The Heart of Dog

by Doranna Durgin

  Minutes.

  By the time I stopped running, I'd left the alley far behind. I knew I wasn't going to catch up to him so easily but sometimes it takes me that way, the thought that he could be close, and my legs take over from my brain. I always feel kind of stupid afterwards. Stupid and sad. And tired. Not leg tired; heart tired.

  The pull from the next Gate hadn't gotten any stronger so I still had a distance to travel. I had to cross a big water once. Long story. Long, wet, nasty story.

  The made-stone that covered the ground was cleaner here. Smelled more of people and less of garbage although I hadn't yet reached an area where people actually lived. At a corner joining two large roads, I lifted my head and sniffed the sky. No scent of morning. Good. It had been nearly mid-dark when I'd entered the Gate one world back, but time changed as the worlds did and I could have lost the night. Lost my best time to travel, lost my chance of catching up to Marcus.

  I dove back into a patch of deep shadow as three cars passed in quick succession. Most of the time, the people in cars were blind to the world outside their metal cages but occasionally on a mid-tech world a car would stop and the people spill out, bound and determined to help a poor lost dog. I was hungry enough, hurt enough, stupid enough to let them once.

  Only once. I barely escaped with my balls.

  When the road was clear, I raced across and, although it made my guts twist to ignore the path I needed to follow, I turned left, heading for the mouth of a dark alley. Heading away from the lights on poles and the lights on building, away from too much light to be safe.

  The alley put me back on the path. When it ended in a dark canyon between two buildings, I turned left again, finally spilling out onto another road; a darker road, lined with tall houses. I could follow this road for a while. The lights on the poles were further apart here and massive tress threw shadows dark enough to hide a dozen of me.

  As it happened, the shadows also hid half a dozen cats.

  Cats are contradictions as far as I'm concerned; soft and sweet and harmless-appearing little furballs who make no effort to hide the fact that they kill for fun and can curse in language that would make a rat blush. I took the full brunt of their vocabulary as I ran by. Another place, another night, and I might have treed a couple but with the Gate so far away I needed to cover some serious distance before dawn.

  Sunrise found me running along a road between houses so large they could almost be called palaces. Probably, a rich merchant area. High-tech, mid-tech, low-tech—some things never changed. People who suddenly found themselves with a lot of stuff had to show it off. Marcus, who never had anything except me and a blithe belief in his own intellect, used to laugh about it. He used to laugh about a lot of things. He wasn't laughing when they tore us apart, he was screaming my name and that's how I remember him most often.

  I couldn't stay on this road much longer, it was beginning to curve away from the direction I needed. But first, breakfast.

  Low-tech, high-tech; both were essentially garbage free. But mid-tech—when they weren't piling it in metal bins, people in mid-tech worlds actually collected their garbage up into bags and set it out in front of their houses. It was like they were bragging about how much they could waste. A guy could eat well off that bragging.

  Second bag I ripped open, I hit the jackpot. A half circle of flat bread with sausage and cheese crumbled onto a sauce. I gulped it down, licked the last bit of sweet cream out of a container, and took off at full speed as a door opened and a high-pitched voice started to yell.

  Over time, I've gotten pretty good at knowing when I'm not wanted.

  As I rounded the curve at full speed, I saw that the houses had disappeared from one side of the road. In their place, a ravine—wild and overgrown and the way I needed to go. The spirit pack was definitely looking out for me on this world but then, by my calculations, I was about due. I jumped the barrier and dove through the underbrush.

  A squirrel exploded out of the leaf litter in front of me and I snapped without thinking. It managed half a surprised squeal before it died. Carrying it, I made my way down the steep bank, across a path at the bottom, and halfway up the other side. Someone, a long time ago by the smell of it, had scratched out a shallow den under the shelter of a large bush. I shoved my kill between two branches because I don't like the taste of ants and there was no other way to keep them off the squirrel—although it was sort of comforting that ants tasted the same on every world. Food safe, I marked the territory as mine and made myself comfortable.

