The Dogs of Winter (21 page)

In the far north of the Border Lands where the wild pig had lived, we came across a trail of blood glowing in the light of the full moon. The blood made me uneasy. The blood trail made the dogs crazy with excitement.

They ran and ran, their noses pressed to the ground, Smoke in the lead. What if one of the Others trailed this blood too? I knew we were far from their territory, but that didn't mean they wouldn't venture this far. Like us.

The pack stopped at the edge of a stream. They searched up and down the banks for the blood trail. I trotted up next to Smoke.

“Let's go back,” I said.

No, Malchik.

I growled hard. “I said —”

Moon yipped and bounded across the creek. The rest of the pack streamed behind her and disappeared into the woods beyond the moonlight.

Rip pawed my leg and panted with excitement.

“Okay, okay,” I said.

By the time I found the dogs, it was over.

A small deer lay at the feet of the pack. Its big brown eyes gazed out at nothing.

I pushed my way through the dogs. “Get back.” I growled and raised the rib bone above my head. All the dogs stepped away except Smoke. He watched as I knelt next to the deer.

I could see where the dogs had torn its back leg and its throat. But on the side of its neck, blood flowed from a perfectly round hole. It was not the shape of teeth or claws or even the tusk of the Biggest Pig in All of Russia. I poked my finger into the hole as far as it would go until it bumped against something hard and flat and small. That was where the blood trail had come from.

I stood and wiped my hand on my shirt. “Eat,” I said.

Growling, smacking, the crunch of bone, the tear of skin.

I turned my back on the dogs and returned to the creek. I sat beside the moon-silver water and rocked myself back and forth, feeling small.

A twig snapped. Warm breath on the back of my arm.

Smoke dropped something at my feet.

I picked it up and brushed it off. It fit warm and egg-shaped in the palm of my hand.

Eat,
Smoke said.

I did.

In the golden haze of late summer, I rested in a tree. This tree was a fine birch not too close to the Ferris wheel park but just close enough for the wind to bring voices and music.

I was trying to remember a song my mother used to sing to me, when I heard a voice below say, “This will do nicely.”

I peered down through the branches. A woman in a wide-brimmed hat and skirt covered with flowers stood a few feet from my tree. She smiled at the small stream I had bathed in earlier to rid myself of fleas. All of us were covered with bites.

The woman unfolded a small stool, just like the one the blind Accordion Man had used to sit on. From a large bag, she pulled out and unfolded a wooden stand, a big pad of paper, and a box. She settled herself on the stool and propped the pad of white paper on the stand. She hummed and opened the box.

Quietly, quietly, I eased myself down one limb and then another to see what she might have to eat in that box. Rip and Moon and Little Mother stuck their noses out from under the brush where they'd been napping in the cool dirt. Their noses wiggled back and forth.

She lifted the lid. The box did not hold food. The box held sticks of bright color. She picked up a stick the color of the late-summer grass and scribbled it over the paper. Then she picked up another color stick and another. Her hand moved this way and that across the page.

I lowered myself one more time. I gasped. The woman had drawn the grass and the stream and the blue, blue sky and the flowers and the brushy brush with three black noses peeking out.

The woman's hand froze. She looked all around. “Is someone there?” she whispered.

I held my breath and kept very still. The birds sang. A squirrel scolded me for being in his tree.

The woman sighed. She put her picture and her color sticks and her wooden stand back in her big bag. She folded up her stool and looked around the small meadow one last time. And then, humming a little tune, she walked back toward the Ferris wheel park.

I dropped to the ground. The dogs wiggled from under the brush and danced with relief, as they always did, that I had come down from where they could not follow.

“Did you see?” I asked them. “Did you see what was in that box?”

The dogs stretched and yawned.

I hugged myself. “Oh, I know it wasn't food, but it was amazing. It made something beautiful.”

The woman came back the next day and the next, always in the late afternoon. I waited for her in the tree and I watched.

Sometimes she drew the light on the stream; sometimes she drew the dying flowers. Always she hummed while she drew.

