Here's the second chapter! I'll put a photo in my profile for those of you who want to visualise the puppy. Incidentally, all the information in this chapter about Cavalier health issues is correct as far as I know, although obviously greatly simplified. Google 'cavaliertalk' or 'cavalierhealth' for more detail.
Please, if you are considering getting one of these dogs, do your homework and only buy a puppy from someone who has done the appropriate screening and has the paperwork to prove it. For Cavaliers, that means getting heart clearance for grandparents (the 'clear heart' test is virtually worthless below the age of five) and it must come from a vet cardiologist, not a normal vet. That's the minimum. Ideally, the breeder would also have MRI'd his/her stock and be able to discuss the results. Only an A or D MRI result can be bred from if I remember correctly. Syringomyelia is not something you want to deal with if you can avoid it with a little time and care.
Rant over! Please do review and let me know what you think. Thanks to adodcefa, who has stuck with this universe since the first part of The Lost Ones.
By the time the puppy had been with them for two days, there was no longer any question about keeping her. Even Clyde had capitulated when the tiny bundle of determined puppy climbed up his leg and chest and then sat and licked his face for a solid five minutes.
And then Luke decided to google 'Cavalier King Charles Spaniel'.
For the next twenty four hours, Sarah Jane and her extended family were subjected to a running stream of random information about the breed. Which was fine when discussing some of the more endearing traits of the Cavalier, and less so when Luke, with mounting alarm, reported the high incidence of early heart failure and agonising neurological conditions. At that point, Sarah Jane insisted on bringing the puppy back to the vet.
When it was their turn, Sarah Jane marched into the consulting room followed by her three boys. Maria and Clyde would have been there too if they could, but there were limits to how much teenager her small car could carry.
Luke put the puppy on the table. "Can you do a genetic scan?" he asked the vet seriously. "Mr Smith says he doesn't doesn't do Earth animals. We want to know about Mitral Valve Disease and Syringomyelia and Dry-Eye-Curly-Coat Syndrome and Cushing's and -"
"All right, that's enough," Sarah Jane put in hastily when the vet's jaw dropped and then dropped again. She flashed an apologetic smile. "As you can tell, my son has been researching Cavaliers since his last visit. I gather this is not a particularly healthy breed - or is that just scaremongering?"
The vet ran his hands over the puppy. "There's truth in both of those statements, Miss Smith," he began slowly. "Certainly, the Cavalier faces two very serious health issues in MVD - that's the heart problem - and Syringomyelia, where the skull literally becomes too small to hold the brain and pain and other problems can appear. But - and it's a big but - both of these are, by and large, acquired, degenerative conditions. She certainly doesn't have a heart murmur now, and SM rarely shows in a pup of this age."
"Is there anything we can do to prevent it?" Luke asked eagerly. "I looked, but it didn't say -"
"Only time will tell," the vet said ruefully. "Unfortunately, since this little girl is a rescue, all I can tell you is that you should hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Get the best pet insurance you can find and afford."
Sarah Jane heard the boys whispering and nodding in that strange way they had, as if they could communicate almost without speech. She started to ask about the insurance when Ned spoke.
"We will pay for that," he said in his formal way. "All three of us."
The vet glanced from them to Sarah Jane. "You're fortunate to have such responsible sons, Miss Smith."
"And we're fortunate to have her for our mum," Luke returned, a trifle too quickly.
She put a hand on his arm; all three of her boys were still affected by the events of six months previously, and Luke in particular tended to react badly to any criticism, implied or otherwise, of Sarah Jane as a result.
"Thank you; that's a relief. There was one other thing I wanted to ask," she began as she remembered the news bulletin from several days before. "You mentioned this neurological condition - Syringomyelia, was it?"
"Yes. Or SM, as it's often known."
"Hmm. Well, I was wondering ... could it cause odd behaviour? Such as making the dog want to go to a specific spot and stay there?"
The vet looked amused. "It would be unusual. SM affects the nervous system and the body's response to sensation, as a rule. I wouldn't expect it to cause mass pilgrimage to Whitehall, for example, if you're thinking of that ridiculous news item from the other day."
"Where's that?" Sarah Jane heard Ricky mutter to Ned.
"He's talking about the only surviving bit of Whitehall Palace. You might know it as York Place," Luke began, his passion for providing information overriding his discretion. "It burnt down in 1698."
