“Uh—yar,” I said.
“Yalarinda orfuy la.”
I got it the second time. Bella was the most patient of dogs, but I didn’t want to try her too far. Reluctantly I reached out to touch the frantic bunny. It went limp. I took it from Bella. Its little heart was going five hundred beats a minute, but its ears were relaxed and it snuggled up against me like I was its favorite littermate. Fleas, I thought. “Good girrrrrrl,” I said. Bella was too dignified for mad tail-wagging, but she flattened her ears briefly. She caught the second rabbit too, and the third. We were up to five rabbits—Athena caught one of them, and we put the other three Baskervilles back on lead (Casimir having amazingly tucked the leads in his knapsack) rather to their disgust, but nothing was going to escape Jonesie’s jaws still breathing, and I didn’t know about the other two.
There was a pause after the fifth rabbit, and then the first sheep came hurtling through. Val shouted something—it was yalarinda again with something else—and then there was a second sheep, and a third.
And a fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth. At about that point I lost count.
“I can’t hold them long,” said Val, sounding pretty strained. “It’s not much more than a conjurer’s trick, what I’m doing. And I haven’t time to teach Maggie to contain something so large.”
“Where are they coming from?” said Arnie, sounding kind of amazed. “Are you calling them?”
“No,” said Val. “It’s Mongo, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said, with a lump in my throat for my very fabulous dog. “I told him to—to herd what he could find toward me.”
Casimir said, “A mgdaga is resourceful, and has good friends.”
About six more sheep went streaming past us in a mob, but this time there was a black and white shadow racing parallel on their flank. He managed to turn them, but rather than dodging past us as you’d expect they plunged into the middle of us, possibly because there were a dozen or so sheep there already. Uproar. Between Val and Mongo nobody got knocked over, although I thought Jonesie was going to have a heart attack. You could see him thinking, I’d have order in ten seconds. Try me.
If I’d been a real shepherd, I would have been telling my heroic dog what to do now, but I didn’t have the faintest idea. He dropped in behind us, creeping along in classic style, as if he’d been watching the Teach Your Dog Herding videos with me—which he had, of course, but I hadn’t realized he’d been paying attention. Also, sheep-herding usually happens in a field in daylight, with sheep that know the drill, and this was patchy scrubland in the dark, with sheep that probably hadn’t seen a dog or a shepherd in a couple of generations.
When a sheep began to drift off to one side or another Mongo was on the job instantly. There was one especially large, especially raggedy one that didn’t like its present circumstances at all, despite Val’s conjurer’s trick, and kept trying to make a bolt for it. Mongo wasn’t having any of that, and I was afraid if I tried to tell him to let that one go we’d lose the rest of them—Mongo and I hadn’t practiced much but the basic bring them over there to here and stop.
Val managed to comb a handful of the rebel sheep’s wool loose with his fingers, trotting along beside it as it tried to get away from him. It stopped and stamped at Mongo, but Mongo eeled around behind it and it shot forward and bumped into another sheep. Baaaa, said the bumped-into sheep. Jill and Bella and Athena were now walking along one side of our weird herd, and Casimir with Jonesie, Dov and Eld on leads were on the other side. Arnie was leading, with four sleeping bunnies down his shirt: two in front and two behind. I doubted the shirt would recover. I was carrying the fifth, wrapped up in the hem of my Mongo-stretched T-shirt.
Val and I were bringing up the rear, Val so he could keep an eye on the sheep. I kept looking over my shoulder. I might have been looking for Mongo, but Mongo was more often to one side than behind us. I was looking for Takahiro.
Val was spinning the wool out roughly between his fingers in a long sort of whorl, longer, longer, longer, and then looping it around in a big circle. I could hear him muttering, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I thought there were some extra gruuaa draped over him—to the extent that I could see them in this light I thought most of them were clustered around Arnie. Val seemed to get what he wanted, and trotted after the devil sheep again—which was now trying to barge its way through the middle of the herd, like someone trying to jump the line. Val worked his way up beside it, pulled his loop over its head and let it fall around its neck.
