He didn’t care about peace, or good things rising.
He didn’t care about bigger truths. And he didn’t care about angels.
He cared about his boy.
That’s it.
He looked up at the angel.
“I’m going,” he said. “I’m going back. Right now.”
Brodie stepped up to the waiting black edge of the chasm. The angel moved to stand beside him.
“You said you wouldn’t stop me.”
“I won’t.” The angel seemed sad to Brodie. Tired, even. He was.
That brave dog paused. He looked up at the angel and swallowed.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
The angel shook his head and bent down to scratch Brodie’s chin.
“Oh, Brodie. You don’t have to be sorry.”
Brodie looked into his eyes.
“Do I just … jump off into it?”
The angel nodded.
“Yes. But first, you have to pick a place. The place. The place you want to go back to.”
“Okay. And then … I just … end up there?”
“Yeah. But, Brodie, you gotta understand. You’re not going back as you were. You’re going back as you are. A spirit. Nothing more. You’re going back to a living world … but you’re going back dead.”
Brodie took a deep breath.
“Okay.”
He took a few steps closer to the brink. He peered down into the gusty, fog-swirled darkness. There was no smell. It just felt cold. His whole body shivered.
“Your spirit will still have life for a while, down there,” the angel said. “You’ll even be able to see the glow of it. But with each moment in that world, it will fade. When your glow is gone, Brodie, you’ll be stuck. You’ll be lost. Forever.”
The word lost rattled Brodie’s heart; he knew it. Dim memories spoke to him, echoes of feelings and fear: running down a street, looking frantically from house to house, person to person, everything being unfamiliar and strange, sniffing at the air and finding no smells he knew, looking around desperately for his boy. Lost. His heart trembled.
The angel knelt down beside him.
“Do what you need to do. And then come back. Before it’s too late.”
Brodie took a steadying breath.
“How do I come back?”
“When you’re ready to return, howl at the moon. Day or night, if you look at the sky, the moon will show itself. Howl, and I’ll come for you.”
“That sounds easy.”
The angel smiled, but like most of his smiles for Brodie, there wasn’t much happiness in it.
“Yeah,” he said. “It sounds easy. But that world … it has ways of holding on. It’s a tangled place. And it’s the good as much as the bad that won’t let you go.”
He scratched the dog with strong fingers, down through his fur to the skin. It was a good feeling.
Brodie took another step forward.
“Okay. I’m ready.”
He wiggled his nose at the blackness waiting for him. He raised a shaky paw and leaned forward.
“Wait!”
Tuck was walking toward him, his body shaking but his eyes steady.
“Brodie, stop.”
“No. I have to do this,” Brodie told him.
“Yeah,” he said, stopping beside him. “I get it.” He looked down into the blackness past his paws, then into Brodie’s eyes. “But I’m coming with you, buddy.”
Tuck looked to the angel. The angel, again, wasn’t surprised.
“I’ve been here too long,” Tuck said. His tail was down, and his clouded eyes dropped to the dirt. “I’ve watched so many go on to Forever. I’ve seen them show up here, I’ve seen them get closer and closer to ready, and then I’ve watched them go. I know what getting closer looks like. I think I even know what it feels like, on the inside. And I’ve been here all this time and I’m not getting any closer.” He swallowed, then looked up at the angel. “I feel like I’m getting farther and farther from ready all the time.” He cast his eyes toward the emptiness. “Maybe my peace can’t be found up here. Maybe I have to find it down there. With Brodie.”
“Listen, Tuck,” the angel said. “If you go back with Brodie, you’ll be going where he goes. To his old life. Not yours. You won’t have the—”
“I don’t wanna go to my life,” Tuck said firmly. “I wanna go with him. Maybe if I … if I help him find his peace, I’ll find mine. And, if not, I can always just howl, right? And you’ll come fetch me?”
There was a laugh in Tuck’s voice and a little wag to his tail. But Brodie could tell he was afraid. The angel could, too.
“It’s dangerous down there, Tuck. Even more dangerous now than when you were alive.”
