#dog!will

    Will Graham did not know that today was Halloween. He had been aware that it was approaching, by the usual signs of carved pumpkins and paper skeletons tacked up in his neighbors’ windows by their kids, but the nearest neighbor was a quarter mile away, and Will had no children of his own. He did know that it was late fall, though. The fish were biting later and later in the day, and with the frost had come the laziness of the trout.

So it happened that he was thigh-deep in half-frozen water, the last of the mosquitos screeling in his ears and Virginia’s finest colors alight all around him, that Will met the sunset of Halloween night. This was his favorite place, a quick shallow river hissing past, fiberglass rod in hand, wrist warm from the quick flicking of the line across the surface. He could stay here forever, never talk to anyone or think of anyone, never be a person. He was part of the scene, and had no name or identity. There was no such person as Will Graham, and there would not be until it became too dark, and he would have to head home.

What he had thought was a distant coyote, maybe a wolf, sounded again, closer now. It was not alone either, as other canine voices rose to meet it in a haunting melody. He closed his eyes and listened, their high song lending an edge to the scene that he felt in his animal brain. Fishing was never a thrill; that was part of why he liked it. Now here was that sound, and the part of his DNA that remembered what it meant to sleep in a cave and keep an ear open for the growl of predators told him it was time to leave, immediately.

Boy those howls really were getting close fast, weren’t they?

Will spent a single moment considering just staying in the water, but his feet were already slogging towards the shore, where his backpack and the rest of his gear lay in the sand. He gathered his things with a little more haste than usual, and was shaking his feet out of the tall rubber waders when it occurred to him that it didn’t really sound like wolves, it sounded more like dogs. Hound dogs. There was no mistaking now that he could hear them clearer, that hiccoughing crack in the voice that always reminded him of his own as a boy. And now there were a whole pack of them coming his way, at a speed that did not make sense for the density of the woods.

It was just as the sun slipped below the edge of things that he saw them. They were hounds, that was certain, but no breed he knew. These were white, a sharp frosty white you didn’t see in animals, their floppy ears a deep crimson color that could not possibly be natural. They were blood on the snow, and their eyes shone savage and excited. They swarmed through the trees, dozens of them, their baying now wrapping around Will like a fog. He kicked out of the waders and backed against a tree, one hand slowly sinking to grasp the handle of the knife he had clipped to his belt. It was a useless tool for whatever it was that now circled him--he couldn’t really call them dogs--but it was better than nothing.

I’m dreaming, he thought. Real dogs are warm.

They huffed breath that frosted in the air, though it was not cold enough for that. It certainly was when they came close enough to brush him with whippy tails, close enough for him to smell that their breath stank of metal and salt, and they were so cold, so cold. No matter which direction he looked, it was scarlet ears and shiny fangs, icy fur and icy breath. He could feel his heartbeat in places he did not usually feel it, his eyelids and the tip of his tongue.

A sharp whistle shrieked through the trees, and as one the hounds pulled their circle back. Will looked up, and up.

The hounds’s master was enormous, the largest man Will had ever seen. There was no way this was real, he kept thinking to himself, a dream a dream a dream, it had to be. Because how else could it be happening? Dogs were warm, they got caught in bushes when they ran over them, and people were people-sized. Horses were horse-sized. Nobody wore armor in Virginia.

The giant man was wearing armor, and so was his horse, but it was hard to tell where man and horse ended and began. The animal was just as monstrously large as its rider, dark as death and glittering with foamy sweat. The rider was black as well, not a man wearing black clothing or with black skin, more like a void where the shadows had dimension and personality. Nighttime with a face. Will couldn’t see any part of the man, but he was sure the figure was a man, or masculine. Something about the way he kept his seat on the giant horse, the poise of his back and chest, the word kingly stuck into Will’s mind, and he could only think of the figure as a king.

