Diana Wynne Jones
DOGSBODY

Illustrated by Tim Stevens

DEDICATION

For Caspian, who might really be Sirius

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

The Dog Star stood beneath the Judgement Seats and raged. The green light of his fury fired the assembled faces viridian. It lit the underside of the roof-trees and turned their moist blue fruit to emerald.

“None of this is true!” he shouted. “Why can’t you believe me, instead of listening to him?” He blazed on the chief witness, a blue luminary from the Castor complex, firing him turquoise. The witness backed hastily out of range.

“Sirius,” the First Judge rumbled quietly, “we’ve already found you guilty. Unless you’ve anything reasonable to say, be quiet and let the Court pass sentence.”

“No I will not be quiet!” Sirius shouted up at the huge ruddy figure. He was not afraid of Antares. He had often sat beside him as Judge on those same Judgement Seats – that was one of the many miserable things about this trial. “You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said, all through. I did not kill the luminary – I only hit him. I was not negligent, and I’ve offered to look for the Zoi. The most you can accuse me of is losing my temper—”

“Once too often, in the opinion of this Court,” remarked big crimson Betelgeuse, the Second Judge, in his dry way.

“And I’ve admitted I lost my temper,” said Sirius.

“No one would have believed you if you hadn’t,” said Betelgeuse.

A long flicker of amusement ran round the assembled luminaries. Sirius glared at them. The hall of blue trees was packed with people from every sphere and all orders of effulgence. It was not often one of the high effulgents was on trial for his life – and there never had been one so notorious for losing his temper.

“That’s right – laugh!” Sirius roared. “You’re getting what you came for, aren’t you? But you’re not watching justice done. I tell you I’m not guilty! I don’t know who killed that young fool, but it wasn’t me!”

“The Court is not proposing to go through all that again,” Antares said. “We have your Companion’s evidence that you often get too angry to know what you’re doing.”

Sirius saw his Companion look at him warningly. He pretended not to see her. He knew she was trying to warn him not to prove the case against him by raging any more. She had admitted only a little more than anyone knew. She had not really let him down. But he was afraid he would never see her again, and he knew it would make him angrier than ever to look at her. She was so beautiful: small, exquisite and pearly.

“If I were up there, I wouldn’t call that evidence,” he said.

“No, but it bears out the chief witness,” said Antares, “when he says he surprised you with the body and you tried to kill him by throwing the Zoi at him.”

“I didn’t,” said Sirius. He could say nothing more. He could only stand fulminating because his case was so weak. He refused to tell the Court that he had threatened to kill the blue Castor-fellow for hanging round his Companion, or that he had struck out at the young luminary for gossiping about it. None of that proved his innocence anyway.

“Other witnesses saw the Zoi fall,” said Antares. “Not to speak of the nova sphere—”

“Oh go to blazes!” said Sirius. “Nobody else saw anything.”

“Say that again,” Betelgeuse put in, “and we’ll add contempt of court to the other charges. Your entire evidence amounts to contempt anyway.”

“Have you anything more to say?” asked Antares. “Anything, that is, which isn’t a repetition of the nonsense you’ve given us up to now?”

Rather disconcerted, Sirius looked up at the three Judges, the two red giants and the smaller white Polaris. He could see they all thought he had not told the full story. Perhaps they were hoping for it now. “No, I’ve nothing else to say,” he said. “Except that it was not nonsense. I—”

“Then be quiet while our spokesman passes the sentence,” said Antares.

Polaris rose, quiet, tall and steadfast. Being a Cepheid, he had a slight stammer, which would have disqualified him as spokesman, had not the other two Judges been of greater effulgence. “D-denizen of S-sirius,” he began.

Sirius looked up and tried to compose himself. He had not had much hope all through, and none since they declared him guilty. He had thought he was quite prepared. But now the sentence was actually about to come, he felt sick. This trial had been about whether he, Sirius, lived or died. And it seemed only just to have occurred to him that it was.

“This Court,” said Polaris, “has f-found you guilty on three counts, namely: of m-murdering a young luminary s-stationed in Orion; of grossly m-misusing a Zoi to com-m-mit that s-said m-murder; and of culpable negligence, causing t-trepidation, irregularity and d-damage in your entire s-sphere of inf-fluence and l-leading t-to the l-loss of the Z-zoi.” For the moment, his stammer fazed him, and he had to stop.

Sirius waited. He tried to imagine someone else as denizen of his green sphere, and could not. He looked down, and tried not to think of anything. But that was a mistake. Down there, through the spinning star-motes of the floor, he looked into nothing. He was horrified. It was all he could do not to scream at them not to make him into nothing.

Polaris recovered himself. “In p-passing this s-sentence,” he said, “the Court takes into cons-sideration your high eff-ffulgency and the s-services you have f-formerly rendered the Court. In view of these, and the f-fact that you are l-liable to rages in which you cannot be s-said to be in your right m-mind, the Court has d-decided to revive an ancient p-prerogative to p-pass a s-special kind of s-susp-pended s-sentence.”

What was this? Sirius did not know what to think. He looked at his Companion, and then wished he had not, because of the doubt and consternation he saw in her.

“D-denizen of S-sirius,” said Polaris, “you are hereby s-sentenced to be s-stripped of all s-spheres, honours and eff-ffulgences and banished f-from here to the body of a creature native to that s-sphere where the m-missing Z-zoi is thought to have f-fallen. If, d-during the life s-span of that creature, you are able to f-find and retrieve the Z-zoi, the Court will be p-pleased to reinstate you in all your f-former s-spheres and d-dignities. F-failure to retrieve the Z-zoi will carry no f-further p-punishment. In the Court’s op-pinion, it is s-sufficient that you s-simply die in the manner natural to creatures of that s-sphere.”

Slow as Polaris was in giving this extraordinary sentence, Sirius had still barely grasped it when Polaris sat down. It was unheard of. It was worse than nothing, because it condemned him not only to exile but hope – hopeless, brutish hope, over a whole uncertain lifespan. He flared up again as he realised it.

“But that’s the most preposterous sentence I ever heard!”

“Quiet,” said Antares. “The Court orders the prisoner taken away and the sentence carried out.”

“Try saying preposterous, Polaris!” Sirius shouted as they led him away.

The sentence was carried out at once. When he came to himself, Sirius was no longer capable of protesting. He could not see clearly, or speak. Nor did he think much, either. He was very weak and very, very hungry. All his strength had to be spent fighting for food among a warm bundle of creatures like himself. He had just found himself a satisfactory slot and was feeding, when he felt himself plucked off again by a large invincible hand and turned upside down. He made noises in protest, and kicked a little.

A great gruff voice, probably a woman’s, said words he did not understand. “That’s the sixth beastly dog in this litter. To one bitch. Blast it!”

Sirius was plunked unceremoniously back, and fought his way to his slot again. He did not think much about anything but feeding for quite a while after that. Then he slept, wedged warmly among the other creatures, against a great hairy cliff. It was some days before he thought about anything but food and sleep.

But at length he was seized with an urge to explore. He set off, crawling strenuously on four short legs which seemed far too weak to carry his body. He tripped several times over the folds on the rough cloth he was crawling on. The other creatures were crawling vaguely about, too. More than once, Sirius was bowled over by one. But he kept on, blinking, trying to see where the strong light was coming from a little further off. He came to cold floor, where crawling was easier.

He was nearly in the strong, warm light, when footsteps clacked towards him. The ground shook. He stopped uncertainly. Once again, he was seized by something ineffably strong and turned upwards, kicking and undignified, towards a vaguely looming face. “You’re a bold one,” remarked the great gruff woman’s voice. Then, as Sirius blinked, trying to see what had caught him, the voice said, “I don’t like the look of your eyes, fellow. Something tells me Bess has been a naughty girl.”

Since he understood none of the sounds the gruff voice made, Sirius felt nothing but exasperation when he was put back in the dark on the rough cloth. Now he would have all that crawling to do again. He waited for the heavy footsteps to clack away, and then set off again.

It did no good. He was put back by someone – either the woman or a being with a hoarse youth’s voice – every time he reached the light. He cheeped with frustration. Something in him craved for that light. Why would they not let him have it?

He was in the doorway the next day, when they came – the woman, the hoarse youth, and another person. They nearly trod on him. Sirius knew it, and cowered down in terror. The woman, with an exclamation of annoyance, plucked him up from the cold floor into the light.

“Blast this one! It is a wanderer.” Sirius was quite used to being picked up by this time. He lay quiet. “Well?” said the woman. “What do you think, Mrs Canning dear? Those markings aren’t right, are they? And look at its eyes.”

Sirius felt the attention of the other person on him. It felt wrong, somehow. He struggled, and was firmly squeezed for his pains. “No,” said a new voice thoughtfully, and it troubled Sirius. It and the smell that went with it set up a ripple that was nearly a memory in his head. “Wrong eyes, wrong colour ears. Your bitch must have got out somehow, Mrs Partridge dear. What are the others like?”

“The same, with variations. Take a look.”

