“Okay,” Sean said, and the simulation sped past him in a blur of fragmented dream images, trolls and dogs and chopped wood and floods, then darkness, but that panoply ended abruptly when Palnatoke awoke Styrbjörn, dragging Sean back into the depths of his ancestor’s mind.
“What hour is it?” Styrbjörn asked, sitting upright. He felt for the dagger, and found it still at his waist.
“A few hours before dawn,” Palnatoke said.
Styrbjörn growled. “Then why do you wake me?”
“It’s the Bluetooth,” Palnatoke said. “He and all his ships are gone.”
The dying caveman looked up at them with dull, watery eyes. Owen didn’t know if he was technically a caveman, but that was what he looked like. He wore leather and fur, and no fabrics of any kind that Owen could see. His dark brown skin appeared almost corrugated, with black dirt deep in the folds and wrinkles, and he had pieces of straw in his long gray hair and beard.
“Can we help you?” Owen asked. “Are you hurt? Or sick?”
“You ask complicated questions,” the man said.
They didn’t seem complicated to Owen. He looked at Grace, and she gave a little shrug.
“You cannot prevent my death, if that is what you are asking,” the man said. “After all this time, I have come to the end of my wanderings.”
“What is your name?” Natalya asked.
“My name? I left that behind me on the Path many years ago. I had no use for it, and it only weighed me down.”
His Dog seemed to have relaxed now that it had brought help to its master. It lay down next to him with a sigh and placed its heavy head in his lap, its yellow eyes rolling upward every few moments to look at its master’s face.
“Does your dog have a name?” Owen asked.
“Oh, she is not mine.”
Owen frowned. “But I thought—”
“She is not mine any more, nor any less, than I am hers.” The stranger looked down and smiled, revealing a mouth of gray and missing teeth. He smoothed the fur over the Dog’s broad head and scratched behind one of her ears. The Dog closed her eyes. “I suppose you could call her something if you like,” the stranger said. “I just call her Dog. We’ve been together down the darkest of roads, and the most beautiful of roads, too.”
“You’re a traveler?” Natalya said.
The stranger seemed to think about that for a moment. “I think a traveler has a destination in mind. A place to arrive. I have had neither.”
“So you just, like, wander around?” Owen said.
“I do.” The stranger nodded, and then he wagged his finger at Owen, smiling again. “Yes, I am a Wanderer.” He looked down at his Dog again, still scratching her ear, and his smile faded away. “Soon I shall wander where she cannot go.”
“Are you sure you’re dying?” Grace asked. “Maybe you—”
“I can’t feel my legs,” he said. Then he held up his right hand and flexed his fingers in and out of a fist. “I’m cold most everywhere else. I feel the life going out of me into the ground. Into this stone behind me. Into this hill.”
“I’m sorry,” Grace said.
“What for?” he asked. “I have beheld wonders and horrors and beautiful, everyday things. I have spent my life asking questions. Sometimes I found the answers, and sometimes I found more questions, and every so often, when I was very fortunate, I found the truth.” He looked down at his Dog again. “There is only one question left for me to ask. But before that, a favor.”
“A favor of us?” Owen said. “Is that why your Dog brought us here?”
“No. She is a Dog. She brought you here because she’s worried about me. She knows that something is wrong, and she hopes you’ll fix it. But now that you are here, yes, I have a favor to ask you.”
“What can we do for you?” Grace said.
The Wanderer cleared his throat, and he paused. “After I am gone, will you find her a new companion?”
Owen had almost expected that, and he looked down at the Dog. One of her paws twitched, and her lip rippled, and he realized she had already fallen asleep, completely oblivious to what the Wanderer was saying about her. She was with him in that moment, which was all that mattered, and she was content. Owen smiled at her, but it was a sad smile. After her companion was gone, she wouldn’t understand. She would be confused and all alone. In pain. And that wasn’t fair.
“We’d really like to help,” Natalya said. “But we don’t … um, know anyone here.”
