“About you becoming a werewolf?” Bounce. Bounce. Bounce.
“Ay, caramba! Of course about me becoming a werewolf! Can I or can’t I?”
Suddenly B-Boy became very still. Worry wrinkles appeared in his forehead. “Paco, my man, I don’t think you should be fooling around with something like this.”
“I don’t care what you think! I need to know. Can I turn into a werewolf?”
B-Boy cocked his head to one side. Then he cocked it to the other side. Then he looked Paco straight in the eye. “Yes.”
Paco shook with excitement. “Tell me! Tell me how!”
“Weeeelll. It’s not that simple. I found two ways you could do it.” B-Boy paused and looked about as serious as a Jack Russell terrier can ever look.
Paco’s impatience poured over him like an icy shower. His nerves tingled. His skin twitched beneath his shiny black fur. “What are they? Come on. Tell me!”
“One way is—” B-Boy paused and took a breath. Then he scratched his side with a back foot. “It’s…It’s…”
“B-Boy! Come on! Spit it out.” Paco’s voice became very high and shrill.
“It’s sorta complicated! First you got to put on a belt made from the skin of a wolf. Then you smear a magic salve all over yourself. Then you recite poetry, some crazy stuff, you know?”
Dismay darkened the Chihuahua’s face. “Qué? I can’t do that. Where would I get the belt? Or the salve? Or find out what poem to recite?”
“Yeah, yeah!” B-Boy panted. “That’s what I thought too. Too many details. But I found this other method. Another way to become a real werewolf.”
“Can I do the other way?” Paco’s eyes lit up again.
B-Boy shrugged. “Sure. Why not? It seemed simple.”
Paco dared to hope. “You mean simple dumb? Or simple easy?”
“Easy. Easy as pie. All you have to do is drink rainwater from a werewolf’s footprint.”
Paco’s eyes glittered. He quivered with excitement. He barked his high, sharp bark. “Drink rainwater? That’s a no-brainer. I do that all the time. I can be a werewolf!” He gave B-Boy a high five. “No problema! I can be a werewolf!” He and B-Boy did a victory dance. Paco looked like a chicken scratching in the dirt, but he didn’t care what he looked like. He was happy, happy, happy.
From behind him, Coco coughed. Paco didn’t turn. She coughed again, louder. Paco kept dancing, scratching the ground, hopping up and down. He was wrapped up in the moment. He didn’t hear her at all.
“Paco!” she finally yelled. “Paco, there is a problem!”
Paco spun around. “Problema? Problema? What problem?”
Coco’s eyes became very soft and sympathetic. She hated to upset her friend. “Paco, you’re not thinking this through. You can drink rainwater. Every dog can. But you have to drink it from a werewolf’s footprint. Where are you going to find a werewolf? I don’t think any live around here.”
Paco stood very still. All his joy vanished. He thought, Coco’s right. Where can I find a werewolf? Then a memory tugged at him. His face brightened. “Maybe one does live around here, Coco. I think I heard one last night.”
“You did?”
“I think so. I don’t know so. Anyway, I heard an awful howl. It sounded really mean. It must have been a werewolf.”
Coco didn’t want to argue with the little dog, but she hadn’t heard anything the night before, and she possessed very good ears. “But you don’t know it was a werewolf. It was probably a big dog. Or a coyote.”
Coco sounded very certain. Paco’s head drooped down; his eyes stared at the ground. “I guess you’re right. It must have been a big dog.”
Seeing the effect of her words, even though she spoke the truth, Coco felt terrible for crushing the Chihuahua’s dreams. “Maybe it was a werewolf,” she offered, her voice encouraging. “One of the wild creatures might know for sure what was howling last night. Why don’t you ask that friend of yours, you know, that old skunk who lives near your backyard?”
Paco’s ears stood up. His nose twitched. Hope returned like the bedroom light flicking on early in the morning. “Yes! I’ll ask Professor Pewmount. Even if he didn’t hear it, he knows all the forest dwellers. They may have seen or heard something. News travels fast among the wild ones. I bet it was a werewolf. That’s a great idea, Co—”
He stopped in the middle of his sentence. A wonderful smell had reached his quivering little nose. His heart beat faster. His head swiveled. His eyes widened. There, waiting for her mistress to open the gate into the pool area, stood a regal Afghan hound. Her narrow snout was raised upward, her curly tail was held high, her long golden coat was shimmering like waterfalls of silk.