There were indignant cheepings that told Sirius that his companions, less used to being handled than he, were being bundled about too. Above the noise, the three voices held a long discussion. And below the cheeping, there was a deeper, anxious whining.

“Shut up, Bess! You’ve been a bad girl!” said the voice called Mrs Partridge. “So you don’t think these’ll fetch any money at all?”

“You might get a pound or so from a pet shop,” said the voice called Mrs Canning. “Otherwise—”

“Much obliged!” Mrs Partridge said. There was such an unmistakable note of anger in her voice that Sirius cringed and his companions stopped cheeping. They were silent when they were plunked back on the ground, though one or two whimpered plaintively when the big anxious mother licked them.

The footsteps went away, but two sets of them returned, briskly and angrily, not long after. All the puppies cringed instinctively.

“Blast you, Bess!” said Mrs Partridge. “Here I am with a parcel of mongrels, when I might have got nearly a hundred quid for this litter. Got that sack, Brian?”

“Uh-huh.” The hoarse youth never used many words. “Brick too. Oughtn’t we to leave her one, Mrs Partridge?”

“Oh, I suppose so,” the woman said impatiently. Sirius felt himself seized and lifted. “Not that one!” Mrs Partridge said sharply. “I don’t like its eyes.”

“Don’t you?” The youth seemed surprised, but he dumped Sirius down again and picked up the next nearest to set beside the mother. The mother whined anxiously, but she did not try to stop him as he seized the other puppies one by one and tossed them into dusty, chaffy darkness. They tumbled in anyhow, cheeping and feebly struggling. Sirius was carried, one of this writhing, squeaking bundle, pressed and clawed by his fellows, jolted by the movement of the sack, until he was nearly frantic. Then a new smell broke through the dust. Even in this distress it interested him. But, the next moment, their bundle swung horribly and dropped, more horribly still, into cold, cold, cold. To his terror, there was nothing to breathe but the cold stuff, and it choked him.

Once he realised it choked him, Sirius had the sense to stop breathing. But there was not much sense to the way he struggled. For as long as he had air and strength in his body, he lashed out with all his short weak legs, tore with his small feeble claws, and fought the darkness and the cold as if it were a live enemy. Some of the other puppies fought too, and got in one another’s way. But, one by one, they found the shock and the cold suffocation too much for them. Soon only Sirius was scratching and tearing at the dark, and he only kept on because he had a dim notion that anything was better than cold nothingness.

The darkness opened. Sirius did not care much about anything by then, but he thought he was probably dead. Being dead seemed to mean floating out into a grey-green light. It was not a light he could see by, and it was stronger above him. He had a feeling he was soaring towards the stronger light. Round bubbles, shining yellow, moved up past his eyes and put him in mind of another life he could not quite remember. Then the light was like a silver lid, thick and solid-looking overhead. It surprised him when he broke through the silver without pain or noise into a huge brightness that was blue and green and warm. It was too much for him. He took a gasping breath, choked, and became nothing more than a sodden wisp of life floating down a brisk river.

Behind him, at the bottom of the river, the rotten sack he had torn spread apart in the current and the other sodden wisps floated out. Two were beyond hope and were simply rolled along the mud and stones of the river bed. But four other wisps rose to the surface and were carried along behind the first. They went bobbing and twisting, one behind the other, round a bend in the river and between the sunny banks of a meadow. Here, the warmth beating from above began to revive Sirius a little. He came to himself enough to know that there was heat somewhere, and that he was helpless in some kind of nightmare. The only good thing in the nightmare was the heat. He came to depend on it.

The river passed hawthorn trees growing on its banks. The current carried Sirius through the shadow of one. He found himself suddenly in deep brown cold. The heat was gone. They had taken his one comfort away now. He was so indignant about it that he opened his eyes and tried to cheep a protest.

He could not manage a noise. But a second later, the river carried him out into sunlight again. Sun struck him full in the eyes and broke into a thousand dazzles on the ripples. Sirius snapped his eyes shut again. The brightness was such a shock that he became a limper wisp than ever and hardly knew that the warmth was back again.

It grew warmer – a golden, searching warmth. “It is you, Effulgency!” someone said. “I thought it was!”

This was quite a different order of voice from those Sirius had heard so far. It puzzled him. It was not a voice he knew, though he had a feeling he had heard its kind before. He was not sure he trusted it. All the voices he had heard so far had done him nothing but harm – and he had a notion he had known voices before that, which had done him no good either.

“You aren’t dead, are you?” the voice asked. It seemed anxious. It was a warm, golden voice, and, though it sounded anxious, there was a hint of ferocity about it, as if the speaker could be far more dangerous than Mrs Partridge and her friends if he chose.

Sirius was not sure if he was dead or not. He felt too weak to cope with this strong, fierce voice, so he floated on in silence.

“Can’t you answer?” The warmth playing on Sirius’s scrap of body grew stronger and hotter, as if the speaker was losing patience. Sirius was too far gone even to be frightened. He simply floated. “I suppose you can’t,” said the voice. “I think this is just too bad of them! Well, I’ll do what I can for you. Just let them try to stop me!”

The warmth stayed, lapping round Sirius, though he sensed that the speaker had gone. He floated a little way further, until he came up against some things that were long, green and yielding. Here the warmth caught and pinned him, gently rocking. It was almost pleasant. Meanwhile, the other four half-drowned puppies floated on in midstream, round bends, to where the river became wider and dirtier, with houses on its banks.

A shrill voice spoke strange words near Sirius. “Oh, eughky! There’s a dead puppy in the rushes!”

“Don’t touch it!” said a voice rather older and rougher. And a third voice, gentle and lilting, said, “Let me see!”

“Don’t touch it, Kathleen!” said the second voice.

However, there were splashings and rustlings. A pair of hands, a great deal smaller and much more shaky and nervous than Sirius was used to, picked him out of the water and held him high in the air. He did not feel safe. The shakiness of those hands and the cold air frightened him. He wriggled and managed to utter a faint squeak of fear. The hands all but dropped him.

“It isn’t dead! It’s alive! Poor thing, it’s frozen!”

“Someone tried to drown it,” said the shrillest voice.

“Throw it back in,” said the second voice. “It’s too small to lap. It’ll die anyway.”

“No it won’t.” The hands holding Sirius became defiantly steady. “It can have that old baby-bottle. I’m not going to let it die.”

“Mum won’t let you keep it,” the rough voice said nastily.

“She won’t. And the cats’ll kill it,” said the youngest voice. “Honest, Kathleen.”

The girl holding Sirius hugged him defensively to her chest and began to walk – bump, jerk, bump – away from the river across the meadow. “Poor little thing,” she said. The two boys followed, arguing with her. Their clamour hurt Sirius’s ears, and the girl kept jerking him by turning round to argue back. But he realised she was defending him from the other two and was grateful. Her convulsive hugging was making him feel safer and a great deal warmer. “Oh!” Kathleen exclaimed, bending over him. “Its tail’s wagging!”

Robin, the younger boy, demanded to see. “It’s a queer little tail,” he said doubtfully. “You don’t think it’s really a rat, do you?”

“No,” said Kathleen. “It’s a dog.”

“It’s a rat,” said Basil, the elder boy. “An Irish rat. Shamus O’Rat!”

“Shut up,” Kathleen said wearily.

CHAPTER TWO

Sirius was brought somewhere warm, and tenderly put in a basket. He went to sleep. As he slept, his draggled coat dried and became slightly curly. The hair on his reddish lapped-over ears dried last of all, and then he was truly comfortable. He woke up, stretching his back pair of legs and his front hard and straight, to find there were hostile, alien things nearby.

These creatures did not speak. They had no language exactly. But they felt things so firmly and acutely that Sirius knew what they meant just as if they had spoken.

“What is it? It doesn’t smell nice.”

Sirius’s nose twitched. He did not care for the way these creatures smelt either, come to that.

“It’s one of those things that bark and chase you up trees.”

“Are you sure? It doesn’t look big enough.”

“That—” with great contempt “—is because it’s a baby still. It’ll grow.”

“They’d no business to bring it to our house!”

“It had better not chase us up trees!”

“Let’s get rid of it before it can.”

“We certainly will, the first chance we get. Don’t have anything to do with it till then. It’s beneath our notice.”

“Shoo! Get out, Tibbles. Buzz off, Romulus and Remus.” Kathleen and Robin came to kneel down beside the basket. The queer creatures vanished, in unmistakable disdain and annoyance. Sirius wagged his tail. Then he opened his eyes and tried to see what his two rescuers looked like. They were so big that he found it hard to focus on them.

“Funny tail!” said Kathleen, laughing.

“Funny eyes!” said Robin. “Kathleen, its eyes are green. Dogs don’t have green eyes, do they? Do you think it’s something else?”

“I know it’s a puppy,” said Kathleen.

“Basil’s going to say it’s a cat,” said Robin. “He’ll call it Shamus O’Cat, I know he will.”

“Let him,” Kathleen said recklessly. It was the only way she could express the feeling the puppy’s eyes gave her.

