The Land of Broken Roads

Dirt stared in shock for a moment, until he was interrupted by the scraping of claws on stone behind him. He spun and saw Socks’ siblings rising to their feet with growls in their throats.

Perhaps he might have waited to see if Socks came back on his own, or if Father reached out and spoke to him. Or if, perhaps, he could discern more about the destination before he tried it himself. It was one thing to say it landed somewhere safe, and quite another to find out firsthand. But seeing the pups’ lingering fear turn to anger dramatically limited his options.

­“I better go make sure he’s all right. We’ll charge up the other side and come back if we can,”­ Dirt told them. “Maybe you should hunt instead of waiting around, though, just in case.”

Then, before any of them could do something hasty, he held his breath, steeled himself, and sprinted into the plaza. His foot landed on the engraved border in the stonework and all the world twisted away.

White chaos clawed at him and Dirt knew he was in the void. The eternal abyss, outside all existence, which held so much suffering and so little else. He was there just long enough to start to panic, to think maybe he would remain here now and return to his original fate. And he’d deserve it twice over, once for breaking the world and once for putting Socks here.

But then gravity took hold of him and he felt himself pulled gently back into existence. The void scattered with a faint sound like breaking glass.

He stood in snow up to his knees, in the midst of a quiet snowstorm so deep that it hid anything more than a dozen paces away in any direction. The falling snow clung to him, sticking to his sleeves and hair and threatening to bury him. There was no wind, no motion except the plummeting clumps of snow, and no sound.

“Socks? Socks! Hello?!” Dirt shouted mentally. Then, just in case, he shouted with his voice as well, giving a high, shrieking howl, hoping the pup’s hearing might catch it.

No reply came, at least not that he could hear. The snow seemed to muffle even the sound of his breathing.

So where were the ruins? There should at least be fallen stones and things around. All he could see were some indistinct lumps, none taller than his waist. The ground was otherwise perfectly smooth white, and the falling snow shrank the world to a tiny space.

Dirt bent down and dug into the snow and found not stone, but grass. Flattened, yellow grass with long, thin stalks and ragged tufts on the end. He took three steps sideways, which got snow up under the hem of his pants and into his shoes, and tried digging again. No stone. No ruins. He’d landed nowhere. Right in the middle of nowhere, with nothing around but snow.

“Home? Can you hear me?” he asked the fore-arm brace. For a moment, there was no response at all. Nothing happened, until finally, there was a slight tremor. But that was all. Just a tremor. She must be really far away, and he probably couldn’t rely on her for much. Maybe not for anything. But at least she was still connected to this part of herself.

“You might be too far to hear this, but don’t try to bring me back with root travel until I’ve had a chance to look for Socks. Okay? Don’t bring me back yet,” he said. The brace gave no response and Dirt sighed.

So now what? He was just starting to feel the cold now, especially in his wet fingers after digging in the snow. It wasn’t as bad as he suspected, but that was likely because there wasn’t any wind and he was still dry. For now.

He trudged forward and quickly became annoyed with how hard it was to walk in deep snow. Even grass as tall as he was hadn’t been this tiring, since he could push that apart with his hands.

After thirty steps, he realized his shoes and pants were already as snow-covered as they were going to get and gave up trying to step in and out of the snow, preferring to kick through it instead. He made a wide circle around his landing spot, looking for any sign of anything at all.

Dirt scattered the snow off one lump on the ground and it was just a bush, not a corpse. So that was good. There were more of those around, and if they’d all been corpses, he might have been in danger from whatever killed them. But after walking in a complete circle, he was more sure than before that there weren’t any ruins here.

He couldn’t see very far, but it was farther than he’d thought at first. If he watched carefully through the heavy, falling snow, it opened up enough to let him see a fair distance. Not very well, but enough he was sure there wasn’t a huge building nearby, or any trees.

Just to be sure, he dug one last time in the snow and found grass, and a single old brown leaf. This time, he put some mana in his fingers and pulled up the grass by the roots, despite the freezing ground not wanting to let go. He dug a bit, hoping he’d find stonework under a thin layer of earth, but he did not. No ruins here.

So maybe nearby? That was the best he could hope for. And if not ruins, at least somewhere to take shelter. Even just a tree to curl up under and warm himself with an ember. He started walking.

He went far enough for his starting point to disappear, and kept going. Far enough to wonder if he was even going in a straight line. There was still nothing to see, not anything. Not one tree, no rises of hills or anything else. Just a few lumps that were probably more bushes.

The snow got thicker, though. It piled up on his hair and shoulders, first an inch, then two. He shook it off from time to time but eventually just ignored it. It was only annoying where it melted and dripped down his face or back, and wiping it off every ten steps wouldn’t help.

