The Dogs of Winter (18 page)

And so the summer passed, and before we knew it, the leaves changed from green to gold and red, and the days grew shorter. The light turned buttery. Many mornings, frost pricked my bare feet. I was glad my hair had grown long enough to cover my ears and neck.

The winds came and the leaves fell to the ground. The dogs had a harder time hunting with the crunch of leaves beneath their paws. Even Moon and Star had to learn to walk on ghost feet.

One afternoon I sat in the fall sunlight and watched the last of the birch leaves in our meadow fall to the ground. A cold wind lifted my hair. An aching sadness I had not felt since we had lost Grandmother washed over me. Tears stung my eyes and spilled down my cheeks.

Moon nudged my face with her cold, wet nose and licked my cheeks. I buried my face in the deep fur across her shoulders. “It must be a year,” I said. She looked at me with her mother's worried eyes.

“The leaves were falling off the trees and it was just beginning to turn cold when I lost my mother, and when
he
left me in The City alone.”

I leaned my head against Moon's shoulder. A year since I'd slept on a bed and eaten from a bowl. A year since I had heard my mother's voice. “I no longer remember her voice,” I said.

I knew the playful
yip
of Star, the deep grumble of Lucky, the beautiful voice of Little Mother when we all howled at the moon. I no longer remembered the color of my mother's eyes. Were they blue as the sky or did they flash black like Rip's?

I stood and shook off the weight of my sadness. I grabbed my bone club. The bone was smooth and cool where my hand had worn away the stiff hair.

“It has been a year,” I said to the dogs as they stretched in the sunlight. “And that means I am no longer five. I am now six.” I swung my club this way and that. “I am no longer a little boy holding on to his mother. I am no longer a little cockroach hiding in the dark.” I swung the club high in the air and brought it down with a
crack
on the skull of a rabbit. “If
he
came to our apartment door now, I would kill him.”

The morning was encased in cold and frost. I climbed the tree of our home and retrieved my pants, sweater, socks, and boots. I pulled on the pants and smiled. They were no longer too long. The sweater sleeves no longer covered my scarred
hands; my toes pushed painfully against the ends of the boots. I left the boots and socks and trotted across the meadow with the dogs.

We sniffed our way along faint trails on the far side of the vast forest we'd rarely traveled. This part of the forest made me uneasy for reasons I could not say. Perhaps it was the thickness of the trees and the lack of sunlight. Perhaps it was the way the mist seemed to never leave this part of the woods. But hunting was getting scarce and the dogs needed to eat. With the cold days, fewer people came to the Ferris wheel park. It was harder for me to find enough for all of us to eat.

We crept through the wet, darkened wood. “At least last night's rain keeps the leaves from being so noisy,” I whispered to Moon. Still, a feeling of dread slowed my steps.

Up ahead I heard the snapping of sticks and a grunt and snort. We froze. Smoke, in the lead as always, raised his head and sniffed. His ears followed the sound of feet shuffling in the leaves. Smoke looked back at me, his eyes puzzled. It was not something we had smelled before. The hair rose on the back of my neck and along my arms.

There was another grunt, closer this time. Red eyes peered through the mist. Something white flashed like a sword.

I crouched to turn.
Let's leave,
I said to Smoke.

Just then, Star shot forward into the swirling mist.

“No!” I cried.

Star snarled and growled. I heard the snapping of teeth. A cry of panic. Star burst through the mist and the trees running toward us, his eyes wide with fear and his tail tucked between his legs.

Thundering behind Star was the Biggest Pig in All of Russia.

“Run!” I shouted.

The pig was fast and agile. Long white tusks curved up from its snout like twin crescent moons.

The pig hooked Star with a tusk and tossed him aside. Little Mother leapt upon the beast, sinking teeth into the back of its neck. The pig tossed her to the ground. Just as it was about to stab her with its tusks, Lucky and Smoke rushed it. Lucky grabbed the pig by one ear while Smoke grabbed a back leg.

The pig squealed in fury and pain. It shook Lucky off as if he were no more than a bothersome flea. It swung its massive neck and scraped Smoke off with a rake of its tusks. Smoke yelped in pain and rolled to the side. The pig lowered its head, its tusks aimed at Smoke's belly. The pig pawed the ground.