They were like grass-green drops in its round head, shining and deep. On top of the green was that milkiness that the eyes of all young creatures have, and she could tell that the puppy was finding it hard to see her. But, somewhere in the green depths, she had a glimpse of something huge and wonderful which made her almost feel respectful.

“Why not call it Shamus?” Robin suggested. “Then you’d get in first before Basil does.”

“That’s a silly name,” said Kathleen.

“Then you ought to give it a cat sort of name. How about Leo? That means a lion.”

“I think lions have yellow eyes,” Kathleen said dubiously. “But it’s more majestic than Shamus. I’ll think about it while I give him his bottle.”

She presented Sirius with a rubbery nozzle leaking milk. He fastened on it gladly, and Kathleen fed him tenderly – and far too much. Sirius was sick. It did not trouble him particularly, but Kathleen seemed to have a great deal of clearing up to do. And while she was clearing up, Sirius became aware of another presence.

This being was large – at least as large as Kathleen and Robin put together – and reminded him, just a little, of the woman called Mrs Partridge who had ordered the youth to drown him. She had the same certainty that she would get her own way. And she had – Sirius sensed at once – the same dislike of him. He cowered in the corner of the fender, feeling very small and helpless, while a hard, high voice beat the air about him. It was a voice that was at once very cold and full of all sorts of strong emotions.

“…bringing this filthy animal into my house without so much as a by your leave … not a scrap of consideration for my feelings … letting it make a mess all over the hearthrug, and goodness knows what germs it’s let loose. And what about the cats? You are a very thoughtless little girl, Kathleen. Lord knows, I’ve regretted every minute since Harry insisted on foisting you on me, but this is the last straw! It’s no good sitting there with that mulish look on your face, Kathleen. Robin, take the filthy little beast outside and drown it in the water-butt.”

“But, Duffie, somebody’d tried to drown him in the river!” Kathleen protested tremulously.

“Whoever it was had more sense than you!” the being called Duffie retorted. “Just look at the mess! Robin, you heard me!”

“I’m clearing the mess up,” Kathleen said miserably. “I’ll clear up any mess he makes, ever.”

“It’s because he’s only little, Mum,” Robin explained. “He didn’t know when he’d had enough. But he’ll be awfully useful when he grows up. What if burglars get in your shop?”

“There’s a perfectly good burglar-alarm. For once and for all, I am not having a dirty dog in my house!”

“Please, Duffie, let me keep him,” Kathleen pleaded. “I’ll make sure he isn’t dirty. He can be for a birthday present. I haven’t had one yet.”

This made the owner of the cold voice pause. She gave a nasty sigh of annoyance that raised the hair along Sirius’s back. “And feed it and buy it a licence and walk it and house-train it! I’d like to see a little sloven like you do all that! No.”

“If you let me keep him,” Kathleen said desperately, “I’ll do anything you want. I’ll do all the housework and cook the meals, and everything. I promise.”

There was another pause. “Well,” said the cold voice. “I suppose it’ll save me… All right. Keep the filthy thing. But don’t blame me if the cats tear it to pieces.”

Then the large being was gone and the air was peaceful again. Sirius found himself being picked up and hugged.

“Careful. You’ll make him sick again,” said Robin, and he wandered hastily off, for fear there might be more clearing up to do.

“You’ll be good, won’t you? I know you will,” Kathleen whispered to Sirius. Wet drops fell on his head and he wriggled. “You’ll be my very own faithful hound. I know you’re special, because of your eyes. We’ll have adventures together. And don’t you mind those cats. I’ll see they don’t hurt you.” Kathleen put Sirius gently back in his basket again and he fell asleep.

By the evening, he was recovered enough to scramble out and go exploring. He went, rocking on his four unsteady paws, with his fluffy string of a tail whipping backwards and forwards to keep his balance, in among the feet of the family. His nose glistened from all the new scents. The cats sat high up on shelves or tables, watching him resentfully. Sirius could feel their annoyance, but he could also feel that they did not dare do anything while the people were there, so he took no notice of them and concentrated on the feet. The children’s feet had cloth and rubbery stuff over them. Robin’s and Kathleen’s were much the same size, but the cloth on Kathleen’s was old and frayed. Basil’s feet were surprisingly large. While Sirius was sniffing them, Basil leant down and called him Shamus O’Cat.

“I’m thinking of calling him Leo, really,” said Kathleen.

“Rat would be better,” said Basil. “Shamus Rat.”

“Told you so,” said Robin.

There was a new pair of feet present belonging to someone Basil and Robin called Dad, and Kathleen called Uncle Harry. They were the largest feet of all, most interestingly cased in leather, with beautiful strings which came undone when they were bitten. Sirius backed away, his tail whipping, rumbling with delight, a taut shoelace clenched between his teeth.

A voice spoke, more like a clap of thunder than a voice. “Drop that!”

Sirius let go at once and meekly went on to the last pair of feet, which were Duffie’s. He did not like Duffie, nor the smell of Duffie, but her feet were interesting. The leather on them was only in straps, leaving the ends bare. The ends of both feet divided into a number of stumpy lumps with hard, flat claws on them that looked quite useless. He nosed them wonderingly.

“Get out of it!” said the cold voice.

Sirius obligingly retreated, and – whether it was his dislike of Duffie or simply a call of nature, he did not know – left a puddle between the two sets of toes.

“Oh Leo!” Kathleen plunged down on the spot with a cloth.

“Dirty Shamus Rat!” said Basil.

“That creature—” began Duffie.

The thunderous voice cut in, rumbling peaceably. “Now, now. You’ve had your say, Duffie. And I say a house isn’t complete without a dog. What did you say his name was, Kathleen?”

Sirius gathered that he was safe. What the thunderous voice said in this place, the other people obeyed. He went on exploring the room while they argued about what to call him.

The argument was never entirely settled. In the days that followed, Sirius found himself answering to Leo, Shamus, Shamus O’Cat, Shamus Rat, Rat, Dog, and That Creature. More names were added as time went on and then dropped. These were the most constant. Basil called him most of them. Duffie called him That Dog or That Creature. Robin usually called him Leo when he was alone with Kathleen, and Shamus if Basil was there. The thunderous voice never called him anything at all. Neither did the cats. Before long, it was only Kathleen who ever called him Leo.

Sirius did not mind. He could tell by the tone of their voices when they meant him, and he answered to that. He like Kathleen’s voice best. It was soft, with a lilt in it which none of the others had, and usually meant he was going to be fed or stroked. Duffie’s voice was the one he liked least and, next to hers, Basil’s. When Basil called him, it was to flip his nose or roll him painfully about. Even if he did neither of these things, Basil made Sirius feel small and weak, or troubled him by staring jeeringly at his eyes.

His eyes soon lost the milky, puppy look. They became first grass-green, then a lighter, wilder colour. “Wolf’s eyes,” said Basil, and added The Wolf temporarily to the names he called Sirius. About that time, Sirius discovered he could eat from a dish and gave up feeding from a bottle. He grew. And grew. And went on growing.

“Is this thing of yours going to turn out to be a horse?” wondered the thunderous voice, in one of its rare moments of interest.

“A Great Dane perhaps?” Robin suggested.

“Oh, I hope not!” Kathleen said, knowing how much Leo ate already. Sirius realised she was worried and wagged his tail consolingly outside his basket. It was a long, strong tail by this time, and he filled the basket to overflowing.

His tail was a great trial to everyone. He would wag it. He beat dust out of the carpet with it every time one of the household came into the room. He meant it as politeness. In a cloudy part of his mind, which he could never quite find, he knew he was grateful to them – even to Duffie – for feeding and housing him. But only Kathleen and Robin appreciated his courtesy. The rest said, “Must that creature thump like that?” and at other times there was a general outcry.

There were times when that tail seemed to have a life of its own. When he was trotting around the house, Sirius normally carried it arched upward in a crescent and forgot about it. He dimly thought, in that cloudy part of his mind, that he could not always have had a tail, because he never remembered it until it was too late. If the least thing happened to excite him, if Robin started to dance about, or Kathleen came in from shopping, Sirius would bound jovially forwards and his tail would go whipping round and round in circles, hitting everything in its path. Ornaments came off low tables and broke. Cats were battered this way and that. Papers flew about. Basil’s fossils were scattered. The next thing he knew, a cat was scratching him, or a strong arm was beating him. He was beaten oftener for wagging his tail than he was over house-training. One of the most constant memories he had of those early days was of lying aching and ashamed under the sideboard, while Kathleen, often in tears, cleared up a breakage or another kind of mess. Duffie was always looming above her.

“I warn you, Kathleen. If that creature ever gets into my shop, I shall have it destroyed.” Her cold voice was so menacing that Sirius always shivered.

The shop took up the two rooms in the front of the house. Duffie spent most of every day in it, either making odd whirrings and clatterings in the nearest room, or talking to all the people who came in and out in the room farthest away, which opened on the street. These people were mostly women with loud voices, who all called the owner Duffie. If Duffie happened to be in the living-room looming over Kathleen when they came, they would stand and shout, “What-ho, Duffie! It’s me!” until Duffie came.

