speak now-ow-ow!” When the cubs are brought before the Senate, their parents may not defend them if they are challenged; but at any other time it is murder if any other seek to harm them.
“
A dozen voices answered, “Anyone may speak, if a wolf asks his testimony. Speak, Butcher!”
Then the she-wolf loosened her sword in the scabbard and prepared for her last fight if it came to fighting. A demon she looked with her gaunt face and blazing eyes, for an angel is often only a demon who stands between us and our enemy.
“You say I am no wolf,” continued the Butcher. “And you say rightly. We know how a wolf smells, and the sound and look of a wolf. That wolf has taken this son of Meschia for her cub, but we all know that having a wolf for a mother does not make a cub a wolf.” The he-wolf shouted, “Wolves are those whose mothers and fathers are wolves! I take this cub as my son!”
There was laughter at that, and when it died, one strange voice laughed on. It was He Who Laughs, come to advise the Butcher before the Senate of Wolves. He called, “Many have talked so, ho, ho! But their cubs have fed the pack.”
The Butcher said, “They were killed for their white fur. The skin is under the fur. How can this live? Give it to me!”
“Two must speak,” the President announced. “That is the law. Who speaks for the cub here? It is a son of Meschia, but is it also a wolf?
Two who are not its parents must speak for it.” Then the Naked One, who is counted a member of the Senate for teaching the young wolves, rose. “I have never had a son of Meschia to teach,” he said. “I may learn something from it. I speak for him.”
“Another,” said the President. “Another must also speak.” There was only silence. Then the Black Killer strode from the back of the hall. Everyone fears the Black Killer, for though his cloak is as soft as the fur of the youngest cub, his eyes burn in the night.
“Two who are no wolves have spoken here already,” he said. “May I not speak also? I have gold.” He held up a purse.
“Speak! Speak!” called a hundred voices.
“The law says also that a cub's life may be bought,” said the Black Killer, and he poured gold into his hand, and so ransomed an empire.
If all the adventures of Frog were told — how he lived among the wolves, and learned to hunt and fight, it would fill many books. But those who bear the blood of the people of the mountaintop beyond Urth always feel its call at last; and the time came when he carried fire into the Senate of Wolves and said, “Here is the Red Flower. In his name I rule.” And when no one opposed him he led forth the wolves and called them the people of his kingdom, and soon men came to him as well as wolves, and though he was still only a boy, he seemed always taller than the men about him, for he bore the blood of Early Summer.
One night when the wild roses were opening, she came to him in a dream and told him of his mother, Bird of the Wood, and of her father and her uncle, and of his brother. He found his brother, who had become a herdsman, and with the wolves and the Black Killer and many men they went to the king and demanded their heritage. He was old and his sons had died without sons, and he gave it to them, and of it Fish took the city and the farmlands, and Frog the wild hills.
But the number of the men who followed him grew. They stole women from other peoples, and bred children, and when the wolves were no longer needed and returned to the wilds, Frog judged his people should have a city to dwell in, with walls to protect them when the men were at war. He went to the herds of Fish and took a white cow and a white bull therefrom and harnessed them to a plow, and with them plowed a furrow that should mark the wall. Fish came to seek the return of his cattle while the people were preparing to build. When Frog's people showed him the furrow and told him it was to be their wall, he laughed and jumped over it; and they, knowing that small things mocked can never grow large, slew him. But he was then a man grown, so the prophecy made at the birth of Spring Wind was fulfilled.
When Frog saw the dead Fish, he buried him in the furrow to assure the fertility of the land. For so he had been taught by the Naked One, who was also called the Savage, or Squanto.
The Circle of the Sorcerers
By the first light of morning we entered the mountain jungle as one enters a house. Behind us the sunlight played on grass and bushes and stones; we passed through a curtain of tangled vines so thick I had to cut it with my sword and saw before us only shadow and the towering boles of the trees. No insect buzzed within, and no bird chirped. No wind stirred. At first the. bare soil we trod was almost as stony as the mountain slopes, but before we had walked a league it grew smoother, and at last we came to a short stair that had surely been carved with the spade. “Look,” said the boy, and he pointed to something red and strangely shaped that lay upon the uppermost step.
I stopped to look at it. It was a cock's head; needles of some dark metal had been run through its eyes, and it held a strip of cast snakeskin in its bill. “What is it?” The boy's eyes were wide. “A charm, I think.”
“Left here by a witch? What does it mean?” I tried to recall what little I knew of the false art. As a child, Thecla had been in the care of a nursemaid who tied and untied knots to speed childbirth and claimed to see the face of Thecla's future husband (was it mine,, I wonder?) at midnight, reflected in a platter that had held bridal cake. “The cock,” I told the boy, “is the herald of day, and in a magical sense his crow at dawn can be said to bring the sun. He has been blinded, perhaps, so that he will not know when dawn appears. A snake's casting of his skin means cleansing or rejuvenation. The blinded cock holds onto the old skin.”
“But what does it mean?” the boy asked again. I said I did not know; but in my heart I felt sure it was a charm against the coming of the New Sun, and it somehow pained me to find that renewal, for which I had hoped so
