by Bobbie Pyron
“It’s beautiful,” she sighed.
“It’s the wild,” Trouble said in a reverent whisper.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Mischief called. “I’m willing to bet that Vetch is still looking for you.”
Trouble cocked his head to one side. “What’s a Vetch?”
“Not a what but a who,” Mischief said. “He’s that human who tried to catch you yesterday.”
Trouble looked behind him. There, just feet away, cars and trucks and Makers hurried by. An odor, faint but menacing in its familiarity, hung in the air. A smell that evoked the eyes of the hunter: Officer Vetch.
He looked down at Rosebud. “The crow’s right. We have to go farther, and quickly.”
The end of the opossum’s nose blushed red with embarrassment. “I don’t think I can keep up with you.”
Trouble looked at the city, the forest, and back at the opossum. Then he lay down on the grass. “Can you climb on?” he asked.
Of course she could. Hadn’t she and her brothers and sisters spent months riding on their mama’s back?
In seconds she sprawled across the coyote’s back, paws clutching the ruff around his neck.
They crossed a wide paved trail lined with benches, then slipped through a hedgerow and down a hill to the biggest meadow Trouble had ever seen. The sight of trees, the wide sweep of grass made Trouble’s heart ache for his family.
Still, this huge meadow provided no place to hide. “Is there a forest?” he asked the crow.
“This way,” the crow answered.
They climbed a low hill, crossed one bridge and then another. To Trouble’s delight, he heard the soft music of a meandering stream. Trouble wanted so very much to investigate the rocks, but his coyote instinct urged him to find cover.
He trotted farther into the deep green of the forest. They skirted a small, jewel-like pond surrounded by azalea bushes. Beautiful, but still not what Trouble sought.
And then, just around the corner, there it was: an ancient, crumbling stone wall covered by decades of intertwining strands of ivy, honeysuckle, and blackberry canes.
Trouble slipped into a surprisingly large den hidden behind a screen of rock and bushes. He could easily have slept with his brother and sisters in this hideaway.
He circled once, circled twice, then curled up tight with his nose buried under the tip of his tail. He didn’t feel the little opossum curl up against him; he didn’t see Mischief hide the keys in the hollow of a tree, nor did he smell the squirrel who poked his head into the den to investigate. For the first time in two days, Trouble felt safe and he slept.
The pup slept even as the sun reached the top of the sky and people filled the park. He slept as lovers picnicked in the meadow, as children sailed small boats across the pond, as runners checked their heart rates.
Trouble did not hear the excited yips of the dogs and people playing fetch in the meadow; he did not hear the clip clop of horses pulling carriages, the cluck and coo of pigeons, the constant chatter of squirrels.
He even slept through a late-afternoon thunderstorm.
Finally, at dusk, thirst and hunger woke him. Careful not to disturb the sleeping opossum, Trouble crept from his den. He stretched his long legs, first one back leg and then the other, and sniffed the air. Downhill from his den, he smelled water and heard a rustle.
He saw a squirrel scurry from the rocks bordering a small cove on the lake.
His stomach rumbled.
He crept behind a long curtain of willow branches, staying downwind of the squirrel.
When he was just a few feet from the unsuspecting creature, he gathered his hind legs beneath him and arced up in the air and down onto his dinner. His brother, Pounce, would have been proud.
17
Wildborn
Trouble licked the last of the squirrel from his paws, then took a long drink. For the first time in two days, he felt rested and satiated. His curiosity returned by leaps and bounds.
He climbed to the top of a large boulder and gazed across the lake. Never had he seen so much water, stretching as far as his eyes could see. He could hear and smell Makers coming and going along the paved trail he had crossed earlier. The wildness in him trembled at the thought of encountering more of them.
But then there was the trouble part of him.
Keeping to the shadows, he slunk back up the hill. He crept as close as he dared to this place thick with the scent of Makers and settled under a wild tangle of forsythia.
