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    The Third Book of the Dun Cow: Peace at the Last
    The Third Book of the Dun Cow: Peace at the Last
    The Third Book of the Dun Cow: Peace at the Last
    Ebook185 pages2 hours

    The Third Book of the Dun Cow: Peace at the Last

    By Walter Wangerin

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The long awaited conclusion to the National Book Award-winning THE BOOK OF THE DUN COW trilogy, from Walter Wangerin, Jr.

    Pertelote, widow of Chauntecleer the Golden Rooster, takes up his mantle as leader of the Animals as they seek safety from the great evil of the Wyrm and his children. Desperate to keep safe those she’s responsible for, Pertelote is travelling blindly, suffering the purposeless, undirected, but insistent journey as the new leader.

    Two other groups of Creatures are making their own journeys through the perilous land: Eurus the merciless yellow-eyed Wolf and his pack, and the sociable pair Wachanga the Cream-Colored Wolf and her friend Kangi Sapa, the Raven. When Pertelote and her band of Animals meet Wachanga and Kangi, she finds much-needed allies in her travels. Allies that become all the more valuable after cruel Eurus begins following the weary Animals with a murderous intent.

    When the disparate bands of Creatures converge on a hidden crater high in the dangerous mountains, they make a monumental discovery that may finally mean an end to their trials and tribulations.

    The epic journey begun in THE BOOK OF THE DUN COW reaches its powerful conclusion in THE THIRD BOOK OF THE DUN COW: PEACE AT THE LAST, proving the sacrifices of Chauntecleer and the Animals were not in vain.
    Praise for THE BOOK OF THE DUN COW:“Far and away the most literate and intelligent story of the year … Mr. Wangerin’s allegorical fantasy about the age-old struggle between good and evil produces a resonance; it is a taut string plucked that reverberates in memory” —New York Times
    “Belongs on the shelf with Animal Farm, Watership Down and The Lord of the Rings. It is, like them, an absorbing, fanciful parade of the war between good and evil. A powerful and enjoyable work of the imagination.” —Los Angeles Times
    Praise for THE SECOND BOOK OF THE DUN COW: LAMENTATIONS
    “[A] profoundly imagined and beautifully stylized fable of the immemorial war between good and evil.” –The New York Times
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDiversion Books
    Release dateNov 26, 2013
    ISBN9781626810716
    The Third Book of the Dun Cow: Peace at the Last
    Author

    Walter Wangerin

    Walter Wangerin, Jr. is a literary scholar, theologian, performance storyteller and best-selling author. He is the author of over 30 books, which encompass a wide range of fiction, non-fiction, children's books, poetry and short stories and have become favourites of people in all walks of life and of all ages. Wangerin's first book, The Book of the Dun Cow, won the National Book Award in 1980 and was The New York Times' Best Children's Book of the Year. Wangerin's was also awarded the Helen Keating Ott Award for Outstanding Contribution to Children's Literature (2000) . His vibrant retelling of the Bible as an epic novel - The Book of God - was acclaimed as a literary masterpiece and has now been published in over 20 languages worldwide and recently reissued. He is writer-in- residence at Valparaiso University. He and his wife live in Valparaiso, Indiana, USA.

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    Reviews for The Third Book of the Dun Cow

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    • 5/5
      Like the previous two books in the Book of the Dun Cow series, Peace at Last continues the fight between good and evil. Now that evil has entered the world and infected many animals, the world has become a very dangerous place for those who would follow the path of righteousness. The disparate group of animals, this Band of the Meek, finds itself trapped between a huge mob of vicious killers intent on destroying them and the promised sanctuary which is hidden at the bottom of a steep ravine. It will take a leap of faith for them to enter but, if they can make this leap, rest and freedom from the sorrows of the world will be their reward even to the Least of them.I have seen this series compared to books like Animal Farm and The Lord of the Rings. To me, it more resembles Pilgrim’s Progress both in style and in content. Despite its modern language, there is something archaic in its telling. There is an elegance and lyricism to the prose which is so rarely seen in modern literature outside of poetry which I found an absolute joy like reading a hymn of praise by Bach. One word of warning, however. There is some use of swearing in the tale. Personally, I felt it fit the narrative, sort of like a dissonant note in a concerto meant to jolt the reader and move the story but I suspect that some readers may be offended by this.

    Book preview

    The Third Book of the Dun Cow - Walter Wangerin

    Homeless

    After the death of Lord Chauntecleer the Rooster, while the Beautiful Pertelote still mourned his passing, the green spring burst from the earth as if it had been swelling in her womb all the Fimbul-Winter long.