Now, in those days, Sirius’s whole world was the house and the yard behind it. The shop left very little of the world downstairs over, so he was naturally curious to see into this shop. He was naturally curious anyway. Kathleen often said, “I know they say Curiosity killed the cat, but it ought to be killed the dog. Get your nose out, Leo.” Sirius made a number of attempts to poke his blunt, enquiring nose round the door that led to the shop. Duffie always stopped him. Mostly she kicked at him with a sandalled foot. Sometimes she hit him with a broom. And once, she slammed the door against his nose, which hurt him considerably. But he kept on trying. It was not that the dusty, clayey smell from beyond the door was particularly pleasing, or that he wanted to be with Duffie. It was that he felt he was being cheated of the greater part of his world. Besides, the cats were allowed inside, and he was rapidly becoming very jealous of those cats.

By this time, it would have been hard to say whether the cats were more jealous of Sirius than he of them. He envied the cats their delicacy and disdain, the ease with which they leapt to places far out of his reach, and the way they came and went so secretly. He could not go anywhere or do anything without somebody noticing. The cats, on their part, disliked him for being a dog, for being new, and for taking up everyone’s attention.

They were three rather neglected cats. Until Kathleen came, no one except Duffie had taken any notice of them at all. Duffie, from time to time, took it into her head that she loved cats. When this happened, she would seize a struggling cat, hold it against her smock and announce, “Diddumsdiddy, Mother loves a pussy then!”

Romulus and Remus, who were twin tabbies, both escaped from this treatment as soon as they could fight loose. But Tibbles bore it. She had an affectionate nature, and even this seemed better to her than total neglect. Tibbles was an elegant cat, mostly white, with a fine tabby patch on her back, and worthy of better treatment.

All three welcomed Kathleen with delight. She fed them generously, knew Romulus and Remus apart from the first, and gave Tibbles all the affection she wanted. Then Sirius came. Kathleen still fed the cats generously, but that was all Sirius would let her do. The day Sirius found Tibbles sitting on Kathleen’s knee was the first time he barked. Yapping in a furious soprano, he flung himself at Kathleen and managed to get his front paws almost above her kneecaps. Tibbles arose and spat. Her paw shot out, once, twice, three times, before Sirius could remove himself. He was lucky not to lose an eye. But he continued to bark and Tibbles, very ruffled, escaped on to the sideboard, furious and swearing revenge.

“Oh Leo!” Kathleen said reproachfully. “That’s not kind. Why shouldn’t she sit on my knee?”

Sirius did not understand the question, but he was determined that Tibbles should sit on Kathleen’s knee only over his dead body. Kathleen was his. The trouble was, he could not trust Kathleen to remember this. Kathleen was kind to all living things. She fed birds, rescued mice from the cats, and tried to grow flowers in a row of cracked cups on her bedroom windowsill. Sirius slept in Kathleen’s bedroom, at first in the basket, then on the end of her bed when the basket grew uncomfortably tight. Kathleen would sit up in bed, with a book open in front of her, and talk to him for hours on end. Sirius could not understand what she was saying, but he darkly suspected she was telling him of her abounding love for all creatures.

One night, when it was spitting with rain, Romulus forgot about Sirius and came in through Kathleen’s bedroom window to spend the night on her bed as he had done before Sirius came. That was the first time Sirius really growled. He leapt up rumbling. Romulus growled too and fled helter-skelter, knocking over Kathleen’s flower-cups as he went.

“You mustn’t, Leo,” said Kathleen. “He’s allowed to. Now look what you’ve made him do!” She was so miserable about her broken flowers that Sirius had to lick her face.

After that, Sirius knew the cats were putting their heads together to get revenge. He did not care. He knew they were clever, Tibbles especially, but he was not in the least afraid of them. He was at least twice their size by now and still growing. His paws, as Kathleen remarked, were as big as teacups, and he was getting some splendid new teeth. Robin, who was always reading books about dogs, told Kathleen that Leo was certainly half Labrador. But what the other half of him was, neither of them could conjecture. Sirius’s unusually glossy coat was a wavy golden-cream, except for the two red-brown patches, foxy red, one over each ear. Then there were those queer green eyes.

“Red Setter, perhaps?” Robin said doubtfully. “He’s got those feathery bits at the backs of his legs.”

“Mongrel,” said Basil. “His father was a white rat and his mother was a fox.”

“Vixen,” Robin corrected him.

“I thought you’d agree,” said Basil.

Kathleen, who seldom argued with Basil, said nothing and went away upstairs to make the beds, with Sirius trotting after. “I think you’re really a Griffin,” she said. “Look.” She opened the door of Duffie’s wardrobe so that Sirius could see himself in the long mirror.

Sirius did not make the mistake of thinking it was another dog. He did not even go round the back of the mirror to see how his reflection got there. He simply sat himself down and looked, which impressed Kathleen very much. “You are intelligent!” she said.

Sirius met his own strange eyes. He had no means of knowing they were unusual, but, all the same, just for a moment, he seemed to be looking at immeasurable distances down inside those eyes. There he saw people and places so different from Duffie’s bedroom that they were almost inconceivable. That was only for an instant. After that, they were only the green eyes of a fat curly puppy. Annoyed by something he could not understand, Sirius yawned like a crocodile, showing all his splendid new teeth.

“Come, come!” said Kathleen laughing. “You’re not that boring!”

Those splendid teeth had Sirius in trouble the next day. The urge was on him to chew. And chew and chew. He chewed his basket into a kind of grass skirt. Then he went on to the hearthrug. Kathleen tore the hearthrug out of his mouth and gave him an old shoe, imploring him not to chew anything else but that. Sirius munched it threadbare in half an hour and looked round for something else. Basil had left a box of fossils on the floor. Sirius selected a piece of petrified wood out of it, propped it between his front paws, and was settling down to some glorious gritty grating when Basil found him. Basil kicked him, rolling and howling, across the room.

“Stinking Rat! Do that again and I’ll kill you!”

Sirius dared not move. He wagged his tail apologetically and looked round for something else to bite on. Nicely within reach trailed a black chewy wire from a shelf above. He had his head up and the wire across the corners of his mouth in an ecstasy of chew, when Robin descended on him and put a stop to that.

“Kathleen! He’s eaten the telephone wire now!”

“I’ll go and buy a rubber bone,” said Kathleen. She went out. Robin, rapidly and furtively, dreading Duffie coming, wrapped black sticky tape round the telephone wire. Basil was anxiously making sure none of his fossils had been eaten.

No one attended to Sirius, crouched under the sideboard. He lay there, nose on paws, and there it came to him what it was he really wanted to chew. The ideal thing. With a little ticker-tack of claws, he crept to the door and up the stairs. He nosed open the door of the main bedroom without difficulty and, with a little more trouble, succeeded in opening the wardrobe too. Inside were shoes – long large leather shoes, with laces and thick chewable soles. Sirius selected the juiciest and took it under the bed to enjoy in peace.

The thunderous voice found him there and chased him round the house with a walking stick. Duffie spoke long and coldly. Kathleen wept. Robin tried to explain about teething. Basil jeered. And throughout, Tibbles sat thoughtfully on the sideboard, giving the inside of her left front leg little hasty licks, like a cat seized with an idea. Sirius saw her. To show his contempt and to soothe his feelings, he went into the kitchen and ate the cats’ supper. Then he lay down glumly to gnaw the unsatisfactory rubber thing Kathleen had bought him.

“That settles it,” said Duffie. “That Creature is not going to spend all day in the house when you go back to school. He’s going to be tied up in the yard.”

“Yes. Yes, all right,” Kathleen said humbly. “I’ll take him for walks when I get home. I’ll start getting him used to it today.”

She had bought something else besides the bone. There was a red jingly strap, which she buckled round Sirius’s neck. He did not like it. It was tight and it itched. But, twist as he might, he could not get it off. Then Kathleen hitched another strap with a loop at one end to the red one and, to his great delight, opened the side door on the outside world, where he had never been before.

Sirius set off down the side of the house in a delighted rush. He was brought up short with a jerk and a jingle. Something seemed to be pulling his neck. He strained. He dragged. He made hoarse choking-noises to show Kathleen what was wrong. He stood on his hind legs to be free.

“No, Leo,” said Kathleen. “You mustn’t pull.”

But he went on pulling. The indignity was too much. He was not a slave, or a prisoner. He was Sirius. He was a free luminary and a high effulgent. He would not be held. He braced his four legs, and Kathleen had to walk backwards, towing him.

CHAPTER THREE

Being towed is hard on the paws, let alone the legs and ears. But Sirius was stiff with shock and Kathleen had to drag him right down the passage. He was not what he seemed. He felt as if the world had stopped, just in front of his forefeet, and he was looking down into infinite cloudy green depths. What was down in those depths frightened him, because he could not understand it.

“Really, Leo!” said Kathleen, at the end of the passage.

