The Dog (5 page)

the wind off the mountains. He nipped at them when he

crossed the wet ground by the shore. That wind was just

fresh sky and water. It could continue for many days in a

row, caressing the hardy yellow flower heads as they swayed

and bobbed. The rowans had unfolded their leaves in long

points like bird claws, white side up in the breeze. The wind

sang in the birch leaves.

The wind off the mountains never bothered him. It never

brought anything stinging or sticky, nothing worrisome or

threatening like the capricious wind that sometimes blew the

water in the rapids back against the flow. The wind off the

mountains was steady. Sometimes it picked up and then the

lake showed its white fangs off in the distance. High above,

the wind sang in the spruces. In the grass it was warm. The

creatures that rustled and squeaked weren't affected by the

wind, even when it made enormous waves in the grass.

The wind raised the fur on his back but his muzzle was

down among the voles. The grass was so full of strong smells

that he sometimes had to raise his head to clear his nose. It

smelled of yarrow about to bloom, a compact, heavily spicy

scent. The mouldering humus was steaming, crawling with

blind, hard-shelled insects that ground their teeth, crisscrossed

by fat, industrious bugs the thrushes could find by

listening. He himself caught them only by chance when his

sharp claws scratched the ground. The delicate scents of

cranesbill, cow parsley, buttercup, snakeweed and the slender,

hardy bluebell, sheep's sorrel and tormentil were intermingled

with that of the grass. The hoverflies and wasps and the

fuzzy bumblebees filled the world that was the flowering

roof of the pasture with a slowly rising and falling hum.

The dog ploughed through the grass, leaving deep furrows

behind him. Sometimes when the sun, the scents and

the sounds made him dizzy with languid pleasure, a delight

so sweet it almost tickled, he lay belly up, rubbing his back

against the grassy carpet. He wriggled, his body coiling,

front paws waving. Afterwards he got up quickly and shook

his coat. When he ambled off he was himself again, composed

and on guard. Behind him the grass was flattened and

the thin blades of cranesbill and starwort were pressed down.

Vessels had been broken, green blood was flowing. Slowly

the work began to restore everything to its pre-disaster state.

Fluids found their way to vessels that didn't leak. Wounds

dried up and blisters healed. By then, though, he was already

lying on a rock near the shore, licking his coat clean from

everything that had stuck to it in the sea of grass.

At night the large grey creatures emerged. They were often

standing down where the forest met the marsh. In the stillness

they resembled rocks and shadows, heavy shapes that

dissolved in the dark and seemed to disperse among the tree

trunks. His ears and nose told him where they were but his

eyes could no longer make them out.

Resting in his old sleeping place, he became accustomed

to them. Their movements were slow and imposing and they

made careless noises, breaking twigs and tramping through

mud with their hooves. They made wheezing sounds and

the bark ripped in their powerful teeth. He saw their legs

moving, white in the dim light. They were always together.

It was quite a while before he realised there were two of

them. If one appeared at the edge of the marsh in the erratic

dawn rays flickering before his eyes, if the shadows and the

sound of snapping twigs coalesced into a single body, then he

knew there would be another one down there too. He listened,

one ear cocked, for the one who was missing.

But he didn't know they were yearlings, or that the female

moose who had given birth to them and nursed them last

year was the carcass that had kept him alive from late winter

to spring. The hunters had sent the dogs after her but she got

away. She'd survived till midwinter with a shattered jaw, and

had died of starvation.

His nose was honed in on voles and mice and the concentrated

smell of bird nests; he ignored most of what the

ground and grass could tell him. There was a blur of smells

everywhere.

But he followed the tracks of the moose. Plunging into

the fresh trails they made gave him intense pleasure. His

entire body quivered in a frenzy of joy. But when he picked

up their scent he stopped. He could hear them wheezing. A

yelp forced its way out of his throat, confusing him, and he

pulled back.

Restlessness came over him. All the creatures living in

dens and holes, moving about in the pale light under the

trees, creating new wafts of scent in the night, all of them

had their own ways. Only he walked with his nose to the

ground, searching and listening, waiting. When he'd found

a mouthful that relieved the pangs of hunger he looked for

a place to sleep, but he was always expectant.

No one came. His restlessness stirred as the light faded. It

became intense when the smell of moose in the tracks

merged with their scent in the air. Bewildered, he withdrew

under a spruce, licking his paws and listening. It seemed as if

each and every creature around him had scents and trails that

were their own and he was the only one searching for a way

to make sense of a jumble of sounds and restless shadows.

But he didn't find it. He could find no trace of the pack he'd

once belonged to.

He was on his own, working out what he needed to

know. A short-eared owl had swiped him across the face

with the side of her wing. He'd thought it was a game bird

when he heard the swoosh, but game birds fled, flapping off

between the trees, not even attacking in self-defence. Owls,

though, dived down. From that day on he listened for that

swooshing noise, distinct from the sound of game birds.

One morning as he was standing at the water's edge,

nosing around for fish the otter had left, the stones shifted.

When he tried to pull himself up one of his hind legs was

caught. It was a long time before he managed to free himself,

and then only with great effort and intense pain.

The soreness stayed with him. The collapse of the stones

was a longer-lasting lesson than the reprimand of the owl. He

walked on three legs, hobbling and hopping when he had to.

