Sky Wolves (2 page)

In fact it was freezing, since the temperature had recently dropped and the boiler wasn’t working.

‘Well, you can always wear it for school,’ said Aunty Joan.

His mother caught the look on Sam’s face. ‘Perhaps we should play a game,’ she said hurriedly, and Aunty Joan suggested they could play Pass the Kidney Stone, since Aunty Lilith had brought hers with her in a jar.

But before things could get really exciting, the doorbell rang.

‘I’ll go,’ said everyone except Aunty Lilith, who hadn’t heard.

Aunty Dot appeared, carrying a bundle wrapped in a blanket.

‘It’s only me, dears – oh, I’ve had the most terrible shock – just wait till you see what I’ve got here.’

‘What is it?’ said Sam’s mum, hurrying forward to help.

Just then the blanket barked. Sam’s mum jumped back in alarm as a small white head with brown ears poked out of it.

‘It’s a dog!’ cried Sam in great excitement.

‘Yes, yes, my darling, don’t you fret,’ said Aunty Dot, in
the voice she usually reserved for policemen and babies in prams. ‘Everything’s all right now. Aunty Dot didn’t mean to hit you with that nasty car.’

Everyone made way for Aunty Dot as she carried the small bundle through to the kitchen, explaining breathlessly what had happened.

‘Just travelling here on the ring road – came out of nowhere – didn’t see a thing –
felt
it, though – must have clipped her – I don’t know if I should take her to the vet’s -’

The little dog was only aware of a cacophony of light and noise. She had come from the darkness into a glaring yellow light that was quite unlike anything she was used to – burning torches or candlelight flickering on the walls of the great hall, or the natural light of sun and moon. There was a harsh quality to this light that hurt her eyes and made her vision blur. And there was a background noise beneath the babble of voices – a whirring and ticking and clicking, and the distant roar from outside – that made no sense to her at all. She had come to one of the realms of Chaos, she thought, and began to tremble all over.

Meanwhile, Aunty Dot was examining her, feeling all the way along her spine.

‘I think she’s hurt her hip,’ she said.

The small white dog submitted to this examination because she could tell from Aunty Dot’s touch that she knew what she was doing. But when she tried to remove the twig, the dog clamped her mouth firmly shut, bracing herself, and Aunty Dot succeeded only in pulling her nose forward.

‘Looks like – mistletoe,’ she said wonderingly, and the aunts exchanged significant glances.

The dog stared at them all. Through her blurred eyes they looked huge and impressive. There was an unusual quality to them that she couldn’t place, yet something about it tugged at the threads of her memory. Everything in the room was vibrating with an energy of its own, but it was almost as though these three women had a different vibration from everything else. She didn’t know whether or not to be afraid, or more afraid than she already was. Then her blurred glance fell on the little boy, who was leaning over her eagerly. He had bright hair and a brightly coloured tunic. A halo of light fell all around him from the lamp above. In her confused eyes he looked like the master she had left – the Shining Boy.

‘Can we keep her, Mum, can we?’ he asked. Then he too tried to take the twig from her mouth.

Very gently, he reached for the mistletoe, looking into her eyes the whole time. The dog tensed all over, but she didn’t growl. She could see herself reflected in each of his eyes, and she could see what he was thinking in the same way as she had always been able to read her master’s thoughts.
You won’t bite me,
he was thinking, and carefully he prised the twig away from her, and she let it go.

‘Well, look at that!’ said Aunty Dot, as Sam turned the sprig of mistletoe over, examining it. Someone had cut and shaped it. It looked like a dart. ‘She knows it’s your birthday. Maybe she’ll grant you three wishes.’

‘Like a genie,’ said Aunty Joan.

‘Jenny’ said Sam, fondling the little dog’s ears.

‘There’s no point giving her a name,’ said his mother at once. ‘We’re not keeping her.’

But the little dog, who understood little of anything else, understood that she had been named. Naming was powerful magic. Once you were named you were part of the world you had come to, and it was the strongest indication that you would stay. Maybe her mission was here now, she thought suddenly. Maybe she was needed here. She wagged her tail feebly.
Jen-ny,
she thought.
Jen-ny.

‘Look at her,’ Sam said.

They all looked at the small white dog with velvety brown markings, who gazed back at them with soft, doe eyes. She was painfully thin, but her eyes and her coat seemed to glow with a deep, mysterious light.