My fingers itched to draw too. How I had loved to draw when I was just a little boy. I drew the stories my mother read to me from the book of fairy tales. I remembered drawing to pass the time when my mother left me alone after Babushka Ina died. I remembered drawing on any little scrap of paper I could find during those long, cold, and lonely nights after
he
came. How long had it been since I had held a pencil in my hand?

On the third day, the woman appeared again. And as always, she wore her big hat and her skirt with flowers. She set up her stool and her stand and set about drawing.

After a time, I saw something from the corner of one eye. Lucky crept toward the woman on his belly. His eyes were fixed on a plastic bag next to her chair.

I sniffed. Something wonderful rested in that bag, and Lucky meant to steal it.

My heart hammered in my chest. I hissed at Lucky.

The woman stopped and looked around.

The woman went back to humming her tune and drawing a squirrel chattering in a tree.

Lucky eased forward, his tongue flicking his nose. He stretched his neck as far as it would go and pulled back his lips.

“No!” I shouted from the tree.

The woman jumped up from her stool. Her eyes darted from Lucky to me. “Oh!” she gasped.

Lucky flattened his ears against his skull and rolled his eyes apologetically. Then he whirled and shot into the underbrush.

The woman looked up at me, her eyes wide and blue. Her hair was white beneath the wide brim of her hat.

I dropped out of the tree and crouched in front of her.

Her wrinkled face went white. Her mouth opened and closed.

I could not bear to hear her cry, “It's a demon!” or “Get away!”

We locked eyes. Her face flushed. Her eyes softened.

As I dashed after Lucky, I heard her call, “Boy! Boy!”

I ran and ran, my feet just skimming the grass. I flew across our stream and burst into our meadow. I wrestled Lucky to the ground and play-nipped at his ears. His eyes danced with relief.

“Me!” I said to Lucky and the rest who'd gathered around, their tails wagging. “She saw
me
!”

For two days, it rained. I knew the Woman in the Hat would not come when it rained. Still, every day I went to the birch tree and waited.

Finally, the sun shone. I raced to the tree and climbed just a few limbs up. Again, she would see me —
me
. She did not look through me like a ghost; she did not confuse me for a mad dog. She did not see me digging through trash bins for food or eating the still-warm heart of a deer. Because her eyes had softened, hadn't they? I hugged myself and smiled.

The sun rose high to the top of the tree. She did not come. The sun slipped to the side, then sank below the outstretched limbs. Still she did not come.

When the first star appeared in the fading light, I climbed down from the tree. The dogs leapt in a frenzy.

“You,” I shouted at Lucky. “It's all your fault!”

Lucky tucked his tail and turned his head away from me. I stood over him, my fists clenched. “If you hadn't been so greedy, if you hadn't tried to steal her food, she'd have come back!”

Tears stung my eyes. I raised my fist. Lucky cowered.

Smoke stepped between us. He lifted one corner of his lip.
Stop.

Lucky looked up, his eyes pleading.

All the anger drained away.

I dropped to my knees and threw my arms around his big neck. “I'm sorry,” I whispered into his scarred ear.

He licked the tears off my face.

I did not go back to the birch tree the next day. Instead, I explored with the dogs.

But the day after, I could not keep from going.

I had just hoisted myself onto a limb when she, the Woman in the Hat, walked into the sunlight. She hummed as she set up her stool and her drawing frame, just as she always had. She took out her wonderful box of color sticks.

I squirmed on the limb. Why had she not looked for me? Had she forgotten? Was I just a ghost to her now?

She took another plastic bag from her very big bag and set it on the stool. Then, without turning or looking up, she called, “I brought you food.”

My heart skipped once and then again. Perhaps she was talking to Lucky?

“But you have to come down from that silly tree to get it,” she said, her voice smiling.

Slowly, I slid down from the tree. Just as slowly, she picked up the plastic bag. She held it out. “Here,” she said. “Take it.”

I wanted to scamper around her in circles like Moon and Star had when they were excited, silly puppies. I wanted to roll on my back and show her my belly. Instead, I walked over to her with my eyes downcast and took the bag. I retreated to the base of my tree and squatted on the ground. The smell from the bag made my mouth water. Inside the bag: bread, a boiled egg, sausage roll, and, most wonderfully, a red apple. I held the apple to my nose and sniffed in its appleness. I would share the bread and sausage roll with the dogs, but the apple and the egg were mine.

