7
" Almost as evil as the stench was the silence. Senex, however poorly he had ended his rule, had always remembered the canonical crows. He sang them, to be sure, in a disoriented manner; but he did sing them, keeping his animals that way, banding them, unifying them.
But Cockatrice never crowed the canon. So under him the day lost its meaning and its direction, and the animals lost any sense of time or purpose. Their land became strange to them. A terrible feeling of danger entered their souls, of things undone, of treasures unprotected. They were tired all the day long, and at night they did not sleep. And it was a most pitiful sight to see, how they all went about with hunched shoulders, heads tucked in, limping here and there as if they were forever walking into an ill wind, and flinching at every sound as if the wind carried arrows. "
― Walter Wangerin Jr. , The Book of the Dun Cow (Chauntecleer the Rooster, #1)
14
" The Coop was empty. Someone took advantage of its emptiness. A small hole existed between two floorboards. Through that hole there slipped a silent, long, long, black nose, and after that a head like a finger pointing: eyes as narrow as needles; a body like black liquid; a tail which came and came and never ceased to slide out of the hole. Dark, smooth, and as quiet as this one was, yet he was no mere shadow. While the crow of grief rolled out over the countryside, Ebenezer Rat crushed and swallowed one more egg. "
― Walter Wangerin Jr. , The Book of the Dun Cow (Chauntecleer the Rooster, #1)