‘She looks a bit like a Jack Russell,’ Aunty Dot said, and indeed she did look almost, but not quite, like a Jack Russell terrier.

‘I wonder where she came from,’ said Sam’s mum.

Sam reached out for her again. ‘She’s my birthday present!’ he said.

‘Don’t be silly, Sam,’ said his mum automatically. ‘We can’t keep her – she must belong to someone.’

But Aunty Dot said she was clearly a stray as she had no collar.

Sam felt that he deserved one good present. And the little dog gazed up at him with dark eyes that seemed to speak of distance and mystery. He could see his face in each of them. It was almost as though she was trying to tell him something.

‘Can I hold her?’ said Sam, and he picked her up.

‘Careful!’ said Aunty Dot and Sam’s mum together, but
the little dog offered no resistance at all. She nestled into the crook of Sam’s arm.
Safe,
she thought.

‘Put her down, Sam,’ said his mother. ‘You don’t know where she’s been.’

‘I mean it,’ she said when Sam didn’t move. ‘There’s no way I want another pet.’

‘Well – I was hoping she could stay here, just for tonight,’ said Aunty Dot.

‘Oh,
yes
!’ said Sam, as his mother started to protest.

Aunty Dot looked at the little dog with eyes made huge and luminous by the extremely powerful lenses in her glasses.

‘She’s a nice little thing,’ she said. ‘I wish I could keep her myself – I do miss having a dog. Life’s not been the same without – ever since -’

She stopped and blew her nose. Aunty Dot had never recovered from losing her own dog. She said she didn’t really want another one, not since her darling Berry had gone away. This had happened years ago, but it still brought tears to her eyes. Since then she had become a kind of unofficial dog walker, regularly taking out several dogs whose owners were too busy to walk their own pets, but she couldn’t face getting so attached to another one of her own. Besides, the aunts all lived together, and Aunty Lilith had her own dog, a tiny and rather bad-tempered Chihuahua called Pico.

‘We can’t just throw her out,’ Sam said. ‘Look at her.’

‘Sam,’ said his mum, ‘we can’t keep a dog. I’m at work all day and you’ll be at school. It wouldn’t be fair.’

‘It’s my birthday,’ Sam said.

‘But we don’t have a garden,’ his mother said.

‘I’ll take her out,’ Sam said. ‘Every day.’

‘You said you’d clean the rabbit’s hutch,’ his mother said. ‘And who ended up with that job?’

Sam shuffled uncomfortably. ‘I’m older now,’ he said.

It was true that Sam’s record with pets had not been great. He had forgotten all about the rabbit. His mother had fed it and cleaned out the hutch, but Sam had forgotten to take it out and play with it, and eventually the rabbit just got more and more snappy and unmanageable, and one day it had learned to open the hutch all by itself. The first they had known about it was when the rabbit had chased the postman up a tree. Then for three days Sam and his mother had been trapped inside the house while the savage rabbit prowled outside, snarling and making other un-rabbit-like noises so that no one could come near. Eventually, to everyone’s relief, it had bounded over the garden gate and left, leaving a trail of mangled well-wishers in its wake.

But a dog was different. Sam had always wanted a dog. Reluctantly, he put her back down on the table and placed the mistletoe twig between her paws. She picked it up immediately and stood quivering, her big eyes fixed hopefully on Sam’s mum.

‘Dogs cost money,’ she said. ‘Suppose she needs the vet?’

‘I’ll pay,’ said Sam, ‘with my pocket money,’ and his mother rolled her eyes.

‘Have you any idea how much pocket money you’d need for that?’ she said.

‘
Please!
’ said Sam.

‘I’ll take her to the vet’s tomorrow, if she’s still having
trouble with her hip,’ said Aunty Dot. ‘I just thought we could see how she went on tonight.’

Sam’s mother sighed. ‘I suppose we could hang on to her for one night,’ she said, and Sam flung his arms round her. ‘But tomorrow we’re putting cards in the shops. Someone must know something about this dog.’

Sam was delighted. He took an old pillow from the bedding chest and put it near the kitchen door so that she could guard it. When he got back to the table Aunty Dot was feeding the little dog a sausage roll. She was obviously hungry, yet she hesitated, then put the mistletoe twig down between her paws and took the pieces delicately.

