by Bobbie Pyron
I nodded. “I know.”
“Yeah,” the other said. He scratched at a sore on his hand. “They say you’re a wild child. We’re invisible, but you with those dogs …” His voice trailed off into a shrug. “They’re offering vodka and cigarettes to any of us who helps catch you.”
Fear raced through me like the fire that took our Glass House. The dogs whined and pressed around me. The children stepped back.
The taller one waved his hand and said, “You don’t have to worry about us, but you better be careful of the older kids and the bomzhi. They’ll do anything for a drink or a smoke.”
“You won’t tell?” I asked.
They shook their heads. “But I’d stay away from the train stations if I were you,” the taller one said.
Fat flakes of snow wheeled down from the sky. I shivered in what was left of my coat and watched them walk away.
I pressed my face against Lucky’s warm neck and tried not to cry.
For days, we followed the great river winding its way through The City until we came to Komsomolskaya Ploshchad. This was the place where we had seen the Christian Ladies last spring, months and months before. We would wait here until they came again. I desperately needed a new coat, boots, gloves, and a hat if I was going to survive a winter not riding the trains.
So we waited, and one day they arrived.
They set up their tables and boxes in the center plaza near the statue of the man with the marble face. He watched, standing high above the snow, as a few children drifted from doorways and from under boxes. He watched, one marble hand still clutching his lapel, as they lined up for food and clothes. No one fought this time. It was the cold now they had to fight to survive, not one another.
Finally, the last of the children left. I crossed the plaza with Rip, Lucky, Moon, and Star. “Please,” I said to a big woman with her back to me. “I need a coat.”
She turned around. Her eyes widened. “Olina,” she called without taking her eyes off the dogs and me. “I don’t think we have any clothes left to fit this young man, do we?”
The woman called Olina bent over a box. She straightened up and looked at us, then looked again. She touched a piece of paper on the table. She came over and stood next to the big woman. She licked her lips. “No, I don’t think we do. Not right now.”
“But certainly we can bring some for you,” the big woman said. “Would you like that, for us to bring clothes just for a boy your size?”
I nodded.
The woman called Olina rubbed her gloved hands together and said, “We can bring them tomorrow, right here — a fine warm coat, boots, sweater, and as many socks and gloves and hats as a boy could need. Blankets too. Would you like that?”
I nodded, smiling. I felt warmer already. I stroked Star’s head.
The big woman smiled. “Olina, I do think we have a bit of porridge and bread left, don’t we?”
My mouth watered.
The woman called Olina bobbed her head and hurried to another table. She returned with a bowl of steaming porridge and a hunk of black bread.
“Here,” she said, handing it to me.
Before she could hand me the spoon, I shoveled the hot gruel into my mouth with my hands. Finally, I broke off pieces of bread for each of the dogs and stuffed two more pieces in my pocket for Smoke and Little Mother. I let Rip lick the porridge from my fingers.
“Now when you come back tomorrow for your clothes, you must leave those dogs behind.”
I looked up at the big woman. “Why?” I asked.
“They have fleas,” she said. Her face was screwed up in disgust.
“I’m allergic to dogs,” the woman called Olina said.
Something whispered in the back of my mind.
“We’ll bring you lots of food, though,” the big woman said. “Enough for them too.”
If I had not been so cold, if I had not been so hungry, I would not have listened to them; instead I would have listened to that voice in the back of my mind. I would have wondered about that piece of paper on the table.
I returned the next day in the middle of a snowstorm. The flags ringing the Ploshchad snapped and slapped in the howling wind. Snow buried the steps at the bottom of the marble man’s statue.
“They won’t come,” I said to the dogs crouched in the doorway with me. “Even Christian Ladies won’t keep a promise in a storm like this.”
But soon, I saw them pushing through the wind and snow, the big woman and the one called Olina. She carried a bag in her arms. A bag full of warm clothes and food.
I yipped and jumped up. The dogs danced around me. All but Smoke and Little Mother.
“You must all stay here,” I said above the wind. “You must stay here and I will be back with food.”
The dogs whimpered and rolled their eyes.
No, Malchik, Smoke said.
“I have to go,” I said. “I do not have a warm coat like you, and we all need food!”
Smoke grumbled.
“Stay here!” I barked in my firmest pack-leader voice, and then trotted across the snow-covered plaza. The big woman waved me over. I waved back. Coat, gloves, hat, food, I sang under my breath in time with my footsteps.
“You came!” I panted in the cold.
“Yes, child,” the big woman said. “Just as we promised.”
Wind cut through my ragtag clothes. I hopped from one foot to the other, trying to peer into the bag. “What did you bring?” I asked. “A coat? Food? I didn’t bring the dogs, just like you asked.”
“Here,” the big woman said. “Come see.”
I walked over to the bag. I did not see a coat. I did not smell food.
“I have a blanket for you!” the woman called Olina said.
“But I don’t need —”
She threw the blanket over my head and wrapped her arms tight around me. Everything went dark. I couldn’t breathe!
“We have him! We have him!” the women cried.
Boots crunched in the snow. A man’s voice called, “Hold tight to him! He’s a wily one.”