Natasha. The dog who had stolen his heart had arrived.
“Hi, Victoria!” Sandy yelled.
The pretty girl who held Natasha’s bejeweled leash smiled. Her straight, waist-length blond hair matched her dog’s silky coat almost exactly. Her silver flip-flops matched her silver tote bag. Her sunglasses glittered with rhinestones. She waved toward Sandy and Olivia with a turn of her hand like the queen of England greeting her subjects.
“HEY, VICTORIA!” Tommy ran up onto the diving board again. “WATCH THIS!” He hurried to the end of the board, gripped the edge with his toes, bounced, and then sprang high into the air. He curved backward and completed a half somersault. Then his long, lean body sliced into the water gracefully, barely making a ripple in the surface.
Victoria clapped. She called out when he surfaced, “You did a perfect half gainer, Tommy! I give you a ten.”
Olivia also watched Tommy make his amazing dive. Her face filled with a painful longing when she saw him emerge from the pool and rush over to help Victoria with her beach bag.
Sandy, too, focused on Victoria. He began to smile in a silly, dreamy way, staring at the lovely girl who swayed like a willow as she gingerly stepped around the puddles on the patio tiles. “She’s really amazing, isn’t she?” he sighed.
“You bet! She came in second in the regional championships last year.” Olivia pretended she didn’t know who Sandy meant.
“Championships?” Sandy sounded confused. “Oh, you mean the dog. Yes, she’s a good-looking animal. But Victoria is…” He released a long, slow breath. “But Victoria is beautiful.”
Natasha sat with great dignity in the shade of a beach umbrella. A drop of water would not dare to dampen her narrow feet. The wind would not attempt to tangle her well-groomed fur. After all, she carried a royal pedigree. She was a princess at the AKC.
She looked down her long nose at the Chihuahua’s eager face. “I told you before, munchkin. I cannot be your girlfriend. You are not my type. You are merely a raisin in the Raisin Bran. The dot over the letter i. A postage stamp on a letter. In other words, little dog, you are much too small for me.”
“But I can change!” Paco tried not to whine, but he could hear himself, and he clearly was.
“Change? I don’t think so. I like take-charge dogs. Big, brawny canines who are sometimes very bad. You remember Bruno, that German shepherd who used to ride around in the back of a police car? Hmmm? Yes? He had a crush on me. He asked me to run away with him—”
“Run away! You wouldn’t, would you?” Coco’s voice cut in, filled with shock and disapproval.
Natasha sniffed. “Not really run away, the way you mean it. At least not for long. I might have sneaked out for a brief race through the park. But that isn’t the point. The point is I liked him. Who knows where it would have led if he hadn’t chased a squirrel on duty and gotten transferred to a different station…” She sighed. “But you, Paco, you are not big. You are not bad. And it makes no difference whether you call yourself Paco or El Lobo. A name doesn’t matter, little muchacho.”
Coco, who was not quite as tall as Natasha but many, many, many pounds heavier, got slowly to her feet from her spot on the beach towel
. She liked everyone, but when Natasha hurt Paco like this, she thought about grabbing that silky ear and giving it a good shake. The chocolate Lab could not keep silent another second. She butted in again.
“That’s not true! Names have a strange way of creating their own destiny. On the inside Paco is El Lobo. He has the heart of a lion!”
Natasha laughed. “A dandelion, you mean.”
Paco blinked away his tears. It wouldn’t do to cry in front of Natasha. He had to be cool. He stood up on his hind legs to appear as tall as possible. He puffed out his chest. He slowly took off his sunglasses and hung them in the neck of his T-shirt. He leaned an elbow on the edge of the chaise. He was cool.
“Niña, baby,” he murmured. “I can change. I will. At the next full moon. You’ll see. I am El Lobo. The Wolf. I will be fierce and dangerous. I will be bigger than Bruno the German shepherd! I will be bigger than any dog you have ever seen because I—I am a werewolf!”
