Passager (5 page)

He showed the boy what to do, but the boy was still too frightened, until the smaller dog suddenly rolled over on its back and showed the boy its belly. He touched its belly tentatively and then threw his head back and laughed. The dog flipped over and lay its quivering head on his bare foot. Bending down, the boy patted the dog's head. Then he pulled its ears.

“Dog,” he said, in a voice that consciously mimicked the man's deep tones.

But he did not dare touch the larger dog. He just nodded at it.

“Enough for one lesson,” the man said. “Time to eat.” And they walked through the long, low building and into the slanting light of the fall day, which was a surprise to them both.

“Dog,” the boy said as they walked past the corner of the building, where waist-high nettles hid the broken stones of an old wall. The small dog came to him, and trotted contentedly at his heels all the way into the house.

THE SMALL DOG SLEPT AT THE BOY'S BEDFOOT
until the middle of the night, when it got up and crept into the bed with him. The new heather in the mattress reminded the boy of the outdoors and the warmth of the dog recalled a time well before memory. He stirred slightly and slipped into a dream that was softer and gentler than any dreaming he had had in a year.

But after a while, the dog began to dream, too, of coursing after hare through the bracken. His legs scrabbled on the bedclothes and he scratched the boy's leg, not drawing blood, but pulling him swiftly out of sleep.

The boy woke disoriented and then, remembering, stuck his face in the dog's side, drinking deeply of the smell.

“Dog,” he said, then raised his head and looked about.

The room was partly lit by light streaming in through the window. The boy rose from the bed, careful so as not to disturb the sleeping dog, and padded over to the lighted sill.

Under a full harvest moon, round and orange, shadows shifted across the field as if dream waves rolled across a dream ocean. The boy could just see the corner of the mews. And seeing the mews, he remembered the trio of birds on their perches shaking their wings in fear.

Something about those birds was important to him, but he did not know what. He only knew, suddenly and with fierce conviction, that he had to go to them.

He had gone to bed wearing the shirt Master Robin had put on him. It hung almost to his knees. He could not, himself, get into the trews. He did take the harness, though, thinking it part of his outfit, and carefully threaded his arms through it, wrapping the leadline around his arm three times to keep it out of his way. He began to tiptoe toward the door.

The dog roused at once, wagging its not inconsiderable tail.

“Dog,” the boy whispered. The animal left the bed and came right over to him. “Sit!” But the boy's voice had none of the authority of the man's, and the dog remained standing at his side, its tail banging against his legs at every other beat.

The door was not open but it was not locked. The boy found this out when he pushed against it. It creaked only slightly. When he went out into the big hall, trailed by the dog, there was no one there but the mother dog drowsing on the hearthstones. Only coals remained of the roaring fire.

The boy was entirely silent as he moved across the floor, but the little dog's toenails clacketed on the stones. It was a comforting sound, though, and the boy smiled at it. The sound disturbed the older dog's sleep, however, and she looked up for a moment, lazily puzzled, before settling back with a contented sigh.

After several minutes the boy found the outside door. He had excellent night sight from his year in the forest, and besides, he could smell the outdoors through the space where door and wall did not exactly fit. It was a matter of moments till he could figure out the lifting of the latch, having watched the man do it.

He pulled the door open.

The little dog raced out before him, sniffing eagerly at the night air, then running to the nettles at the corner of the mews where it smelled the markings of its mother.

For a moment the boy stopped to look at the black-and-white shadow waves. There was a slight breeze blowing past the mews and over the field to the forest beyond. He could smell the musty mews, the birds, possibly the cow and horse in the stone barn beyond. Drawing himself up, recited the litany he had learned that afternoon: “Door,” he said. “Perch. Bird. Lamp. Rafters.” Then he walked to the mews door.

His hand was barely on the latch when a dog leaped upon him. Instinctively his hand went to guard his throat and the dog's teeth found only his wrist. In the moon's light he saw it was the dun dog and realized his mistake. The wind had been blowing
to
the woods. Not
from
it. He'd had no warning of the pack.

He screamed, a high piercing scream. The dun suddenly slackened its grip as the little brown dog, who'd slept so loyally on the boy's bed, leaped onto its back, savaging it with sharp teeth.

Then the pack was on them, the pair of grey brachets, the three small terriers harrying at the boy's heels. The yellow mastiff stood to one side, watching its packmates, waiting to move in at the kill.

And then just as suddenly the pack was scattered by a fierce, dark shadow. The loud, howling mother dog, having left the fire at the boy's first scream, waded into them. She found the terriers, grabbing one with her teeth and, shaking it three times fiercely, breaking its neck. The other two ran yipping across the meadow, disappearing entirely into the shadows of the corn.

The brachets wrenched about to face her and the dun threw the little dog off its back, and faced her as well. That could have been the end of her fight. There were still three against her. To save herself she needed to turn and run. But then, from behind her came a low, throaty growl. The yellow mastiff moved, stiff-legged, toward her, cutting off any retreat.

The boy began to tremble, but when the little dog hobbled to his side, favoring one front leg, and growled back at the mastiff, the boy's trembling became anger instead of fear. He unwrapped the leadline from his arm and in one savage movement flung himself on top of the dun dog, throttling its neck with the rope as hard as he could. He wasn't strong enough to kill it, but he managed to cut off its breathing and it dropped beneath him.

As if that were some kind of signal, the rest of the pack—the brachets and the mastiff—fell upon the mother dog. She screamed once, but the sound was drowned out by a sudden loud cracking of a horse whip.

