The dog called, “Get on in here, old bear. Not likely they’ll smell you down here in this creek, but if they come over the hill, you’ll be spotted.”
Casseomae eased into the thicket beside the cub. “And what now?”
As Dumpster scampered in, he cast a look of loathing at the dog but then settled down into the leaf bed. “What else is there to do? We wait.”
Casseomae dropped her chin to her forepaws, snorting irritably. She hated this. It felt strange. She watched the child rub the dog’s coppery fur, and the dog stared at him bewildered.
“It’s … remarkable,” he said. “I’ve journeyed far across the Forest. I know every tree and relic. But I’ve never heard tell of a living Companion or even one who remembers the days when they ruled. The Companions are gone! And yet here before me … please, I have to know. Where did the pup come from?”
“Not a scratchin’ word, Cass,” Dumpster murmured.
But Casseomae did not share the rat’s distrust of the dog. He had warned them of the coyotes. He could be useful. And the cub clearly liked him. However, there were more important things at the moment than satisfying the dog’s curiosity.
She lifted her head. “You’ve traveled far in the Forest, dog? Where can I bring the cub where he will be safe—?”
A bark rang out from the top of the rise, answered by a yip.
“They’re getting closer,” Dumpster whispered.
Casseomae shifted anxiously, digging her claws in the earth. “Cursed Rend and her rout! If she reaches us here, I’ll tear them apart.”
“They’ll never fight you,” the dog said. “It won’t do any good.”
More calls echoed through the Forest, growing nearer to the top of the rise.
“Well, there’s no other choice,” Dumpster spat. “They’re coming. She’s got to drive them off.”
“There’s another choice.” As the dog stood, the child sat up on his knees. The dog looked at Casseomae. “You’ll have to keep him from following me.”
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I’ll draw that rout away,” he said. “They don’t know I’m with you.”
“You’re not with us!” Dumpster said.
“Hold on to the pup,” the dog said, ignoring Dumpster. “You understand?”
The child was watching the dog anxiously, a hand on his back. Dumpster clicked his teeth. “Stupid Faithful and his charms over the pup. He’ll make an awful racket when you go.”
“I’m not casting any spells on the pup,” the dog said. “You ready?”
Casseomae huffed, inching closer to the cub. “Dog, tell me. Isn’t there somewhere safe from the wolves?”
“If there were,” the dog said, “why would I be here?”
He eased out from the thicket. The child leaned forward to follow, but the dog growled at him. A coyote called out just over the top of the rise. The child blinked rapidly at the sound.
The dog was out from the laurel thicket. He lifted a leg to spray urine on the outside branches. He trotted around and did it again. “Don’t let him follow me, you understand?”
“We know!” Dumpster said, twittering his whiskers anxiously. “Get going.”
“Bear?” the dog said.
“What?” Casseomae growled.
“If I were you, I’d ask the Auspectres your question.”
“The who?” she asked.
A coyote bark rang out. The dog gave one last look back at the child and then in a blur sprinted up the rise toward the call.
The child leaped forward, snapping laurel branches. Casseomae lunged for his back and caught the blue hide with her teeth, not puncturing the material but not letting him go any farther either. The child called out and tried to scramble forward, but Casseomae had him.
Through the trees came booming barks, not the cries of a coyote but what Casseomae knew had to be the dog. His barks echoed through the Forest and soon were joined by the yowling, yipping coyotes converging on him.
The child shouted several more times and batted Casseomae’s nose. She didn’t growl but held him until the sounds of pursuit disappeared into the distance. The child reached back to tug the blue skin from Casseomae’s teeth, and she released him. The child emerged from the laurels and stared at the Forest.
“We’ll never see that cur again,” Dumpster said as he scampered beside Casseomae. “But I’ll have to give it to him. He’s brave. Stupid, but brave.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The child continued to look around for the dog as they followed the creek. Casseomae smelled no sign that Rend’s rout was following them, but she knew they had to cover ground fast. Dumpster gave a squeak, struggling to catch up. “You’ve got to move faster, rat.”
