Less, really, he added to himself, because he was in no mood for her games today and if she kept it up, he’d see how a good whack across the back of the head might set her straight.
“Oh, no,” she said. “Off in the otherworld with some murdering greenbree. That’s safe as plucking flitter wings afore you bite off their little screeching heads. Safe as rooting for food in a garbage bin instead of stealing it off a table the way a good bogan would. Safe as—”
“We’re at a funeral,” Big Dan said, interrupting her. “Could you show some respect?”
“What? For a Redshanks?”
“He was one of my men.”
“Aye, and much good that did him.”
“Give it a rest,” Big Dan told her.
She had something to add to that as well, but the look in his eye made her keep it to herself.
Big Dan turned his attention back to where Gathen’s body lay on a pyre of scrap wood, newspapers, and whatever inflammable items could be found on such short notice. It wasn’t like the old days, when they could go into the forest and get what they needed. Here they had to scrounge through the city streets and back alleys to find any sort of fuel at all. The whole mess had been doused in gasoline to ensure a quick ignition and the smell of the gas drifted throughout the empty lot where they had gathered for the funeral.
Stourin Redshanks, Gathen’s grandfather, stood in front of the pyre, a flaming brand raised high in his hand. Though he cut a fine figure for an old bogan, Big Dan was more mesmerized by the sparks that came from the brand as Stourin waved it back and forth above his head. Any moment, Big Dan expected one of those sparks to land in the cloud of Stourin’s frizzled grey hair and set the whole hairy bush on fire.
“He was a good lad, Gathen was,” Stourin said, his voice ringing and clear. “He had many years left in him. But those stoogin’ canids didn’t see it that way. Oh, no. Cut him down and leave his kith and kin to grieve the loss while they go laughing on their way. And for what? What crime did Gathen commit ‘sides being a bogan?”
Many of those gathered had staves which they pounded on the ground in response. Those that didn’t, stamped their feet.
That brought Big Dan’s attention away from the sparks and Stourin’s hair.
Oh, he thought. Maybe he shouldn’t have made up that story. He’d meant well, but he hadn’t wanted this. Even his own men—who had been there with him and heard Rabedy’s tale, who’d seen Gathen’s body without a dog or wolf bite upon it—were getting caught up in the anger against the canids. They knew how Gathen had really died. Taken out by some pluiking slip of a girl. But here they were, getting carried away by the elder Redshanks’ speechifying.
“Tatiana will tell us we need peace,” Stourin went on. “That we must maintain the truce. But what do we tell her?”
“No!” almost a hundred bogan voices cried in return.
It made a sound loud enough to be heard halfway across the Tombs.
This wasn’t good. This wasn’t any bloody good at all.
Big Dan had only meant to give Gathen some measure of respect in how his life had ended. A tale of a battle with canids seemed so much more noble a death than the truth.
“And if she sends her guard to tell us different?” Stourin demanded.
“We’ll send them back in pieces!” someone shouted to a general roar of approval.
This was truly, pluiking bad, Big Dan thought. But it was too late to own up now. Better the anger be turned on the court’s guard and the canids than on him. And besides, by the time Tatiana actually sent anyone to look into this, all the hubbub would probably have died down, just the way it always did. There’d be no pack of bogans heading off into the wild and the green to hunt down Gathen’s supposed murderers. That was too much like work. A more likely scenario was that the next canid some of these bogans ran into here in the city might have himself a bit of a hard time. But so what? Big Dan’s sympathies had never run with canids, innocent or not.
He let himself relax and concentrated on the moment at hand. He thought of the good times he’d had with Gathen, the stupid little bugger. Lairds, but he was a bogan’s bogan, always into something and none of it good.
When Stourin stopped for a breath in the middle of a particularly descriptive rant against the canids who’d murdered his grandson, Big Dan let himself get into the spirit that the others were showing.
“We’ll hunt the pluikers down like the dogs they are!” he shouted.
That brought him a response of thumping staves and stamping feet as loud as any Stourin had received. Big Dan let himself look stern, hiding the grin that was building inside him. Maybe this was a better way. Instead of making deals with some pluiking green-bree, to just take what they wanted from the green and the wild. Bugger them all.
But then the guard had to arrive, twenty strong and with a gruagagh in tow, and everything went very bad indeed.
The guards all had bows, with arrows nocked and ready. They fanned out when they saw that they were outnumbered five-to-one, and if their captain had had any sense at all, he’d have withdrawn and come back another day.
But they had a gruagagh with them—a tall, gangly wizard with dark eyes, who was too full of his own importance the way gruagaghs inevitably were. He ignored the numbers and the anger of the crowd, and called out the names of Big Dan and his boys, their true names, so they had to come stepping out from where they stood with the others, ready to be magically marched back to the queen’s court to face whatever pluiking business she might have with them.
And even then it might have been all right.
Big Dan had no idea why they were being summoned—no specific idea, at any rate. It could be for any number of things. But what was the worst that could happen? They might be banished from the city for a year and a day and have to carve out a territory in some smaller town away from the queen’s influence for the duration. It wouldn’t be the first time for him.
