CHAPTER 11

The Dogness of Dogs

At one time the tree must have been healthy, for its massive, snaking roots had pushed the cobbles awry. Moss and small plants continued to grow thickly in the cracks, which proved that the tree had not been poisoned, as Little Fur had feared. She laid her hands on its much-scarred trunk only to find that its heartwood was rotten. There was nothing she could do, but she went deeper, striving to find a reason for the disturbance of the earth magic that she sensed surrounding the tree.

To her astonishment, she found herself in the tree’s dream, sitting in the dense shade of the Old Ones, sorting seeds! The tree must have taken her image from the flow, and of course that was the answer to why the flow was agitated. The tree was responding to her appearance!

Sly began hissing like a snake. Little Fur turned to see her gazing malevolently along the street where the wall gave way to a queer fence of thin metal strands woven into a great web. This stretched as far along the street as they could see, and on the other side of it was a nasty-smelling huddle of wooden dwellings.

“What is the matter with her?” she whispered to Ginger.

“Dog,” he said.

Little Fur’s heart began to race. She had never seen a dog, but almost as many animals and birds had been hurt by dogs as by humans and trolls. Each one of them described the fearsome beasts quite differently, so that Little Fur knew they must have shape-changing blood in them.

The worst thing of all about dogs was their complete devotion to their human masters. It was even said that dogs would kill at a human’s command.

Sly padded over to the tree and said softly, “The dog has smelled us but it does not know that we have smelled it.” Her green eye glittered with triumph.

“Will it come after us if we turn back?” Little Fur asked. They could climb the tree to escape the dog’s brutal teeth, but then they would be trapped there until its master came.

Before either cat could answer, the dog began to howl. Little Fur clapped her hands over her ears at the sound, which seemed to tear the night. Crow fluttered onto one of the dead branches and peered down at her. “Why stopping? Not goodly!”

“Dog ahead,” Sly murmured. “Big dog.”

Crow cawed his derision. “Dog being trapped behind metal web and chained to small house.”

So they went on up the street. Little Fur’s legs trembled because the horrible noises the dog was making were actually screams of rage, and she could understand them.

“I smell you!” the dog snarled. “Come close and I will tear and bite you. My fangs will crack your bones! I will pull you to pieces and eat you up! I will eat the moon! I will crack it like an egg. I will slurp up the light in it and all will be darkness!”

“Do not be afraid,” Sly commanded. “That dog is all bark and no bite. It wants to frighten us. That is what the humans trained it to do.”

“The humans want it to frighten us?” Little Fur asked, but Sly sprang back to the web and began winding back and forth before it, crooning.

“I smell you, Cat,” the dog growled, and Little Fur saw it loom as a huge, dark shape behind the web of metal. “I have killed a million cats,” it whispered. “I have sucked them out of their fur. I will tear and bite you. My teeth will—”

Sly gave a long, chilling warble that made Little Fur’s hair stand on end. “Cur. Slave and idiot who cannot hunt but must be fed dead meat by human hands.”

Little Fur saw the dog clearly then. It was as tall as she was, with a chest broader than Brownie’s and a coat so short it was like a skin clamped about the hot-smelling muscles of its body. Its head was wedge-shaped and massive, with a gaping maw that hung open to allow its red tongue to loll out between gleaming teeth. White-frothed drool hung from its bottom lip and there was a red shine in its eyes.

“Jump into my yard, Cat, and I will show you what I am,” the dog invited.

Sly swayed close enough that the dog could have licked her face, had it not been for the fence. She showed no fear. Indeed, her smell was cruel and amused. “What could a tame beast like you do to a wild thing such as I? Tell me that, Pet?” she taunted.

This last word seemed to madden the dog. It threw itself violently against the web, which creaked and bulged out toward the cat but did not give way. Instead, there was a white flash of light and a loud clap as the dog was thrown yelping and howling into the dust of its yard.

