The Dogs of Winter Read online

  “You stink,” Vadim said, grinning.

  “I am the King of Stink,” I said.

  “We are the Kings of Burps and Stink,” we crowed together.

  The sky turned the color of dirty sheets. Snow began to fall.

  “Let’s go,” Vadim said. And because the Sisters of Mercy were celebrating Christmas and the dogs and I had nowhere else to go, we followed the boy deep underground to the huge steam pipes in the belly of The City.

  Children filled this world beneath The City — children all sizes and ages. Some were from The City, but many had ridden trains from far away.

  “In my village, all we had to eat was chicken feed,” a boy perched atop one of the pipes bragged.

  “In my village, all we had to eat was dust,” said a girl in a pink shirt with a big, grinning mouse on the front.

  “Oh yeah, well in my village all we ever ate was snow,” said a tall, dark-eyed boy breathing in and out, in and out of a brown sack. He reminded me of Pasha.

  Two small boys wrestled each other amid the trash on the ground. Another boy ran a tiny toy car along a pipe. Someone passed a bottle to me. Without thinking, I drank.

  “Agh,” I cried and spat the foul liquid in the dirt. Everyone laughed.

  “He’s a street baby,” someone said.

  “I am not a baby,” I said. “I am five years old, but in the spring, I will be six.”

  “Not that kind of baby,” Vadim said. “Street baby. That means you’re new to the streets.”

  “No, I’m not,” I said. To me, it seemed I had lived this way a very long time.

  “How long?” a tall boy with no hair tossed out. “How long have you been on the streets?”

  I shrugged. “There was no snow when he brought me to The City. The days were still warm sometimes and it was light all day. I would have gone to school soon.”

  “Pah,” said the tall boy, lighting a cigarette. “Only months. I’ve been here years.”

  “Me too,” a girl chimed in.

  “I’ve been here two years,” said another boy.

  A very small boy — smaller than me — curled into a pile of dirty blankets and cried.

  Candles flickered on top of the pipes, throwing shadows against the walls. The play-wrestling between the two boys turned into a fight.

  “Why did you have to hit me in the head like that?” one screamed.

  “I didn’t mean to,” the other said.

  “I hate you!” the hurt one cried.

  I crept into a far corner with Little Mother, the puppies, Grandmother, and Rip. Smoke and Lucky would not follow us beneath the earth. Little Mother watched the children nervously as she fed her hungry puppies.

  The candlelight made the children look big and wild, their eyes and faces hollow.

  “We’ll go back to the Sisters of Mercy tomorrow,” I promised the dogs. “At least for now, we’re warm and we’re not as hungry.”

  Vadim stole. He stole from shops, he stole from passersby, and he stole from other beggars and bums. He stole to feed himself and us, yes, but he also stole because he could.

  “You have to steal,” Vadim said to me on a day the cold held us in a vise.

  “I can’t steal,” I said.

  “I’ll teach you to steal,” Vadim said. “I am the King of Thieves in all of Russia!” And just to prove his point, he slipped behind a woman waiting for the bus, and eased something from the bag at her feet.

  He tossed a book to me. “Here,” he said. “It’s yours now.”

  I thumbed through the small paperback book. There were no pictures and far too many words I could not read. It was of no use to me.

  I made myself small as a mouse and crept over to the woman. Just as I slipped the book back into her bag, the bus rattled to a stop. The woman bent to pick up her bag — her bag with her book and my hand still clutching the book.

  Her eyes widened.

  I froze.

  “Thief!” she cried. “Dirty little thief!” Her great arm swung in an arc high over her head. Her black, shiny purse hovered in the air above my head. I cowered on the sidewalk, waiting for the sky to fall.

  A hand grabbed the back of my neck and yanked me to my feet. “Run!” Vadim commanded.

  And we did. We ran and ran and ran, slipping and sliding on the ice-rutted sidewalks. Rip and Lucky ran behind us. We ran until our feet could run no more. We collapsed in a laughing, panting pile of boys and dogs.

  “You are a crazy boy,” Vadim said, laughing. “She could have killed you with that purse.”

