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Not apologizing.
I wasn't sure I should write this story. Then people (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bethbethbeth and cesperanza and justacat) said 'kill the puppy'. Which is to say: this story carries a juvenile canine death warning.
Ray saw them first. If he were actually seven years old, and Fraser was actually his big brother, vaguely bullying in the way of all big brothers cursed with scrawny nosey nearsighted baby brothers, he would have used that argument when pleading his case before his mom.
But Fraser was Fraser, and Ray was a long way from seven years old, and neither of their moms were anywhere to be found in the middle of the Arctic.
He was down on his knees, more or less where he’d landed when he jumped off the sled, and Fraser stood over him on snowshoes. He prodded the frost-coated fur of the dead dog with one snowshoe-toe.
“Wolves,” Fraser said firmly. “They’re not puppies, Ray, they’re wolf pups, and you cannot take care of them.”
Ray, down in the snow with the dogs, had already separated the living puppies from their frozen siblings. There were four, and they huddled together, climbing awkwardly up his thighs, nuzzling against his coat. “She’s a sled dog, Fraser, look.” He reached out to the momma dog, ran his hands over the wear spots on her fur where she’d worn a harness, but Fraser was shaking his head.
“Scars, maybe. Or perhaps someone did, somehow, get her to wear a harness for a time, but she’s out here alone, now, and those pups are at least half wolf, probably more, and dog-wolf hybrids are dangerous animals. You cannot keep them, Ray. Leave them here, let nature take its course. They probably won’t survive anyway, and you’ll only waste time and upset yourself.”
Ray kept his eyes on the puppies, their little claws clinging to his snowpants, nuzzling toward his belly. “Dief’s a hybrid.”
“Dief’s an exception to every rule there is, Ray, and I very nearly did have to put him down.” Ray looked up at that. Fraser’d never told him that before. Fraser’s face was tight and pale as he looked toward Dief, and then he turned his eyes back to Ray, and his voice was softer, but the unyielding look in his eyes was the same. “Could you do that, if these pups turned wild? There are four of them, what do you think the odds are that they’ll all turn out to be good-tempered? And Dief was weaned, Ray, he was already fending for himself when he chose to join me. These pups are weak, they won’t–-”
But Ray turned away from Fraser’s eyes, from the good judgement of his partner, from the softness of his voice, and Fraser trailed off into silence. Ray tugged off his gloves and thrust his hands in among the puppies. The first one he picked up had a weirdly patterned white splash on his chest; it looked like somebody had made a handprint on his belly, fingers straying up toward his throat. “Hand,” Ray said firmly, ignoring the way Fraser sighed with despair and turned away. The other names came easily, Fraser had told him the stories and sung him the song often enough. One at a time he picked up the puppies, looking each one in the eye as he said its name. “John. Franklin. Beaufort.”
Ray gathered them up in his arms, careful to see that he had them all secure, and waded through the snow, back to the sled. He shifted the packs around a little, to make a miniature version of the nest he rode in when they first started out. “Handy,” he muttered, petting them, “Johnnie, Frankie, Beau. You guys be good, okay? Keep each other warm.”
Handy yipped at him, then snuggled down with the others, and Ray tucked the blanket around them carefully before he took his place at the back of the sled, shouting to the dogs to get going. He didn’t look back, and it was a few minutes before Fraser appeared in his usual spot in Ray’s peripheral vision.
***
He fed them mashed up dog food mixed with the canned milk that Fraser had let him bring for his coffee, from his fingers. It took them a while to get the idea, but they were starving, and they caught on quick. Their milk teeth were needle-sharp, and by the time they were all fed, Ray’s fingers were scratched up, bleeding in a couple of places. Ray glanced over at Fraser as he bandaged himself, awkwardly, but he wasn’t about to ask for help. He expected a lecture on rabies, but Fraser just stared at the fire.
Ray handled the puppies, holding them in his lap, picking them up one at a time, holding them and touching them. They were sleepy, now that they’d eaten, but when he picked them up they roused a little, enough to gnaw on his gauze-covered fingers and wag their tiny curly tails. Johnnie was a girl, as it turned out, but Handy and Frankie and Beau were all boys.
