(Being the opening bit of a potentially lost novel)

There is that Dog Again

My sister and I are sitting by the side of the road in the early morning and we are waiting to be given a ride into town. The sun is still orange but it has come out of the shadow of the mountains and the air is almost warm. It is springtime now and the birds in the pine trees in the valley are singing. Three carts going to the market have passed us by, but no one has picked us up yet. Somewhere among the pine trees or on the other side of them there is a river which I can hear but not see.

My sister lights her pipe, spits into the dust and considers that for a moment, and then squints down the road.

“There is that dog again,” she says.

“I see him,” I reply, and there he is, back along the road, sniffing around at things and walking about in his strange way.

“Or is it even the same dog?” My sister asks. “I thought it was but now I wonder.”

“It is the same one.”

“Can you be sure? Any dog might lose a foot to a trap, or by going under the wheel of a wagon, or something else. It is a dangerous world. And not just for dogs.”

“That is true.”

After we have watched the dog for a while longer my sister says, “it does look like him, though.”

I do not say anything to that. If I were to say something it would be that the dog looks like him because it is him.

“He gets up and down the country well for a three-legged creature, do you not think?”

“Three legs is still one more than a man has,” I say, and my sister looks at me strangely then, but she knows I am right.

Continue reading “Lives of the Miracle Children – first chapter” →