The Dogs of Winter (12 page)

“Is this the boy to be taken?” Water-colored eyes raked over me from behind glasses as thick as river ice.

The Sister clamped her hand on my shoulder. Fingers too old to pry open a tin lid dug into my skin through the new shirt, sweater, and coat. “Yes,” she said. “He says he has no family. From the looks of him, he's been on the streets a long time.”

I squirmed under the iron grip of the Sister. “What do you mean, taken?”

The Sister ignored me. She and the Gray Woman, the woman with the Fist of God, passed words back and forth over my head: “homeless,” “filthy,” “wild.”

I squirmed and passed questions up to them: “Why?” “Where?” But once again, I had become invisible.

The Sister shoved me into the folds of the greasy gray coat. “The orphanage is the best place for him.”

Orphanage!
The word shot through my heart and down to my legs. It gathered like a great coil in my stomach and sprung loose with the word, “No!”

I wrenched away from the Gray Woman and the Sister and stumbled headlong into the street.

“Grab him!” the Gray Woman barked.

Hands I had not seen reached down and pulled me to my feet. I screamed and kicked and cried, “No! No!”

The hands clutched and pinned and, finally, slapped me to the ground. A million stars exploded in front of my eyes.

“Don't hurt him!” the Sister called from the doorway. “He's not a criminal.”

The Fist of God wrenched me to my feet and shook me. “He needs to learn.”

I howled in pain.

Something sailed through the air, over my shoulder. Teeth clamped down on the Fist of God. The Gray Woman shrieked. Smoke knocked her to the ground. Lucky and Rip growled and snapped at the man with the hands I had not seen.

“Get this mad dog off me!” the Gray Woman cried.

“Smoke,” I called. “Let's go!”

With a final snap and snarl, Smoke and Rip and Lucky ran with me down Petrovsky Boulevard, away from the Sister of Mercy and the Fist of God, the long arms of my coat sleeves flapping like wings.

We ran until we could no longer hear their words —
Get him! Come back!
— chasing us down the street.

We skittered to a stop near the entrance to the world beneath the earth. Here we would be safe and warm and away from the Sister of Mercy and the Fist of God and the word “orphanage.” Perhaps Vadim had found food to share.

“Just let me get a little bit to eat and then we'll get Vadim to help us find some more food,” I said to the dogs as we turned the street corner. “I know the puppies are —” I stopped dead in my tracks. Running toward us, eyes huge with fright and desperation, were Little Mother and Grandmother. Little Mother jumped against my legs, nearly knocking me to the ground, crying piteously; Grandmother panted and moaned.

“What?” I asked. “What is it? Where are the puppies?”

Little Mother tugged at the bottom of my too-big coat, pulling me toward the opening that led to the underground.

I scrambled behind her into the dark underworld. Candlelight flickered off the grimy walls and the network of pipes. Little Mother led me over to the corner where she and the puppies stayed with Grandmother. The nest of rags and newspapers was empty.

“They have to be here,” I said. I looked behind every crate, under blankets and rugs, beneath heaps of trash the children had piled against the walls. Nothing. No puppies.

I shook the boy breathing in and out of a brown paper bag. “Where are the puppies?” His sunken eyes swam to my face and then slid away.

I scrambled over to a boy and girl sleeping beneath a rug. “Where are the puppies?” I said, pulling at the rug. Empty brown bottles rolled from beneath it.

The girl opened her eyes. She blinked slowly. “What d'you want?”

“The puppies,” I said, pointing to the corner. “The puppies are gone. Where are they?”

The girl yawned. “Oh, that. Vadim took them.”

“He what?”

“You heard me. He took them.” She pulled the rug up to her ears.

I yanked the rug down. “Why? Where did he take them?”

The girl slapped my hand away. “He took them because, as everybody knows, you can make more money begging with puppies than alone. As for where, I have no idea.”

She rolled over against the boy. I buried my head in my hands. “No,” I moaned. Little Mother licked my fingers.

“Vadim said he might try to sell the puppies,” the girl said from beneath the rug.

My head snapped up. “What?”

“Sure,” she said, her voice slipping away into dreams. “They would bring good money.”

I ran.

The dogs and I ran up and down streets, darting in and out of traffic, and across the still, frozen plazas. We checked the doorways and heat grates I knew Vadim favored. We ran and ran until the snot and tears were frozen parts of my face; we ran until Grandmother could run no more.

I slumped against a crumbling brick building. The light was already fading from the day. The dogs formed a half-moon around me, waiting for answers.

I beat my fists against my head. “Stupid, stupid, pathetic
little boy. How could I have been so
stupid
!” Grandmother leaned against my leg and sighed.

I looked into the eyes of the dogs and finally locked my gaze with Smoke. “Where,” I said. “Where would Vadim take them?”

I swam in the warm amber of Smoke's eyes, the flecks of gold and the flecks of night. His eyes said he believed I was not a stupid, pathetic little boy. I was Sobachonok, Dog Boy. Those same eyes that commanded me to follow him onto the train and to the home of the pack. The eyes that led me away from the train station and —

“That's it!” I cried, springing to my feet. “Come on!”

I ran as fast as I have ever run to the train station. I raced down the stairs two at a time, skidding on the marble floor, Rip, Little Mother, and Grandmother streaming behind me, and Smoke and Lucky ahead weaving in and out of the coats and legs and boots and arms and bags and eyes that did not see us.

