Dog Boy by Eva Hornung Read Free Book Online Page B

men beating the other man. He heard again the screams and fragments of other lives that came from the huts.
    ‘Alyosha! Get me the meat grinder from Kyril’s!’ ‘Oujas, Valodya! Go wash in the pond!’ ‘I’ll skin you alive, I will.’ ‘ Bla-ack Raa-ven, La la laa li la…you tell my…la la li laa… ’
    His mind ran through all the images of mothers and small children going about their business, so profoundly separated from him. There were no older children in the village.
    Mamochka took all the young dogs in turn to the village to learn about dogs and men. Because Romochka had to go with Mamochka, he went every time. It was a good place to find rats, although once they had one they would have to fight for it. With her help they usually kept their rat, but they had to learn when to defer. Romochka was shocked the first time he saw Mamochka, confronted by a big black dog, drop the rat and veer away stiffly with her hackles raised. After that he learned how to recognise the individual members of the forest clan. They were a much larger established clan with a lair somewhere in the forest. Mamochka never crossed their closed paths. Her hackles rose whenever she saw or smelled one and he learned slowly to recognise this and to step carefully himself. In time the hairs at the back of his own neck rose with hers and he developed an awareness of territory that was almost unconscious.
    By the end of the first week of forays Romochka was dismayed at what a poor dog he made. He was completely dependent on the four siblings, again, to know right from wrong, and Mamochka didn’t let him hunt with anyone except herself, so little did she trust him to take care of himself. If he chafed at the rules and got silly or playful, or tried to tempt the others into a game, she bit him.
    Worst of all, he was next to useless. His heart burned as he lay awake in the den thinking about it. He could see in his mind’s eye the four, noses to the ground, knowing things he couldn’t see or smell. He saw them curious, delighted, intrigued, doubtful, frightened, worried, elated; saw them slow down, deviate, turn back or speed up, stop and listen in reaction to what their nose could pick up. He saw them hunt, tracking something until they flushed it out, and he could see on their bodies the moment they crossed a boundary into closed paths to do it. He could recognise the apprehension of a hunt in someone else’s territory. Yet he could smell nothing. He had tried by himself to trail Brown Brother across the allotment. He thought he had it. He turned round to see Brown Brother proficiently trailing him.
    How would he ever hunt properly without a nose? He felt his nose and his small teeth in deep dissatisfaction. He rubbed his palms over his hairless arms and felt his callused hands and long broken fingernails.
     
    From the first meeting place there were trails through the waste lands and marshes to the mountain, the cemetery, the forest and the city, open trails that were the same every time, that skirted other clans’ closed paths. On the mountain, at the edge of the cemetery, and in the forest there were other meeting places. The trail home or outwards always took these in and everyone (except Romochka) could read whether the region had been safe and fruitful.
    He learned mountain, cemetery’s edge and forest but not the city. He didn’t even know that a trail led there, back to where he had come from so long ago. He learned to skirt the apartment blocks and the abandoned construction sites and warehouses that lay between them and the city, abutting the highway at the far side of the cemetery. The blue-tiled apartment blocks, with their vast fields, playgrounds, and gangs, were open paths to all dogs. No clans lived there, although many pet dogs did. But he learned over time that the mysterious closed paths around people were unpredictable, and that the gangs were one of the greatest foes.
    He learned that the warehouses nearest the