Never in his short life had Trouble ever imagined so many Makers—young Makers, old Makers, Makers running (although Trouble never could see what chased them, or what, for that matter, they were chasing), Makers riding atop skeletons of small Beasts, and even Makers with wheels on their feet. It was all so fascinating!
And then Trouble saw the most curious sight of all: dogs leading Makers by long strings! Trouble knew what dogs were from his visits to the Maker’s home on the edge of the forest. He knew they always lived with Makers, which seemed an odd thing to do.
He heard a flutter and a rustle. Mischief hopped over to the coyote.
“Why do the dogs lead them?” Trouble watched a tall, thin Maker pulled along by a dog no bigger than a rabbit. “Are the Makers blind? Are they too dumb to find their way?” It had not escaped the coyote’s notice how very small the Makers’ noses and ears were.
Mischief chortled. “You got that right. Humans, which is what they’re called, are not the brightest, if you get my meaning.”
Trouble wasn’t entirely sure he did. But before he could ask Mischief what he meant, he saw something he could never have imagined: A Maker—a human—carefully used a plastic bag to pick up the waste its leader dog had deposited in the grass and—oh!—carried it along with her.
Trouble looked at Mischief in disbelief. “The Makers—er, humans—worship the dogs?” It was the only possible explanation, wasn’t it?
Mischief cawed with delight.
The sky grew dark. The parade of humans along the paved trail waned, then stopped altogether.
For the first time, away from the towering buildings and streetlights, Trouble saw stars in a wide blanket of purple sky. Still, the light from the city washed the North Star from the sky.
“Soon,” he said to Rosebud as she washed her face and whiskers, “the moon will be out.”
Rosebud paused. “I do not like the moon,” she said. “Especially the full moon.”
Trouble blinked. “How can you not like the moon? The moon is the mother. My father says the moon is Divine Light.”
“Exactly,” Rosebud said. “Let’s see how much you like that ‘Divine Light’ if you’re being hunted to eat.” Her whiskers quivered.
Trouble considered this. He had rarely been hunted for food, but he did know a lot about the moon.
“I think,” he said carefully, “that sometimes you have to take risks to see something beautiful.”
Finally, the moon rose. Trouble watched it slowly climb, not above the jagged tops of trees like at home, but above the jagged New York City skyline in the distance.
Rosebud peered out from their den in the bramble and looked west. A half moon rested on its side in the sky. She sighed with relief. She ambled out and stood next to Trouble.
“Do you think,” the coyote mused, “this is the same moon that rises over our meadow by Singing Creek? The moon we sing to?”
Rosebud looked from the moon to the coyote. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never thought about that. I’ve lived most of my life in the city, under this sky.”
The two friends watched the moon together, one with a longing in his heart and the other with more questions than she had ever known.
“Perhaps,” she said, “we should ask the crow. Birds go many places opossums don’t.”
Frogs began their evening song; fireflies floated from the forest on the far side of the meadow, blinking. A bat careened through the sky.
Trouble stood and shook off his ponder
ing. It was time to explore.
“Come on,” he said to Rosebud.
They scouted the edge of the inlet. Rosebud discovered for the first time the particular deliciousness of fresh frog. Trouble discovered catching one was much harder than it looked, although the fun was in the trying.
They investigated the wide meadow where grass held the smells of Makers, dogs, and food. The two friends shared the remains of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Rosebud’s ears trembled with delight at the sight of a coyote with peanut butter stuck to the roof of his mouth.
They crossed another of the humans’ paved trails and came, finally, to a lovely forest glen.
Crickets chorused and the moon stood high in the sky, and just for a moment Trouble was home with his family.
He threw back his head, closed his eyes, and sang,
Oh Mother Moon, rising in the sky,
we welcome you back on this summer night.
We will hunt by your light.
We will love by your light.
We will dance by your light.
Oh Mother Moon, rising in the sky,
we welcome you,
we sing to you,
Mother Moon in the sky.
