“No, that’s not him,” Cora replied as she marched on to the next bank of runs.
“Not who?”
“Not the one, Dad. The one meant for me.”
She had nearly reached the end of the long row of kennels when Cora stopped in her tracks. There, sheltered in the farthest recesses of his kennel, was the shadowy outline of a trembling dog. This was the first dog not to race to the front of his cage and he immediately intrigued Cora. She knelt down slowly, the first reserved action she had displayed since arriving, and called out to the shy creature.
“Come here, sweetie,” she cooed.
Mr. Catlin tore himself from the puppies and made his way toward Cora, hoping to catch a glimpse of the dog that had caught his daughter’s attention.
“Come on, it’s okay,” Cora called out as the dog began moving closer to the front of his kennel.
“Careful, Dad, you’ll scare him,” she whispered at her father’s approach. Mr. Catlin obeyed and cautiously slowed his pace. He arrived just in time to see a smallish scruffy face emerge from the shadows of the kennel. “It’s okay, buddy, come on out,” Cora continued to bait, hoping to earn the dog’s trust enough to get a look at him.
The wiry little fellow slunk from the darkness with hesitancy to his step. He didn’t seem standoffish, Cora thought, but rather cautious from the knowledge that not everyone was kind. There was an immediate connection between the two as Cora felt the softness of his warm brown eyes meet her own.
“Now that’s a ratty-looking little dog,” was Mr. Catlin’s first remark.
“Dad!”
“Well, it is,” he defended with a huff, walking back to the Labrador puppies.
The gentle dog seemed unaffected by Mr. Catlin’s comment.
Cora knelt down to get a better view of her new friend and was greeted with an affectionate response. Pressing his muzzle to a crack in the kennel door, the dog licked tenderly at her hand. She surveyed his spiky medium-length gray coat. It looked unkempt, as if he had just rolled out of bed. His ears were oddly shaped and didn’t quite lie down properly, nor stand erect. His fur was a dirty-looking combination of dull grey and charcoal black that grew in patches of varying length. He was an odd compilation of mismatched pieces.
“This is him, Dad. This is the one,” Cora called out to her father, who was still knee-deep in puppies. She didn’t take her eyes away from the homely dog for a second as he continued to gaze at her with love and gratitude at her reciprocal affection. She found more soul in those eyes than any human’s that she’d ever seen.
After reluctantly leaving behind the half-dozen Labrador puppies that had fallen desperately in love with him, Mr. Catlin sulked off to the lobby to inquire after the shelter’s adoption procedures. Cora, who was now entirely infatuated, raced after him with her new beau’s kennel paperwork in hand, thinking that it may further facilitate the adoption process.
#
It wasn’t until all three were loaded into the Explorer and en route back home that Mr. Catlin stopped fussing about Cora’s choice and seemed to really see the dog for the first time.
“I guess he’s not that bad,” Mr. Catlin conceded, glancing in the rearview mirror at the scruffy mutt who was riding quietly beside Cora in the backseat. “What are you gonna call him?”
Cora stared intently at the dog, who up until now had been surveying the buildings pass as he sped farther and farther from what could have been his final resting place. Sensing her renewed attentions the dog again turned toward Cora and pinned his ears in a playful display, tenderly nudging her shoulder.
“I guess I hadn’t really thought about what to call him,” Cora admitted.
“I think you should call him Mutley!” her father teased.
“Dad!”
“Well, admit it, Cora, he’s about as mutley as they get,” Mr. Catlin reasoned, with a sly glance at Cora’s sneering reflection in the rearview. She could tell that even though she hadn’t chosen the dog he’d favored, her father was still pleased to see her smiling again.
“Okay, okay,” the suddenly serious Mr. Catlin continued. “What about Motley?”
Cora genuinely considered the name for a moment and found it endearing. She reasoned that the final decision was not hers to make and turned to her scruffy copilot and asked, “What do you think? Do you like the name Motley?” The dog, happy to be away from the shelter and even happier to have someone pay him so much attention, wagged his tail feverishly and licked at Cora’s face.
