Day Three: the dog's story
So, it was really only a matter of time before I wrote something about the Decameron, that hilarious collection of stories about pirates, adultery, practical jokes, and basically everyday life from fourteenth century Italy-although I didn't expect it to crop up in the Pet Agency series. This story probably won't make much sense if read out of sequence with the other Pet Agency stories.
Posting a day early today because tomorrow I'm in Montreal...
Previously: The Clockwork Ferret
It’s cold on the tundra. Griff’s a bit hungry, but he’s not enough of a hunter to forage and still keep effective look-out for Chilli, so today, thirty-six hours into sentry duty, he’s fasting, telling himself stories to pass the time.
Back when Griff and Chilli had only known each other a short while, she got loaned to an art forgery investigation and came back able to read and understand Italian. Griff is illiterate; he can tell a few jokes if called upon, but when he tries to tell a story he gets the characters mixed up, and the order of things. But that was the year when the guinea pig with whom he was usually partnered stopped showing up for half her assignments, and he could barely stop to think without a great tide of worry crashing over him; and Chilli, to distract him, told him stories from Boccaccio’s Decameron.
“So then these pirates show up, and the young wife is so desperate to get away from her elderly husband that she jumps out of the boat…”
Griff would never tell Chilli, but the stories didn’t really have enough non-human animals to interest him, and he usually wound up fretting about his partner anyway, and then having to pretend afterwards that he’d been listening. However, he would have liked to have Chilli here to help pass the cold watches outside the Research Institute. Setting aside the fact that he couldn’t imagine watching this long for anyone except Chilli herself.
“So, there was a young man of Padua whose lady treated him with most wondrous cruelty, insofar as she refused any converse with him, hardening her heart against his entreaties. At last, the young gallant’s friends perceived that he fell very swiftly into a decline. So, with wise counsel, they entreated him to seek elsewhere such cheer as might be had in hunting and honourable pursuits, as being a sovereign remedy for a mortified heart.”
“Er, not that this isn’t hilarious, but I keep losing the thread with all the fancy language.”
“There are humans who talk like this, no kidding.”
“Translate for me, will you?”
“Well, he’s outside the city hunting, and suddenly he sees two hounds running through the woods.”
“So there are dogs in this one.”
“They’re not important characters.”
“What kind of dogs?”
“Um. Big black ones. Oh I know, boarhounds.”
“That hunt wild boar?”
“Yeah, sort of ugly, heavy-jawed brutes like you.”
“How many dogs do you think it would take to bring down a boar?”
“Six?”
Friendly wrangling. How many dogs for a bear? A mother bear? One of the mountain lions in Chilli’s native country? (She could answer that one, she had seen it happen). How many chinchillas would it take? (An army, Griff said. Chilli who had never really got along with her con-specifics, shuddered.)
It was a good game, but now that Griff’s out here in Siberia, it’s a bit too easy to start thinking, How many foxes to bring down a chinchilla? And, even though Chilli would kick his butt for thinking it, because she has a mission to accomplish, and the little creep is necessary for that, he thinks, How many German Shepherds for a weasel, if that’s what it came down too?
However, the first time they’d played the game he’d gotten bored pretty quickly and asked, “So what were they doing?”
“Who?”
“The boarhounds. They were running through the woods.”
“Oh, they were-you know what, Griff, this was actually a pretty stupid story. I’ve thought of a better one now I can tell you.”
“With dogs in it?”
Chilli didn’t answer.
“Finish this one first.”
“The dogs are chasing a woman, and there’s a huntsman coming after her. They catch up to her and hold her still, with their teeth you know, and the man takes a knife and cuts her heart out of her chest.”
“The dogs just hold her?”
“Well, they-eat it. The heart. In the story, I mean.”
It was surprising, considering how his original owners had treated him, but at that point in his life, Griff had never bitten a human being. It wasn’t a big, un-crossable line for him the way it was for some dogs; he figured he’d probably do it if he were pushed. But he discovered, with a queasy sensation, that he did have a line at eating internal organs. Chilli went on.
“Then the young knight draws his sword, but it just goes through the huntsman like air, because he’s a ghost. And the huntsman says, Wonder not…” Chilli paused, but this time Griff didn’t protest about the archaic language. “Wonder not that I slay this woman, or something like that, for I do but execute the sentence of Heaven.”
“You mean,” Griff said, “She’s being punished?”
“Yeah, it turns out she rejected the huntsman, rather like the lady of the young knight did. The huntsman finally committed suicide. Later she died too, of a fever, and now her punishment is to be chased and killed for all eternity. His punishment is to chase her.”
“And the dogs?”
“What’s that?”
“What are the dogs being punished for?”
Maybe they had bitten a child, Griff thought. Or maybe they stole food from 14th-century Italian beggars. Or turned on one of their pack-mates and left him for dead. But Chilli just wrinkled her nose. “Oh-they’re not.”
