“She’s been through enough,” Grat said in a rumble.
“Tell that to Sabot,” Samus snapped back. He glared back at Denali with cold eyes and left without saying more.
Grat huffed and stepped out into the dying light.
“Where are you going?” Barley said quickly. Her eyes were worried and worn. “We need you here.”
“I need to talk with him. I know what it’s like.”
“He won’t punish her,” Barley said.
Grat said nothing and walked away.
Denali walked on empty legs and laid herself next to the puppies. The weight of the day seemed to shackle her down. All she wanted to do was sleep, but instead her mind replayed the fight. That made her think of the exile. Then the fear came and she shook.
“Shh, shh,” Barley hushed and laid herself down next to Denali. Her stout muzzle nudged Denali.
Denali felt the warmth of her mother on her. She was like a pup curled up on the rich brown fur. She whimpered and cried.
“Hush now, child,” Barley said. She licked her tongue out and cleansed Denali’s wounds.
“Tell me again,” Denali whispered. “How you found me.”
Barley stopped the cleansing and made a hushing noise into Denali’s ear. She reached her head around and plucked up a chocolate brown pup and laid it down onto Denali. One by one, the pups piled up and snuggled all into a ball. Denali lay underneath it all and felt safe, at least for a while.
“You came from the stars,” Barley said. “You were so little, so very little. Samus found you and gave you to me.”
One of the pups stirred and Denali felt a wet nose in her ear. She liked the story when Barley told it, everything seemed so simple. Even still, she wondered why Barley still stuck to the fable. She didn’t want to call it a lie—lies seemed so negative. It was more of a legend to her, her own secret legend. She preferred it to the truth: she was just a runt.
“You were so little, and we didn’t know where you were from—”
“I thought you said the stars?”
“Shh! You know the story, now be quiet and listen!” Barley growled back.
Denali wagged her tail, just the slightest bit, and watched Barley’s soft eyes.
“Soon after the bots came, as they always do when we dig up new things. But this time there were many, so many.” Barley paused and adjusted a pup. “When we came out, Grat was with Karoc and Crassius.”
“Crassius?” Denali asked. The name was new to her. She wrinkled her nose and wondered how much of the fable was made up as time went on.
Barley glanced out the door. “It was your uncle, Grat’s brother. The bots hunted us all night. Grat was wounded and Crassius stood when no one else could.”
Denali laid her head down and heard Barley’s heartbeat. Was it all true?
“Then it was done. We fled and eventually came here, where we spend the summers. You can probably just remember the last time we made the trip south,” Barley said, yawning. Her metal teeth rippled in the waning light.
Denali could remember, but only the slightest of details. The smell was what struck her most, a congregation of thousands of dogs. She’d never smelled anything like it since. They came, in packs, groups, and alone. They brought loads of scrap and corpses, all to seek the blessing of the machine gods. But most brought the young.
She remembered the day when the passage opened and the younglings ventured in. She could smell the fear, and see the looks that said none cared. But they all did. They waited all night. The shamans howled in the darkness, to call to the dead, they said.
Most came out, endowed with the gifts from the machine gods. Others didn’t.
“Do we go again?” Denali asked.
Barleys eyes took on a worried look, she glanced away. “Yes.”
“Will I have to go into that passage?”
“Yes.”
“Will I survive?”
Barley looked back to Denali with tears ringing her eyes. “Yes.”
Denali looked away and listened to the heartbeat. She wanted only to run, hide, be away from them all. But she knew if she did that her mind would go, and she’d be nothing more than an animal.
And so what? Be an animal that was free, or a conscious being shackled to reality. The hills suddenly didn’t seem so bad to her. The pups would get on fine without her. Grat and Barley could have a family without a bastard. She knew in her heart that she was captured, or maybe even stolen. Samus did it, she was sure, he’d take a pup.
Of course he would. He did everything he could to get more marauders. More dogs, and not the sort she liked. He told them all that they would reclaim their honor. Well, he can have it, she thought. I don’t want any damn part of it.
She closed her eyes and pictured the hills in the distance. The exile came back to her, the one that saved her, and she felt even more ashamed. Humiliated. It wasn’t just her failure, but the fact that Samson made her lie. Damn them all, she thought. Tonight, wounds or not, she’d go and be on her own.
Grat came in and stepped gently through the room. His breathing was soft like hay rustling in the wind.
“Well?” Barley asked.
“Samus will speak with me again in the morning.”
Denali feigned sleep and listened.
“I know how he feels,” Grat said.
“I know,” Barley added. “Light of men, do I know.”
Denali slid out into the crisp air. The mountain air cut through her coat. It took a moment to shake off the chill. She already wished she was back where it was warm. No, this is not my life.
The stars were pins of light that shone through a shroud of darkness. Only the mountains silenced the spread from one end of the sky to the next.
She paused just outside and closed her eyes. Not that she needed to adjust to the darkness, but it seemed to help her take in the smells. At first the scents were a wall, a cloying prison of dog and meat. But then the bits seeped through. The currents wafted and danced. The picture grew in her head.