“Look, I’m not a blundering locomotive like you,” he said.
“A what?” Casseomae grunted.
“Nothing.” Dumpster sighed. “I’m going as fast as I can.”
Casseomae cast an anxious glance. “If they catch our scent … Look, just let me carry you.” She reached down with her long lips to pick Dumpster up by the back.
He scrambled away from her. “Like some suckling pup? No, no, no. Dumpster will not be slobbered on by a putrid-breath bear.”
“Well, I’ll leave you, then,” she growled.
“Argh!” He lashed his tail. “Let me just climb on your back.”
“What?” She snorted in disbelief.
“Look, you’ve got plenty of fat for me to hang on to. I’ll just ride on you.” Dumpster flattened his whiskers at her stares. “I don’t like the idea any better than you do, old bear, but there’s no other way for us to go faster.”
Casseomae flopped down on the ground. “Just until we know we’re not being tracked.”
Dumpster climbed up her front leg, digging his tiny claws into her fur until he reached the massive hump of muscle at her shoulder. She rose and sniffed back at him. “Comfortable?”
“Not in the least,” he said, digging his claws in a little tighter. The cub gave Dumpster a baffled look. “What are you looking at?” Dumpster squeaked.
Once she was moving at a faster pace with the cub jogging beside her, Casseomae asked, “Have you heard of those Auspectres?”
Dumpster jostled on her back. “No, never,” he grumbled. He crept closer to her ears, finding a better hold away from her bucking shoulders. “It’s probably some Faithful rumor. Just get us back to the highway, Cass. We know my mischief went that way. We need to follow them.”
As night fell, Casseomae sat atop some boulders listening while the cub filled his water pouch at a spring. Night birds and tree frogs filled the darkening Forest with their chorus, but there was no sign of the dog.
Dumpster trotted out on the boulder beside her. “We have a problem,” he said.
“What?”
“I think the pup is out of food.”
Casseomae gazed down at the child. He was licking a shiny wrapper, but she saw that the pouches along his belly and legs were no longer bulging. “What do we do?” she asked.
Dumpster flicked his whiskers. “Nip me if I know. I guess we hope we find an undiscovered Old Devil cache.”
“Is that likely?” Casseomae asked.
“No,” Dumpster said.
She snorted and lumbered down toward the child. “We should go. Too easy to be sniffed out on this high ground. A little farther and we’ll rest for the night.”
The following day, Casseomae watched the cub closely but never saw him take out more food. By midmorning, the tuft of golden fur on the child’s head had turned wet again. The heat drove Casseomae to scratch against the rough bark of trees, much to Dumpster’s displeasure.
“I’m riding up here,” he complained, crawling on her head to avoid being squashed.
A startled rabbit dashed from a log right in front of Casseomae and she brought her huge paw down on it in a flash. As she stopped to eat the surprise catch, Dumpster leaped from his perch to search for a meal of his own. The child flopped
to the ground, squeezing water from the tube onto his face.
By the time Casseomae had eaten the rabbit, she found that the cub had stripped the blue hide from his torso and arms. She watched with a mix of horror and fascination. Without his hide, the cub was pale, bare, and deer-thin. He was hitting the blue hide with a sharp rock.
“Don’t do that to yourself, little cub,” she warned, nudging his bare back.
The cub shot up when her wet nose touched him and chirped in his funny speech before going back to work.
Over and over the cub prodded the hide with the rock until the fabric tore apart. Dumpster emerged with an acorn in his mouth just as the child was putting the clothes back on. The parts that had been covering his arms were now gone.
Casseomae sniffed at the two limp pieces lying on the ground. They looked like shed snake skin. “Is this why they’re called the Skinless? Because they can remove their hides?”
“It’s not his hide, mushroom brain,” Dumpster replied. “I told you before. It’s clothing. The Old Devils didn’t grow it on their bodies. They made it to keep warm.”
“Does your memory tell you why he just tore part of it off?”
