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Rescue had made himself quite at home within this house of love, letting himself in and out, except when the doors were latched, at which he would whine just loudly enough to be heard and paw at the door with a polite, uplifted right paw, just firmly enough to indicate which obstacle should be removed, at leisure. He was an excellent hunter of rats and vermin, and he spoke vociferously at larger critters, keeping them at bay from behind a closed door. Lily’s mother took to treating him with soup bones and fatty scraps; I think she loved him as much as I did, but like a mother to a son, scolding him when he misbehaved, showing him tenderness at all other times. For example, when he helped himself to a scrap before she had given it to him, she came to shout, “No! Bad Dog! Bad Rescue!” He put his head down and look up at her, wagging his tail across the floor very slowly. She held the stare for a few moments, then said, “Sit! Rescue Sit!” And he jumped up on her apron with his front paws, whining and wagging his entire rear end. “Rescue! Sit!” At this, he dropped to all fours, still wagging, ears perking forward, and she finally yielded, returning the scrap to him. “Good doggie,” she said, rubbing him behind the ears while he wolfed whatever piece of fat she had given him. “You’re a good doggie, aren’t you?” He finished his piece of fat, then rolled over on his back completely, scratching his back on the floor while she crouched and rubbed his tummy. He was in doggie heaven. This was his habit; I saw the same thing transpire between the two of them many times. Usually, after a minute of this, he would request to go outside, running as fast as he could, chasing after wind, leaves, and faraway birds, barking at them all.

During the winter, he had the other habit of accompanying Lily’s uncle and me while we continued our training. When we would reach for our cloaks (to which Lily and her mother had sewn hoods), he would sit up from his post by the fire, and as we would reach to open the door, he darted between our legs to be outside with us, no matter how cold or miserable it may have been. Lily’s father complained of the smell of wet dog once; the complaint was met with the furrowed brow of Lily’s mother. She didn’t even look up from her meal.

Rescue, on rainy days, would wander around the perimeter of the back garden for a while, then pause somewhere near us, looking at us. He must have been wondering what kind of fools we were to be lunging at each other with sticks, or grappling with each other without sticks, out there in the rain, when there was a perfectly warm fire by which to accomplish the same thing. Lily’s uncle was teaching me to use his weight against him, a technique which came naturally to me. However, when he would fall upon me in the first part of a defensive move, Rescue invariably leaped at Lily’s uncle with a growl.

“A boy and his dog!” or something similar, would come the cry from the mud after I had completed the move, while Rescue nipped at his ears.

One day, Lily’s uncle did not say anything when Rescue teamed with me against him. I took no notice of it at the time, and we continued our training. After we returned inside, he whispered something to Occuri, whose countenance fell downward. She knelt before Rescue, like a princess supplicating a king, holding his favorite towel, and she asked him, “How are you, Rescue?” Rescue wagged his tail and panted while she rubbed him dry. “Oh, no, Rescue!” she said, and she started to cry.

I stood there, watching my dog panting and Lily’s mother crying, hugging him and drying him. I was paralyzed. I didn’t know what was happening. I did know that I did not want to ask.

“The smell,” said Lily’s uncle. “Rescue is going to die.”

“I didn’t ask,” I said.

He was sitting on the couch already, stretching his feet toward the heat of the fire. “It’s a matter of time; you will make the decision when he should die. Prepare yourself.”

“I will not!” I declared.

“You will!” he shouted back. “You are his owner, his steward; you are his master. This is true.”

Lily’s mother was still crying over Rescue, not sobbing or weeping, but crying, sad. “Oh, Rescue,” she sighed, then let him go. He went to his spot by the fire. She sniffled, wiping away a tear with the towel.

“This is true,” Lily’s uncle had said. My house—the Fieldstone’s warehouse—was slowly being filled with crates. Hired hands were knocking out walls to create more space. It is true that I never went up there, but I did know what they were doing. I think I knew more what they were doing than they did.

I waited for Lily’s father to return home. “Rescue must die soon,” I blurted out, “but I do not know how to put him to his end.”

“Mercy will dictate,” said Lily’s father. “Mercy always dictates. How do you know your dog is sick to death?”

“Your brother says so,” I accused.

Lily’s father went over to Rescue. Rescue was suspicious of Lily’s father but was not afraid of him. He did not wag his tail, but he did allow him to pet him, lifting up his head to receive a fine scratch on the chin, after which he did wag his tail.

“Yes,” said Lily’s father. “It is so.”

Pain came into my body at his word. “Is it because we let him outside in the rain?” I asked.

“No. Probably not.”

“Then why?” I was fighting tears, but these tears were not for my damn dog; they were for a host of spirits and immaterial effects and clouds and fogs that floated in me according to an unseen will, a will that was intent on pressing against my will, with an ability to touch nerves deep within my insides so that my mouth opened with nonsense, nonsense that was perfectly sensible when my dog was now dying and would die for a long time. I wanted my dog to come with me, to chase after butterflies and squirrels, to alert me to comers and goers, to be beside me at night, and to be a general companion, even if Shur-qa-hil was the guide. The trip north was for me and my dog. Me and my dog! My dog and me, who had no home, together, homeless, free, and far away.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Who loved Shur-qa-hil? That horrible, fat, corrupt, know-it-all, pompous, hairy monster!

“Rescue has lived his life a happy dog,” said Lily’s father. “As we all live our lives happy dogs.”

“Happy dogs!” I shouted.

