The Scent of an Angel by Nancy Springer Read Free Book Online Page B

way.
    It may have been during those days that I saw the freckle-faced boy with the bamboo fishing pole. Grubbing in the loam of a creek bank for worms, he turned up a nest of baby vipers instead, and thought he had found himself a lucky, rare sort of squirmy bait for his hook. I tugged with my teeth on his shirt tail before he could touch his own death, distracted him with play and led him romping away. All that day I stayed with him, until the serpents had slithered away and nightfall saw him safely home.
    It may have been during that time that I saw the raccoon lurching along a footpath in stark daylight, teeth bared, red eyes glaring, drool dripping from his jaws. Rabid. Mad. I fled, running ahead of the raccoon, and encountered a barefoot young woman ambling along with her eyes on the sky, daydreaming of her lover perhaps. I jumped on her, whining, entreating her to turn back. She shrieked and struck at me because I had muddied her long white apron with my paws. In looking down at me, she looked down the path ahead of her also, and then she saw her danger, screamed anew, and fled without thanking me.
    And it may have been during that time that I saw the scrawny old man sitting on his porch long after dark, sitting in his shirt sleeves in the cold and just staring. I went to him and whined, and still he stared into nothingness. I laid my forepaw on his knee, and his slow gaze shifted to me. “Puppy,” he murmured as if from another world. He stared at me now, and I gazed back. After minutes had gone by, he said, “Puppy, are you hungry?” and he rose stiffly and tottered into his house. “Nothing in here to eat,” he murmured. “I ain’t been eating.” But he found me some stale bread, then lay down on the davenport to sleep, and I slept on the rag rug beside him. The next day, because he had to feed me, he hobbled to the neighbors and got food, and he ate with me. I stayed with him until I made sure the neighbor woman was looking after him, then trotted on my way.
    And so it went. I followed the breeze, searching it for the scent of an angel, and it led me where I was needed. Why I gave aid to the folk and creatures in my way, I do not know. I felt as if I could not do otherwise, even though sometimes I had to stay with some lonely, suffering soul for weeks or even months, interrupting my search—I could not help it, perhaps because I myself knew what it was to suffer, or perhaps—perhaps it was simply my nature. I am, after all, a dog. I give of myself without stint or reckoning. Such is my being.
    It seems to me that this went on for a long time, and I considered that I was getting nowhere. I despaired of finding my angel. I trotted on, when no one needed me, following where the wind led, simply from habit. Perhaps in our lives we all make shining choices that turn in to shadowy habits. I trotted on, but I felt no hope any longer.
    It is odd the way things turn out. Without my knowing it, the wind led me back to where I had begun.
    * * *
    To my eyes at first it was just another village where I might beg a scrap of bread to eat—but then, I did not yet know why, my heart trembled and began to howl. And then I saw—that cowshed, it was—yes, it was where I had suckled at my mother’s belly before she had stuck her hungry head into the bear trap after the bait. Before she was killed. And that was the very farmhouse where the fat woman had given me many curses and a few scraps. And that cottage…
    That was the cottage where the witch lived. On the breeze I smelled soot and lavender.
    On the breeze also, I heard the sound of weeping.
    I wanted to trot on to the cowshed, for it was home of a sort. I knew I would never see my mother again, but my heart yearned for…something. Perhaps I might find some of my litter mates still there?
    But—that soft, weary, sobbing—who was weeping?
    That tired, muted sound would not let me pass the cottage by. My heart would not let me. Limping with soreness from the stony