We both pointed and said, "Look!" at the same time. Once a Day must have been to the cat's blind side, because the cat kept on, desperately, up to her chin in snow; and just then we heard what she was running from. The noise tore through the fog, a sharp, snarling yelp made again and again that made me freeze in terror. Once a Day stopped too, but Puff kept on; the woods crackled and thrashed to the left, and there burst from cover an animal. The man next to me bared his teeth and hissed out in fear, and the animal - a dirty-yellow, skinny, big-headed thing - stopped and with great snaps of his head looked from Once a Day to Puff who was disappearing over the ridge. The woods behind him spoke, and a red one charged out; he didn't stop at all, but hunched his skinny back up through the snow. The yellow one followed. Bursting from the woods, a spotted one slipped into the water and slopped out again, climbing after the others.
Once a Day had got to the top and over, beating the snowbound dogs, and the man with me was halfway to the pool's edge, shouting and waving his stick, before I unfroze and slid after him. As we circled the pool, stepping up to our knees in black water and muck, two more dogs came yelping from the woods, and stopped when they saw us. They backed and ran to and from us as we tried to climb the bank, we not daring to turn our backs on them, shouting at them as they shouted at us. Two men now came from the woods following Once a Day's footprints, and my stick friend tore the gray scarf away from his face and waved to them, and the dogs, seeing them, ran off in another direction.
Heavy with water, sobbing painful cold breaths, we got to the top. Puff, Once a Day, and the dogs were gone. The snow, stirred and footprinted, melted out in hillocks along the wet black ground; and across the snow, starting at my feet and running crazily away in drops, was a long stripe of blood.
Cat's blood: I grasped at that. Puff's blood. Poor Puff, but old after all, still too bad, anyway it's cat's blood… The two in black passed me, hurrying on, pointing out the signs of the trail to each other. I still stood stricken. Stick came up next to me, his sodden boots squishing.
"Dog days," he said; "a lean month, and nothing's that large, if they're together they'll try it…"
"No," I said.
He went off, following the others, his head nodding rapidly side to side. "If she stayed with the cat," I heard him say, "they'd take them both, oh yes, drag them to the woods, you hear the silence now, you see what that would mean…"
No, no, no, he's not kept his head, I thought, starting after him, then turning back to look again at the snow, not kept his head about the cat's blood that it was, why does he go on like that?
"Dogs are dogs are dogs are dogs at least," said Stick.
"Why don't you just look?" I shouted at him, my feet numbly plucking mud. "Why don't you just be quiet about it and look?"
"Wood smoke," said Stick, stopping still.
I smelled it and saw it at once: a dark smudge in the woods, browner than the gray day. He ran on toward it, calling out to the others; I only stood, still trying to speak truthfully to myself, scared, not knowing what a fire in the forest would mean anyway. Stick turned and waved to me, and disappeared in a clump of trees.
There was a path through the clump of trees, and at the end of the path a cabin of logs built against an old angelstone wall; ashy smoke rose up through a hole in the roof of wattles. The yellow dog, the first one Stick and I had seen at the pond, paced back and forth before the door until he saw us, and backed away and ran as we came close. From another direction the two in black came up to the cabin, and disappeared into the darkness inside, as though walking through way-wall; they seemed to be laughing. Stick went in. I came up last, and heard them talking inside.
I went in.
In the flare of firelight and smoke, the black-cloaked people sat laughing softly, relaxing in the warmth. Zhinsinura was laughing too; beside her old Puff lay asleep; and within her arms Once a Day lay, her eyes bright in the firelight, smiling. I crept to her, my fear still a hard knot in my stomach, to touch her, to know for real it was she.
"You're all right," I said, and the others laughed.
"Yes," she said. "The doctor was there."
"What doctor? What doctor?"
She only shook her head, smiling.
"How, what happened? How did this fire get here? How, what…"
Zhinsinura put her hand firmly on my wrist. "Hush," she said. "It's nice now."
The others had fallen silent, and for a moment Puff awoke and eyed me with her one eye. I saw that I wouldn't learn now, probably would never learn, what had happened, whose blood was on the snow, because it was then not now; it was nice now. I was not to ask for what I wasn't given. I sat slowly, thinking: if it had been I among the dogs, I wouldn't have found this nice place, because I would have looked for it.
"Yes," I said. "Yes, it is nice now; with the fire and all, yes."
"He was dark," said Stick, whose face I could see across the fire grinning widely. "Dark even to shouting." He laced his hands comfortably behind his head and showed more teeth. "Dog days," he said, pleased.
And that's how I found out what dark and light are.
You didn't tell about February's tile.
I don't remember it well. I remember that it was "crazed," you know, heat or something had made it a web of fine cracks. I remember that it was black, mostly, like the month. They stood on a bridge, I think, over a cold river; there was something huge out on the river. I don't remember.
In March's pale tile the hem of her blue dress curled with the same curl that marked the dead leaf's path in November: the curved line that meant Wind. They stood in the wind atop a brown hill that looked to be the top of the world - nothing could be seen around them but a big sky, pale and purplish. The wind that blew behind them tangled their curls and held their kites high up, so high they seemed tiny.
In the still-roofed part of one of Service City's ruined buildings, amid piles and bundles of the List's things stored there, Once a Day found her kite. We sat amid the clutter and listened to Zher as she tied, with infinite absorption, a new tail for it. Her eyes were cast down, and her mouth seemed to obey the same commands that her hands were following: closing firmly to tighten a string, opening then pursing to find the next rag; when she made a knot, her tongue peeked out.
"When the moon is full in March," said Zher, "the hare goes crazy." His eyes grew wide and fierce. "He stamps his feet." Zher's leg kicked the ground with a thump. "He balls his fists and can't stand it, can't stand it." He stared around him, his leg twitching to kick again. "When another comes, he shouts out, 'No room, no room!' even if there's plenty."
Once a Day laughed at his craziness, and then returned to her work. Of any there at Service City I found her absorption most beautiful, because I loved her, but they were all like her in it. On each thing they did their attention was complete. It was as though the thing to be done directed the doer, as though the task were master.
Of course there weren't many things the List did. One of them was to fly kites in March. There were many in that building, broken and whole, hung between a pile of plastic boots and gray capes and a stand of furled umbrellas. On the right day, chill and blowing, a day like a stiff new broom for winter, they would all be scattered across a brown hilltop with their hats tied on and their raggedies snatched at and billowing, and all their bright-tailed kites aloft. Or then again maybe they wouldn't.
Anyway. On a day still and odorous, with pale things sprouting in the forest, the kite tile was moved, and there were three in one pile and nine in the other; the ones who stood to see it turned made their small sound of satisfaction as April was revealed.