It was time to get to bed, and he carried them over toward the tent, and Fraser finally looked at them. “Dogs sleep outside,” he said, quietly.
Ray wanted to argue–-they were puppies, so small and young and weak, but he knew that that was Fraser’s point, so he just nodded. He dug out a little nest for them in the snow, right in front of the tent, and turned his bedroll so that his head was to the door. Once Fraser was in his sleeping bag, head still facing the other way, Ray shifted the zippers of the door to make a little gap, and left his hand sticking out, warm in the pile of sleeping puppies. He stared at the lump of Fraser’s feet, listened to the sound of him breathing way at the other end of the tent, and eventually Ray fell asleep.
***
Ray was exhausted, all the time. The puppies woke up three or four times every night, and so did he. Morning and night and midnight wake-ups and daytime breaks, all he did was look after the puppies. He did what Fraser told him to, all the necessities for continuing the quest, but he rarely saw the scenery or thought about Franklin’s Hand, not when he had Handy and Johnnie and Frankie and Beau to keep alive. Fraser ignored the puppies, like if he pretended they didn’t exist, maybe they’d go away.
Ray wanted to ask him questions–-Fraser had to know more about dogs than he did–-but he didn’t know if Fraser would help, which sucked, because he’d never had to wonder before if Fraser would help him with anything.
Ray started carrying Handy in his coat, where it was warmest, feeding him first every time, but while Johnnie and Frankie and Beau were turning into hoppy perky wild little things, Handy stayed sleepy and quiet, nuzzling sweetly at Ray’s perpetually bandaged fingers every time he reached into his coat to check that he was still breathing.
***
Ray woke up on the fifth morning with the puppies and knew something was wrong. He unzipped the flap of the tent and saw Frankie and Beau curled up against Johnnie in a comfy little pile. Handy had crawled a couple of feet away, and lay alone on the snow, his fur covered in frost, perfectly still.
Ray just stayed there, propped on one arm, staring. Beau, and then Frankie, and lastly Johnnie, woke up and crawled into the open end of his sleeping bag, and Fraser, behind him, sat up as well. Ray didn’t move, didn’t say a word, and after a moment Fraser joined him at the tent opening. He felt a hand on his shoulder, and the warmth of it made him realize he was cold, his hand was in the snow, he was letting the heat out of the tent.
“Ray,” Fraser said, quietly, but Ray shook off his hand, shoved the puppies out into the snow where they belonged.
“Shut up, Fraser. It’s just nature taking its course, right?” He zipped the tent flap shut and got dressed, more or less one handed, his left hand dead with cold. Fraser didn’t say anything, and after a few minutes he started getting dressed too.
***
Ray did all the morning stuff, fed Johnnie and Frankie and Beau, and when Fraser went back to start striking the tent, Ray picked up Handy from the snow and carried him a little way away from the camp. He looked around, but there was just snow, in every direction, and he knew that under the snow was permafrost, and he had nothing to dig with anyway.
Ray laid Handy down on the snow, and hit his knees. He dug out a nest, deeper down than usual, a foot, two feet, three, til he was head-down in the snow, packing the sides of the hole solid. When he straightened up out of the snow, he pulled Handy into his lap again, and looked around. There was nothing to mark the spot, no way anyone would ever know Handy was a puppy and not a wolf pup.
Ray tugged off his gloves and reached inside his parka, felt around til he located the half-gone roll of medical tape, and began tearing strips. His snow-chilled fingers were clumsy, but he managed to make the letters, thinking numbly that it was a good thing Johnnie or Beau hadn’t died, because he could never have made a J or a B with straight pieces of tape. He stared at HANDY, crookedly spelled out along the puppy’s back, tape bright white against dark gray fur, and then, on impulse, made a little letter K underneath. He ruffled Handy’s little ears one last time, and then laid him in the snow, keeping his eyes on his hands as he filled in the hole and packed it down.
When he got back to the camp site, the tent was broken down. He helped Fraser pack it on the sled, rounded up the puppies and settled them in their spot. He didn’t look back until they’d gone over a couple of rises, and the trail of his own footprints was lost in the distance.