I was trapped! I wriggled and struggled against the woman’s arms and the blanket’s grasp. Another hand grabbed my shoulder. I bit as hard as I could through the blanket.
“Ow!” someone cried. “The little beggar bit me!”
For an instant, hands fell away. I threw off the blanket and froze. I was surrounded by the militsiya.
“Holy mother,” one of the policemen said. “Look at it.”
I crouched and looked for a way around or through them.
“He’s not an ‘it,’” the woman named Olina said. “He’s a child.”
The big woman held out a bag. “See here, boy, I have some food for you. Sausages, just like I promised.” She smiled. Her teeth were yellow and pointed.
I shuddered. Baba Yaga. I was not her boy.
I threw back my head and barked.
“What’s he —”
Before the policeman could finish his question, Smoke leapt upon his back and knocked him to the ground. The Christian Ladies screamed as dogs came from every direction. Lucky sailed through the snow-filled air. Rip darted in and out from between my legs, snapping and growling.
I grabbed the bag of food that had fallen from the big woman’s hands. “Run!” I cried.
I ran as fast as I have ever run in my life across the Ploshchad, the dogs fanning out in front. Little Mother joined us and ran as fast as her big belly would allow.
Behind us I heard the tweet tweet! of the militsiya’s whistles.
“Stop him! Stop him!” the Christian Ladies cried.
But we would not be stopped that day.
“Once upon a time,” I said to the dogs in our cold, dark den beneath an abandoned warehouse, “there was a ghost who very much wanted to be a boy. He thought if he were a boy — the very best boy — he would be loved and protected. He did not want people to look past him and through him because he was just a little ghost and he was lonely and afraid.”
I stroked Little Mother’s ears. “And once upon another time — a time much later than before — there was a boy who wanted very much to be a ghost….”
I sighed. Now I would bargain with Baba Yaga herself to be invisible again.
Later, something woke me in the dark.
One of the dogs pawed at my arm. I sat up. “What’s wrong?”
I heard panting and moaning on the other side of the tiny den. I crawled across on hands and knees to Little Mother. I could barely make out the glow of her wide eyes in the dark. “Oh, Little Mother,” I said, reaching out a hand to stroke her.
She snapped at my hand, just barely missing my fingers. I gasped in surprise. Never had she threatened me before!
She whimpered in apology but still, I crawled back across the rubble away from her. I cuddled Rip to my chest and pulled Moon and Star next to me. Only Smoke was allowed to be close to Little Mother.
I buried my face in Lucky’s flank. “Nothing is right anymore,” I said. “I do not know what I have done, but everything is wrong.”
A tiny sound woke me in the gray hours of morning — the tiniest of cries. The dogs quivered next to me with excitement.
On the other side of the den, Little Mother lay on her side licking something. Smoke hovered over her protectively.
I held my breath, hardly daring to move. I looked from Little Mother to Smoke. Is it what I think it is? I asked in our silent way.
Smoke’s eyes smiled. Come see, Malchik.
Slowly, I crept over to Little Mother. She grumbled a warning. I stopped and turned my eyes away. Smoke snorted.
I crept a little closer. This time, Little Mother did not growl. She busied herself licking the just-born puppies nestled against her belly.
“Oh, puppies!” I breathed. I counted three. Later I would find the body of a fourth that had not survived the birth.
Suddenly, the world was full of hope. We had puppies to care for! For the rest of the day, I made plans.
“We’ll wait until they get a little bigger,” I said to Little Mother, “and then find a better place for the winter. Maybe we’ll go back to the den where you had Moon and Star.”
That day, Lucky and I left only long enough to find food. Smoke would not leave her side.
“I’ll get us lots of food, I promise,” I told Little Mother and the others as I fed them from what I’d found. “The puppies will grow big and strong.”
We listened to the snow-scraping machines out on the streets. “And when spring comes, we will return to the forest and never, ever come back.”
And so day after day, I hunted food with Lucky, Moon, and Star. Smoke brought her food too, but he didn’t like leaving her alone for very long. And Rip had taken on the role of the puppies’ babushka.
At first, I tried going out only when it was dark so as not to be seen by the militsiya, if they were even still hunting me. But I could not bear the cold long enough to find the food we needed, especially for Little Mother as she nursed her puppies; and the night belonged to the tall, skinny Crow Boys in their black leathers and chains, and the bomzhi, who would do anything for a drink.
So the dogs and I devised what we thought was a clever plan: We hunted food separately but together. The dogs would saunter along like any pack of street strays and investigate the trash bins behind certain restaurants. I stayed behind, pretending to sleep in a doorway, an old newspaper covering my face, and listened. If the dogs found food in the bins, they yipped. I waited until the sidewalk was empty of people and then I dashed behind the building and joined the dogs. I grabbed what food I could and ran back to our den. Some days, even after visiting several bins, there was not much food to show for our efforts. But at least it was something.
And so it was, on this particular snowy afternoon, we had found a restaurant whose bins overflowed with food. We came back again and again to fill our bags.
Lucky and Moon and Star disappeared around the corner without a backward glance. I curled up in the shivery doorway and waited for their signal.
And waited and waited.