The snow that had been up to his knees deepened inch by inch as well. Slower than it stacked up on top of him, since it was probably packing down the more there was on the ground, but still it rose.

By the time it was waist deep, he wasn’t sure how far he’d come. The light came from everywhere and nowhere, no shadows. He couldn’t guess where the sun was. If he looked back, the trail he made seemed straight, but was it really? How long until he actually found something?

There, off to his left, was a small hill that he hadn’t noticed before. A big snow-covered lump the size of a barn, highlighted by pale gray that blended into the snow until he looked closely. What was that? He looked around, wondering if there were others.

It wasn’t that close, though, and his toes were getting unacceptably cold. That hill thing could wait, since it didn’t look like a building. Dirt did his best to stomp out an open area where he could get the snow off his legs, which was harder than it looked. The snow only packed down so far, and it tended to collapse in on itself.

When Dirt turned again to look at whatever that big lump was, it had gotten closer. He was sure it was something worthy of his attention now. All white, with only a few highlights of pale gray where the snow hadn’t yet fallen. But that seemed odd, so what was it? The real shape of it was almost impossible to make out. Just lumpy white atop dashes of pale gray, and there near the ground a bit of dark. It moved, lifting slightly to creep one step closer.

He laughed. “Socks!” he shouted, running over. Then with his mind he said, “You almost snuck up on me. If you’d only had a little more snow on you, you would’ve gotten me.”

The pup stopped hiding his mind and stood to full height. He shook off the snow that had accumulated atop his fur, which had the effect of looking like he was materializing out of nothing. -I thought you would spot my nose or eyes first, so I kept my nose in the snow and my eyes closed.-

Dirt sent the mental image of exactly what he’d seen, which gratified the pup. He was better camouflaged than he’d thought.

“Are you mad at me?” asked Dirt. “Because I’m sorry I startled you and sent us here.”

-I might have been mad if you hadn’t followed me. Get on. Let’s go find a place to rest and get you warm.-

“Aren’t you cold?” asked Dirt.

­-No, not at all. My fur is thick. I like it. Now get on.-

“But you’re covered in snow.”

-So are you.-

Well, that was true. Dirt took a little breath of mana and jumped up, where he cleared the snow off his usual spot. He lay down and dug his fingers in, relieved at the warmth he found buried in the fur. His toes still ached, though. He’d need to get his shoes off and warm them up before long.

Socks moved at a run, which surprised Dirt until he noticed the pup was looking with ghost sight instead of his eyes. There was still snow in that world of gray shadows, but it did nothing to impede the pup’s vision. It was almost transparent, shimmering and faint enough to see the flattened grass underneath.

They were indeed a long way from anywhere. Socks had to widen his ghost sight far enough that it gave Dirt a secondhand headache, but there was nothing to see. Just flat, everywhere, although they found a slow-moving river that was frozen over. Dirt might have noticed the taller lumps alongside it where the grass had grown thicker, but that was the only indication of its existence.

The ice was thin, and Socks cracked it with a heavy paw to drink his fill. Dirt slid down to do the same and immediately regretted it. He was soaking wet now from all the melting snow and dunking his face in ice-temperature water didn’t help. But maybe it was for the best. Home might not be able to give them food or water right now. He’d have to find out later.

-We are not lost. I never get lost. But we are very far away. Here, look,- said Socks. He was thinking about his direction sense, focusing on it so Dirt got the idea. Neither of them knew how to express the distance, neither physically nor in days of travel, but the distance between here and Mother’s den was far, far greater than they had ever travelled before. It seemed a dizzying distance, an impossible length of ground to cover.

-Father landed even farther away than this. But he was close enough that he could talk to me,- said Socks. -That old transporter is broken and sent us to random places. He didn’t know it was still functional. He did not think we would follow him.-

“You could have figured out how to use it on your own, I bet,” said Dirt.

-Maybe, but we didn’t,- said Socks. -Father thought it was funny. He will talk to me later.-

“Are we going to meet up with him?” asked Dirt.

Socks replied with a mental image of his direction sense, this time indicating how far away Father was. Dirt took that to mean ‘probably not.’

-So what have you been doing with the trees the last few days, other than getting carried off by the wind?- asked Socks.

Dirt said, “You first.”

Socks grumbled in feigned annoyance.

Dirt played along by patting his fur and sending him a puff of affection. “Come on, you said you weren’t mad at me.”