“No!” I roared. The beast swung its head. The red pig eyes gleamed with hate. I raised my club and brought it crashing down on the pig's shoulders.
Crack!

The beast staggered under the blow. Smoke leapt to his feet. I glanced at him. Blood streamed from his side.

The pig charged and slammed into my leg. A tusk tore through my pants and sank into flesh.

I screamed in pain and fell backward. The pig prepared to charge again.

First Moon, then Smoke and Lucky set upon the huge pig. Blood and fur and snarls and yelps filled the air.

I pulled myself to my feet and raised my club. Smoke glanced up from his hold on the back of the pig's neck.

Now,
he said.

The dogs froze. The pig's red eyes locked on mine. I brought the club down with such force on the pig's head that the club broke in two.

The legs of the beast buckled. For just a blink, the red eyes gleamed again with hate, then dulled to nothingness.

My knees gave way. I sank to the wet, blood-spattered leaves. I gulped the air with ragged breaths.

The dogs sniffed the great pig. Lucky licked at the blood on its torn ear. Little Mother pawed its side. It did not move.

I watched and shivered as the dogs tore into the pig.

I am six years old now,
I thought.
And I killed it.

My stomach heaved, and I vomited in the grass.

For two days and two nights, the sickle-shaped gash from the pig's tusk festered. My leg burned and pulsed. I grew hot, then cold, then hot again. I slipped in and out of fever
dreams — dreams of being chased by big black things with glowing ember eyes. Sometimes the thing was a giant wolf with wings, sometimes Baba Yaga chased me. Sometimes
he
chased me.

I'd wake with a cry and always, the dogs surrounded me: Moon and Star were pressed into my side, Rip and Lucky lying at my feet, Little Mother busy licking Smoke's side over and over.

Once, I dreamed of my mother's hands. She smoothed the damp hair from my fevered face. She washed my face over and over with a wet rag. “There, Mishka,” she said. “My brave boy.”

“Mother,” I said, opening my eyes. I expected to see her face, the face I no longer remembered, hovering over me. But it was not my mother washing my face. Instead, Little Mother hovered over me, washing and washing my face with her rough wet tongue.

Smoke stood next to her, gazing into my eyes.

Brave Malchik,
he said.
My brave boy.

Winter came early that year. Winter came and people left the Ferris wheel park. The food stalls closed. The garbage cans were all but empty. The big duck pond where we'd found the delicious eggs and where the dogs had occasionally managed to catch a duck or two iced over. My sweater was in tatters from living in the tree for months; I had outgrown my boots. I had no coat.

Every day it was colder, and every day I said to the dogs, “We have to leave.” But still, we stayed in our home beneath the tree.

And then, the snow came. It did not come in gentle fits and starts like the winter before. It did not do us the courtesy of coming with patience. One day it was not there and the next morning it was everywhere.

We woke to darkness. The air in the den beneath our tree was close and wet. I untangled myself from Moon and Rip and felt my way to the opening beneath the tree limbs. My hand met snow. I felt all around the circle of the tree's wide skirt. Everywhere snow packed thick against the limbs.

My heart beat hard in my chest. Rip squeezed next to me and sniffed the snow wall. He whined, and then barked.

Another bark and then
scratch scratch scratch
on the other side of the snow wall.

Little Mother and her children began digging on our side of the wall. Snow flew in all directions, and then …

Light! Light and a big black nose pushed against my face. We shoved and tumbled our way out of the den and into the gray light.

Lucky jumped up and down, his plumed tail wagging, his tongue swiping the side of my face. He chased Moon and Star through the snowy meadow. Smoke and Little Mother licked each other's faces. Rip crawled into my lap and looked up at me with smiling eyes.

The meadow was a stranger now. I could no longer see the stream's course or the rocks where I'd sat every night and watched the stars. The trails that I knew as well as I knew each of the dogs were gone. The deer skull was mostly covered in snow. Only the black holes of the eyes were visible. I stared at the holes. They stared back.

Rip nudged my hand and whined. I tore my eyes away from the skull and looked into his worried eyes. “I know,” I said. “It is time.”

And so it was, the dogs and I left our home in the forest and made our way back to The City.

