The Heart of Dog

by Doranna Durgin

The net dropped.

  The street erupted into conflagration. Hanah ducked, crouching with her arms over her head. A dared glance showed her a building crumbling, taking those on the roof with it. A brace dog leaped to snatch the slack net, using jaws and spurclaws, snapping through the air like a whip until others found purchase and slowly weighed the net down. Balls of flash lightning rolled along the street; barely discernable flickers of solidity raced along the cobbles.

  Sharlie gave no warning—she threw herself against Hanah, snarling. Hanah cried out in surprise, staggering back against the cobbler's shop; her head hit brick, knocking her vision into splotchy, scattered darkness. When she blinked herself back, Sharlie was bounding again to her side, her amber eyes crazed and wild.

  Hanah shoved her away. "Godspoke, Sharlie, be careful!" She gingerly rubbed the back of her head, found blood, could barely focus on the sight of it smearing her fingertips. Beyond her trembling hand, the street spewed dust and screams and the roar of something mighty...but the net closed tightly around the struggling energies of the Flash creature, forcing it smaller, tighter...brighter. A thunderstorm's worth of coruscating light left only tantalizing glimpses to suggest the creature had any solid form at all.

  But Hanah had seen its solidity...could see the aftermath of it, in the lame brace dog and the human it still guarded. On the other side of the street a smithy suddenlycrumbled in upon itself to scatter bricks along the cobbles. As the net drew tighter, condensing power into something suddenly small and manageable, the FlashGuard rushed forward with practiced teamwork. With rope and chain and mule teams, they hauled the restricted and squirming captive into a large flatbed wagon...and then they tidily hauled it away.

  For a moment the street was silent. And just like that, the quality of the light, the sound, the very air Hanah drew into her lungs...those things changed. Became lighter, softer.

  Then those left behind began to gather their wounded. Then the world became real again. Hanah's head throbbed; her eyes didn't quite focus. She stuttered over the impulse to run in and help...and then, looking at the capable efficiency, hearing the calm command in raised voices, knew that she'd only be in the way. At her side—back at her side, somehow, without attracting Hanah's attention—Sharlie whined. She lifted one paw, extending it beseechingly toward Hanah.

  Hanah sighed. "You're right," she said, and touched the rising knot on the back of her head. "Neither of us belongs here." But she looked up at the lingering disaster down the cobbled street and added with grim determination, "Yet."

  And she thought...after this, the academy will need us more than ever.

  ~~~

  The Flash comes.

  ~~~

  Guarie and Hanah spent the evening in subdued silence and murmured conversation, weighed down with the awareness of change. Never had a Flash creature of such size and strength invaded the spokes. The murmurs of impending disaster seemed not so much exaggeration as reality, and after Guarie's best friend—another seamstress for the Guard—came over and spent evening tea by lamplight reciting all the recent incidents of which she knew, Hanah crept away for an early bedtime, her head aching.

  The following morning Hanah left early for the steep, rocky training grounds. Both the academy and the guard would turn inward this day, regrouping and licking their wounds...as well as looking ahead. Hanah grabbed the chance to work the rugged terrain, careful to keep Sharlie beside her with body language and unspoken words—and ever caught unaware when Sharlie hesitated, looking to Hanah with that paw extended.

  "Come on, Sharlie!" Hana snapped, one more time. Her head ached fiercely in the bright, cloud-free sun of the day. She was heavy with the weight of looming change and the need to do something, to be the one who saved that next family from the Flash. Another day of failure tightened her throat moment by moment until she couldn't even—

  Breathe.

  She sat on the rough granite that cut through the short grass of this steep slope, looking down on the neat pattern of the city below. She thought she saw the dark, disturbing blot where the smithy had given way, the charred streaks against the brick that had remained standing.

  "All right, then," she said. She blotted her eyes on her soft sleeve, surprised to find the need. "Let's at least go back down into the city together."

  ~~~

  Oh, but I'm already here with you, my HanahPup.

  ~~~

  Gaurie's troubled gaze greeted Hanah as she looked up from the deep bowl of the sink, taking her hands from the varied spring greens of their side yard garden to dry her hands on one of the towels she'd stitched from scraps at work.