“Well, it’s decided then,” Mr. Catlin said, watching the pair in his mirror. “Motley it is.”
Six: Escape from The Backworlds
The weekend following Cora’s trip to the Humane Society was one of the best of her life. With a new dog to care for, talk to, and, according to her mother, “fuss over,” Cora found herself with little time to worry about Monday’s battle with the bully brigade or Celius, Beatrice, and her mysterious ancestry. On Saturday morning, while she lay curled up next to Motley on her bed, she decided that this is what happiness felt like.
Mrs. Catlin was less than ecstatic when Cora and her father ambled through the door on Friday afternoon with their new family member. Cora suspected that had she walked in with a “prettier” dog, her mother would’ve given a more hospitable welcome to Motley. Still, Mrs. Catlin tried her best to unscrew the gnarled frown from her face as Motley sauntered in through the front door, with a widely smiling Cora trailing close behind.
By late Sunday evening the novelty of devoting her every waking moment to Motley’s care had worn off a bit and the impending school day overtook Cora’s thoughts. She desperately wanted to hide the remainder of her days away with Motley, tucked safely in her bedroom. She envisioned herself, years older and still held up in her room with Motley, refusing to attend school. Her hair was raggedy and graying and the floor was littered with every manner of confection wrapper imaginable. Flies buzzed around both she and her four-legged roommate, who refused to bathe for fear of leaving their safe haven. Motley all but dared the pesky insects to land, certain that his next meal would arrive on a winged buffet. The daydream was so real that Cora could nearly hear her mother pounding at the door calling, “Time for school! Get up, sleepyhead!”
Pounding.
More pounding.
“Cora, get up, you’re going to be late!”
Cora sprang from bed, quite convinced that her daydream had become a little too real. But where were the candy wrappers, the tightly drawn shades, and her long, scraggly hair?
“Cora, are you even awake?” her mother demanded, swinging open the door.
“Yes,” Cora responded with a grumble, realizing that she’d simply fallen asleep and landed smack-dab in the middle of a Monday-morning nightmare.
“Well, you’d best get ready, then. No time to dawdle,” the chipper Mrs. Catlin directed with a tightly wound smile.
Cora gave Motley a condescending rendition of her mother’s head bob with the shrilly sweet “no time to dawdle” command before the two climbed out of bed. It was fun to have someone to complain to.
“And keep that dog off the bed,” Mrs. Catlin reminded, peeking her head back in Cora’s room.
“His name’s Motley!” Cora shouted back at her mother, who was already halfway down the hall.
Motley watched the exchange intently and after taking note of his reaction Cora decided that the dog was pleased she had stuck up for him. He nudged her hand lightly and proceeded to follow her downstairs for breakfast.
When time came to head out for her day, Cora was genuinely surprised at how distraught she was to leave Motley behind. They’d only spent a weekend together, but Cora hadn’t felt such love and kinship from anyone but her father in as long as she could remember. Even more, Cora knew that Motley didn’t have to love her like her parents did. This unspoken bond shared between Cora and Motley was incredibly precious to her and it hurt her to see Motley’s outline in the front room window, disappearing from view as she made her w
ay to school.
With mixed emotions Cora entered her forest shortcut. She’d had little time to think of anything but Motley over the weekend and hadn’t given a spare thought to the magical happenings in the woods. It seemed that the less she thought about them, the less real they became. Tracing her way along the familiar dirt trail, Cora began to question the validity of her memories regarding Celius and the events of that fall day. Now that Motley had arrived and renewed her faith in the real world, she no longer dreamt of an alternate reality.
As Cora ambled on toward Barnes Middle School she studied the curvature of the path that was before her and noticed something she hadn’t seen in her past scouring of the forest floor. There, at the base of a towering tree, lay a very small, shiny round object. The reflection of its polished surface against the sun reflected a beam of light, announcing its previously inconspicuous location. As she made her way toward it, she searched her memory banks for a possible match. With each successive step she eliminated another possibility. A mushroom? No, too shiny. A stone? No, too bright. A pinecone? No, too round.
