He came to hold my hand now, and I smiled up at him, so happy that he stood beside me now. He bent and kissed me, whispering, “The God called me to your side.”
I nodded.
Kitto came to stand on my other side but didn’t try to take my hand. I reached out to him, and the smile that flashed joyful across his face was so worth that small gesture. “What’s happening?” he whispered.
“Magic,” I said.
The black dog snuffled Bryluen’s onesie-covered body. She stared at him, eyes intent, not afraid, and then the big nose touched her bare face. The rush of magic washed over us in a skin-tingling, hair-raising wash of warmth that filled the world with the scent of pine and roses, and the scent of spring like a wash of fresh rain that brings the first flowers.
The black fur ran as if it were water moved by wind, and where that wind touched it the fur turned the green of grass and leaves, fur growing slightly longer, thicker, more wiry-looking. The shaggy green head was bigger than the baby it lay beside, but it raised that head and looked at us. Its tongue lolled out happily, and the overly wide eyes held both happy dog and something else, something more.
“Cu Sith,” Frost whispered, and it was, the great watchdogs that used to guard our faerie mounds, our sithens. One had appeared in Illinois and attached itself to the Seelie Court, and a second had appeared here in L.A. when the wild magic created new lands of faerie inside the walled estate. The first one had run away to take up its post among the Seelie and spent a lot of time protecting the servants from King Taranis’s rage. Taranis was afraid of their Cu Sith, partly because of what it was, and partly, I thought, because it didn’t like him, and a Cu Sith was the heart of any sithen it guarded. It was a way of saying that his faerie mound didn’t like him much.
Spike raised his head skyward and gave one long, deep baying howl. The other dogs joined him, one, two at a time, so that it was like a choir, each voice rising and blending with the next, so that we stood in the center of that beautiful, mournful, joyful noise. It reminded me more of the sound of wolves than dogs.
Gwenwyfar began to cry, and the other black dog went to her crib and looked back at us whining, as the howls reverberated and faded in the small room. We lowered the crib and the big black dog sniffed her. She cried harder, striking out with tiny legs and waving small fists. The dog snuffled her harder, rolling her a little with its muzzle; one of her tiny fists must have touched the fur, because white began to spread from its nose backward like a white snow covered the bare earth, except that this snow was shaggy fur, and the dog turned huge saucerlike eyes upward. Its great jaws were full of razor-sharp teeth, and though it looked like a big, white dog, there was just enough different about its eyes and mouth to make you think, Not quite a dog. It was one, and it wasn’t.
“Galleytrot,” Kitto said. He was right, it was known as a ghost dog, something that chased travelers on lonely roads and haunted lonely places. As the Cu Sith was the bright, high court of faerie, so the galleytrot was the scary story told around the winter fire, and a warning to stay in groups, because alone, things that weren’t human could find you and steal you away. When the wild magic had come, the only other galleytrot had come to the hands of the goblin twins, Holly and Ash. There was no way for them to be Gwenwyfar’s fathers; they had come to my bed too late. Galleytrots weren’t exclusive to the goblins, but they were certainly more Unseelie than Seelie Court. Gwenwyfar might look perfectly Seelie, but her true heritage showed in the white dog at her side, as Bryluen’s showed in her green dog. If theGalleytrot had come to Bryluen, I’d have wondered more if her possible goblin heritage might come from the twins.
Kitto said, “There’s no dog for Alastair.”
The door opened, and it was Doyle with another black dog at his side. The dog went to Alastair’s crib, and Frost lowered it for him. I took his hand in mine again, and Doyle took his other one, so that Frost stood in the middle of us as the black dog sniffed the baby. Alastair stared into the big face like Bryluen had, and then the dog touched his face, gently. Alastair made a soft sound and then the fur ran with colors, but something was different with this one, because it wasn’t just the fur that changed, but the dog began to shrink, as if the big black body were being erased, or condensing down.
“What is it?” Kitto asked.
Doyle bent down and picked it up, ruffling its long ears. “A puppy,” he said.
“But a puppy what?” Kitto asked.
I touched the long, trailing ears; they were silky. “Hound of some kind,” I said.
The puppy began to whine and wriggle. Doyle put it on the floor, but it began to whimper and cry. Alastair started to cry, too.
Doyle frowned for a moment, then picked the puppy up and set it in the crib. It licked Alastair’s face, and the crying stopped. It walked around him and settled on the other side, its white and red puppy body stretched the length of his, Alastair’s hand touching its back.
“He’s too little to have reached out for the puppy,” I said.
“Perhaps,” Doyle said.
“We can’t leave the puppy in with him, it’s not housebroken,” I said.
“It’s his puppy, Merry.”
“Do you know what kind of dog it is?”
“As you said, a hound.”
“The other two dogs are guard dogs; what can a puppy do?” Frost asked.
The puppy gave a contented sigh, and Alastair made a similar happy sound. “Maybe every boy needs a dog,” Doyle said.