  Down on the path, a female person ran by. Nothing seemed to be chasing her. Running beside her was a lovely black and white bitch with pointed ears and a plumy tail. Ears flattened, she glanced up toward me as she crossed my trail but kept running, clearly aware of where her responsibilities lay. I could appreciate that. Resting my chin on my front paws, I went to sleep.

  The heat of the sun was warm against my fur when I woke so I knew I'd been asleep for a while. The question: what had woken me? The answer: a sound. A rustling in the bush I slept beneath. I heard it again and slowly opened my eyes.

  A small crow sidled toward my squirrel. Only half the size of some crows I'd seen, its weight was still enough to shake the branch. With one claw raised, it glanced toward me and froze.

  "Nice, doggy. There's a nice, big doggy. Crow not tasty. Doggy not eat crow."

  "I hadn't intended to," I told her lifting my head. "But I don't intend to allow you to hop in here and eat my kill either."

  The crow blinked and put her raised foot down. "Well, you're a lot more articulate than most," she said. "Practically polysyllabic." Head to one side, she took a closer look. "I don't think I know your breed."

  "I don't think you do," I agreed. "I'm not from around here."

  Left eye, then right eye, she raked me up and down with a speculative gaze. "No, I don't imagine you are. You want to talk about it?"

  "No." She took flight as I crawled from the den but after a long, luxurious scratch I realized she'd only flown up into the nearest tree. "What?"

  "Where's your… what is it you dogs call them again? Your pack?"

  I'd have howled except that was a good way to attract the kind of attention I didn't want. Marcus had been the only pack I'd ever had.

  "Is that what you're looking for?"

  "What makes you think I'm looking for anything," I growled.

  "Well, you're not from around here. So…" She hopped along the branch. "…I'm wondering what you're doing here. You're not lost—you lot are so obvious when you're lost—therefore, you're looking for something. Someone." Crows always looked pleased with themselves but something in my reaction shot her right up into smug and self-satisfied. "I knew it. You have a story."

  "Everyone has a story." I started up the bank.

  "Hey! Dog! Your squirrel."

  "You can have it." Anything to keep her from following me. It didn't work. I heard her wings beat against the air then she landed on a jutting rock just up the path. I don't know why people call cats curious. Next to crows, they're models of restraint.

  "Sometimes, it helps to share."

  I drew my lips back off my teeth. "Sometimes, I like a little poultry when I first wake up."

  "Poultry!" They probably heard her indignant shriek on the other side of the gate. "Fine. Then I'm not going to warn you that the roads are full and you'll never get anywhere unseen. They'll grab you and stuff you into a cage so fast, it'll make your tail curl!"

  I nearly got whacked on the nose with a wing as I passed. At the top of the ravine, I peered out between two metal poles and realized the crow had been right. This was another place where no one lived and the roads were full of cars and people.

  I marked both posts, hoping that, given enough time, the crow would have flown off and then I started back to the den.

  "I told you so."

  She was still there. But, on the bright side, so was my squirrel.

  "Look, dog, maybe we got off on the wrong foot.
Paw. Whatever. You're on your own—and that's not the usual thing with you lot—and I'm on my own and that's not so usual for my lot either. You're probably lonely. I'm not doing anything right now. You've got a story and I'd love to hear it. What do you say?"

  I bit the tail off my squirrel's fat little rump, spat it to one side, and sighed. "Do you have a name?"

  "Dark Dawn With Thunder."

  I blinked. "You're kidding?"

  She shrugged, wings rising and falling. "You can call me Dawn."

  "Rueben." With one paw holding down the squirrel's head, I ripped the belly open and spilled the guts onto the ground. "Here. You might as well eat while you're listening."

  "So you'll tell me your story?"

  "Why not. Like you said, you're not going away." Neither was I. Talking over the pull of the Gate might help keep me from doing the truly stupid and risking the roads. I'd never find Marcus locked in a cage. And I was lonely. Not that I'd admit as much to a crow. "So…" I swallowed the last of the squirrel and sat down in the shade. "…what do you know about the Gates between the worlds?"