Sirius gave in and began to walk, absently at first, trying to understand what had happened. But he had no leisure to think. As soon as they were in the street, half a million new smells hit his nose simultaneously. Kathleen was walking briskly, and so were other legs round her. Beyond, large groaning things shot by with a swish and a queer smell. Sirius pulled away sideways to have a closer look at those things and was distracted at once by a deliciously rotten something in the gutter. When Kathleen dragged him off that, there were smells several dogs had left on a lamp-post and, beyond that, a savoury dustbin, decaying fit to make his mouth water.

“No, Leo,” said Kathleen, dragging.

Sirius was forced to follow her. It irked his pride to be so small and weak when he knew he had once been almost infinitely strong. How had he come to be like this? What had happened to reduce him? But he could not think of the answer when something black was trickling on the pavement, demanding to be sniffed all over at once.

“Leave it,” said Kathleen. “That’s dirty.”

It seemed to Sirius that Kathleen said this to everything really interesting. It seemed to Kathleen that she had said it several hundred times before they came to the meadow by the river. And here more new smells imperiously wanted attention. Kathleen took off the lead and Sirius bounded away, jingling and joyful, into the damp green grass. He ranged to and fro, rooting and sniffing, his tail crooked into a stiff and eager question mark. Beautiful. Goluptious scents. What was he looking for in all this glorious green plain? He was looking for something. He became more and more certain of that. This bush? No. This smelly lump, then? No. What then?

There was a scent, beyond, which was vaguely familiar. Perhaps that was what he was looking for. Sirius galloped questing towards it, with Kathleen in desperate pursuit, and skidded to a stop on the bank of the river. He knew it, this whelming brown thing – he dimly remembered – and the hair on his back stood up slightly. This was not what he was looking for. And surely, although it was brown and never for a second stopped crawling past him, by the smell it was only water? Sirius felt he had better test this theory – and quickly. The rate the stuff was crawling, it would soon have crawled right past and away if he did not catch it at once. He descended cautiously to it. Yes, it was water, crawling water. It tasted a good deal more full-bodied that the water Kathleen put down for him in the kitchen.

“Oh, no!” said Kathleen, panting up to find him black-legged and stinking, lapping at the river as if he had drunk nothing for a week. “Come out.”

Sirius obligingly came out. He was very happy. He wiped some of the mud off his legs on to Kathleen’s and continued his search of the meadow. He still could not think what he was looking for. Then, suddenly, as puppies do, he got exhausted. He was so tired that all he could do was to sit down and stay sitting. Nothing Kathleen said would make him move. So she sat down beside him and waited until he had recovered.

And there, sitting in the centre of the green meadow, Sirius remembered a little. He felt as if, inside his head, he was sitting in a green space that was vast, boundless, queer, and even more alive than the meadow in which his body sat. It was appalling. Yet, if he looked round the meadow, he knew that in time he could get to know every tuft and molehill in it. And, in the same way, he thought he might come to know the vaster green spaces inside his head.

“I don’t understand,” he thought, panting, with his tongue hanging out. “Why do those queer green spaces seem to be me?”

But his brain was not yet big enough to contain those spaces. It tried to close itself away from them. In doing so, it nipped the green vision down to a narrow channel, and urgent and miserable memories poured through. Sirius knew he had been wrongly accused of something. He knew someone had let him down terribly. How and why he could not tell, but he knew he had been condemned. He had raged, and it had been no use. And there was a Zoi. He had no idea what a Zoi was, but he knew he had to find it, urgently. And how could he find it, not knowing what it was like, when he himself was so small and weak that even a well-meaning being like Kathleen could pull him about on the end of a strap? He began whining softly, because it was so hopeless and so difficult to understand.

“There, there.” Kathleen gently patted him. “You are tired, aren’t you? We’d better get back.”

She got up from her damp hollow in the grass and fastened the lead to the red collar again. Sirius came when she dragged. He was too tired and dejected to resist. They went back the way they had come, and this time Sirius was not very interested in all the various smells. He had too much else to worry about.

As soon as Robin set eyes on Sirius, he said something. It was, “He’s pretty filthy, isn’t he?” but of course Sirius could not understand. Basil said something too, and Duffie’s cold voice in the distance said more. Kathleen hastily fetched cloths and towels and rubbed Sirius down and, all the while, Duffie talked in the way that made Sirius cower. He suddenly understand two things. One was that Duffie – and perhaps the whole family – had power of life and death over him. The other was that he needed to understand what they said. If he did not know what Duffie was objecting to, he might do it again and be put to death for it.

After that he fell asleep on the hearthrug with all four paws stiffly stretched out, and was dead to the world for a time. He was greatly in the way. Robin shoved him this way, Basil that. The thunderous voice made an attempt to roll him away under the sofa, but it was like trying to roll a heavy log, and he gave up. Sirius was so fast asleep that he did not even notice. While he slept, things came a little clearer in his mind. It was as if his brain was forced larger by all the things which had been in it that day.

He woke up ravenous. He ate his own supper, and finished what the cats had left of the second supper Kathleen had given them. He looked round hopefully for more, but there was no more. He lay sighing, with his face on his great clumsy paws, watching the family eat their supper – they always reserved the most interesting food for themselves – and trying with all his might to understand what they were saying. He was pleased to find that he had already unwittingly picked up a number of sounds. Some he could even put meanings to. But most of it sounded like gabble. It took him some days to sort the gabble into words, and to see how the words could be put with other words. And when he had done that, he found that his ears had not been picking up the most important part of these words.

He thought he had learnt the word walk straight away. Whenever Kathleen said it, he sprang up, knowing it meant a visit to the green meadow and the crawling water. In his delight at what that word meant, his tail took a life of its own and knocked things over, and he submitted to being fastened to the strap because of what came after. But he thought these pleasures were packed into a noise that went ork. Basil discovered this, and had great fun with him.

“Pork, Rat!” he would shout. “Stalk! Cork!”

Each time, Sirius sprang up, tail slashing, fox-red drooping ears pricked, only to be disappointed. Basil howled with laughter.

“No go, Rat. Auk, hawk, fork!”

In fact, Basil did Sirius a favour, because he taught him to listen to the beginnings of words. By the end of a week, Sirius was watching for the noise humans made by pouting their mouth into a small pucker. It looked a difficult noise. He was not sure he would ever learn to make it himself. But he knew that when ork began with this sound, it was real, and not otherwise. He did not respond to fork or talk and Basil grew quite peevish about it.

“This Rat’s no fun any more,” he grumbled.

Kathleen was relieved that Leo had almost stopped chewing things. Sirius was too busy learning and observing to do more than munch absently on his rubber bone. He ached for knowledge now. He kept perceiving a vast green something in himself, which was always escaping from the corner of his eye. He could never capture it properly, but he saw enough of it to know that he was now something stupid and ignorant, slung on four clumsy legs, with a mind like an amiable sieve. He had to learn why this was, or he would never be able to understand about a Zoi.

So Sirius listened and listened, and watched till his head ached. He watched cats as well as humans. And slowly, slowly, things began to make sense to him. He learnt that animals were held to be inferior to humans, because they were less clever, and smaller and clumsier. Humans used their hands in all sorts of devious, delicate ways. If there was something their hands could not do, they were clever enough to think of some tool to use instead. This perception was a great help to Sirius. He had odd, dim memories of himself using a Zoi rather as humans used tools. But animals could not do this. That was how humans had power of life and death over them.

Nevertheless, Sirius watched, fascinated, the way the cats, and Tibbles in particular, used their paws almost as cleverly as humans. Tibbles could push the cover off a meat dish, so that Romulus and Remus could make their claws into hooks and drag out the meat inside. She could pull down the catch of the kitchen window and let herself in at night if it was raining. And she could open any door that did not have a round handle. Sirius would look along his nose to his own great stumpy paws and sigh deeply. They were as useless as Duffie’s feet. He might be stronger than all three cats put together, but he could not use his paws as they did. He saw that this put him further under the power of humans than the cats. Because of their skill, the cats lived a busy and private life outside and inside the house, whereas he had to wait for a human to lead him about. He grew very depressed.

Then he discovered he could be clever too.

It was over the smart red jingly collar. Kathleen left it buckled round his neck after the first walk. Sirius hated it. It itched, and its noise annoyed him. But he very soon saw that it was more than an annoyance – it was the sign and tool of the power humans had over him. One of them – Basil for instance – had only to take hold of it to make him a helpless prisoner. If Basil then flipped his nose or took his bone away, it was a sign of the power he felt he had.

So Sirius set to work to make sure he could be free of that collar when he wanted. He scratched. And he scratched. And scratched. Jingle, jingle, jingle went the collar.

“Make that filthy creature stop scratching,” said Duffie.

“I think his collar may be on too tight,” said Robin. He and Kathleen examined it and decided to let it out two holes.