    Rain fell in torrents. The Mad House of Otter rejoiced, mud-slithering, cavorting, calling to one another, and laughing because they looked like wet cigars.

    The Doe De La Coeur remained in the Hemlock Hall. Otherwise her long legs would sink in the mud, and she’d be stuck in an open field.

    Likewise, the Hare String Jack: he and his friends and relations watched the heavy rainfall from under the boughs of the Hemlock, twit-twittering at the Otters because the Otters were ruining the shoots of young grass, and it was grass that the Hares wanted for food.

    Soon the Queen Honey Bee and her Family Swarm were buzzing abroad in search of new blossoms dusted with pollen.

    Sheep bowed their heads patiently. When other Animals came close to them they bleated warnings and begged them to go away. Sodden wool stinks, and stinking can embarrass a soft-hearted Ewe.

    The Animals allowed themselves to hope again. Slaughter had left them, please God, for good and all. And the Creatures who’d learned to love the taste of blood had quit the camp altogether: the yellow-eyed Wolf, brother to the White Wolf Boreas, gone; the Marten, having shamed himself by killing and eating the Grey Squirrel, gone; the fat Hen who had slain Chalcedony in a fit of jealousy, gone; and the black Wolf, the red-eyed Nota, dead.

    Moreover, the heaving sea Wyrmesmere had by a blast from the Dun Cow’s nostrils been rolled back southward like a scroll.

    In Chauntecleer’s absence the beautiful Pertelote took it upon herself to sing Matins. To sing every one of the Canonical Crows:

    "My darlings, sweet the sunrise, soft

    The dawning, good the day’s long fall

    To dusk.

    Labor in light. At night retire

    To dream of him who still inspires

    Your trust."

    So it was in those days when spring was filled with promises. And so it might have gone for the rest of the Animals’ lives—

    But the season that gives is also the season that takes away. Nothing exists without its opposite. Darkness proves that light is light. Night proves day. Cold proves heat, and sickness health, and suffering proves joy. And life cannot be measured unless it is by death.

    Black clouds swelled and threw the land into gloom. The wind blew raindrops like bullets into the faces of the Creatures, who took cover under the Hemlock. Thunder rolled. Lightning stuttered closer and closer until a single firebolt struck the pinnacle of the Hemlock Tree. Immediately its needles sparked and spat. And in spite of the rain, the Hemlock boughs burst into flames.

    Pertelote was horrified. She cried out. She raised her cry to the level of an outright siren. The mighty crash of the lightning had sent the Animals not rushing out but huddling inside around the trunk of the Tree.

    Pertelote cried, John Wesley!

    The Weasel saw the Animals’ rank stupidity.

    Mices! he roared. File single!

    Their Step-papa’s command emboldened seven little hearts.

    Hup! Hup! he shouted. Now, Mices! Nip Buggers in their butts!

    The military Mice obeyed. Hens began to cackle at the indecency, and ran, flummoxed, outside the Tree. Ferric Coyote—who would have fixed himself into a desperate freeze—yiped and ran. His daughters followed him out into the mud.

    The Weasel bombed Critters with his body. He knocked his cousin-Otters in their heads. He gave Sheep what-for. He tore fur from the Jackrabbits’ backs.

    When they saw that the Hemlock had become a fountain of flames, the Animals panicked.

    The havoc empowered Pertelote. She flew among the Creatures, crowing and crowing, until she’d gathered them into ranks and led them away from the Hemlock. The World Tree was a shooting candlestick in the middle of an empty land. Its blaze cast a lurid light over her Animals’ faces, and she herself seemed to be a firebrand as she flew over them, calling them by name and comforting them.

    Lord Chauntecleer had perished betimes. Now the Hemlock too had perished. When every Animal had been accounted for, Pertelote alighted beside John Wesley, exhausted and overwhelmed by her emotions. What were they going to do now? No home to focus their spirits. No purpose left but survival. No season that was not untrustworthy.

    In the end the trunk of the Hemlock had became a singular, smoking spire, and then a cold, black obelisk, a memorial to civilizations past.

    CHAPTER ONE

    Eurus

    The cry of a Loon rises through the windless mists on the lake.

    A Cream-Colored Wolf pauses in her passage. She lifts her head, and listens. The Loon sustains her yodel a while, then it sinks into silence, and the forest seems more hushed than before.

    The Wolf stands among wet greenery on a soup of duff. Every leaf holds a pregnant drop of the morning’s dew. Breezes shake them free, and the Wolf is alert to the small patterings on the ground.

