Free The Third Book of the Dun Cow: Peace at the Last by Walter Wangerin Jr.

the last age, sacrifice,
    Apocalyptic wars.”
    Suddenly Wachanga is on her feet.
    “Ma’am!” she says. “You make me remember! I remember those words. And after them comes ‘Arise.’ That word. Yes, and these words too:
“‘Arise
    Before the next age overthrows
    The stars and make this globe its own.’”
    An electric charge passes through the cord that binds the women together.
    Pertelote whispers, “Wachanga.”
    The Cream-Wolf answers, “A cave. There is a cave. I am a pup in that cave. And another pup is beside me. Oh, ma’am!” Wachanga has begun to pace under the flood of her remembering. “Oh, Pertelote, ma’am, and it’s a mother … She is a great Cow offering us her milk. She is teaching us, and we three, the three of us are smiling together. Such a good time. Oh, such a sweet … I want, I wish I could be there again. Mother-Cow, she lows, ‘Children, children mine,’ and we are warmed. She breathes, ‘Forever and aye be kind.’ And then one day the Cow says—Oh, I remember the moment. I remember the word itself. She says, ‘Speak,’ and then both of us are talking. Ma’am Pertelote, she teaches us how to talk. Until…”
    Wachanga pauses, crestfallen.
    “Until we have to leave her.”
    Finally, Pertelote has settled herself in a scoop of earth. Snow is banked around her, protecting her from the midnight cold.
    Chauntecleer once spoke of a such a Cow. But she regarded it as a hallucination.
    But now, now Pertelote is stirred by a very deep sound, a lowing sound, as if it were of the lowest tones of an organ, as if it were the voice of a vast Cow!
Pertelote, tu Gallina:
    Gallinae albae filius—
    Most highly favored lady,
    Quit not the road continuous.
Matrona, venit in montem;
    In montem sanctum meum.
    Come to my holy mountain,
    Tuum, tuum, tuum.

[Thirteen] In Which the Raven Tells a Story
[Thirteen] In Which the Raven Tells a Story
    West-southwest the Animals travel. By now everyone knows about Wachanga’s scent path, and everyone jumps to help her, for most of her scent posts have been covered under thick snow.
    The Brothers Mice burrow under the deep drifts and skitter the ground in search of the scent of her “Ancestors.”
    “Step-papa Weasel. What are ‘ancestors’?”
    “Ask Boogaloo Crow,” grumbles John Wesley. “Boogaloo Crow, he knows everthings. This, that and t’other. This, that and t’other.”
    Mr. Pertinax Cobb burrows where the snow mass is too packed too tight for a Mouse’s whiskers.
    Where the snow has hardened into a crust, the Doe De La Coeur punctures the crust with her long legs. (Her gracious legs, thinks Pertelote, worried that the Doe might break a bone.) Then with the points of her hooves she scrapes and breaks the soil below, and the Plain Brown Bird twitches down and brings up a bit of the dirt for Wachanga’s assessment.
    Because their own progress has grown ever more laborious, the Hens realize more than the others that they are climbing a slow ascent. Pertelote knows her sisters. She is aware of their weaknesses. They are right, the band is ascending. But the future of that ascent is concealed by clouds that heap the western horizon from the north to the south.
    Night after night Kangi Sapa, that raggedy Raven, that raconteur, entertains the tired community with chapters of a long tale, one chapter every night.
    Okay. All right. Listen up.
    Once upon a time this Opossum—Friend Double-U, do you know what an Opossum is? Oh, but you’re a sly one, bro. I expect you know her by her nickname. “Possum.”
    So once upon a time this Possum lived in a pile of rocks. Warmed herself with a hot coal she kept in her belly pouch.
    Now, now, brother Weasel, this is my story. In my stories coals don’t burn through belly pouches.
    So then. Idle as a potato was Mizz Possum. Fat as a Pig…
    Wait a minute. Mrs. P, you don’t have Pigs around here, do you?
    Okay. So then. Old Mizz Possum required that coal for the heat. The body heat, you understand. She