The Return (6 page)

Shep announced that the pack would wait until dark before setting out for the shelter.

“Can't we just walk to the edge of the Park?” whined Pumpkin. “No one will see us in the Park.”

“I don't know that,” Shep woofed. “Who knows if there are people in here? There could be dog catchers looking for you and Callie right this heartbeat. No, we wait until night. Better safe than captured.”

Shep was stalling — he wasn't ready to let his friends leave. If the other dogs smelled this, they kept it to themselves. They didn't argue with his order. Even Callie kept whatever thoughts she had to herself.

Pumpkin sulked in the corner of the clearing under a scrubby bush, then sprang up yelping about the horrible insect that buzzed by her ear. Zeus retreated to his nest of leaves near the tunnel and Oscar followed him, yapping at Zeus about whether he needed help with his paw or a drink or something to eat.

Shep curled up on the bank of the stream. He couldn't shake the dread that covered him like a coat of mud. He didn't want to take the pack to the shelter. Even if he didn't go home, what was he going to do, run around the city alone? How would he form a new pack? In truth, he didn't want a new pack — he wanted his friends to stay with him, to
want
to stay with him. He wanted things to go back to how they used to be.

Pumpkin sighed with a dramatic flourish of her tail. “There's nothing to
do
until sunset,” she whined.

Snoop pawed a dead branch. “Want-to-play-Big-Stick-huh-please?” he yipped.

Pumpkin trotted toward Snoop, tail wagging. “I want to play! But I'm too small for Big Stick. Does any dog have a Ball?”

Daisy snorted. “Where would one of us have gotten a Ball?”

The white girldog slumped into a sit. “Fine, then I'll just sit here and watch my fur grow.”

Rufus growled from his nest under a bush. “You're not making the heartbeats pass any faster by whining.”

Ginny shook herself, rustling the dead leaves around her. “How about I tell you a story?” she yipped.

“Oh, yes!” barked Pumpkin. “I would love a story! What's a story?” She waved her tail and smiled at the dogs.

“It's something Shep dug up,” woofed Ginny.

“I didn't dig up anything,” Shep snuffled. “All I did was woof to Callie what an old timer had snuffled to me when I was a frightened pup. You and Oscar took that stick and ran with it.”

“And look at all the trouble that —
snort
— caused,” grumbled Daisy.

“How could some old timer's woofs cause trouble?” yipped Pumpkin.

“Trouble? Pish posh,” snapped Ginny. “Oscar's and my stories made a whole pack of abandoned pets feel safe in this storm-wrecked world. Whatever else happened wasn't the stories' fault.” She looked sternly toward where Oscar hid behind the tunnel wall.

“These story-things sound very powerful,” woofed Pumpkin in a hushed bark. “Do they bite?”

“In a matter of barking,” Ginny answered, a smile on her jowls, “I guess they do. This one is about a dog who's woofed to me all my life.”

 

Many cycles ago, there was a dog named Lassie, and she was loyal and kind to other dogs. One sun, she caught a strange scent. Worried that this scent might be from a threat to her pack, she followed it through the woods. It led her out of her pack's territory, far from her den, through strange waters and thick leaves. She began to worry that she'd gone too far following this new smell, but she also felt that having come so far she could not turn back until she found its source.

Night fell over the forest. Lassie looked up at the Great Wolf's glittering coat and asked him for guidance. As if answering her howl, one of the furs in his coat blazed for several heartbeats. Lassie thanked the Great Wolf and dashed toward where the fire had burned in the night.

The fire led her to a small, hairless animal curled in the grass. Lassie licked the thing and it stirred. She ducked away from the animal but then remembered that the Great Wolf had led her there so this animal must not be dangerous.

The hairless animal stretched, its gangly limbs protruding from its body like branches from a tree.

“What are you?” woofed Lassie.

The hairless creature started. But Lassie wagged her tail, and the creature calmed. It extended its limb, which had a sort of paw with long toes stuck on its end. Lassie raised her paw, and the creature wrapped its long toes around her pads.