I sat up. The newspaper covering my face fluttered to the ground. My stomach groaned and my hands ached in the cold. “They must be filling their bellies first,” I grumbled. I’d caught Star and Lucky doing that before, gorging themselves before calling me.
I ground my teeth. Anger filled my belly.
And then I heard a sharp, panic-stricken bark. This was not the usual we-found-food yip, this was a call that said they were in trouble. I heard the bark again.
I ran around to the back of the building and skidded to a stop in the snow. Their paw prints led to the garbage bin, yes, but then they continued on.
I followed the prints with my head down. I heard another bark — Lucky’s deep, angry woof. The prints and the bark led to the back door of the restaurant. I stopped to listen. “Lucky?” I called in a loud whisper. “Moon? Star?”
Moon’s answering whimper came from inside the restaurant!
Panic raced through me. How had they gotten inside? I grabbed the door handle and turned it.
It was locked.
I pulled and pulled on the door handle with all my might. I banged on it with my fists until they turned bloody. “Lucky!” I cried. “Moon!”
“They can’t help you now, little Mowgli.”
Every part of me turned to ice at the sound of that voice. I lowered my fists and turned my head.
There, with falling snow resting on his wide shoulders, and a cigarette dangling from his bottom lip, stood the Woman in the Hat’s son. Many other militsiya stood on either side of him in their gray coats and tall black boots.
I looked frantically to the door and then to the way in and out of the alley. Militsiya were everywhere.
“Come with us quietly, now.” He stepped closer. “Don’t give us any trouble, and your dogs won’t get hurt.”
My mind raced as fast as a subway train. Little Mother and Rip and the puppies needed me to bring food but they also had Smoke to protect them and take care of them; Moon and Lucky and Star were trapped inside the restaurant with no way to get out except me doing what the militsiya said. And how did I know the dogs were unharmed even now?
I flicked out my knife. One of the policemen gasped. Another snickered.
I stuck my chin in the air and made myself tall as I could. “Let the dogs go and I’ll come with you,” I demanded, looking directly into the dark eyes of the Woman in the Hat’s son.
A short, fat policeman laughed. “So the wild child is not dumb!”
The old woman’s son narrowed his eyes and studied me. A smile played at the corner of his mouth. “Okay, Mowgli, it’s a deal. But you must step away from the door first.”
Once I moved aside, he signaled to one of the policemen. “Open it.”
I readied myself for what would come next. The dogs would burst through the door and knock down every one of the policemen. Then we would run away. I knew I could outrun any militsiya. I didn’t need shiny black boots to run fast; I didn’t need Famous Basketball Player shoes. Like the dogs, my feet had wings.
The door swung open. There on the cement floor of the storeroom, wrapped in a thick black net, lay the dogs, helpless. They locked their pleading eyes on my face and moaned.
“No!” I cried. I lunged for the dogs and attacked the net with my knife.
Arms grabbed me from behind and pulled me back.
“Let me go!” I screamed. I slashed with my knife at anything I could find.
Someone cried out and cursed. But even as those hands fell away, more hands grabbed and hit and twisted. My knife fell to the ground.
The dogs barked and snapped and growled from their place on the floor. I snarled and snapped and sank teeth.
I was knocked to the ground. Gloved hands shoved my face into the snow and twisted my neck sideways.
Hands grabbed my legs and my feet and tied them with rope. Another pair wrenched my arms behind my back and tied them too.
“Give him the shot,” someone said above me. “We can’t carry him screaming and biting through the streets.”
I rubbed blood from my face in the snow. My eyes searched and found Lucky. His dark brown eyes poured into mine. I am sorry, he said.
“Oh, Lucky,” I moaned. He’d never spoken before.
Something sharp stung the back of my neck. A sick warm sweetness flooded my head and my stomach. The last thing I saw was Lucky’s eyes.
“Good God, he’s a filthy little beggar,” a voice from somewhere above me said.
“Stinks too,” another voice said.
My head, my legs, every part of my body thrummed with pain. Why couldn’t they just let me alone?
A hand grabbed my boot and started to pull it off.
“No!” I snapped. My eyes flew open. I could not survive the winter without my boots. I could not find food for myself and the dogs without my boots!
But I was not on the streets of The City. I was in a too-bright, too-warm room that stank of soap and desperation. I was not surrounded by my family of dogs but by people in green uniforms and white coats.
I panted and snarled and looked about wildly for a way out. No busy streets to run down, no trees to climb, no tumbledown buildings to hide in — only one tiny window high above my head.
I gathered my legs beneath me and shot across the room for the only door.
“Look out!” a woman in a green uniform cried.
“Grab him!” a man in a white coat commanded.
I clawed and scrabbled at the door handle. It would not turn. I spun to face down my captors. I bared my teeth and reached in my pocket for my knife. It was gone.
And then I remembered: the restaurant and the militsiya and Lucky and Moon and Star all trapped in that net and trying to cut them loose with my knife and the fist to my face and the gloved hand on my neck and Lucky’s eyes.
I sobbed. Did they survive?
A hand reached out for me. I bit as hard as I could. Blood filled my mouth. The man in the white coat screamed in pain. Eyes filled with horror and disgust.