Tuck’s wag broadened.
“All the more reason to keep this guy company. Besides, ain’t nothing down there that runs faster than I do.” He turned his eyes to Brodie. “Whaddya say, Brodie? Can I come with you?”
The thought of having Tuck by his side when he leapt off into that darkness put some wag into his own tail, too.
Because Tuck? He was exactly the kind of dog you wanted by your side, no matter what you were jumping into.
“Yeah,” he answered. “You bet you can.”
Tuck stepped forward and the two dogs circled each other happily, tails wagging. Their souls were shining, bright and hopeful and pure. But only the angel could see that.
And it only made him sadder. He didn’t know if he could stand to watch two souls that pure and good be lost.
“Maybe this’ll be fun,” Tuck said, bouncing on his paws.
“Sure,” Brodie answered, but his heart was still racing in his chest.
“Do you have a place picked out?”
Brodie stopped and stood still, his eyes closed.
He went through his memories. He only had three. The ball. The snow. And the monster.
He replayed the snow memory: Aiden laughing, the blue sky, the cold that was fun and not scary. The park with its slide and its swings and its places to run and hide. It was a place his boy knew. A place his boy went. And, at least on that one day, a happy place.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know where we’re going.”
“All right,” Tuck said, and his tail was all wag now. Tuck was a dog who loved to move, and they’d been standing by that cliff edge for way too long. “Then let’s go, buddy.”
The angel knelt between them. He put a gentle hand on each of their backs.
“You’re good dogs,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. “Both of you. Remember that. Be good dogs.”
The angel stood.
“Okay. Whenever you’re ready. The world is waiting.”
Brodie took a step toward the rim. Then another. Tuck’s shoulder pressed against his. His tail still had a little wag left in it. Brodie’s did not. But they walked together toward the darkness, shoulder to shoulder.
And the angel sat and watched Brodie go. He had to. But he was worried. He was so worried that he rubbed his angel’s chin with his troubled angel’s hand. He worried because he knew the goodness of those two dogs. And he knew the danger of the world they returned to.
Angels can see a lot. They can see the past and they can see the present. They can see the hearts and thoughts and fears of people—and dogs, and cats, and all things that have hearts and thoughts and fears. But one thing that angels cannot see is the future. And the future is an awfully big thing to not be able to see.
So the angel watched Brodie—that brave, determined dog—leave. And he watched Tuck—that loyal, courageous friend—go with him. And the angel worried.
When Brodie stood with his claws up to the very edge, one jump away from plummeting back to earth, he paused.
The blackness stood waiting like an open mouth to swallow him. His soul trembled at the sight, at the thought of jumping off into it. His courage was holding on by the thinnest edges of its teeth.
Aiden, he thought. Aiden. He said the name in his head like a
prayer. And with the name came a memory. A new one, just when he needed it. Like a gift from an angel.
It was just Aiden and Brodie. Just those two, together in darkness.
The warmth of a bed. A blanket over them both. Pure blackness, except for a thin sliver of silver slipping in between the curtains on a window across the room.
Brodie, pressed tight against Aiden. Feeling his warmth.
Aiden’s breaths, shaking and broken. They were the echoes of sobs.
Brodie whimpered. Just a little. He licked softly at Aiden’s face. He tasted salty tears. He tried to clean the sadness from his boy’s face. He tried.
Aiden’s arm was thrown around Brodie’s shoulders. He squeezed, pulling him in even closer. He pressed his forehead against Brodie’s. Brodie could see Aiden’s eyes, just barely make out the shine of them in that glow of window moonlight, looking fiercely into his own.
And then that boy said four words. Four words that had meant nothing to Brodie the dog, but now meant everything to Brodie the soul leaping into darkness.
That boy held Brodie tight and said: “You. Me. Together. Always.”
It was a small memory. There wasn’t much to it. No story. Few details.
But that memory? It was everything. It was.
Brodie closed his eyes and held his boy’s face in his memory. He took a shuddering breath. He remembered that other memory, the dark and deadly one, with the monster coming toward them both. The smell of Aiden’s fear. His voice screaming his name.
