The Empty City

by Erin Hunter

  “Here,” he muttered. “So you won’t get cold.”

  Storm stepped forward and began to dig in the sunny spot, and Peaceful joined her. It barely took any time at all—they only needed a tiny hole, for such a small dog.

  Storm’s heart ached. It’s so unfair, to die before you really live.

  Arrow gently lowered Tufty into the grave, and there was a long silence.

  The Alpha or Beta would normally say something, Storm thought. But I don’t suppose Arrow and Bella have even thought about which of them is which—in a Pack of two, that sort of ceremony probably didn’t seem important.

  Something told Storm that Bella would be the Alpha, anyway—she had wanted the role before, when the Pack had chosen Sweet, and Arrow had never shown any sign of wanting a greater rank than he had as a hunter.

  But now, Storm could tell that Arrow wasn’t sure what to do. He looked at her, and she gave him a tiny encouraging nod. You can do this.

  Arrow sighed and hung his head.

  “When . . . when we left the Wild Pack, we had a vision of a new way. A Pack where it doesn’t matter what kind of dog you were born. Nip and Scramble will grow up in that Pack—but you won’t have the chance, Tufty. It hurts.” He took a deep breath. “But this Pack won’t always be easy. There will be problems, and dangers, and some other dogs will distrust your litter-brothers, even though they’ve never hurt anyone, just because of who their Father-Dog is. And I’m . . . glad that you won’t have to know what that’s like.

  “I wish you had stayed. I wish that you’ll know how loved you were. Your Mother-Dog and I are sorry we’ll never see you grow. We—we know you would have been a good dog.”

  Storm turned her face to the sky and whined in grief-filled agreement.

  Arrow fell silent for a moment. Then he stepped forward. “Now you go to the Forests Beyond, where it is always Long Light and the prey is plentiful. Good hunting, Tufty,” he said, and scraped a pawful of earth down over her little body.

  Storm followed. “Good hunting, Tufty,” she said. Earth-Dog, please take her to Martha, she added silently. She loved me and my litter-brothers, and she didn’t care what kind of dogs we were.

  Then Peaceful stepped forward, and Storm was deeply touched to see that she did the same, adding her own pawful of earth and “Good hunting, Tufty,” even though it wasn’t her own custom.

  Arrow gently filled in the rest of the hole and stepped back, staring at the dark spot in the bright sunbeam. Storm joined him, nuzzling him gently, uncertain what she could say.

  “That was beautiful,” Peaceful said. “The Forests Beyond sound wonderful. But now it is time for me to get back to my own Pack. My absence will have been noticed.”

  Storm turned to her, wondering how she could possibly thank Peaceful for everything she’d done. “I hope we’ll see you again,” she said.

  “I hope so too,” said Peaceful. “Arrow . . . one last thing. I know that the pain is fresh and strong in this moment, but when you return to Bella and your litter, you should remember this day—not as the day you lost a pup, but the day you were given two.”

  For a moment, Arrow stiffened, and Storm thought he was holding in a huge howl of grief. Then he let it out as a long sigh and nodded. “Thank you, Peaceful. For your help, and your wisdom.”

  Peaceful dipped her head again, and with a last flick of her tail in Storm’s direction, she turned and padded away quickly. A few long wolf-strides later, and she was gone.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Storm trotted through the trees, feeling the early light of the Sun-Dog on her back and a cool breeze stirring her fur. Many of the Sun-Dog’s journeys had passed since the birth of the pups, and the weather was starting to change. There was a feeling of expectation in the air and a chill on the ground in the mornings.

  The scents of prey were all around her, and she took a moment to thank the Forest-Dog for this plenty. She knew she would be able to catch enough to feed herself, Bella, and Arrow, even though Bella was still making milk to feed the pups. It was a luxury she wasn’t used to, being able to pause and sample the different prey scents that crisscrossed the forest floor, working out which creatures would make the best meal.

  Just another way this Pack is better than the Wild Pack, she thought. And it is my Pack now. Her life here had begun with both joy and tragedy, but Arrow and Bella had taken Peaceful’s advice, and though they still mourned Tufty, they were focused on their living pups.