It stopped barging. It dropped slowly to the back of the herd—Val was now walking with me at the rear again—and looked around, rather like someone who’s gone into a room and can’t remember why. It gave a forlorn little baaa, turned around, saw Val . . . and trotted happily toward him, clearly baaaing, Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you!
It sidled up beside him and bumped him lovingly with its head. Val looked at it sadly. “I am sorry, you ugly creature,” he said. “I have not used my magic in a long time, and I am very out of practice.”
If it hadn’t been for Takahiro, I would have laughed.
There were no more bullets, no wicked little singing hums, and no sense of being followed.
And no Takahiro.
• • •
We walked on and on and on and on. I don’t know when Jill and Bella and Athena dropped back again to walk with me, and Val (and the devil sheep) went up ahead to walk with Arnie. The sheep (and Jonesie) had settled down, and Mongo was still on watch, and Casimir still had the other three dogs on leads. I don’t remember when or who told me that Val or Arnie or all the rest of them had decided that we couldn’t stop till we got past the fence around the Goat Creek camp, that while, thanks to Mongo, we weren’t leaving a blazing neon trail that said THIS WAY any more—and that thanks to Majid and the gruuaa Arnie thought they’d shut down most of the Goat Creek base’s ’tronics—Val and Arnie thought they could probably hide us long enough to get some sleep outside the compound, but not inside. I staggered on, thinking about Takahiro. I wanted to lie down and never move again. How many more times had they shot him as we ran away? Maybe bullets couldn’t kill a werewolf the way they could a human, but enough bullets would slow him down enough for them to . . .
Old stuff I hadn’t thought about in ages—stuff I hadn’t known I remembered—about Taks kept prodding me, sharply, like being stuck with pins. I remembered offering him a bite of my peanut butter sandwich—I’m not sure when, but it was pretty soon after I gave him the crane. He’d never had peanut butter before, and at first he thought I was playing a practical joke on him. (His mom had been pretty traditional. Lots of rice and tofu and adzuki beans.) But then I’d thought my first taste of wasabi was a really mean practical joke, although Taks had warned me to take only the littlest bit of little and a really big mouthful of rice. . . .
I remembered him and Jeremy and Gianni deciding when they were fourteen that Sworddaughter, everyone’s favorite TV series when we were all eleven and twelve, was only for babies who couldn’t see how old and pathetic it was. I’d been mad at him for months after that. I remembered him telling me that hating Mr. Denham was dumb—I had just failed another pre-algebra quiz. That’s because I’m dumb! I screamed at him, and ran away before he saw me burst into tears, because then I’d have to hate him too. I remembered winning first place in the summer reading challenge, the summer between ninth and tenth grades, and he was the only one of the people I thought were my friends who didn’t congratulate me, because he was in one of his moods. I’d been really proud of that award. I’d read twenty-three books over that summer, including some really long ones, like David Copperfield (good) and Anna Karenina (what a bunch of dead batteries).
I remembered him sitting at the table in our kitchen, wearing Val’s bathrobe and following me with his eyes.
I remembered kissing him. . . .
I was
crying again. I seemed to be crying all the time. We’d been walking forever. I’d been crying forever. My head and my bones had ached forever.
Taks, where are you? You’d have caught up with us if you could.
A couple of times we paused for a handful each of chocolate and peanuts and a swallow of water. I didn’t know where any of it came from: maybe Val had made them out of mushrooms and dead leaves, like Cinderella’s godmother raids the vegetable patch for transportation. I love chocolate, but this chocolate tasted of nothing. I didn’t think anything would ever taste of anything again if Takahiro didn’t come back.
The fence, finally. It looked like any old stupid mean fence: plain chain link with a roll of barbed wire at the top. Not like the fence I’d stood staring at, clutching my algebra book, when Takahiro had kissed the top of my head, said, “Ganbatte,” and pretended to go with Jill and Casimir. A million years ago.
