He Said, Sidhe Said

by Tanya Huff

  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, 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 if I was 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 litter-mates. 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 howling. "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 – 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.

  "You're going to come out into a parking lot. Cross it on a bit of an angle… Go to your left. No, your other left. …and you can use the dumpster to go over the fence."

  And why was I still listening to the crow?

  On the other side of the fence, two cats hissed insults as I went by, and a small, fat dog on a rope started barking furiously. I was gone before anyone came out to investigate the disturbance, but not so far gone that I couldn't hear them blame the whole noisy situation on the cats. Pretty funny.

  Determining this new road went in essentially the right direction, I stopped running full out and dropped into a distance eating trot.

  "Aren't you in a hurry?" The crow was on one of the wires that crossed over the street, calling the question down to me. Not exactly unnoticeable to my mind, but what did I know of this world? "Shouldn't you be moving faster?"

  "I know what I'm doing," I snapped. "Don't you have a flock to join?"

  "A murder." She flew ahead and landed again.

  "A what?"

  "A group of crows is called a murder. A murder of crows."

  "Why?" I couldn't stop myself from asking even though I knew any interest would only encourage her to hang around.

  Fly ahead. Land. "I don't know."

  "I thought crows remembered everything?"

  Dawn shrugged philosophically. "Can't remember what I've never been told."

  "All right. Fine. Don't you have a murder to join?"

  Fly ahead. Land. "Not any more. I left because I'd heard all their stories."

  "Stories? What does that have to do…"

  She clacked her beak. "I get bored easily."

  We went on like that until nearly full dark. Dawn flapped from wire to wire, telling me way more crow stories than any dog would ever want to know. A lot of them involved carrion. Then, as the last of the light disappeared, I looked up and she was gone. I shouldn't have been surprised; like most birds, crows prefer not to fly at night. Maybe she should have thought about that before she offered to help. I shouldn't have missed her. But I did.

  I walked most of the night, napping twice but not feeling safe enough to sleep deeply. As the sky began to lighten, the pull of the Gate became so strong that I knew I was close. Using Dawn's dumpster trick, I went over another fence, finding Marcus the only thought in my mind.

  Which was why I didn't notice the men until I was in the midst of them.

  "Holy fuck! Would you look at the size of that mutt!"

  They were all around me. Something hard hit me on the left shoulder, and I reacted without thinking. The scent of so many males was too strong a challenge. I whirled to the left, flattened my ears, and snarled.

  The man scrambled back. I could smell his fear. A piece of broken brick glanced off my back. The sharp end of a stick jabbed at my haunches. I should have kept running. Should have. Didn't. Now they'd closed in. Too close.

  I heard a length of chain hiss past my head.

  If they wanted a fight…

  Then I heard a hoarse shriek of outrage, a scream of pain, and the circle made up of legs and boots and rough weapons opened.

  "Where the fuck did that crow come from!"

  I don't know how much damage she stayed to do, but when she found me again, I'd gone to ground. I heard the sound of claws on gravel, looked out from behind the huge wheel on the trailer that sheltered me, and there she was. She snatched up a discarded piece of sugared bread, threw back her head and swallowed, then hopped closer.

  "All right, I'm convinced, you really do need to find this Marcus of yours because you shouldn't be running around wit
hout a keeper. What kind of an idiot picks a fight with seven big, burly, cranky, construction workers before they've had their first coffee? You know, if you'd tried the roll-over look at me I'm so cute schtick, you'd have probably gotten a belly rub and a couple of sandwiches. Those kind of guys usually like a dog that's big enough they're not afraid of breaking it. So, you hiding under there?"

  As she'd actually paused, I assumed she wanted an answer. "Yes."

  "Why?"

  I glanced up at the massive trailer. "Because I fit. And because the Gate's in that building."

  Dawn turned enough to study the building with her right eye.

  It was constructed of the big, made-stone blocks. I'd seen windows and a door along the front, but neither on the sides. The back of the building, where the trailers were parked, had a set of huge double doors and one smaller one with a light over it.

  "So, what do you do now?" she asked.

  "I wait." This close to the Gate, I was too jumpy to lie down, but there wasn't enough head room to pace. I had to settle for digging a trench in the gravel with a front paw. "I wait until one of those doors open, then I run inside."

  "And once you're inside?"

  "I keep from being grabbed long enough to get through the Gate."

  "I like a dog with a plan. But I'm warning you, it's barely daylight and not a lot of people are up at this…"

  One of the big double doors swung open and slammed back against the made-stone wall with a crash loud enough to fling Dawn into the air and raise the hackles on my neck. With the barrier out of the way, the pull of the Gate nearly dragged me out of my hiding place, but I'd been stupid once this morning, and stupid wouldn't help me find Marcus.

  Then the other door opened and men appeared carrying huge made-things of metal and plastic and glass that I didn't recognize. I felt the trailer above me shake as they climbed up the ramp.

  "Hey, a film crew." Dawn was back on the ground. "I'll let you in on a secret, Rueben – there's good pickings in the garbage outside the craft services truck. These guys never seem to have time to finish eating anything."

  I had no idea what she was talking about. Nor did I care.

  Two of the men were in the trailer. The other two were out of sight in the building.