  My eyes streamed from the cold and the laughing and the words “dirty thief.” I wiped at my eyes. “She would have knocked my head off,” I said. “If you hadn’t saved me.”

  “And your head would have rolled down the street, saying, ‘Help me! I seem to have lost something!’”

  A door creaked open. A voice called, “Boys! You boys, there. What —”

  Vadim was up and running before the voice finished.

  As for me, something held me. I clutched Lucky’s neck and squinted at the person standing next to a door with faded, outstretched angel wings.

  “Are you a Sister of Mercy?” I asked.

  “I am,” she said. “I am the only one left. And you look like you’re in need of some mercy.”

  I shuffled my boots in the snow and held tighter to Lucky.

  “Well come on in, boy. I don’t have all day.”

  The inside of the House of the Sisters of Mercy was dark and cold and clenched. The dogs pressed close to my legs and whimpered.

  The Sister grabbed me, her fingers digging in like claws. She turned me this way and that and felt my arms, my legs. “There’s nothing to him,” she muttered to herself. “Nothing at all.

  “How old are you, child?”

  “I am five years old,” I said.

  “Lord help us,” she said, “they get younger and younger.” She sighed. “I suppose there’s no use asking if you have parents and where they are,” she said.

  I shook my head.

  “I didn’t think so,” she said with a sigh. “There never is.” She coughed. The cough rattled like rusty chains. “Chto delat? What should be done?” she said to herself.

  “Well, first things first,” she said, and dragged me by the arm to the back of the House of the Sisters of Mercy. A large metal tub squatted in the corner with a faucet above. “Take everything off,” she said as she turned the knobs of the faucet.

  A bath. I could barely remember the last time I’d had a bath.

  I stripped off my sweater, my shirt, and my pants. The old newspapers I’d used to keep the cold out dropped like leaves to the floor. The pages from the book of fairy tales fluttered to the floor too. I pulled off the glorious boots Anya had given me and pulled out the wet newspapers stuffed in the toes.

  The woman turned from the steaming tub. She snatched the hat from my head. “Give me that lice nest,” she said, and tossed it into the garbage. Then she looked me over from my toes up to my bare head. “A filthy little bag of bones,” she said. She pointed to the tub. “In.” She handed me a brush and a hard bar of soap. “Scrub,” she said.

  I scrubbed.

  “Pah, not like that.” She snatched the brush and soap from my hands and scrubbed. She scrubbed like she was trying to remove my skin, my muscles, my bones, and all the dirt from the streets of The City.

  “Ow!” I cried. The dogs whimpered from the doorway.

  “Hold still, child,” she said. The water turned black. The Sister poked and prodded in my ears. “There’s enough dirt in there to grow potatoes,” she grumbled. When she turned to grab the soap bar that had slipped from her hand, I poked a finger in my ear. Potatoes?

  Then she attacked my hair and my head. “Just like I thought,” she snapped. “Lice.” She poured a bottle of foul-smelling something all over my head and scrubbed it into my hair with her claws.

  “Ow!” I cried again. Lucky growled from the doorway.

  “Stop being
a baby,” she said.

  Finally, she grabbed a threadbare towel. “Out,” she commanded.

  I stood wet, shivering, and naked in the freezing room on the cold cement floor.

  “Dry off,” she said. “I’ll find some clothes for you, although Lord knows if I have anything small enough.”

  Rip and Lucky inched over and sniffed my legs and hands. “It is me,” I said to them, scratching their heads. Lucky’s brown eyes were doubtful; Rip licked the water dripping down my legs. I laughed and scooted away from him. Rip snatched the corner of the towel and pulled, shaking his shaggy head back and forth. We played tug of war, with Rip pulling and me sliding across the wet, cold floor and Lucky barking.

  “Here now, what’s this nonsense?” the Sister snapped.

  I froze. Rip dropped the corner of the towel. Lucky cowered under the woman’s steel-gray eyes. “I didn’t just break my back over that bathtub to have you get all filthy again from those flea-bitten mongrels.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “Here.” The Sister thrust an armful of clothes at me. “They’re too big, but it’s the best I could do.”

