Puppy Love: Sagecraft I

by J. C. Hendee

  Something slammed the cage’s door with a snarl. The whole tarp shuddered as all three of them flinched. Grim jumped back a step as Kyne quickly looked about.

  She saw no one along the mainway of Old Procession Road.

  How had the little wolf cub heaved the lump of meat out of the dark and straight through the iron slats… and why?

  Kyne had had enough mishap frights for one night.

  “Give me the lantern and get up there!” she told Grim, pointing at the tarped cage.

  Grim’s mouth gaped.

  “Are you crazy?” Marten whispered, wiping off meat juice and the lump as he scrambled up.

  Kyne turned on him as she snapped the lantern closed. “It cannot get at any of us through that heavy tarp, let alone the cage’s iron slats. Either you help me or leave me the tools, because I am not leaving without the wolf cub.”

  She waited for them to argue, though likely Grim would give in first. He did but not without a mean, pudgy scowl before carefully climbing up on the wagon bed’s end.

  “Get the sack,” she told Marten. “We have to catch it… when it bolts out.”

  “And if it doesn’t,” he argued, “now that it knows we’re out here?”

  Kyne had no ideas about that and snatched up the sack herself. Marten gave her the nastiest of his looks and grabbed the lantern from her. Grim already had his mallet out, but when he peered at the tarp, almost reaching out to pinch it open, he stalled with a sudden gulp. Instead, he used the mallet’s handle to lift the tarp’s edge, and Marten held up lantern.

  Grim shook his head and pointed down at the tools. “Get me the longer chisel with the big handle. Then pull off the other tools and gather up my cloak.”

  Once Marten did so, Grim carefully put one hand atop the wagon’s sidewall to climb. He paused, as they all did, in listening.

  The pup was quiet again.

  Maybe that made it all scarier, especially after Kyne had been bitten last night. Grim hesitantly braced one hand on the tarped cage as he stepped up on the wagon’s sidewall. There he froze again, but still there was no sound in the cage.

  “I don’t like this,” Marten whispered. “It’s too quiet in there.”

  Kyne ignored him, mostly because she did not want to think about that. As Grim finally knelt atop the cage, he used the chisel’s long blade to push the tarp aside as he set the blade’s end against the padlock’s top.

  “Smother the lock with my cloak,” he whispered down to Marten. “But don’t bump the chisel.”

  Marten grumbled, but after handing off the lantern to Kyne, he did as Grim asked. Kyne clenched as Grim raise the mallet, and the mallet’s head came down with a light tap.

  “Harder!” Marten insisted. “Get it over with.”

  “Not until the blade bites and sets,” Grim warned. “Or it will slip.”

  Tap, tap, tap, and Kyne shuddered every time, though the cloak smothered most of the sound. Still, she looked toward the warehouse’s bay doors. The wagon blocked those from sight, and she dared not step out far enough to see. Hopefully any watchman inside heard nothing.

  Clank!

  Kyne jumped and choked as Grim struck hard this time.

  “Well?” Marten whispered.

  “You’ll feel it went the casing splits,” Grim answered.

  “Oh, great.”

  “Just don’t let the pieces fall.”

  Grim struck again—and again—and every time Kyne grew more and more panicked until…

  The chisel lurched downward with a smothered screech.

  “Ow!” Marten yelped, but he held on.

  Grim slid the chisel out and climbed off the cage’s side as Marten carefully pulled away the wadded cloak. Inside it was the front and back of the padlock’s casing. Grim inched along beside the cage and peeked under the tarp’s flap. He carefully removed the lock’s loop and handed it down to Marten.

  “Wait there,” Kyne told Grim, and in holding the sack, she set the lantern aside. “Stay to the side of the cage. When I say, push the door open against the tarp. We want it to see only a narrow opening and not us.”

  Kyne scooted in below Grim and next to the wagon’s nearer corner as she opened the sack. She held out its other edge to Marten as she crouched. Marten rolled his eyes but took hold and crouched across from her.

  “When it lunges out,” she whispered, “be ready to lift the sack’s mouth into its path and catch it.”

