Here is our next chapter, in which Cadpig and Lilly take the first steps toward a new life.
III. The Fool. III.
The train pulled into the station. There was no time for hesitation. Cadpig leapt down from the car and onto the platform. Lilly followed slowly behind. She stood there at the edge, looking over nervously. Did she really want to do this?
"Come on, Lilly," Cadpig encouraged. "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, they say."
"That's… a little more than a step," Lilly said as she examined the distance between herself and the platform.
"It'll be fine, especially for a strong wolf like you," Cadpig called back with another wink. She was trying to get Lilly's courage up. She knew she still had to be tender, but if Lilly took much longer, the train might leave with her still in it.
Lilly closed her eyes and backed up. "Well, okayyyy…." she said when she came to a stop. Without opening her eyes she ran forward and made the jump. For what felt like hours, she seemed to hover in the air as the world stopped around her. There was just her and the air. Lilly opened her eyes and smiled with joy. She had made it!
The first thing she saw was the ground just a few inches from her face. Soon her nose and then her whole head and then her whole body collided with it. She toppled over onto her back.
Cadpig stood over her. "See, it wasn't that bad! The landing needs just a little work, but you had nice form!"
Lilly slowly and clumsily got up, trying to shake the slight daze out of her head. "You… you think so?"
Cadpig nodded. "Sure! You'll be a pro at jumping out of trains in no time!" Then, mostly to herself, she added, "If only we could turn that into a broader skill…."
While Lilly still found her bearings, Cadpig looked around to find anybody or anything which could tell her where they were. Suddenly, she noticed an old Greyhound laying by the station-master's office.
"Well, I suppose he's as good a person to ask as any," she said.
Lilly followed slowly, without saying anything.
"Excuse me, sir," Cadpig said in her most cheerful way. "Would you mind telling us where we are? You see, we got on the train a while ago and have kinda… lost track of things."
The old Greyhound slowly lifted up his head, as though coming out of a deep sleep. Except that he still looked to be half in a deep sleep. But he spoke nonetheless. "We don't get many dogs coming on the cargo trains. You two must be strays."
"You could say that…" Cadpig began coyly.
"But I'm not a dog," Lilly whispered to Cadpig. "I'm a wolf."
Cadpig quickly shushed her and then nervously moved her eyes upward, encouraging Lilly's to follow. Above the Greyhound was a large notice stating that any wild predatory animals should be shot on sight.
"What did your friend say?" the old Greyhound said. "I'm getting on in years and am a bit hard of hearing."
"Yeah, we're strays," Cadpig answered. "I'm a Dalmatian and she's a Samoyed."
Lilly had no clue what a Samoyed was, but she thought it best to play along. It was for her own good, after all.
"Yeah," Lilly said, a little more loudly. "I'm not a wolf or anything."
"Overdoing it," Cadpig said quietly to Lilly.
But the Greyhound seemed satisfied with this line of questioning. "Well, you two girls are now in the town of Nortonsburg, California, just west of the Sierra Nevada range. It's not a big place, but we like it."
Cadpig smiled and thanked the Greyhound. But Lilly did not even notice; she had fallen into a reverie of sorts. Not a big place? How could the Greyhound say that? It looked larger than anything she had ever seen, she thought as she looked over at the tall buildings in the short distance. No tree, no mountain, had prepared her for the grandeur of these manmade structures.
"Lilly. Lilly!"
Lilly was snapped out of her trance. She saw Cadpig walking up slightly ahead of her, signaling for her to catch up. With a small, embarrassed smile, Lilly did.
"Now you two girls be careful out there," the Greyhound said. "This town may be small, but it still ain't the kindest place for strays!"
Both Cadpig and Lilly waved goodbye and continued onward, neither taking the warning much to heart. Both had been used to receiving such advice of that kind before. Cadpig never listened to it, Lilly always listened to it. And yet, both of them had come to the same place in the end.
"I don't get it," Lilly said as she and Cadpig walked through the half-empty streets of Nortonsburg. "Why would they want to shoot me for being a wolf?"
"Wolves aren't a common sight in cities," Cadpig explained. "When one shows up, people get kinda scared."
"Oh," Lilly said quietly, her eyes turning downward to the pavement. "I didn't know I was scary…."
Cadpig sighed as she looked at her companion. "Oh, we're not having another pity party again, are we? Lilly, you're not scary. It's just that people don't understand."
"Why don't they understand? I've never done anything to them!"
"I know, Lilly, but that's just the way it is."
"I don't want people to be afraid of me."
"And they won't be, but you just have to be smart about it. If anybody asks you, say you're a Samoyed. You're not a wolf, got it?"
Lilly lifted up her head long enough to tilt it. "Got it, I guess."
Cadpig nodded. "Okay, stick to that and you'll do fine. See, the trick is that you just have to be kind and caring and gentle and always treat other canines with respect no matter what they do or how they do it. You just have to forgive and forget. You have to – oof!"
As Cadpig had been looking at Lilly, she did not notice the other canine until they were upon each other. Both fell to the ground, but Cadpig did not even seem to spend a second on it. She was quickly on her feet again.
"Why, you little punk!" she shouted. "Don't you pay any attention to where you're going? Just who do you think you are, walking all over us like that?"
"Cadpig," Lilly said nervously, "I, uh, I thought you said to always be gentle and forgive no matter what."
"There's exceptions to every rule." Cadpig answered.
The other canine picked himself up. This was the first time the two had a chance to get a good look at him, or even see that it was a 'him' in the first place. He was not overly tall, being just a small bit taller than Lilly, but his thin, lanky body and scraggily fur gave him the appearance of being much taller. He was black-furred for the most part, except for a streak of white running down his chest and some patches elsewhere which had greyed before their time. His mane was just as scraggily as the rest of his fur, and its most notable feature consisted two large strands of hair coming down, one hovering over each eye. But there was a more curious thing about his eyes – or, more precisely, what was in front of them. He was wearing a fine-gilt pair of pince-nez spectacles, attached by a cord to the purple collar around his neck.