  And Storm, too. Not a day went by when Bella didn’t thank her for bringing Peaceful to their aid. We only have a Pack, she’d said, because of you, Storm.

  She had never been in a Pack before where every Packmate, without exception, understood and loved her. Bella and Arrow had even told her she would be welcome to sleep in their den, but Storm had refused. She still, every so often, found that she had sleepwalked—usually only a few pawsteps out of the camp, but it was enough for her to be sure she didn’t want to be in danger of stepping on the pups or disturbing Bella’s precious sleep. She had her own den, in a small hollow that she’d dug out underneath a jutting rock, behind a wall of vines. It was cozy, and safe, and all her own. And if she ever missed the warmth and comfort of other dogs, she knew where she could find them.

  Perhaps their Pack wasn’t the biggest, but she was sure it was the best.

  As she raised her head to sniff out the trail of a weasel she was following, a leaf dropped out of the air and tumbled across Storm’s muzzle on its way to the ground. It was brown and it crunched when she nosed it.

  Red Leaf was coming.

  She knew it from the cooling of the air, as well as the change in the trees. It explained the abundance of prey, too—the creatures had all had a good Long Light, had grown fat and sleepy. The lean times were ahead, but Storm was confident that the Pack would be able to weather them here.

  The time had passed so quickly.

  Perhaps that’s what happens when you’re happy?

  Storm arrived back in camp with two fat weasels dangling from her mouth, added them to the prey pile, and cleared a small collection of dry leaves away. The breeze carried them off, but Storm knew that it would bring more—maybe a lot more. The thin pine needles didn’t seem like they would drop yet, but some of the other trees here were thickly covered in leaves as big as Storm’s face, and she was a little worried that the pups would get lost underneath them if they all fell at once. . . .

  Suddenly she felt something on her tail, like a small creature biting it, and she spun around.

  “Scramble! No!”

  The pup sat back on his haunches in shock and couldn’t keep his balance—he rolled over on the ground, legs in the air and eyes wide. “No, Storm!” he giggled. “I’m Nip.”

  “Oh—sorry, Nip,” Storm said. “I couldn’t see your patch.”

  Nip giggled some more and rolled to his paws, then barked a high-pitched volley at a crunchy brown leaf that wheeled past him. “Leaf Monster!” he yapped, and he tried, and failed, to pounce on it. Storm watched him with an indulgent sigh.

  It was almost impossible to tell the two pups apart. Both of them had the same fur; black like Arrow’s and fluffy like Bella’s. They had identical big brown eyes, identical sandy-colored paws, and even identical sandy splotches on their backs—except that Scramble’s was on his left side, and Nip’s was on his right.

  I hope Scramble’s with his Mother-Dog, she thought, and not trying to climb a tree again.

  These pups were going to be trouble, Storm could tell. She was sure they had only opened their eyes a few days ago. They weren’t even eating prey for themselves, and yet they were already running rings around their parents.

  She’d thought that Lucky’s pups were a handful, with Tumble’s constant need to climb everything, Fluff’s love of unexpectedly head-butting dogs, and Tiny’s tendency to vanish and reappear somewhere Storm could have sworn she couldn’t possibly reach. But Nip and Scramble were younger than those pups had been when Storm took care of
them, and they were already far more mischievous.

  Arrow emerged from the den with Scramble in tow. “Storm, would you watch the pups for a while?” he asked. “Bella wants to go for a run, to stretch her legs, and I’d like to go with her.”

  “Er—yes, that’s fine,” Storm said, watching as Scramble joined Nip in his hunt for the vicious Leaf Monster. Secretly she had hoped she would have time to lie down and enjoy the Red Leaf afternoon sun, without having to be on alert for escaping pups, but that was the price of being in such a small Pack—there was always something to do.

  Bella emerged from the den, moving a little stiffly, but bright-eyed. She trotted over to Storm and gave her an affectionate lick on the end of her nose.

  “Thank you, Storm. Be good for Storm, pups!” she told her litter, but they were too busy trying to climb a small rock at the edge of the camp. Bella rolled her eyes happily, and she and Arrow headed out into the trees.