Laccus was on guard, she could smell him and his caribou knuckle. He always brought a knuckle to chew on. The scent was as good a marker as any to Denali. She set off and kept to the edge of the street.
The night was deep, that deep darkness that comes when it’s so far past morning and evening that it seems the sun was never there to begin with. The scent of fake things, man things, plastic things, came to her. The breeze shifted and she smelled Sabot.
It hit her then. She stopped and leaned against the cool concrete and felt it rasp against her. Sabot was dead. The fact hadn’t seemed real until she smelled the dead smell. It was always the same, it didn’t matter who, or what. Dead was dead and she just wanted to whimper and cry. Everything seemed so real to her in the darkness, she’d never felt so alone.
All her life she’d felt different. The other pups were bigger, rougher, tougher. They had short snouts with burly teeth. Massive heads like pumpkins. She was always the small fry, the runt, the last to eat. Her nose was better, her ears crisper and being small made her useful. Sometimes.
But she was always part of the pack—a small, if vital piece. Vital, if not to them, then to her. A pack is a pack, and now she was setting out to leave it.
She clenched her teeth, turned her head and stalked slowly. The smells changed and she caught Samus and Samson, but not where she expected to find them. They were outside. She paused and waited for the wind to shift again. They were definitely outside and away from everyone. This, she thought, was worth investigating.
A deep anger grew inside of her like a smoldering ember. My home! My family! She sniffed high in the air and followed the scent. Something felt wrong to her.
It was up. Up past the crumbling concrete dwellings. Past the heaps of scrap that smelled of plastic and wire and old things. But not quite so high as the dilapidated thing that they plundered in the summers. It was there she found them, in the darkness away, where no one wanted to be.
It was rare to see th
e skelebots at night. They liked the sun, but still, would come close to things unearthed. She didn’t know why. No one knew why. Certain things seemed to draw them. Live things, powered things, things that glowed, things the machine gods sought. That was her particular talent, getting into the old places where no one else could fit. There she earned her place, with the things men forgot.
The shale hill gave way to a lichen coated plateau with warped girders driven into the stone. Beyond it a jumble of debris and sand, was the entry to the scrap place. Just past the field of worthless things stood Samus and Samson, close to the metal wall of the structure.
Samson, even in the starlight, looked afraid. His tail was plastered tight to his leg and the smell of urine, fear urine, was in the air. His shoulders hunched tight while his muzzle was almost on his front paws. Fear, raw and thick.
Denali crouched tight and felt the cool stone on her stomach. It was still too far to hear anything. She could just make out a clear path past the bits of plastic and glass. One paw in front of the other. Silent and smooth.
With every creep she listened and sniffed. The winds had settled into a routine of mountain drifts, like the stone itself was exhaling. Words drifted and danced just on the edge of her hearing, she could almost make out the words, almost. She was sure Samson was talking.
Her paws bumped a slender cylinder and it toppled with a clink onto a ceramic orb. She stopped and closed her eyes tight. So tight it almost hurt. And then her ribs ached, but she listened and heard nothing.
The silence in her ears was overwhelming. She concentrated with every sense. Her paws started to shake. Fear. Doubt crept in and she wished she was back sleeping by Barley.
Then the voices came again, lower this time.
Denali crept forward with her ears tight to her head and felt thankful that the wind was pushing her scent away. If it was the other way, she was sure even Samson would smell it. The stone chill started to work its way into her. She stopped and listened again. Almost.
Then the wind stopped. The voices came like a whisper in the distance.
“But how?” Samson asked.
“There are places. When she goes to the trial,” Samus replied. “You’ll go, too.”
“Why not now? Here?”
There was a pause. “Do as I say. Not here.”
“Why?” Samson’s voice cracked with the strain.
Denali turned her head and closed her eyes. She ignored the chill in her bones. Her heart beat faster.
“You can’t get to her here, no one can.”
“An accident? Send her off!”
“Shut up!” Samus growled. “There are things here you don’t understand.”
“It’s your pack! You can end lives, I’ve seen you do it!”
“If you rule as a wolf, you die as a wolf. We’re dogs, Samson, not animals.” Samus’s voice was steady, as if reading scripture. “Grat protects her.”
“But she’s not his blood.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“He’s big but he’s slow, take him—”
Samson never finished his sentence. Denali heard the snarl and the scuffle. She risked a peek over a heap of crushed ceramic with flat ears.
Samus stood with both his front paws pinning Samson to the ground. His jaw was locked firmly onto the skull of his son. Samson failed once, twice, and whimpered. The smell of piss floated in the air. After a long silent time he released Samson and stepped back. Samson didn’t stand back up.
“Grat is many things, but remember, he is a memory of an old time.”
Samson was silent.
“He was once to be something great,” Samus said.
Denali felt the wind stir. It was a confused wind, a wind that came from one side and then the next. A morning wind. She needed to go, and knew it—but Grat, once something great? She had to hear more.
“We bury Sabot tomorrow. Then you keep your distance, do nothing.”
“But I can help! I made her swear—”
“So you said. The truth would have worked better.” Samus turned and raised his snout up. “I could explain a pup running from a bot, but your lies made my work more difficult.”
