by Livi Michael
But a dog was different. Sam had always wanted a dog. Reluctantly, he put her back down on the table and placed the mistletoe twig between her paws. She picked it up immediately and stood quivering, her big eyes fixed hopefully on Sam’s mum.
‘Dogs cost money,’ she said. ‘Suppose she needs the vet?’
‘I’ll pay,’ said Sam, ‘with my pocket money,’ and his mother rolled her eyes.
‘Have you any idea how much pocket money you’d need for that?’ she said.
‘Please!’ said Sam.
‘I’ll take her to the vet’s tomorrow, if she’s still having trouble with her hip,’ said Aunty Dot. ‘I just thought we could see how she went on tonight.’
Sam’s mother sighed. ‘I suppose we could hang on to her for one night,’ she said, and Sam flung his arms round her. ‘But tomorrow we’re putting cards in the shops. Someone must know something about this dog.’
Sam was delighted. He took an old pillow from the bedding chest and put it near the kitchen door so that she could guard it. When he got back to the table Aunty Dot was feeding the little dog a sausage roll. She was obviously hungry, yet she hesitated, then put the mistletoe twig down between her paws and took the pieces delicately.
Sam picked her up again and put her on the kitchen floor, very gently. ‘Come on, Jenny,’ he said, and she limped over to the pillow right away and sat on it. She understood that there had been some kind of discussion and that she could stay. She didn’t understand fully where she was, or what she was supposed to do, or what all these people would do with her, but for now at least she was safe. She suddenly felt unutterably tired. She turned herself round on the pillow once and sank down, her eyes already closing. Sam slipped the mistletoe dart back on to her pillow.
The aunts all left, Aunty Dot promising to call by the next day to help Sam take Jenny for a walk, and Sam was finally persuaded to go to bed after a brief, tense argument with his mother about whether or not Jenny could sleep on his bed. His mother won the argument and Sam went upstairs alone. He pulled the jumper off at last, feeling relieved to get rid of the itchy wool, and stuffed it right at the back of his cupboard. So far back, in fact, that he didn’t notice when it glowed, fiercely and brightly for a moment, before settling down. He got into bed and lay awake for a long time, thinking about having a dog of his own, and when he fell asleep he dreamed strange, wonderful dreams, about a boy with a face like the sun and a white dog gleaming like a small star through the early-morning mist.
2
New Day, New World
When Jenny woke up the next morning, she had no idea where she was. It was still dark in the kitchen, and rather cold, and the whirring and humming and clicking noises were still there. They seemed to be coming from tall, metallic slabs that stood against the wall.
She had been dreaming that she was with her master, playing in meadows thick with flowers, and the early-morning sun shone down on them through the mist. But now here she was, stranded in a cold, dark, alien world. The only warm place was the pillow on which she lay and the only reminder of her former life was the small, chewed twig between her paws. She tried and tried, but she couldn’t remember why she had come here in the first place. It was as though the accident had driven the memories from her mind. She felt lonely and afraid, and she jumped when she heard footsteps clattering down the stairs.
‘Jenny!’ Sam called. ‘Jenny?’
The little dog lifted her nose and sniffed. That was her name now, she remembered. Jen-ny.
Sam bounded into the kitchen.
‘There you are, Jenny,’ he said, hugging her straight away. ‘Are you cold? Did you sleep well? I bet you’re hungry!’
He went on talking to her in words Jenny didn’t understand. But fortunately all dogs speak human to some extent. They respond to the tone of voice, the rise and fall and rhythm of the words, and Jenny knew that Sam was being kind. And she recognized the smell of him right away, though he wasn’t quite as shiny as the night before. In fact, now that she could see him clearly, he didn’t remind her of her master at all.
He stood up and pressed a switch and immediately the room was filled with the same yellow glare as before, and Jenny couldn’t see a thing. She cowered in the blinding light.
‘It’s only a light bulb, Jenny,’ Sam said, laughing, and he opened one of the whirring metal slabs and brought out the sausage rolls from the party. He ate one himself and offered one to Jenny. She sniffed it, but she was too confused and wary to eat.