“GET ... AWAY ... YOU...” came Master Robin's voice, and the whip snapped again, opening up the back of one of the brachets. And then again, the left front leg of the other.

The mastiff smelled the blood and would have stayed on, but the man banged its nose with the heavy leather butt end of the whip and it sprang away from the fight. Still growling, it backed up in its stiff-legged way till it felt the first of the corn at its back. Then it turned and melted away into the shadows. The brachets followed, howling. The dun, gasping, rose and stumbled after them.

Still trembling, the boy started toward the cornfield, but was caught up short by the man holding the trailing end of the leadline.

“Let them go,” the man said, his voice soft again. “They will do us no harm now, my boy.”

Suddenly the boy found himself sobbing. “Dog,” he said. “Dog.” He dropped to his knees and smothered the little dog with hugs.

Master Robin picked the boy up in one arm, the little dog in the other. “Our dogs will be well again,” he said. “Let us tend them, shall we?”

“Yes,” the boy said. “Yes.” He buried his head against the man's broad shoulder for a moment, then looked past him. The mother dog, limping, bleeding slightly from a bite up high on her neck, was right behind. When he saw this, the boy relaxed and nuzzled against the man as a young pup will do with its own.

IT TOOK THEM THE REST OF THE NIGHT, MAN
and boy working together, to bind up the dogs' wounds. The wounds were not deep, but there were many and they bled profusely. The mother dog lay patiently by the now-roaring fire while the man put poultices on the open sores and sewed up the raw edges of the bites with coarse black thread. But the smaller dog would not be still except with its head on the boy's lap.

By first light they were done, but with Mag and Nell stirring about, neither boy nor man wanted to try and sleep.

“The mews then?” the man asked at last.

“
Master Robin
—and after what happened?” Mag protested, waving her hands about.

The boy gave her a pitying look.

“The birds still must be tended,” the man said. “And I will take the whip. But I doubt that pack will be back. There's easier pickings in the woods.”

They went out, man and boy, together.

Except for patches of blood-sodden earth and the dead terrier by the mews door, there was no sign of the war that had been fought. They buried the terrier—so small and pathetic in the morning light. The boy did not wonder at it. He had seen his fill of dead things in the wood.

The mews was cool and shadowy; it smelled of must and age. The boy went eagerly in after the man, and in a quiet voice recited his lesson.

“Door. Perch. Bird. Lamp. Rafters.”

The man turned to look at him and nodded, careful not to laugh. They stared at one another for a long moment, then tracked through the sawdust on the floor side by side.

When at last they were before the trio of birds, Master Robin stood, hands behind his back, nodding. The boy echoed his stance.

“Bird,” the boy said, his voice husky.

“Mine,” the man said as if in answer. He took care to speak as solemnly as the boy. “Mine because they have given some part of themselves to me. But not all. And not forever.” He let the boy take that in before continuing. “I would not want them to give me all. And every day I must earn their trust again.”

“Again,” the boy said, nodding.

“With wild things,” the man said, turning his head slightly to watch the boy, his eyes narrowing, “there is no such word as
forever.
”

The boy listened intently.

“I stood three nights running with the goshawk there,” said the man, nodding toward the bird furthest to the left. “He was on my fist the whole time.”

“Tied?” the boy asked. It was a new word and an old one for him.

“Aye.”

The boy seemed to consider this, as if he knew it had been a wise thing to do. “Tied.”

“When he bated, I put him back on my fist again. And again. And again. I sang to him. I spoke words to him.”

“My hinny, my jo,” the boy said in a passable imitation of the man's voice. The man was momentarily stunned. “My hinny, my jo,” the boy repeated.

“Aye. And stroked his talons with a feather and gave him meat. And, after three days without sleep, he allowed himself to nap on my fist. He
gave
himself to me in his sleep.”

“In his sleep,” the boy said, wondering if the hawk could dream.

“The peregrine there,” Master Robin said, indicating the middle bird. “Now she is my oldest bird. A beauty. An
eyas.
Like all females, she is strong and calm.”

“Eyas. Oldest.” The words were equally strange to the boy.

The third bird suddenly stirred.

“That means I took her from the nest myself. Nearly lost an eye doing it, but...” The man stopped, aware the boy was no longer listening. Instead he was straining to watch the third bird, staring up at it.

“Ah, that one. He's a
passager,
wild caught but not yet mature.”

The hawk stirred again, as if it knew it was being talked about. The bell on its jess rang out.

At the sound, the boy jumped back.

“You like my merlin best, then?” the man asked in his low voice.

The boy turned sharply, stared at the man wideeyed. His mouth dropped open and he put his hands out as if he had suddenly been turned blind.

Master Robin gathered the boy in his arms. “What is it, then? What is it, my boy, my passager, my wild one? What did I say? What have I done?”

The boy tore from his arms, and turned again to the bird who, unaccountably, began to rock back and forth from one foot to another, its bell jangling madly.

As if he, too, were a bird on a perch, the boy began to rock back and forth. “Name,” he cried out. “Name.”

The man stared at the boy and bird and finally, with a shock of understanding, he plunged his hand into the nearby water barrel. Then he reached for the boy. With his finger he drew a cross on the boy's forehead, one swift line down, a second across, under the tangle of elfknots in his hair.

“I baptize thee Merlin, my child. Somehow your name is the bird's. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

“Amen,” the boy said, and smiled up at the man. “I ... am ... Merlin.” And memory as well as language came flooding through him as he was given back his own true name.