“I can take her.”
“So you can run away again? You, my son, ran.”
The words hung and swayed in the silence.
“You run again and I’ll tear your throat out!” Samus growled. “You have one chance to prove yourself in the trial, do that and you’ll have your own pack.”
“Kill her?” Samson asked.
“If she makes it to the trial.”
“How can you stop her?”
“Tribute. Grat owes me for a son. Blood or metal. He won’t give her up, so we’ll take the metal.” Samus stuck his nose up once more. He drew in a long breath of air and held it. “And she’ll only have a few days to get enough metal.”
“She’ll never make it,” Samson said.
“We’ll see.”
Denali dropped her head and scrunched back bit by bit. She heard a growl, a rough sound like rock on grit. She knew she couldn’t run, not yet, not here. They were too close, and the edge was too far. Her eyes scanned quickly through the rubble and then she saw the exit.
Instead of edging back, she scooted to the side. She came to a gap and waited, she peeked her head up. Samson and Samus were both gone. Her heart thrummed faster. She was being hunted, she could feel it.
There was a gap, a space between the rubble before the main path to the crumbling structure. Denali peered at the gap. If she went to one side or the other she’d be in the open. A crumbling sound hissed through the rubble behind her. She sprang out as gently as she could.
The gap was tight. Her fur snagged on an outcropping of wire. Denali stifled a yelp and kept moving. Quiet, all she wanted was a silent exit. The curved wall of structure grew closer.
A growl sounded behind her. A deep growl that announced imminent violence.
She could almost feel the teeth on her back. Her spine curved and she lowered her stomach to the ground and slinked forward.
Then she was through. The air felt icy cold. She sprang two leaps and dove head first into a crack in the metal wall. The darkness wrapped her tight and she closed her eyes, not wanting any sparkle of light to escape.
A hiss and a scratch echoed into the tiny space. She opened her eyes a slit and watched a dark form creep past. A second form came a moment later. Both paced with noses to the ground.
Denali closed her eyes and waited. If there was one game she always won, it was hide and seek. She knew they might have smelled something, but in her short life she always played the prey, and had learned that the bigger dogs could smell, but not well enough. She was safe, for now.
“Nothing, now go, we’ve work to do. We move out in three days,” a voice growled in the dark.
Safe. Or so she hoped.
CHAPTER FOUR
Glow
Denali followed behind Barley with a stout leg of caribou firmly in her teeth. The pair walked through the low side of the camp past buildings and away from the snowfield where the meat was kept. It was a daily ritual, all around the females of the pack spread out with the morning meal.
Already the sleds were being rigged. Heaps of metal, wires, and ancient devices were piled and strapped onto axles and sledges. Each household had its own that was passed down through the generations. Some bore markings, but none knew the meaning.
Denali stumbled and yawned. When she finally escaped from the crack it had taken her until almost dawn to get back to the camp. She had hardly shut her eyes when Barley woke her to get the meat.
Her desire to run from her fate melted with the rising sun. If she could have gone the night before, she would have, but not now. The events came together and she’d see her own fate. No one was going to drive her out.
Most of all, she felt angry for not telling the truth. She could, she knew she could, but she didn’t want anything to happen to the pups. After the trial, she thought, then she�
��d tell. Samson would fail.
“Wait,” Barley said.
Denali almost ran the hindquarter into Barley’s legs and instead skidded to a stop.
Grat sat in front of the entryway with his legs sprawled out to the side. Beside him Samus lay with his front paws almost touching Grats. Three other dogs, each with a tint of white on their faces, stood on all fours. Karoc, Yuma, and Diogenes.
Denali knew them all. They were the elders. If Samus was the word of law, they were the voice behind him.
Grat looked at ease and this made Denali nervous. She glanced over at Barley. Barley shook her head in response. They waited.
Grat glanced beyond the elders and looked straight at Denali. Samus looked and then the elders. They all looked to be judging her.
The meat felt suddenly heavy in her mouth and she set it down. “Mother.”
“Denali,” Karoc barked.
Denali looked to Grat and didn’t move until her father nodded. She held her head high and walked under the gaze of the five before her. As she came closer they loomed large, she felt so very small. Almost small enough to scoot under their stomachs.
She came to them and sat. Each watched her and nodded to the others. Grat said nothing and looked at Denali.
“As pups, we’ve all made mistakes,” Karoc said slowly, with a growl like gravel in his voice. “But this is different.”
“If you were older, you’d suffer a different fate,” Yuma added.
“And you still might,” Diogenes said with a frown.
“We are here, as custom requires, to find a resolution,” Karoc said.
Denali wanted to tell him where to stick his custom. She was afraid, but knew that the truth would have served better.
“Did you lead my sons into the forbidden place?” Samus said.
Denali looked at Grat for some reassurance. Grat said nothing. “I did.” The words came out quickly, she felt nothing but hatred as she said them. The sounds of the pups inside of the shelter reminded her of why she was lying.
“Did you stand with them and fight?” Karoc asked.
Every part of her wanted to scream the truth. “I did not.”
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