The vet was looking at Luke strangely. "He's a bit of a Mastermind, isn't he?"
"Just a bit," Sarah Jane agreed as she lifted the puppy and smiled. "Thanks for your reassurance. We'll be back again if we need anything." She began to usher the boys out of the consulting room.
"Don't forget to worm her!" the vet called behind her.
"We won't!" she called back. "Thanks!" With a sigh of relief, she closed the consulting room door over, paid the receptionist, and then hustled her sons out of the surgery and back to the car. She handed the puppy to Ned.
"What will we call her?" Ricky demanded, having been unusually quiet throughout the visit.
Sarah Jane wondered if he'd been stunned into silence by the interior of the surgery; the medical prowess of the twenty first century still awed both Ricky and Ned when it was aimed at humans, never mind animals.
"I nearly blew it, didn't I," Luke mourned, ignoring Ricky. "I got excited and I said too much."
Sarah Jane smiled at him as he and Ricky - being shorter than Ned - clambered into the back. "Never stop being excited, Luke." She slid into the driver's seat. "The universe is an amazing place."
She could see how his face had brightened in the rear view mirror and started the car. "Let's get home. I'm sure Maria and Clyde will be waiting for us and we can talk about the strange Cavalier behaviour more then."
"But we are we gonna call her?" Ricky repeated, having absorbed modern slang and abbreviations at an astonishing rate. "Just 'Puppy' all the time?"
"Mum?" Luke prompted.
"It's not up to me," Sarah Jane told him. "What do you think?"
"I don't like naming things," Luke said and she hid a smile, remembering how he'd told Maria that he liked her name for himself.
"Ricky? Any ideas?"
"I called my last dog Rex," the boy said cheerfully, "but Regina just sounds wrong."
"Ned, then?"
The latter took so long to respond that Sarah Jane took her eyes off the road to glance at him. "Ned?"
"I was thinking," he said softly. "She wants only to be touching you. She is truly a comforter spaniel. And she is the same colour as my ring."
He indicated the small silver ring he wore on his right hand, one of the few relics he retained from his previous life as Edward V. The stone at the centre of the ring was a red-gold amber, very similar in tone to the colour of the puppy's fur.
"Amber heals the body, the mind and the soul, or so my physician told me," Ned went on. "That seems an appropriate name for one such as this, don't you think?"
Sarah Jane smiled as she parked her car in her driveway in Bannerman Road. "Amber. I like it. It fits. What do you think, boys?"
The other two agreed that it would do, for a girl pup, and Sarah Jane laughed. "All right, Amber it is! And I see the TV's on. Clyde and Maria must've let themselves in." She shook her head as all three boys managed to get out of the car and into the house in the time it took her to turn off the engine, extract herself, and lock the car doors.
When she closed the front door behind her, the noise coming from the living room made her wince. The kids were talking and laughing - or arguing and laughing, it was difficult to tell which - and the puppy was barking in that high pitched puppy yip. And big dogs were barking. Sarah Jane dropped her keys and marched into the sitting room where she threw her coat over the back of the sofa.
" - second time it's been on, it must be aliens," Clyde insisted excitedly. "Think about it, it's all too convenient. Sarah Jane gets a dog and then weird stuff happens?"
"I don't think Amber's an alien," Sarah Jane interrupted firmly. "We've just had her to the vet again and been given the all clear."
"And isn't that exactly what the aliens would want?" Maria supplemented. "I don't want to believe it either, Sarah Jane, but what if he's right?"
Amber's barking grew to such a frenzied pitch that Sarah Jane clapped her hands over her ears. "Someone put the puppy in the kitchen. She can't behave like that. Ricky, turn the TV off. Ah!" as comparative silence descended, broken by the fainter protests coming from the kitchen as Luke returned, minus Amber.
"Now," she said once her 'team' had collected themselves and everyone was sitting down more or less quietly, "Clyde, tell me what you and Maria were shrieking about."
The two exchanged a glance. "Those dogs, the Cavaliers, they're still behaving weirdly. 'Member the other day they mentioned how a small number of them were pulling their owners towards Whitehall? Well, today Blenheim Palace has had them too!"
"Blenheim Palace?" Luke repeated, a line appearing between his brows. "That's weird too, 'cos there's a connection between it and the breed."