He didn’t know if he could do this. But he knew he could do it for his boy.
It’s easier, sometimes, to be brave when you’re being brave for someone else.
He pushed the monster away and imagined that park, that sparkling clear park with the snow and the laughing and all those wonderful words.
“I’m coming, Aiden,” he whispered, and those words were not for Tuck or the angel but were just between him and his boy. “I’m coming for you.”
Such a good dog.
He closed his mouth and pointed his ears forward.
And then Brodie?
He jumped.
A gust of frigid wind sucked the air from Brodie’s lungs.
He squeezed his eyes shut tight. Tuck trembled beside him.
There was a squeezing and a rushing and a feeling like falling.
A great coldness closed its fist around him. A coldness that didn’t just touch his fur or his skin or even his bones and his heart; it crept into his thoughts, his memories.
His whole self tingled. Then went numb. Then burned.
A feeling of being upside down and then inside out and then spinning around.
And then stillness.
And then: the feeling of something cold and wet under his paws.
And the sound of a car engine, rumbling in the distance.
And the smell of soil and garbage.
He opened his eyes.
He blinked and looked around.
All he saw was darkness.
For a moment he thought that it hadn’t worked. That he was stuck, somehow, trapped between the worlds. A whimper shook in his throat.
But then he looked closer, and shapes began to take form.
In the distance, the faint glow of streetlights. A parked car. A great white snowy field. A couple of swings, empty and still.
He looked up. The moon shone faintly, hidden by dark clouds. The clouds, shoved by the wind, parted. Bright white light flooded down for a moment, revealing the benches and slides and picnic tables standing in paw-deep snow. And he could remember each one. Familiarity swept over him, as warm a feeling as petting fingers.
“Where are we?” Tuck asked from behind him.
“We’re at the park,” he answered, and his tail began to wag. “We’re at my boy’s park.”
He turned to grin at Tuck and stopped short when he saw him.
“Whoa.”
Tuck’s eyes were locked on him, too, and they were just as wide as Brodie’s.
“Yeah,” he echoed. “Whoa.”
Tuck was glowing. A buttery golden light was sparkling off his fur. And swirling all around him were those same floating firefly lights that they’d seen when a dog Forevered.
“Oh, boy,” Brodie whispered. “Just like he said. It’s your spirit.”
Tuck circled him, his tail wagging slow.
“Yep. You, too, buddy.”
Brodie looked down and saw the same glow around his own body, the same drifting lights slowly circling him.
And, standing there, looking at the wondrous glow of his own soul for the first time, Brodie remembered the sound of Aiden laughing. He remembered it from the time they’d played in the snow, but from other times, too: an openmouthed sound, an eye-sparkling sound, a tail-wagging sound. Laughing. The sound of a happy heart. Right then, looking at his own golden fur and glittering cloud of lights, Brodie felt like laughing. He didn’t know how laughter worked, but he knew then what it felt like.
Because a soul? It’s a beautiful thing to have. And it’s a terrible thing to lose. But Brodie didn’t know that yet.
Tuck’s nose was waving in the air, sniffing at the night smells.
“Smell that, Brodie?” he asked.
Brodie sniffed.
“What?”
“Everything, buddy. Just everything.”
Brodie sniffed again and knew what he meant.
Up there, where they’d come from, there had been only a few smells, and they were all good and clean and pure. Dirt, grass, water, dogs.
But down here, there were so many more. Brodie smelled oil, and wood, and people. He smelled car exhaust and cooking food and cat pee and the overflowing garbage cans at the park’s edge. There were a hundred smells, more even, and some were good and some were bad and they were all mixed together and his nose lapped at them like a thirsty tongue lapping at water. It wasn’t that it smelled better—up there had definitely smelled better, he thought—but it smelled more.
“Come on,” Tuck said, and his tail was wagging fierce and his eyes were bright. Brodie knew what he was going to say before he even said it. “Let’s run, Brodie. Let’s run.”