Sam picked her up again and put her on the kitchen floor, very gently. ‘Come on, Jenny,’ he said, and she limped over to the pillow right away and sat on it. She understood that there had been some kind of discussion and that she could stay. She didn’t understand fully where she was, or what she was supposed to do, or what all these people would do with her, but for now at least she was safe. She suddenly felt unutterably tired. She turned herself round on the pillow once and sank down, her eyes already closing. Sam slipped the mistletoe dart back on to her pillow.

The aunts all left, Aunty Dot promising to call by the next day to help Sam take Jenny for a walk, and Sam was finally persuaded to go to bed after a brief, tense argument with his mother about whether or not Jenny could sleep on his bed. His mother won the argument and Sam went upstairs alone. He pulled the jumper off at last, feeling relieved to get rid of the itchy wool, and stuffed it right at the back of his cupboard. So far back, in fact, that he didn’t notice when it glowed, fiercely and brightly for a moment, before settling
down. He got into bed and lay awake for a long time, thinking about having a dog of his own, and when he fell asleep he dreamed strange, wonderful dreams, about a boy with a face like the sun and a white dog gleaming like a small star through the early-morning mist.

When Jenny woke up the next morning, she had no idea where she was. It was still dark in the kitchen, and rather cold, and the whirring and humming and clicking noises were still there. They seemed to be coming from tall, metallic slabs that stood against the wall.

She had been dreaming that she was with her master, playing in meadows thick with flowers, and the early-morning sun shone down on them through the mist. But now here she was, stranded in a cold, dark, alien world. The only warm place was the pillow on which she lay and the only reminder of her former life was the small, chewed twig between her paws. She tried and tried, but she couldn’t remember why she had come here in the first place. It was as though the accident had driven the memories from her mind. She felt lonely and afraid, and she jumped when she heard footsteps clattering down the stairs.

‘Jenny!’ Sam called. ‘Jenny?’

The little dog lifted her nose and sniffed. That was her name now, she remembered.
Jen-ny.

Sam bounded into the kitchen.

‘There you are, Jenny,’ he said, hugging her straight away. ‘Are you cold? Did you sleep well? I bet you’re hungry!’

He went on talking to her in words Jenny didn’t understand. But fortunately all dogs speak human to some extent. They respond to the tone of voice, the rise and fall and rhythm of the words, and Jenny knew that Sam was being kind. And she recognized the smell of him right away, though he wasn’t quite as shiny as the night before. In fact, now that she could see him clearly, he didn’t remind her of her master at all.

He stood up and pressed a switch and immediately the room was filled with the same yellow glare as before, and Jenny couldn’t see a thing. She cowered in the blinding light.

‘It’s only a light bulb, Jenny,’ Sam said, laughing, and he opened one of the whirring metal slabs and brought out the sausage rolls from the party. He ate one himself and offered one to Jenny. She sniffed it, but she was too confused and wary to eat.

‘I bet you need the toilet,’ Sam said, and he opened the back door, letting in a blast of cold air.

The door led into a yard that was full of junk: planks of wood, buckets and ladders, an old brush and mop, a window, still in its frame, and Sam’s bike, draped in a plastic sheet. Jenny hung back warily. The yard was full of strange smells. She didn’t dare venture out.

‘Go on, then,’ Sam said, but Jenny didn’t move. He went into the yard and called her, patting his knees, but still she wouldn’t stir.

Then Sam had an idea. He walked back into the kitchen, quickly picked up the little dart on Jenny’s pillow and threw it into the yard.

Jenny leapt. She flew through the air like a bird, or a
very bouncy kangaroo, catching the mistletoe twig before it landed.

‘Go, Jenny!’ shouted Sam, and in the middle of all the confusion of the yard, Jenny squatted and made her mark. It felt strange, but she couldn’t help herself. Making your mark was very powerful magic, and another sign that she belonged in this world now.

Then, just as she would have done with her old master, she returned the dart to Sam.

‘Good girl!’ he said, patting her on the head. ‘Looks like your hip’s better, Jenny!’ He threw the twig back into the kitchen and Jenny leapt after it, flying gracefully over a chair.

‘Ace!’ said Sam.

He found a bowl in the cupboard and filled it with water, and Jenny lapped at it gratefully, then ate the sausage roll. She had eaten and drunk twice now in this strange world and maybe that was the third sign.