In the Time of Kings Read Online Free PDF Page A

slams the window closed.
    “But he’s my friend,” I whisper, my hand now resting on Ivanhoe’s back. “I love him.”
    For a long time, I stroke and stroke and stroke, as if I can somehow revive him. But he remains still, his body losing warmth, his legs growing stiffer by the minute.
    My dog, my buddy, had been alive longer than I had. He had always been there throughout all of my twelve years. I think of all the days we’d spent together — his short legs spinning over gravel roads as he trailed after me when I rode my bike out toward the hidden pond. There, beyond the railroad yard, I battled imaginary dragons with a trash can lid as my shield and a rusty piece of rebar as my sword. Ivanhoe was my faithful squire, ready to alert me to danger with an excited bark if a stray cat wandered near or lick my face clean if I stumbled while clambering up the sand hill. Before we returned to the house, I would always pick the burrs from his hair. As he got older, I’d walk my bike home while he lagged behind, his steps unsteady, his breaths coming heavily. Eventually, I had to put him in my Radio Flyer wagon, the bottom lined with an old blanket, and pull him behind me.
    “Ross?”
    It’s Claire. She comes through the gate and squats beside me.
    “I’m sorry. Really sorry. I’ll miss him, too.” She bends down and kisses his muzzle. “He was the best dog ever. Nobody could ever take his place.”
    For a long while we sit with him, neither of us saying a word as the neighborhood stirs to life on that lazy summer morning. A car with a noisy muffler rumbles by. The Bradford twins from across the street squeal with glee as they roller skate down the sidewalk. Somewhere, the deep ‘woof, woof’ of a German Shepherd guarding his territory booms.
    “We should bury him,” I say.
    “How about here — under the tree? You could come out and talk to him whenever you wanted that way.”
    I contemplate it. Mom won’t care. But Dad ...
    “By the pond,” I say. “He’d like it there.”
    Even though I’ve made the decision, I remain where I am. Any minute, I’m sure he’ll wake up, yawn, and gaze at me with those cloudy eyes. I’m not ready to say goodbye. Not yet. Certainly not forever.
    I meet Claire’s eyes. She understands.
    “Here.” She lays both hands across Ivanhoe’s ribs. “Do like this. We’ll help him pass over. Do you want me to say the blessing?”
    I nod and she closes her eyes, so I do the same. She says a bunch of words I don’t understand, sometimes pausing as she struggles with how to say them.
    When she’s done, I fetch the wagon and she helps me put him in it.
    “What language was that?” I say.
    “Latin,” she answers. “I’m not sure if anyone speaks it anymore, but the priest at my church is the only one I know who uses it. I think it was the right thing to say.”
    Claire’s family is Catholic. My dad says if her parents were good Catholics, they’d have more kids than just her and her brother. I never really understood that and always meant to ask him if we weren’t good Lutherans then, because there was only me.
    “I know this won’t make it hurt less,” she goes on, “but when my grandpa died I asked my grandma if she was sad. She said what made it easier was knowing she’d see him again someday. She didn’t know when or where, but she was sure of it.”
    “In heaven, you mean?”
    “In her next life.” She wrinkles her nose. “Crazy, I know.”
    Maybe, but I’d like to believe it’s true.

5
    HERE AND NOW
    Orkney Islands, Scotland — 2013
    T he ferry ride across the tranquil, steely waters of Pertland Firth is both soothing and eerie. A thick mist had drifted around us soon after our departure at sunrise from John O’ Groats at the northernmost tip of Caithness — although ‘sunrise’ in this case is a figurative term, since the sun has yet to make an appearance. We’d had to get up at, as Claire liked to call it, O-dark-hundred just to catch the bus from