Quite Contrary (22 page)

I circled around the house, trying to figure if it would be best to keep my distance. I decided instead to creep right up to the side and edge around. There was only one thing I was worried about, and I couldn’t imagine I could outrun him in this wide, flat field.

“A lot of blood,” Rat whispered into my ear. I glanced at him, and had to bite down on my laughter. Nervous as this situation was, his little face bobbing up and down as he smelled the air went from ‘cute’ to ‘hilarious’ when he kept wrinkling up his nose in disgust.

I really wasn’t good at playing it safe. Why was I trying to pretend? I leaned around the corner and called out, “Hey, Mister. You’re alive, right? Because it looks like my rat owes me five bucks.”

This town seemed to specialize in old people, and Mordecai—“Hey, and you’re Mordecai, right?”—was a perfect example. He wore crude, ragged jeans and a flannel shirt the same dull blue-gray color. He had a rifle, and he and it looked about the same—old and hard. He didn’t have much hair, and what he had was white, but he didn’t have many wrinkles. He didn’t look unhealthy, old-person thin. He looked in shape, and moved easily as he wiped down his rifle with a rag. Not that I knew anything about guns, but it was long and thin and I was guessing it was an antique.

“I’m alive. Your rat smells my dog, Wilbur. I buried what I could.”

I winced. “Ow. Geez, I’m sorry. Losing a dog is rough. Hunting dog, right? Pet and partner?” When he nodded, I repeated, “Geez. Sorry.” I hoped he could tell I meant it. I hated fake sympathy.

“Hunting dog is why he was killed. Wolf got him. Killed him in his own kennel. Doesn’t want me tracking him in the woods,” the old guy recited sourly. He turned beady brown eyes to me and added, “And yeah, I’m Mordecai.”

Rat started to bristle up, and I shot him a warning look. I wasn’t stupid. ‘Wolf’ was not a good word. But it couldn’t be mine, because mine wouldn’t have cared. “Sorry again, then, ‘cause I hate bugging you on what’s already a really bad day. I’m looking for a city of iron and yellow smoke. You heard of it, maybe know of a way there?”

Mordecai had no shortage of patience. “Yes, and no. These woods are full of paths. One of them goes to a place I guess is like that. Without my dog, there’s no way to find it. All the paths look the same, except to his sense of smell.”

I winced. Good job, Mary, just keep kicking him right in his grief.

Still, I turned my head asked Rat, “How’s your sense of smell?”

“Better than yours. Nothing like a dog’s.” He sounded frustrated and apologetic.

“I’ll figure out something else, then. Thanks, Mister. Really sorry about your dog. Guess it must have been old if a wolf got it.” I stepped away from his house to let him know I wasn’t going to hang around and bug him.

“Wouldn’t have mattered. A wolf’s stronger than a dog. Stronger, smarter, faster. Better in every way. It’s gonna be a pain in the rear training up a new dog with a wolf trying to get it before I can put a bullet in him,” Mordecai answered, as gloomy as he was patient.

I felt like I was on fire. “Better in every way, huh? Including sense of smell? And you’re going to have to train a new dog anyway?” I asked, trying to hold a lid on this terrible glee.

The old man wasn’t stupid at all. “They’re hard to train, but it doesn’t matter. There’s no way I can catch this one alive. Too smart. Probably talks.” Still, he watched me as he said it. He knew I had an angle. I was probably vibrating with this evil idea.

“He’ll walk right up to you,” I promised him. I could hear myself drawling, rolling every word across my tongue maliciously.

“Miss Mary, please don’t do this,” Rat whispered to me from my shoulder. He was pulling on his ears again.

I felt like I floated as I walked out across Mordecai’s lawn towards the wood. “I’ll have the fairy tale woodsman standing right next to me. My Wolf might be a match for him, but not any regular wolf.”

I could hear Rat’s fast, squeaky breathing. Little clawed fingers grabbed my ear and Rat called out behind me, “Mister Mordecai! Get a collar, rope, whatever you’ll need. This could happen fast. Real fast. Your wolf is watching us right now. He wants to run away, but he can’t.”

I giggled. I wasn’t usually big on revenge, but after the last few days of hell, this was going to feel a lot like justice.

Tree stumps marked the edge of the wood, and some of them were big. I walked up to one wider than I was tall, and hoisted myself up to sit on the edge facing the woods. I heard loud footsteps and clanking and rustling behind me—and the clicking of a gun.

Mordecai grunted. “The trees are too quiet. He’s here, yeah. But he won’t come out.”