  She was too frightened to be bothered by another of Marten’s scowls, and she looked up to nod at Grim.

  Grim took a slow breath, almost grabbed the door’s edge, and then again used the mallet’s handle instead. Once he had its end against the door’s edge beneath the tarp, he looked down.

  Kyne nodded, and Grim shoved.

  The door pushed out against the tarp, forming a narrow opening.

  And nothing happened.

  Kyne rose enough for a peek. With the lantern set aside, again it was too dark in the cage to see anything.

  “Now what?” Marten asked.

  About to sink back down, Kyne spotted the wolf-catcher’s club lying against the wagon’s sidewall. She tapped Grim’s boot and pointed to the club in mouthing the back of the cage.

  Grim just stared at her.

  She glared right back at him, and with a frowning huff, he gently wedged the mallet in place to hold the door open. As he reached down for the club, Kyne turned to Marten, who looked even more annoyed as they heard Grim shuffle toward cage’s rear.

  Clack! Clack-Clang!

  Snarling and clawing erupted within cage.

  Panic spread over Marten’s face.

  Kyne’s hands clenched on the sack’s edge.

  And the thumps of racing paws charged the cage door.

  “Now!” Kyne squeaked.

  Marten rose instantly as they opened the sack’s mouth. The sack bulged outward and fell with a weight. Kyne squeaked again as she and Marten toppled in clinging to the sack. And everything got ugly.

  Amid snarls and growls, they scrambled to pin the writhing sack. One of its bottom corners rose up and twisted about like… like something alive. It went straight at one of Kyne’s braced arms. She shrieked instead of squeaked as little teeth within the lunging sack bit her forearm.

  Kyne jerked away and realized her mistake too late.

  With a vicious, smothered snarl, the sack—the pup—writhed the other way, right over on top of Marten.

  “Ow… ow-ow! Off, off, get it off me!” he shrieked.

  Kyne threw herself atop the sack bulge—another mistake.

  All three of them squealed and rolled, snarled and thrashed in a tangled mess. Suddenly, everything went pitch black around Kyne as a heavy canvas fell over them… followed by more weight, and a lot of it.

  Kyne was instantly squashed atop the sack atop Marten.

  A loud yelp sounded beneath the tarp and not from her.

  She never had an instant to wonder if that came from Marten or the pup. Struggling with even less room to spare, she was definitely the one to yelp when she was nipped yet again on the thigh. Kicking and slapping at anything that moved, she crawled out of reach.

  When she finally found the tarp’s edge and got out from under it, she spun around on her butt. Marten had managed to do the same on the far side. Atop the thrashing, snarling bulge was a fearful, wide-eyed Grim.

  Kyne looked once to the exposed cage.

  Grim must have thrown the tarp over the struggle, before the pup got free, and jumped on top of it all.

  “Stop staring and help me!” he whispered with hands and knees braced around that squirming bulge.

  Kyne scrambled in on all fours to pin down one side of the tarp as Marten did the same.

  “Grab your tools!” Marten whispered. “We have to get out of here.”

  Grim tumbled off even as the snarling mound in the tarp kept lunging this way and that. Kyne heard a muffled clack of little jaws as she looked up.

  The cage was fully expos
ed. Its door was ajar. And the lock was gone.

  “Someone will notice,” she whispered.

  Marten gave her the same astounded stare that Grim had, as if she was utterly witless about what mattered.

  “I’m ready,” Grim half-whispered, standing over them with the tools wrapped up in his cloak. “Now what? It was supposed to be in a sack for carrying.”

  A muffled voice nearby was followed by the sound of wood and metal scraping. All three of them gasped, craning their heads and trying to see the warehouse doors.

  That was pointless, since on the ground they barely saw much of its back wall under the wagon. But that was from where those noises had come.

  “Grab the back edge,” Marten whispered, gripping the tarp’s edge behind the bulge.

  Kyne did so.

  “Now pull the tarp under it!”

  That raised a yelp and another clack of jaws as the bulge that was the pup tumbled into the tarp’s fold. They all heard another rumble and screech of a bay door sliding open, and Grim took off for the corner.