‘I bet you need the toilet,’ Sam said, and he opened the back door, letting in a blast of cold air.
The door led into a yard that was full of junk: planks of wood, buckets and ladders, an old brush and mop, a window, still in its frame, and Sam’s bike, draped in a plastic sheet. Jenny hung back warily. The yard was full of strange smells. She didn’t dare venture out.
‘Go on, then,’ Sam said, but Jenny didn’t move. He went into the yard and called her, patting his knees, but still she wouldn’t stir.
Then Sam had an idea. He walked back into the kitchen, quickly picked up the little dart on Jenny’s pillow and threw it into the yard.
Jenny leapt. She flew through the air like a bird, or a very bouncy kangaroo, catching the mistletoe twig before it landed.
‘Go, Jenny!’ shouted Sam, and in the middle of all the confusion of the yard, Jenny squatted and made her mark. It felt strange, but she couldn’t help herself. Making your mark was very powerful magic, and another sign that she belonged in this world now.
Then, just as she would have done with her old master, she returned the dart to Sam.
‘Good girl!’ he said, patting her on the head. ‘Looks like your hip’s better, Jenny!’ He threw the twig back into the kitchen and Jenny leapt after it, flying gracefully over a chair.
‘Ace!’ said Sam.
He found a bowl in the cupboard and filled it with water, and Jenny lapped at it gratefully, then ate the sausage roll. She had eaten and drunk twice now in this strange world and maybe that was the third sign.
Afterwards they went on playing. Sam threw the dart and Jenny caught it, no matter where he threw it, how high or how far.
‘Jenny – you’re amazing!’ he said, and just then the doorbell rang, and Jenny shot backwards, barking, under a chair.
It was Aunty Dot, who had pedalled all the way across the city on her bike to see them.
‘I thought we’d take her out, first thing, before it’s too busy,’ she said, and she propped the bike up in the hallway and followed Sam into the front room.
‘Watch this, Aunty Dot!’ he said, and he threw the mistletoe dart high into the air.
‘Look out!’ said Aunty Dot, but before it could strike anything, Jenny leapt. She flew straight over the back of the settee, caught the dart in her jaws and descended again gracefully to the carpet.
‘Goodness!’ said Aunty Dot, and then ‘My word!’ as she did it again. ‘Well, there can’t be much wrong with her hip,’ she added, as Jenny bounded over the high-backed chair.
‘It doesn’t matter where I throw it,’ Sam said, ‘she always catches it!’
‘Impressive,’ said Aunty Dot, and she patted Jenny’s head vigorously.
Jenny put up with this politely, but then Sam said, ‘You have a go,’ and as soon as he handed the dart to Aunty Dot, Jenny put back her ears and growled.
It was an astonishing growl. It rattled all the ornaments on the mantelpiece, and the books and videos on the shelves. The shelves themselves started shaking, the coffee table rattled and the high-backed chair juddered towards the centre of the room.
Aunty Dot clutched her hat, which she could feel was about to fly off. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Oh, my word,’ for she had a sudden, fleeting vision of volcanoes erupting and continents shifting deep within their oceanic beds.
But Sam was beaming up at her proudly.
‘She does that an’ all,’ he said.
‘Well!’ said Aunty Dot, once she had got her breath bac
k. ‘I don’t think she wants me to have it.’ She gave the dart back to Sam, and instantly the thunderous growling stopped and Jenny wagged her tail.
‘Well,’ said Aunty Dot again, ‘I think we’d better take her out for a walk,’ and from her shoulder bag she produced a collar and lead.
‘Cool!’ said Sam. ‘Can I hold them?’
‘You’d better get dressed first,’ said Aunty Dot. ‘And tell your mum where you’re going.’
Sam ran upstairs, where his mother was still in bed. Aunty Dot eyed the little dog intently and Jenny eyed her back.
‘You’re not quite what you seem, are you?’ Aunty Dot murmured, bending forward and removing her spectacles. ‘I wonder what your real name is and where you’ve come from. And what that dart is for.’
