I know how many steps it is from my bed to the ornaments. Three large ones and one half one. I decide to test it. As I get up I slip a hand beneath my bed, something I wouldn’t normally dare do in the dark. I find the lunchbox I pretended I’d lost. When I open it I smell stale Dunkaroos.
I walk to the other side of the room, and the other side of the room doesn’t retreat from me. The wall is very still and the stone bodies are still too. I fit every last ornament in the box. I close the lid and slide my lunchbox back into the hidden recess beneath my bed.
I wait to feel afraid, or better, or finished. I wait in the dust at the foot of my bed.
Good Dog, Alice! by Juliet Marillier
In Great-Uncle Bartholomew’s opinion, it was a mistake to name my dog Alice. He made that clear from the moment I introduced them.
“Alice? You can’t call a dog Alice!” Uncle Bart’s moustache quivered with disapproval, putting me in mind of an overexcited caterpillar.
I had known other dogs with names generally reserved for girls and boys: Monty-short-for-Montague, for instance, a British bulldog; and Seraphina, a well-coiffed miniature poodle. “What’s wrong with Alice?” I asked.
“My dear girl! Everything! A learned colleague of mine knows a young person of that name, and I gather she is involved in all manner of wild escapades. I once had a gardener whose daughter was an Alice. She would tuck up her skirts and climb trees all day long, and if anyone asked her to descend and comport herself like a lady, she would pelt them with random objects.”
That sounded rather fun to me, though I could imagine Uncle Bart being somewhat put out if I hit him on the head with, say, a conker. “What sort of objects?”
“Whatever one finds in a tree, I suppose. Sticks, acorns, squirrels.”
“Squirrels?!”
“The slower ones might be caught, then hurled,” said Uncle Bart thoughtfully. “The gardener’s daughter was a quick sort of young person.” His eyes fell again upon the dog, a tri-coloured King Charles spaniel which my favourite cousin, William, had brought for me as a surprise birthday present that very morning. William had not obtained Uncle Bart’s permission to give me a dog, perhaps anticipating the answer would be no. He had simply arrived with the puppy in a covered basket. He’d brought his parents too, not in a covered basket but walking behind, all smiles. It had been impossible for Uncle Bart to refuse.
“That’s only two Alices,” I pointed out. “I believe there is something amiss in your statistical method, Uncle.”
“Ah, well,” said Uncle Bart, ignoring this comment, “at least the dog will not tuck up her skirts or climb trees. But I fear the wild escapades.”
“You could come on them too,” I suggested, wondering at what age a person would be too old for escapades. It would do Uncle Bart good to get away from his studies from time to time.
He chuckled. “I am a scholar. A scientist. A man of many parts. None of those parts is inclined towards escapades. Not to say that scholarship and adventures cannot go hand in hand. I recall a time…” Then, just as he was about to say something interesting, Uncle Bart went off into a dream. This was a frequent habit of his.
“Uncle?”
He snorted, coming back to himself. “Yes, child?”
“I think Alice is missing her mother.” I picked the dog up and held her to my chest. “We should make her welcome.”
“Why not call the creature Fluff or Spot or … or Rover?” Uncle Bart had not given up.
“Rover is for a boy dog. Spot is for a spotted dog. And Fluff…” There was no denying the fluff; Alice possessed it in abundance. “Fluff is too obvious,” I said. “A scientist would not choose that name for his dog.”
“Ah,” said Uncle Bart. “But she’s not my dog. You’re the one who had the eleventh birthday.”
“And I’m the one who is calling her Alice.”
*
William and his family had stayed only long enough to wish me a happy birthday and hand Alice over. That was disappointing. William and I could have explored or made a snow monster or played shuttlecock. We could have had a proper birthday luncheon: roasted potatoes with rich gravy; tiny cakes with crystallised violets on top; lemonade to drink. Not that our cook and housekeeper, Mrs Manifold, would dream of preparing something so festive. Maybe if I’d still had a mother and a father, birthdays would have been different, but my parents and my brother had been killed when I was three years old. That was why I lived with Uncle Bart.