Little Fur cried out once in fright at the flare of light, but the dog went on whimpering for some time. When at last it rose, it staggered as if it had been hit on the head. It came slowly right up to the fence, and Little Fur gagged, not at the singed smell it gave off, but at the rich, dreadful reek of its hatred. “I will know the scent of you again, Cat, and the scent of the thing from the last age that stands behind you. And next time, there will be no fence. . . .”

Sly gave a sniff and continued on down the lane, her tail high and haughty. Little Fur followed on shaking legs, as much appalled by the cat’s deliberate cruelty as by the dog’s hatred.

“What happened back there?” she asked to stop herself thinking of what might have happened if the dog had gotten through the web to them. “What made that light and the burning smell?”

“The web burned the dog!” Sly’s eye flashed with sneering triumph. “Humans spin sky-fire into the metal web.”

“I . . . I didn’t realize they could do that.”

“They can do anything they can imagine,” Sly said carelessly. “The dog knows that the fence bites and burns but it is easy to make dogs forget because it is easy to make them angry. Things that are angry are always stupid.”

“Why did you make it jump at you?” Little Fur asked. “You have made it your enemy by doing what you did. It won’t forget you and it will try to hurt you if it smells your scent again.”

Sly only gave her a cool look. “I am not afraid of a dog,” she jeered.

But I am, Little Fur thought, for the dog had sworn to remember her scent as well.

They followed the metal web, and the cluster of huts behind it gave way to a vast, bleak plain scraped bare of all green and growing things. There was nothing on it except a few glimmering puddles that smelled like the road-beast feeding place. Little Fur was so aghast that she almost failed to notice that the cobbles had ended. The street had become one of the black roads and it stretched away into the distance. There was a track of stubbled grass between the black road and the web, but it was dangerously close to the web full of sky-fire.

“I don’t think I can go along that,” Little Fur said, remembering the terrible singed smell of the dog.

“Not following fence. Must crossing wasteland.” Crow had landed by a gate in the web.

“What about the sky-fire?” Little Fur asked nervously.

“No sky-fire in gateway,” Crow said, and to prove it, he flew to the top of the gate.

“What is this place?” Little Fur asked, staring through the fence at the bleak plain.

“Once here being grass and trees and empty stone dwellings. Good roosting for many birds. Then humans bringing roaring road beasts with long claws and great metal teeth to break everything to pieces. Maybe humans will building more high houses here. Or maybe this being new road-beast feeding place.”

Little Fur had seen too much to disbelieve this. Crow must have smelled the sinking of her heart, for he added, “After this being grass plain. Then we coming to burying ground.”

So Little Fur squeezed through the gate, but she had taken only a single step when she staggered back, pale and horrified. “The ground is dying!”

“Must crossing quickly then,” Crow urged.

“You don’t understand. It’s dying because the earth spirit has just left it! You must find another way!”

Little Fur was pacing up and down the cobbles willing Crow to hurry when a thought struck her. She sat down and emptied the contents of the seed pouch onto her cloak. At the very bottom were several small seeds with dagger-tip points. They belonged to a greedy plant that would happily and swiftly strangle anything growing nearby. She gathered them only for their juice, which healed various forms of claw rot. But if she could bear to plant the voracious things in the ravished ground, they might just take hold swiftly and vigorously enough to summon the flow of earth magic.

She set pouch and bottle and cloak aside and went back along the street to get some moss. Then she squeezed back through the gate and pressed the moss onto the bare earth, knowing that the good earth adhering to its roots would help shield the seeds so they might have a chance to germinate. Touching the moss protected her from the worst of the dying earth’s pain, but she could easily tell that the ground had not only been savagely stripped of life, it had been deliberately poisoned.

That was what had driven the earth spirit away.

Little Fur got shakily to her feet and squeezed through the gate again. There was only a slim hope that the seeds would survive, but she had done her best. She went to the step of the stone dwelling where Ginger had curled up to sleep and sat by him, staring across the street at the ravaged earth. Then she lay against his soft flank and gave herself up to the soothing beat of his blood.