~~~

‘That was weird,’ said Luco, walking to the edge of the hole and looking down.

‘He jumped,’ said Cha Cha, her face in shock. ‘Without the rope, he jumped.’

‘Ka…’ Wu Dog Yan muttered.

‘No rope.’

‘Ka.’

‘Didn’t take it.’

‘I know.’

‘Any of it.’

Wu Dog Yan patted Cha Cha lightly on the head. ‘It’s okay, I think he was very far beyond any help.’

‘But… we only talked to him for two minutes.’

‘Ka,’ said Luco, still peering down the hole. ‘He probably would’ve got better if we’d got him to a doctor. Might’ve taken a few months, a few therapy sessions, but-…’

‘Shut up, Luco,’ said Zade, in a surprisingly firm voice.

‘I’m just being honest.’

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ continued Cha Cha, looking directly at Wu Dog Yan as if she were some kind of professor. ‘Why would he do that? Why would he jump?’

‘Nuut kaata.’

‘Because the hole needs to be obeyed, apparently.’ Luco saw Wu Dog Yan glare at him and put his paws up in mock-surrender. ‘Sorry, I mean, ka…it’s bad. Tragic. Kind of.’

The sound of kind of echoed around the walls of the cell as no one knew how to answer it. Wu Dog Yan patted Cha Cha on the head again, Zade peered down the hole, and Luco tried to pick up Zade’s hammer.

The silence was broken by the howling of wind blowing through the corridor outside.

‘What do we do now?’ asked Zade, stepping back from the hole.

‘Find Dog Lee, of course,’ answered Luco, giving up on the hammer. ‘Make sure he’s not hanging down a hole like that poor fool.’

‘We’re not going to tell the police?’

‘The police? You want to call the police?’

‘Not really, but-…we probably should.’

Wu Dog Yan stood up and held out her phone, showing the screen to all of them. ‘No signal, remember? Besides, it would take them hours to get here and we don’t have hours. Maybe one and a half at best.’ She put her phone back inside her jacket and picked up the sword. ‘The only thing we can do now is do what we came here to do. Find Dog Lee before-…before whoever did this does it to him too.’

‘Dog Hood, you mean…’ said Luco, adding a fake cough.

‘Or this Prosperoro character.’

‘Huh, the sorcerer guy?’

‘Ka.’

‘You really think that lunatic dog was telling the truth?’

‘Someone put him in here.’

‘Ka, someone weird.’

‘Someone sadistic,’ corrected Wu Dog Yan, trying different grips on the sword handle.

‘Ka, exactly.’ Luco nodded, possibly not understanding sadistic. ‘Very bad guy.’

‘Wait, we’re just gonna keep moving?’ asked Cha Cha, still struggling to blink.

‘Don’t have much choice.’

‘No attempt to climb down or-…’

‘To check on a lunatic?’ said Luco, cutting her off. ‘Sorry, Cha Cha but he’s gone. You can plan his funeral later if you want, but the rest of us…we’re going into the castle.’

‘He may be about as compassionate as an armadillo riot cop,’ said Wu Dog Yan, patting Cha Cha’s shoulder for the third time, ‘but he’s right. We have to keep going.’

‘Okay,’ mumbled Cha Cha.

Wu Dog Yan took another look at the hole then walked out of the cell, turning right and opening the door in front of her without any kind of caution. Cursing in hamster language, possibly in a good way, Luco jumped in the air with excitement and scampered after her, with Zade left to pick up Cha Cha and guide her out of the cell.

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‘You know…’ said Zade in the softest voice a tiger could muster. ‘There’s a chance that dog landed in water, not on rocks.’

‘There was no splashing noise.’

‘Ka, true, but…’

‘It must be an endless hole…’

‘…there wasn’t a breaking body sound either. That means it could be some kind of…slide…a slide that…guided him down to the beach or ground or something.’

Cha Cha looked back at the cell, making out the top of the hole.

‘It is possible,’ continued Zade, his tone not very convincing. ‘And falling into water, from this height…not always fatal.’

‘I don’t like this castle anymore.’

‘Ka. Me neither, to be honest.’

‘Feels evil…like a lot of dogs have died here.’

Zade really didn’t know what to say this time as he pretty much believed the same thing, so he shut his mouth and guided his comrade through the door and onto yet another staircase. This one was a lot shorter than the others, with nothing decorative on the walls, so they sped up, in single file, their weapons gripped tightly in their paws. Before long, they found themselves standing in the main hall of the castle.

Wu Dog Yan and Luco were already pacing around, checking the doors that were visible, but all of them appeared to be locked. They came back to the centre of the hall and looked over at the stairs leading to the second floor.

‘I guess that’s the only place to go,’ said Wu Dog Yan, pointing upwards with her sword.

‘But this is the place I saw from the eyehole in the cave,’ said Luco, jabbing his paw in the air. ‘The guy disappeared behind that pillar over there, the one near the fireplace.’

‘Are you suggesting there’s a secret entrance?’

‘There must be.’

‘Ka, okay. I suppose there’s no harm in looking.’