This was a considerable relief to Sirius. The collar no longer itched, though in its looser state it jingled more annoyingly than before. That night, after a little manoeuvring under Kathleen’s bed, he managed to hook it to one of Kathleen’s bedsprings and tried to pull it off by walking away backwards. The collar stuck behind his ears. It hurt. It would not move. He could not get it off and he could not get it on again. He could not even get it off the bedspring. His ears were killing him. He panicked, yelping and jumping till the bed heaved.

Kathleen sat up with a shriek. “Leo! Help! There’s a ghost under my bed!” Then she added, much more reasonably, “What on earth are you doing, Leo?” After that, she switched on the light and came and looked. “You silly little dog! How did you get into that pickle? Hold still now.” She unhooked Sirius and dragged him out from under the bed. He was extremely grateful and licked her face hugely. “Give over,” said Kathleen. “And let’s get some sleep.”

Sirius obediently curled up on her bed until she was asleep again. Then he got down and started scratching once more. Whenever no one was near, he scratched diligently, always in the same place, on the loops of the loose skin under his chin. It did not hurt much there and yet, shortly, he had made himself a very satisfactory raw spot.

“Your horse has his collar on too tight,” the thunderous voice told Kathleen. “Look.”

Kathleen looked, and felt terrible. “Oh, my poor Leo!” She let the collar out three more holes.

That night, to his great satisfaction, Sirius found he could leave the collar hanging on the bedspring, while he ambled round the house with only the quiet ticker-tack of his claws to mark his progress. It was not quite such an easy matter to get the collar on again. Kathleen woke twice more thinking there was a ghost under her bed, before Sirius thought of pushing his head into the collar from the other side. Then it came off the bedspring and on to his neck in one neat movement. He curled up on Kathleen’s bed feeling very pleased with himself.

This piece of cunning made Sirius much more confident. He began to suspect that he could settle most difficulties if he thought about them. His body might be clumsy, but his mind was quite as good as any cat’s. It was fortunate he realised this because, one afternoon when Kathleen, Robin and Basil were all out, long before Sirius had learnt more than a few words of human speech, Tibbles did her best to get rid of him for good.

Sirius, bored and lonely, drew himself quietly up on to the sofa and fell gingerly asleep there. He liked that sofa. He considered it unfair of the humans that they insisted on keeping all the most comfortable places for themselves. But he did not dare do more than doze. Duffie was moving about upstairs. It seemed to be one of the afternoons when she did not shut herself away in the shop and, Sirius had learnt by painful experience, you had to be extra wary on those days.

He had been dozing there for nearly an hour, when Romulus jumped on him. He hit Sirius like a bomb, every claw out and spitting abuse. Sirius sprang up with a yelp. He was more surprised than anything at first. But Romulus was fat and determined. He dug his claws in and stuck to Sirius’s back and Sirius, for a second or so, could not shake him off. In those seconds, Sirius became furiously angry. It was like a sheet of green flame in his head. How dared Romulus! He hurled the cat off and went for him, snarling and showing every pointed white tooth he had. Romulus took one look. Then he flashed over the sofa arm and vanished. Sirius’s teeth snapped on empty air. By the time he reached the carpet, Romulus was nowhere to be seen.

A bubbling hiss drew Sirius’s attention to Remus, crouched in the open doorway to the shop. Remus bared his teeth and spat. At that, Sirius’s rage flared vaster and greener still. He responded with a deep rumbling growl that surprised him nearly as much as it surprised Remus. A great ridge of fur came up over his back and shoulders and his eyes blazed green. Remus stared at this nightmare of eyes, teeth and bristle, and his own fur stood and stood and stood, until he was nearly twice his normal size. He spat. Sirius throbbed like a motor cycle and crept forward, slow and stiff-legged, to tear Remus to pieces. He was angry, angry, angry.

Remus only waited to make sure Sirius was indeed coming his way. Then he bolted without courage or dignity. He had done what his mother wanted, but not even for Tibbles was he going to face this nightmare a second longer than he had to. When Sirius reached the door of the shop there was no sign of Remus. There was only Tibbles, alone in the middle of a dusty floor.

Sirius stopped when his face was round the door. In spite of his rage, he knew something was not right here. This door should have been shut. Tibbles must have opened it. She must be trying to tempt him inside for reasons of her own. The prudent thing would be not to be tempted. But he had always wanted to explore the shop, and he was still very angry. To see what would happen, he pushed the door further open and let out another great throbbing growl at Tibbles.

At the sight and sound of him, Tibbles became a paper-thin archway of a cat, and her tail stood above in a desperate question mark. Was this a puppy or a monster? She was terrified. But she stood her ground because this was her chance to get rid of it.

Her terror gave Sirius rather an amusing sense of power. Slow and stiff-legged, he strutted into the room. Tibbles spat and drifted away sideways, so arched that she looked like a piece of paper blowing in the wind. Sirius saw she wanted him to chase her. Just for a moment, he did wonder how it would feel to take her arched and narrow back between his teeth and shake his head till she snapped, but he was sure she would jump out of reach somewhere before he could catch her. So he ignored her. Instead, he swaggered across the dusty floor to look at the objects piled by the walls and stacked on the shelves.

He sniffed them cautiously. What were these things? As curiosity gained the upper hand in him, his growl died away and the hair on his back settled down into glossy waves again. The things had a blank, muddy smell. Some were damp and pink, some pale and dry, some again shiny and painted in ugly grey-greens. They were something like the cups humans drank out of, and he thought they might be made of the same stuff as the dish labelled DOG in which Kathleen gave him his water. But Sirius could not have got his tongue into most of them. No human could have drunk out of any.

Then he remembered the thing on the living-room mantelpiece Kathleen had smashed that morning when she was dusting. It had held one rose. Duffie had been furious.

Sirius understood now. These things were rose-holders and they broke. Let a dog chase a cat among them and the result would be spectacular. Duffie would certainly carry out all her cold threats. It was clever of Tibbles.

Cautiously, carefully, walking stiff-legged in order not to knock anything, Sirius explored the two rooms thoroughly. He sniffed at rows of hand-thrown pottery. He nosed glaze. He investigated damp new clay. He put his feet on a stool to examine the pink and dusty wheel on which Duffie made the things, and snuffed at the oven where she fired them. That was a better smell than most. It brought a queer tinge of homesickness.

He went into the shop itself, where rows of shiny pots in dull colours waited for people to buy them. He did not find it very interesting. In fact, the whole place was rather a disappointment. It astonished him that even Duffie could find things like this important. But he was sure she did. The cold dusty smell of the place matched her personality.

Tibbles followed him about like a drifting outraged shadow. How could the creature resist chasing her to go sniffing about like this? But Sirius took no notice of her at all. When he had seen enough, he turned carefully and carefully pit-patted towards the open door. He was going back to the sofa.

It was too much for Tibbles. Determined to carry out her plan, she dashed at Sirius and clawed his face. Then she leapt for a high shelf in the place where pottery was stacked thickest.

That was her undoing. She was in too much of a hurry to judge her jump properly, or perhaps she was simply confident that Sirius would be blamed for anything that broke. She missed the space she was aiming for and collided with a mighty purple vase. Slowly and imposingly, the vase tipped over, knocked Tibbles sideways and fell into a heap of pots beneath. Tibbles just managed to hook her claws into the very end of the shelf, where she hung, scrabbling underneath the shelf for a foothold. Sirius bolted, with the smash ringing in his ears. He had a last sight of Tibbles desperately hanging and scrabbling, and the other end of the shelf tipping sharply upwards.

CHAPTER FOUR

Sirius shot soundlessly across the living-room carpet. His hind legs were instinctively lowered and his tail wrapped under them. Duffie was pounding downstairs. From the shop came smash after crash after smash. Pots were sliding down the sloping shelf, over the helpless Tibbles, and breaking one upon another in a heap by the doorway.

As Duffie burst into the living-room, Sirius shot into the kitchen, shot across it to the space under the sink and crammed himself in behind the waste-bucket. Romulus was hiding there too. He spat half-heartedly at Sirius, but both of them knew the situation was too serious for fighting. They both crouched, trembling, packed side by side into the slimy space, listening to the dreadful noises from the shop.

In the heat of the moment, Sirius and Romulus found they were communicating with one another.

“What happened? What went wrong?”

“It was her fault. She jumped on a shelf. Everything fell off it.”

“She’s being killed. Do something!”

“You do something.”

It certainly sounded as if Tibbles was being killed. There was more heavy crashing, and cold high yelling from Duffie. After that came a dreadful screech, half cat, half human. Remus shot into the kitchen, a fat stripy streak of panic, and made for the waste-pail too. When he saw Sirius and Romulus already there, he stopped, looped into a frenzy, glaring.

“Help! Let me hide! She’s killing us!”

Duffie was now raving round the living-room. “Where’s that flaming CAT?”

At the sound, Remus somehow packed himself in beside Romulus, quivering as if there was a motor inside him. Sirius found himself being oozed out on the other side. “Hey!”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” shivered Remus. “Oh, ye gods!”