  Storm moved closer to the pups, since she might have to catch one if it fell—

  But she was too late. Scramble had already reached the top of the rock, yipped with triumph, and bounced on all four paws—and somehow lost his balance and tumbled off into the grass. Storm started forward to check that he was all right, but Scramble was already up and glaring at his litter-brother.

  “Nip push!” he barked.

  “Not me,” Nip replied, sitting back on his haunches with a thump.

  “Now, Scramble,” Storm said, leaning down to give the pup a lick on the top of his head. “Are you listening? Listen to me. Nip was on the ground, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes,” muttered Scramble, after a long pause for thought.

  “So he couldn’t have pushed you off the rock, could he?”

  “No.”

  “Was Tufty,” yipped Nip.

  Storm felt her ears drooping slightly.

  Not this again . . .

  She wasn’t sure it was a good idea for Bella have told them about Tufty so soon. Of course, Storm understood the urge to make sure that poor Tufty was remembered by her litter-brothers, but they were still so small. They couldn’t possibly understand about life and death at their age, so if they were told they had a litter-sister, one who had to go away, what were they supposed to think?

  Except that they hadn’t asked where she went. That was the strange part—the two pups had decided, seemingly all by themselves, that Tufty was still here. The adult dogs just couldn’t see her.

  Bella and Arrow corrected them when they heard this and told Storm that all pups had strange imaginations, and they would grow out of it. But it worried Storm. She’d been a pup much more recently than either of them, and she didn’t remember playing anything like this with her litter-brothers.

  She watched as the two pups gamboled across the clearing, playing with the leaf. Nip biffed it with a paw, passing it to Scramble, who jumped on it and bit it, then patted it away—to nobody. It lay twitching in the grass for a moment, with neither of the two pups trying to catch it. They both just sat and watched the empty space. Then the wind pulled it up and Nip went after it again.

  It’s like there is a third pup in their game, Storm thought, with a shudder. They’re imagining that their sister is still alive to play with them. It’s almost as if they can see her.

  It made Storm’s fur prickle to think about it.

  Storm stepped into the space between Lucky and Mickey, and she felt at once that she was home. She wasn’t sure why she had stayed away so long. Every dog in the Pack was looking at her with love. She forgave them all for the way they had treated her—they had made it right, and now she knew this was where she should be.

  The dogs lifted their muzzles to the sky, and Storm did the same. The moon was huge, and so close she could almost make out the faint shapes of wolves moving on its surface. Or perhaps she was imagining it.

  As one, the Pack began the Great Howl, and Storm had never felt so perfectly connected to them before. She could feel them breathing as she breathed, and see the Spirit Dogs walking among them, faint presences stopping to nuzzle or speak to the other dogs, one by one.

  Then . . . it came. Every pawstep sounding out, quiet, as if it was walking over hardstone instead of grass. Storm couldn’t turn to look at it, but she felt its presence, its malevolence. When it passed by the other dogs, their eyes widened and their ears went back, and then they turned their gazes on Storm. One by one, the light of love went out, replaced by the gleam of suspicion. Lucky, Daisy, Moon, even Sunshine—when the Fear-Dog passed them, they shuddered and turned on one another. On Storm.

  There was something else, too. A dog. Was it the same one that had she had once dreamed watched her from the forest shadows? It was sitting in the middle of the circle of dogs, in the heart of the Pack, watching the Fear-Dog’s progress.

  “Is the Fear-Dog your master,” Storm asked, “or are you his?”

  The strange dog did not reply. It only opened its jaws and let out a sound like pebbles rolling down a slope—a rattling sound that made Storm leap to her paws. Her Pack was in danger! She growled . . .

  . . . and she was still growling as her eyes snapped open and she stared around, jolted awake. She was on her paws, in the camp, outside her den. The Moon-Dog’s light was so bright she almost thought it was the Sun-Dog, until her eyes properly adjusted.

  Something’s wrong. There’s danger here.

  The hissing, rattling noise was still going.

  Storm’s hackles rose and she growled again. She blinked the sleep out of her eyes and shook herself, trying to focus. There was danger. She could sense it, and hear it, but not see it!

