A Boy's Best Friend

Three Days Ago

I could never hate him. I truly couldn’t. But there was an ache in my brain thinking about what he had done to me, bringing such heavy guilt to set on my back during what I had coveted for years. Anything but that life. That life was as useless to me as a sword was to a librarian or a match to a blacksmith. How could he? I was devastated, alone, and left with a future of sharing meals with the vermin and making deals with the devil. I couldn’t still help but wonder if I was the coward. 

Current Day

 Twelve days. Twelve days since I had escaped my godforsaken town, if one could even call a few huts and a well just that.The gods only knew how many miles I had voyaged, fueled by anger and spite. My feet begged for mercy with each forcing step, the compression biting at my sores. 

“We just have to make it through this mountain range, Larkly, where a hot warm soup of jlefta and bread rolls wait for us. Or, for me, rather. I assume you’d prefer rabbit”. Not getting a response, I kept climbing, only assuming my companion’s lungs were rather occupied as we climbed. Though my conscious time whispered of months passing, the rotations of the suns fed the truth. One rotation of Oslanda, four of Oshlinda, and six of Ostlenda. I am anything but mathematically inclined, but however daft I may be I knew how to count days. Twenty days, a generous amount of time I had given myself, to persuade my father to not force my kin to crown me the village head. Larkly was as aware as I was that the implications of a dutiful diadem would only widen the gaping hole of misery I felt in the center of my soul. A tad dramatic is what he would tell me when I described it that way, but would he have preferred I called it my lack of a will to live? We continued to walk, my glutes burning and aching as I pressed my legs into the soil beneath me, the crunching of pine needles satisfying my boredom. He walked up next to me, a mischievous smile on his face patiently waiting for my intrigue. 

“What’s that dumb look on your face for? I know better than to assume you’re just excited for the journey”. His smile only widened. You’ll figure it out eventually his face seemed to tell me, quite too excited. Then, it crept up on me, clingy to my skin and peeling away any sort of inhibition I had been reserving for legitimate obstacles. It punched right into my nostrils, the stench suddenly overbearing, nearly making me wish I was only born with four senses. He read my wrinkling nose and coughing as easily as a wall painting and began laughing, his barks reverberating off the trees around us. 

“Really? Really? You find some dead… skunks to roll in just when we don’t have water to clean you off with. You foul beast!” I screeched, grabbing at him as though I would enact some sort of vengeance, but he was too quick. Bounding happily ahead, his fluffy white paws crunched on the brush of the forest floor. This was my trusted and loyal travel companion. Wonderful. 

The sun was about to set and the cold started to set in. I became much more aware of the lack of fur I had on my body, becoming envious of my sidekick furball. Larkly and I stopped at the edge of the last hill, a rocky cascade enveloping the sight that lay ahead. A city, Vertrian, a collective merchant municipality built off the spines of artisans and dreamers, given to the shrewdly wealthy gangs. Fools were devoured by their own gluttony and greed, and the average citizen was about as moral as a wolf surrounded by lamb, but if you were smart, you worked slowly and kept your mouth shut. I had been here once to trade for lamb pelts when the white wolves from the outskirts of the mountain ranges had been driven into their camps by a windstorm. The man was a lepidopterist by practice, but a shepherd by trade. Moths and butterflies don’t feed the family. However, through the event several years ago I had grown a small network within the city. Nobody I had kept up with except for one. Tindy Tournsborough, a woman of nineteen years, the daughter of the shepherd. She lived in the city as an art curator for the wealthy and lived comfortably and so, throughout the ten years between when I had first laid eyes on the tented collective and now, we would visit each other. She passed through to the cities beyond my village for her work and I had come here again when I aided my father in relying on the shepherd’s resources. Now, I was at her door, praying to the gods that her lips, the same ones that had passionately pressed upon mine nineteen months and four days ago, had not lied. She had told me that if my father and I ever decided to change my life’s path I knew where I could stay. A heavy knock thumped on the door. Two knocks. A bark from Larkly, my loyal mutt. I looked around, hoping that I could imagine the shadows pulsing and squirming. Our walk through the city had been no stroll in paradise and I only glanced at Larkly nervously when nobody came to the door. Nine. Ten seconds. I turned around, taking a step off the entrance of a small walkway when the door opened and a light flooded out onto the street. 

“Well, this is a day I never thought would come.” I whipped around to see the curves of a woman illuminated by a kitchen light wrapped in a silk robe. Tindy’s red curls sprung up from all directions and her soft cheeks were dotted with freckles. 

“Tindy, I’m sorry I couldn’t warn you of my intent to come, I hope it’s not overstepping-” 

“Oh nonsense, Paulie,” she interrupted. Larkly seemed to take that as an invite as he trotted on in and sat on the multicolor braided rug mere feet into her home. We both chuckled, knowing that Larkly always knew his way in the world, confidently. I envied him, his precious little green orbs staring at me, a challenge. She stepped to the side and gestured her hand in a welcoming motion towards her house, already twice the size of the one my six-person family had grown up in. What had I gotten myself into? 

Larkly was the only one who already seemed comfortable with our living arrangements, probably because he could curl into a little ball at the end of the couch and I had to do the same, only I wasn’t a twenty-pound dog. Tindy had been even more nervous that I was to be there, though she had to get over the initial disgust at the pungent stench that Larkly had brought with him. She claimed today we would go shopping together since all the clothes I had brought, the same clothes I had worn the day I left home, wouldn’t do. I didn’t want to tell her that I would rather watch grass grow, since to me it was about the same, but there was nothing in the world I could do to wipe that beautiful, cheesy smile off her face. 