At least there were no lessons on my birthday. Froggy was away for four days, doing some kind of examination. Froggy was my tutor. I was supposed to call him Master Frederick. He had been Uncle Bart’s prize student at Oxford University.
“One good thing, Alice,” I told my dog as I put on my cloak and boots and woolly hat. “With him away, we have four whole days to ourselves, and nothing to worry about.”
Mrs Manifold had decreed that Alice should stay in the scullery, eat and drink from her own bowls and not get underfoot. I saw no good reason to keep to those rules. “You will sleep on my bed, of course,” I whispered in Alice’s ear as I carried her down the back stairs. “I’ll take you for two walks every day, and I’ll teach you all manner of tricks. I know you are an exceptionally clever dog.”
I gazed into Alice’s round, bright eyes, searching for signs of the naughtiness Uncle Bart anticipated her developing, but she was the very picture of innocence. Her face belonged in a painting, the sort where the girls wear white frilly frocks and have their hair in ringlets, and the boys are in satin sashes and knickerbockers. “You won’t be that kind of dog, Alice,” I told her, “because I’m not a frilly frock sort of girl. You and I will have escapades. At least, when Froggy is away we will.”
On the first day I showed Alice the garden. It was winter, but there was not enough snow on the ground to make a snowman. There was not even enough for a snow dog the size of a King Charles spaniel. We made a snow mouse, then another one so the first would not feel lonely. Alice spent most of the time digging a hole under a leafless rose bush. But she was there. That was the important thing. I found tiny pebbles for eyes, so the snow mice could watch out for trouble. I made their ears from dried-up leaves and gave them tails of winter grass. I named them Sebastian and Amethyst. When you made something it was right to give it a name, even if it was only a snow mouse that would soon melt away. A name brought a thing to life. A name gave it light. You remembered that light even after the thing itself was gone.
I didn’t remember my parents very well. But I remembered Tom. He was my big brother, two years older than me. I spoke to him every day, so he wouldn’t be lonely wherever he was. Not out loud; deep down, without making a sound. Do you like my snow mice? If you were here, we could make a whole army and enact a great battle. But I fear Alice would become overexcited and romp all over the field of conflict, scattering the mouse warriors in all directions. I imagined Tom smiling, laughing, throwing a snowball.
I spoke to my brother at night, too, when I sat on my bed with my shawl clutched around me, my heart hammering as I waited for the creak of the door. When I whispered his name, the light of it made a little glow in the dark space of my bedchamber. I wish you were here, Tom. I would be braver then.
On the second day it was too windy to go out of doors. I showed Alice the inside of our house. Uncle Bart was in his study. Mrs Manifold was mostly in the kitchen, but as the only live-in servant at Wraithwood Hall she had many responsibilities, so I made a game out of avoiding her. Then there were Molly and Susan from the village, who came in to scrub floors and remove cobwebs and change the sheets. They chattered while they worked, so it was easy to keep out of their way. James, the gardener, had been given the day off.
Alice and I toured the bedchambers. First was Uncle Bart’s, with an improbably high four-poster bed and a writing desk strewn with academic papers. We did not go into Froggy’s room. After t
hat came two spares, kept in readiness though Uncle Bart rarely had houseguests. Last was mine, with its own little hearth, a tall stack of books – I frequently borrowed items from Uncle Bart’s collection – and a window that looked out over the front garden. My room had only one deficiency: the door was without a lock. I had never found the right words to request one. Uncle Bart would be sure to ask why, and how could I possibly answer? If I told him the truth, he would be shocked. He would be upset. He might not believe me. After all, he was a man.
On the third day, Mrs Manifold remarked at breakfast time that a dog should know its place. A disobedient animal, she said, was an insufferable nuisance and not to be tolerated. Alice gazed back at her, eyes bright in anticipation of bacon.
I would train Alice in the old ballroom, I decided. It was cold and dusty and darkish, but had the advantage of being in a tucked-away corner of Wraithwood Hall, visited only by pigeons. There had not been a ball since Uncle Bart was young, and that was a very long time ago.