“I don’t suppose any of you thought to bring wire cutters?” said Arnie. Jill, Casimir, and I all shook our heads. Casimir was carrying my knapsack now: he’d managed to tie mine down over his somehow. It was the sort of plain practical thing I could never do, like I couldn’t do algebra. Casimir still moved like a panther too, even in the middle of the night on bad ground with army riflemen behind us, and a big lumpy heavy awkward bundle of knapsacks on his back.
I felt as if I was still carrying my knapsack, and it was full of bricks. I missed my algebra book.
I missed Takahiro worse.
“Hey,” said Arnie. “You still got those bullets?”
Val pulled them out of his pocket and held them out.
Arnie picked one up and looked at it. “You think you’re rusty, son,” he said to Val. “This may be gonna rain on the Fifth of July.” He closed his hands over it and blew, like you do before you roll dice, to make them lucky for you. Then he threw it at the fence, picked up the next bullet, blew, threw, picked up the next. . . . The bullets shone like bumblebees with the sun on them, black-and-gold-striped, even though it was full dark, and there were stars overhead and only a quarter moon. They buzzed rather like bumblebees too, and when they struck the fence, the wire they struck turned all gold. Arnie threw bullets till Val’s hand was empty, and when he was done there was a big almost-rectangle, about the size of a bedroom window, gleaming gold. He rubbed his hands on his pants and then stepped forward, hooked his fingers through some of the gold-edged holes, and pulled.
The whole golden panel fell out. “Ouch,” he said, and dropped it. “Hot.” It sizzled as it landed, and then turned black, like chain link that has been in a fire. He put his foot on the bottom edge of the hole in the fence and shoved it down a bit more so we could climb through easily. Val was moving among the sheep, touching them one after another, murmuring words . . . and they were trotting away. Mongo pressed up against me, watching. I curled my fingers through his collar, to make sure he understood that this was okay. The little broken cog that still hung there rubbed against my skin. It was good to be normal when you could. But sometimes you couldn’t afford normal. “You’re wonderful,” I said to him. I remembered him shoving Takahiro out of the way of one of the bullet storms. But Takahiro still hadn’t caught up with us.
Arnie knelt, and peeled up his shirt . . . and four sleepy bunnies tumbled out, thought about it a moment, righted themselves, and hopped away. Jill, who had taken bunny duty over from me, set down the fifth, and it hopped after the others. Mongo, visibly tired for perhaps the first time in his entire life, sat down with a gigantic sigh, his tongue hanging out. I meant to sit down, but I pretty much fell, and Mongo immediately curled up against me, and I put my arms around him. “The best dog in the universe,” I said, and he licked my face. (Mongo would never be too tired to lick someone’s face.) I wondered how Jamal and Paolo were.
I wondered where Takahiro was.
I woke up enough to climb through the fence—completely cold now, although the edges of the hole were crumbly, like burned string—and then Arnie was carrying me piggyback after all. Somebody’s belt was holding me loosely against him while he held my legs. I wanted to tell him to put me down, but I was too tired. I kept seeing a shining silver wolf with blood rivering down his body. “Taks,” I murmured. “Takahiro.”
“Hey, hon,” said Arnie. “Just a little farther.”
He let me down gently, finally, with my head on my knapsack as a pillow. Some pillow. I had pulled myself up on my elbows to see if there was something I could do about the fact that apparently someone had filled up my harmless knapsack with blunt knives and old broken bits of storm drain when Jill knelt beside me with a wet plastic bottle. “We only had one bottle of water,” she said. “This is Goat Creek, but the guys say it’s safe to drink.” I drank most of it, not having been aware of being thirsty. It made me aware that I was hungry, but I didn’t care. Nobody died of hunger on the first day anyway.
Takahiro . . .
I wasn’t going to be able to sleep with my head on pieces of broken drain. But here was Mongo, settling down against my chest, and someone else—Athena—at my back. I could hear everyone else making themselves as comfortable as they could.
Takahiro . . .
But I was warm now. And I was so tired even the jagged chunks of whatever weren’t going to keep me awake.
