Unable to bear the beauty of it, Micha was turning to leave when something enormous, red-brown and quite extraordinarily hairy, went barrelling past him, almost knocking him over. He had a jumbled impression of a joyously lolling tongue and streaming ears, and then came a voice, far too genteel for the words it uttered: “Ruff, get your arse back here, right now. I said ‘Heel,’ you mongrel son of a bitch.”
Micha spun. Climbing over the stile was perhaps the tiniest woman he had ever seen.
Ruff, halfway across the meadow, hesitated. One paw still raised, he cast a guilty look over his shoulder. Then his nose twitched. Then he went rigid, even to the furthest flying feathers of his tail. His head snapped forward. In those fleeting seconds, he was quite the pointiest dog Micha had ever seen, a long, lean canine arrow.
“Oh no you don’t,” bellowed his owner. “Leave those fucking ducks alone.”
Ruff was practically vibrating with indecision.
Then one of the ducks rose up from the water, its wings fluttering, bright as banners.
And Ruff was off.
“Fuck,” said the woman, who had to be sixty if she was a day. “Fucking fuck.”
“Er ...” Despite his time on the streets of the London slums, Micha was still enough a child of the middle classes to instinctively respecthis elders. Even if his elders were swearing like a sailor on shore leave. “Don’t worry, I’ll get him.”
He put down the sketchbook and ran off after the dog. He thought he heard the woman call something after him, but he could hear very little beyond his own laboured breathing and pounding heart. Maybe Thomas had been right. He did need to do something to regain his strength, because this was ridiculous. A week-old kitten would have outpaced him, let alone a vigorous dog the size of a small elephant.
By the time Micha caught up with him, Ruff seemed more interested in chasing the ducks in circles than hurting them, and Micha joining the fray only contributed to the excitement. Such was Ruff’s joy in this new and thoroughly entertaining game that all remonstrations went unheeded, and Micha was obliged to make a wild grab for Ruff’s collar instead. His fingers closed around it, but he had considerably overestimated his own strength. Ruff—assuming this was all part of the fun—bounded onwards. Micha lost both his footing and his hold on the dog and went arse over apex, face-first into the stream.
The squelch of mud and the shock of cold water.
Coupled with mortified dignity and searing personal outrage.
Spluttering and swearing, Micha pushed himself to his hands and knees, just in time to see the ducks flapping lazily off into the sky. Ruff plonked himself down on the bank and tilted his head curiously at the foolish human who had unaccountably jumped straight into the water.
“You—” began Micha. But then his hands, inadequately braced on silt and pebbles, slid out from under him, and after a second or two of unseemly flailing, he went down again.
When he resurfaced, it was to the sound of someone laughing and an arm extended to help him.
“If you weren’t old enough to be my grandmother,” he grumbled, while the woman steadied him and got him back onto his feet, “you’d be in here with me.”
“I tried to warn you.” She dabbed at her eyes with her free hand. “Dear me, that was the funniest thing I’ve seen all year.”
Micha scrambled onto dry land and collapsed onto the grass in a sodden heap. “Dull year?”
“Rather a sublime downfall, dear.”
“Nice to know I’m good for something.”
She eyed him, not unkindly. “You poor boy. You could catch your death of cold.”
Micha could already feel the chill seeping into his skin. “I’ll be all right.” It was typical really. This was what you got for trying to do a good deed. Thrown into streams and laughed at by old women with monstrous dogs. He crawled to his feet and lurched off to retrieve his sketchbook.
“That will never do,” said the old woman, keeping pace with him easily. “You’d better come along with me.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes.” She clicked her fingers, and the dratted animal—miraculously obedient all of a sudden—came bouncing over. “Come, Ruff, come.” He pushed his nose apologetically into Micha’s hand, nearly knocking him off his feet again. Micha glared at him and then, somehow, found himself scratching the dog behind his silly flyaway ears. Ruff made a deep happy noise and drooled on Micha’s boots.
“Is this some kind of convoluted kidnapping racket?” he asked. “Using your dog to lure helpless young men into streams and then you whisk them off to who knows where?”
The woman’s eyes, which were very blue, twinkled at him rather charmingly. “Do stop making a fuss and come along, dear.”
Micha gave an aggrieved sigh but, not knowing quite what else to do, he fell into step beside her. Finding his way back to the rectory in wet clothes was not a pleasant prospect, and besides, she was ... she was ... nice?
“It’s Michael,” he offered, “Michael Dashwood. But—” He had been about to say that most people called him Micha, but then he stopped. Micha was a name that had once glittered gold upon Isidore’s tongue, before it became a common thing, passed between the mouthsof strangers, spit-tarnished. It had been many years since he had been merely Michael. His mother’s son.
