The Heart of Dog

by Doranna Durgin

  Quite suddenly, the air cleared. Quite suddenly, Shiba could see normally again.

  Quite suddenly, she and Taliya both stopped short. Shiba's hackles rose completely beyond her control, all the way from her neck down her spine and even into her tail.

  Three young humans, one fuzzy blond puppy of no particular lineage.

  The three young humans look stunned—two naked boy children with silvery grey hair and one naked girl child with black hair; all with dark eyes and sharp oval faces and rather large ears and six or seven years' growth. The blond puppy floundered in a diaper cloth, not nearly as steady on its feet or of an age with the puppies who had been there moments earlier.

  Shiba growled, and then she whined, and then she looked to Taliya for guidance—but Taliya's face couldn't decide between fear and fury. "It's harmless," she said, mimicking Eldon's voice from not so very long ago. "Conceived in the borderlands," she said, and glared down and Shiba and then back at Sabre, who knew well enough when retreat under the porch was the very best option. Then she tipped her head back and cried in a voice surely loud enough to reach a town miles and miles away, "TAAL-LONN!!"

  6.

  Shiba stalked around the three young humans, bewildered by the mixed puppysmell and humansmell. Taliya—once she finished shouting imprecations to the sky and stomped her foot once or twice—had no such hesitation. She snatched up the blonde puppy and bundled it into a basket best left for picnic outings. She went into the cabin and at short intervals, pieces of clothing flew out the door. When she was done flinging, she emerged to clothe the young humans.

  For their part, the young humans barely interrupted their play. They poked, they prodded, they giggled, they pulled hair and they experimented with their teeth. Shiba's teats shrunk up in horror at the sight of those strong human incisors.

  Once Taliya had them clothed—tunics made from Tallon's old shirts, with no attempt at puzzling human underlayers or even at pants at all—she recorked the potion, checked the level of the remaining fluid, and shook her head. "We've got to find the other one," she told Shiba, and crouched to show Shiba the thick glass cordial. "It's not inside—they must have lost it somewhere. We've got to find it and take it and the children to Eldon. Eldon will know what to do." But Shiba would have taken better heart if Taliya hadn't then muttered darkly, "He'd better."

  She called Sabre out from his sanctuary and held the cordial out to him, too. "Take scent," she told them both, only a hint of desperation in her voice. "Find it!"

  Sabre instantly bounded away into the trees, barking in a choppy early-trail voice, already on the scent. But Shiba gave the playful young humans a worried look and went to nudge them, making them squeal at the touch of her cold nose as they wrestled, emitting odd hybrid puppy-human I-am-fierce noises. And she looked up at Taliya, who stood beside the picnic basket of blond puppy growling just as fiercely at the tail it had just discovered, and she whined.

  Taliya's anger melted away; she went down on one knee and threw her arms around Shiba's sturdy shoulders. "We'll fix it," she said. "Somehow. We'll fix it."

  "Yi-yi-yi-yiii!" Cuttie's voice, unmistakable no matter her form, rose even as her brothers' faux snarls rose to fever pitch. Shiba didn't hesitate. She pulled out of Taliya's grip and she rounded on the squabbling young human puppies, her own no-nonsense snarl garnering instant silence. The three looked as they ever did in such moments—perpetually astonished at the reprimand, all wide-eyed what-did-we-do? But then... Then their little faces crumpled. Their eyes squinched shut and their cheeks flushed and their mouths opened to human wails of dismay dampened by human tears.

  Behind Shiba, the blond puppy took up the chorus in a thin, piping and inexpert howl, oowaooohwaaaa!

  Baffled, she backed away from it all. She found Taliya's face crumpling as well, and then the ruckus and that thin little howl triggered her own hound song, and she lifted her nose to the sky to join in. Aaahwoouuuooouuo..!, a chorus of cacophony with Sabre's chop bark sounding hard and clear in the background.

  Which is how Eldon found them.

  7.

  But Eldon had his own concerns. "Where's Tallon?" he asked abruptly, with no apparent awareness that anything on the homefront might be amiss.

  "You!" Taliya swiped away angry tears. "You said it was harmless unless it was in the presence of magic! You were wrong! Now fix it!"