“I see.” The Wanderer scratched at his eyebrow with one of his thumbs, the nail chipped and worn down. “I … I worry what will happen to her.”
A tightness gathered in Owen’s throat, but he swallowed it down and said, “We’ll take her.”
Natalya and Grace looked over at him.
Owen knew this was only a simulation, and Monroe would say the Dog was a symbol, not a pet, but it didn’t feel that way to him. He knew what she was about to face, and he couldn’t leave her to do it alone. “We’ll take her with us,” he said. “We’ll look after her until we find her a home.”
“Thank you.” The Wanderer closed his eyes again, and leaned his head back against the stone. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Owen said.
“Not far from here,” the Wanderer said, “there is a Crossroads. I think you will find someone for my Dog there, if you wait long enough.”
“We’ll go there,” Owen said. “We’ll find someone.”
Grace and Natalya hadn’t objected to this plan, but Owen could tell they felt unsure about it. They didn’t smile and they didn’t nod. Truthfully, Owen felt unsure about it, too. If they took this Dog and spent time waiting at the Crossroads, wherever that was, that would mean less time spent searching for the Summit and the key to this simulation. Less time figuring out how it could help them stop Isaiah.
The Wanderer leaned forward and laid his chest over the Dog in his lap, embracing her huge head. She woke suddenly and sat up, alert. Then she reached her nose toward his face, sniffing, and lapped his chin once with her tongue. She whined.
“You know,” he said, exhaling. “You can smell it.”
She rose to her four feet and stepped closer, licking his face again, insistently, urgently, his cheeks, his forehead, his nose, his lips. He closed his eyes and let her. Then he dug the fingers of both hands into the scruff around her neck and pulled her close, touching his forehead to hers.
“I know,” he whispered. Then he leaned back against the stone, and looked up into the sky. “It is snowing. I will ask my question now.”
But it wasn’t snowing. It wasn’t even cold. Owen looked up.
And then it was snowing.
Delicate white flecks found their easy way down from an ashen sky, and some of them touched Owen’s face with their icy edges. The Dog whined again. Owen looked down, and he could tell the Wanderer had died. His body was empty. The Dog licked his lifeless face, waited and whined, and licked, and whined. She looked up at Owen, as if desperate for him to do something, and then she looked back at the Wanderer, who had left her. The snow gathered on her coat, white against her dark fur, and now she barked, sounding frantic, but not at anything, or anyone. Out of confusion and fear.
Grace looked at the Wanderer’s body. “I know he’s not real, and he didn’t really die. But it’s still hard.”
“I’m not sure I know what real means anymore,” Natalya said. “When the—”
The Dog let out a sound like a moan as she lay down next to her dead companion, placing her head in his lap as she had been doing only moments before.
“Poor thing,” Grace said.
“Now you see why I couldn’t leave her behind,” Owen said. “You want to talk about what’s real? For me, if it feels real, it’s real. And I feel for that Dog.”
“So do we,” Natalya said.
The snow now fell heavily, and within moments white drifts had gathered around the body of the Wanderer, slowly burying him with the Dog mourning at his
side. Owen looked through the opening of the stone ring, and noticed that it didn’t seem to be snowing elsewhere. Just the top of the hill, where the temperature had fallen quickly and suddenly.
“I think we should get back to the Path,” Natalya said.
Owen agreed, and he called to the Dog, “Come, girl.”
She didn’t move. Didn’t even look up.
Owen stepped closer to her, and tapped his leg. “Girl, come.”
He saw her ears move, angling toward him, so he knew she was listening to him and just choosing to ignore him. With her size, he was still afraid to approach her, but he realized he would have to if he wanted to convince her to come with him. So he moved closer, one step at a time, watching her reaction to his presence.
“Be careful,” Grace said. “I was just reading about a Norse god who got his hand bitten off by a wolf.”
“Thanks, Grace, that’s a great story,” Owen said, taking another step.
