The Heart of Dog

by Doranna Durgin

  "You think not?" Brenna raised an eyebrow, reached for the phone on the wall. The dial tone was loud in the sudden silence of the room; even Coretta seemed to be holding her breath. Druid, glancing into a shadowed corner, whined. Brenna said, "I think you're wrong, but that doesn't matter." She hit the number nine. "Because Iban Masera will believe me, and Iban has friends on the force. Or didn't you read the headlines last summer?"

  She saw from his face that he had. She hit the number one. "You'd better get your story together." And touched the one again.

  "Wait!" Miller shouted, startling her so she jerked her hand away, scowling at him. She eyed Coretta, who shifted her grip on the scissors but otherwise seemed frozen—although her expression was clear. Be ready to run.

  They didn't have to. Miller's voice softened, became what he probably considered soothing. "Look. You're right. Things got carried away here. It was a mistake. A misunderstanding. It won't happen again."

  "No kidding," Brenna said flatly. She snapped her fingers, calling Druid away from the precariously jumbled crates; he responded only with a muffled whine. The kind of whine that would have bothered her, had she a moment to think about it. Did bother her, without that moment to do anything about it. She turned back to the phone.

  "Look," he said again, more desperately this time and more smoothly all at once, a tone that made her want to take a shower right that very minute. "At least let me turn myself in. Tomorrow. It'll go better for me. And if I don't do it, you can call them then." He nodded back at Coretta. "When she's not so upset. It'll be easier on her that way."

  She gave him a narrow-eyed look.

  Exasperated, he said, "What have you got to lose? Take the girl home. Turn me in if I go back on my word. At least give me a chance to talk to my family!"

  Coretta whispered, "I'm not a slut. I loved him." And then, with a sob, "I want to go home." She looked small and frail and ready to break.

  Brenna slammed the phone down, knowing herself for a fool...and unable to put the girl through hours of waiting and questioning and filling out forms and seeing Miller's words echoed in the faces of those who heard his story. Slut at thirteen. Not this young woman who was trying so hard to get her life together. Darkness...power skittering down her spine...a weird whisper of sound bouncing around the corners of the room... But only Brenna heard it. Brenna and Druid, who'd come to her side suddenly hackled, suddenly ready to leave. Oddly, Brenna thought she heard the faint patter of blunt claws clicking on linoleum.

  "Tomorrow," Brenna said, hearing her words as those of a stranger; she fought not to react at the smirk on Miller's face. She held out her hand, and Coretta slipped around the edge of the room to take it. Brenna nodded at the mess. "Get ready to explain why I'm not working here anymore along with the rest of the excuses you'll need to make."

  It seemed like he might protest...but he didn't. His face took on a secretive air, with nothing of resignation or shame whatsoever. Looking at that expression, Brenna gave an inward sigh. She had no expectation that he'd turn himself in...but it didn't matter. She and Coretta would file a complaint in the morning, once she had the names of Masera's friends.

  Druid made a noise deep in his throat, looking at Brenna as if he had something to tell her and not enough of Lassie in him to do it. Not fretful, not worried...but full of significance he couldn't share.

  Brenna gave him a quick rub behind the ear as she recaptured his leash, and then she led Coretta through the store, leaving the broken grooming room door askew behind her. At the scattered glass of the front door she hesitated—should she call Mr. Lowry?—and then decided to let Miller deal with it.

  Coretta said softly, "He doesn't have a family. He doesn't have anyone to tell. I bet he's not even here in the morning."

  And a dark, acerbic voice within Brenna told her that even if he stayed, even if he was arrested, it was still a case of she said—he said. The anger welled up and spilled out, coming from the very center of her being and briefly claiming her ability to think.

  "Brenna?" Coretta asked, glancing toward the back of the store, then at the broken glass before them.

  Brenna shook herself out of it and bent to scoop up Druid lest he cut his feet on that glass. "Hefty," she grunted at him, staggering slightly. Glass crunched under her sneakers as she headed out of the store, making arrangements with Coretta to meet here in the morning and head for the little Parma Hills police station together.