"How?" Maria asked.
"Well, you know Cavaliers come in four colours?"
"If we don't we should," Clyde muttered in an undertone to Maria that made Sarah Jane smile before pulling her face straight. Luke had been rather enthusiastic. "Yeah, ruby, black and tan, tricolour and Blen - oh, I see!"
"They're called Blenheim because of the palace?" Ricky put in. "Why?"
"'Cos the story goes that when the Duke of Marlborough was away fighting, his wife was so worried that she kept rubbing a spot on her little spaniel's head. Good stress buster but she didn't know that, did she? Anyway, she rubbed away and the dog was pregnant, so when all the puppies were born they had a little brown spot on her heads. It's called the 'Blenheim spot' or lozenge."
"OK, so the Cavaliers have been gathering at Whitehall and Blenheim Palace," Ricky said. "Why Whitehall?"
Luke clasped his hands behind his head and sighed, leaning back against the sofa. "You've all gotten lazy, d'you know that? Why do I have to do all the work?"
Sarah Jane rolled her eyes. Clyde laughed. Maria and Ricky pummelled Luke with cushions and Ned sat quietly in his favourite armchair next to the fire, looking troubled.
"Are you going to explain or sit there looking superior?" Maria asked once she'd finished her impromptu cushion fight.
"I don't need to look superior, I am superior," the boy told her, reducing her to glaring silence. His mother smiled; a year ago, Luke would have presented such a statement as simple fact, but the twinkle in his eyes and the twitch at one corner of his mouth now revealed the change.
"Lukey-boy, my work here is done," Clyde said with a smirk and a slap on the back as Maria gawped. "You've finally managed to shut a girl up. Congrats, my son."
Maria raised her cushion threateningly. "Wanna bet?"
"Do you want to hear this or not?" Luke demanded with point, and his friends subsided. "Whitehall's easy. It was used as a palace in the seventeenth century, and that where Charles II lived. Charles II is the man the dogs are named after - Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, only the Cavalier bit is from something else. Anyway, so far, we've had the dogs appear in small numbers in two places associated with them. And you think that's aliens?!"
"Maybe they're doggy aliens," Clyde said, rather feebly for him.
"Maybe we should just talk to Mr Smith," Maria suggested. "See if he's noticed anything strange."
"Yeah, I keep meaning to ask." Clyde turned to look at Sarah Jane. "How did he start working again? Properly?"
"Oh, the Doctor fixed it for me before he went off again," she told him, getting to her feet. "Apparently the Jenan were able to beam out a pulse to disable him as long as their TARDIS was within orbit. All the Doctor had to do was break the link with the er, JARDIS. Talking to Mr Smith is a good idea. Come on!"
She led the way to the foot of the stairs, but paused to allow her younger companions to go ahead. Her original team, followed by Ricky, went up quickly, but Ned lagged behind. She raised her eyebrows at him. "You all right?"
"Yes." There was an awkward pause, and Sarah Jane sighed inwardly. "Do you go on up, my lady. I will check on Amber first and follow you."
"She'll probably be asleep," she told him as she turned to ascend the stairs. "She'd had a long day for such a baby."
"Still, I would like to make sure. We would not hear her cry in the attic."
"Ah, Edward Plantagenet, you're a softie, you know that?" She patted his shoulder, noting how his face lit up at the sound of his true name. "I'll see you in a moment."
She watched him vanish in the direction of the kitchen and sighed again, more loudly, before heading atticwards. After much discussion, the princes had taken on the surname 'Neville'. Ned had argued, quietly but insistently, for 'York' which had the virtue of being true, but she had vetoed it. The chances of people realising that the boys were temporally displaced princes were infinitesimally small, but there was no point in tempting fate. So they'd been persuaded to adopt the family name of their paternal grandmother Cecily Neville, Duchess of York. Only now was Sarah Jane realising how much the change rankled with the older boy.
"Well?" she prompted when she entered the attic and no-one turned. "Did Mr Smith have anything useful to say?"
The moment lengthened. Even the computer remained quiet, with just the occasional blink from the console indicating that it was even on.
Then Ricky flung himself into her arms. "They're all dead," he said very quietly, his voice worrying toneless. "All the little comforter dogs near Blenheim Palace. They're all dead!"