Tuck took off and Brodie was right behind him, trying to keep up. They ran through that cloudy-night park, two dogs with their souls shining like the fireworks (the word fizzled to life in his brain as he ran) that Brodie suddenly remembered his boy setting off, right there in that park, on a hot summer night.
And as they ran, more remembering came to him. Memories, one after another, rattling into his head.
They ran past a metal slide, gigantic and sloping, and he remembered: Aiden, standing at the very top of the slide, waving his arms for balance. A smile that came and went and came again to his face as he concentrated on not falling. Himself, nervous and pacing below, whining and circling. “Will you catch me, Brodie? Will you catch me if I fall?” He didn’t know the words then, didn’t know the meaning of the sounds his boy was making, but now he did. “Yes!” he wanted to bark up at him. “Yes, Aiden! I’ll catch you!”
They loped past a picnic table, ducking to cut the corner close and scoot under the bench, and he remembered: Him and Aiden, huddled together under the table while a heavy gray rain fell on the world around them. It drummed on the table above them and plopped in puddles around them and filled the air with its smell and its song. He was happy and wagging, loving the mud and the wetness and the being close with Aiden. But then he saw the fear on Aiden’s face, saw his paleness and wide eyes. He was looking down at his clothes, hopelessly muddy. “Oh, man,” he was saying, over and over again, a tremble in his voice that had stilled Brodie’s tail. “I’m gonna be in so much trouble. Oh man oh man oh man.” Brodie licked his hand, licked his face, licked his ear. Trying to help. But failing.
They circled a rusty old merry-go-round, still and silent, and he remembered: Aiden, lifting him up onto it, pushing him toward the middle, his claws clicking on the scratched-up metal. “Ready?” His voice, already
riffled with laughter. Aiden running, gripping the merry-go-round, faster and then faster and then faster, taking it from a rumble to a squeak to a squeal, and then jumping up onto it with Brodie, breathless and laughing. Aiden’s arm tight around him as they watched the world spin and blur around them. And Brodie was happy, even though his paws slid and scraped for balance and his stomach somersaulted. Because when he was with Aiden and Aiden was with him, the world could spin as crazy as it wanted and he knew they’d never fall off.
And then, out of nowhere, a memory that almost made him stumble and stop: Darkness. Summer heat. Him and Aiden, crouched in the thickest part of the biggest bunch of bushes in the park, under the trees where the park went wild. Hiding. Aiden’s arms around him, so tight he could barely breathe. Aiden was sobbing, and choking, and panting. The smell of tears. The taste of blood. His broken voice. “We’ll be okay. We’ll be okay. We’ll be okay. I love you, Brodie. I love you, Brodie. We’ll be okay. We’ll be okay. We’ll be okay. I love you, Brodie.” Over and over and over and over. Him being held too tight, for too long, and his muscles wanting so badly to shake free, to break loose, to move. But not doing it. Staying there tight with his boy. Knowing that Aiden needed that. Knowing that Aiden needed him.
He stopped running. He looked over to the trees, to where that memory lived.
Tuck noticed and stopped, circled back, came up to him slow.
“Brodie?”
Brodie looked at him.
“I need to find him. Now. I need to know he’s okay.”
Tuck’s run-happy wagging slowed, but he stepped up to snuffle encouragingly at Brodie’s ear.
“All right. That’s what we’re here for, right? Lead the way, buddy.”
Brodie sniffed at the air, looking for the memory of which way to go. Tuck followed him through the snow to the sidewalk at the park’s edge. It was lit here and there with yellow circles of light from streetlights. A car rolled slowly by, its taillights glowing red. Snow was pushed together in dirty piles along the side of the street, but the road itself and the sidewalk were bare. The concrete sparkled with a thin layer of icy frost.
He looked up the street one way, sniffing the air and eyeing the houses. Most had porch lights on, and lit-up windows. Some were decorated with strings of colored lights along their roofs. Christmas. The word came into his mind, and with it a scattershot of half memories: the crinkle of paper being ripped, the crisp scent of a pine tree, the excited eyes of a boy he loved.
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