“He will,” Rat assured him. From the heavy breathing, he must have been scared out of his wits. “He has no choice.” Claws tightened on my ear. “Maybe you need to be a little more tempting. Stretch out.”

“I’ve got nothing to tempt with, Rat!” I laughed, then contradicted myself. “But maybe he doesn’t think so.” I leaned back a little, propping my hands on the wooden stump. Lifting one bare leg, I laid it out over the surface of the stump and watched the woods.

“I can see you, wolfy,” I called out. I wanted to sound sweet, but I’m no good at sweet. I sounded like the mean little bitch I am. I wasn’t lying, either. A dark shape lurked under a bush with gleaming eyes. Not nearly big enough to be my Wolf, thank goodness. I wasn’t the one committing suicide here. Speaking of which?— “Don’t you want me? You do, right? You’ve never wanted anything more.”

It took a step forward out of the bush. Mordecai’s rifle swung forward past my shoulder, pointed right at it. The wolf took another step forward, like it was being dragged.

I just couldn’t leave well enough alone. “Ooh, what big eyes you have, grandma. And what big paws,” I cooed. I didn’t even get to the teeth line. The wolf’s will broke, and it lunged forward, galloping right at me. Fear jolted through me. It moved so fast, teeth bared in its desperate need to kill me. It was already close enough to jump, rearing up, but the butt of Mordecai’s gun hit it in the side of the head.

The wolf fell, then tried to leap back to its feet and fell again. It dragged itself up , only to have the old man’s gun give it another smack on the skull. The wolf dropped, twitching, and Mordecai pounced on it, wrapping leather belts around its feet.

Then came a huge leather dog collar, and as he slipped it around behind the wolf’s neck, the thing spoke for the first time.

“No. No!” it wailed, starting to thrash, but it was way too late.

Mordecai cinched the buckle closed, and the wolf yelped like it had been shot and collapsed.

“A collar. Not a collar?” it wheezed.

My heart beat a mile a minute and the ice from watching the wolf charge hadn’t gone away, but I still grinned like a mad girl. “I know he’s not as lovable as Wilbur, old man, but with a lot of training, I think you’ve got yourself a fine new hunting dog.”

“He’ll be trouble for a while, but he can talk, which means he can understand orders. We’ll find you your path before I take him back to the kennel for the night.”

On my shoulder Rat squealed, his claws digging painfully into my ear as he shoved his head into my hair and—was he licking my scalp? Then, I got it. He was laughing!

I wasn’t sure what you did to rats, so I rubbed my thumb hard over the top of his head, then slid off the stump. Oh, and I grinned a lot.

The wolf didn’t want to help, but the rest of us weren’t sympathetic. Mordecai kept a leather belt tight around its front ankles, forcing it to lead us with a pathetic three-legged hobble. The thing seemed more stunned than sullen, and I wasn’t sure if that was the collar or it had a concussion. Mordecai held the leash tightly right behind the wolf’s neck, that was for sure.

We followed a skinny, winding track into the trees. This forest wasn’t that bad. The trees were spread out and had wide canopies, and there was much more greenery around their bases than I’d expected at this time of year. Leafy shrubs, small bushes, tall grass made the trail obvious, and it was just as obvious when we got to the first fork.

“We’re looking for a city of iron and yellow smoke. Smell it out for us, Rover,” Mordecai ordered.

The wolf flinched, but Mordecai pushed its head down to the path, and it started waving its nose around, first on the dirt and then in the air.

“Not good paths. This one is better,” it muttered.

It limped down one of the trails, and we wandered under the trees again for a while.

We passed a trail that branched off to the side; the wolf waved its head once and kept moving. A few minutes later, we hit another fork. Honestly, I couldn’t tell it wasn’t the first one, but Mordecai looked satisfied. In fact, as the wolf led us down one, Mordecai leaned down and rubbed his hand over the top of its head. “Good boy.” From its pained grimace, hitting it would have been kinder. Mordecai rewarded a faint growl by shoving the wolf forward with his hand around the chain, and it resumed limping.

As we followed this identical new path through identical trees, the wolf made it clear that to him this was different. He lifted his nose high as he hobbled along, and grumbled, “Smoke. Bad smoke. Poison smoke. That’s what you want, isn’t it, little girl?”

Rat’s pudgy body shot up. “That’s it!”.

“Then this is the right path,” the wolf muttered.

