Chapter 1 Love #4
“Hmm? Oh.” She nodded at the pile of wood and stone just beyond the length of her chain. “That thing over there. That’s what they call it.” She settled in, crossed her forepaws, and lay her head on them. “Aaah.”
Blacktail looked at the den of her masters.
Not that it was a proper den—something like a cave, or perhaps a sleeping hole under a deadfall—But it filled the same need as a den.
This is where they sleep, he thought. It is where they go to feel safe.
He studied the thing—tracked its straight and unnatural lines, sniffed its muddled morass of chemicals, oily food, man-stink…
perfume…other things as well. He was close enough to feel the warmth of it, not quite so intense as a living beast, but more than a rock or a tree.
As he watched something inside, the walls clattered.
A moment later, laughter. Man. Woman. A young-ish child.
Very well then, Blacktail thought. House. He didn’t quite snarl, but something in him stirred.
Her head perked up. “What’s the matter?”
“Hmm?” He turned back to her. “Sorry. I was just thinking.”
“Do tell.”
Blacktail was new to courtship, but he had good instincts for a scrap. He took a long breath, turned back to face her, wagging his tail in wide, slow arcs. “I was thinking that my wife should not be bound like this.”
“Oh? Oh really?” She stood up, pulled away from him. “Well. Well. I’m terribly sorry. Just, oodles of sorry. Tell me, O Woodsy Stranger, how shall I redress this wrong? How shall I best alter my life to suit you?”
“You should come with me,” Blacktail said. “I’ve got a great hill. Top notch, really. Everyone says so. There’s plenty of game, a nice clean stream—mountain runoff, you know, very fresh. Everybody loves it there. Why, just this morning some jerk came by and—”
“Me? Me. Starving in the woods, a common trash bandit? Ha! See here, country pup—you’re a nice lay. Annnnd…I won’t deny you’re easy on the eyes. But you presume a lot.”
Blacktail stood and glared down at her. He was at least a head taller than she. His eyes flashed in the moonlight. “My mother killed for that hill,” he said. “Many times. I have, too. I am no trash bandit.” He turned to go.
“Wait!” she said. “Please, wait.” Her tone was softer now. “I’m sorry. Really. My mouth works a lot quicker than my brain. My mother always said so.”
Blacktail stopped. After a moment he turned back to her, twitched his tail once. “It’s fine.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. Really. But I should still go. The sun will be up soon. I doubt that your two-legs would welcome me here. Or—who knows—maybe they would?” He showed his teeth in a way that frightened her a bit. “They might try to put me on a leash.”
She considered this. “I see your point. That probably wouldn’t end well.”
“No. Probably not.”
“Very well. Go. But will you return? This evening? I really am sorry for offending you.”
Blacktail smiled, his nostrils flaring at her scent. “Tell me your name, then.”
“My mistress calls me Renren.”
Blacktail didn’t much care for the sound of the two-legs’ name on this fine creature, but that was hardly her fault. “A pretty name.”
“See you this evening, then?”
He wagged his tail, then bounded over the garden wall and back into the wild.
—
On the way back to his den Blacktail stopped for a quick lunch in the woods.
Perhaps not coincidentally, he found himself in the mood for squirrel.
Bite you, Car. Afterward he lay down to sleep, but found that he could not.
His home seemed emptier than it had when he woke the day before.
The memory of Renren’s scent weighed on his mind.
I will visit her when the moon rises, he thought. Best not to appear too eager.
He managed to wait until late afternoon before setting out. By twilight he lay hidden in a patch of brush, staring at her den with his head on his paws and a wistful grin on his face. When it was dark—just—he picked up the rabbit he had brought her and hopped the wall again.
“Back so soon?” she said. Her tone was cool. His heart fell for a moment. Then he noticed that her tail was swishing back and forth fast enough to create a breeze.
“I, er, brought you something,” he said gruffly.
“Oh?” She sniffed the rabbit. “Thanks, but I just ate.” She indicated the bowl of food-rocks beside her sleeping hole.
He poked his nose in the bowl, gave it a sniff, and stifled a gag. How can she eat that stuff? When he looked up, Renren’s eyes were fixed on the rabbit and a thick runner of drool hung from the side of her mouth.
“Well, if you don’t want it…” he said.
“No! That is, I, ah…Oh, give me that.” She shouldered him aside and snapped up the rabbit.