  “Run!” Marten whispered.

  Kyne heaved up on her end of the tarp as she and Marten chased after Grim. And the pup growled and yipped as the tarp skidded along the street stones.

  · · · · ·

  Kyne looked all about in the night as Grim held up the lantern before the Hoof House’s bay doors.

  “Oh, that’s just great!” Marten griped.

  They had never seen that lock and chain before.

  None of them had ever been to Master Boulg’s old stable except for public school days. They—or at least Kyne—should have known the old stable master would lock the empty stable after dark, or on any day without a public school session.

  “You cannot break that lock,” Kyne warned. “Someone will see by morning and look inside.”

  Grim turned. “Really? You think?”

  “Do not snip at me! If you cannot open it without breaking—”

  “No, I can’t, even if I wanted!” Grim rasped back. “This one’s better, newer, steel instead of iron. And I don’t think I can fiddle it open.”

  This was the only place Kyne had thought to hide the pup where it could be contained until… well, she had never thought much beyond that. None of their homes were acceptable, even aside from their parents finding out. The next public school session at the stable was six days away. She had hoped that would give her time to think of what to do next.

  Along the way to the stable, the pup had made too much noise, but so would anyone thumping across the street stones. Twice they heard a door opening somewhere behind them and ran for the next corner. The pup made even more noise when they did that.

  Kyne’s little hands and fingers ached from heaving and clutching the tarp. Now that the pup was somewhat quiet, they were stuck in plain sight.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked.

  Marten rolled his eyes and looked to Grim. “You got a work knife or blade of some kind?”

  Grim eyed him, perhaps as confused as Kyne. “Yeah, so?”

  “Give it to me, and the lantern, and you help with the tarp.”

  Grim handed off the lantern and dug into the bundled cloak. He pulled out a long scarred blade with a straight edge and a worn wooden handle big for both of his chubby hands.

  “You two drag that… that little monster,” Marten instructed, taking the blade and waiting until Grim re-bundled the tools and took hold of the tarp. “Now follow me.”

  “Where are we going?” Kyne asked.

  Marten’s narrow face scrunched in frustration. “Just… come on!”

  He took off around the stable’s corner.

  Kyne and Grim heaved the tarp, which raised more grumbling from the pup than from Grim. When they rounded the corner, Marten was already climbing the exposed end of a woodpile beneath a lean-to along the stable’s side. Beyond the stable’s far end was Master Boulg’s little home.

  The one curtained window that Kyne saw was still dark. When she raised her eyes, Marten had gained the lean-to’s roof and now crept up to a hatch in the stable’s upper wall. Kyne had never noticed that before in her visits here.

  Marten carefully set the lantern on the roof’s drooping slant.

  Kyne grew worried again. The lean-to was old, likely built long ago but after the stable was no longer used as a stable. That hatch could not have been used for years, so what if it was nailed shut?

  Marten slipped the blade under the hatch’s bottom edge and began wiggling it along the slit. Even that much extra noise made Kyne’s all the more anxious. Then the blade stopped. Marten shifted to one side, gripped its handle with both hands, and heaved.

  The blade wrenched along the slit with a clack of wood inside the loft.

  Marten fell back and slide halfway down the lean-to’s roof.

  Kyne’s breath caught, but he was quickly up on all fours and crawling down the roof to where he had climbed up.

  “Give me the tools first,” he whispered.

  Grim did so, and then came the awkward pulling and shoving to get the tarp up on the roof… and without the pup escaping or any of them toppling off the lean-to. By the time they wrestled the tarp through the hatch, the pup was thrashing in a fury.

  Kyne dropped on the loft’s dusty boards, panting too much to say anything.

  “Not… done… yet,” Marten got out, and he spun a board nailed to the loft wall that had held the hatch closed.

  Getting down the ladder to the stable floor was even worse. Since Marten went down first to brace the tarp from below, he got bit twice more. The only good thing was that the pup was too busy trying to blindly get at Marten to make much noise. Instead, it was Marten who made noise with all of his foul language.

