Some. But this fatigue isn’t something I can recover from quickly. This is why I would have preferred to use the hatchet with the sigil. Speaking of which, I need you to find that and bring it with you. The bellows too. Can’t leave those here.
I knew where the bellows was and Starbuck found the hatchet after a bit of a search. Atticus used his Druidry to move some charred wood around and bind it together into a travois, which looked like a sort of torched trellis when he was finished. That took a while, and then we had to help him roll on top of it, pulling on the shreds of his clothes. That was how weak he was.
It was designed with a couple of branch leads and then a shortbranch connecting them that I’d have to take into my mouth, which would allow me to pull him behind like I was a horse. As a test, I dragged him a little way to the sinkhole he’d made earlier. He pulled up more water and got us all good and soaked, and then he had Starbuck crawl under his shirt so he’d have a wet layer of cloth around him as we entered the fire.
That was the part I didn’t want to think about. When I came through it the first time, I was following Atticus. And when the fallen angel zapped me, I didn’t have a chance to think about it. But now I had to enter the fire on purpose by myself, and I wouldn’t be able to run at full speed.
There was a yippy Chihuahua voice in my head that said,Don’t do it, just go hungry for a night and maybe skip breakfast too and wait until Atticus can move on his own.But what kind of wolfhound would I be if I listened to my inner Chihuahua?
The voice got pretty loud as I got nearer the fire, though. It burned with the rage of five grizzly bears on energy drinks fighting to drink the last one of a six-pack. I was thinking that maybe this one time, the Chihuahua was wise.
But then Atticus said,I don’t think I told either of you how awesome you were back there. You saved my life and ran through fire for me, and now you’re going to do it again. You helped me protect the earth. There simply aren’t any better dogs than you. You’re the best.
Well, I couldn’t listen to the Chihuahua after that, because I was the best dog.
But fire wasn’t a Scooby-Doo villain that you cease to fear once you pull the mask off. It’s an elemental force against which my only chance of survival was to avoid it. No matter how much I told myself that I was the best hound, my instincts insisted that I run the other way.
I found the path through the fire that Atticus had made beforeand slowed, because I couldn’t see the end. Smoke and distance made the flames seem to close up in an impenetrable wall.
It should be. Hold on.I dropped the lead out of my mouth and turned to see what he was doing. He twitched his foot onto the ground so he could check things out with the elemental.
It’s clear, he confirmed.Even if it doesn’t look like it. Just take us through as fast as you can.
That was when I learned the true difference between courage and sausage. A big plate of sausage might fill my belly, but it wouldn’t help me take a single step toward that fire. I needed courage first, and then, if it served me well, I might get served some sausage on the other side.
I picked up the lead in my jaws again and flattened my ears against my head.
I said.
My first two steps were small things, not very courageous at all. But I realized that if I took small steps we’d all die from the heat and lack of oxygen if not the actual flames. The best hope we had was for me to use the full stride of an Irish wolfhound.
I leapt forward, startling both Atticus and Starbuck at the sudden lurch, but toppling neither. I pulled as hard as I could, fully aware that the weight was slowing me down, but still going at the top speed I could manage, right toward the most frightening thing I could think of besides a world ruled by squirrels.
I tried to think about things that made me happy, like belly rubs and poodles and gravy and every single time Atticus told me how good I was. I’ve had a very long life thanks to him, and a super delicious one, but I supposed all good things must be paid for somehow. The bill for our blessings always comes due in some fashion, and there’s no way to avoid it.
The fire did its best to burn everything away as I plunged into it, flames rising well above my head on either side. My memories, my fine gray coat, the best human ever, my snorty Boston buddy, and my courage: it wanted everything to become ashes.
The ground scorched the pads of my paws and I could hardly breathe, the flames sucking up all the air, but there was nothing to do but churn forward.
Courage, I realized, only revs your engine at the starting line. It doesn’t keep you going for the long haul. What keeps you going is something else: stubbornness, perhaps, or fear of what would happen if you stopped. In my case it was probably a whole lot of both. Once into the suffocating heat of the inferno, the only answer to any of my thoughts—likeit’s too hot,I can’t breathe, orI’m so tired—was to keep going until I got through it.
It spurred me everywhere, not just on my flanks.
It toasted me from nose to tail.
It threatened to kill me. And Starbuck, despite being soaked and protected by Atticus, had trouble breathing, and let me know. he cried.
I needed air too. And if I gave up it wouldn’t just be me who burned away—my best friends in the whole world would die as well.
The path kept going and going the way pain keeps going, hot and orange and urgent, until it suddenly stopped. And when it did, the relief was so acute I almost wondered why I ever felt distress, like the pain was a hallucination or something.
When we got past the leading edge of the fire, Atticus told me to stop and he did his water trick again to cool us all down.
Thank you, Oberon. You saved us all, he said, even though he had saved me from death too many times to count.