“I’m just saying—”
The Dog growled, and if Owen had heard that sound while he was on a hike, he would have assumed it was a bear or a wolf. He would have taken off running, and he wouldn’t have had a choice about it. That growl shook his bones. But instead of running from that hilltop, he stopped where he was and held his ground. The Dog turned her head slightly toward him, watching him with one eye, but she wasn’t showing her teeth and the growling had stopped as he had halted. He slowly lowered himself to the snow where he was and sat down.
“What are you doing?” Natalya whisper-shouted. “Owen, come away.”
“You guys go ahead,” Owen said without taking his eyes from the Dog. “We’ll catch up.”
“Are you for real right now?” Grace asked. “You want us to leave you alone? In this simulation? With that thing?”
“She’s just scared,” Owen said. The Dog had started to pant, even though she was lying in the snow. “I’m just going to sit here for a while and see if she’ll calm down.”
“We don’t have time for that,” Natalya said with a bit of chatter in her teeth from the cold. “And I think that Dog can take care of itself just fine.”
“That’s not the point,” Owen said. “And I told you guys to go ahead without me.”
“I guess it’s a good thing I came in here,” Grace said. “Natalya needs someone with sense in their head.”
“Owen,” Natalya said, “stop and think about this. Think about where you are. Think about the risks.”
Owen knew the risks, and knew he sounded ridiculous, but it didn’t feel that way. This seemed important, and real, and he wasn’t ready to give up. The snow had nearly buried the Wanderer’s legs, with just the tops of his leather leggings poking through. The snow collecting on the Dog’s fur had turned clear and icy around the edges.
“I’m serious, you guys,” Owen said. “Just go. I’ll be fine.”
“It’s freezing,” Grace said.
“I’ll be fine. I’m not leaving her.”
Natalya shook her head, and then shrugged. “Whatever. Okay, fine.” She turned to Grace. “Let’s go, I guess.”
“Guess so,” Grace said.
They turned to leave, but Owen kept his eyes on the Dog, waiting. He wasn’t sure what he was waiting for, but he waited. The snow beneath him started to melt and soak into his clothes, and the cold finally got to him. He brought his arms in close to his chest, and pulled his legs up so that he was almost sitting in a fetal position. Over time, the falling snow clung to his eyelashes, and he felt its weight on his head and shoulders. When he shook like a dog to throw it off, the actual Dog raised her head and watched him. He imagined her judging his technique.
“I’m not good at that, am I?” he said.
The Dog laid her head back down, and she whimpered.
“I’m sorry,” Owen said. Then he looked over his shoulder to make sure Natalya and Grace were gone. “I lost someone, too. It didn’t make any sense to me. It still doesn’t. I didn’t even get to say good-bye, so you’re lucky you got to have that.” He rocked his body to try to warm himself with some movement. “But you can’t just lie down. You have to keep going. That’s what he would have wanted you to do.”
The Dog looked at him as he talked, and then she yawned with a little whine, showing all of her many sharp teeth.
“Come, girl.” He patted the snow-covered ground next to him, leaving an impression behind.
She watched him, but didn’t move.
“Will you come?” He patted it again. “Come.”
The Dog looked at the spot Owen had indicated, and he felt certain she understood exactly what he wanted. But still she stayed where she was. He’d begun to doubt whether she would ever voluntarily leave the Wanderer’s side. He certainly couldn’t pull her away, even if she decided not to hurt him as he tried. She was just too big.
Owen shivered now in a way he couldn’t control. Violent convulsions seized his muscles and held them tight. It would still be easy enough for him to walk, or crawl, out of the stone ring, to escape the snow into the warm sunlight. But he refused to do that. Even if it meant he froze to death right here in this spot and desynchronized, he wouldn’t leave the Dog. She had to know. She had to know that you can lose someone who means everything to you, and still keep going.
Besides, if she was devoted enough to stay by her companion, he could stay by her. So he stayed and stayed, hoping that if he did freeze to death in this simulation, it wouldn’t do any permanent damage to his mind.
By now the snow had covered the Wanderer’s legs and reached his waist. As for the Dog, Owen could still see the ridgeline of her back, as well as her neck and her head, but everything else lay buried.
