Kiss of the Fur Queen Read Online Free PDF

her the right to do. Little Seagull Ovary, for instance, insisted that the hibernating bear, being an actor bear, celebrated throughout the bear community, had missed a vital entrance cue on stage as a result of the newborn baby’s interruption; his audience had complained to the management and he was in danger of fading into obscurity.
    A star shot across the heavens, arced, and landed with a little explosion of light so close that Chichilia could almost catch it in the palm of her hand. The earth rumbled faintly; a shiver leapt up their spines.
    “The child has landed. The child is running through the forest now,” said Little Seagull Ovary.
    In the land of dreams, the child-about-to-be-born was fluttering through a forest lit in hues of mauve and pink and turquoise, the wings that had sprouted on his back whirring soundlessly. He alighted on the occasional spruce, the occasional pine, the occasional birch as the fancy tickled him, like a subarctic hummingbird. A distance off, he spied another flying creature, compressing and pulling at a funny corrugated box strapped to his scrawny chest; in response, the box produced an irritating, squeaky whine. The infant-not-yet-born and the itinerant musician were about to fly to each other for a better look when they were interrupted by a cry, half wail of lamentation and half shout of triumph. Suspecting the cry as his entrance cue, the infant-not-yet-born dove into the nearest mound of snow, images of the sour-tempered actor bear and the sweet-faced lyric-poet rabbit he had met minutes earlier flashing across his memory. He dove with such enthusiasm, however, that he was way below the permafrost before he remembered to turn around.
    Back beside his snoring sisters, Champion stirred and looked up at the hanging bedsheet. He rubbed his eyes. Eventually,with an effort that caused him to become wide awake, he was able to grasp that a shadow splashed across the sheet might be a very large fish hook.
    “Athweepi,”
an ancient voice intoned, gentle as morning dew. The fish hook was, in fact, an old woman, and she was addressing a largish mound that moaned and shifted in front of her.
    Champion could discern in the old woman’s hands scissors, a length of cloth, and perhaps a bowl. And he heard, amidst the moans and the whispered, calming words, the sloshing of liquid on metal. Then the old woman reached so deep into the mound that she almost disappeared.
    The journey back up to the surface was not as easy as the journey down, the spirit baby in the loincloth of rabbit fur discovered. For he had to squirm and wriggle and flail and punch his way through soil and rock and minerals so thickly layered they were all but impassable, through permanently frozen clay, tangled roots of trees and dormant fireweed, and shards of animal and human bone. He pushed and pushed until a tunnel eased his passage, replete with a viscous wetness. The earth around him rumbled and gurgled as if it would split open. The rumble became a roar. The roar became a scream. And the flash of light was the second-last thing he would remember about his first journey on Earth.
    When the scream was gone, only moans and whispers remained, subdued currents of wind, a chorus of ancient women whispering,
“Awasis, magawa, tugoosin.”
    The hook-backed old woman resurfaced and from her hands, to Champion’s great astonishment, dangled neither scissors nor cloth nor bowl. It looked like legs, arms, and a head, although so spindly they were hardly worth mentioning.
    “The baby!” The realization slapped Champion square across the face. He stopped his breathing so his ears could open wide: not a peep, not a sigh, not even half a burp. Maybe it was dead, Champion dared to hope, then blushed. He would have crossed himself in repentance had he already learned the labyrinth of Roman Catholic guilt.
    The midwife jerked one hand away from the baby, then jerked it back, the resulting slap on its bum resonating like a small gunshot.