I peed on the base of the mailbox, just in case. If this was my final act, passersby would know what happened to me. Passing into the cave mouth beneath the icicles that dripped like fangs, could see the slush of this strange being lead down into the dark. The icy wetness numbed my paw pads, and although it made me feel fouled and contaminated, it provided me a tangible trail to follow when it became so dark that even my canine sight began to lose the track.

It was confirmed by the much more pleasant presence of my human’s scent. Dogs are so fluent in olfactory communications that even if I had not known him, his particular musk yet assembled in my mind a remarkably clear picture of whom I smelled, though I stood in a nearly pitch black cave: Human, male (no question), twenty-some human years of age, unshowered, more confused than afraid. That smell comforted me more than any blanket, and I did not lose hope that I could rescue him from this strange place.

The light behind me was far enough back that only the faintest gleam suggested what was around me, dripping limestone and dull strata of minerals I had no knowledge. I could safely say I had never been in a cave before. I have heard tell of them in Airy Zone, but never seen one, unless you count Lisa’s basement, or a particularly deep hole I once dug in Lisa’s back yard for the safe keeping of one outrageously potent sock. I got in a lot of trouble for that one, but as far as I know the sock was never found or dug up. Even the hated Lawn Guys have driven their infernal machinery over its location without discovering it.

The tracking of Commander Zideo soon plunged me into darkness more depriving even than that of the tower of Ludopolis, which at least had permitted moonlight through its windows and holes, or been punctured by occasional lamps. This darkness did not relent.

When I related this tale later to the other dogs in the neighborhood, baying it full-throatedly into the Howl Network so all could hear and relay it, I really leaned into the sensory aspects. In the absence of light, I used smell and sound and feel to locate my human. Dogs love that stuff.

As I followed what I took to be the main passage, a wide but uneven tunnel from which smaller halls branched off—which I could feel rather than see, as the cross-drafts alerted me to their intersections with the passage—I thought I heard something being dragged swiftly through other parts of the cave. It was wet, like a sack of sediment continually scraping itself against rock, its timbre warping viscously around protrusions. Sounds in a cave echo and confuse the location which I otherwise would be very good at sourcing. Whatever wet thing was sliding around, it was either a few twisting halls away, or directly next to me.

In dog culture, it is a little intrusive to talk about your human’s heartbeat, which is why I haven’t mentioned it much. But dogs can hear them, and I was sure I could sense the rhythm of Zideo’s—faintly, but growing stronger. It was hard to hear over the gravelly, sliding sound, and then completely washed out by a vocalization. I couldn’t make out what it said at first, but it was not Zideo’s voice. “Ho, hummmm,” it said, to itself. “Building fire for the warm folk, hum, hooooo.” It was a voice both resonant and muffled. It trilled high and thrummed low.

There was blue light ahead. Drawn to it, Zideo’s smell washed over me as though someone had turned up its volume knob. There he was, damp and miserably cold, shivering at a simple wooden table next to a frozen blue flame. The image of him hugging a thin blanket to himself and staring at the dead hearth will never leave me. Although I took it as a personal failure to find him so unhappy, I had found him, and that was what mattered.

He startled to see me when I came into what little light there was, but then threw his arms out to bring me in close. “Cormac!” he said, and his voice carried a child’s involuntary joy in recognition. There was an exchange of rubs and scritches and furious face-licks. I could have continued on like that for some time, but he stood. “I can’t believe I found you.” (I let that one pass.) “There’s gonna be a fire in here soon. Did you meet our friend?”

In a pinch, a dog will do extraordinary things, such as demand to be followed. Penetrating human English is no small barrier, though, and mostly we just do annoying things to get your attention until you get up, then run away. We have seen your Lassie program on glowing rectangles, and we know that you think you can easily interpret barks to mean things like “Follow me, Timmy has fallen into the well,” and so on. Let me be the first dog to tell you that this is a gross exaggeration of how things work, but any dog-to-human communication should be heeded and (frankly) lauded.

“Hum, ho, ice and snooowwww,” echoed the voice.

My sense of danger was urging me to get him out of the cave as soon as caninely possible. Although the voice’s words were harmless and indeed comedic, there was a note in it that set every last follicle of my fur on end. I tried to get Zideo’s attention, but he kept talking. “That was some crazy ride, huh?” I huffed and even hurfed. “Better than sticking your head out the window of my car, I bet.” I walked around the dining room, past three drafty exits. I “sat pretty” in front of him. “Better than any roller coaster I’ve been on. I wonder what happened to the others?” I whined. “I thought I saw mayor what’s-his-name, but only for a sec. Haven’t seen Addrion or Helmgarth.” I whined louder, and snorted. “I have no idea how we’re going to find one another.” I pawed the ground. I worked myself up into such a tizzy that I began sneezing. “What got into you, bud?” asked Zideo. Finally! Success.

He stood up, and knelt by the fireplace. The frozen flame was just that—a candle topped with a blue-white jewel of ice, but somehow emitted a perfectly heatless and dim light that flickered in a way reminiscent of candle light, but with none of its comforts. The fine embroidery and thin make of the blanket showed me that it was, in actuality, a tablecloth. This could have been interpreted as a selfless act, the host sullying his possessions to bring comfort to the guest. But I was not convinced.