The forest grew quiet. Rosebud gazed up at the coyote in astonishment. Mischief alighted on a branch close by.
Trouble listened for the answering voices of his pack. None came. He knew, then, they must be very far away.
Heartbroken, he sang his longing to the moon.
Where is my home in the forest
on this moonlit night?
With my mother and father and family.
They are my heart. They are my home.
Where is my home?
Where is my home
on this moonlit night?
The last high note of Trouble’s song sailed through the night.
“Oh my, oh my,” said a voice. “That was quite something.”
Trouble opened his eyes. In the glen sat a fox, her red-and-white coat shimmering in the moonlight. Rosebud gasped and hid between Trouble’s legs.
“The last note was a bit sharp,” a sonorous voice said from the top of an old cherry tree, “and the rhyming scheme lacked acceptable meter.”
Trouble peered up into the trees. There, standing tall on a limb, huge eyes shining as bright as twin moons, perched a great horned owl. It glared down at the coyote with disdain.
“It’s better than anything you could do,” Mischief snapped.
The owl drew himself up, teetering just a bit on the branch. “Uncouth cad,” he hissed.
The fox flicked the white tip of her tail. “That song made me think of the den where I was born. Such happy times, they were. I’m raising my own kits in that very same den where my mother raised me. Home is family, isn’t it?”
“Home is everywhere,” Mischief declared. “Home is all that I see.”
Rosebud thought about home too. Home had once been deep in her mother’s pouch, then riding on her mother’s back. But her family had long ago gone its separate ways.
Trouble looked back up at the sky. He heard crickets, yes, and the wind in the trees. But farther beyond, yet not so far, he heard pulsing traffic, bleating horns, wailing sirens, and the restless world of Makers.
“This is not my home,” he said.
“Then might I suggest,” the owl said with a menacing click of his talons, “you go back from whence you came?”
“But I don’t know how to get back to my home,” Trouble said.
“Just skulk away like the good little scavenger you are,” the owl said, “and retrace your steps back to wherever you came from.”
All eyes turned to Trouble.
“But it’s not that easy,” he said.
And then, as the moon traced its way across the summer sky, past the Milky Way and the Big Dipper, Trouble told his story. He told them about the Singing Creek Pack, and the wide green meadow, and the den beneath the roots of an old oak tree, and the sky that went on forever.
He told them about wanting to see what was beyond his home and the Maker’s house, and his plan, and the long ride in the belly of the Beast, and all that had happened since, including the terrible Officer Vetch and the big woman in the subway train and all the Makers screaming and yelling and threatening.
They listened without a sound beneath the moon.
“That’s it,” Trouble said. “That’s how I got here.”
“You are Wildborn,” the fox whispered.
The others nodded, including the owl.
“Wildborn,” they said with reverence.
18
Minette
The next morning, the poet and the poodle did what they did every morning: they rose from their beds in the gray light of dawn. They ate their poached eggs and toast; brushed teeth, hair, and fur; and went out to see what the morning would bring.
Minette, the poodle, yawned. She had not slept well because of the howling that had awakened her the night before.
It was not unusual to hear dogs howling in the city, especially in the summer when apartment windows were open to let in the cool night air. But this howling was different in ways Minette could not name but felt in her bones.
Minette and the poet, Madame Reveuse, locked their apartment door and rode the elevator down eight floors. Minette’s toenails clicked on the worn marble floor of the lobby as she trotted beside Madame.
“Bonjour,” Madame Reveuse said to the doorman.
“And good morning to you,” the doorman said as he pulled open the door. As always, he patted the top of Minette’s fine, curly head, something she did not particularly like but tolerated nonetheless. It would have been rude to do otherwise.
The sky was just turning from pale gray to pink, the streets almost deserted. A newspaper deliveryman removed bundles of papers from the trunk of his car. A shopkeeper swept the sidewalk in front of her bakery. A doorman stood outside a grand apartment building smoking a cigarette.