  Kyne refrained from scolding him. She didn’t have the breath for it either.

  Once they reached the dirt floor in the stable’s front bay. they ended up sitting on the tarp’s corners to keep the pup trapped while they caught their breath. Grim tiredly open the lantern halfway so they could see.

  “All… right,” Marten wheezed. “We get up… run for the… ladder… before it thrashes out… and spots us.”

  “No!” Kyne gasped. “We cannot… leave it… alone!”

  Both boys stared at her, and even Grim started to look angry.

  “I’m not letting… that thing… gnash on me again!” Marten panted out.

  Grim nodded fervently in agreement.

  “If we leave it alone…” Kyne struggled to get out, “it could start barking… howling… or try to claw its way out. Think of the noise… it would make.”

  “What do you think we’ve been doing?” Marten growled at her.

  “We should’ve let it go in the first place,” Grim added.

  “No!” Kyne warned. “It is too young to know what to do on its own.”

  “Yeah, about that,” Marten said lowly, his eyes narrowing. “Now what? I assumed you had something else in mind, considering we can’t keep him forever.”

  Kyne glanced from Marten to Grim. With all of Grim’s blinking, he was likely thinking too much about that question instead of the answer.

  “Kyne?” Marten growled.

  She slouched, looking down at the rumbling bulge under the tarp.

  “Ah, no, you didn’t!” Marten slapped his hands over his face, pulled them down slowly, and exposed another glare at her. “You idiot. You didn’t plan anything else, did you?

  All Kyne had thought about amid panic was getting the pup away from the wolf-catcher.

  “So now we have to get a wagon somehow,” Marten grumbled. “And since we just came from a wagonhouse—”

  “Hey, no you don’t!” Grim cut in. “You’re not stealing a wagon out my father’s workshop.”

  “I was just thinking maybe—”

  “No maybes!” Grim snapped. “Besides, we’ve got no horses, even if we knew how to hook them up right. And nobody but a lamebrain thinks they can jump in a wagon and know how to handle a team. Espec
ially along city streets where there’s no room for mistakes… and being noticed.”

  That silenced Marten for the moment.

  Kyne thought of the wolf-catcher’s driver. “Could we hire a private teamster to do it?”

  “You got that kind of coin?” Marten asked. “I don’t… or enough to keep him quiet about three kids sneaking something out of the city.”

  Kyne slumped again. She had truly made a mess of this if not even Marten could find a way out. Then again, boys, they always thought they would do better—know better. And if they did, that was worse.

  “So what do we do about… it?” Grim asked. Even then, he leaned away a little in watching the tarp’s shifting, rumbling bulge.

  “We stand up together,” Kyne answered. “Pull one edge to roll it out, and we hold the tarp up in front of us.”

  “You are crazy,” Marten whispered. “You’re as bug-batty as that journeyor you think so much of!”

  “Shut up!” Kyne ordered. “And grab the edge.”

  When she got to her feet and was about to grip the tarp’s edge, neither of the boys had moved.

  “Now… or I pull the tarp from under you.”

  Not pleased about it, they struggled up to either side of her, stepping along the tarp’s edge as they did so to keep the pup trapped. When she finally nodded once, they all heaved together and quickly backed toward the stable doors.

  The thrashing bulge rolled away as the tarp flattened out.

  A snarling, furred mass tumbled across the stable’s dirt floor.

  Everything was quiet except for it thrashing to gain its feet… or paws. The pup wobbled dizzily in facing away from them.

  Kyne felt awful again at how it had been dragged through the streets and up and down into the stable. The first thing she noticed was that its matted coat was certainly a strange, very pale gray. That color became creamy along its legs, belly and throat. It was too covered in dirt-dust and stray straw to spot any hint of the bluish tinge she thought she had seen the other night. Then she noticed it was obviously male.

  “Did we do that?” Grim whispered.

  Confused, Kyne was about to look his way when she noticed something else, now that the pup was steadier on all fours. There was more than dirt and straw in his fur.

  “No… we couldn’t have,” Marten mumbled. “There’s no way.”