The ensuing argument was even longer than the one about the boarhounds, and successfully put the guinea-pig, not to mention Griff’s first year-end review, out of his mind. But here, forty kilometres outside of Tomtor, his paws stinging with cold, it isn’t so much a distraction as it’s impossible to stop thinking about. He wouldn’t mess around on a security detail like this, and he’s confident that he’s still one hundred percent alert, but it’s true that he didn’t sleep last night, and that’s having its effect. To his ears, half-numbed as they are with cold, the tundra’s silence echoes with eternity, as if he’d died without knowing, and this is his afterlife.
Chilli said, “The dogs didn’t do anything wrong. The huntsman was a bad man,” in the same tone that, a month later, she would say with all sincerity and in apparent possession of her wits, “You could never make me ashamed of you, Griff. That guinea pig was bad news.”
Griff believes her when she’s there, which is why the one creature that he hates to wait for is the one creature for whom he’d be willing to wait forever.
What is this dog being punished for?
He’s being punished for letting his chinchilla go into a building full of carnivores, when he knows full well that it doesn’t take fifty or even five foxes to bring down a chinchilla, it just takes One. Good. Bite.
And while all this is going through Griff’s mind, he smells something. It’s not the faint miasma of danger and death that all morning he’s been imagining he smells from the Institute at the bottom of the hill. It’s a real fox, very close: maybe the wild one with rabies that the hotel clerk in Tomtor warned them about, maybe just a vixen out hunting. Griff decides immediately that he’s going to kill it. One less danger for Chilli in this world equals a good day’s work.
Although on dark days Griff suspects that he’d be capable of chasing down a frightened human, eating its heart, and maybe enjoying it too, he isn’t a boarhound and his tracking skills are poor. This fox seems to have been foolish enough to get nearly on top of him, which argues for the rabies hypothesis. Griff can tell he’s downwind of the animal, so he steps, light and soundless, over the hard, frozen ground, around behind a shrubby thicket, and finally sees it. It’s a young one, a kit or a pup, or whatever you call it, who doesn't know any better than to linger at the top of a slope with its silhouette against the sky. But since it’s going to grow up to be a killer, Griff doesn’t feel guilty, just reminds himself to be quick, because if the fox bites him and it’s rabid, Chilli will be furious.
Well, she’ll be furious anyway, about the risk, but she’s not here. It’s been at least an hour now since Griff stopped believing anything she said, stopped imagining that there could be anything worse than the lonely punishment of this tundra.
And then a familiar figure hops into sight, and it’s worse than anything could possibly be, because this infant-killer is directly between Griff and his tiny, soft Chilli, and is watching her with hungry eyes.
Next: Outskirts
Posting a day early today because tomorrow I'm in Montreal...
Previously: The Clockwork Ferret
It’s cold on the tundra. Griff’s a bit hungry, but he’s not enough of a hunter to forage and still keep effective look-out for Chilli, so today, thirty-six hours into sentry duty, he’s fasting, telling himself stories to pass the time.
Back when Griff and Chilli had only known each other a short while, she got loaned to an art forgery investigation and came back able to read and understand Italian. Griff is illiterate; he can tell a few jokes if called upon, but when he tries to tell a story he gets the characters mixed up, and the order of things. But that was the year when the guinea pig with whom he was usually partnered stopped showing up for half her assignments, and he could barely stop to think without a great tide of worry crashing over him; and Chilli, to distract him, told him stories from Boccaccio’s Decameron.
“So then these pirates show up, and the young wife is so desperate to get away from her elderly husband that she jumps out of the boat…”
Griff would never tell Chilli, but the stories didn’t really have enough non-human animals to interest him, and he usually wound up fretting about his partner anyway, and then having to pretend afterwards that he’d been listening. However, he would have liked to have Chilli here to help pass the cold watches outside the Research Institute. Setting aside the fact that he couldn’t imagine watching this long for anyone except Chilli herself.
“So, there was a young man of Padua whose lady treated him with most wondrous cruelty, insofar as she refused any converse with him, hardening her heart against his entreaties. At last, the young gallant’s friends perceived that he fell very swiftly into a decline. So, with wise counsel, they entreated him to seek elsewhere such cheer as might be had in hunting and honourable pursuits, as being a sovereign remedy for a mortified heart.”
“Er, not that this isn’t hilarious, but I keep losing the thread with all the fancy language.”
“There are humans who talk like this, no kidding.”
“Translate for me, will you?”
“Well, he’s outside the city hunting, and suddenly he sees two hounds running through the woods.”
“So there are dogs in this one.”
“They’re not important characters.”
“What kind of dogs?”
“Um. Big black ones. Oh I know, boarhounds.”
“That hunt wild boar?”
“Yeah, sort of ugly, heavy-jawed brutes like you.”
“How many dogs do you think it would take to bring down a boar?”
“Six?”