He didn’t know how long he had been there. He was trying to figure it out by watching the rate of the falling snow as it piled up, but before he got there his thoughts collapsed in a jumble and he lost track. He grew sleepy, and he’d read enough books and watched enough TV to know that was a sign of hypothermia. But he didn’t care. He had made up his mind about staying until the end, and maybe going to sleep would make desynchronization easier.
That thought felt appealing. Simple.
Sleep.
“I … admire your … devotion,” he said to the Dog. Then he flopped onto his back in the snow, staring up into the dancing sky. “Devotion,” he said again, thinking that word was important, but he couldn’t remember how or why. He closed his eyes, and he felt himself drifting up into the sky like a snowflake that gravity couldn’t catch.
Higher he went.
Farther.
He could get lost up here in all the nothing. Just a speck floating away and—
Something hot branded his cheek. Something molten in the icy cold that burned him back into his body. He felt a gentle prodding, from his head to his knees. He felt something tugging on him, and heard a tearing sound, and then something jerked his whole body under his armpits, dragging him through and over the snow. He felt it sliding beneath him, its divots and swells, and he heard rough breathing in his ear.
It was the Dog.
As his mind came back down from the sky, he became aware of light falling against his eyelids, a warm wind across his skin, and the whisper of grass beneath him. When his body came to rest, he opened his eyes, squinting, and saw the head of the Dog directly above him. She looked down at him, panting, and then bent closer to lick his face.
“Okay, okay,” he said, raising his hands to keep her at bay. “Good girl.”
She backed away and stood there wagging her tail. Then she barked.
“I’m getting up,” Owen said. But every part of him hurt as it thawed out, and it took him a while just to sit up, and even longer to struggle to his feet. His hair and clothing were soaking wet, and his favorite T-shirt hung loose and torn over his shoulder where the Dog had apparently used her teeth to pull him.
She had seen him collapse, and she had saved him.
And there he was on the hillside, a little unsteady, looking down at the Path bel
ow, while a dense bank of fog smothered the stone circle just above him. The Dog sat beside him, and Owen reached over to scratch behind her ear in the way he had seen the Wanderer do. Her fur was wet and cold with melted snow, and she smelled like any dog would, except maybe worse.
“Thank you,” he said. “I want you to know that wasn’t my plan. But if someone asks, I’m going to say that it was.”
From his vantage, he could see the course of the Path as it wound away through the white rock bluffs and green hills. He scanned along it, but couldn’t see any sign of Grace or Natalya. Off in the distance, he wasn’t sure how far, it appeared that another road intersected with the Path, forming a crossroads.
“That must be it,” he said, looking over at the Dog. “That’s where we’ll find you a new companion. Come, girl.” He took a few slow and heavy steps down the hillside.
But she didn’t follow him.
He looked back, and so did she, staring at the shroud of fog. She had saved Owen, but that didn’t mean she was ready to leave her Wanderer behind. She whined and shifted weight on her paws, almost taking a few steps in place.
Owen sighed. He had nearly frozen to death for her. If that wasn’t enough for the Dog to follow him, he didn’t know what else he could do. Natalya and Grace were up ahead somewhere, and it might be possible to catch up to them. He still didn’t want to leave the Dog, but now that she seemed to have broken out of her grief, at least enough to leave the Wanderer’s side, he felt better about it than he had before.
“Come!” he called, one more time, putting as much command into his voice as he could, and then he turned away from her. He decided he would not look back. He would simply walk down the hill. She would either follow him or she wouldn’t.
He was halfway down the hill before she barked. He kept going, slow and steady, without looking back. A few paces on, she barked again, and still he kept walking. But her next bark sounded closer. A few moments later, she barked directly behind him, and then she loped up alongside him, panting.
He looked over at her. “Good Dog.”
She still appeared uneasy, walking with her head down, occasionally glancing back at the hill, but she kept pace with him until he reached the safety of the Path and set off in the direction they’d been traveling before. Hopefully, Grace and Natalya hadn’t made it too far ahead of him.