Zade and Cha Cha stayed in the middle of the hall and fake-studied the statues while Wu Dog Yan and Luco checked out the fireplace. There were five statues in total, all female dogs, all without any description.

‘Do you recognise any of them?’ asked Zade, but Cha Cha didn’t seem to be interested in answering as she just muttered, ‘nuut,’ and stared down at the floor.

Despite Luco’s assurances that there was definitely a secret passage somewhere near the fireplace, neither he nor Wu Dog Yan could find any switch that might reveal it. They pushed, prodded and shuffled around everything on the mantelpiece above the fire, hit the stones of the wall, stamped on the floor, blew on the flames, but each time nothing happened.

‘Well, someone lit this thing.’

‘Unless it’s a fake fire’

Wu Dog Yan looked at the flames for any clues that might expose it as fraudulent, then held her paw near it. She pulled it away quickly when the heat became too much.

‘It feels pretty real…’

‘Maybe you have to step completely in, like a leap of faith,’ said Luco.

‘You wanna try?’

Luco stared at the flames whipping and snarling and took a step back. ‘Zade?’

‘Nuut.’

‘Go on, it won’t hurt you.’

‘Nuut.’

‘The quicker you do it, the quicker we can leave.’

Zade stopped another nuut crawling out of his mouth and looked at the door they’d come from, then the fire. He growled a little and, after shaking out the fur on his leg, stepped in.

‘Is it going through the wall?’

Zade pushed at the wall behind the fire. It didn’t budge, or suck up his claw like the hologram had. He stepped back out and checked his leg fur for damage. Surprisingly, it wasn’t that bad, just a few singed hairs.

‘Try going in again, this time from a slightly different angle,’ said Luco, prodding Zade in the lower back.

Zade growled again, louder.

‘We should check upstairs,’ said Wu Dog Yan, already making a move across the hall. ‘See if there’s anyone up there.’

‘You’re giving up on the secret passage?’

‘Ka. For now.’

‘But it’s here somewhere, I saw it…’

‘And it’ll still be here when we come back down.’

Luco turned to the fireplace and stared at all four glowing corners. The secret passage, if it really was there, did not flash any neon lights back at him.

‘Agreed?’

‘Ka…fine. But only because you used the argument I thought of too.’

Wu Dog Yan smirked and looked over at Cha Cha, telling her she could stay down in the main hall if that made her feel more comfortable.

‘Nuut, I’m coming with you,’ said Cha Cha, quickly.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Ka…’

‘Zade?’

Zade looked around the main hall, at the dark corners and cracks in the wall that could be hiding more spiders. ‘Ka, better if we all stick together. Harder to attack us then.’

‘It’s unlikely anyone’s going to attack us,’ said Wu Dog Yan, letting her grip on one of the swords loosen a little.

Zade tried to do the same with the hammer, but his paw muscles wouldn’t allow it.

‘Ka, ka, ka, we all go, come on…’ said Luco, grabbing Zade and Cha Cha by the sleeves then trying and failing to drag them towards the stairs. ‘Hopefully we’ll get up there before Saint Gwut Day[1].’

Zade and Cha Cha waited for Luco to let go of their sleeves, but a whole minute passed and still he was holding onto them, so they shrugged him off and walked of their own free will. Everyone clutched their weapons even more tightly, except for Luco, who didn’t have one, and Cha Cha, who let the spear hang loosely at her side. Well, her grip was tight, but she didn’t seem at all ready to use it. Not surprising really. Even in the old times, during the war with the cats, and the 70 year cold war with the polar bears, most of the dog soldiers would aim their spears above their enemies’ heads, and swing their swords at arms instead of stabbing them forward into chests. Tiger wars were an exception to this, obviously. At least until their population started to decrease. Then the weapons became blunt and fighting turned into a sport, one that didn’t have to end with one tiger cutting out the heart of their opponent.[2]

Meanwhile, the four comrades had made it across the main hall and were about to ascend to the first floor.

At the bottom of the staircase, and continuing all the way up the side wall, were strange paintings of caves emitting neon purple light. At first glance, they all looked identical, but as the four comrades walked up the stairs, they saw that each one had slight differences. In some of them, the cave was bigger, in others, the purple light spread farther into the sky.

‘Whoever lived here before really liked the colour purple,’ said Zade, but no one bothered to respond.

~~~

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[1] A celebration of an old dog lady who was caught by the cats and was so perfect and kind that those cats killed themselves out of guilt.

[2] It did end that way sometimes. Actually, it still does, in some of the poorer areas of Paw Lam, if the tigers are drunk enough.