“An acorn!” Cora realized aloud. But why is it so shiny, she wondered, continuing on a few feet and kneeling down to retrieve the curious nut. That’s when she saw it: two teeny buttonholes right through the shell with a tether of moss-colored string hanging loosely between them. Turning it over in her fingers Cora breathed in the heavy-sweet scent of maple that lacquered the acorn’s unnaturally shiny exterior.
“Celius’s button? This is Celius’s button!” she repeated excitedly, glancing around the small grove of trees she had entered, half expecting to see him standing beside one of them. But Celius wasn’t there. And though his absence was discouraging, Cora’s renewed belief in her memories was inspiring. She turned the acorn button over and over in her fingers, feeling as though she had the secret of an entire world captured in her hand. All the way to school she held it tightly, unaware that doing so had put a large grin on her face
“Whatchya smilin’ about, Fatlin?” was Zach Taylor’s greeting in first period. Cora didn’t reply but instead made her way quickly to her seat, before Zach could say anything else.
Ms. Shintaff shuffled through the classroom door, glaring at Zach before saying hello to a couple of other students in the room. It was enough to send him stalking to his own desk in silence. Cora placed the acorn button in her pants pocket and glanced at it periodically throughout the rest of the day, grinning at the little bump against her hip.
#
When the sixth-period bell rang, it sent Cora racing for the woods in search of more clues. She was overcome by vivid images of all the treasures she might find among the trees. She wished desperately that the lonely button wouldn’t be her only discovery of the day, but when she reached the trail head and Cora’s gaze fell upon a particularly scruffy-looking bush her thoughts took a different path.
“Motley…” she whispered to herself, reminded of the loving dog waiting at home for her. Her clue-hunting would simply have to wait, she decided, hurriedly making her way down the path, and trying her best not to spy anything interesting.
It was at that precise moment, when she had given up all hope of finding anything, that Cora saw Celius. He was sitting cross-legged on a stump as if he had been waiting there all along.
“Now, girl, it’s about time,” he greeted with a wink.
Despite all the things she had wanted to ask him the past several weeks, Cora found herself speechless.
“Now, I suppose you’ll be giving me the silent treatment for being gone for so long. Well, then, go on… I deserve it.”
Cora was frozen.
“I’ve come to take you home, girl,” he whispered with delight. “It’s truly time.”
Celius was no longer just an acorn in Cora’s pants pocket—he was here, standing in front of her and promising a whole new world.
“Why have you been gone so long?”
“Knew you’d be asking me that,” Celius replied. “That bit with the castle storming turned out to be a whole mess of trouble. Been fighting and darn it if we weren’t winning,” he continued, pointing to a shiny shell-shaped medal pinned to his jacket. “But that’s all done with for now and that’s why I’m here to get you.”
“Okay, okay,” Cora blurted. She’d been shaken from her daze and was determined to get some answers. “So what is this other world? Where is it? Why don’t I remember it?”
“It was many years ago when you first came here. You wouldn’t have any memory of it. You were just a babe then, when the fighting began. You were sent down to The Backworlds for your own protection but if it were up to me I wouldn’t have sent you to no place as funny as this one,” Celius explained. Cora took note of his relaxed, willing demeanor. He was much less hurried than the last time she saw him.
“You see, we—both you and me—we’re from Clouden. Clouden’s a straightforward world that exists above The Backworlds. In Clouden things are right on the mark, not odd and backwards like they are down here. In Clouden things are good, other than the fighting.” Celius stopped at this and got a sad look in his eyes. Cora felt compelled to reach out and comfort him but he shrugged off the gleam and began again. “Anyways, like I was saying, Clouden is a right fine place and it’s your true home. Your parents are there waiting for you and missing you a whole great lot. They’ve been watching you, you know. Your mother herself told me a little bit of her died, looking at you from up there and seeing all your pain.”