I taught Alice Sit and Stay. I taught her Shh. And because lessons should be fun, I taught her Catch. My breakfast bacon was in my pocket, broken into tiny pieces. Alice was hungry from all the sitting and staying; she learned to catch quickly. I’d been right about her. She was an exceptionally clever dog.
On the fourth day, I lost Alice. We were so busy with our training that I missed the bell for luncheon, and only realised how late it was when I heard Mrs M calling my name. The quickest way back into the main part of the house was through a narrow hallway between the ballroom and the servants’ quarters. I was not supposed to use this shortcut. The hallway was barely wide enough for me to pass through; a solid person like Mrs Manifold would be in danger of getting stuck, and a tall one like James would have to stoop, for the ceiling was low. Stranger still was the blue-painted door halfway along, a door just the right height for an eleven-year-old girl, but far too small for grown-ups. Long ago, Uncle Bart had seen me coming out of the shortcut, and I could still remember his stern warning: “Do not go through that passage, child. No good can come of it. And never, ever open the blue door. Do not even speak of it. Promise me, now.”
Shocked by the terrible look on his face – it was as if he could see demons – I had squeaked out a promise before I had time to consider. Later, I wished I had asked questions. Why must I never open the blue door? What would happen if I did? And if that place was so dangerous, why didn’t they block it up so nobody could go there?
I had never disobeyed the rule about the blue door, though I did use the passage sometimes when in a rush. I had performed some investigations, going around the outside of Wraithwood Hall and trying to work out where the blue door might lead. But it didn’t seem to lead anywhere.
That morning, Alice had been learning Wait. Wait was short for wait-until-I-say-the-magic-word-before-you-eat. It was a measure of how clever Alice was that before the lesson was over she could wait for a slow count of five without falling upon the scrap of bacon I had placed before her. The magic word was Crunch. I thought this might be a useful thing for her to know, should someone offer her comestibles that would not agree with her. I hoped this would never happen, but there was no accounting for the vagaries of humankind, or so Uncle Bart frequently muttered while reading The Times over his breakfast eggs.
When I heard Mrs Manifold calling me I ran through the little passage, trying to tidy my hair as I went and hoping I would not be in trouble. Mrs M stood outside the dining room with a covered platter in her hands and a harried look on her face.
“You’re late,” she said, looking me up and down. “Your uncle has a visitor. Did you wash your face and hands?”
“Yes, Mrs Manifold,” I lied.
There followed a tedious luncheon during which Uncle Bart and his guest, a fellow scientist, discussed at length a paper on the topic of phrenology, which had to do with interpreting bumps on the head. I could not imagine why anyone would want to study such a thing, but I knew better than to say so. In fact, I said nothing at all, but worked my way through a somewhat better meal than usual, thanks to the presence of my uncle’s learned friend. It was not until I was finishing my stewed apple and custard that I realised I had left Alice in the ballroom on her own.
I set my napkin down and waited for a pause in the conversation. “Uncle Bart, may I please be excused from the table?”
“What lovely manners,” commented the learned friend with a condescending smile.
“Go, go, by all means, child,” said Uncle Bart, evidently keen to return to the topic of head bumps. I fled. Not through the little passage, since Mrs M was nearby, but the long way, out of the house, around the stone pathway, into the ballroom through the big door that did not quite close properly.
“Alice!” I called. “Alice, come!”
No reply. All was still.
I commenced a search. The ballroom housed a miscellany of old furniture, draped with protective sheets. I crawled under things, I climbed over things, I squeezed behind things. From time to time I called, “Alice!” I had not realised so many spiders lived in the ballroom. As I was pulling the last of the cobwebs from my hair I heard muffled barking. It was coming from the little passage.
I tiptoed over, not wishing to startle Alice into flight. When I looked in, nobody was there, only shadows. But the blue door, the door Uncle Bart had said must always stay closed, stood ajar. A cold draught came from within, making me shiver. Alice barked again. She was in there. In the place beyond the door.