As he regained himself, he scrambled around to pick up the pen and little note-book he had been carrying. As he stood up, he glared at Cadpig. "Watch where I'm going?" he barked. "Watch where I'm going? How about you pay a bit more attention when a distinguished individual is coming your way!"
"A distinguished individual?" Cadpig mocked. "You don't look very distinguished to me!"
He growled. "You can tell by my purple color that I'm a gentleman and a scholar!* I'll have you know that someday I'm going to win the Nobel Prize!"
"Oh, I think I'll be winning a Nobel Peace Prize long before you will," Cadpig answered, her eyes narrowing. "Definitely. The Peace Prize is mine!"
Lilly looked back and forth between them without a clue as to what she should do. The situation was escalating. She was an Omega; it was her job to calm things down and stop the bickering. But that was a job, too, which she had never felt very good at.
"Oh, I don't want a Nobel Peace Prize," he answered. "They only give that to people in India who build houses for orphans and unimportant stuff like that. No, I'm going for the real prize; the Literature Prize!"
"You're teeth'll become orphans if you continue talking like that," Cadpig said sharply. Somehow sweetly, but still sharply.
"Hey, I know," Lilly said nervously. "Does anybody want to see some turtle impressions?"
The male tried to write something down in his book but his pen had been jammed by the fall. He shook it to try and get it to write again, but it kindly rewarded him for his efforts by squirting dark black ink all over the page, covering completely the very lines he had been working on all morning.
"You brute!" he yelled. "You've ruined my masterpiece! How am I supposed to win the Literature Prize now?"
"You'll live," Cadpig answered sardonically.
"Not if I don't get something else written!" he protested. "I am a poet, after all!"
"Ha! You, a poet!" Cadpig guffawed. "More like a potato from the looks of you!"
Lilly could not help laughing at that. Cadpig smiled; at least Lilly knew what a potato was, apparently.
But the poet was getting flustered. "Oh, you people just don't understand culture!"
"What we don't understand is rudeness!" Cadpig barked back. "There's no need to be rude around here!"
"Cadpig," Lilly whispered. "I thought conflict resolution involved stopping fights, not starting them."
Suddenly, Cadpig's eyes grew wide. She began to calm down. She smiled at the harried poet. "You know what?" she said. "How about we just forget about it? Let bygones be bygones!"
"Thanks for that, Lilly," Cadpig whispered over her shoulder to her friend.
The poet did not know how to respond by this sudden change in temperament. "Okay?" He said, trying to go along with it. For, however he may have seemed, he was not truly a fighter at heart.
"Well, let's start things over," Cadpig said happily. "What's your name?"
The male suddenly stiffened up proudly as he said in a booming voice, "Walton Bradby Yards, illustrious poet, at your service!"
He offered a paw to Cadpig who, surprised by the gesture, took a moment to shake it. Then he offered it to Lilly, who just looked at it blankly, being even more surprised by this than Cadpig had been. She took a step back and looked to Cadpig, who nodded encouragingly. Lilly took it and gave it a limp shake.
"Now I didn't catch either of your names," Walton said.
"Oh, I'm Cadpig and I'm a Dalmatian. This is Lilly and she's a Samoy–"
"A wolf!" Walton exclaimed as soon as he turned his gaze to Lilly.
Cadpig and Lilly jointly shushed him. Both looked around nervously to ensure that nobody had heard this.
"Oh, don't worry," Walton said. "It's nothing to be ashamed of. I'm half-wolf myself, on my father's side. He's what they call a lone-wolf. And a painter, but that's neither here nor there. My mom's one of the most successful champion show-dogs on the west coast!"
"But the humans had a sign that said they'd kill wolves," Lilly said, understandably very frightened by the prospect.
"Oh, well, if the humans know, of course they'll kill you!" Walton said. "So don't tell them!"
"I… wasn't going to," Lilly said quietly, stunned and shamed by the strength of Walton's answer.
Cadpig spoke up to defend her. "Lilly's not used to towns or dogs. We're still working on that and she doesn't really need to be confused right now."
Walton suddenly realized something. "Wait, I've never seen either of you before. You too aren't from around here, are you?"
Both females shook their heads.
"I'm from Jasper Park, Alberta, Canada," Lilly recited like a schoolgirl, though she quickly hid behind Cadpig after she said it.
"I'm from Grutely…. er, somewhere over there!" Cadpig waved her hand breezily in the direction of the east.
A wide grin developed on Walton's face. "Well, you two need someone to show you around, don't you?"
Lilly nodded a little behind Cadpig. "That would be nice," Cadpig said.
"Then just come with me!" Walton said as he began to step forward. "I know this town like the back of my paw!"
He then suddenly stopped. "Hold on. What town are we in, again?"
"Nortonsburg," Cadpig said.
"Oh, right! As I was saying, I know this town like the back of my paw! Just follow me and everything will be okay!"
As he walked forward, Cadpig and Lilly stayed behind. Lilly gave Cadpig a deeply worried look.
"Well, it'll be an adventure if nothing else," Cadpig said with a shrug and a smile.
Quickly, they followed after the poet, catching up to him in no time. Thus, these three unlikely companions joined together in the center of town.
From the shadows, a figure wrapped in a royal-blue cloak watched. "Don't mess this up, Yards," he whispered. "Don't you dare mess this up, or the brethren shall not be happy about it. They shall not be happy at all…."
*A takeoff of the famous lines written by Robert Burns in "The Twa Dogs."
Who is this mysterious figure and what dark schemes do his words signify?
Read on.