The Cast Stone (44 page)

“Okay, so I've read Doris Lessing and I get it.” Benji held the lead dog, Duchess, while Ben harnessed one of the full-grown puppies. “Don't belong to any organization, how simple.”

“Right. If you
belong
to them, then they own you.”

Benji thought for a moment about that play of words. “Yeah.” He nodded his head, happy outdoors in the sunshine of early March, with a bit of warm wind coming from the southwest.

“It's also kinda like that dog you're holding there.” Ben finished harnessing, attached a tug line, and stopped. “For most of the winter I've been telling her that haw means I want her to turn left and gee means I want her to turn right. She doesn't question it. She's been told it so many times consistently that it's become her truth. She probably believes me because I am the alpha male here. I am the one that brings the food. And her puppies.” Ben waved a gloved hand at the other five dogs harnessed to the toboggan, “They believe that this is normal, perhaps even natural and necessary, look at them, they're anxious, they want to do this. It's like they're saying, come on already, let's go. I've only been running them a few months and already this is their absolute truth, they belong to this team.” A dog jumped over its teammate. Ben gently put it back on its side of the gangline. “People get that way too, get to believing something is natural and necessary because that's all they ever experienced.”

Benji joked, “So should I turn her loose?”

“Naw, she's too domesticated, wouldn't survive on her own yet. In time she could learn to go back to being wild and free, run with a pack because the pack was her family and not because the pack was a yellow dog pack or capitalist pack or conservative pack or a resistance pack.” Ben stood on the back of the toboggan. “Okay, let her go.”

Benji let go of Duchess's collar and stood aside. The team began to run all at the same time, a fast, long-legged lope, and as Ben went by, he leaned out and gave Benji a pat on the shoulder. “Be back in about a couple hours.”

She could kill Monica, that would be easy, she knew where Monica lived, knew her habits, how she always used the elevator to get to the parking level of her apartment. It would be simple, Betsy would sit in a car near the elevator and wait — simple, easy and unsatisfactory. No, Monica deserved to die a fuck of a lot slower than that. It was simply a matter of principle. Betsy grinned at the idea, “Yeah, on principle, Now who was being principled — bitch?”

Her feet still hurt from the frostbite, and the new shoes didn't help. The pain fed her anger, she breathed in deep, exhaled with a surge through clenched teeth. She was going to fuck Monica the way Monica had never been fucked before, take away the one thing that that the bitch cherished the most. Betsy was going to kill Ben — kill the idea, kill the principle. Then she would come back and kill Monica too — and Abe — just for the fuck of it.

The early sun reflected off the sharp edge of an axe that hung by a strap attached to the dog sleigh, a tiny flare lost in the sparkle of sun on crystallized snow. The sleigh runners made a slicing sound behind the team that ran a familiar track along the edge of Moccasin Lake. Ben stepped down on the sleigh brake, and shouted a calm “whoa” that brought the team and the sleigh to a stop. Most of the seven dogs looked back over their shoulders as though to ask, “What's up, why'd we stop?”

Ben had no reason. The dogs had not run far and did not need a rest. The track across the lake was clear. No reason other than he wanted to, it felt right, just stop and enjoy the warmth of the sun on his face for a minute, to take off his gloves and grab a handful of snow just to feel it melt between his fingers and wipe the wet across his face, to walk up to the lead dog and scratch her behind the ear for a minute and tell her she's “a good dog, yeah, you're a good dog.”

There wasn't much left of winter, the remainder of March, then most of April and the geese would come back and the lake would melt. The sun already gave a good warmth and stood higher in the southern sky; a pale blue completely cloudless sky. There to the south, just above the horizon, a black spot caught Ben's attention. He watched it, mildly curious, a raven probably; more than likely a raven. But ravens were still mating this time of year and there should be two of them.

The black spot became slightly larger. It was clearly a bird. Ben noted the flight pattern of flap and glide. Pelicans fly like that, so do eagles, as do ravens occasionally. It wasn't a pelican, too early, no open water. So, it was either a raven or an eagle. If it was an eagle it would be the first to migrate back, the first to return to their nesting grounds. Ben waited. Scratched the lead dog's ears absentmindedly for no other reason than she deserved kind treatment and for the feel of fur on his hand.

The eagle flew straight towards Ben and the team. He recognized its flight long before he could make out its white head and tail. As it passed directly overhead in a long glide, wings outstretched, it banked steeply to its left, made a circle as it descended and landed on the snow-covered lake a dozen metres from the back of the sleigh.

At first Ben was wary, looking around. This was not normal behaviour for an eagle. There was nothing here to attract it. It wasn't like a fisherman had left something out on the ice that an early eagle would be interested in, something to eat before the lake ice melted and it could fish for itself. It would be hungry though, it had come a long ways. He took a sack filled with chunks of frozen fish from the sleigh, snacks for the dogs, and tossed a few greasy pieces out towards the large bird.

It kept its distance. Ben dumped the sack. There wasn't a lot in it, something though, a bit, an offering. “Hey, Mikisew,” he spoke softly, reverently, “Hey, Grandmother. You can see far, you can see the future, you can see the past. Thank you for coming back to us.” He gave the sack a final shake for the last fish crumbs, pulled up on the sleigh brake. The dogs leaning into their harness, eager to run again, did not need to be told when the tension came off the gangline. They burst into a quick lope. Ben looked back, turned around on the sleigh so that he was facing backward and watched the eagle hop toward the offering he had left, accepting it.