But Stourin had primed the crowd with his incitements. They surged forward with a roar, their staves lifted above their heads. Others pulled slings from their belts and loosed rocks against the guards.
The gruagagh, already standing straight-backed and grim, lifted himself a little taller still.
“You dare?” he cried.
Mage lights flickered around his fingers and who knew what he might have done. But before he could call up his magics, a stone from one of the slings struck him on the side of the head and down he went.
The guards loosed a volley of arrows, aiming for legs to bring the attackers down, for fairy didn’t kill fairy. But it wasn’t enough and it was too late. The crowd fell upon them, breaking their bows, knocking them to the ground with their staves where they could be punched and kicked by those not carrying weapons.
It was over in moments. The guards made a hasty retreat, dragging their wounded fellows and the gruagagh with them into the between.
The bogans laughed and stamped their feet in victory, and if there were a half-dozen that needed attention from a healer, they were also heroes and were borne up by the crowd to be treated as such.
“That’s how we see a warrior off!” Stourin cried.
He cast his flaming brand onto the pyre and the gasoline caught with a huge whuft that had the crowd cheering madly.
Big Dan cheered along with the rest of them, but he, at least, knew this wasn’t over. Lairds knew what the queen had wanted with him and his boys, but whatever it was, this had just made it worse. By the time the guard came back with reinforcements, he planned to be long gone from this place. This place? He’d quit the pluiking city itself and make himself scarce for as long as it took for all of this to blow over. Just step off into the between and—
Except then he heard the drums.
They were faint, lying just under the raucous cheers and shouts of the bogans seeing old Gathen off in proper style. But Big Dan could hear them all the same.
He looked around, past the crowd that surrounded him, but there w
as nothing to see. Only the empty lots and abandoned buildings of the Tombs.
That was when he realized that the drumming came from the between.
He shook his head, realizing what that meant.
For it to be so loud . . .
He had himself a look, peeking through the veil that hid this world from the lands that lay between it and the otherworld, and near shat his pants from what he saw.
“Away!” he cried. “Away!”
Those closest to him heard and looked confused.
“Turn your pluiking eyes into the between!” he shouted.
They did, one after another, the word spreading like a wave through the crowd. And once they’d looked, there was no more talk of brave battle, of showing the pluiking green-brees and court both that they meant business.
The crowd fled to a bogan, scattering in all directions.
Moments later, there was only Gathen’s pyre in that empty lot of weeds and rubble, burning hard and bright as it sent a streak of black smoke trailing high up into the sky.
Honey
It was good now, she thought. Smells were deep here. Pure. Like the inside of a thing, not just what was on the fur. Game was plentiful.
And there were no men.
Up in the mountains, the air was cool under the drooping boughs of the Ponderosa pines. Lower down, here among the cacti and desert shrubs, it got cool at night, but the days were gloriously warm. The view was open and wide, and there were quail and doves to give warning if her own senses should miss the approach of danger—unlikely as that might be.
Motionless under a mesquite tree at the top of a dry wash, the pit bull was invisible, her honey-blonde fur blending in with the washed-out dirt, stones and cross-hatch of branch shadows. She lay with her forepaws stretched out in front of her and watched a small pack of pups playing with each other in the loose sand at the bottom of the wash below.
They weren’t her pups. Hers were a year and a half old now and didn’t need watching anymore. She’d been particular in choosing a mate, settling on a passing wolf who hadn’t stayed to raise the litter with her. She hadn’t expected him to. He was a handsome old loner, but her choosing him had more to do with the spirit voice that was so strong in his head. His blood, combined with hers, had made sure that her offspring had strong voices, too.
Cousins, they called themselves, these creatures with the spirit voice like she had in her head, like her wolf. Or sometimes they would say the People, which seemed funny, since most of them were like her—unable to shift to a two-legged, five-fingered shape. But while they couldn’t walk upright, there was more to them than the beasts who had no spirit voice. What set them apart came from that old blood of theirs—not solely from the air of the otherworld, although the very air here was potent as well. The longer she stayed in these lands, the more she felt the changes.
Her spirit voice was stronger than it had ever been. She could shape words with it now so that anyone could understand her, not simply the pack. The voice had also created a new kind of wisdom inside her, a knowing that filled her mind with concepts beyond survival and simple physical comfort, and then allowed her to articulate them. She was fascinated with these new concerns—concepts of right and wrong and her place in the world, as well as the responsibility she owed the world for the gift of her own life. They were things that she had already known before, but they had simply been a part of her being. What had changed was that now she understood the reasoning behind them. When she made an ethical choice now, it was informed rather than by instinct.
And it wasn’t only her voice that had changed.
She should have been past her prime, not so quick on her feet and stiff from the years she’d fought in the ring and the wounds she’d sustained. Instead, she felt young and vital, her muscles firm, powerful. She could run for hours without tiring. She could bring down prey many times her size in the hunt.
It was very good now, but it had been hard at first.