  In her arms, Druid twisted, uncharacteristically restless, until he could stare at the back of the store. Even as they walked away he watched the store, ears back...whining deep in his throat.

  Nuadha's Silver Druid.

  Knowing something she didn't.

  ~~~

  Brenna thought she might be sore and bruised when she woke, but she wasn't. She felt oddly relieved given the day that lay before her, a day that garnered her an early back rub from Masera and a lingering kiss good-bye. Typically unspoken of him.

  Druid, too, seemed fine, and Coretta, when they met her, looked tired but determined. They stared at the cardboard-covered Pet Corral door and exchanged a long look. Finally Brenna said, "I have to check."

  To see how Miller had left the grooming room, or if there was any indication that he'd followed through on his word to turn himself in.

  Inside, Mr. Lowry was talking to their handyman, gesturing at the front door; he gave Brenna a nod and waved that she should come speak to him. "Be right there," she told him, wondering if she should admit it was she who had—somehow—broken the door, and why.

  "Let's go out the back," Coretta murmured, nudging her, not wanting to get caught up in talk...to answer questions. Druid trotted along behind, unconcerned, and halting smartly at Brenna's heel when she and Coretta stopped short, realizing that the grooming room door no longer hung open; it was simply gone.

  Repairs. Mr. Lowry hadn't wasted any time.

  But the grooming room...

  Spotless, compared to the evening before. The equipment stand had been uprighted, the tools put away. The crates, sparkling clean, were again stacked against the wall. The tub area looked scrubbed.

  Miller?

  And Brenna frowned. For the first time in over a week, the thought of the man didn't evoke the dark and frightening swirl within her. No skitters down her spine, no fear of who she was or what she was becoming.

  Druid sat in the doorway and looked up at her, expectant in some way. As with the night before, knowing something he had no real way to tell her.

  Except...

  Brenna stopped Coretta when the girl would have wandered into the room. She took a few cautious steps forward herself, watching where she put her feet. Disturbing nothing. Trying to understand what was so different about the room.

  Not a single stray hair. No clipped clumps, no brushed-out undercoat, no chunky remains of matted coats. Not even assiduous application of the shop vac had ever left this room so utterly devoid of hair.

  Mr. Lowry came up behind Coretta, pausing barely long enough to ask, "Have you seen Aron Miller this morning, Brenna? Coretta?"

  Brenna demurred with a distracted murmur, and Mr. Lowry frowned as he left, calling out a request to the cashier to try Miller's number one more time.

  "See?" Coretta said, conspiratorial in her whisper even though they were now alone. "No family. He just ran. He'll only do this to other women, in other places."

  This time, the skitter did run down Brenna's back. "I'm not so sure," she said. Closer inspection of the floor hadn't revealed hair...but she suddenly discovered a few faint patches of a rusty stain.

  Paw prints.

  She suddenly saw them everywhere. Some starkly rusty, some faint, enough for a dozen dogs—all of them secretive and fuzzy around the edges, as if made by a hairy Samoyed or Great Pyrenees or even an untrimmed Cocker Spaniel.

  She tried again to call up the anger within her, and found nothing.

  Fuzzy-edged footprints everywhere, growing fainter...disappearing if she looked
directly, but otherwise filling the edges of her vision.

  She fought a sudden impulse to pull the crates out and check behind them for the perpetually lurking dog hair...and then didn't. She knew what she'd find.

  Or rather, what she wouldn't.

  She backed up a step, Druid happy and relaxed beside her, panting slightly with a doggy smile pulling back the black-edged corners of his mouth.

  It wasn't my anger. None of it.

  Not the part that had held the power. Not the part that had so frightened her.

  That had belonged to someone—something—else. Something that had once come forth at her distress, had once again used her and used Druid...and used that which waited here in this room.

  And then subsided again.

  Until the next time.

  Coretta's words came laced with uncertainty. "I don't understand. He cleaned up and then he ran?"

  Druid leaned against Brenna's leg. Nuadha's Silver Druid. Knowing better than she the forces that had been at work in this place.

  "If he ran..." Brenna started, but hesitated, looking at the paw prints she suddenly felt certain Coretta couldn't see at all.

  If he ran...he hadn't gone far.

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Return to Table of Contents

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  A Call from the Wild

  by Doranna Durgin

  Revisions was a fascinating anthology to write for. Make a foundational change in our history…and how it affets our present. Well, I went back—way back. And wondered…what if we'd never domesticated dog?

  ----------

  No one ever has to know.

  I'll take care of this here and now.

  No one ever has to know...