Jenny stared at Aunty Dot as though she had never seen her before. Without her glasses she was transformed. White light streamed from her face, which suddenly seemed not elderly and kindly, but magnificent and ageless. Her eyes radiated darkness, while pale fire streamed from her lips. It was obvious to Jenny that Aunty Dot too was not what she seemed.
Sam came thundering down the stairs again.
‘Can I put the collar on her?’ he said.
‘Yes, I think you’d better,’ Aunty Dot replied, replacing her glasses.
There followed a short interlude during which both Sam and Aunty Dot tried to get the collar on Jenny, and Jenny responded by running round in circles, twisting out of reach, rolling over and finally backing into a corner under the chair.
It was as if she didn’t know what a collar was.
‘Right,’ said Aunty Dot, out of both patience and breath. ‘I think I know what’s going on. She’s nervous of traffic, since I clipped her last night. It’s quite understandable, poor thing. But she’ll have to get used to it. See if she’ll let you pick her up.’
As before, Jenny seemed quite happy to be picked up by Sam. He tucked her under his arm and followed Aunty Dot to the hallway, standing to one side of the bike as she opened the front door.
‘Now, you’ll have to be really careful,’ Aunty Dot warned. ‘We don’t want her jumping down and running into the road.’
In fact, Jenny did seem to be extraordinarily nervous. She flinched at all the brightness and quivered at the noise. Sam held on to her tightly, then he saw Aunty Dot’s bicycle basket.
‘I know! She can have a ride in your basket,’ he said, and before Aunty Dot could say, No, don’t! he lifted the lid and lowered Jenny inside.
‘WOOOFF!!’ said the bicycle basket, and there followed what sounded like a small tornado. Aunty Dot hastily scooped Jenny out again.
‘Pico!’ she said.
It has already been mentioned that Pico was very small, even for a Chihuahua. He was so small that he could fit in the palm of Aunty Dot’s hand. He was also very loud. In fact the one attribute had evolved out of the other, since Pico lived with Aunty Lilith, who was short-sighted and very deaf. And she weighed a lot. It wasn’t easy to coax her on to scales, or to find any that would take the full brunt of her weight, but Aunty Dot had bought an industrial-sized set especially for the purpose and had bullied Aunty Lilith on to it one day.
‘Good heavens, Lilith!’ she had said. ‘You weigh 340 pounds!’
‘Too much money for a set of scales,’ Aunty Lilith said.
‘No, dear – you’ll have to go on a diet!’
‘Dye it? There’s nothing wrong with it!’
‘Nothing wrong with what?’ said Aunty Dot, getting confused.
‘That’s what I said!’ said Aunty Lilith triumphantly.
Most conversations with Aunty Lilith went like this, and in the end most people gave up and left her to sit in her specially designed armchair, which could be manoeuvred into different positions at the touch of a button, and to eat her favourite treacle toffee, which exercised her jaw at least. Other than this, Aunty Lilith was quite happy in her chair and rarely saw the need to move out of it, but when she did Pico had to be very careful, because her size-nine feet might descend in any direction. And so this was how he had come to develop his tremendous bark.
‘WOOF!’
Because Pico was too small to go for walks in the usual way, Aunty Dot carried him around in the basket of her bicycle. When anyone approached it, Pico produced a bark like a Great Dane.
‘WOOF!!’
‘No one’ll ever steal this bike,’ Aunty Dot said, with satisfaction, and Sam, out of politeness, refrained from saying that no one would ever want to. It was a vast, unwieldy thing that clanked and groaned, and looked as if it had been cobbled together from the remains of other bikes. Aunty Dot had ridden it around the city for many years. She rode on the pavements, since the roads were so busy, and whenever pedestrians got in the way, she just jiggled the basket so that Pico barked again – ‘WOOF!!’ – and they scattered to left and right, sometimes diving into the road for safety.
‘Better than a car horn,’ Aunty Dot always said.
Now she handed Jenny back to Sam and lifted Pico from the basket.
‘Jenny dear, it’s all right – everything’s fine,’ she said, holding the Chihuahua out towards her. Jenny this is Pico.’