The pack could have gone wild, loosed in these lands as they had been, a world beyond the world they knew, where they were born. And they would have, if she hadn’t had the voice in her head. The voice wasn’t strong. She didn’t have many words. But she could always speak a little, and she’d already known the basic rights and wrongs, enough so that she’d held their wildness in check. She made sure that other creatures with voices—hare, squirrel, deer—did not become prey unless they were old or infirm, those voices of theirs calling to predators for release from their ailing prisons of flesh.
The pack hadn’t understood—except for her own offspring, they still didn’t—but they obeyed her. Her leadership carried over from the old world, from the fighting ring where her sire and dame had fallen. Where the rest of her litter had died, too—brothers and sisters sacrificed for the amusement of men.
She knew in her old world that there were bonds between some men and dogs, though it wasn’t something with which she’d had any lasting experience. She could remember the Boy when she was a pup, the Boy who’d loved her and called her Honey. But her time with the Boy was short. She was soon taken from him by the Man, beaten and made to fight in the ring. Tooth and claw and blood. Always the blood.
She was undefeated, but the victories were hollow. They meant nothing to her except for how they left her scarred, especially around her neck and chest. Her victories pleased the Man, but why should she care? Her only reward was a cuff on the head, the cage in which she was transported, and the chain that held her in the yard, winter and summer, storm or shine.
The Man was careful with her. He had a thing that spat pain to keep her in check—a small black box he could hold in his hand. When he touched it to her, her muscles jumped and went slack and her mind went spinning, spinning . . .
She had no interest in pleasing him. Their bond was formed of hate and pain. She was only a tool to him, nothing more, while he . . . he was the chief monster in a world of monsters.
She had sneered at the dogs who cozied up to men, who thought they could be a part of men’s lives—the part that held comfort and joy and contentment. When the Boy was gone, she understood that dogs and men could only be enemies. The bond was a lie. A hateful lie to make her stare at the moon and pine for what reason told her was impossible.
Her heart had hardened. Her life revolved around the ring, being transported to and from it, being chained in the yard, always waiting for that one single opportunity to tear out the throat of the Man. Time and again she vowed that this night she wouldn’t fight. She’d let her opponent kill her and be done with the prison of her life. But in the ring, all the anger she felt toward the Man arose, and she took out her rage on whatever hapless dog had been thrown into the dirt ring with her.
And then she met Joe.
She could still remember how he’d treated her as an equal, right from the first, when she was still chained in the Man’s yard. He carried a strange, unrecognizable scent—man, yes, but also that of dog and bird. Not that he’d been in contact with either, but that they lived under his skin with the man. His presence made her whiskers twitch and woke a tickle in that part of her mind that housed her spirit voice.
When he approached her he was cautious, but fearless. She’d heard the words spilling from his lips, but she also heard his spirit voice in her head. She’d never met any man or beast with that voice before. Voices had come to her before, but they were always distant, beyond the confines of where she was chained, or in passing, when she was in a cage in the back of the Man’s pickup on the way to or from a fight.
But here was a man with that voice. A man offering friendship with no bargain attached. Who’d freed her and the rest of the pack without the fear that they would then turn on him.
It was only later that she understood why. When she saw he could wear more than one shape. Dog, man, blackbird. He offered friendship and freedom because he was one of them. From another pack, but he was still kin. Or at least kin to her with the voice in her head.
That voi
ce.
When he came to her a couple of years ago and asked her to help find a friend, she’d done so willingly. He’d come as he had when he set the pack free and showed them how to step into the otherworlds: Fearless. Without guile. Expecting nothing. As a friend. The way, she realized, that he’d go to another to ask help for her if she were in trouble and he couldn’t help her on his own.
She felt like part of two packs then. The one she led. And the one . . . his . . . in which she . . . this was hard. The one in which she neither led nor followed, but in which she was an equal. The feeling was alien and uncomfortable, but not altogether unpleasant.
She’d seen him numerous times since they’d gone off to help his friend, coming upon him suddenly in some part or another of the otherworld. They would run together for a time, playing and roughhousing like littermates.
When she was with her pack, he took on the role of the other members, letting her lead, happy to follow. When it was only the two of them, neither led.
He hadn’t come for a while now. Not since her voice had gathered strength inside her. She wanted to speak to him of everything that ran through her mind, but she was too shy to approach him. His life, she knew, was busy and full. Who was she to push herself into it?
But sometimes she went to his world. Late at night, she would sit outside the building where he lived with that woman, that woman with her spirit so big her dark skin couldn’t seem to contain it. From across the street, she would watch the flicker of candlelight in their windows. Sensing his presence. Wondering if he sensed hers.
Movement in the dry wash below caught her eye, bringing her up out of her reverie, but it was only one of the pups straying too far. She gave a sharp bark and he turned his head in her direction, trying to outstare her until she barked again, sending a command with her spirit voice at the same time. He hurried back to where the rest of the litter had paused to watch the exchange and jumped on the nearest one to prove that he still had backbone.
She smiled to herself, then made a quick turn away from the wash, suddenly aware that she and the pups were no longer alone. A growl awoke deep in her chest as she lunged to her feet. Below the puppies scattered for shelter as they’d been taught. But as though her thinking of Joe had called him to her, there he was, sitting on his haunches a half-dozen paces from where she stood.