    She moves forward again, southwest, pursuing a trail marked by a scent she believes to have been left by her Ancestors, ages and ages past.

    Balsam firs pique the air with a spicy aroma. Lichens cover the limbs and the trunks of birches. Yellow violets and the shy pink lilies of the valley spot the forest floor. The Cream-Colored Wolf’s tread is noiseless.

    The yellow-eyed male, whose cruelties she escaped several months ago, gave her the name of Snotra. The name has always lain uneasily upon her soul. She has never accepted it.

    Before the Cream-Colored Wolf first appeared before him, Eurus, the yellow-eyed Wolf, had prowled the northeastern territories alone. He had severed himself from the ineffectual community of Animals who had been governed by that wretched Rooster, Chauntecleer. From the moment when Eurus had tasted blood he’d begun to scorn the goddamn meekness of those Creatures. He could no longer abide their nerveless obedience, and he left.

    In the autumn after his departure, Eurus climbed the high ridges and howled in search of other Wolves—not for the comfort of their company, but because of his desire to dominate.

    Finally, under a midnight moon, there came the timid, answering bark of another Wolf. Eurus howled a command, Present yourself!

    Out of the brush below the ridge crept a lean and shabby Wolf. Eurus bared his teeth and uttered a rumbling growl. He stiffened his legs and twisted his ears like cups toward the other Wolf. His ruff and the hairs all down his spine bristled. He gave every sign of a banked, explosive hostility.

    The lesser Wolf climbed slowly to the plateau on which great Eurus stood, dropped into a crouch, tucked his tail between his legs, and flattened his ears. He sidled close to Eurus, who accepted his cringing approach. The newcomer took tiny steps forward, tapping the stony surface with the nails of his forepaws, then licked Eurus’s muzzle with quick, repeated strokes. He rolled onto his back and presented his genitals.

    Good. This was the submission Eurus had been looking for. He laid the joint of a foreleg across the beggar’s neck. Even so was their relationship established.

    So there were two Wolves. And according to his sordid posture, Eurus named the other Crook.

    The morning light revealed Crook’s disfigurement: a black scar from some earlier injury which reached from his ear to the corner of his jaw.

    During the next several days the two Wolves ran together, Crook always behind the dominant Eurus, who periodically repeated his come-hither howls.

    One evening Eurus halted beside a lazy stream to take a drink of its water. Suddenly he lifted his drizzling snout, turned it windward and sniffed. Crook, he commanded, wait here. He had nosed out a fresh scent and had read its information.

    She was a female. She was hungry but by no means thwarted. Her spirit challenged all comers, and her character was confident.

    When Eurus saw her in the gloaming, he barked once. The female Wolf raised her head and saw him. She was larger and sturdier than Crook, but her frame had less heft and power than Eurus’s.

    He said, State your name.

    I have no name, she said.

    Where do you come from?

    I don’t know.

    She did not grovel as Crook had done. She may not have known who she was or whence she came, but she approached Eurus with a growl. Several times she snapped her teeth together and emitted a few sharp barks, and that was that. She was his.

    Walk with me.

    They returned to Crook, and the three of them lay down to sleep, Crook the lackey, the She-Wolf his consort, and Eurus the dominant one who intended to bear sons by her. In light of this expectation he named her Rutt.

    In the morning the Brown Wolf saw that Rutt was ornamented with a black saddle across her back. The rest of her coat was grizzled, her head broad and strong, her eyes pale, except for the small, black disks in their centers, eyes pale and willful—a quality Eurus would be happy to command.

    Eurus believed that he had been set free—that he had come into his full stature—when he’d first learned to relish slaughter and to swill warm blood. Food roamed everywhere in forest glades, under jumbles of logs, in the marshes where Moose munched green vegetation—and his fangs ignited fear in other Creatures’ eyes.

    In order, then, to give his small pack a taste for raw meat, yellow-eyed Eurus took them hunting.

    In late autumn it is the habit of a Beaver to stock provisions against the winter. Eurus nosed out one such Beaver chewing a sapling at a dangerous distance from her dammed-up pond. In order to stand upright, she bent her leathery tail flat, a third foot beneath her.

    Eurus crept forward, his nose close to the ground. Suddenly he leaped and pounced on the Beaver and, with one hard shake of his head, snapped her neck. He drove his fangs into the her belly and tore it open. He pulled back his bloody muzzle and called, Come and eat! Even so did Rutt and Crook taste blood and knew which food would satisfy them for the rest of their lives.

    Teaching,

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