• • •
I don’t know how long I had slept when I sensed something looming over me. I didn’t have time to be frightened, because Mongo was awake, and I felt his tail thumping, and heard his little moan of welcome. Athena gave a squeak of surprise or courtesy, got up, and lay down again next to Mongo. And then something huge and warm and furry was lying down behind me. A head bent over me, and a tongue about the size of our kitchen table licked my face. I threw myself over on my other side to face him. “Takahiro.”
As I turned around I felt something falling over, away from the leg it had been leaning against. I sat up long enough to reach down and pick up my algebra book. I had a crick in my neck already that was so painful my head would probably never stand properly upright on the end of my neck again. The algebra book couldn’t possibly make it any worse. I put it under my knobbly knapsack and lay down again, facing Takahiro. Mongo laid his head in the little soft place between my last rib and my pelvis, and I wrapped an arm around as much of Taks’ ruff as I could reach. Sleeping with my boyfriend, I thought, and almost laughed. We’d only kissed for the first time yesterday.
CHAPTER 14
I WOKE UP SURPRISINGLY WARM AND COMFORTABLE and . . . peaceful. I thought I could smell coffee. And I had the oddest sensation that Mom was nearby. I had a vague recollection that something really dreadful had been happening, but I shied away from remembering and concentrated on feeling—safe? What was that about? Why did I want to think about being safe? But I shied away from whatever it was again.
That was coffee I was smelling. I didn’t mean to speak out loud—and spoil everything—but the feeling that Mom was standing by my bed holding a mug of coffee was so strong: “Mom?” Except this wasn’t my bed I was lying on.
Something, or rather someone, stirred. And I snapped back into reality. The reality of lying on cold hard bumpy ground with a pillow made of corners. The reality of being curled up against someone’s chest. Um. Someone’s naked chest. Takahiro was human again. Oh . . .
I raised my head cautiously. Takahiro’s eyes were blinking open. He saw me and smiled. There was something like a blanket draped over us but I was still, um, rather intensely aware of the full length of Takahiro’s body pressed against mine, although I was still in all my (filthy) clothes from the day before. I had one hand curled up under my chin and the other over Taks’ shoulder. I went to touch his chest and . . . oh. I didn’t mean to move away from him, and I didn’t move very far, but far enough to see what my hand was touching: he had the most awful scar: three ugly, grotesque starbursts of raggedly healed flesh: one just above his left nipple, one just below his sternum,
and one over his right ribs. “Oh, Taks . . .”
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess I have a problem, next time the doc tells me to take my shirt off to listen to my chest.”
I stroked the starburst over his heart and realized I’d started to cry. “Oh, hey,” he said, “don’t cry. I’m fine—genki desu.” He started to struggle up to one elbow, and winced. “Well, almost fine. It still kind of hurts, but only a little. Really. And Mongo is the best. If he hadn’t got me out of the way of that second . . . Hey. Maggie. Please don’t cry.”
I gulped and nodded and gulped again and got the hiccups. How dreeping romantic is that. He patted me on the back and said, “We’re alive, we’re fine, we’re free, and you’re a hero.”
“You’re a hero,” I said, still staring at his chest.
“Ja, okay, we’re both heroes,” said Takahiro. “And Mongo. Live heroes. Those are the best kind.”
There was the crunch of approaching feet. I looked up. Even having (mostly) remembered where we were and (some of) what was happening and that (presumably) we weren’t safe yet and there were (probably) some very-pissed-off cobey units chasing us, I was still expecting it to be Mom. It wasn’t. It was Val. But he was carrying two big plastic cups of steaming coffee.
He sat down beside us, and as we both sat up I realized it wasn’t a real blanket over us, it was one of those crinkly plastic emergency blankets over two sweatshirts and a jacket. Both of us were moving cautiously for our different reasons, but my algebra book had been good for the crick in my neck, or maybe that was having Taks back. I almost started to cry again as I said to Val, “Look—”
Val was already looking. “Hurt?”
Takahiro gave a half nod. “A little.”
“Even for a werewolf that is a great deal of damage. You are very brave. And very foolish.”