  The clothes were indeed too big, but they were clean and all the holes were patched. “Spasibo, Sister,” I said.

  “You’re welcome,” she said. “And I have a proper hat, coat, and gloves for you. I’m afraid, though,” she said with a wheezy sigh, “I have no shoes that will fit you.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “Anya gave me those boots. They are glorious boots for a pathetic little boy.”

  The woman frowned. “Who’s Anya? I thought you said you have no family.”

  “My friend,” I said. “Anya is my friend. And she gave me the boots.”

  The Sister pulled a pair of shiny scissors from her big apron pocket. She pointed them at a stool. “Sit.”

  I sat.

  She ran a comb none too gently through my hair. “What a mess,” she muttered. I felt the cold metal of the scissors press against my neck. Snip snip. Hair fell around my shoulders and onto the floor like ashes. Comb comb, snip snip.

  Finally she stopped. She tilted her head to one side. “Well, at least you don’t look like a walking bundle of sticks and rags now.”

  I ran my hand over the stubble and sores and bumps of my head.

  She tilted her head to the other side and laughed. “Actually, boy, you look a bit like a plucked chicken, but I don’t suppose they’ll care.”

  I hopped off the stool and ran my hand over Rip’s wiry fur. “No, the dogs don’t care,” I said.

  “Put your boots on and let’s find you a coat and hat before they come,” she said.

  A coat. Oh, the luxury of a coat! “You don’t have to give me a hat,” I said. “I have a hat.”

  “Pah,” the Sister said, coughing. “What you had was a vermin-infested rat’s nest.”

  The Sister pawed through a box of clothes. “Too big,” she’d say. Or, “I wouldn’t give this to a bomzhi.”

  My stomach rumbled. “Do you have any food?” I asked.

  She stood and rubbed the small of her back. “Perhaps a biscuit or two.” She shuffled over to a tin on a shelf. She handed it to me. “My old fingers can’t open this lid.” I pried open the tin lid. Inside, resting on a napkin, lay two dusty biscuits. I popped one in my mouth and divided the other between Rip and Lucky.

  “What are you doing?” the Sister said, snatching the tin from my hands. “Giving perfectly good food to dogs?”

  The stale biscuit stuck in my throat. “Sorry,” I said. “They are hungry too.”

  She tossed a coat and hat to me. “Try those on,” she said.

  The coat came well below my knees and the sleeves flapped at the end of my arms like useless wings. But still, it was a coat and it was wonderful in its coatness. I stuffed the pages from my fairy tale book into the big pockets.

  I smiled up at the Sister. She sighed and coughed. “It’s the best I can do.”

  I heard a sharp bark outside, beyond the door — Smoke’s bark. My heart leapt. I hadn’t seen Smoke for two days. Lucky yipped and pawed at the door. Rip danced in frantic circles.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  “Wait,” the Sister commanded. “They’ll be here any minute.”

  “But they are here,” I said. “Smoke is waiting for us.”

  I threw open the door with the faded feather wings. On the other side stood the raised Fist of God. The Fist was attached to a long gray coat and an even grayer woman.

  “What took you so long?” the Sister snapped.

  “Is this the boy to be taken?” Water-colored eyes raked over me from behind glasses as thick as river ice.

  The Sister clamped her hand on my shoulder. Fingers too old to pry open a tin lid dug into my skin through the new shirt, sweater, and coat. “Yes,” she said. “He says he has no family. From the looks of him, he’s been on the streets a long time.”

  I squirmed under the iron grip of the Sister. “What do you mean, taken?”

  The Sister ignored me. She and the Gray Woman, the woman with the Fist of God, passed words back and forth over my head: “homeless,” “filthy,” “wild.”

  I squirmed and passed questions up to them: “Why?” “Where?” But once again, I had become invisible.

  The Sister shoved me into the folds of the greasy gray coat. “The orphanage is the best place for him.”

  Orphanage! The word shot through my heart and down to my legs. It gathered like a great coil in my stomach and sprung loose with the word, “No!”

  I wrenched away from the Gray Woman and the Sister and stumbled headlong into the street.

  “Grab him!” the Gray Woman barked.