  Then she spotted something—a red leaf moving, and then a few blades of grass. She stepped closer, and now she could see a long body in pale and dark brown, slithering across the grass toward Bella’s den, shaking its tail, which was making that weird rattling hiss. Two keen, beady black eyes shone on its pointy head, trained on the entrance.

  A snake! And it was heading straight for the pups.

  “Get away!” Storm barked, though the thing didn’t seem to have ears. She leaped toward it, her heart pounding. She had seen a snake before, but never hunted or fought one—how did you catch such a strange, quick, wriggling thing?

  The snake paused, and its head snapped around to face Storm. It opened its jaws, farther even than any dog Storm had ever met, revealing gleaming, deadly-looking white fangs.

  They carry poison in their teeth, Twitch had told her once. He’d told her to stay away.

  Well, I can’t! It’ll hurt the pups!

  The snake hissed again and rattled its lumpy tail, and Storm fought the urge to back off.

  There was only one thing for it. The thing had no legs, no way to fight back, if you didn’t count those sharp, poisonous teeth and the speed it could move its head. . . .

  She feinted to her left, the snake lunged, and Storm twisted and pushed off, coming around to her right instead, fangs at the ready. She grabbed the snake between her teeth, right behind its head. The body flailed, the tail smacking against her chest and neck, but she had the creature where she wanted it. With a flick of her head, she tossed the snake as far away from the den as she could. It landed upside down in the grass and immediately started wriggling to right itself.

  There was a scrambling behind her and Arrow came out of the den, panting, looking around as if he had just been startled awake too. He saw the snake, and his pant turned into a growl. He ran to Storm’s side and they both flung a volley of furious barking at the snake. Having righted itself, it slithered quickly away into the bushes. Storm took a few steps forward, still barking, until she was certain that the snake was not coming back.

  She turned back to find Bella and the pups watching her, as well as Arrow. They were sitting in the mouth of the den, and for once Nip and Scramble were perfectly quiet, their eyes huge and wide. They seemed frightened, and when Storm walked toward them, Nip’s legs trembled.

  “Thank you, Storm!” Bella yapped. “You sa
ved us! Say thank you, pups.”

  “Thank Storm,” Nip whined, and his legs stopped shaking. “Storm did a big bark!”

  “Loud,” said Scramble.

  “Yes, it was,” said Arrow. “Thank goodness you were awake, Storm.”

  “Actually,” Storm said, “I—I wasn’t. Not at first. I was having a dream. I thought I was back in the Wild Pack, but they were in danger—there was a dog making a noise just like the snake. I tried to protect them, but then I woke up, and I was already on my paws. I . . . was growling at the snake in my sleep.”

  She hung her head. She was prepared for Bella to draw back, for Arrow to step between her and the pups. But they didn’t.

  “That’s quite some nose for danger you have,” said Bella. “You must have sensed the snake, and somehow it got into your dream. You were trying to save us, even though you didn’t know what from.” She nosed at the pups. “Come on, it isn’t awake time for little dogs yet. Back to the den with you.”

  Scramble stared at Storm for a moment longer, his eyes thoughtful. “Loud bark,” he said. “Big, loud bark!”

  “A big, big bark,” Nip agreed. Bella huffed into their fur and nudged them inside, and they went without complaining.

  “Do you think you can get back to sleep?” Arrow asked Storm. She sighed.

  “Maybe in a little while,” she said. “Not now.” Her heart was beating too fast—and the memory of the Wild Pack’s peace being broken by the mysterious dog in her dream was a little too fresh.

  “I don’t feel sleepy either,” said Arrow. “Let’s just sit with the Moon-Dog for a bit.”

  Storm sat down in the middle of the clearing, relieved and grateful for the company. Arrow sat beside her, and for a moment they fell into a comfortable silence.

  It was a nice dream, until the Fear-Dog came, Storm thought.

  It had been wonderful to see her old Pack again, to know that they wanted her there, and all their old arguments had been settled. Was that possible? Being here, with Arrow, Bella, and the pups, had shown her what it was like to be in a Pack that accepted her. It was all she had ever wanted, but Storm had to admit that a small part of her still wished that the acceptance could have come from the Wild Pack instead.