There was only one choice. Alice was my dog. She was my responsibility, and I must bring her back. Courage, I told myself. It’s a rescue mission. An adventure. I walked up to the blue door, pushed it wide open and walked on through.
I had expected a hallway, a chamber or steps to a cellar. Instead, I found myself outside. But this was not the garden of Wraithwood Hall, though here, too, it was winter. Snow lay in drifts around towering trees, enough to make a monstrous snowman. Icicles hung from the branches, shining as if with their own light. I could hear a rustling, as if something was moving about up above, keeping an eye on me. I stared in wonder. This was a place from a strange fairy tale. It surely could not be real. Yet here it was, only one step from home. I had walked into a true adventure.
Alice, I reminded myself. Find Alice. There was no sound from her now, but across the carpet of snow was a trail of neat pawprints, heading towards a round bush, all prickles and berries. It looked somewhat like an oversized hedgehog.
“Alice!” I called. My voice sounded monstrously loud. The rustling from above ceased. “Where are you?”
The prickle bush lurched to its feet and began to move towards me. The feet were gnarled and knobby, and the gait was that of an infirm old man. This was becoming odder by the moment.
“Ah, a young person.” The bush had a voice to match its walk. “We are not often graced with such a visit these days. Welcome, welcome! Sit down, make yourself comfortable.”
I discerned beady eyes deep in the foliage, and perhaps a twiggy nose. There was nowhere to sit except on the ground in the snow. Fearing to offend my host, I sat. “Have you seen a little dog?” I asked. “Her name is Alice and she came this way. She is very young and will be easily lost.”
“It is customary to begin a conversation with introductions,” said the creature. “My name is – it is – oh dear. It has been so long since I had a visitor that I cannot remember.”
“Oh, how sad,” I said, wondering how long it might be before Uncle Bart started to forget his own name. I must make sure I called him by it at least three times a day. “Would you like a new name? I could give you one.”
If a bush could blush, this one did so. The edges of his leaves turned pink, and his berries glowed. “Oh, yes!” he said in tones of such awe that I might have been offering a chest full of pirate treasure or The Complete Works of William Shakespeare in a collector’s edition. “Oh, that would be very fi
ne indeed!”
A name was quite a responsibility. It had to contain the essence of the individual’s character, which meant something like Prickly would not do at all. “I’ll need to ask you some questions first,” I said. The snow was soaking into my skirt, all the way through my undergarments to my skin. I could not hear Alice at all.
“Ask away.”
“What is your job here? What is your responsibility in this – this interesting place?”
“I guard. I protect. I keep watch. Small folk hide in me or shelter under me. My fruit keeps them alive in the long winter.”
“And in summer?”
The creature sighed; all his leaves trembled. “In summer I rest, so I will be strong when the winter comes. Tiny folk rest in my shade.”
This was a very important personage. Clearly the small folk could not survive without him. Such a being could not be given an ordinary name, such as John or Cedric or Charles. “I think your name could be Trusty,” I said. “Would that be acceptable?”
“Rusty?”
“No, no – Trusty with a T. Because everyone trusts you, or they would not hide in you or shelter under you or eat your fruit. You are the guardian of the woods.”
“Trusty with a T. That is an excellent name. I thank you.” The creature seemed to bow; his leaves all tilted a little in my direction.
“Trusty, could you help me to find my dog, Alice? She is about this big” – I motioned with my hands – “and her fur is three colours: white, black and russet. She has long ears and a plumy tail.”
Before Trusty could respond, a terrible shrieking broke out, the high-pitched cry of a small animal in deathly peril. I whirled to see an enormous owl seated on a branch nearby. The bird’s great eyes were most curious. In one I could see the face of a clock, with a full set of Roman numerals, and in the other was a pair of scales in perfect balance. There was no time to reflect upon this oddity, for the bird held in its beak a tiny struggling creature. It had a tri-coloured coat, long ears and a plumy tail. It was no bigger than a mouse.
Year's Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction & Fantasy Page 10