“Our Father in heaven teaches us mercy by giving us dogs to care for. Did you ever make a slave of your dog?” he asked, being patient with me.

“No.”

“Did you let him do what dogs do?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“Did you clean him, feed him, tend to his hurts, pet him, tell him he was good, and otherwise take care of him?” he asked.

“Yes. For the most part,” I said. “I liked to just let him run around.”

“What more are you hoping for your own life?” asked Arret. “Do you desire mercy when the end of your time comes?”

More pain came into my body. Couldn’t the end of my time come very soon? Lily came into the room. She had been napping. Her face was flush with the awakening of recent sleep. I did not answer.

“Show mercy to your dog,” said Lily’s father, “and your Father in heaven will show mercy to you.”

I had in my mind’s eye a sudden vision of the end of Rescue: I raised a rock to bash his head, and I could not muster the strength for a lethal blow; instead, I hurt Rescue, and he yelped in agony, looking at me while I held him down, while Lily’s uncle and father looked at me, while I brought a rock down again and again, all the while my Rescue looking at me. Is this mercy?

It rained every day, but not a drop fell out of the sky. The rain was misty, cold, and low. It crept everywhere, through every seam, under every door, up every crevice. It had absolute freedom to go where it pleased while we dogs shivered by the fire, unable to want to go anywhere else, anywhere at all, without an external force driving us away into the mist. We forgot what shadows looked like, what relief the sun gave the landscape, what dynamics the daylight gave to the colors of the city. What white there was was drab; the rest was gray. Rescue began to cough.

Then, one day, he tried to get up to follow Lily’s uncle and me outside. The weather was actually fair: no sunshine, but a reprieve from the mist. He whimpered, looking at me, wagging his tail, or trying to wag his tail. I thought I could see in his eyes a shame, that he was ashamed that he could not make his body move. He stopped wagging his tail, but he did not stop whimpering. He moved his front paws toward me, then put his head down into his paws, never taking his eyes off me. I felt tears well up.

I went to him. In truth, this was the first time I had really come to him with full affection in the weeks that had elapsed since he first became ill. I knelt down with him, and I held his head on my lap, scratching him behind the ears. He continued to whimper. Loneliness overwhelmed me. Rescue had reached the end of his days. The time had come for me to kill him.

I looked to Lily’s uncle and said, “How do I do this?”

“Wait here,” he said, and he disappeared into the sleeping area. I heard a cabinet door open, and, after a moment, I heard it close again. He reappeared holding a little flask in front of him. “Put a little bit of this on a piece of meat, then wrap it in a piece of fat,” he said to Lily’s mother, “but take care to avoid touching it.”

She pulled its stopple. It made a high-pitched pop sound when it opened. Lily cut a piece of fat from a bird they were preparing for the evening meal. No one spoke. The only vocalization was the occasional whimper from my dog. I looked into his eyes and I saw that he had shame no longer. He had pain. He was asking me for mercy.

The treat was delivered to me by Lily or Lily’s mother. I held the treat in my left hand while I continued to pet Rescue with my right hand. His breath had become labored and shallow. Upon my command, he managed to take the treat from my hand, and he chewed. I don’t know if he swallowed, but it didn’t matter. After a little while, he looked at me, closed his eyes, then opened them to look at me one last time, then he closed them again. He stretched his legs and fell asleep. His breathing was still shallow, but it was no longer labored.

Lily’s uncle gave me a bowl and a knife. “You must cut deep and fast,” he said, and he showed me the place to cut. “He will not struggle, and his pain is dulled.”

I held the bowl under him and made the cut. A spasm came over Rescue’s body, and the first flow of blood was driven by his heart over the rim of the bowl onto me and the floor. A spasm came over my body, and I was forced to cry out. After that, I wept, and his blood flowed into the bowl until he died. The blood on my hands began to cool, and I continued to weep over my dog. Lily sat down beside me and caressed the back of my head.

I looked up at Lily’s mother. “It’s a dog!” I said. I don’t know why I said that, but I felt very close to the earth, without any shame or inhibition. That declaration was upon my heart and upon my lips simultaneously. She heaved a sigh and wiped away some tears. Then she wept with me.

Lily’s father returned home shortly after Rescue died, and, upon surveying the scene, indicated without a word that I should follow him outside with Rescue’s body. Once outside, he asked me where I would like to bury Rescue. I made a gesture to the rise that was beyond the dividing wall, up the hill from their house to my old house. We sat there, Rescue and I, often, under the sky during the morning or evening, looking out over Lily’s house into the city toward the tower. I’d throw a stick, and he’d run after it. Sometimes he’d bring it back. I never thought much of the place or the memory until Lily’s father asked me where Rescue should be buried.

Lily’s father and uncle made a grave in the mud for Rescue while I stood above them holding his body. When they were finished, I placed him into it, then helped cover him over, not without pausing to weep over my dog a few times. When we finished covering him, I said again, “It’s a dog!”

I turned away from the grave and went down to the little river, where I washed off the blood and the stench of the illness of my dead dog.

I did not participate in meals or activities for a few days, but no one seemed to object. I can’t remember what conversations I had, but I do know that I had conversations. It was very strange: my memory of these days is like the rehearsal of a drama without all the persons or any set-pieces: movement stops and starts, and none of the dialogue has context. In fact, I have no memory of dialogue whatsoever, only pantomime.

Winter passed away. Eventually, spring came and we went.

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