Friendly wrangling. How many dogs for a bear? A mother bear? One of the mountain lions in Chilli’s native country? (She could answer that one, she had seen it happen). How many chinchillas would it take? (An army, Griff said. Chilli who had never really got along with her con-specifics, shuddered.)
It was a good game, but now that Griff’s out here in Siberia, it’s a bit too easy to start thinking, How many foxes to bring down a chinchilla? And, even though Chilli would kick his butt for thinking it, because she has a mission to accomplish, and the little creep is necessary for that, he thinks, How many German Shepherds for a weasel, if that’s what it came down too?
However, the first time they’d played the game he’d gotten bored pretty quickly and asked, “So what were they doing?”
“Who?”
“The boarhounds. They were running through the woods.”
“Oh, they were-you know what, Griff, this was actually a pretty stupid story. I’ve thought of a better one now I can tell you.”
“With dogs in it?”
Chilli didn’t answer.
“Finish this one first.”
“The dogs are chasing a woman, and there’s a huntsman coming after her. They catch up to her and hold her still, with their teeth you know, and the man takes a knife and cuts her heart out of her chest.”
“The dogs just hold her?”
“Well, they-eat it. The heart. In the story, I mean.”
It was surprising, considering how his original owners had treated him, but at that point in his life, Griff had never bitten a human being. It wasn’t a big, un-crossable line for him the way it was for some dogs; he figured he’d probably do it if he were pushed. But he discovered, with a queasy sensation, that he did have a line at eating internal organs. Chilli went on.
“Then the young knight draws his sword, but it just goes through the huntsman like air, because he’s a ghost. And the huntsman says, Wonder not…” Chilli paused, but this time Griff didn’t protest about the archaic language. “Wonder not that I slay this woman, or something like that, for I do but execute the sentence of Heaven.”
“You mean,” Griff said, “She’s being punished?”
“Yeah, it turns out she rejected the huntsman, rather like the lady of the young knight did. The huntsman finally committed suicide. Later she died too, of a fever, and now her punishment is to be chased and killed for all eternity. His punishment is to chase her.”
“And the dogs?”
“What’s that?”
“What are the dogs being punished for?”
Maybe they had bitten a child, Griff thought. Or maybe they stole food from 14th-century Italian beggars. Or turned on one of their pack-mates and left him for dead. But Chilli just wrinkled her nose. “Oh-they’re not.”
The ensuing argument was even longer than the one about the boarhounds, and successfully put the guinea-pig, not to mention Griff’s first year-end review, out of his mind. But here, forty kilometres outside of Tomtor, his paws stinging with cold, it isn’t so much a distraction as it’s impossible to stop thinking about. He wouldn’t mess around on a security detail like this, and he’s confident that he’s still one hundred percent alert, but it’s true that he didn’t sleep last night, and that’s having its effect. To his ears, half-numbed as they are with cold, the tundra’s silence echoes with eternity, as if he’d died without knowing, and this is his afterlife.
Chilli said, “The dogs didn’t do anything wrong. The huntsman was a bad man,” in the same tone that, a month later, she would say with all sincerity and in apparent possession of her wits, “You could never make me ashamed of you, Griff. That guinea pig was bad news.”
Griff believes her when she’s there, which is why the one creature that he hates to wait for is the one creature for whom he’d be willing to wait forever.
What is this dog being punished for?
He’s being punished for letting his chinchilla go into a building full of carnivores, when he knows full well that it doesn’t take fifty or even five foxes to bring down a chinchilla, it just takes One. Good. Bite.
And while all this is going through Griff’s mind, he smells something. It’s not the faint miasma of danger and death that all morning he’s been imagining he smells from the Institute at the bottom of the hill. It’s a real fox, very close: maybe the wild one with rabies that the hotel clerk in Tomtor warned them about, maybe just a vixen out hunting. Griff decides immediately that he’s going to kill it. One less danger for Chilli in this world equals a good day’s work.
Although on dark days Griff suspects that he’d be capable of chasing down a frightened human, eating its heart, and maybe enjoying it too, he isn’t a boarhound and his tracking skills are poor. This fox seems to have been foolish enough to get nearly on top of him, which argues for the rabies hypothesis. Griff can tell he’s downwind of the animal, so he steps, light and soundless, over the hard, frozen ground, around behind a shrubby thicket, and finally sees it. It’s a young one, a kit or a pup, or whatever you call it, who doesn't know any better than to linger at the top of a slope with its silhouette against the sky. But since it’s going to grow up to be a killer, Griff doesn’t feel guilty, just reminds himself to be quick, because if the fox bites him and it’s rabid, Chilli will be furious.
Well, she’ll be furious anyway, about the risk, but she’s not here. It’s been at least an hour now since Griff stopped believing anything she said, stopped imagining that there could be anything worse than the lonely punishment of this tundra.
And then a familiar figure hops into sight, and it’s worse than anything could possibly be, because this infant-killer is directly between Griff and his tiny, soft Chilli, and is watching her with hungry eyes.
Next: Outskirts