  "What is it?" Hanah asked, hesitating in the hallway that ran the length of their long, narrow home. Sharlie nudged her head under Hanah's hand, seeking caress; Hanah gave it without thinking.

  "Come in and sit down." Gaurie patted the table, a half-circle slid tightly against the wall at the back of the kitchen. The cheerful touches of the room—flouncy curtains and lace wall-hangings and quilted cut-outs of bird and flower and the Wheel of Life—seemed to recede and disappear. "You had a visitor today. From the academy."

  Hanah stopped breathing, and sat. They need us now. Maybe right now. Maybe Stark had no choice but to accelerate their training.

  Sharlie sat by her leg and rested her chin on Hanah's leg, folding her ears back with a worried eye. Hanah ran a finger from Sharlie's nose to the back of her skull, following the strength of that long muzzle, the dip at her stop, the strong dome of her head. Over and over. Finally.

  Words burst out of Gaurie in a desperate, helpless flood. "They're letting you go."

  Hanah blinked. She couldn't quite think. "They're...what?"

  "It's over." Guarie sat down next to her, and took Hanah's hands.

  Hanah took them back, curling them in to tight fists.

  Guarie sighed, a resigned sound. Now that she'd delivered the devastating message, she seemed more her normal self. Calm. Capable. Understanding. "They're out of time, Hanah."

  "Them?" Hanah laughed, as bitter a sound as she'd ever heard. "You mean us."

  Her cousin nodded, running a hand over the frizzy brown curls that escaped her work bonnet. "Yes." Her eyes were quiet. Not blaming. "After yesterday, they need to accelerate the students in training...they need to focus on the teams that are working out—"

  Hanah jerked around in the chair, full of anger and denial and unable to speak lest she take it out on the one person who'd tried to make up for her early losses. Never had Gaurie discouraged her, not even when the inevitable loomed.

  And now the inevitable was here. Just when Hanah had so stupidly thought herself on the verge of success...

  Failure.

  Gaurie cleared her throat. "You can take up work in the kennels. You can even stay close to Sharlie that way. Former students always have first choice of those positions."

  Hanah couldn't say anything. She squeezed her eyes closed, trying to clamp down on anger before she lashed out with unfair words. Sharlie nudged her hand; Hanah pushed her muzzle away. If only you'd found your voice...

  Gaurie's next words came a little more firmly. "The secondary who visited—"

  Hanah turned to her in surprise, eyes flying open.

  Gaurie nodded. "Yes. It was Roge. He came in person. He was very sorry. He said they just didn't have any choice. He said he admired your determination and persistence...but that it was also getting in your way. He wished he could give you more time."

  "Give me more time," Hanah repeated numbly.

  Another nod. "He said you'd been seen yesterday, near the hub. During the...incident. He wanted you to know that Sharlie saved your life."

  "I—she—what?"

  Sharlie looked at Gaurie, cocking her head as Gaurie looked back at her and nodded. She extended a paw, spurclaw politely tucked out of the way; Gaurie took it, and then took Hanah's gaze, something in her pale blue eyes unyielding. "That's what he said. He specifically wanted you to know."

  Hanah frowned
against a whirlwind of confusing emotions, the startled confusion tangling with lingering anger and the sudden glimpse that things were not all just exactly as she'd thought they were. Sharlie had...when? Hanah recalled only a few stray skitters of blue-white energy, the painful impact of her head against brick, the wild, frightened look in Sharlie's eye.

  Gaurie folded her hands together, regarding Hanah thoughtfully. "I know you've been trying your hardest to prove your independence from me," she said. "To take up the fight against the Flash. But I think you need to know, Hanah...even a grown woman takes her strength from others sometimes."

  Hanah had nothing to say. Nothing but words that Gaurie didn't want to hear—I don't need anyone else and beneath that habitual snarl of defiance, a barely heard cry of grief for her family. Unless she became one of the FlashGuard, how could she make up for the loss? How could she make things right?

  "Roge said there'd be a delay in re-assigning Sharlie. They'll give you plenty of notice, you needn't worry about that."

  Hanah gave Sharlie a startled look, another impossible realization piled on top of all the others.

  Of course they're going to take her away.