They both were shocked at the spark that ran through their lifeblood at the touch of their paws. It was as if Lassie had bathed in sunlight; she felt her fur glow. The creature's eyes sparkled. Its smooth cheeks warmed to a rosy pink and its lips curled into a wide smile.

The creature opened its mouth. “You are good,” the creature said. “I am a boy. What are you?”

Lassie told the boy that she was a dog. She told him that there were many like her, and about how the Great Wolf had taught her pack to live in peace.

The boy shook his head. “Humans are not happy the way you dogs are. We fight and struggle and live in fear.”

“That sounds terrible,” woofed Lassie.

The boy and Lassie sat together, him with his arm around her neck and she with her head against his shoulder, and the warm glow radiated through them.

In the morning, the boy stroked Lassie's fur. He had an idea. “Lassie, you should come to my den and tell the humans about the Great Wolf. Maybe then we can learn to live in peace like the dogs.”

Lassie agreed, and the boy began to lead her back to his den.

As they walked, the scent of their happiness — that warm glow of connection — wafted throughout the forest. It drifted up to the Great Wolf, and he smiled; it drifted down to the Black Dog, and he scowled.

“What new joy has the Great Wolf delivered?” he snarled. For the Black Dog hated anything favored by the Great Wolf.

The Black Dog skulked up from the depths, winding his way through the shadows, and soon caught up with Lassie and the boy. He saw the golden glow shining around them and was disgusted.

“No dog should be so happy,” he growled.

The boy introduced Lassie to his people and explained what Lassie had told him. “Lassie and the Great Wolf could teach us to live in peace,” the boy said.

These words raised hackles along the Black Dog's bony spine. He could never allow the Great Wolf's influence to spread so far. He had to distract Lassie before she had a chance to speak.

The Black Dog turned himself into a pup and began whimpering and crying. Lassie heard the pup's cries and told the boy that she had to see what was the matter. The boy begged her not to go, but Lassie could not ignore a dog in need.

“I will go with you,” said the boy, and the two ran off together.

When they arrived at the thicket where the pup lay crying, the boy knelt beside the small dog.

“Don't cry,” the boy said. “My touch will make you feel better.”

He laid his hand on the bristly coat, and the Black Dog revealed his true form.

“Your touch will never be felt by another dog,” the Black Dog snarled.

A hole opened beneath him and sucked both the Black Dog and the boy down into the earth.

Lassie shrieked with terror. She ran back to the human den for help. She told the boy's kin about the Black Dog's treachery and begged them to help her save the boy. But the humans did not listen. They yelled at Lassie and blamed her for the boy's disappearance. They struck her, called her bad, and demanded that she leave all the clan's boys and girls alone.

But Lassie could not abandon her boy. Even if his kin would not help her, even if they hated and feared all dogs, she could not leave him prey to the wrath of the Black Dog.

Lassie ran back to the hole and crept down into it. She followed the Black Dog's trail deep under the earth until she found him in his cave. The boy lay limp in his jowls.

“Leave us, or I will kill this boy,” the Black Dog barked.

“You must kill me first,” Lassie howled fiercely. “I will never leave my boy.” She dove at the Black Dog's jaws and tore the boy from his grasp.

Their battle shook the roots of the earth. Dogs heard Lassie's cries and ran to aid their packmate. The humans heard the boy yell for Lassie's help and knew that they had misjudged the dog. They, too, raced to save their boy. But all were too late. When the dogs and humans arrived, they found poor Lassie slumped over her boy and the boy dead in her paws. The Black Dog disappeared in a foul mist. All that remained of his evil was a nasty pant that echoed throughout the cave.

The Great Wolf shone into this darkest cavern and his misery rained down as a soft, silver light. “What has happened to my Lassie?” he howled. “You humans did not believe her barks, yet she woofed the truth.”

The Great Wolf wrapped his fiery paws around Lassie's fallen form and raised her up into the sky. But Lassie's spirit cried out, “Please, bring my boy with me!”