“Not bad,” she allowed. “A bit crunchy”—here she snapped a leg bone—“but a good flavor.” She chewed the haunch, her eyes widening when its juices slipped down her throat.
“Honestly, it’s better than good.” Then, grudgingly, “Thank you. You caught it yourself?”
“I did.”
“Do you hunter types always eat so well?”
“Well…the winters can get a little lean,” he admitted, “but mostly I do well enough. If you like that, you should taste the deer. Unbelievable.” He nuzzled her belly, sniffing playfully, and she giggled.
“Renren?”
“Yes?”
“Your scent seems different tonight. It is…more complex. Richer.”
“Is it?” She smiled. “I thought it might be my imagination. My mum said it usually takes longer.”
“Said what usually takes longer?”
“You really don’t know?”
He only looked at her, clearly baffled.
“I’m pregnant. In a few moons’ time little dogs will crawl out of me, as with my mother, and hers before.”
He blinked. “You’re making that up.”
She laughed. “No, not at all. This is how it is done, or so I am told. You are a father now, Blacktail.”
“What, me?” He thought about it for a moment, then wagged his tail. “Puppies, you say?”
“This pleases you?”
“Yes, it pleases me. Yes. Very much.”
“Then come to me,” she said, and presented herself to him again.
In this manner they passed the evenings of the autumn together.
Most nights Blacktail brought her a mouse or a possum or a squirrel, and told her about life on his hill.
Perhaps, he suggested, she might come to visit him there?
She might find it to her liking. It was, he sometimes opined, a decent place to raise a family.
Renren always objected, saying that she could not climb the wall, or that she would be cold in winter, or it was an awfully long way to walk. But they both knew the real reason was that she had spent her whole life as a slave, and the world beyond the wall frightened her.
One afternoon, as Renren lay waiting for Blacktail in her garden, a squirrel ventured down from his tree to gather fruit.
The fact that they were old acquaintances—his name was Fatcheeks—and he had often been her only companion did not, in Renren’s mind, relieve her of her fundamental duty to attempt to eat him when the opportunity presented itself.
So she pretended to nap, and when he was close enough, she bounded after him.
There was never any real chance of catching him—if nothing else, she was by now very pregnant. But Fatcheeks was polite enough to run away as if truly frightened, and Renren bounded after him, her ears flopping in the breeze. It was a good game—until her chain snapped her back.
Suddenly and without warning, she was furious.
Is this what you want for your puppies? she asked herself.
Life on a chain? Afraid to go out into the world because they have known no other way?
She turned and snapped at her chain, gnawing at it until her gums bled.
You are contemptible, she thought. You deserve to be a slave.
Fatcheeks watched her from a safe distance, confused and, touchingly, a little worried.
iv
That night, when Blacktail asked her to go with him, she agreed. “But it has to be tomorrow,” she added.
“What? Why not tonight?”
She met his gaze. “The child of this house has been kind to me on occasion—he plays chewtoy with me, and once there was a pork chop. I would give him a last kiss before I go.”
“But…it will not understand….”
“You do not know them as I do,” she said. “They are strange and sometimes cruel, true enough. But in their essence, their nature, they are not so different from us. They breathe. They mate. I think they may even love. I owe them this much.”
“Very well, then,” Blacktail said. “Tomorrow.” As the sun broke over the horizon he leapt once again over the garden wall.
All that day he waited in the small patch of forest behind the den.
He tried to sleep, but the joy in his heart was such that he could do nothing but stare at the walls and dream of the days to come.
They would live on his hill. She would give birth to a litter of strong pups, and he would teach them all to hunt.
In time they might even spread to other hills, and…
Blacktail broke off from his ruminations. A female two-legs, one of those that walked in a stinking cloud of flowers and rosewood, was dragging Renren toward the black and gaping mouth of Car. Blacktail started toward them with a growl, thinking that she was being sacrificed.
Renren had been watching for this, and she stopped him with a single bark. “I don’t know what she’s about, but don’t worry,” she yelled. “We do this from time to time. Car is harmless, and the smells are fun. Be patient a little while longer.”
Blacktail paused for a moment in an agony of indecision, then crouched back down. In a few moments Car had carried her away.
All that morning and afternoon he waited. He didn’t move from his ditch. He hardly dared to breathe. He wasn’t one to embrace despair at the slightest setback, but he could feel it stalking him, huge and nightmarish, as he hunkered alone and helpless among the stinks of men.