During this period his corkscrew tail was often limp. He

didn't go lame, but when the wound healed he had a bump

on his hock that he often licked. When the mornings were

cold and rainy the pain reawakened. He grew accustomed to

it. The pain became part of him, just like the bump.

He knew what to expect from the owl. When she

plunged, gilding on outspread wings, he should keep out of

the way. The owl and the stones.

There were other things that didn't reveal themselves. He

no longer ambled along as he'd done as a pup, absentminded

and eager. He crossed open spaces quickly, hunching

down, his entire body tense from listening. When the

summer heat hung over the pasture and the murmur of bird

calls died out towards morning, he was a thin, muscular dog

who often stood by a birch or a rowan, letting the shadow of

the leaves play across his dark mask and slanted eyes as if he

were aware of them and wanted to conceal them so they

wouldn't give him away. He avoided the rustling aspens,

which interfered with listening, and he avoided the side of

the point near the rapids except for an occasional early

morning foray to sniff for fish scraps.

More and more often, he followed the trail of the moose. It

served no purpose but felt compelling. His eagerness had no

direction, no goal, and always left him bewildered. But the

scent took him farther and farther from the little world near the

cabin that he knew so well: the marsh, the pasture, the point.

He found his way to other marshes, to rocky terrain covered

with bog moss, dark forests with wood grouse, swampy shores

of dark, unfamiliar lakes. Above him a buzzard screeched.

He always caused a commotion. Birds flew up in front of

him with piercing shrieks that went on for a long, long time.

That could mean eggs. He searched, nose to the grass, letting

the shrieks guide-him. When they grew loud and anguished

he was close, when they died out he'd lost the trail.

Now there were bodies inside the eggs. Most of the time,

though, only the shells were left; the warm, moist contents

were gone. He wasn't interested in the shells. The young that

had hatched by the shore fled to safety in the water, leaving

tiny rippling wakes on the smooth surface. He tested the

wetness with his paw but didn't like it. Once he'd plunged in

after them, but when his paws no longer touched bottom he

couldn't see across the water. He paddled, but no matter how

far he stretched his neck he didn't catch sight of anything

alive, so he turned back to land, shook himself thoroughly

and loped off without looking back.

While following the moose trail, he'd come across a body

of water not far from the marsh. He began including it in his

daily rounds. Each time he went there and walked around

the shore he was less tense and hunched down.

It was a tarn, black and almost round, quite near the big lake.

A brook made its way down through the dense forest of old

spruce, bringing water from the tarn to the larger lake, an

inland sea with cold, restless blue water that never was silent.

The beavers had made a dam in the brook. Along the far

bank the spruces and small pines were turning yellow. On his

side the banks were steeper. Though the soil was full of passageways

the ground held; water hadn't reached the roots of

the trees and they were still healthy. In the passageways the

scent of beaver was strong.

In the evening the steep side was sunny and he lay there in

a dense thicket of crowberry brush and bilberry, letting the

warmth sink into his fur. If he lay still for a long time he

sometimes caught sight of a beaver's head gleaming in the

light, cutting straight through the water. He always followed

the beavers with his gaze but didn't move or become agitated.

It was impossible to get near them.

By the passageways along the banks where the beavers

came ashore there was nothing for him. He picked up their

particular scent and the smell of their droppings. There were

no fish scraps, not a single feather, either, but they left

stripped branches everywhere.

The loud splash of a large, flat tail sometimes awakened

him. He liked lying there listening to them. The sound of

their gnawing could be heard from far off. When they

thought they were alone they poked around on the shore.

They were clumsy on land. He couldn't see them, but he

could hear their heavy bodies and the twigs that snapped in

their jaws.

The sun was low in the sky. It was no longer warm but

stung in his eyes as it played among the trunks of the spruces.

He liked lying there listening to sounds that signalled neither

flight nor a threat. He and the beavers had nothing to do

with each other, but they were there, in the same evening

sun, by the same dark water that glowed in its reflection. He

liked the sounds they made, their company.

A vole in the grass. He heard it a moment ago. He recognised

the sound of the hindquarters, heavy and sliding. It's not the

scampering of a mouse.

He's standing tense, head lowered. His ears are cocked

forward, the cartilage stiff, the hairs raised.

They're both stock-still now, but as soon as the vole at his

feet moves, he'll pounce. Down there is the warm world of

the grass with its whirring and humming, but he's only listening

for one distinct sound: the vole. It's there

somewhere, blinking, its heart pumping blood, listening,

every hair in its grey-brown fur on end.

The dog remains still so he won't lose the scent. The wind

off the lake blows through the meadowgrass; the pasture billows

and shimmers, blinding him. But he doesn't move. In

the jumble of sounds under and above him there's only one

sound he's waiting for.

He never tires. A vole that's not threatened moves straight

through the grass, perhaps towards its nest. It may freeze

warily in its tracks but will start moving again. The dog often

misses when he tries pouncing in the cover of grass, but his

ears never lose track of a vole that has come to a halt somewhere

beneath him among the coarse stalks of wolfsbane.

Now. A faint sliding. The cow parsley doesn't move, but

that's where it came from. The dog is poised for the strike.

His nose and front legs dive into the grass. He's got it, but

only for a moment. Frenzied wriggling under his front paws.

Then it scurries between his legs. Two more tries. It's injured

and can't get away. Now he bites and the tiny, warm body

goes limp between his jaws.