  I expected to startle her. I didn't.

  She tossed back a bit of intestine. "I know what all crows know. I know they exist. I know the way of opening them has been lost for a hundred thousand memories."

  "It's been found again."

  "You came through a Gate?"

  "And I'm leaving through one."

  "You don't say." She searched the ground for any bit she might have missed then folded her wings and settled. "Start at the beginning…"

  "Marcus."

  My beginning. Hopefully, my end.

  I'd been with him ever since I'd left my mother's teat and the warm comfort of my littermates. I remember falling over my feet as I chased a sunbeam around his workshop. I remember becoming too big for his lap and sitting instead with my head resting on his knee. I remember the way his fingers always found exactly the right place to scratch. I remember how he smelled, how he sounded. I remember the first Gate.

  I think he wanted to prove himself to the old ones in his pack. They believed he was too young to do anything of merit but he only laughed and carried on. He talked to me all the time about what he was doing; I only wish I'd understood more. But understanding came later when, unfortunately, he had a lot less time to talk.

  I don't know how he found the Gate. I don't know how he opened it although there were candles lit and a lot of weeds burning and copper wires and a thunderstorm. I'm not embarrassed to admit I yelped when the lightening hit. Marcus laughed and rubbed behind my ears, the sound of my name in his mouth comforting. Then he took hold of the fur on the back of my neck and we walked forward.

  Every hair on my body stood on end and for a heartbeat light, sound, and smell vanished. If not for the touch of his hand, I would have bolted. When the world came back, it was different.

  The sun was low in the sky—it had been mid-light mere moments before—and we stood on a vast empty plain. No buildings. No smoke. No sign of his pack.

  He was happy. He danced around and I danced with him, barking.

  And then we found out we couldn't get home.

  The Gates only worked one way.

  I found the next Gate. And the next. By the fourth world, Marcus had learned to sense their pull—and that was a good thing because it was the first mid-tech world we'd hit and I was in an almost constant state of panic.

  By the fifth, I realized that all sounds he made had meaning. The gates were changing me. I remember the first thing he said that I truly understood.

  "Well, Rueben, old boy. Looks like we'll have to keep going forward until we get home."

  Only the first Gate—the Gate on the world where you belong—fights against being opened. After that, it seems to be merely a matter of knowing where they are. They recognize you don't belong and the next thing you know it's a brand new world. Those first five worlds, when it was just me and Marcus, surviving by our wits, working together, depending on each other's skills the way a pack is supposed to, those were the happiest times of my life.

  The sixth world was low-tech and we emerged into a crowded market place. Marcus staggered a little, steadying himself on my shoulder. By the time he straightened, the crowds had begun to scream, "Demon!" I didn't know what it meant but I knew anger and fear when I heard it, when I smelled it, so I braced my front legs and growled.

  Marcus tried to soothe me. He thought that laughter and intellect would win the day but I knew he was wrong. If they were going to take him, they'd have to go through me.

  I didn't know about crossbows then.

  I learned.

  It took three to knock me off my feet but I was still snapping and snarling as they dragged us away and threw us in a tiny, stinking, dark hole to wait for the priest.

  Marcus begged cloth and water and herbs from the guards. He kept me clean, he kept me alive. I don't know how he convinced them to part with such things but that was when he stopped laughing.

  I think he'd begun to realize how much I understood because there were things he didn't talk about.

  The priest finally came.

  The priests in Marcus' old pack were always good for a bit of something sweet and an absentminded scratch. This was a different kind of priest. The smell of anger clung to him like smoke.

  They dragged us out blinking and squinting in the sunlight. Marcus lifted his face to the sky like he'd forgotten what it looked like, like he'd been afraid he'd never see it again. They said we were demons and demons had to die. The priest told us we would burn on top of a holy hill so the smoke would rise into the demon worlds and warn others of our kind to stay away. He said a lot of other things too but none of it made any more sense so I stopped listening.