  ~~~

  Winter followed Neil down from Utah's Markagunt Plateau.

  His breath came in clouds of white as the temperature dipped for the night, trading a painfully blue sky for the crisp middle-desert darkness of brilliant stars and familiar constellations.

  The chill itself he didn't mind. The unseasonable clouds moving in from the west...those could pose a problem. Cold rain to stiffen his bones, sicken his animals, and rile the already furious river. Cold rain to trap them east of the crossing, vulnerable to wolves, to coyotes...to the pieds. To death.

  All of them. Neil, his two sturdy little tolting ponies, his gelding guard llama, and most of all, the five hundred sensible Churras under his charge.

  As sensible as sheep ever got, anyway—nearly five hundred ewes and fifteen rams, uniquely spotted and oddly adorned, the ewes with their stumpy scur horns and rams with three to four horns apiece. They were commodities of wool and meat and breeding stock, entirely isolated from modern society and conveniences. Delivering them alive meant being paid; it meant the chance to break free of this dangerous and wearinglife.

  Through the summer he moved them around the high plateau's natural pasturage, receiving supplies from the roving camp boss and keeping the Churras together with the tolters, a few tethered bell sheep, and pure determination. Keeping them well-fed while managing the range, keeping them safe from the thriving wolves, the bears, and mountain lions that called these wild highlands home even in the late twentieth century.

  But the Churras would die if they were trapped east of the crossing.

  Not from the cold. That would come upon them regardless once they reached the winter lowland pastures spilling out south of the canyon near the Arizona line. And not from the lack of forage, for they wouldn't last that long—none of them. Not the sheep, the guard llamas, or the swift, tireless tolting ponies.

  A thin ululating cry startled the air, swiftly joined by others. A gleeful cry.

  A hunting cry.

  Neil lifted Zip's reins, halting the pony along the eastern rim, pretending he could ignore the goose bumps raising along his spine. The white dun's short, fat ears swiveled within a thick brush of pale mane and forelock, unalarmed.

  Neil took his cue from the tolter. Zip as much as told him that the pied wolves were still on the other side of the river, separated from them by the roiling North Fork and several thousand feet of canyon walls.

  Safe. For now.

  But down at the river's edge and the south entrance of the canyon, they'd be smack in the middle of pied wolf territory. If caught by unseasonable rain and rising water, not even Neil's wickedly accurate shooting eye would keep them alive.

  For the moment, he hesitated, the dark bulk of Watchman Peak looming before him and the flat expanse of the east rim behind him. He'd meant to push on tonight. Now he wondered about returning to the last way station to wait out the rain and the river.

  The pieds might find them there, too. But they preferred the lower elevations.

  All except the one.

  On cue, a lonely yip from well outside the herd perimeter gave tentative reply to the call of the pack.

  Modern scientists said man had once tried to domesticate the pieds. Neil didn't believe it, himself, DNA evidence or no—they were too wild, too untamed, and far too concerned with themselves. They worked together in an eerie fashion, reading one another's very glance, responding with the flick of a huge, upright ear—surrounding and harrying their prey with deadly skill.

  The only thing Neil believed came from those archeological digs where ancient pied and man had died together. Not signs of domestication, as claimed—but a warning. A time when man had once let the pieds too close, and paid the price. Massacre. Betrayal, if one could call it such from a species so self-serving in the first place.