“Probably for the same reason you’ve been rubbing against every tree in the Forest.”
“I’m getting off my winter coat,” Casseomae said, feeling an itch arise at the mention.
“There you go,” Dumpster said smugly. “Our pup here is just trying to cool off.”
“Humph,” Casseomae snorted, feeling much better about the whole situation. “They were pretty clever creatures, weren’t they?”
“Yes, they were,” Dumpster said, crunching on the acorn. “Too clever, if you ask me.”
The child watched as Casseomae bent down to nose up an acorn and eat it. He came over and put an acorn tentatively in his mouth. When his teeth crunched on it, he immediately spit the broken shell out in distaste.
Casseomae watched with concern. “He’s so bony as it is. We’ve got to find something he can eat.”
“His kind ain’t fit for Forest food,” Dumpster said. “They ate beefs, cousins of the deer but bigger and slower and stupider. Unfortunately the wolves wiped them out long ago.”
“I could catch him a fawn,” Casseomae said. “Maybe he’d eat that.”
“Old Devils never ate fresh kills. They stuffed the meat in containers called cans. Tough to open, but of course we figured out how!” Dumpster twitched his whiskers smugly. “Old Devils loved eating birds, too, but they had to be set on fire and I’ve got no memory for how to do that.”
Casseomae considered the cub’s predicament as they continued. Was it hopeless to expect that the child could live off the offerings of the Forest? Was his kind really so different from the tribes of voras? Could they only survive with canned foods and false hides and devices and relics?
By nightfall, purple thunderheads had risen behind them and rumbles pealed through the trees. After the heat of the day, Casseomae didn’t mind the prospect of a wet night. The rain began with white flashes of lightning, sending the child closer to her. A sharp crack of thunder erupted, shaking the ground.
“It’s safe, cub,” Casseomae snorted gently to the whimpering child, and then added to Dumpster, “I’d figure if he came from the sky, he’d have seen storms worse than this—”
“The highway!” Dumpster leaped from her back and sprinted ahead over rising puddles until he stood on the path’s hard, cracked surface. “At last, we’ve found it again.”
As Casseomae lumbered up onto the highway, she paused to sniff. She peered through the gray falling light and rain. “That’s not all that’s back.”
The child gave a shout and began running toward a coppery-red form lying under the shelter of an overturned vehicle. When Casseomae caught up, she feared the dog might be dead. He was lying on his side with blood in his fur. But when the child knelt next to him, he opened his eyes. “You found me,” he gasped.
“Not on purpose,” Dumpster said.
“The Companion has been led back to me,” the dog said, clearly pleased as the child nuzzled his fur and chirped softly to him.
“Murk’s whiskers,” Dumpster mumbled.
“Are you badly hurt?” Casseomae asked. “How did you escape Rend’s rout?”
“Rend,” the dog scoffed, licking the child’s hand before continuing. “Is that her name? A more vicious coyote I’ve never met. Fortunately she keeps poor company. Her mate and guards have no more sense than doves and hardly any more courage. I escaped with only a few bites but none so deep.”
“Then why don’t you get up?” Dumpster said. “If a vora had come across you before us, you’d be in a poop pile of trouble, wouldn’t you?”
“He’s plainly exhausted.” Casseomae flopped to the still-warm highway as the rain soaked into her fur.
Standing out in the pouring rain, Dumpster turned his black eyes from the dog to Casseomae. “Then let’s go before he can follow us. If we set off now—”
“You’ll be washed away in no time,” Casseomae grunted. “We’ll rest here for the night.”
“With this cur?” Dumpster said in disbelief.
“He helped us.”
“That Faithful vermin didn’t help me. He helped the pup.”
The dog lifted his head. “You call me a Faithful, rat, and yet you’re the one traveling with a Skinless One. You’re helping him as well.”
“I’m not helping him,” Dumpster squeaked.
“You found him that Skinless food,” Casseomae reminded him.