“My mother?”
“Aye, your mother. I suppose she’s looking down and watching us right now.”
Cora’s eyes lifted to the sky as she imagined some plump, plain middle-aged woman with rosy cheeks and a soft smile looking down and watching over her.
“Why can’t I see it? Clouden, I mean,” Cora wondered aloud, looking down from the heavens with an air of suspicion in her eyes.
“Wouldn’t be a secret if you could see it, now would it?” Celius looked a little annoyed at Cora’s query, as if she ought to have known better.
“So it’s invisible?”
“It’s not so much that as you can’t see it, through the clouds,” Celius replied. “You see, unlike The Backworlds, Clouden is just as it seems. Clouden is ‘cloud-in’…it’s in the clouds. Unlike the Backworlders, we don’t name our home for what it’s not. We name it for what it is,” he very logically asserted. “Silly Backworlds,” he added with a chuckle, “naming a world of water after earth!”
Cora sat dumbly silent.
“It’s a lot, I know it is. Didn’t want to tell you too much all at once. Your dad warned me of that, but there I go again, not listening,” Celius apologized. “Well, I can’t say there isn’t a whole lot more to tell, but we’ll save it for another day.”
Cora nodded and rose to stand with Celius.
“We best be off then,” he said, turning to walk deeper into the forest.
Cora began to follow, mentally drawing a picture of Clouden in her mind, when reality snuck in. “Wait!” she called, stopping abruptly.
Celius seemed to have anticipated her hesitation, turning around with a hand on his hip. Cora thought she saw him rolling his eyes.
“What about my family?” Cora felt tears welling in her eyes. The thought that she would actually be leaving them behind to lead a new life in a new world suddenly hit her. “I can’t just leave them.”
Celius looked relieved and empathetic in the same instant. “Goodness gracious, girl, you have a soft heart indeed, but you need to come home to where you belong. This Backworlds is no place for you.” He was walking closer to her, his manner tender. “Can you tell me that you really feel like you belong here?”
Cora thought back to all the years of sadness. She thought of the name-calling, the taunting, and the endless days of torment. With tears in her eyes, she looked up at Celius and replied with a small “No.”
“Come on then, girl, let’s go,” Celius beckoned. “And here I was afraid you weren’t going to b
elieve me,” he said in a soothing voice. “Your father said you might find the whole idea of Clouden a bit too fantastical after all your time down here in The Backworlds, but I told them that the Clouden in you could never die…no matter how long you were stuck down in this infernal place. Don’t worry about all this, my sweet lady,” he continued, reaching up to brush the hair from her tear-stained cheeks. “You come and see your true home and make your decision then. It’ll all be up to you from there.”
Celius’s promise set Cora at ease and after composing herself she decided to ask him for a small favor. “Do you think that I could say good-bye?”
“It isn’t a good idea,” Celius replied without turning around.
“Why?”
“Though you may not see it quite right down here, you are a jewel, my lady, and folks don’t often want to give up something so precious.”
Cora’s face flushed in embarrassment. No one had ever referred to her as anything precious, much less a jewel. “But…but they’ll be so worried if I just never come home. They’ll think I’ve been kidnapped or something.”
“They’ll never let you go, girl, don’t you see that? Don’t you want to go home?”
“Of course I do,” Cora quickly replied, “But, maybe…I could leave them a note or something?”
“Now, that’s an idea,” Celius affirmed, puffing his chest out. “You’re a smart little whip. I knew you’d come up with something. Well, then, I suppose we’d better get ourselves turned right around, shouldn’t we?” Celius spun on his heels like a top and made his way toward the main trail.
Cora followed, contemplating what to leave in the note to her parents. By the time she and Celius had reached the edge of the forest Cora had written the entire letter in her head. At Celius’s suggestion the two plopped down under a weeping willow just out of sight and she set pen to paper.
Dear Mom and Dad,
I just want to start off by saying that I love you and that I appreciate all you’ve done for me over the years.
Whole in the Clouds Page 4