Natasha arched an eyebrow. “You will have to show me before I believe you.”
“Sí, claro! Of course! I will show you in—” Paco mentally counted, and he wasn’t so good at math, “in three, or maybe four, days.” He smoothly took his sunglasses out of his shirt and put them back on. He made his voice as deep as he possibly could and said, “Then, mi amor, you will go out with me.”
Natasha laughed a deep, throaty laugh. “If you become a werewolf in three or even four days, Mr. Cocktail Frankfurter, I will be your steady girl.”
“Hey, Natasha. Hey! Hey!” B-Boy was completing a head spin. “Look at me!” He launched into another power move called a windmill. Then he stood up on his hind legs and popped and locked all the way to the edge of the pool. Taking a mighty leap backward, he somersaulted into the water. It was a full gainer.
“B-Boy, on the other hand—” Natasha drawled in a voice as silky as her coat, “B-Boy may be rather short, but he—he amuses me.”
Paco couldn’t help himself. He growled. Natasha clearly liked B-Boy better than him. That Jack Russell was nothing but a doggone showoff. He’d never dare to be El Lobo. But Paco was different. He would do anything, no matter how dangerous, to become a magnificent wolf king fit for a princess of the AKC—fit to become the dog of Natasha’s dreams!
Several hours later and back home again, Paco sneaked out the doggy door as soon as the sun set. The backyard was silent and empty. Not even a sparrow chirped in the bushes. Not even a field mouse scurried through the flower bed.
Where is everybody tonight? Paco thought.
Impatient and anxious, he paced up and down the flagstone path, up and down, up and down. He waited for nearly five whole minutes, which seemed like hours to him, before he spotted the white, aged face of Professor Pewmount appearing from behind the rock wall at the far end of the garden.
The old skunk was moving unusually slowly. He took a step and paused. His nose twitched nervously, testing the night air. A rim of red encircled his dark eyes. His head swung back and forth. He peered into the distance, watching for any movement. When he was sure nothing stirred, he’d start forward again.
Paco didn’t wait for the skunk to get closer. He ran as fast as he could up to Pewy.
The skunk stiffened with surprise. Something like fear widened his eyes.
Paco didn’t notice. The little dog was too caught up in thinking about himself to see that his friend was worried or scared. Paco’s body trembled with excitement. He started talking as fast as he could.
“Pewy, hi! Hi! You know what? I heard something terrible howling last night! But I don’t know what it was. Did you hear anything? If you did, do you think it was a werewolf? And if you did, and I did, he couldn’t be far away, right? But he wasn’t close either. So what do you think?”
Then Paco shook from head to toe, as all Chihuahuas do. It doesn’t mean they’re scared. They shake because their feelings are too powerful to keep inside themselves. And what Paco felt right now was impatient.
Professor Pewmount’s sainted mother always said, “If ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ were candy and nuts, oh, what a party we’d have.” It was nearly the first thing that came into the skunk’s mind as he listened to Paco’s excited questions. He scowled at the little dog. He cleared his throat. He took his time. He finally answered.
“Yes, I heard something howling last night. The wild creatures in the forest did too. And some of the wild ones, those with the very best noses, smelled something. But nobody saw anything. So we don’t know what was howling.”
Disappointment flitted over Paco for the briefest moment, like a batwing in front of the moon. Then he thought of something and brightened. “Pewy, you said some of the animals could smell something. What did it smell like?”
The skunk looked away. He didn’t really want to answer.
“Pewy, please. I need to know. Tell me, please, please.” Paco whined, feeling nearly desperate.
The skunk sighed a deep, ancient sigh and spoke. “The early morning chattering of the woodland animals agreed that the scent was terrible. It wasn’t a dog. It wasn’t coyote. It could have been a wolf. Yet no wolves have lived in this land for over a hundred years. A werewolf, I must admit, was hmmmnn—errrr—mentioned—by, by, ahem, a squirrel. Or maybe two squirrels.”
