Dog Boy Read Online Free PDF

very near. It was Black Dog, eyes shining, tail waving. Romochka understood, yipped and followed. Black Dog led him outside and Romochka blinked in that forgotten light. He had not been outside in daylight now for more than a month. The sun glimmered, a white plate in the flat grey sky. The earth was pillowed in white. Black Dog shone black against the snow. The cream eyebrows and mask gleamed uncommonly. His long winter coat made a thick scarf over his neck and shoulders. He turned bright eyes to Romochka; he was excited too. He licked Romochka’s face and capered to the church door. Romochka skidded after him in socks, squeaking through the powder snow. Black Dog peed on the broken door, then led Romochka out of the building. The apple trees were white figures, each twig highlighted. Every stick, bent grass and broken beam in the courtyard had a mantle of snow. Black Dog led Romochka to the gate, and, for the first time, outside.
    Everything had changed. The trees were a lacework of white above billows of white and shadow. Romochka looked back towards the city. The ranks of apartment blocks too were changed, their façades ornamented with the geometric pattern made by snow on a thousand balustrades and window sills. He couldn’t remember ever having seen that snow was beautiful.
    Black Dog yipped and Romochka turned to watch him pee on the gatepost, then out on the lane on the far corner of the street wall, on the near corner, and then on the next building, which was a three-storey concrete construction so unfinished that every floor had filled with drifting snow. Romochka then carefully did the same markers as Black Dog, holding in enough pee to last. Black Dog checked their trail and was happy. He trotted back inside, turning at the lair entrance to look back for Romochka, tail waving. No nipping, now, just friendly telling. How polite! Romochka was delighted. He sought out Black Dog in the bed when they all settled, and, hesitant, offered to curl up with him. Black Dog stretched out in invitation, and, as Romochka twined his arms around that thick neck and buried his face into that heady male coat, Black Dog sighed and licked the boy’s face for the first time with true tenderness.
    After that, Romochka peed carefully on the markers; and all the dogs, he knew, would smell it and know that he was doing his job.
     
    Winter deepened. Romochka went up to the frozen gloom outside only to pee. The long darkness upset him. The light in the lair was an almost interminable, blank nothingness. He would wake up refreshed and ready to play, only to find his eyes opening on darkness upon darkness with no relief. Daylight when it came made only a feeble glow near the entrance hole. At first he stayed on the nest, miserable and shivering, waiting with increasing annoyance for the shy day.
    In the darkness of that first midwinter he would find White Sister at his hand the moment he thought he wanted her, and before he reached for her. She came to him now and then simply to keep him company and he found that his fingertips knew her better than the others.
    He listened to the other puppies play all around the lair without him. He waited for light to filter in, or for the grown dogs to come home, or for the puppies to tire and come and play a little or sleep with him. But the puppies soon discovered that he couldn’t see them and they started new games. He found himself pounced on from nowhere and mauled; leapt upon, wrestled, kissed, slurped and savaged. He stopped sulking and started listening. He could hear where they were in that large expanse. He could hear the giveaway sounds of them sneaking up on him. He couldn’t tell at first which one was which until they were on top of him. He knew when it was Grey Brother who landed on him, because he darted in and away with agility. Black Sister bit hardest. Brown Brother was clumsy and indecisive about which bit of him to grab and snuffled a lot while he thought about it; and White