  Unlike the llamas, who understood their place in the herd and embraced it with fierce intent. Unlike the miniature seeing-eye horses, the compact drug and bomb-scenting pigs, the loud, sharp-clawed Siamese guard cats. And unlike the tolting ponies, who trusted him so deeply they defied instinct to save him from landslide, from predator—and now, he hoped, from flood.

  No, the pieds knew only how to cleave to themselves, forming the large packs to harass every rural farmer, herder, and unfortunate hiker across the southwest. They shared territory with the larger predators; they evaded even the latest detection devices. Indeed, the pieds looked after their own with a wily skill that permeated folklore and news broadcasts alike.

  Except...

  That lonely yip again.

  The yearling pied had joined up with them at the spring crossing, clinging all the way up to the Markagunt Plateau and circling just close enough to keep Ben the llama stomping and blowing.

  Neil hadn't worried about it—not a single pied. Every now and then the packs evicted a doomed male—alone, they weren't effective hunters of anything bigger than a ground squirrel. That this one had survived the journey with the herd surprised him, but unless the pack received him—and they wouldn't—the pied would die over the winter. He wasn't even worth a bullet.

  Not that he'd ever given Neil a chance.

  Neil looked over the endangered herd, thinking of his apartment in Rockville. Half the year he spent his time like a herder from the previous century, exposed to the danger of the wilds. Alone. The other half, somehow still alone, he rejoined contemporary life—fast-paced, full of disposable things and disposable people, making his last paycheck last until first the spring shearing, and then next partido contract.

  When he made camp boss, he'd have work all year round.

  Except he'd never make camp boss if he lost this herd, never mind the college diploma that declared him academically fit to run a ranch. He'd never make it if he lost even a tenth of the flock to either the river or the pieds.

  Ben swiveled his head atop a long neck to look at Neil, his silhouette distinctive and evocative of the llama's characteristic pursed-lipped annoyance at the increasing separation between Neil and the still ambling herd. Neil's second tolter had enough sheep sense to keep the herd moving evenly; Bessa tackled her job with a wicked glint in her eye whether she was under saddle or free of it.

  Neil again glanced up at the sky. Above the dark blot of darkness at the western
skyline, Orion the hunter chased his prey, clearing the sky of predators. On his heels shone the bright star of Ovis, the sheep following safely in wake of the great hunt. Be an omen, he told Orion and Ovis, though he was more worried about the clouds than the great predators on this particular night. He touched his legs to Zip's sides. The pony leapt forward in his smooth, swift tolting gait, the sheepskin-padded saddle rolling evenly under Neil's seat.

  They'd try to make the next station, where at the least Neil could replace the batteries in his tired radio and send out a trouble call.

  They'd try to beat the rain, because they had to. They'd reach the river, because they had to. They'd punch through pied territory in the daytime, and make the safety of the mesh-fenced range perimeter—and there, for sure, they'd leave the lone pied behind.

  ~~~

  Loneliness forced a whine, flattened the pied's generous ears. His long, lanky legs picked up a loose-limbed walk, pacing the sheep. A trot now and then, circling in the darkness when he got too far ahead. Watching the long-necked one for signs of trouble.

  They were not of his kind. None of them. But they were all he had. He'd learned to lick splattered bacon grease off cold fire circle rocks, he'd learned how close he could get before he was noticed by man, pony, or llama. He'd learned that the traveling herd often flushed small ground creatures for a quick satisfying crunch-and-swallow. Squirrel, shrew, even jackrabbit.

  He'd learned that sometimes, the man left a biscuit or chunk of dried meat sitting at the edge of his camp.

  He did not go hungry. But he went lonely. This night he went lonely with the fresh cold biting the inside of his nose and the scent of rain waxing by the moment, all of which made him uneasy.

  But not half so uneasy as the scent of unfamiliar human on the rising breeze.

  ~~~

  A long-eared owl swooped from the hardwoods in a clap of territorial sound; Zip snorted and shook his head, tangling a mane damp with the first drops of rain. The moon hung sullenly over the eastern treetops, as though it was trying to rise and the weight of the descending clouds kept it prisoner.