Born of Myth: Part Four

IV. Black on White

            The morning sun danced on the lake and glowed in the droplets about Ratatoskr’s ears. Vera had joined him at the edge of the lake; she did not want to see him leave. She had already begun to count time until their next meeting. But squirrels must live alone, she thought. We are solitary creatures. Vera would care for the kits until they reached three months of age, however. The knowledge seemed to swell in her chest.

            Ratatoskr shook the water from his fur, and Vera followed suit. The light reflected on the snow and warmed them both. She tasted the mixed scent of the pine seeds, thimbleberries, and catkins she had buried nearby, a foot into the earth. The songs of the passerines drifted in and out of harmony but floated all the time among predators and prey alike.

            His eyes focused on the copper of her coat and the white brilliance in the bulge of her abdomen. Vera, too, slipped into a trance, the familiarity of which she found exclusive to Ratatoskr’s power over her. Yet, at this moment, she noticed that his eyes had begun to dart in all directions. She flew into the air at the explosion of his squawk, “RUN!”

            After the gunshot, Ratatoskr’s body sank into the snow. Vera did not see the girl crouched behind the berry bush, nor did she smell her. The squirrel’s surroundings blurred during the infinite journey to her den, only ten feet away. She thought time had reversed and imagined the seconds dripping into a kind of negative realm where death became life. In this world, everything was nothing. And nothing was everything.

            Four days after her escape, the intensity of Vera’s grief lightened with the birth of her three pink kits. At the first sign of their fur, she would delight in the complete blackness of the two smaller females. The larger male would also grow a black coat, but the whiteness of his underside would dazzle her. It was then that Vera would name him. He was, after all, born of myth.

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