The Stray and the Strangers

by Steven Heighton

  Silent helpers and people from the town piled up mats and blankets. They began to take down the huge tents. The silver trailer that always smelled of hot food was hauled away by a truck.

  Everyone moved with a drooping slowness — shoulders slumped, feet heavy. Yet somehow the work went fast.

  The camp was vanishing before Kanella’s eyes.

  A stinging snow whipped in off the sea as she ran around the site. A few helpers were fighting the wind to pick up diapers, plastic cups and water bottles, stuffing them into bags. She barked at them to stop. But they ignored her, as if the wind were swallowing her sounds.

  No one would meet her gaze or speak to her.

  She trudged back to the food hut and nosed the door open.

  The young woman was gone. The stove was gone. All that remained of the pine tree were some faded needles in the dirt. The table that had roofed her den was gone, too, though her blanket still lay on the ground.

  No smell of food. Her water bowl empty.

  The bearded man came into the hut. As he gazed at Kanella, the blue of his eyes deepened and softened.

  “Ah, my poor girl. Now you are going to be an orphan, too.”

  The man took a last box of the milk Kanella loved. He knelt beside her in his tottery way, like on the first day when he had fed her. There were more white hairs in his beard. He filled her bowl with the milk, but she ignored it. She leaned against his leg, pushing her head deeper into his warm palm.

  * * *

  At first light the next morning, she woke, cold, on her blanket.

  How she missed the warmth and smell of the boy. The man was sleeping on his own cot under a heap of blankets. His ragged breaths were misting the cold air of the hut.

  She nudged open the door.

  Nothing remained of the camp. It had turned back into a big, empty parking lot.

  She decided to venture down the road to the town. Perhaps more boat strangers were arriving there. If she could lead a large group of them back here, the camp might start to fill up again.

  She started down the road, then heard the door of the hut open behind her.

  The bearded man was calling her name. How breathless and small his voice sounded!

  The faster and farther she ran, the fainter his voice. She had never ignored him this way before, but she had to do it. He would understand when she returned with more strangers, who would need him and the whole camp again.

  The mountains still hid the rising sun, but up ahead its honey-colored light was spilling across the water. She reached the town and loped up through its silent lanes to her old burrow in the olive tree. From this high point, she peered out to sea.

  Just as she had hoped — more boats and rafts were coming in!

  She pelted down through the maze of streets to the harbor. Only a few townspeople were out. They leapt aside to let her pass. Despite her cinnamon fur and white socks, no one recognized her. She didn’t slink along now, skittish and guarded. She moved with purpose.

  In the harbor, dozens of dejected cats watched as fishermen helped dripping strangers onto the pier. Kanella streaked among them, barking frantically. She started up the road and then glanced back, trying to make the strangers understand.

  This way! Follow me!

  They were being led toward a row of buses by the tall people who wore matching coats, strode with loud steps and talked brusquely. She followed the group, repeating her message. But over the sound of tramping feet, shouting adults and crying children, no one seemed to hear.

  The buses swallowed up the strangers and rumbled away as Kanella nipped at their wheels and ran in front of them. Their engines and blaring horns drowned out her barking.

  There were too many buses to chase, and she knew now that she couldn’t catch them.

  She trotted back up the road. Maybe a few boat strangers had found their way to the camp without her. She had not felt this empty and hungry since first finding a home in the food hut.

  She reached the flat, wide place where the camp had been. Even the food hut was gone. Cold winds moaned across the bare lot. She sniffed the ground and caught traces of familiar scents. The man and the young woman. The pine tree. Milk.

  Those good smells made a clear trail that she followed straight to her bowl and blanket, still there on the ground.

  The bowl was full of milk. Heavy stones sat on the corners of the blanket so the wind couldn’t blow it away.

  The milk was very cold and thick. She drank it before it could harden.

  Then she curled into a ball on the blanket and scarved her tail over her nose.

  9

  Going North

  She woke quivering with cold. It was night, and it seemed that the wind was howling and the moon was shining.

  She raised her head and saw two moons.

  They were the burning eyes of a small car. The howling was the car’s engine.

  Something was moving toward her, a shadow against the white lights. Was it the loud, angry official?

  She did not rise, bark or even whimper.

  Then she caught a familiar scent. The bearded man. On trembling legs she stood to greet him, her whole body wagging.

  He crouched on one knee and buried his face in her ruff. She heard her name among his words.

  “I thought I had to leave you, Kanella, but now I find I can’t.”

  Licking his face, she tasted saltwater, like on the face of the boy just before he left. That taste and memory filled her with yearning and panic, but now the man was gathering her in his arms and carrying her to the car.

  “Who knows how I’ll get you home across so many borders? Come, my little stowaway.”

  He set her in the back, and moments later they were moving.

  Kanella had never been inside a car. Beyond the window, stars drifted like far-away rafts over the black sea of the sky. The car’s warmth and humming and the scent of the man calmed her and she fell back to sleep.

  For two nights and days, she traveled in this new den.

