The lost life of the Dog Star
Sirius remained in the yard, puzzled and unhappy, until long after sunset. He had never seen night fall before. He watched the red sun flaring down behind the roofs, leaving an orange stain behind it and a much darker blue sky. After a while, the sky was nearly black. And the stars came out. Wheeling overhead they came, tiny discs of white, green, and orange, pinpricks of bluish white, cold tingly red blobs, large orbs, small orbs, more and more, crowding and clustering away into the dark, while behind them wheeled the spangled smear of the Milky Way. Sirius stared upwards, dumbfounded. This was home. He should have been there, not tied up in a yard on the edge of things. They were his. And they were so far away. He had no way of reaching them.
He was filled with a vast green sense of loss. Out there, invisible, his lost Companion must be. She was probably too far away to hear. All the same, he threw up his head and howled. And howled. And howled. . . .
BOOKS BY DIANA WYNNE JONES
The Dalemark Quartet
Cart and Cwidder
Drowned Ammet
The Spellcoats
The Crown of Dalemark
The Chrestomanci Books
Charmed Life
The Magicians of Caprona
Witch Week
The Lives of Christopher Chant
Conrad’s Fate
The Pinhoe Egg
Other Books
Changeover
Wilkins’ Tooth (USA: Witch’s Business)
The Ogre Downstairs
Eight Days of Luke
Dogsbody
Power of Three
Who Got Rid of Angus Flint?
The Four Grannies
The Time of the Ghost
The Homeward Bounders
Archer’s Goon
Fire and Hemlock
Warlock at the Wheel (short stories)
The Skiver’s Guide
The Thirteenth Enchanter
Howl’s Moving Castle
A Tale of Time City
Chair Person
Wild Robert
Hidden Turnings (editor)
Castle in the Air
Black Maria (USA: Aunt Maria)
A Sudden Wild Magic
Yes, Dear (picture book)
Hexwood
Fantasy Stories (editor)
Everard’s Ride (short stories)
Stopping for a Spell (short stories)
The Tough Guide to Fantasyland
Minor Arcana (short stories)
Deep Secret
Believing is Seeing (short stories)
Dark Lord of Derkholm
Puss in Boots (retelling)
Mixed Magics (short stories)
The Year of the Griffin
The Merlin Conspiracy
Unexpected Magics (short stories)
The Game
House of Many Ways
Enchanted Glass
Earwig and the Witch
FIREBIRD
WHERE FANTASY TAKES FLIGHT™
The Blue Sword Robin McKinley
The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales Ellen Datlow and
Terri Windling, eds.
Dragonhaven Robin McKinley
Eon Alison Goodman
Eona Alison Goodman
Fire Kristin Cashore
Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits Robin McKinley and
Peter Dickinson
Fire and Hemlock Diana Wynne Jones
Firebirds:
An Anthology of Original
Fantasy and Science Fiction Sharyn November, ed.
Firebirds Rising:
An Anthology of Original
Science Fiction and Fantasy Sharyn November, ed.
The Game Diana Wynne Jones
The Hero and the Crown Robin McKinley
Incarceron Catherine Fisher
Sapphique Catherine Fisher
The Seven Towers Patricia C. Wrede
Snow White and Rose Red Patricia C. Wrede
A Tale of Time City Diana Wynne Jones
Tam Lin Pamela Dean
The Tough Guide to Fantasyland Diana Wynne Jones
DIANA
WYNNE
JONES
Introduction by Neil Gaiman
FIREBIRD
AN IMPRINT OF PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC.
FIREBIRD
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in the United Kingdom by Macmillan London Limited, 1975
First published in the United States of America by Greenwillow Books, 1988
Published by Firebird, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2012
Excerpt from Fire and Hemlock copyright © Diana Wynne Jones, 1985
Excerpt from A Tale of Time City copyright © Diana Wynne Jones, 1987
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Copyright © Diana Wynne Jones, 1975
Introduction copyright © Neil Gaiman, 2012
All rights reserved
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ALWAYS LEARNING
PEARSON
For Caspian, who might really be Sirius
INTRODUCTION
Neil Gaiman
Don’t read this introduction.
Read the book first.
I’m going to talk, in general terms, about the end of this book, and I’m going to talk about Diana Wynne Jones, and they intertwine (one made the other, after all), and it’ll be better for all of us if you’ve read the book before you read my introduction. It’s out of order and jumbled-up, but that can’t be helped.