The Great Wolf then took up the boy, too, so that he and Lassie could sparkle as one golden fire in the sky.

The humans and dogs looked at one another. In their sadness, they came together, and in coming together, they felt that golden glow that Lassie and the boy had found. But the Great Wolf punished humans for their folly and took away their ability to understand dogs. And so we muddle along, happy together, but unable to fully express our devotion as Lassie and her boy once could.

 

The pack was silent after Ginny finished her story, they were so absorbed in the tale. Even Shep wished to live in that world — he could almost believe in the Great Wolf again the way Ginny woofed it.

“Wow,” yipped Pumpkin. “Where can I get more stories like that?”

Ginny beamed, tail waving at the compliments of every dog. “Well, how did you meet your family? There might be a story there.”

“My girl came to where I was born and picked me out of the whole litter of pups to be her superstar show dog,” barked Pumpkin, preening as she pranced in the dirt.

“I was the pup of two show dogs,” woofed Ginny. “But you all could probably tell that from my coat.” She flicked her tail, sending its long hairs sailing over the dust. “Alas, that's not much of a story. What about the rest of you?”

Dover, Boji, and Rufus had all been picked from their litters like Ginny and Pumpkin. Daisy and Oscar both came from the store.

“I was rescued from a shelter as a puppy,” Callie barked when asked where she came from. “I was born there to a shelter dog.”

“Did you have any littermates?” asked Pumpkin. “Maybe that could also be a story? ‘A Pup and Her Littermates.'”

“I don't remember,” snuffled Callie, tail low.

“My first family gave me away when they had a baby,” Zeus growled from the shadows. Apparently, the story had lured him to the edges of the pack. “They pretended to love me until they found something better. Turn that into a story.”

“That's a terrible story,” yipped Pumpkin. “Can a story be terrible?” She cocked her head in Ginny's direction.

“Not any story I want to hear,” she groaned.

“I don't give a ripped toy if his story is terrible,” grumbled Rufus. “It doesn't excuse anything he did. He's still a bad dog, no matter what happened to him.”

Shep didn't disagree with Rufus — just because Zeus's first family had abandoned him didn't make up for the fact that Zeus had murdered dogs, their friends. But still, Shep hadn't known that about his friend — his ex-friend. Zeus had always seemed a little distant, a little afraid of getting too close, like it was fine to play in the Park together, but forget anything else. Not that with collars around their necks, they could have done more. But he wondered if maybe they had barked about it, back when they had been friends in the Park, would Zeus have run off and joined the wild pack? Could things have been different if they had been better friends?

Shep wondered how well he knew any of these dogs. For all the suns they'd spent together, they'd had precious few heartbeats to just woof about themselves. Shep wanted to know his pack better, and now that chance was slipping away. All so that these dogs could return to their collars, to the families that left them behind.
Now that's an idea….

“I've got a story for you,” Shep woofed. “Once there was a pup who was born in the fight kennel. He grew up and escaped the fight cage only to find himself caught in a harsh world run by wild dogs. He thought he was saved when he was taken in by his boy, but then his boy abandoned him to be eaten by a storm.”

He looked at his packmates to see if they'd caught his scent; they looked at him with stricken muzzles, tails low and still.

He continued, “But this story has a happy ending. That dog met an amazing girldog and they rescued other dogs left alone in the storm by their families. She helped him to smell that dogs are meant to live as a pack, not alone in human dens.”

He scanned the snouts of his friends. “Are you sure you want to go home to the humans who abandoned you?” he barked. “Why don't we all stay here? There's lots of prey to hunt in the Park. We dogs can rely on each other!” He smiled and panted and waved his tail.

No tail answered his wag.

Callie loped to Shep's side. She winced a small, tight smile. “I'm sorry, Shep,” she woofed. “But we want to go home.” She licked his nose. “Your boy loves you. I'm certain that if he could have taken you with him, he would have.”