kangi Sapa. Kangi Sapa is my name.”
    The Raven starts to dance a little dance around the Wolf, and to sing a little tune in a voice as raucous as a fresh load of tin cans.
“I begin to compliment
    And she begins to grin.
    How do you do?
    How do you do?
    How do you do again?”
    So, then: the Raven in flight above and the Wolf afoot below, the two companions set out, Kangi Sapa taking the lead, Wachanga following, though uncertainly.
    “Oh,” cries the Raven, “what adventures I got up my sleeve, my darlin’!”
    Suddenly Wachanga leaps. She sends herself sailing in twenty-foot bounds, then stops, and sniffs the soil. She trots left and right, her nose to the ground, but then returns to the Raven somewhat pensive.
    The Raven, he is a talky sort of Bird.
    “Hatched in another land, I was,” he says. “Damn gloomy land. Old, old oak trees growing beards of moss and big enough to hold up the … What’s it called?”
    Wachanga says, “I don’t know, Mr. Kangi Sapa.”
    “Wasn’t asking you, darlin’. Was probing my memory banks. Firmament!” the Raven announces. “Oaks big enough to hold up the firmament.”
    “The firmament.”
    “You bet your bottom dollar.”
    Kangi Sapa claps his black beak shut. He flutters a while, frowning. Probing his memory banks, no doubt.
    Suddenly Wachanga is off again, dashing to the right. The Raven says, “Quork!” and flies after her, talking, talking. “They used to call me ‘Bird Munum.’ Can you believe it? A loathsome sort of name. Yep. Believe it. An old-world name for a young-world explorer. Hey! Girl! Where you going?”
    Wachanga has taken a twelve-foot bound.
    “Babe, I mean to tell you, you’re driving me nuts!”
    “I’m sorry, Mr. Sapa.”
    “You got a thistle up your butt?”
    “No, sir. I’m looking for the