If you need an introduction before you start reading, here’s one: this is the story of the Dog Star, Sirius, who is punished for a crime by being incarnated as a real dog, here on Earth. It’s a detective story, and an adventure; it’s a fantasy, and sometimes it’s science fiction, and then it breaks all the rules by twining myth into the mix as well, and does it so well that you realize that really, there aren’t any rules. It’s an animal story for anyone who has ever had, or wanted, a pet—or a human story for any animal that has ever wanted a person. It’s funny, and it’s exciting and honest, and it has some sad bits too.
If you read it, you’ll like it.
Trust me. Come back when you’ve read the book.
Welcome back.
Diana Wynn
e Jones wrote some of the best children’s books that have ever been written. She started writing them with Wilkins’ Tooth (AKA Witch’s Business) in 1973, and she continued writing them until she died in March 2011. She wrote about people, and she wrote about magic, and she wrote both of them with perception and imagination, with humour and clearness of vision.
We met in 1985, at a British Fantasy Convention, and we met before the convention started because we had both got there early, so I introduced myself, and I told her that I loved her books, and we were friends that quickly and that easily, and we stayed friends for over a quarter of a century. She was a very easy person to stay friends with, smart and funny and wise and always sensible and honest.
At her best, Diana’s stories feel real. The people, with their follies and their dreams, feel as real as the magic does. In this book she takes you inside the head of someone learning to be a dog, and it is real, because the people are real, and the cats are real, and the voice of the sunlight feels real as well.
Her books are not easy. They don’t give everything up on first reading. If I am reading a novel by Diana Wynne Jones to myself, I expect to have to go back and reread bits to figure everything out. She expects you to be bright: she has given you all the pieces, and it is up to you to put them together.
Dogsbody isn’t easy. (It’s not hard, either. But it’s not easy.) It begins in the middle, at the end of a trial. Sirius, the Dog Star, is being tried by a court of his peers. It’s five pages of science fiction, and just as we’re getting used to it we are thrust, like Sirius, into the mind, what there is of it, of a newborn puppy, and we are in a dog’s-eye view look at the world.
The magic of Dogsbody is that it’s a book about being a dog. And it’s a book about being a star. It’s a love story, and Diana Wynne Jones wrote very few love stories, and normally in those she wrote, the love was flawed and imperfect. But the love of this dog for his girl, and of this girl for her dog, is a perfect and unconditional thing, and we know this is true as soon as we meet Kathleen. We learn about her life—the politics of the family she’s in, and the greater politics that put her there.
Had Diana simply written a story about Kathleen and her dog from the dog’s point of view, one that felt as right as this one does, that would have been an achievement, but she does so much more than that: she creates a whole cosmology of effulgences—creatures who inhabit stars, or, perhaps, who are stars. There is something called a Zoi that must be found before Sirius runs out of time. Then she adds the Wild Hunt, the hounds of Annwn, the Celtic underworld, to the tale, while never losing sight of the humanity at the heart of it.
I remember reading Dogsbody to my youngest daughter, almost ten years ago.
When I finished it she didn’t say very much. Then she looked at me and put her head on one side and said, “Daddy? Was that a happy end? Or a sad one?”
“Both,” I told her.
“Yes,” she said. “That was what I thought. I was really happy, but it made me want to cry.”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “Me too.”
It also made me try to figure out why and how Diana had made the ending work so well, triumphant and heartbreaking at the same time. I wanted to be able to do that.
Three weeks ago, I was in England, in Bristol, in a hospice, which is a place that provides care for people who are going to die. I sat beside Diana Wynne Jones’ bed.
I felt very alone, and very helpless. Watching someone you care for die is hard.
And then I thought of this introduction. I had been looking forward to writing it, looking forward to talking to Diana about the book, and now it would never happen. I thought, “If Diana was a star, I wonder which star she would be,” and I imagined her shining in the night sky, and I was comforted.
Once, long ago, people thought that heroes were placed in the night sky, as stars or as constellations, after their death. Diana Wynne Jones was my hero: a brilliant writer who wrote satisfying book after satisfying book for generations of readers; the kind of writer whose work will be remembered and loved forever, and who was as funny and smart and honest and wise in person as she was on the page. She will shine for a long time to come.
(My friend Peter Nicholls, who was Diana’s friend too, told me that he thought she could be Bellatrix, the Female Warrior, who is the star in the constellation Orion’s left shoulder, and I think that is a fine suggestion. Diana was a warrior, even if her weapon was not a sword.)
This is one of her best books, although many of her books are good, and all of them are different in their own respective ways. I hope it made you happy and sad.
