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become.
    Unlike the yellow-eyed Eurus, when Selkirk rushed away from the Hemlock it was not to hunt. It was for shame.
    The pads of a Marten’s paws are dense with fur. He has, therefore, the ability to detect the slightest vibration in the ground. He knows when Moles come drudging through the earth, and Voles when they burrow under a crust of snow. He could dig and dispatch them both in a twinkling—if he would. He wants to. But he won’t.
    Instead he eats the meat he has not killed.
    Selkirk has learned the ways of Vultures.
    Presently he crouches on the swaying end of a spruce branch. The wind lifts and drops the bough, yet Selkirk shifts his neck in order to keep his small head steady. His grey ears are like dishes turned upward, listening for the thrumming, nearly imperceptible sound that the tip a Vulture’s wing makes when he dives.
    The Marten does not know that Chauntecleer has died—only that the Rooster was recruiting Creatures to fight a war under his mad command. It is not impossible that a legion of battle-hardened, wild-eyes Beasts are on his trail too. Therefore Selkirk has lived in the trees, zipping their limbs and launching himself across gaps thirty feet wide and catching the branch of another tree. The air can’t hold his scent. And, unless Chauntecleer has engaged a Hawk, neither will the warriors sniff the tree-crowns he has abandoned.
    There!
    Selkirk hears the humming of the Vulture’s flight.
    He takes off, crashing the branches.
    And there! Not one, but a dozen of the great Birds are spiraling down on the spread of their wide, dark wings. There’s food on the ground. Selkirk scrambles down the trunk of an Ash, lickety-cuts across a meadow, then closes in on the object of the Vultures’ keen attention.
    It is a Pronghorn lying on her ribs, her head thrown back, her mouth agape, her grey tongue looping to the earth, her eyes already eaten out.
    The gentle Creature’s shoulder has been shredded. There is a hollow cavity where once her heart beat and where her liver lay tucked in its home.
    The Vultures land on their laughable feet, their wings drooping like canopies. They mass beside the Pronghorn’s corpse. Their heads are rucked and naked and as red as sunburn. Their breath smells of rot. Selkirk gags, but minces forward. If the Vultures don’t make space for him, neither do they reject his presence.
    In this one thing the Marten has learned to restrain himself: he will not kill.
    He will feed only on the carrion dead.

[Eight] In Which Bat Brings Healing in His Wings
[Eight] In Which Bat Brings Healing in His Wings
    There is a species of Bot Fly that attacks a Squirrel’s scrotum. If that Fly’s myriad larvae live long enough in his little sac, they will geld him.
    Cousin to that Fly is another Bot who deposits her maggots in the nostrils of Sheep. These small, vile worms will chew into the Sheep’s sinuses. Nor do they rest in the warm cavities, but continue chewing until they have penetrated the Sheep’s brain. Soon the poor Ewe has trouble with her balance and begins to suffer the Blind Staggers.
    A third Bot will lay five hundred eggs in the fur of a Deer’s pasterns. Though tiny, this parasite can fly at speeds of fifty miles an hour, so fast she makes herself invisible. The Deer can neither see her coming nor, if she could see, outrace the Bot. In the course of a common day the Deer bows and licks her pastern. The saliva warms and incubates the eggs. They hatch and are swallowed down. The Deer’s stomach becomes their feeding trough. They crowd the lining of the stomach and the bowels, and consume the food the Deer requires for her own nourishment. She grows emaciated and loses her love for life.
    After the success of their river crossing Pertelote’s company has had a rough go of it.
    Feathers have been snapped and fur has been torn as they passed through lowland thickets. Nettles stung the Creatures’ noses, vine branches lashed their faces, thorns raked their flesh.