Smoke stopped. Lucky skidded into Smoke. Smoke cocked his head to one side. I stopped and tried my best to hear above the crowds coming and going and the sigh and whistle and hum of the trains.

And then I heard it — a young boy's voice farther down the long hallway calling, “Puppies! Puppies for sale!”

I ran and pushed my way through the crowds until we found Vadim. There he was, sitting at the feet of a statue, the
puppies sleeping in his lap. Little Mother yelped with joy and began sniffing her puppies all over.

“What do you think you're doing?” I screamed.

Vadim shrugged and scratched at a sore by his mouth. “I just thought I'd get a little more money…. And besides, they'd be better off in someone's home than starving on the streets with you.”

I snatched the puppies from his lap. They whimpered in my arms.

“They need to be with their
mother
,” I snapped. “They need
her
.”

Vadim sprang to his feet. He pushed his face close to mine and growled, “What good do mothers do, Dog Boy? Tell me that.” His face was red and pitted with pain. “Do you see our mothers here?” he demanded. “Do you see anyone here taking care of
us
?”

I wrapped the puppies under my coat. “I thought you were my friend.”

“We can't afford to have friends out here on the streets, you stupid little kid,” he said. “We can only look after ourselves.” He shoved me backward. Smoke and Lucky stepped toward him and growled.

Vadim threw up his hands. “You're crazy,” he said. “You with these dogs.”

He pushed through the crowds of people, away from us. Then he stopped and shouted, “You'll never make it,
Sobachonok. The winter will get you or the gangs or the
militsiya
, but you won't make it.”

And then he was gone, lost amid a forest of legs.

I slumped to the floor and took the puppies from my coat. The dogs hovered around us, sniffing and nuzzling and licking.

I leaned my head back against the cold wall. The lights dripping like ice shone above us, each grand cluster marching in a straight line down the long hallway of the train station. I closed my eyes against the brightness.

Where could I go now? Our Glass House was burned to the ground. I could not go back with the children beneath The City, I could not go back to the Sister of Mercy. I could not trust any of them.

“What do we do?” I asked Smoke. Smoke sighed and laid his head across his paws. All of us were huddled in a far corner of the train station. We had gone aboveground earlier to buy food. The world above was cold, so very cold. The air cracked inside my lungs every time I breathed in. We saw few other children and even fewer dogs. The small, lifeless bodies of frozen birds littered the sidewalks. Before I could stop them, Rip and Lucky snapped up the birds and swallowed them whole.

“Perhaps we can stay here in the train station,” I said. “Just for a while. Surely the police wouldn't force us out into this cold.”

And so we stayed for a time. We left the station only to buy food. Even Smoke, who normally went his own way, stayed close and slept. The cold marble floor was hard on Grandmother's old bones. She limped and had trouble
getting up from her sleep. So during the day, I gave her my coat to sleep on. It was not so cold in the train station during the day, and besides, I was a young boy and she was an old babushka.

There were other people who came to the station for money. No children, but grown
bomzhi
. One old man came dressed every day in a tired suit and a big fur
shapka
on his head. Pinned to his skinny chest were grand ribbons and medals. In his hand he clutched a small tin.

“Did you get those ribbons for running the fastest?” I asked.

Clink!
A hand dropped a coin in the tin held by the man of the ribbons and medals.

The old man glared down at me and did not answer.

“I have never been given a ribbon or a medal, but I can run very fast,” I bragged.

Another hand stuffed a folded ruble in the tin. “
Spasibo
, sir,” said the man of the ribbons and medals.

“My mother taught me to always say thank you too,” I said, nodding. “Do you still have a mother?” I asked the man.

Still, he would not look at me, he would not answer.

I stroked Lucky's ears. “I had a mother,” I said. “I have not seen her in a long time — since the leaves were just beginning to fall. I am starting to forget her.”

The old man of the ribbons and medals glanced down at
me. He rubbed a dirty finger behind his glasses. “
Chto delat?
What is to be done?” he said with a sigh.

He took the folded ruble from the tin and handed it to me. Then, without a word, he walked down the long hallway, up the stairs, and to the world beyond.

Days passed but the bitter cold did not. It was so cold, the great river that wound this way and that through The City froze solid. It was too cold to snow, I heard people in the shops say. “I did not think such a thing was possible,” I said to Little Mother as she nursed her growing puppies. The cold was endless, like winter in the Snow Queen's eyes.

I began dreading my trips aboveground for all the frozen bodies now lying in gutters and next to the heat grates: not just birds now but cats and dogs and puppies. One day I saw a crowd gathered around a spot on the sidewalk. I pushed my head through the forest of legs. There, curled next to a doorway on a piece of cardboard was a small girl. She could have been just taking a nap, resting after playing in the snow at the park. But her face was gray and her lips were blue and her eyes with the dark half-moons beneath stared at nothing. A great sadness swept over me. The Snow Queen had stolen her away in sleep. Where was God, where were the angels and the saints when this girl lost her way?

A siren wailed in the distance. Rip, Lucky, and Smoke threw back their heads and howled a sad, sad song of good-bye to the frozen girl.

I thought of Vadim's words: “You'll never make it, Sobachonok. The winter will get you or the gangs or the
militsiya
, but you won't make it.”