Neil Gaiman
April 22, 2011
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
1
The Dog Star stood beneath the Judgment Seats and raged. The green light of his fury fired the assembled faces viridian. It lit the underside of the rooftrees and turned their moist blue fruit to emerald.
“None of this is true!” he shouted. “Why can’t you believe me, instead of listening to him?” He blazed on the chief witness, a blue luminary from the Castor complex, firing him turquoise. The witness backed hastily out of range.
“Sirius,” the First Judge rumbled quietly, “we’ve already found you guilty. Unless you’ve anything reasonable to say, be quiet and let the Court pass sentence.”
“No I will not be quiet!” Sirius shouted up at the huge ruddy figure. He was not afraid of Antares. He had often sat beside him as Judge on those same Judgment Seats—that was one of the many miserable things about this trial. “You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said, all through. I did not kill that luminary—I only hit him. I was not negligent, and I’ve offered to look for the Zoi. The most you can accuse me of is losing my temper—”
“Once too often, in the opinion of this Court,” remarked big crimson Betelgeuse, the Second Judge, in his dry way.
“And I’ve admitted I lost my temper,” said Sirius.
“No one would have believed you if you hadn’t,” said Betelgeuse.
A long flicker of amusement ran around the assembled luminaries. Sirius glared at them. The hall of blue trees was packed with people from every sphere and all orders of effulgence. It was not often one of the high effulgents was on trial for his life—and there never had been one so notorious for losing his temper.
“That’s right—laugh!” Sirius roared. “You’re getting what you came for, aren’t you? But you’re not watching justice done. I tell you I’m not guilty! I don’t know who killed that young fool, but it wasn’t me!”
“The Court is not proposing to go through all that again,” Antares said. “We have your Companion’s evidence that you often get too angry to know what you’re doing.”
Sirius saw his Companion look at him warningly. He pretended not to see her. He knew she was trying to warn him not to prove the case against him by raging any more. She had admitted only a little more than anyone knew. She had not really let him down. But he was afraid he would never see her again, and he knew it would make him angrier than ever to look at her. She was so beautiful: small, exquisite and pearly.
“If I were up there, I wouldn’t call that evidence,” he said.
“No, but it bears out the chief witness,” said Antares, “when he says he surprised you with the body and you tried to kill him by throwing the Zoi at him.”
“I didn’t,” said Sirius. He could say nothing more. He could only stand fulminating because his case was so weak. He refused to tell the Court that he had threatened to kill the blue Castor-fellow for hanging around his Companion, or that he had struck
out at the young luminary for gossiping about it. None of that proved his innocence anyway.
“Other witnesses saw the Zoi fall,” said Antares. “Not to speak of the nova sphere—”
“Oh go to blazes!” said Sirius. “Nobody else saw anything.”
“Say that again,” Betelgeuse put in, “and we’ll add contempt of court to the other charges. Your entire evidence amounts to contempt anyway.”
“Have you anything more to say?” asked Antares. “Anything, that is, which isn’t a repetition of the nonsense you’ve given us up to now?”
Rather disconcerted, Sirius looked up at the three Judges, the two red giants and the smaller white Polaris. He could see they all thought he had not told the full story. Perhaps they were hoping for it now. “No, I’ve nothing else to say,” he said. “Except that it was not nonsense. I—”
“Then be quiet while our spokesman passes the sentence,” said Antares.
Polaris rose, quiet, tall and steadfast. Being a Cepheid, he had a slight stammer, which would have disqualified him as spokesman, had not the other two Judges been of greater effulgence. “D-denizen of S-sirius,” he began.
Sirius looked up and tried to compose himself. He had not had much hope all through, and none since they declared him guilty. He had thought he was quite prepared. But now the sentence was actually about to come, he felt sick. This trial had been about whether he, Sirius, lived or died. And it seemed only just to have occurred to him that it was.
“This Court,” said Polaris, “has f-found you guilty on three counts, namely: of m-murdering a young luminary s-stationed in Orion; of grossly m-misusing a Zoi to com-m-mit that s-said m-murder; and of culpable negligence, causing t-trepidation, irregularity and d-damage in your entire s-sphere of inf-fluence and l-leading t-to the l-loss of the Z-zoi.” For the moment, his stammer fazed him, and he had to stop.
Sirius waited. He tried to imagine someone else as denizen of his green sphere, and could not. He looked down, and tried not to think of anything. But that was a mistake. Down there, through the spinning star-motes of the floor, he looked into nothing. He was horrified. It was all he could do not to scream at them not to make him into nothing.