“Eat,” she said.

I opened my eyes, startled. She watched me. The wrinkles around her eyes smiled like Babushka Ina's had.

I broke off a small piece of bread and chewed. My throat was too dry to swallow. How long had it been since I'd been this close to another person?

“Do you live near here?” she asked, tucking her white hair into a bun.

I nodded.

Her summer-blue eyes took in my long, matted hair, my torn off pants, and the shirt that was really just rags now. “Do you have parents?”

I shook my head.

She cocked her head to one side. “What's your name, then?”

I coughed and looked away, ashamed. What would I tell her? Dog Boy? Cockroach?

She sighed. “You're just like Mowgli in
The Jungle Book
.”

I looked across to her. Mowgli. A tiny memory that I could not catch came with that name.

She sat on her stool and placed her pad of white paper on the frame. She looked over her shoulder and said, “You're welcome to stay and keep me company, Mowgli.”

And I did.

“Can you draw a firebird?” I asked. Rip licked the grease of roasted chicken from my fingers. I shifted him in my lap to better see what the Woman in the Hat was drawing. Lucky lay with his head by her foot. Sometimes Lucky and Star came with me to the birch tree. Rip always came. Never did Smoke or Little Mother or Moon let the Woman in the Hat see them.

She gave me a curious, sideways look. “How does Mowgli know about firebirds?”

“From my fairy tale book,” I said.

“You can read?”

I shrugged and pulled a tick from Rip's good ear.

“How old are you, Mowgli?”

I sighed. I had been meeting her at the birch tree for many days. I was tired of her questions.

I pointed to her box of color sticks. “What are those?”

“Pastels,” she said. She held up a pastel the color of blood. “Want to try one?”

I shook my head, but I could not take my eyes off the red, glowing stick.

She smiled. “Come here, Mowgli, and show this old woman how to draw a firebird.”

I took the pad of white paper. My filthy fingers smudged the edges. I cringed.

“It's okay,” she said. She handed me the red pastel. “Draw,” she said.

I closed my eyes and searched my memory for the great firebird, and then I drew. When I was finished, I handed her the pad, not looking at her.

She gasped. “Why, Mowgli, this is very good!” She looked from the firebird, to me, then back at the paper.

I wrestled with the smile pulling at my face. My heart soared like the firebird over The City. I buried my face against my hands.

She touched my shoulder. I jerked away and covered my face.

“It's okay,” she said. I heard a ripping sound. My drawing was trash. I huddled deeper in my knees and hands.

“Here,” she said. “You keep it.”

I looked up. She had torn my firebird from her pad and held it out to me. “You can hang it up,” she said.

I leapt to my feet. The smile won over my face. “You keep it,” I said. “It will get wet and ruined where we live.”

And before she could ask the question already marching from her mouth, I dashed with Rip into the forest.

That night, I sat on the flat boulder at the far edge of the meadow and gazed at the night sky. Moon lay on one side of me, her feet twitching in her sleep. The rest of the pack lay scattered about the meadow.

I pulled my knees to my chest and rocked myself back and forth. My blood sang in my body like the music in the Ferris wheel park.

“This is very good,” she had said. She had not said, “You are a small pathetic boy.” She had not said, “You are no better than a cockroach.” She had said, “very good.”

I cupped Moon's face in my hands and put my nose close to hers. “I am very good,” I said. “I am a very good Mowgli.”

Moon wagged her tail and kissed the end of my nose.

I took the piece of newspaper my sausage had been wrapped in from my pocket. I smoothed it out on my knees. Star nibbled at one corner.

“Stop that,” I said, pushing him away.

I searched the piece of newspaper hungrily for words I knew.

“The. Man. Ran. Away,” I read out loud to the dogs. “The man ran away,” I said. I laughed. “He ran away!”

I grabbed Lucky by his front paws and danced with him in the moonlight.