  As we walked to the pyre, I stayed pressed close against Marcus' legs because I think he would have fallen if I hadn't been there. Not that I was in much better shape.

  Then we got lucky.

  At the top of the hill, I felt a familiar pull and I knew from the noise Marcus made low in his throat that he felt it too. The Gate. And it was close. On the other side of the hill, about halfway down. We should have been able to feel it all along but I think that whatever made the hill holy had blocked it. I didn't think that then, of course, but I do now.

  The way things had been set up, there wasn't room for more than one man to hold Marcus as he climbed onto the pile of wood. Why would they need more than one? He was so thin and in so much pain and even I could see that all our time in the darkness had broken something in him. When he wrenched himself free, they froze in astonishment. He grabbed the single rope they had around my neck and we ran.

  They hadn't thought we had the strength to escape, you see.

  They were right.

  They caught us at the Gate. We'd gotten so close that it had opened and they held us so close that it stayed open, waiting for us to leave a world where we didn't belong. Bleeding from new wounds, Marcus tried to explain. The priest refused to listen. He knew what he knew, and nothing anyone could say would change that. As they began to drag us away, I saw my chance and sank my teeth into the arm of the man who held me. He screamed, let me go and I threw my entire weight against Marcus' chest, pushing him and the man who held him back into the Gate. We could deal with him on the other side.

  Then a hand grabbed the end of the rope tied around my throat and hauled me back.

  Marcus screamed my name and reached for me but he was falling too fast. He was gone before my front paws hit the ground.

  If the priest thought I'd waste my strength throwing it against the rope, he was very wrong. I took most of his hand through the Gate with me. It took me two worlds to get the taste out of my mouth.

  The crow hopped along the branch and stared down at me, head cocked. "So you got away?"

  "Obviously."

  "Where's Marcus? Wasn't he waiting for you on the other side of the Gate?"

  "No." I scrubbed at my muzzle with both front paws to keep myself from how
ling. "I found out later that you have to be touching for the Gate to send two lives to the same world."

  "You're looking for him."

  It wasn't a question but I answered it anyway. "I don't know if he's still by that Gate waiting for me to come through or if he's on his way around trying to get back to that world again, but yes, I'm looking for him."

  "How long?"

  Rolling onto my side, I licked a fall of fur back off an old, faded scar. "This was where one of the crossbow bolts hit. It was open and bleeding when Marcus was thrown through the Gate."

  Dawn glided down beside me and peered at my side. If crows knew anything at all, they knew wounds. "A long time."

  "Yes. But I will find him."

  She nodded. "I don't doubt you'll keep trying. It's a dog thing. Hopeless…"

  My growl was completely involuntary.

  "Hopeless," she repeated, clacking her beak. "But romantic. You're lucky crows are a lot more practical."

  "Lucky?"

  "Because you shared your story, I'm going to help you get to your Gate."

  Before I could protest, she took wing, flying toward the upper edge of the ravine. By the time I'd scrambled to my feet and shaken my fur into some semblance of order, she was back. "I don't need your help," I told her walking stiff-legged past her position. "I can find the Gate on my own."

  "I don't doubt it. But do you know what traffic is doing? Can you find the fastest route through the buildings? Do you know when it's safe to move on?" She stared at me thoughtfully—well, it might have been thoughtful, it might have been disdainful, it was impossible to tell with crows. "No one will notice me but, if you're not very careful, they'll certainly notice you. Do you have a bear in your ancestry or something?"

  "No."

  "Pony?""No!"

  "Marcus fiddle with your DNA?"

  "My what?"

  She flew ahead and landed on the guard rail. "Not important. What is important though is that, if you hurry, you'll be able to get across the road."

  I gave poultry another quick thought then leapt the guard rail.

  "Run fast, dog. The light is changing."

  Into what? Not important. I started to run. Metal shrieked against metal. As I reached the far side, something big passed so close to my tail that I clamped it tight between my legs and lengthened my stride. Racing along the narrow passage between two buildings, I wondered just what I thought I was doing, listening to a crow.