  Hanah leaped from the chair and bolted down the hall, and made it to her small, narrow room just before the tears came.

  Alone.

  ~~~

  One day. Another. And another, until they piled on top of themselves and Hanah did no more than blunder on with life. The image of herself working the kennels for the rest of her life, always close to the dogs but never bonding with any of them, hurt so much she could not bear to contemplate it.

  So as the city rebuilt its damaged section, as the people withstood a myriad of scares and cried out fearfully at every faint evidence of Flash activity, Hanah did what she knew best. She took Sharlie out into the city surrounds, always changing the terrain and swapping out sections, not moving with any real purpose.

  Habit, perhaps.

  Desperation.

  She was fifteen years old, ready to start a new life...and she saw could see nothing of it. Nothing to keep her thoughts from wandering back in time. Nothing to keep her focus forward instead of constantly drifting over the past—those moments the Flash had open before her, expanding from a pinpoint to a tunnel of eerie, slashing blue and white lightning.

  And then it had closed around her family, leaving her alone. Five years old, and alone.

  Quite suddenly, Hanah's knees gave way. She sat against the abrupt wall of the earth crack into which she'd come. She'd meant to leave Sharlie up top to explore, but when she looked up, dazed, she found Sharlie sitting nearby, head cocked. With slow understanding, Hanah said to her, "They're not coming back. They're never coming back. Now I'm never going to find them, and I'm never going to make up for what happened."

  For being left behind.

  For surviving.

  And Hanah burst into great big noisy sobs. For every grieving tear she'd hidden behind her determination, she now cried two. For every sorrowful tear she'd hidden beneath a hard exterior, she cried a dozen.

  She cried endlessly. The shadow from the high wall of the earth crack crept over her, bringing a chill; a territorial songjay fluttered in close to scold around her.

  Sharlie wiggled in on her elbows and put her chin on Hanah's leather-clad toes and then after time and more time had passed, inched close enough to sit and wash Hanah's face with her tongue. Hanah threw her arms around those sturdy brindle shoulders and cried all the harder.

  Eventually, she ran out of emotion.

  Her nose was stuffed and her eyes were gritty and swollen and her cheeks held blotchy heat. She groped around the hard, rocky ground for the velvet-soft leaves of the spike mullen she'd been beside and blew her nose.

  Sharlie very carefully cleaned her face again. Hanah squinched up her eyes and nose and pressed her lips together under the washing, and then scrubbed her shirt hem over her face. But she dropped a kiss on top of Sharlie's head before she stood up. "Now," she said. "Good-bye to that. I just have to figure... what's next." She gave Sharlie's big upright ear a slight tug. "For both of us."

  Sharlie flicked her ear away, snagging Hanah's hand in a light, careful grip of teeth—not so much as to dent the skin, but not so Hanah could pull away, either.

  "Yes," Hanah said. "Together. I don't know how..."

  No, that was a lie. She looked down into those kohl-rimmed amber eyes. "The kennels. I'll work the kennels, if that's what it takes."

  And having said it, Hanah suddenly felt ready to move on—out of this diminutive box-end canyon and back to the city. Back to tell Gaurie what she'd decided. Back to the school, to look for new directions.

  Sharlie unexpectedly tightened her grip, startling Hanah into a yip of discomfort. And then Sharlie's long fringe hackles went up, and she dropped Hanah's hand altogether, staring down into the end of the earth crack with an intense eye—until she glanced back up at Hanah and her tail dropped, wagging fast and low in its habitual apologetic manner.

  "'Spokes!" Hanah said, throwing her arms up. "I'm not even asking you to do anything! What—"

  Sharlie bounded away. In mid-word, she bounded away, head low; she ran full speed toward the deep box end of the earth crack, three times as high as Hanah was tall and about that same width, and then she stopped short, weaving back and forth on her front legs. She ignored Hanah's call, repeating her strange weaving motion—weaving, weaving—