Madame Reveuse and Minette strode down West Seventy-Second Street. At 6:30 in the morning, they had Manhattan mostly and blissfully to themselves.
Until they arrived at the west entrance to Central Park. There, they joined the small but dedicated pack of early-morning dogs and their walkers.
Madame unclipped the leash from Minette’s sparkling pink collar. “Go play,” she said, though they both knew she wouldn’t. Minette was not a game player or ball chaser. She most certainly was not one to roll in anything, smelly or otherwise. What was the point of getting her lovely coat dirty?
The poet and the poodle followed the winding paths past Strawberry Fields, Cherry Hill, over Bow Bridge (Minette’s personal favorite of all the Central Park bridges), and into the deep green of The Ramble. There, the poet sat on a bench perched on a dome of ancient stone and removed a pad of paper and a pen. It was here she composed the poems for which she was famous.
Once she was sure her mistress was absorbed in her work, Minette wandered down to the meadow below. Soon the sun would burn the dew off the grass, but for now it felt wonderful on her paws. In her mind, she composed her own poem.
Cool wet on my feet
sun has not burned off the dew
much to my delight.
Unlike Madame Reveuse, whose poems tended toward long and rambling, Minette preferred the spare simplicity of haiku.
Minette’s long, perfectly tapered snout twitched. Her wet, black nostrils flared. The breeze carried a new scent up from the willow cove, something she had not encountered before. A doglike smell, but not quite.
Slowly, she made her way along the edge of the meadow, nose working its way over bushes and hedges and stones. Here was Astro’s mark, left two days before. And there, close to the grass, was Roxie the tiny Yorkshire terrier’s mark from yesterday.
She ignored the yips and barks of the other dogs playing fetch with their people. She ignored the crow who called from a nearby tree, “Dog! Dog!” The smell grew stronger.
Minette follow
ed her nose to a tangle of bushes and vines surrounded by large stones.
There.
She bent down and peered into the den. Inside, curled together, were a coyote and an opossum. And littering their small den were banana peels, bones, apple cores, and the fur of a former squirrel.
“Oh!” she exclaimed.
Trouble’s eyes flew open.
There before him was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen. Wide brown eyes, long neck, aristocratic snout, and, most extraordinary of all, curls! Who could have ever imagined such a thing?
Trouble sat up and grinned his best coyote grin. “Hello!” he said. “I’m Trouble.”
Catching the thick odor of blood on his breath, Minette growled, “Of that I am quite certain.”
She wheeled and, in a most dignified manner, trotted back up the hill to her poet.
“There you are, ma chérie,” the poet cooed to the dog as she packed up her paper and pen. “I don’t know about you, but I have worked up an appetite. Shall we go?”
While Madame retied her wide straw hat, Minette gazed down to the meadow. There, just there, she could see Trouble’s head poking out from the den, watching her. With a swift, dainty squat, the poodle left her mark, then trotted away.
19
Close Encounter
Trouble watched from the cover of his den and waited. He wanted so very much to dash up to the bench where Minette had left her mark so he could read about her. Twice, he’d started creeping from the den, despite the dogs and humans still playing in the meadow. Twice, Mischief had squawked, “Don’t!”
Finally, as the sun reached the tops of the trees and the summer air grew warm and thick, the humans and dogs left.
Trouble trotted up the rise to the bench and sniffed. Yes, the remarkable creature was a dog and a female. He closed his eyes and drank in her scent mark. She was not a pup, but neither was she old. She was healthy and had eaten an egg recently. Her mark said the bench and, most important, the Maker on the bench were hers and hers alone.
Trouble sniffed the bench (the Maker was female, old but healthy) and all around it. He sniffed the sidewalk for the dog’s tracks and followed them all the way to Bow Bridge. Just as he was about to step onto the bridge, he heard light footsteps behind him.