“Somebody has to make sure I don’t act a fool again. You’re coming with, whether you like it or not”. Larkly huffed a breath out his snout as he continued to brood on the couch, preferring to rest after such a long journey. I also suspected other motives of his mood that morning but, alas, I was not going to put up with his pouting. Tindy strutted out of her room wearing a pair of thick-framed black glasses, a red pair of high boots, and a black pashmina shawl. Stylish, per usual, my own dirty clothes suddenly asking to be incinerated. But I could never part with the cloth that covered my awkwardly framed body, the ones sewn with love by my mother, the hides peeled off the meat of our animals. Their animals. Not mine anymore. 

Under the shade of the cotton awnings, Tindy, Larkly, and I searched for what felt like hours. Vendors called us out by whatever characteristic they thought would grasp onto our attention. Dog boy! Strawberry woman! Larkly had nearly gotten them killed when he snatched a pear off the edge of a merchant’s caravan, sprinting like hell when a man with a peg leg started hobbling after him. We both chuckled and continued on, as though nothing had happened. We made our way through the boundless market, stopping to breathe in an alley cooled by the dewy mist that carried down the mountains, unfelt in the suffocated streets. Here, I began to smile as the optimistic beginning of a life I had yearned for came to yield. How many nights had I stayed awake in that rickety farmhouse, imagining futures and trivial things such as sharing a ham sandwich with my fellow dreamers? I looked down at Larkly in hopes of catching a smile once I heard his panting halt, but his eyes laid on something further down the alley. I turned to see what he had and my heart skipped a beat. A man blocked the shadows of the rats, his large build creating an intimidating atmosphere that reverberated down my spine, such a familiar dread that came with it. I took a step back. 

“How did you find me?” I asked. He stepped forward and his eyes slid to Tindy. No. She wouldn’t. Couldn’t. 

“That’s not even possible, she wasn’t aware of my arrival. Plus she wouldn’t. Right Tindy?” I looked over to see her eyes droop, her freckles bunched as she winced. How was this even possible? 

“I had a feeling where you would go, and seeing there was nowhere else you knew, and like a logical traveler, I took the stallion here. I told her, should Paulius come to you, bring him to this alley and we will meet,” the voice boomed. My dream. My life. Larkly stayed in the same place, frozen. Frozen or willful, I did not know. As for Tindy, well, she was dead to me already. I didn’t even blink in her direction as I continued to listen. 

“Do you know the pain of a father whose son does not love him? I searched everywhere for you when I awoke the morning after you left. This world does not thread its blessings into my life lightly, I am not willing to give you up as easily as you would hope. I have come here every day since I arrived, hoping that Tindy would bring you to me. Come home, son. It is your duty.” 

“No,” I said without hesitation. He snorted. 

“Are you so stubborn and selfish in your own ways to realize that we need you and you need us? You may not love us but our hearts are not complete without you. You do not belong in this city. Let your fun end here and I will let you visit this… pig sty again.” 

“I may have lost my only reason for visiting, though you do not lie in insinuating that pigs occupy this city.” A low blow I shot towards Tindy, but her face was still angled towards my father. “ I will create my own life here. The village is not where I belong and time has only proven that! Don’t try to make me go because I won’t”. I felt the desperation again, the same one I had felt those many suns ago when I had tried to convince him of the same. I could feel the ghost of a hand on my shoulder as Tindy reached over but I swatted her hand away. My father began walking towards me and I backed up, step by step, knowing that if he grabbed me I would not be able to escape his clutches again. I prepared myself to run, but I stopped, realizing that Larkly still had not moved. 

“Larkly, come on, let’s go.” He did not move, though his small head looked over his shoulder to watch my face contort in anger. 

“Larkly, come” I commanded. Why would he not move? 

“It seems your mutt has more sense than you, boy.” I didn’t understand. I looked into his eyes, the only ones I thought had understood me all these years. If humans weren’t to be trusted, I would have hoped nature and all its creatures would not share the same fault. A sadness sparkled in the green depth, as though to say this was the only way. My best friend, the one who had helped me create this dream, ready to give up so soon? 

“I would sooner live on the streets with the filth than to go back with you,” I spat. Bold words for somebody who had nothing, but I didn’t think as I sprinted back into the market, not looking back as I zipped between flowing dresses and grimy men. The heat stung my face but I kept running, my eyes racing from tent to tent, trying to find somewhere to hide. It wasn’t until nightfall that I stopped moving, finally turning around to see nobody behind me in the alley. I fell against the slick wall and slid down, putting my hands in my face. Why? Why would she do this? Had my father offered her some sort of money? For all the authority he had, I knew he was not flush. He did not love me. There were long, spindly scars on my back and thighs to prove that. I had made my resolve with my decision and reflected on what he had said, thankful that Larkly and I had taken a new route to Vertrian. Larkly. I didn’t understand how he could have done this. Sure, Tindy I had not seen in over a year so the pain, although fresh and raw, did not cut as deep at the loss of my companion.

Had I not been so wrapped up in the adventurous anxiety and doldrums of my choices I may have even seen it coming. But Larkly, never in a million years. I almost wondered if he was right. A wet raindrop brushed my cheek and I recoiled, looking up frightful of the downpour to come. I lowered my head to see that, in front of me, sat a dog. A scruffy, lovable, little mutt. How he found me only the gods knew. And I embraced him as he nudged his way between my knees, smothering my sweaty face in licks, because for all the fates in the world, for my stubbornness and failure, I knew he would follow me anywhere. 

“Okay buddy, we got work to do. It’s time to go rebuild that network”. He barked and the joy his exuberance filled me with was enough to make me stand up, ready to take on the world.