For a moment the two dogs tensed and bristled at one another, then Jenny moved her nose, quivering and whiffly, towards Pico, and after a moment he lifted his tiny nose to her. And, moved by an impulse she didn’t fully understand, she said, ‘Little friend, I see that your body is small, but your heart is great. You have within you distant horizons and marvellous deeds. You will leave the place where you are now and travel to faraway lands. The stars shall be your compass and your journey shall know no boundaries.’
Now, in the main, Pico was contented with his life. He had known nothing else, having been bought by Aunty Lilith when he was a puppy and hardly bigger than a mouse. But sometimes he did wonder if there was more to the world than Aunty Lilith’s sleeve and Aunty Dot’s bicycle basket. When he rode in the bicycle basket he had a sense of immensity and noise, but Aunty Dot and Aunty Lilith were agreed that the pavements were too dangerous for him. Once, when he had been taken out, he had barked at a large, mean-looking dog called Rex, and Rex had looked down in surprise to find where all the noise was coming from, then opened his great jaws and scooped him up in a single bite. Pico had to be pulled out of his mouth by the tail. Since then he had been carried about from one confined space to another, which was all he knew of the world. But he did dream about huge mountain ranges and deserts and forests and plains so vast that, run though you might, there was no end to them. He didn’t know where these dreams came from, but each time he had them he felt restless and a little more discontented with his lot. He would bark at Aunty Lilith until she put him on the window ledge, where he would peer out as well as he could at the bush that obscured his view, and get terribly excited if anyone came, such as the postman or the window cleaner. He would trot all the way from one end of the ledge to the other and wish he was bigger and that he could see more.
‘Where have you come from?’ he would bark at them, or ‘Where are you going?’, and in his mind he had the sense of far horizons and of horses galloping into the sun.
But all that came out of him was the same sound – ‘WOOF!’ – and the postman and the window cleaner would laugh, and say that he was a great little guard dog, and leave him alone again on the ledge.
One day, Pico, he would tell himself, one day you will see the world! And each time he told himself this, he had the sense that the day was coming nearer. Now for the first time he could see those dreams realized in Jenny’s eyes. When he spoke finally it was in a voice that was hushed and awed.
‘You are right,’ he told her. ‘But no one has ever seen that before.’ And right there and then, Pico gave Jenny his heart.
Aunty Dot could sense that something had shifted between the two dogs.
‘Perhaps we could try her in the basket after all,’ she murmured, thinking aloud.
So, very carefully, Sam lowered J
enny into the basket and, even more carefully, Aunty Dot lowered Pico in after her.
It worked! The two dogs nestled in without protest, and as Aunty Dot wheeled her ancient bicycle along the street, Pico rode between Jenny’s forepaws and both of them looked out.
The most obvious thing about the city where Sam and his mother had come to live was that there was hardly anywhere to walk a dog. There were overpasses and bypasses and subways, and concrete buildings and apartment buildings so tall you could hardly see the sky, but there was very little grass or trees. And wherever there was grass, there were notices up saying: DOGS NOT ALLOWED. More notices on lampposts read: DOG OWNERS BEWARE! £1,000 FINE IF YOUR DOG FOULS THE PAVEMENTS.
They didn’t say what the fine would be if the owners fouled the pavements, Aunty Dot pointed out, as she showed Sam the notices. ‘And humans are a lot dirtier than dogs,’ she said.
It was true that the city was dirty. A kind of smog hung over it at all times, so that only on the brightest, hottest days could you actually see the sun, like a flat disc without rays, through the smoke. Petrol fumes clogged up the air and roadworks clogged up the roads. So many different companies were drilling and digging, you could see right into the underbelly of the roads, as though they were being gutted. Wheelie bins overflowed from alleys, wastepaper bins spilled their contents into the streets, people scattered their litter behind them as they went.
And there were so many people! Fat and thin, tall and short, drab and colourful, decorated with paint or metal studs. Jenny had never imagined there could be so many people. They didn’t look anything like the people in her own world. For one thing, hardly any of them wore small, horned helmets. Or carried axes and shields. Some of them carried bags, and they bumped and jostled one another along the pavements, yet even then they didn’t look at each other, but down and away, and they didn’t look happy either, but frustrated and sad, bad-tempered, or just as though they were millions of miles away in their thoughts.