There was a scream like a steam-siren from the next room. Something crashed, probably a new rose-holder. “Damn!” yelled Duffie. “Got you, you fiend!” It was clear Tibbles had been caught. A heavy, sharp thumping began. It was as strong and regular as the noise Kathleen had made when she hung the carpets on the clothesline and beat them with a beater. Duffie yelled in time with the thumps, “I’ll – teach – you – to – break – my – pottery!”

Sirius found he could not have this. Whatever Tibbles deserved, it was not being beaten to death. His dog’s hatred of strife in his family fetched him out from under the sink. That, and a strong green sense of justice, sent him scampering to the living-room, followed by a gust of amazement from Remus and Romulus.

Duffie had her sandals planted wide apart on the hearthrug. She had Tibbles dangling wretchedly from one hand, curled as stiff and small as possible, while the other hand clouted away at Tibbles, hard and rhythmically. At the sight, Sirius’s green sense of justice became mixed with anger. He would dearly have liked to plant his jawful of white teeth in the bulging muscle of Duffie’s calf. He had to tell himself she would taste nasty, he wanted to bite her so much. He launched himself at Duffie instead, and managed to land hard against her stomach before he fell on the floor. Duffie staggered.

“Drat you, animal! Get away!”

Sirius got up and began to leap about Duffie, reaching for Tibbles and barking excitedly.

“Will you stop interfering!” Duffie shouted, lashing out with a sandal.

Sirius knew he was not big enough to reach Tibbles. Duffie was holding her dangling high out of reach. But he ran in a swift figure of eight around her feet as she kicked out, and made her overbalance. Duffie loosened her hold on Tibbles in order to catch at the mantelpiece. Tibbles dropped with a thump on all four feet and was off like a white flash upstairs.

“Damn!” shrieked Duffie, and lunged at Sirius. He ran away round the sofa, expecting to be beaten with a broom again.

Luckily, they had only been twice round the sofa when the side door opened and Robin, Basil and Kathleen trooped in.

“What’s going on?” said Basil.

To the surprise and relief of Sirius, Duffie forgot about him and began to rage long and shrilly about the damage those wretched cats had done in the shop. While the side-door was open, Romulus and Remus seized their chance and fled through it. Neither of them reappeared again that day. Sirius supposed it would have been prudent of him to do the same, but he was not really tempted. He was too glad to see Kathleen again. He jumped up against her and squeaked with pleasure.

While Duffie was busy dramatically throwing open the shop door and pointing to the heap of smithereens inside, Kathleen wrapped her arms round Sirius. “I’m glad it wasn’t you for once,” she whispered.

It seemed unfair to Sirius that it should be Kathleen who cleared up the broken pottery. But he had noticed that Kathleen always did do an unfair amount of work. He lay and whined in protest outside the shop door, until she had finished and was able to take him to the meadow.

Duffie, meanwhile, stumped away upstairs to find Tibbles. But Tibbles had hidden herself cunningly in the very back of the airing-cupboard and Duffie did not find her.

After supper that evening, Duffie angrily shut herself in the shop and worked away at her potter’s wheel to replace some of the breakages. When she heard the wheel whirring, Tibbles dared at last to emerge. Very sore and ruffled and hungry, she limped downstairs and into the living-room. Only Sirius saw her. Robin, Kathleen, Basil and the thunderous voice were all crowded round the table over some kind of game. Sirius was on the hearthrug with a tough raw bone propped between his paws and his head laid sideways, grating deliciously with his back teeth. He looked at Tibbles across his nose. Tibbles stopped short in the doorway, seeing him looking.

“It’s all right. It’s quite safe,” Sirius told her. “She’s in the shop. And there’s a whole lot of scraps still down in the kitchen.”

Tibbles did not reply. She stepped off delicately to the kitchen, shaking each front paw with a ladylike shudder before she put it down. Sirius, in a dog’s equivalent of a shrug, went back to his bone.

Quite a while later, when Sirius had done with the bone and was snoozing, Tibbles limped out of the kitchen and came slowly over to the hearthrug. Though she looked rather less wretched, she was still very ruffled. She sat down, wrapped her tail across her front feet, and stared fixedly at Sirius.

“I still hurt. It’s all your fault.”

Sirius raised an eyebrow and rolled one green eye up at her. “It was your fault, too. But I’m sorry. I was afraid she was going to kill you.”

“She was,” said Tibbles. “She loves those silly mud pots. Thank you for stopping her.” She raised a front paw and licked it half-heartedly. “I feel awful,” she said miserably. “What can I do?”

“Come over here and I’ll lick you,” Sirius suggested, greatly daring.

He expected Tibbles to treat the suggestion with contempt, but, instead, she got up and, casually, as if she did not care particularly, she settled down between his front paws. Most astonished and very flattered, Sirius gingerly licked her back. She tasted clean and fluffy.

“Further up and over to the right,” Tibbles said, tucking her paws under her gracefully.

Half an hour later, Kathleen looked up from the cards. “Goodness gracious!” she exclaimed. “Just look at that now!”

Everybody looked, and exclaimed to see Tibbles tucked up like a tuffet between the forepaws of the dog with the dog’s head resting against her. Tibbles had flat wet patches all over the tabby part of her back from being licked.

When she saw them looking, she raised her head and stared at them defiantly. “And why shouldn’t I sit here?” Then she turned her pink nose gently to Sirius’s black one and settled down to purring again.

Sirius’s heavy tail flapped on the carpet. He felt warm and proud to have this lovely white cat purring against him. He looked down at her small humped shape and wondered. It was familiar. So, in a dim back-to-front way, was everything that had happened that afternoon. Some time, in a misty green past, there had been a time with three other beings when he had flown into a rage, only then, as far as he could remember, the disaster had been his and not his Companion’s.

Then he remembered, and with great sadness. Once, somewhere else, he had had a Companion, as small and white and nearly as elegant as Tibbles. He had loved this Companion with all his heart, and given her anything she wanted. Then he had been forced to leave her. He could not remember why, but remembering just that was bad enough. He was glad Tibbles was there to make up for it a little. And Kathleen. Sirius cast an eye up at Kathleen, sighing. He had Kathleen and now Tibbles. Perhaps he should not be sad after all. But deep down inside him there was such green misery that he could have cried, if dogs could cry.

That night Tibbles came and curled up on Kathleen’s bed beside Sirius. “You’re heavy, the two of you,” Kathleen said, heaving them about with her feet. “If you weren’t so warm, I’d kick you off.” She managed to find a space for her feet along beside the wall and fell asleep murmuring, “I’m glad you like one another. But what about poor old Romulus and Remus?”

However, to Kathleen’s pleasure, her puppy now got on well with all three cats. Romulus and Remus were not as affectionate to Sirius as Tibbles, but that was because it was not in their nature. But they liked him. They respected him for rescuing Tibbles when neither of them would have dared. And he was big enough to warm a number of cats at once. It became quite a regular thing – as soon as the cats had ceased keeping out of Duffie’s way – to find all four animals piled together in a heap on the hearthrug, the cats purring and Sirius lazily thumping his tail. Sirius liked this heap. It reminded him of the time when he had wriggled in a crowd of other puppies.

He became very fond of all three cats. They were quaint and knowing. It made him feel cleverer to be friends with them, and it made him feel very clever indeed when he discovered that they could not understand what humans said.

Before long, Sirius was understanding most of human talk. The cats could never learn more than a word or two. They came to depend on Sirius to tell them if anything important was being said. Whenever Duffie went into one of her cold rages, they would come and ask Sirius anxiously what had annoyed her this time. It gave him a pleasant sense of superiority to be able to tell them, even if what he had to say was, “I put mud on the sofa,” or, “Kathleen gave me a bone when there was still some meat on it.”

“It’s a pity,” Tibbles remarked once, reflectively licking a paw, “that she hates you so much. Perhaps you ought to go and live somewhere else.”

“I don’t think Kathleen would like me to go,” Sirius said.

“Kathleen could go with you. She hates her, too,” Tibbles observed.

Sirius knew that. One of the first things he tried to find out, as soon as he understood enough talk, was why Duffie hated Kathleen so. It was not easy to discover, because there were so many things connected with it that he did not quite understand. He had to find out why Basil was always jeering at Kathleen for being Irish, and what it meant to be Irish, and why Kathleen spoke in a clipped, lilting way which was different from the rest of the family.

Then, one night, Sirius heard a man talking on television in the same rapid but singing accent. Up to then, he had not realised he could learn anything from either the television or the radio. He tried to attend to both after that. The radio defeated him. It spoke in a blank, boxy voice, and it had no face or picture to show him what it was talking about, but the television proved easy to follow and much more informative. At length, he had it all sorted out.

The family was English, and they were called Duffield, but Kathleen was from a country called Ireland, where bad things were happening, and her name was Kathleen O’Brien. In some parts of Ireland, Sirius gathered, cars and buildings were sent up in flames, and people were killed by other people when they answered a knock at their front door.

Sometimes the Irish people came and did this in England, too, which accounted for some of the things Basil said. Kathleen’s mother was some kind of relation to Mr Duffield – he of the thunderous voice – but she had left Ireland when the trouble started and run away to America. And Kathleen’s father had been put in prison for taking part in the violence. So Mr Duffield had sent for Kathleen to come and live with them.