  Hands I had not seen reached down and pulled me to my feet. I screamed and kicked and cried, “No! No!”

  The hands clutched and pinned and, finally, slapped me to the ground. A million stars exploded in front of my eyes.

  “Don’t hurt him!” the Sister called from the doorway. “He’s not a criminal.”

  The Fist of God wrenched me to my feet and shook me. “He needs to learn.”

  I howled in pain.

  Something sailed through the air, over my shoulder. Teeth clamped down on the Fist of God. The Gray Woman shrieked. Smoke knocked her to the ground. Lucky and Rip growled and snapped at the man with the hands I had not seen.

  “Get this mad dog off me!” the Gray Woman cried.

  “Smoke,” I called. “Let’s go!”

  With a final snap and snarl, Smoke and Rip and Lucky ran with me down Petrovsky Boulevard, away from the Sister of Mercy and the Fist of God, the long arms of my coat sleeves flapping like wings.

  We ran until we could no longer hear their words — Get him! Come back! — chasing us down the street.

  We skittered to a stop near the entrance to the world beneath the earth. Here we would be safe and warm and away from the Sister of Mercy and the Fist of God and the word “orphanage.” Perhaps Vadim had found food to share.

  “Just let me get a little bit to eat and then we’ll get Vadim to help us find some more food,” I said to the dogs as we turned the street corner. “I know the puppies are —” I stopped dead in my tracks. Running toward us, eyes huge with fright and desperation, were Little Mother and Grandmother. Little Mother jumped against my legs, nearly knocking me to the ground, crying piteously; Grandmother panted and moaned.

  “What?” I asked. “What is it? Where are the puppies?”

  Little Mother tugged at the bottom of my too-big coat, pulling me toward the opening that led to the underground.

  I scrambled behind her into the dark underworld. Candlelight flickered off the grimy walls and the network of pipes. Little Mother led me over to the corner where she and the puppies stayed with Grandmother. The nest of rags and newspapers was empty.

  “They have to be here,” I said. I looked behind every crate, under blankets and rugs, beneath heaps of trash the children had piled against the walls. Nothing. No puppies.<
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  I shook the boy breathing in and out of a brown paper bag. “Where are the puppies?” His sunken eyes swam to my face and then slid away.

  I scrambled over to a boy and girl sleeping beneath a rug. “Where are the puppies?” I said, pulling at the rug. Empty brown bottles rolled from beneath it.

  The girl opened her eyes. She blinked slowly. “What d’you want?”

  “The puppies,” I said, pointing to the corner. “The puppies are gone. Where are they?”

  The girl yawned. “Oh, that. Vadim took them.”

  “He what?”

  “You heard me. He took them.” She pulled the rug up to her ears.

  I yanked the rug down. “Why? Where did he take them?”

  The girl slapped my hand away. “He took them because, as everybody knows, you can make more money begging with puppies than alone. As for where, I have no idea.”

  She rolled over against the boy. I buried my head in my hands. “No,” I moaned. Little Mother licked my fingers.

  “Vadim said he might try to sell the puppies,” the girl said from beneath the rug.

  My head snapped up. “What?”

  “Sure,” she said, her voice slipping away into dreams. “They would bring good money.”

  I ran.

  The dogs and I ran up and down streets, darting in and out of traffic, and across the still, frozen plazas. We checked the doorways and heat grates I knew Vadim favored. We ran and ran until the snot and tears were frozen parts of my face; we ran until Grandmother could run no more.

  I slumped against a crumbling brick building. The light was already fading from the day. The dogs formed a half-moon around me, waiting for answers.

  I beat my fists against my head. “Stupid, stupid, pathetic little boy. How could I have been so stupid!” Grandmother leaned against my leg and sighed.

  I looked into the eyes of the dogs and finally locked my gaze with Smoke. “Where,” I said. “Where would Vadim take them?”

  I swam in the warm amber of Smoke’s eyes, the flecks of gold and the flecks of night. His eyes said he believed I was not a stupid, pathetic little boy. I was Sobachonok, Dog Boy. Those same eyes that commanded me to follow him onto the train and to the home of the pack. The eyes that led me away from the train station and —