-Fine, but you will think it is boring. Father said I was getting influenced by you too much after you found the magic primer. He said that wolves do not do magic that way, and we don’t have to, and all those little lines and drawings aren’t real in the first place. That’s a human thing, even if it works when I try it. He made me try standing on one paw. A front paw.-

“I’ve never seen you… hmm. Now that I think about it, your body isn’t really designed for that, is it? So can you do it?”

-No. But Father says if I can learn how, then I’ll just be one step away from changing my shape.-

“Wolves can change their shape?” said Dirt, almost shouting with his mental voice. “Into what?”

-Into whatever we want. But only for a little while because we get tired. Father showed us by turning into a bear.-

“A big one?”

-Yes.-

“Can he turn into a small one?”

-Why would he want to?-

“I’m asking if you can learn to turn into something human sized, obviously,” said Dirt.

Socks huffed his amusement and changed the topic, which excited Dirt terribly. If Socks was being coy, then the answer was yes and they both knew it. The rest of what Father taught him was things about hunting—pack strategies, now that there were enough pups together to learn, and clever details about using scenery and their natural coloring to hide. Socks had been trying that with the snow, in fact, and almost pulled it off.

The hunting stuff was more interesting than Socks thought, but Dirt kept getting distracted by his own imagination. If Socks could turn human size, then he wouldn’t scare anyone the next time they found humans. And he would be easier to feed. And if he could stay that size all night, then he could learn what it’s like to sleep in a bed. And what if he could turn into human shape, not just a different animal? What would he look like?

Each time Dirt’s mind wandered, he expected Socks to interrupt him and confirm or deny it, but the pup just stayed coy and let Dirt’s mind wander. In fact, Socks was probably letting him do it so he’d have more ideas to try once he figured out the trick.

Then it was Dirt’s turn to explain what he’d been up to, but there wasn’t much else to say without giving away the raised city, and he didn’t want to do that because it might give away his villa, and if Socks learned about that, then he’d be able to pry up the secret of the hot bath. So Dirt mostly talked about the schola and the texts there and what he’d read. And all the golden stuff the trees had collected.

Socks had far less trouble jogging through the deepening snow than Dirt did, and thank Grace, the storm passed before night fell, which pushed the horizon back out to a reasonable distance. The landscape remained flat, though, with a few solitary hills here and there.

Night fell before they found any shelter and as tempting as the bright, silvery moonlight shining through the breaking clouds was, Socks didn’t want to risk Dirt freezing to death by going any farther.

He grabbed Dirt with his mind and rolled out from under him, flattening the snow in a small area to make something like a camp.

-We need to dry your clothes. Take them off,- said Socks, rolling back slightly to show how poofy the fur on his stomach was.

Dirt nodded and stripped. Socks held each piece of clothing in the air with his mind while Dirt snuggled into his fur, back first so he could see. He made hot embers that circled around his clothes to slowly dry them out. And surprisingly, the still night air around them held the heat better than they expected. The flattened snow turned icy and didn’t melt, and Socks was big enough to act as a little embankment for the warm air to stay in. Both of them found it satisfying; not that the big pup would have gotten cold, but there was something to be said for a warm belly.

I SEE YOUR PET FOLLOWED YOU, said Father, his voice rumbling in their minds like thunder. Dirt grinned and Socks sent back a wordless mental shout of affection. I SUPPOSE YOU ARE NOT GOING TO THE DESERT AFTER ALL. GO HERE AND KILL EVERYTHING. AND AFTER THAT, GO HERE. THERE IS SOMETHING THERE FOR DIRT. I WAS WAITING UNTIL HE WAS GROWN TO TELL HIM ABOUT IT, BUT IT’S ON THE WAY. AND IF YOU WANT TO, YOU CAN FIND HUMANS HERE AND HERE AND HERE. FINALLY, YOU CAN MEET TWO OF YOUR RELATIVES AND THEIR PUPS HERE. THEY WILL BE PLEASED TO MEET YOU, IF YOU DO NOT STAY LONG.

Father sent impressions of each location in direction-sense, which Socks took care to remember.

CAUSE HAVOC. DIG HARROWS IN THE EARTH. TURN RIVERS FROM THEIR COURSES. LEAVE FIELDS OF BONES BEHIND YOU. EXPLORE AND RETURN WITH EXPERIENCE, MY SON.

And that was all. Father said nothing further. Socks missed him already and sniffed his shoulder where the faintest hint of Father’s scent remained.

Dirt just kept the embers going until his clothes were dry. There was nothing wrong with Socks regretting not getting more time with Father, so Dirt didn’t try to talk him out of it. And with nothing more to say, they waited until Dirt’s clothes were dry and drifted off to the land of dreams. Tomorrow, they’d go find out what Father wanted them to kill.