Paco’s ears stood up. “What do you mean, mentioned? What did the squirrels say exactly?”
Pewy rubbed his nose. He was clearly nervous. “They said, ‘Last night was a night when humans could not rest in their beds, nor birds in their nests, nor foxes in their dens, nor could the stars stop twisting in the heavens. And on such a night, the werewolf howls.’ That’s what they said. Word for word.”
Paco shivered. His eyes got very big. “I’m scared, Pewy,” he confessed.
“You should be afraid. We all are. Everyone agrees that the beast, werewolf or not, sounds very dangerous. He’s new to the area, and surely he has come to eat us, not to make friends. The entire forest is on high alert. The red-tailed hawks and blue jays are taking the daytime watch. The bats and owls are keeping guard by night.”
Paco squared his shoulders and straightened his tail. “Even though it’s very scary, I still want to find this werewolf. After all, I don’t have to fight him. I just have to drink rainwater from his footprint. Since he’s not far away, where do you suppose I have to go to look for him?”
Pewy shook his head in disapproval. “You are very young and very foolish. Muy bobo, as you would say. No one should go looking for trouble.”
“I have to! Natasha will never love me unless I change who I am.” He began to whine again. It was a very bad habit of his. “Please tell me where the wild ones think the great beast is.”
Professor Pewmount’s mouth got tight, as if he really did not want to speak. But if he didn’t, he knew the squirrels would tell Paco sooner or later. Squirrels can never keep secrets.
“They say the creature is to the north. A few miles. Near the peak they call Mount Diablo. As I just said, you are young and foolish. You will never listen to someone old and wise. But you should heed me and stay away from there.”
Paco did not hear the wise skunk’s warning. He merely heard what he wanted to hear. “Only a few miles? That’s splendid. I can run there and back before Olivia knows I’m missing. You know the country better than anyone, Pewy. Which road do I take?”
Professor Pewmount turned to leave. His mind was troubled. He wondered if he should have withheld the truth and told Paco the howling was a coyote. Then again, his long life had taught him that lies were never a good idea.
“Which road, my little friend? Take the white road, of course.” He began to wander away into the dark.
Paco’s heart beat fast. He didn’t quite understand. He called out, “Pewy! I thought you’d give me a route number, not a color. Why did you say ‘of course the white road?’”
The skunk slowed and looked back. “You are not a for
est creature, or you would know that. A white road reflects the moon and stars; it can be traveled by night.”
“Of course!” Understanding fell upon Paco like grace.
“Yes, my friend, but the wild ones also know that because a white road can be traveled in the darkness, it can easily lead you into places you would avoid in the light. Dangerous places. Foul lands. Perilous kingdoms. You must be very careful when you follow a white road.”
“I will be! I promise. Thank you, Pewy.”
The learned skunk had reached the far side of the yard by this time. He was nearly out of sight when he stopped. He seemed to be thinking about something. He turned around. He called out to Paco, “I would like you to do something for me if you go.”
“Oh, I am going. Tell me what you want. I’ll do it.”
The skunk’s voice came across the grass like the whistling of the wind. “Don’t go alone.”
Paco didn’t have to think twice, or even think at all, about who would go along the white road with him, travel beyond the boundaries of his hometown, and stay the course until he reached Mount Diablo. No matter how long the way or difficult the journey, Paco had one friend who would never turn him down.
That friend—more true, more loyal, more trustworthy than all the rest—was Coco. Labrador retrievers have kindness and helpfulness woven into the very fiber of their being. But Coco had an extra measure of both. Paco knew that. Sad to say, he took it for granted. He and Coco had been pups together. They had tugged on the same chew toy. They had munched on the same bone. Coco had even sat back and allowed Paco to eat out of her doggy bowl. For a lover of food, as Coco clearly was, sharing her precious dinner showed how deeply she cared for him.
Therefore, Professor Pewmount’s request to “not go alone” was already taken care of, in Paco’s mind at least. But the small dog remained outside in the soft gray dusk to think about something else. He stared off into the gathering darkness and put all his brain cells to work on a plan for slipping out of the house and finding the werewolf.
Chihuawolf Page 2