He even had a crown, of sorts. Rising above that man/horse darkness was a branching spike of antlers like those of a stag, sharp and reflecting the light from the cold hounds’ coats. Will wanted to believe that this shadowy king was wearing a helmet decorated with them, but he knew this was not the case. Why not, he thought wildly. Sometimes dogs are made of snow, and sometimes giants have horns. It’s a dream.

(No it’s not.)

The king hefted a long spear and leveled it at Will’s throat. The shaft of it was as thick around as Will’s forearm, and the tip of it was cold enough to burn where it touched just under his chin. Will held perfectly still, both hands clamped around his pathetic little folding knife, and kept his eyes unblinking on the place where he thought the king’s own must be.

Are you hunter? asked the king suddenly, Or are you prey?

Will didn’t know why it surprised him that the voice had not come from a mouth, yet he had heard it in the same way that you hear thunder, reverberating in the bones of his chest and shaking his blood. The spear tip lifted ever so slightly, tilting Will’s face higher, exposing his throat even more to the circling hounds. 

“I’m not prey,” Will said aloud, wondering how he did it. He didn’t know what was the right answer, but he knew that a hunter and his pack of dogs would not allow anything they named prey to survive the next minute. He intended to live, dream or no dream. The spear stayed where it was, the king silent. Will swallowed what felt like a mouthful of dust and spoke louder. “I am not prey!”

Hunt with me, the king said. Or be hunted. Choose.

“I--I choose to hunt,” Will said. There was a power in the words he didn’t understand, and it spread through him like the cold water of the river. The king pulled back his spear, and whistled again. The hounds followed his command, and they tore off through the underbrush, feet light and jaws salivating.

Will went with them. 

He didn’t realize exactly when it had happened, but more details arose whenever he had a moment to spot them. His breath was as cold as the hounds’ was, and every time he exhaled it clouded his vision, taking away the glory of the world. How had he never noticed how much life there was in these woods? He knew that there were trees and squirrels and birds, but he had never seen them glow, never known down to the last bacterium how much life still drew breath even with winter only hours away. His paws danced between them all, fleet as the breeze, his voice just once more part of the harmony that swelled whenever his pack spotted something that was foolish enough to run.

And he never wanted it to end. Sometimes there was blood in his mouth, sometimes it was whatever got in the way. Once it was something even colder than the other hounds, and they shredded that spirit before it had time to remember how to die a second time. Behind them, their master’s horse thundered, his whistle the only thought they could hold. There was no such person as Will Graham, and until daylight broke above the hills, there would not be again.

Twice they stopped to question whether something was prey or not. The first time, another hound joined the pack and the hunt went on. The second time, Will joined the others in the taste of hot, frightened meat. His tail wagged in the pure wild joy of it, to chase and to be rewarded with what he caught.

They ran on.

There were only minutes until the rise of the sun, he could tell. The dogs lay panting on the ground, tongues lolling, while the hunter king dismounted. Will glanced around, and saw other people sitting with him in the thin grass, gasping just as much as he was, blood on their mouths. The hunter approached each of them in turn, and murmured something to them that Will could not hear. He was too tired to move, too tired to think. He brought one shaking hand (hand!) to his face, and it came away scarlet. He spat on the grass.

The people who spoke to the king sometimes lay down and went to sleep where they fell, sometimes disappeared entirely. Two of them slid back into the frosty white skins they had worn earlier, and let their red ears spread onto the ground as they panted away their exhaustion. A very distant and weak part of Will feebly whispered that this was just part of the dream, but god, how could anyone be stupid enough to believe that at this point? No, if it was real, (it was) he needed to know what had happened.

He closed his eyes. 

Wipe away the scene as it was now. 

Wipe away the time that had passed.

I am part of the world, as old as the first dream of an animal that thought to take what had been a predator and turn it into an ally. I am the spirit that made an ape grip a sharp stick, the impulse that made it think, this could be sharper. I am the eye that was drawn to movement, the urge to chase. I know what lies in the woods, and I am its master.