  Eldon stopped short. An older man, lean and lanky with big bony hands that knew just where to scratch a canine ear, normally unflappable—now he stared, non-plused. Finally he cleared his throat. "Well, they don't look like they've been harmed, exactly..."

  "Eldon..." The word was a warning growl. Shiba lowered her head and growled for real.

  Eldon circled the trio, peeked in at the blond puppy. Then he offered, "At least they're not old enough to be butt-sniffing."

  Taliya's eyes widened with horror; she threw her hands in the air, plunking down to sit on the ground as though she'd suddenly lost strength in her legs. The three young humans did as they always did when she sat with them—they swarmed her, pushing each other away to claim her lap.

  "Don't you dare," she told them. "Don't you dare lick my face."

  Eldon to the rescue, at last. "That'll do, puppies."

  His no-nonsense voice got their attention, and if they didn't back away, they at least settled. Shiba gave Trey a lick across his ruffled hair, but he didn't even taste the same and she backed away, lowering herself to lie with her chin on her paws and her most soulful expression directed toward Eldon.

  "Now," he said. "Tell me what happened."

  Taliya told him. Short and to the point, she told him. She gestured with the cut-glass cordial, sloshing the remains of the potion. In the background, Sabre had gone from the excited bark of trail found to the more musical bark of running trail...and now his muffled chop-bark for treed drifted in on the light breeze. She said, "The puppies dragged the other one out, too, but they didn't return with it. Sabre's out there trailing it now."

  Eldon shook his head. "It has to have been the puppies. Sabre and Shiba shouldn't have been so close to the border when they—well. It hasn't happened before. They've already got magic woven into their breeding lines; there's no telling what effect such a conception had on them. Obviously more than any of us anticipated."

  "You mean—"

  "I mean, I told you the truth. That potion is inactive unless in the presence of magic, and its purpose is to reverse the magic it intercepts. Under the circumstances...I think it did the best it could."

  "It's a stupid potion, then," Taliya sniffed. But she had hope in her voice when she added, "So maybe we can just put them together and sprinkle the potion around, and they'll go back the way they were?"

  "It's the first thing I'd try," Eldon said. "Except..."

  Taliya narrowed her eyes so fiercely they were nothing more than angry maternal slits. "Except what, Eldon?"

  "We can't use it for that. And we can't wait around to find the other bottle." In the background, Sabre's call had stopped. Shiba looked anxiously toward the woods, knowing Sabre would never give up on a trail, especially not once he'd barked treed. "And I'm afraid the longer the...children stay in these unnatural forms, the harder it'll be to reverse the process."

  "Why?" Taliya demanded. "Why can't we use it for that?"

  Eldon looked at Shiba and looked at Taliya and finally said, most reluctantly, "Because you two are too damned good at what you do. I've gotten word that Tallon has been targeted for magical attack. Wherever he is, he needs the rest of this potion, and he needs it now."

  "He's in town," Taliya said instantly. And then, "Take it to him. I'll find Sabre—he's got the other one. These... children will bathe in the stuff if I have anything to say about it."

  "Just don't get it on you," Eldon said dryly. "Taliya, if it doesn't work, I'll have the best minds in the Line Patrol here to sort this out as soon as possible. Don't think we won't take care of this."

  "But it might be too late, you s
aid."

  Eldon didn't answer. But he wouldn't meet Taliya's eyes, and he wouldn't even look at Shiba.

  That couldn't be good.

  And then Sabre trotted proudly into the clearing, his face and paws encrusted with loamy dirt, his jaws carefully clamped around a cordial that looked the twin to the one Eldon held.

  There was no cork.

  As Sabre came to a stop before Taliya and triumphantly presented his prize, one last drop of potion dripped to the ground and quickly soaked in. Gone. Shiba's head felt suddenly heavier on her paws; she rolled her eyes to see what Taliya would do.

  Taliya pressed her lips together in that way that usually meant whichever smuggler they trailed was in big trouble now, and she looked at Eldon.

  Eldon only closed his eyes and winced.

  Taliya said, "We're coming with you."

  Eldon's eyes flew open.

  "Tallon needs the potion. We need the potion. That means we need to be at the same place, the same time."

  "How—" Eldon said, looking at the young humans, and looking at the blond puppy, "All the way—?" And finally, desperately, "You know it's not safe!"

  "And neither was that potion!" Taliya snapped at him, an argument he could never win.

  8.

  Shiba wore her brush guard and her trailing harness with its identifying medallion. Sabre wore only his harness and medallion. Taliya wore whatever she'd thrown on that morning. The three young human puppies rode in a garden wagon, wore their makeshift tunics and made no bones about squatting by the side of the road when necessary, tumbling in and out of the wagon as they pleased with no effort at human-type noises as they communicated their curiosity, their needs, and their concerns. The blond puppy slept in its picnic basket in the wagon.

  And when the puppy woke and cried in hunger, Taliya looked down at herself and the damp spots on the front of her blouse, and she looked down at Shiba...

  And for a short while, Shiba rode in the wagon so the blond puppy could nurse, and Eldon used all his energy keeping the young human puppies from climbing in to do the same. "There are so many things wrong with this moment that I can't even hold it all in my head at the same time."

  "Potion," Taliya said. "Not safe. It's your turn to pull the wagon."

  Strange how Shiba could run an entire day on trail in the woods and not feel the heat or the fatigue, but a couple of miles on this road... She panted heavily, and she stopped at every little creek to quench her thirst. So did the young human-puppies, crouching over to lap the water with little efficiency and to roll in it as Shiba did. Barefoot and dripping and squealing, they ran down the road ahead of the little procession—until they finally ran out of energy and curled up in a heap, crammed into the wagon around the basket.

  Late afternoon cast long shadows by the time they reached the town. Shiba's ears flattened at the noise of the place; her nose stung from the humansmell, the spicyfoodsmells, and the livestockpoopsmells. And there, threading amongst it all, was the merest hint of magicsmell. She looked at Sabre, saw that faraway look in his eyes that said his nose was about to overcome his brain, and gave Taliya a small wooah of warning. When both Taliya and Eldon looked at her, she confirmed it, lifting her nose slightly to test the scent as she repeated the warning. Wooah.

  "It could just be something stray, slipped through the lines," Eldon said, as the young ones stirred in the wagon, woken by the scents and sounds of this place. No one paid them much attention; most were headed in the opposite direction, their minds on home and supper and not caring much about the odd little procession.

  "And it could be whoever's come for Tallon," Taliya said sharply. Her trust in Eldon's judgment, it was clear, had been diminished this day. Distracted, she was just a moment too late to stop the three former puppies from slipping out of the wagon, squatting briefly in the street, and then dispersing.

  It instantly became apparent that they were the perfect height to take full advantage of these first meetings with strangers. Just the right height to—

  Sniff.

  Taliya made a strangled noise; she grabbed one of the boys and got him to the wagon as Eldon grabbed the other. Cuttie danced just out of reach, laughing at the spectacle of Taliya dodging through the people who'd collected at the town gate bottleneck, waiting their turn to leave for the day. Eldon, holding the two boys in the cart, said, "She's a pu—" thought better of it, and tried again. "Do what you'd do if she still looked like Shiba."

  Taliya, her face red, instantly turned her back on Cuttie, picked up the wagon handle, and marched down the main road into town. Within moments Cuttie had caught up to the wagon, and though she wouldn't be caught, she stayed close. And Shiba, reassured that the family was still together, looked at Taliya and said, "Wooah!"

  Taliya had that thin-lipped, exasperated look. "I know where he's supposed to be, but I bet I know where he really is. I'm going to turn the dogs loose, Eldon. I'm not taking the chance that this magic isn't about hurting Tallon. If we're wrong, we'll have still found magic that shouldn't be here. Either way, we're all in the same place at the same time with the potion."

  Eldon opened his mouth as though, plainly not liking it. And then he looked at Taliya's face and closed it again, tipping his head in assent.

  "Go!" Taliya said to the linehounds. "Shiba, Sabre—find it!"

  Shiba's fatigue vanished; she sprang forward. She had no chance of outrunning Sabre, but Sabre slowed to wait as Shiba's nose untangled the faint strains of magic from this crowd—from the human legs they raced through, the cart wheels, the merchant stalls. They gained speed and confidence as the magicsmell grew stronger, and they finally raced right up a collection of outdoor tables and benches where men and women drank from foam-headed mugs, finding a wispy fog of magic hovering around the shoulders of their very own Tallon. To the laughter of those at the other tables, both hounds leaped to bounce off Tallon's shoulders; the only thing that kept him from flying off his bench was the fact that they did it from opposite sides. "Bawhouuu!" they bellowed in chorus, deafening him equally in each ear.

  "Shiba!" he said in astonishment, half his strongly scented drink spilling on the table. "Sabre!"

  "No dogs!" shouted a voice from the back, barely audible over the hound-generated chaos. "No dogs!"

  "Tallon!" Here came Taliya, hauling the wagon at top speed; Eldon ran alongside, keeping the young ones in the wagon. Cuttie trailed behind, yipping with excitement. "Tallon, there's danger—"

  "What the—what're you—Shiba, Sabre, leave it!" And then Tallon seemed to realize where they'd found him, for he said, "I was just—and who are—? Where's the baby?"

  "Potion," Taliya said, her voice hard and meaningful. "Not safe."

  "Bawhouu!" Shiba added emphatically. Magicsmell, right here!

  Eldon, panting, said, "They heard about our plans—they're going for a preemptive blow—got a tip they'll go after you—"

  "Bawhouu!"

  Taliya snatched up the potion bottle from the blonde puppy's basket. "It's all we have left, and we had to be together so the children...the puppies..."

  "Bawhouu!"

  "Whoa," Tallon said, turning a funny shade of grey. "I don't feel so good—" And he reeled on the bench, turning an even funnier shade of white.

  "Now!" Eldon said. "They're already here, they've already done it—now, Taliya!"

  Taliya fumbled the bottle, pulling at the cork; she'd jammed it in there so tightly that Eldon had to leave the young humans in the wagon and together they wrestled with it even as Tallon made a gasping noise and fell over the table, his head clonking audibly on the stained wood.

  Beside herself, Shiba ran to Taliya and leaped into the air, and at the height of it she blasted a frantic "Bawhouuuu!" so Taliya and Eldon both jerked in surprise, popping the cork and sprinkling the potion hither and yon.

  Shiba crouched where she landed, watching...Sabre put a paw on Tallon's leg, watching...Eldon and Taliya held their breath, both watching...

  From the back,
a voice shouted, "No dogs! None!"

  And then Tallon took a funny gurgling breath and lifted his head. The wagon and its occupants disappeared in a strong smell of magic, turning wispy and gray and unseeable and then resolving again.

  Puppies. Puppies and a baby. Yapping, whining, squalling—

  From the back, "No babies, either!"

  And then one sound that didn't fit with the others.

  A giggle.

  A girl-human giggle, as Cuttie ran up to the wagon to put her cheek against her brothers' plump canine forms, exchanging happy puppy kisses and little yips of delight.

  "Cuttie," Taliya said in horror, looking at the empty potion bottle. "She wasn't close enough—it'll be too late—"

  "You were supposed to change back!" Eldon said, with enough ferocity to speak of his desperation. Sabre slunk beneath the table. A mournful howl welled up in Shiba's throat. Tallon said, "Wha—?"

  Cuttie stopped her little frolic to look at her brothers, and then to look down at herself. "Oh," she said, in her unexpected little girl voice. "Is that all?" A quick flashburn of magicsmell, a quick blink of can't-see-it, and a dark little bewitching bitch puppy scampered around the wagon, looking for a way to join her brothers.

  "You!" Taliya scooped her up and plunked her in the wagon. "Conceived in the borderlands, were you?" Eldon sat heavily on the bench, looking stunned...looking at the puppies. Looking at Cuttie. Tallon only said, "Wha—?"

  Shiba looked up at Taliya; Taliya looked down at Shiba.

  Puppies.

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Return to Table of Contents

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Hair of the Dog

  by Doranna Durgin

  A Feral Darkness, the book that spawned this story, is just plain all about dog. Oh, it's got nasty dark powers and people who matter, but all the same…it's about dog. It's also the only book where I based a character (Druid the dog) on the combined nastures of two of my own. And as with most of my books, the story really doesn't quite end…and here's a peek at Brenna and Druid a year later.