Try as he might, Sirius could not connect Kathleen with the scenes of violence he saw on television. She was the gentlest and most reliable person in the household. But it was plain that both Basil and Duffie did.

Duffie’s real name was Daphne Duffield, and she disliked Kathleen for a number of reasons. She had been very angry that Mr Duffield had not consulted her before sending for Kathleen. That started it. Then Kathleen had no money, except a very little her father had once sent her from prison. Duffie went on at great length, whenever she was cross – which was frequently – about having another mouth to feed, and the cost of clothes, and the cost of Sirius, and the cost of all the china Kathleen broke washing up, and a great many other costs. And Duffie disliked Irish people. She called them feckless. She called Kathleen lazy and stupid and sluttish.

Kathleen did all the cooking and most of the housework and dozens of odd jobs as well. But because she was not much older than Robin, she did not always do these things well. Some things she had never done before, some she was not strong enough to do, and sometimes she would start playing with Sirius and forget that she was supposed to be cleaning out the bathroom. Then Duffie came and said all these things, cold and high, making Kathleen tremble and Sirius cower.

Duffie always concluded her scolding with, “And I shall have that creature destroyed unless you mend your ways.”

Sirius learnt that he was being used to blackmail Kathleen into doing all the work and being scolded into the bargain. When Kathleen had brought him home as a tiny sopping puppy and Duffie had been so very angry, Kathleen had promised to help in the house if Duffie let her keep Sirius. Duffie held her to it. By the end of the summer, Duffie was doing nothing but make pots and scold Kathleen. And Sirius began to long to sink his teeth in Duffie. When she grew cold and shrill at Kathleen, Sirius would eye her bulging calves and yearn with a great yearning to plant a bite in one. He did not do it, because he knew it would not help Kathleen at all. Instead, he rumbled deep in his chest and shook all over with the effort of not biting Duffie.

He wished Mr Duffield would stop Duffie treating Kathleen so badly, but he soon learnt that Mr Duffield was only interested in the work that took him out of the house every day till evening and only complained if Duffie made him uncomfortable. Duffie was not usually unpleasant to Kathleen in the evenings.

Basil was unpleasant to Kathleen most of the time. Sirius soon gathered that Basil did not really dislike Kathleen. He was just imitating Duffie.

As Sirius grew larger, and larger still, Basil ceased to frighten him at all. Whenever he saw that Basil’s mindless jeering was getting on Kathleen’s nerves, Sirius stopped him. Usually it was only necessary to distract Basil by starting a game. But if Basil was being very bad tempered, Sirius found he could shut him up by staring at him. If he fixed his queer green eyes on Basil’s light blue ones and glared, Basil would round on him and jeer at him instead.

“Shamus Wolf! Sneaking filthy mongrel! Rat redears!” Sirius never minded this at all.

“I read in a book that no animal could look a human in the eyes,” Robin once remarked unwisely.

“Leo’s unusual,” said Kathleen.

Basil punched Robin’s nose. He was about to go on and punch Robin everywhere else, but Sirius rose, rumbling all over, and pushed in between them. Robin ran away and locked himself in the broom-cupboard. Basil was frightened. He saw he could easily turn Shamus Wolf into a permanent enemy, and that would be a waste, since he was far more fun that the stupid cats.

“I’ll take the Rat for his walk, if you like,” he offered. The Rat was only too ready to come. And, as Kathleen was busy trying to scrape dozens and dozens of tiny new potatoes, she agreed.

So Basil and Sirius went and raced round and round the green meadow, shouting and barking vehemently. They met four other dogs and five other boys, and all of them ran up and down in the mud at the edge of the river until they were both black and weary. When they came home, Robin was waiting, rather puffy-eyed, to fling his arms round Sirius and get licked. Sirius licked him tenderly. He was fond of Robin and knew his position was a difficult one. Robin was the only one in the family who liked Kathleen, and he adored dogs. But he was only a little boy. He was scared of Basil and he wanted to please Duffie.

Unfortunately, Sirius had forgotten how muddy he was. Mud went on Robin and got plastered on the kitchen floor as well. Duffie came in and coldly raged. Kathleen was in the middle of cooking supper, but she had to find time to get Robin clean clothes and wash the kitchen floor, while Basil jeered and Robin wavered miserably between jeering too and offering to help. It was one of many times when Sirius felt he would be doing Kathleen a kindness if he ran away.

He did not run away because, as he had told Tibbles, he knew it would make Kathleen unhappy. Besides, there were times when Duffie was safely in her shop when he had great fun. Robin, Kathleen – and Basil too, if he was in the mood – would do a romp-thing in the living-room, of which the aim seemed to be to stuff Sirius under the sofa – only they usually lost sight of the aim and ended simply rolling in a heap.

Or they would all go out to the meadow and throw sticks for Sirius to fetch out of the river. Sirius fetched the stick, but the rule was that he would not bring it to be thrown again. They had to catch him first. He was an expert at dodging. He would wait, with the fringed elbows of his forelegs almost on the ground and the stick temptingly in his mouth, until all three children were almost upon him and putting out their hands to seize the stick. Then he would bounce between them and be away to the other end of the meadow before they could move.

The very best times were when Kathleen and Sirius, not to speak of Tibbles, had gone to bed in Kathleen’s room. Nobody went to sleep for at least an hour. First Kathleen and Sirius had a silly game which went very quickly round and round Kathleen’s bed. Kathleen tried to crawl and keep her face hidden at the same time, laughing and laughing, while Sirius ploughed rapidly after her, trying to lick her face and giving out panting grunts, which were his way of laughing. They played this most nights until Tibbles had had enough and boxed Sirius’s ears. Then Kathleen would settle down with a book and talk. She liked reading aloud, so she read to Sirius. Sometimes she explained the book as she read it. Sometimes she just talked.

As Sirius understood more and more human talk, he learnt a great deal from this – more than he learnt from watching television. Tibbles would sit, placid and queenly, washing herself, until she sensed something was interesting Sirius particularly. Then she would ask for an explanation. The odd thing was that, in her own way, Tibbles often knew more than Kathleen.

One night, Kathleen was reading a book of fairy stories. “They’re fine stories,” she explained to Sirius, “but they’re not true. Mind you don’t go believing them now.”

Sirius liked the stories too, but he was not sure Kathleen was right. He had a notion some of them had more truth in them than Kathleen thought. Kathleen said suddenly, “Oh, listen to this, Leo!” and she read, “Of all the hounds he had seen in the world, he had seen no dogs the colour of these. The colour that was on them was a brilliant shining white, and their ears red; and as the exceeding whiteness of the dogs glittered, so glittered the exceeding redness of their ears. Fancy that, Leo!” Kathleen said. “They must have looked almost like you. Your coat is sort of shining sometimes, and your ears are nearly red. They were magic dogs, Leo. They belonged to Arawn – he was king in the Underworld. I wonder if you’re some relation. It doesn’t say anything about the colour of their eyes, though.” Kathleen leafed on through the story to see if there was any more about the dogs.

“What was that about?” Tibbles asked. Sirius told her. He was excited and puzzled. As far as he knew, his green thoughts came from nothing like an Underworld. And yet Kathleen was right. The description did fit him. “Yes,” Tibbles said thoughtfully. “They are a bit like you, I suppose. But they’re whiter and their eyes are yellow.”

“You mean – these stories are true?” Sirius asked her.

“I don’t know,” Tibbles said. “I’m talking about nowadays. I’ve no idea what it was like when the place was full of kings and princesses and magicians and things. Maybe some of the things she reads you could have happened then.”

“Don’t they happen nowadays?” said Sirius.

“I didn’t say that.” Tibbles got up irritably and stretched. Stretching, with Tibbles, was an elegant and lengthy business. It began with a long arching of the back, followed by the lowering of her front legs to stretch her shoulders, and finished with a slow further lowering of the back to get the kinks out of each back leg separately. Sirius had to wait till she had finished and curled up again. Then she said, “The trouble with humans is that it’s all or nothing with them. They seem to think anything impossible could happen in the old days. And just because these are new days, they tell you none of it is true. Now I’m going to sleep.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Soon after this, Kathleen had to spend most of every day at school. School, Sirius discovered, was a place where she learnt things. He thought this was absurd. Kathleen did not need to learn anything. She was the wisest person he knew. Basil and Robin had to go to school too, which was not so absurd, but they had to dress up in special grey clothes with red stripes round the edges in order to go. Kathleen went in her usual, shabby clothes. Sirius learnt that this was because she went to the ordinary school nearby, whereas Basil and Robin went to a school on the other side of the town which charged money for taking them. Duffie earned the money by making and selling those mud pots, but of course she would not spare any money to send Kathleen too. Because Kathleen’s school was nearby, she was usually home first, which suited Sirius very well. And he remembered dimly that this had been the way of things before, when he was very tiny and still being fed from a bottle.

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