***
Ray startled awake as Fraser zipped the tent flap shut, and instantly knew he’d slept too long, neglected the puppies. He was disoriented for a minute, and then realized that he was sleeping the wrong way in the tent. Fraser was sitting up on his bedroll, doing something Ray couldn’t make out in the half-light, until Fraser picked up Johnnie in one big capable hand, and extended his fingers to her mouth.
Ray started to sit up, but Fraser shook his head. “It’s all right, Ray, go back to sleep.”
Ray blinked a couple of times, and then fell back into his bedroll, already lost.
***
When he woke up again, the puppies were curled up against his chest, and Fraser was staring at them, frowning a little.
“Hey,” Ray said, his voice scratchy, and Fraser looked up.
“You can’t take them back to Chicago, Ray,” Fraser said, quietly, gently, his eyes just as steady and implacable as the first day. “Sled dogs don’t belong in a city like that.”
Ray struggled to get his brain in gear, pre-coffee. “Dief,” he muttered, but Fraser was shaking his head.
“Dief is an exception, Ray. In any case, you really ought to start training them properly. A dog needs to know who’s in charge, and an obedient dog is a happy dog.”
The word “dog” penetrated the fog of sleep and tiredness in Ray’s brain, then, and he had to smile, no matter what Fraser was saying. “Train ‘em to be good dogs, huh?”
“Yes, Ray. You should begin with basic commands.” Fraser pushed up on one elbow, leaning over the puppies, closer to Ray. “For instance, you ought to teach them to stay.”
Ray swallowed at the look on Fraser’s face, determined, not taking no for an answer this time. “I dunno, Fraser, I dunno how to–-”
Fraser put one hand–-two fingers clumsily bandaged--on Ray’s chest, only a thin layer of cloth separating them. “Stay, Ray. Just stay. It’s the most important thing.”
Ray nodded slowly, thinking he could do that much, anyway, and the rest would sort itself out as long as he had Fraser to help him through it. “Stay,” he repeated, feeling a smile cross his face, and more warmth than three sleeping puppies could explain, curling in his belly. “Yeah, I guess I can do that.”
Fraser smiled.
bethbethbeth and cesperanza and justacat) said 'kill the puppy'. Which is to say: this story carries a juvenile canine death warning.Ray saw them first. If he were actually seven years old, and Fraser was actually his big brother, vaguely bullying in the way of all big brothers cursed with scrawny nosey nearsighted baby brothers, he would have used that argument when pleading his case before his mom.
But Fraser was Fraser, and Ray was a long way from seven years old, and neither of their moms were anywhere to be found in the middle of the Arctic.
He was down on his knees, more or less where he’d landed when he jumped off the sled, and Fraser stood over him on snowshoes. He prodded the frost-coated fur of the dead dog with one snowshoe-toe.
“Wolves,” Fraser said firmly. “They’re not puppies, Ray, they’re wolf pups, and you cannot take care of them.”
Ray, down in the snow with the dogs, had already separated the living puppies from their frozen siblings. There were four, and they huddled together, climbing awkwardly up his thighs, nuzzling against his coat. “She’s a sled dog, Fraser, look.” He reached out to the momma dog, ran his hands over the wear spots on her fur where she’d worn a harness, but Fraser was shaking his head.
“Scars, maybe. Or perhaps someone did, somehow, get her to wear a harness for a time, but she’s out here alone, now, and those pups are at least half wolf, probably more, and dog-wolf hybrids are dangerous animals. You cannot keep them, Ray. Leave them here, let nature take its course. They probably won’t survive anyway, and you’ll only waste time and upset yourself.”
Ray kept his eyes on the puppies, their little claws clinging to his snowpants, nuzzling toward his belly. “Dief’s a hybrid.”
