The Dog by Kerstin Ekman Read Free Book Online Page B

fishing
    spots by the narrows and gone inside. The dog crossed his
    tracks in the damp grass when he fled.
    Belly close to the ground, he followed the shore of the
    shallow inlet and then ran in among the scrubby birches
    by the pasture. Without bothering to look for the easiest
    path, he bounded across the wet area below the barn. It
    was covered with meadowsweet, which left a dense,
    honey-like smell when it broke off, making him dizzy. He
    ran through the marsh, black mud splattering around his
    legs. When he reached the spruce forest he had to slacken
    his pace. He loped along until exhaustion dulled the tension
    in his muscles. The memory faded. The throbbing
    sensation in his throat and lungs let up and his heartbeat
    grew steadier.
    He was extremely thirsty; all day and all night he'd been
    too afraid to drink. As he started looking for water his body
    began to relax. Weariness came over him in the chill before
    dawn. He discovered a brook and drank for a long time. As
    he wound down he just lapped sporadically, standing with
    hanging head, letting the murmuring of the brook clear his
    head and drown out the loud surge of blood in his ears.
    Then he pushed on through the forest. Dawn awakened
    all the creatures that had perched on twigs to sleep. There
    was a soft flutter quite nearby: the bold Siberian jays. He was
    accustomed to them and kept going.
    Exhaustion made him increasingly sluggish and empty
    inside. Once the sun was up he came upon a boulder to rest
    by. The warmth of the sun found him there; it penetrated
    through his furry coat to his tired, tingling body. He slept in
    fits and starts while the warmth took over, healing and calming
    him. Only when the jays came too close did his paws
    twitch.
    That day he didn't hunt. He didn't recognise the forest
    around him. He was searching, but not for food; it was
    familiar places he was after, and the smell of his own markings.
    He left no drops of urine, merely stayed on guard and
    kept on searching. He didn't empty his bladder until it was
    painfully full. Towards evening he started covering longer
    stretches at a time, loping at a steady pace, stopping once in
    a while to listen. But even the blend of sounds in the air had
    changed. Everything was different.
    He headed uphill. Sharp rocks protruded and he had to
    climb. He was frightened of stones that might shift under his
    weight but he had to get across the rocky area. Inside him
    was a cavity that could only be filled by familiar things. No
    matter where he stopped, listening and sniffing, the wind
    brought only the unfamiliar, and it was vast.
    The unfamiliar was hunger and stone. It was gravel and
    debris he'd never seen before, blasted-out strips of new logging
    roads, blotches of diesel oil in the gravel. It was rusty
    iron, plastic containers, mouldering cloth, beer bottles and
    jagged rocks. The pads of his paws got cut. Eventually he
    retreated from the strip; it had seemed easy to walk on but it
    exacted a price on his paws.
    He drank from a brook, standing in the water for a long
    time. It soothed the pain in his paws. The running water
    cleared his nose but he still couldn't pick up any scents he
    recognised. The only relief from fear and confusion was to
    keep going.
    The farther up he got the sharper the air became. The
    cleared area was huge. He tried to avoid piles of twigs and
    woodchips but there was no way round. Tractor ruts, deep
    as ditches, cut into the ground. Above him a buzzard
    sailed on outspread wings, screeching. It wanted him to
    leave. He would have been glad to escape the horrible
    noise and the circling overhead, but there was no forest to
    be found.
    In the days that followed he could only hunt in the cleared
    area. The rough terrain made it difficult to find anything.
    Tracking prey was impossible. The buzzard could strike from
    the air but the dog had to make his way on the ground
    through brambles of brush and muddy tractor ruts.
    Hunger made him clumsy and overexcited. He