  ~~~

  Oh, my HanahPup, please listen! Listen now.

  ~~~

  "Splinters, Sharlie, what the flash—?"

  Sharlie didn't drop her gaze; Sharlie didn't drop her tail. Sharlie burst out with one uncharacteristic bark and threw herself back at Hanah, shouldering her so Hanah couldn't help but stumble back. Stumble and fall, astonished. And still Sharlie pushed at her, shoving with her head, with her shoulders, with the hardness of an amber eye gone ablaze—an expression Hanah had never seen.

  A sudden tingle ran down Hanah's spine. Her eyes widened as an eerie flicker of white patterned her hand, her sleeve, and Sharlie's brindle sides.

  The Flash burst into existence around them.

  Not before them, not beside them, but fully engulfing them. Cutting shards of blue and white light seared into Hanah's vision; she sat not on the ground but bounced in a turbulent, semi-solid footing that made her clutch for something—anything—solid.

  "Sharlie!" she cried—and then screamed it, because her voice made no noise in this alien place, and she suddenly realized she heard nothing at all. Not the wind that whipped up her chronically short hair, not her own whimpers of fear. "Sharlie!"

  Something solid filled her arms. Solid and a little musky and covered with crisp brindle hair. Hanah clamped down tight, closing her eyes. She held Sharlie without questioning, without second thought; she believed in Sharlie more than in her own weak legs and confused senses.

  She believed.

  In Sharlie.

  ::Hanah. Finally, my Hanah.::

  The voice came not through ears that didn't function here, but deeply into Hanah's mind. She gasped; her fingers spasmed down on Sharlie's coat.

  Sharlie gave her a quick nuzzle. ::Leave this place,:: she suggested, with all the implication that they could.

  "But how—" Hanah cut herself short. Could Sharlie even hear her? After a moment during which the buffeting of the Flash seemed to fade, she remembered to concentrate on her words so Sharlie might hear them within her mind. This, too, she had been taught—along with so many things that suddenly made a visceral sense. The silent language of hand signals between brace dog and handler. Blindfolded exercises. The assignments to develop sense of direction.

  But none of these things had been done in excess—because no one, not even advanced, experienced brace team members—willingly chose to enter the Flash. And not everyone who did came back out.

  ::Leave?::

  The novelty of Sharlie's voice struck Hanah all over again. She cracked open one eye, and found the
spears of Flash-generated light to be bearable if she squinted hard. Sharlie stood before her, the black mottling of her coat reflecting a deep cobalt in the eerie lighting. A trace of Flash powder dusted her shoulder. Hanah burst into mind-words. "You found your voice!"

  ::Found your ears,:: Sharlie told her. ::Leave?::

  Hanah was too suddenly aware that leave was not so simple a prospect—for she had not yet been trained to fight her way out of the Flash if the interface closed.

  Sharlie cast a worried glance Hanah's way. ::??::

  "Leave!" Hanah agreed emphatically, trying to project all the confidence she could. Sharlie could hear the interface of Flash and normality; Sharlie could detect the way home. Would take them there. Hanah had only to believe in her.

  Believe.

  And then Hanah's head filled with a rushing noise, the sound of wind in trees, waxing and waning like a living, breathing thing. She looked at Sharlie with wonder. "You can hear that?"

  ::We go.::

  Hanah stood, one unsteady hand on Sharlie's back. Sharlie moved in silent grace, every step deliberate, never thrown off-balance in the heave and sway of the Flash. Her great amber eyes narrowed, focused inward...concentrating for their lives.

  In moments she slowed, and her movement turned to a primal dance with the elements...slightly crouched, a creature of contained power and grace. Hanah had a startling glimpse of the wild and untameable nature of Sharlie's ancestors, the ferocity that allowed the caydogs to face the Flash.

  Until quite suddenly Sharlie straightened and looked back at Hanah, her expression tinged with the uncertainty Hanah knew so well, her foreleg lifted in supplication, reaching. Hanah bit her lip in an instant wash of disappointment and fear and frustration, knowing—knowing—Sharlie had lost their way.

  But the susurrus of interfacing worlds came as loudly as ever through their connection.

  Louder.

  Hanah had a flash of insight so great as to take her breath away.

  She had done this to Sharlie. She had created this uncertainty. Her demands, her inexorable drive, her inability to understand that all those times Sharlie had acted strangely and reluctantly, she'd only been trying to tell Hanah those things Hanah was not yet able to hear.