“Dief’s an exception to every rule there is, Ray, and I very nearly did have to put him down.” Ray looked up at that. Fraser’d never told him that before. Fraser’s face was tight and pale as he looked toward Dief, and then he turned his eyes back to Ray, and his voice was softer, but the unyielding look in his eyes was the same. “Could you do that, if these pups turned wild? There are four of them, what do you think the odds are that they’ll all turn out to be good-tempered? And Dief was weaned, Ray, he was already fending for himself when he chose to join me. These pups are weak, they won’t–-”
But Ray turned away from Fraser’s eyes, from the good judgement of his partner, from the softness of his voice, and Fraser trailed off into silence. Ray tugged off his gloves and thrust his hands in among the puppies. The first one he picked up had a weirdly patterned white splash on his chest; it looked like somebody had made a handprint on his belly, fingers straying up toward his throat. “Hand,” Ray said firmly, ignoring the way Fraser sighed with despair and turned away. The other names came easily, Fraser had told him the stories and sung him the song often enough. One at a time he picked up the puppies, looking each one in the eye as he said its name. “John. Franklin. Beaufort.”
Ray gathered them up in his arms, careful to see that he had them all secure, and waded through the snow, back to the sled. He shifted the packs around a little, to make a miniature version of the nest he rode in when they first started out. “Handy,” he muttered, petting them, “Johnnie, Frankie, Beau. You guys be good, okay? Keep each other warm.”
Handy yipped at him, then snuggled down with the others, and Ray tucked the blanket around them carefully before he took his place at the back of the sled, shouting to the dogs to get going. He didn’t look back, and it was a few minutes before Fraser appeared in his usual spot in Ray’s peripheral vision.
***
He fed them mashed up dog food mixed with the canned milk that Fraser had let him bring for his coffee, from his fingers. It took them a while to get the idea, but they were starving, and they caught on quick. Their milk teeth were needle-sharp, and by the time they were all fed, Ray’s fingers were scratched up, bleeding in a couple of places. Ray glanced over at Fraser as he bandaged himself, awkwardly, but he wasn’t about to ask for help. He expected a lecture on rabies, but Fraser just stared at the fire.
Ray handled the puppies, holding them in his lap, picking them up one at a time, holding them and touching them. They were sleepy, now that they’d eaten, but when he picked them up they roused a little, enough to gnaw on his gauze-covered fingers and wag their tiny curly tails. Johnnie was a girl, as it turned out, but Handy and Frankie and Beau were all boys.
It was time to get to bed, and he carried them over toward the tent, and Fraser finally looked at them. “Dogs sleep outside,” he said, quietly.
Ray wanted to argue–-they were puppies, so small and young and weak, but he knew that that was Fraser’s point, so he just nodded. He dug out a little nest for them in the snow, right in front of the tent, and turned his bedroll so that his head was to the door. Once Fraser was in his sleeping bag, head still facing the other way, Ray shifted the zippers of the door to make a little gap, and left his hand sticking out, warm in the pile of sleeping puppies. He stared at the lump of Fraser’s feet, listened to the sound of him breathing way at the other end of the tent, and eventually Ray fell asleep.
***
Ray was exhausted, all the time. The puppies woke up three or four times every night, and so did he. Morning and night and midnight wake-ups and daytime breaks, all he did was look after the puppies. He did what Fraser told him to, all the necessities for continuing the quest, but he rarely saw the scenery or thought about Franklin’s Hand, not when he had Handy and Johnnie and Frankie and Beau to keep alive. Fraser ignored the puppies, like if he pretended they didn’t exist, maybe they’d go away.
Ray wanted to ask him questions–-Fraser had to know more about dogs than he did–-but he didn’t know if Fraser would help, which sucked, because he’d never had to wonder before if Fraser would help him with anything.
Ray started carrying Handy in his coat, where it was warmest, feeding him first every time, but while Johnnie and Frankie and Beau were turning into hoppy perky wild little things, Handy stayed sleepy and quiet, nuzzling sweetly at Ray’s perpetually bandaged fingers every time he reached into his coat to check that he was still breathing.
***
Ray woke up on the fifth morning with the puppies and knew something was wrong. He unzipped the flap of the tent and saw Frankie and Beau curled up against Johnnie in a comfy little pile. Handy had crawled a couple of feet away, and lay alone on the snow, his fur covered in frost, perfectly still.