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Zideo drew back to the two mesh curtains that hung over the fireplace, then brought the cold candlestick over to see it better.

“I bet we could light this ourselves if Helmgarth was here,” he said. “He’d have a match in that backpack.” The blue light fell over the fireplace. “See, it’s already got coal. And uh… sticks for kindling, I guess. And something else…” He leaned close and thrust the candle into the fireplace. “Are those carrots…?”

He frowned, and stood up straight very suddenly, the tablecloth falling to the floor. My human looked at me, and I knew he finally appreciated the urgency of the situation.

“I think we should get out of here, bud,” he whispered. No sooner had he, then the voice sang in the depths of the cave.

Ho, hummm, teeth and gummm.

Sticks and snow, please don’t go….

It bounced and swirled around us. The host might have been in the room with us, or a mile deeper into the cave. To this day, I am not uncertain that he were not hovering inches away, somehow. Zideo looked at me and jerked his head. We crept out with the ice-candle, its small pool of light deeply insufficient, but it was all we had. Humans are much too dependent on sight, another nonsensical design choice of the species, but I believe their dependence on canines for guidance and guardianship is a symbiosis written by destiny itself. For shepherding and protecting our helpless primates, we are paid in treats and tummy rubs. No dog will disagree when I say that this is a more than fair transaction.

The cave draft became a wind and the voice became fell. It chased us through those dark tunnels, grasping (I felt sure) at us from dark passages like clutching branches. The candle light, though dim and blue, prevented my night vision from guiding us, but we both sensed the direction of the fresh air and drew ever closer to it. Soon there was light, but it reflected, always around another bend, through another tunnel.

At last, cave mouth opened before us, a gasp of blinding white snow seen through its icicle fangs. Beneath them stood a snowman, the least threatening creature I have ever beheld—and I include the young penguin in this appraisal.

I actually love snowmen. Airy Zone does get snow in the cold months.

As a dog, I will probably never have the opportunity to visit the Louvre. But who would want to, when such thoughtful provoking installations appear in our own neighborhood each winter?

This snowman, however, was different in a number of ways from those pleasant creations of children and grown-ups. Certainly, his body was composed of that same stuff. Three dense orbs of packed snow increased in circumference top to bottom, constituting its head, torso, and base, respectively. His eyes were dark, black rocks, with uneven gravel in his mouth in place of teeth, their points visible when its mouth moved of its own accord. His arms were not simple twigs, but bundles of sinewy branches, and vines, protruding through a soaking wet, red flannel shirt from which the sleeves had been torn. The widest and lower most accumulation of snow was the most offputting to behold. Lacking legs, snowman‘s base served as abdomen, gut, and means locomotion. It deformed this way and that as he moved, the sediment within rattling, churning and frothing where it drew across the cave floor like a slug.

The coal eyes shifted in their settings — I will not say sockets — twitching and following us in a macabre parody of human eyes. In the absence of eyelids, they never blinked, only gazed at us over a broken carrot nose that dangled hideously. He gripped a makeshift wood-cutter’s ax, a crudely sharpened stone tied to a branch, crooked, but sturdy.

There was something about him that seemed out of place–that is, beyond his being a living snow person. We were not meant to observe him directly. He belonged in the distance, in the background.

“Friieends!” He said, and finally I heard plainly the voice that had haunted our footsteps in the cave. He spread his arms in a gesture that imitated a welcome, if you ignored the ax. “I was just about to make a fire for the warm folk, ho-hum!”

“Hey bud, I don’t mean to be criticize your grind or anything,” said Commander Zideo. “But are you some kind of snowman serial killer?”

The snowman's mouth dropped open, and the freehand went to his chest. “Friiieeeeends!’ He exclaimed again. “I’m offended, ho-hum. Why would you say such a thing to a simple, ordinary snowman?”

“I sort of kind of saw all the remains of other snow people in your fireplace,” said Zideo, finding his stance. “You melted them. You melted them all! They’re melted. Every single one of them. And not just the snowman… But the snow women and snow children too! They were people made of snow and you melted them like icecubes.”

The snow monster—for that is what he truly was, and no snowman–winced at the accusation. He tightened his grip on the ax. “Ho-hum ho… I can’t believe what I’m ho-hum hearing! First, the warm folk take advantage of my hospitality, and snoop around my home, and then–” and suddenly then he swung the weapon, mid-sentence.

But not before I let out to high-volume barks, and Zideo managed to duck out of the way of the whistling, ax head. “—then you quote the Prequels at me!” Zideo dropped the enchanted candle. I snarled and barked, and prepared to intercept the snow monster, but Zideo turned and sprinted back into the cave.

We scrambled in the dark, but we were together. My hope was that we would lure the creature back into its own passages, and then escape through the cave mouth unobstructed. But I knew that we were in the snow monster’s territory, its very den. I did not know how a snow monster could see in the dark, but then again, I did not know how it could see at all. It had no eyes after all, and light does not pass through solid lumps of coal.

We felt our way through connected halls that I did not recognize. I was sure we had gotten off track from the main tunnel. With cold fingers, cold paws, and little hope, we probed for a chamber in which I knew we would make our final stand. I only hoped we would find one that was easy for me to defend.

The laughter and ho-hums of the snow monster distracted and dazzled us from every direction. He could have been anywhere.