“That’s not the same!” Dumpster clicked his teeth angrily. “Besides, even if I was helping this here pup, that doesn’t make me a Faithful. Feeding a lost pup isn’t the same as serving in the army of the Old Devils. It isn’t the same as helping those murderers wage war against the Forest tribes.”
The cub stared with owl-wide eyes as Dumpster skulked off toward another car not far away, then he crawled in next to the dog, out of the rain.
Casseomae expelled a sharp snort of air. “Ignore him, dog. He has a foul temper since he lost his mischief. Probably had it before then too.”
“His words don’t hurt me. I’ve kept my oath and soon I’ll be rewarded.”
“Oath?” Casseomae grunted.
The dog struggled up onto his forepaws. “Tell me, bear. Where did this pup come from?”
“You won’t believe me.”
“I scarcely believe the pup is real, even with his paws upon me.”
“He fell from the sky,” Casseomae replied.
The dog cocked his head. “You mock me. Like the rat, you think since I’m a Faithful—”
“I’ve got nothing against you, dog. And I’m not lying. Even the rat saw it. They fell—”
“They? There are other Companions?”
“They’re dead,” Casseomae said.
“Was it the Ogeema?” the dog asked, a slight growl in his breast. “Did he kill them?”
“No. They died from the fall. Only this cub survived.”
“But there could be others, couldn’t there?” the dog barked. The child looked around sleepily before lowering his head back to his arm. As his eyes closed, he reached out to pat the dog’s head. “The pup could lead us to them,” the dog said.
“The cub is lost,” Casseomae said. “He doesn’t know where to go. I’ve barely been able to get the pitiful thing to follow me.”
The dog continued to lick happily at the child’s hand. The cub pulled it away with a few chirps of pleasant complaint before rolling over to fall back asleep.
The dog grinned widely at Casseomae. “My clan tells of a day when the Companions will return. When we’ll be reunited and our persecution by the Ogeema and his kind will be over. But only if we remain faithful and keep our oath of loyalty until they return. And now they’ve returned! Now they are coming back to us, coming back home.”
“There are no other Companions,” Casseomae said. “I told you he’s the only one.”
“You
’re wrong,” the dog replied. “There are others. There have to be. And the pup will lead me to them.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
As morning light spilled across the highway, the rain evaporated from the leaves in a steamy mist. The dog was up and scampering around. The child chased after him, calling out his own strange and happy barking noises. Dumpster emerged to join Casseomae where she had dug up an ant mound.
“I assume you’re not running him off for a reason.”
“I can’t protect the cub alone,” Casseomae said. “I need the dog.”
“You need that dog like you need a flea in your ear,” Dumpster said. “I’ll be scratchin’ glad when I find my mischief. Then I can leave you to watch that pair of tongue-lappers run around in circles.”
Casseomae peered at the child and the dog playing together. Their grinning expressions did make them seem akin.
The child leaped on top of a relic. His clothing-hide was opened at the chest, and the bottoms were rolled up to his knees. With the arm portions now cut away, he looked like he was molting—shiny blue giving way to a slightly fuzzy pink-white. But all of it was taking on the brownish hue of dirt. The cub had grown filthy since his arrival and last night’s rain only made it worse. The Skinless certainly didn’t know how to stay clean like the Forest’s cubs.
The dog trotted over and said, “We’d better not follow this trail. Too many voras and viands use it.”
“Well, this is the way we’re going,” Dumpster said. “If you’re too cur-hearted to follow us, you can go another way.”
The dog bristled but tried to pointedly ignore the rat. “Why are you following the highway?” he asked Casseomae.
“His mischief is going that way,” Casseomae said. “In search of a safer territory. I’m hoping it will lead me to a safe territory too. For the cub.”
“Until the Companions take back their place, there is no safe territory in the Forest for his kind,” the dog said.
“What about the Havenlands?” Casseomae asked.
The dog flattened his ear and glanced over at Dumpster. “You’ve been listening too much to that rat. The Havenlands don’t exist.”
The Prince Who Fell from the Sky Page 7