Ray just stayed there, propped on one arm, staring. Beau, and then Frankie, and lastly Johnnie, woke up and crawled into the open end of his sleeping bag, and Fraser, behind him, sat up as well. Ray didn’t move, didn’t say a word, and after a moment Fraser joined him at the tent opening. He felt a hand on his shoulder, and the warmth of it made him realize he was cold, his hand was in the snow, he was letting the heat out of the tent.
“Ray,” Fraser said, quietly, but Ray shook off his hand, shoved the puppies out into the snow where they belonged.
“Shut up, Fraser. It’s just nature taking its course, right?” He zipped the tent flap shut and got dressed, more or less one handed, his left hand dead with cold. Fraser didn’t say anything, and after a few minutes he started getting dressed too.
***
Ray did all the morning stuff, fed Johnnie and Frankie and Beau, and when Fraser went back to start striking the tent, Ray picked up Handy from the snow and carried him a little way away from the camp. He looked around, but there was just snow, in every direction, and he knew that under the snow was permafrost, and he had nothing to dig with anyway.
Ray laid Handy down on the snow, and hit his knees. He dug out a nest, deeper down than usual, a foot, two feet, three, til he was head-down in the snow, packing the sides of the hole solid. When he straightened up out of the snow, he pulled Handy into his lap again, and looked around. There was nothing to mark the spot, no way anyone would ever know Handy was a puppy and not a wolf pup.
Ray tugged off his gloves and reached inside his parka, felt around til he located the half-gone roll of medical tape, and began tearing strips. His snow-chilled fingers were clumsy, but he managed to make the letters, thinking numbly that it was a good thing Johnnie or Beau hadn’t died, because he could never have made a J or a B with straight pieces of tape. He stared at HANDY, crookedly spelled out along the puppy’s back, tape bright white against dark gray fur, and then, on impulse, made a little letter K underneath. He ruffled Handy’s little ears one last time, and then laid him in the snow, keeping his eyes on his hands as he filled in the hole and packed it down.
When he got back to the camp site, the tent was broken down. He helped Fraser pack it on the sled, rounded up the puppies and settled them in their spot. He didn’t look back until they’d gone over a couple of rises, and the trail of his own footprints was lost in the distance.
***
Ray startled awake as Fraser zipped the tent flap shut, and instantly knew he’d slept too long, neglected the puppies. He was disoriented for a minute, and then realized that he was sleeping the wrong way in the tent. Fraser was sitting up on his bedroll, doing something Ray couldn’t make out in the half-light, until Fraser picked up Johnnie in one big capable hand, and extended his fingers to her mouth.
Ray started to sit up, but Fraser shook his head. “It’s all right, Ray, go back to sleep.”
Ray blinked a couple of times, and then fell back into his bedroll, already lost.
***
When he woke up again, the puppies were curled up against his chest, and Fraser was staring at them, frowning a little.
“Hey,” Ray said, his voice scratchy, and Fraser looked up.
“You can’t take them back to Chicago, Ray,” Fraser said, quietly, gently, his eyes just as steady and implacable as the first day. “Sled dogs don’t belong in a city like that.”
Ray struggled to get his brain in gear, pre-coffee. “Dief,” he muttered, but Fraser was shaking his head.
“Dief is an exception, Ray. In any case, you really ought to start training them properly. A dog needs to know who’s in charge, and an obedient dog is a happy dog.”
The word “dog” penetrated the fog of sleep and tiredness in Ray’s brain, then, and he had to smile, no matter what Fraser was saying. “Train ‘em to be good dogs, huh?”
“Yes, Ray. You should begin with basic commands.” Fraser pushed up on one elbow, leaning over the puppies, closer to Ray. “For instance, you ought to teach them to stay.”
Ray swallowed at the look on Fraser’s face, determined, not taking no for an answer this time. “I dunno, Fraser, I dunno how to–-”
Fraser put one hand–-two fingers clumsily bandaged--on Ray’s chest, only a thin layer of cloth separating them. “Stay, Ray. Just stay. It’s the most important thing.”
Ray nodded slowly, thinking he could do that much, anyway, and the rest would sort itself out as long as he had Fraser to help him through it. “Stay,” he repeated, feeling a smile cross his face, and more warmth than three sleeping puppies could explain, curling in his belly. “Yeah, I guess I can do that.”
Fraser smiled.