Earth and Air by Peter Dickinson Read Free Book Online Page B

out of his way, fetched a crowbar and spade, and sweated the rest of the afternoon away prodding and scooping and chopping through roots, picking out the larger rocks from the spoil and setting them aside. When the farm woke and people started to come and go, some of them asked what he was up to. He just grunted and worked on.
    By sunset the hole was as deep as the reach of his arm. He changed her everyday collar for her smart red Sunday one with the brass studs, wrapped her in the sack and lowered her into the grave. Gently he covered her with the larger rocks he’d kept, fitting them together according to their shapes and then ramming earth between them in a double layer, proof against any possible scavenger.
    Finally he filled in the hole and spread what was left of the spoil back under the fig. The stars were bright by the time he fetched a small flask of oil from the barrel in the larder and poured it slowly over her grave.
    â€œGood-bye, Ridiki,” he said. “Good-bye.”
    He scattered the remaining handful of earth over the grave, let the fig branches back to hide and shelter it, and turned away.
    The evening meal was long over, but he couldn’t have eaten. He sat until almost midnight on the boulder beside the vegetable patch with her old collar spread between his hands and his thumbs endlessly caressing the wrinkled leather. The constellations wheeled westward and the lights of the fishing-boats moved quietly around Thasos. When he was sure that there’d be no one about to speak to him he coiled the collar tightly in on itself, put it in his shirt pocket, went up to his cot in the loft over the storeroom and lay down, knowing he wouldn’t sleep.
    But he did, and dreamed. He was following Ridiki along a track at the bottom of an unfamiliar valley, narrow and rocky. She was trotting ahead with the curious prancing gait her bent leg gave her, her whole attitude full of amused interest, ears pricked up and cupped forward, tail waving above her back, as if she expected something new and fascinating to appear round the next corner, some odour she could nose into, some little rustler she could pounce on in a tussock beside the path—pure Ridiki, Ridiki electric with life.
    The track turned, climbed steeply. Ridiki danced up it. He scrambled panting after her. The cave seemed to appear out of nowhere. She trotted weightless towards it, while he toiled up, heavier and heavier. At the entrance she paused and looked back at him over her shoulder. He tried to call to her to wait, but no breath would come. She turned away and danced into the dark. When he reached the cave the darkness seemed to begin like a wall at the entrance. He called again and again. Not a whisper of an echo returned. He had to go; he couldn’t remember why.
    â€œI’m coming back,” he told himself. “I’ll make sure I remember the way.”
    But as he trudged sick-hearted along the valley everything kept shifting and changing. A twisted tree beside the track was no longer there when he looked back to fix its shape in his mind, and the whole landscape beyond where it should have been was utterly unlike any he had seen before.
    At first light the two cocks crowed, as always, in raucous competition. He had grown used to sleeping through the racket almost since he’d first come to live on the farm, but this morning he shot fully awake and lay in the dim light of early dawn knowing he’d never see Ridiki again.
    He willed himself not to be seen moping. It was a Saturday, and he had his regular tasks to do. Mucking out the mule shed wasn’t too bad, but there was a haunting absence at his feet as he sat in the doorway cleaning and oiling the harness.
    â€œSorry about that dog of yours,” said Nikos as he passed. “Nice little beast, spite of that gammy leg, and clever as they come. How old was she, now?”
    â€œFive.”
    â€œBad luck. Atalanta will be whelping any day now. Have