Something looked different up ahead. The track we were on had widened, but I hadn’t noticed until I saw the crossroads. The four dirt paths leading out from it weren’t quite roads, but they were wider and more straight than the tracks we’d been following up until now. A decaying signpost with four arrows stood in the center, making the intersection look almost official.

“Those could say anything.” I wasn’t really arguing. I still felt buoyed from catching the wolf, less tense. I walked out ahead to examine the signpost. Reading it from a distance was out of the question. The wood was ancient, rotten, and unpainted. Even when I stood up close in front of it, the letters scratched into the arrows were too worn to be legible.

Mordecai and the wolf trailed up behind me until I felt hot breath on the back of my knees and a harsh, growling voice whisper, “Hello, little girl.”

I threw myself forward and rolled, but I’d underestimated Mordecai. The wolf bit and bit again, throwing its head around and snapping, but the old hunter had yanked it instantly up into the air by the collar.

The wolf went insane. It growled and twisted its head around, trying to bite Mordecai. He slammed the wolf into the ground, pinning it by its neck. It thrashed, unable to get a good grip on the ground with its front legs tied.

“Bad dog! Bad Rover!” Mordecai yelled, smacking its head against the dirt path. It just screeched and snapped, biting in every direction. Pulling his rifle off his back, Mordecai smacked the wolf—Rover—in the head again, then again when the first blow didn’t work.

The wolf lay there limp. “Sorry, Miss. I’m going to have to keep Rover away from little girls, I can see that.” Mordecai panted, sitting on the body and getting out more leather belts to tie the wolf’s ankles and muzzle.

“Any idea when he’ll wake up?” I asked as I climbed back to my feet. My skirt jerked as rat grabbed to it and clung.

“After two beatings like that? Hours. He ain’t doin’ nothing for a while.” Mordecai sighed, picking up the wolf under one arm.

Wow. That skinny old man was strong. The wolf easily weighed more than I did.

“Any clue which of these is the right path?” I asked sourly. Of all the times to lose my guide.

All Mordecai could do was sound regretful. “Not one. I can lead you back to town, but that’s about it. Never been to this crossing before.”

“Frack,” I swore as best I could. Stupid Rat. Although … I hadn’t lost my guide, had I?

“Hey, Rat—” I started to inquire, but his little head was already twisting every which way. A pink hand extended, pointing down the path right in front of me.

“That way, Miss Mary. I can smell it now. Just barely, but it’s a hard smell to forget.”

“Great. Thanks.” I owed Mordecai one too. “Thanks, Mister Mordecai. You got us just far enough.”

“Thank you for the new hunting dog, Miss. Rover here just needs to be trained. Good luck with this city of iron place.” He hoisted the trussed-up wolf higher and went back down the path we’d come in by.

“Bye!” I called back, and followed my own path. It definitely wasn’t a track now. I might have to call it a road. It didn’t bend much, and the trees had been cleared off it. Rat clawed his way up to my shoulder, sniffing the air occasionally to make sure we were headed in the right direction.

“Hey, is that a building?” I asked when I saw a blocky shape ahead and off to the side.

“Better than that, Miss Mary. It’s a train station!” Rat announced. He sounded pretty eager, but then I got it. A city of iron would be all about trains. He’d mentioned them in the story, hadn’t he?

“Are the trains really going to be running?” I asked doubtfully.

“No, but we can follow the tracks. We don’t need to know where we are if we know for sure which way we’re going.”

That meant a lot of walking, but it was a step up.

The trains couldn’t be running. The tracks were covered in rust, and the road dead-ended by the station. Most of it was made of cement blocks, which was fortunate. Everything wood had rotted so badly a railing crumbled when I touched it.

I looked up. “Getting dark. “The trees thinned out around the station, and I could make out a sky shading towards indigo.

“Roof over your head and food in the bag, Miss Mary,” Rat pointed out, “And the water fountains might work.”

They did, after I let them run long enough for the rust to pass through. I ate a sausage and a bun, then laid the bag down to use as a pillow as I stretched myself out on an old metal bench.

“I really hope a train comes after all,” I muttered as Rat curled up in my hood.

Of course, it didn’t. But I had food and water when I woke up, and I didn’t even need Rat to tell me which way to walk. An old notice board still had an arrow and a picture of a bunch of buildings with smokestacks. So, I walked along the gravel beside the tracks for a long time, kept faintly amused by Rat’s attempts to comb my hair and his occasional disgusted declarations that he could smell we were going in the right direction. I couldn’t smell anything but autumn trees and rusty metal railroad tracks.