Into the thinking kingdoms - Alan Dean Foster [55]
“I did not say that you did,” the herdsman replied quietly. On the other side of the cat-a-mountain, Simna made gargling pig noises in his sleep. Behind Ehomba, the withering fire continued to cast warmth from its bones. “I asked if you could find out.”
Canine eyes searched his fine, honest face. “You are an interesting man, Etjole Ehomba. I can herd the lightning, but I think maybe you could shear it.”
He smiled. “Even if such a thing were possible, which it is not, what would one do with clippings from the lightning?”
“I don’t know. Feed it to a machine, perhaps.” Coming to a decision, she rose, stretched her front feet out before her and thrust her hips high in the air, yawned, and beckoned for him to follow.
She stopped in the cozy room’s farthest corner, facing a two-foot-high handmade wooden box with a forward-slanting lid. On the front of the lid someone had used a large-bladed knife to engrave a pair of crossed bones with a dog heart above and singular paw print below. “Open it.”
For the barest instant, Ehomba hesitated. His mother and father and aunts and uncles and the elders of the village had often told the children stories of warlocks and witches, of sorcerers and sorceresses who could turn themselves into eagles, or frogs, into oryx or into great saber-toothed cats. He had grown up hearing tales of necromancers who could become like trees to listen silently and spy on people, and of others capable of turning themselves into barracuda to bite off the legs of unwary gatherers of shellfish. There were rumors of hermits who at night became blood-supping bats, and of scarecrowlike women who could become wind. Others were said to be able to slip out of their skins, much as one would shed a shirt or kilt. Some grew long fangs and claws and their eyes were said to be like small glowing moons of fire.
But he had never heard of a witch among the animals themselves, who had not at some time been human. He told her so.
“Do you think only humans have their conjurers and seers? Animals have their own magic, which we share but rarely with your kind. Most of it you would not understand. Some of it would not even seem like magic to you. We see things differently, hear things differently, taste and smell and feel things differently. Why should our alchemy also not be different?” Eyes the color of molten amber stared back up at him. “If you want my help, Etjole Ehomba, you must open the box.”
Still he hesitated. A backward glance showed that his companions slept on. There was no sign of movement from the direction of the cottage’s single bedroom. “Does Coubert know?”
“Of course he knows.” Her muzzle brushed the back of his hand, her wet nose momentarily damp against his dry skin. “No one can live with a witch and not know what she is. Human or dog, cat or mouse, we are all the same. Some things you cannot hide forever even from the ones you love.”
“And he has no magic powers of his own?”
“None whatsoever,” she assured him. “But he is good to me. I have clean water every day, and I do not have to kill my own food.” For the barest instant, her eyes blazed with something that ran deeper than dogness. “We are comfortable here, the two of us, and if a right woman or strong husky were to come along, neither of us would resent the other’s pairing. We complement one another in too many ways.” She gestured with her black nose. “The box.”
His long, strong fingers continued to hover over the lid. “What is in it?”
“Dog magic.”
Lifting the cover and resting it back against the wall, he peered inside. No crystal globe or golden tuning fork greeted his gaze. No bottles of powdered arcanity or pin-pierced dolls stared back up at him. There was not much at all in the bin, and what there was would not have intrigued a disgruntled thief for more than a second.
Some old bones, more than a little rancid and well chewed; a long strip of thick old leather, also heavily gnawed; a ball of solid rubber from which most of the color and design had long since been eroded; a stick of some highly polished