  In a line of other cars, they drove clattering into the dark belly of a ship that stank of oily fuel and steel. Alone she waited while the ship groaned, juddered and rolled, but she wasn’t afraid. The man’s smell and presence were strong in here. She knew he would come back. When he did, they drove out of the ship onto a huge pier and journeyed on in the morning light.

  At times she watched his hands holding the wheel or met his red eyes in the mirror. Mostly, she slept.

  Each time she hopped down out of the car, the snow was deeper, the air colder, the smells foreign. Never had she sniffed air that lacked the salt tang of the sea. Never had she felt a sun so pale and weak, or seen so many trees stripped bare as if dead.

  Kanella woke in the dark as the car slowed down. Was she dreaming? Slowly they passed a long line of boat strangers who were waiting in front of a gate blocked by men in uniform. Whining, she put her paws up on the window. She searched for the boy’s face in that line of cold, tired faces.

  The man reached back to pat her, then firmly forced her down.

  “Hush, girl. Go back to sleep. We still have a long way to go.”

  As she burrowed back under her blanket, he said softly, “Though not as far as they do.”

  Later she woke in the dark again. His sleeping head was next to hers, his seat stretched back like the cot in the food hut. The sound of his breathing was like winter waves on the shores of her island.

  She knew that the island lay far behind them now.

  At last he was calling her name, waking her from a deep sleep. He lifted her up and set her down in snow that came up to her chest. He pointed to a house.

  It was not made of stone, like the white houses of the island, but of dark wood. Tall pines grew around it. Sweet-scented smoke rose in a bushy plume.

  She waddled after him through the
snow, trying to step in his tracks.

  At the door he said her name in the voice she loved and invited her inside.

  AFTERWORD

  Since 2015, over a million refugees and migrants — mostly Syrian but also Afghan, Iranian and Iraqi, among others — have risked the 6-mile (10 km) sea crossing between Turkey and the Greek island of Lesvos. Fleeing war, homelessness, poverty and other struggles, they have been seeking a new life in northern Europe or North America.

  Toward the end of 2015, European countries began to seal their borders, leaving the refugees and migrants trapped in Turkey and Greece. Over 100,000 still live in undersupplied camps like the main one on Lesvos. Called Mória, it is now home to some 20,000 people, which makes it the most crowded human settlement in the world.

  Kanella was a real stray who briefly found a home in an unofficial camp created in the parking lot of a closed nightclub called OXY, just south of the beautiful town of Mólyvos (or Míthymna), Lesvos. The camp was run by volunteers, mainly from Europe and North America but also from some of the refugees’ own countries. It was closed by authorities at the end of 2015.

  I met Kanella while I was helping in the camp in the month before it was closed. I can’t say for certain what became of her when her new home disappeared, though I know that several volunteers were hoping to adopt her. So I like to believe that — as in this story — she was lucky enough to find a home elsewhere.

  May that be true for everyone who is searching.

  STEVEN HEIGHTON is an award-winning author of poetry, novels and short stories. His work has been translated into twelve languages, and his most recent novel, The Nightingale Won’t Let You Sleep, was published to rave reviews and has just been optioned for film. His most recent volume of poetry, The Waking Comes Late, won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. He also reviews fiction for the New York Times Book Review, and he has taught and presented at universities and literary festivals around the world. The Stray and the Strangers is his first work for young readers. Steven lives in Kingston, Ontario.

  MELISSA IWAI is an author and illustrator. She has illustrated over thirty books, including Thirty Minutes Over Oregon by Marc Tyler Nobleman, an Orbis Pictus Honor Book for Outstanding Nonfiction. Melissa lives in Brooklyn, New York.

  Groundwood Books is an independent Canadian children’s publisher based in Toronto. Our authors and illustrators are highly acclaimed both in Canada and internationally, and our books are loved by children around the world. We look for books that are unusual; we are not afraid of books that are difficult or potentially controversial; and we are particularly committed to publishing books for and about children whose experiences of the world are under-represented elsewhere.

  Groundwood Books respectfully acknowledges that the land on which we operate is the traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples.

  Groundwood Books is proud to be a part of House of Anansi Press.

  Map of Lesvos — Extended Image Description

  Map: A map of the island of Lesvos, located in the Aegean Sea. About 6 miles to the north of the island is a stretch of Turkish coastline.

  Arrows on the map indicate that refugees used sea-crossing routes to travel from Turkey to Lesvos, where they landed near the coastal town of Mólyvos (or Míthymna), on the north side of the island. The town of Mólyvos is itself about 2 miles north of the refugee camp featured in the story, camp “OXY”. Roads leading out of camp OXY indicate that refugees travelled an additional 25 miles or more to reach camp Mória, and then eventually the city of Mytilini, both located to the southeast of the island. From Mytilini the refugees were then ferried to Athens.

  A smaller map below indicates the position of Lesvos and the Aegean sea (situated between Greece and Turkey) relative to nearby geographical landmarks like the Mediterranean Sea (to the south) and the Black Sea (to the north east).

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