As always, the people of The City hurried this way and that, huddled in their coats, slipping and sliding on the ice-crusted sidewalks. Here, no birds sang. My eyes were hungry for trees, for open spaces. Here, the tall buildings and the tumbledown buildings pushed in on one another. I coughed and pinched my nose against the foul smells: car exhaust, unwashed hair, smokestacks, rotting garbage, sewage.

We passed children and bums sleeping and begging in the shop doorways. Their eyes widened as we passed. One called, “Hey! What are you?” Another called, “I smelled it coming a mile away!” We did not stop; we did not look left or right. I curled my fingers around the knife in my pants pocket.

Moon pressed close against my legs. The other dogs kept close too. A large, mangy dog growled and snapped as we approached. His ribs rippled beneath patches of fur and sores. The dog stood in our path, daring us to pass.

Smoke and Lucky closed in front and stopped. They raised their tails and narrowed their eyes and growled. I took out my knife, narrowed my eyes, and pulled my lips back from my teeth. A long, low warning growl rumbled in my throat.

The dog blinked. He looked from Smoke and Lucky to me. I growled again. The dog dropped his tail and slunk away into the shadows.

I rubbed Lucky and Smoke's sides. They licked my hands and wagged their tails. Then we sauntered down the sidewalk to Sokolniki metro station.

At first I was so busy raiding the garbage cans in the metro, I didn't notice the people staring at me. “There must be more in here,” I muttered to myself. “If only I were a little taller.”

“What
is
that?” I heard a voice say.

I pulled my head out of the garbage can to see what the problem might be.

Two women stared at me, their eyes wide with disbelief. One pressed a handkerchief to her nose and mouth. “It almost looks like a child,” she said.

The other woman shook her head and pinched her nose. “No child ever smelled like that. Certainly no human. It looks like a demon!”

“I am a boy,” I said, my voice croaky from disuse.

Their eyes widened again.

I held out my hand. “I am just a boy,” I said again, my voice clearer this time. “And I am hungry.” Lucky wagged his tail hopefully; Rip tried to dance on his back legs but toppled over.

The women clutched their purses against their sides and hurried away.

Their words rung in my ears as I looked for more food.
It looks like a demon! No child ever smelled like that!
I sniffed my clothes and my skin. I smelled like the dogs and the earth and the trees. “I smell good to me,” I said to Moon and Star. Still, the people coming and going to the trains
pinched their noses and looked at me in disgust when they passed. No one would give me money to buy food this way.

That evening when the metro station was quiet, I slipped into the bathroom for a drink of water. I almost fled in fear from the wild beast glaring at me from above the sink.

I bared my teeth. It bared its teeth.

I narrowed my eyes. It narrowed its eyes.

“What are you?” I demanded. Its mouth moved in time with mine.

I gasped and touched my face. It touched its face too.

I stepped closer and touched the cold glass of the mirror. “You're
me
,” I whispered.

This was not a mother's little Mishka staring back at me. This was not a boy who slept curled into a mother's side and hid in pantries. This was not a little mouse who cowered in fear of the tall boys in chains and black.

This boy staring back from the mirror had slept beneath a tree with his pack; a boy who ran through the forest swift as a deer and rolled with delight in mud and the sweet scent of dead things. This boy carried a club and killed a giant pig and howled at the moon with his family.

This boy was Smoke's brave boy, his Malchik. I smiled.

“Still, we need to eat,” I said to myself in the mirror.

I stripped off my clothes and scrubbed. The water turned black and my skin turned pink. The scar on my leg from the pig's tusk glowed red.

The clothes were in tatters, it was true. “I need to find the Christian Ladies and get new clothes,” I said to the boy in the mirror.

Clothes, food, and a warm place to be safe. That was all we needed to get through another winter. “And then we'll return to the forest,” I said. My mind whirred with a plan as I slipped on my clothes, my too-small boots. “Clothes from the Christian Ladies. More people mean more money and more food.” I took the knife from my pocket and pulled open the blade. I pried twigs and dead leaves from the long snarls in my hair. I grabbed a greasy lock covering my eyes and sawed back and forth with the knife. I grabbed another and another and another until hair blanketed my feet.

“And to keep warm and safe, we will again ride the trains,” I said to the brown eyes in the mirror.

The eyes that stared back from the mirror did not belong to a demon or to a wild beast or to a mother's little bear. They were the wary, cunning eyes of Malchik.