To have power over the wild and to have say in what lived and died, that is power. To bring what died back into the firelight, and with the carcass bring life to all who partook of it, that is grace. They know this of me. They beg me, hunt again. Take from the wild that threatens, and become the threat. We will join you. We want to find life through what dies tonight.

Here is a tool, to kill at a distance. Here is a mount, who may carry me through the world. And they, guided by my power and might, will chase what flees and send it running closer to me. Together we will tear open what is soft, and they will carry what we have torn all the way back to the fire.

I will do this again, and again, as part of the human world. You all need me to hunt and kill what I have tracked through the wild, and I will do it until the earth is a small burnt rock in space. This is my design.

Will curled up small and wrapped his arms around himself. He felt sick, a belly filled with raw meat he could not be certain was an animal’s threatening to come back up. He wanted to lie down with the other dogs (they were the dogs, he was not a dog, not right now) and just exist without thoughts. But that wasn’t really an option. Not while he still thought of himself as Will. Not while the person who was Will Graham had reappeared in the world.

The hunter king had come to him. You hunted well, he said, straight past Will’s ears and into his heart. Name your reward.

“I don’t want anything from you,” Will muttered. 

Do you truly wish for nothing?

“Yes.”

Then nothing you shall have. If we should meet again, little pup, I hope that you survive.

Will closed his eyes, and true to his word, the hunter king gave him nothing. Will sank into it gratefully, and waved goodbye to the memory as it melted away with the last of the evening frost.

“You lost, buddy?”

“Uh...yeah. I guess I am. How far is it to Wolf Trap?”

“Wolf Trap? That’s like twenty or thirty miles East of here.”

“Oh. Are you going East?”

“No. I’m going to the hospital.”

“Yikes. Good luck.”

“Not for me, buddy. You. Get in. What the hell happened to you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yeah. I got nowhere to be this morning. Let’s get you ok again.”

The driver reached over the side of his pickup seat and opened the door from the inside. Will climbed in. He wondered where all this blood had come from. He wondered how he had gotten here. 

There was a pair of German shepherds in the bed of the truck. Will kept turning back to look at them as the driver took them closer to civilization. They watched him through the little window with ears up and backs straight. It looked like they were expecting him to do something.

“You really don’t remember what happened?” the driver asked every so often. Will could only shrug. “Were you hit by a car?” He was more tired than he had ever been, but this was not his blood. He leaned against the door, meaning only to wedge his legs a little more comfortably under the dashboard, but a quick blink turned into a long blink, and he was asleep before he could answer the driver’s question. His last thought before blackness was, I should get a dog.

Early winter.

Will painted the inside of his house a dark sage green. It looked nicer that way. Kind of like leaves. With the wood floor and window frames, it was nearly like being out in the woods even when he was warm in bed.

A stray dog had lost a fight with a raccoon, somewhere along one of Will’s daily walks. He carried the dog to his green home, and nursed it into loyalty.

Late winter.

He read something about the meat industry and felt sickened at what he saw. Not at the mistreatment of the animals, or at the sight of gore, or even at the philosophy associated with taking lives that meant nothing. It just felt lazy. There was nothing wrong with earning your blessings, he thought. He stopped eating meat from the store, and started relying on his lures and hook a lot more.

He picked up a dog from the side of the road that had been so eager to see a person that she sprained her tail, wagging it so hard on the drive to the vet’s. She had no collar, and no chip in her shoulder, but after five seconds of soft brown eyes watching him from the passenger seat, she had a home.

Early spring.

It was too damn bright in this house.

Harley had raced off into the woods after some smell, and returned with Max. Both were covered in ticks. Will gave them a joint bath in his front yard, and Max dried himself in front of the heater vent in Will’s bedroom.

Late spring.

A letter from the Federal Bureau offered him a teaching position in their cadet academy, working in what he did best, profiling the serial killer mind. Six months ago he would have cheerfully fed the letter to the fire. Now he read it again and again, a glass of whiskey balanced on one chair arm, and he could not shake the image of himself standing at the front of a lecture hall, asking the uniformed students:

Gossip between a dog & cat~

Bonus: