Katerina dreamed of Wilf that night, and awoke sometime before dawn, certain that he was dead. But he wasn’t. Wilf was asleep himself, chasing rabbits in his own dream, chained to the basement wall of a house at the outskirts of the village. He had been captured a week ago by a villager named Hugo Prummler.
Prummler had often seen the dog running beside the Princess, the whole town had come to know the glittering spectacle of the frail young woman on the massive horse with the swift dog at their side. When he came upon the animal asleep in the shade of his bushes he took it as the answer to his prayers. The dog was valuable. The princess would be distraught at his absence, and after enough time, a week or two, perhaps as much as a month, when a reward had been posted, he would return the mutt to the grateful royal family.
And never work another day in his life.
For Wilf the days in Prummler’s cellar, broken by brief walks at dusk and before sunrise, were an unbearable torment. He had tried barking to gain attention, but the massive villager had beaten him until he stopped. He was afraid for his life; he could sense that this human was more brutal even than the bears he had glimpsed in the deep woods. They would kill him if they caught him, he knew that – but only for food. This man took a gloating pleasure in Wilf’s captivity that had nothing to do with any ultimate outcome. Even the beating was beside the point – the muffling effect of the earthen walls made barking completely inaudible to anyone not standing directly above the basement entrance. It was an unfortunate accident that Prummler had heard him at all. But he had kicked and punched the hapless dog anyway. To dominate another creature was Prummler’s true pleasure; it was an end in itself, and Wilf couldn’t understand it. There was no comparable emotion in the animal kingdom.
Still, all of that was almost beside the point. The worst part of the whole situation was that Wilf’s mission might fail.
He hadn’t just run away as an ordinary dog might do, lured by a strange scent or the temptation of a pack. There were gangs of wild dogs, abandoned by their owners, but they scared Wilf. He wanted nothing to do with them. Besides, as Princess Katerina’s favorite he had too much pride to roam the streets, eating garbage and chasing vermin for sport.
No, he had run away for a reason.
He had understood when Anders and the Princess talked about the gryphillaria leaf – how no one but the dead herbalist could tell the difference between it and the poison plant, pormelusia. No one human, that is; he knew he could tell the musty, astringent smell of those leaves from ten feet away. It was possible that the pormelusia smelled exactly the same, but he doubted it. Perhaps it would to a human …or a horse.
But dogs knew better.
He didn’t want to argue or give anyone false hope so he just left, running for the woods, hoping he could return with the gryphillaria before more bad things happened and the Princess went away with the thick man who smelled like cold bacon fat. The King wanted her to mate with this creature. He couldn’t see the truth, but humans rarely did. Katerina sensed the man’s anger and cruelty. She needed to defy her father, and she could do it if she had the medicine she needed. But he was the only one who could find it for her.
No one else could help.
He had been too eager, though. He had run too far and fallen asleep in the wrong place and now he was trapped and the Princess might be married already. He wasn’t even sure how many days he had been here. His sense of time was no match for his sense of smell. The only thing he was sure of was that he had to escape.
He studied Prummler’s routine as best as he could. There was no chance of escaping from off the sturdy rope leash during the short walks in the walled garden, and the cellar itself had no windows or stairs to the main part of the house. The access to the outside was through a hatch beside the north wall. There was a latch that locked the bay doors and it made a distinctive double click as it closed. After some uncountable number of days, it became to clear to Wilf what he had to do. There were only two moments of opportunity each day – those few seconds when the hatch doors were open, and Wilf was off the leash but not yet chained to the wall. Prummler kept a firm grip on Wilf’s collar, but he had only one hand free. Long ago, he had seen one of the horses pull the bridle out of a stable boy’s hand with a twist of his neck. The image had stayed in his mind. A shadowy choreography began to move through Wilf’s mind, over and over as he lay curled at the furthest extent of the chain. He saw his actions and Prummler’s ever more clearly. And he began to think it could work. There was a lot he had to do, very little time to do it …and only once chance. If he failed Prummler would not allow himself to be so careless again.
For two dusks and two dawns he hesitated, waiting and watching, trying to be sure. Then, on the third day, he made his move. It was an uneventful ten-minute walk and Prummler had been drinking. Wilf knew the smell. And he knew it didn’t make humans faster or more quick-witted.
As Prummler was preparing to secure his collar to the chain, Wilf twisted his head as he had seen the horse do. It bent Prummler’s wrist in the wrong direction and he let go with a shout of pain.
This was it.
He bounded up the stairs and pushed the doors closed with a bang. He shot the bolt with a paw, pushing until he heard the double click, and then ran at the garden wall. He leapt, but it was too high and he almost tumbled over on his back when he landed. He jogged around the house. The front gate was lower. It meant jumping out into the dirt road that ran in front of the building. He might be seen. He might be trampled by horses. But the risk of Prummler’s wife or children seeing him was worse. He took a breath, ran hard at the fence and caught the top rail with his front paws. He pushed hard, snagged it again with his back paws and then he was flying through the air. He landed running in the empty road, and in another moment he was through an alley across the street, into she shadows and gone.
Half an hour later he was hitting his stride, panting as he ran – the loping, steady sprint that had kept him even with horses and left other dogs in the dust since he was barely more than a pup.
He might have reached the forest by midnight, if not for the rabbit trap.
The rabbit trap?
noooooooooooooooo! Wilf!