“And then Kyra swung at Fang,” a wizened greyhound woofed. “We thought he’d bite her whole paw off. But then we heard the rip.”
“A gruesome rip?”
“Certainly gruesome, Patel. It didn’t register with me what had happened until I saw the eye flying through the air.” The old dog rolled his eyes around for emphasis.
One of the pups in his audience, a tiny black-and-tan one, winced.
“Duke’s scared again,” Patel huffed.
An older chocolate dog licked his chops. “No one asked him to come here and ruin the story,” he said nastily.
“Really, Bud!” The old dog snapped at his ears. “No one asked you, either. Last I checked you were supposed to be out with Ruffle.”
Bud tucked his tail between his legs. “I’m a-goin’ right now if you won’t tell.”
“I won’t. Now get out of here.”
Duke crept closer to the greyhound’s side. “Aren’t there any nice stories about Kyra?” All he ever seemed to hear about his late grandmother were tales of brutishness and war-mongering.
“Marlon,” whined Patel, “what happened after she took the eye?”
“We went home and celebrated our victory against the bears,” Marlon told him. Duke rasped his tongue over his bristling hackles. He was irritated with the puppyish adoration that Marlon used whenever he spoke of Kyra. They might have been mates, but he was a grown dog. “Anyway, I can tell tamer stories if that’s what you want.”
Patel huffed at Duke. His own rust-colored hackles were up. “Okay. Fine.”
“Tell about Eukaryota’s palace,” Duke suggested. He was fond of anything Eukaryota, one of the two brother gods.
The pups’ grandfather shifted, grunting as he did so. “Eukaryota shares his palace with his brother, Prokaryota, but they’re never, ever in it.”
“Why?” Duke prompted.
“Because there’s too much to do outside. Prokaryota’s two children and Eukaryota’s four look after it. There are two gates to Heaven. Prokaryota stands at both of them at the same time, so that he can get an idea of how wicked the souls of the dead have been. The wicked don’t get to go to Heaven at first, but if they weren’t too bad, they only need to be punished for a little while.
“Eukaryota walks in the dreams of those who seek him and offers help where he can. But it doesn’t always work.” Marlon lowered his voice. “Eukaryota’s power hasn’t been quite so powerful since Virus caught up with him.”
Virus, who can be considered the animals’ equivalent of Satan, created viruses to combat her nephews’ honest efforts at governing an entire universe on their own. She robbed them of the ability to do anything about it. The only good she did was serving as a last resort to bitches desperate to get their pups to behave.
“The gods have two tables, one for each of them. Eukaryota’s is special, because that’s where the most honorable animals sit and feast. When the end of time comes, Eukaryota will return to the palace and sit at his high table again.”
Duke tugged at Marlon’s gray and black-flecked fur. “How many animals sit at the table? A hundred?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, wrinkling his muzzle.
Patel growled. “This story is for babies, Duke. Are you a baby?”
“Be quiet, Patel,” their grandfather ordered. “Maybe you had better go on back to your mother.”
Patel licked Duke’s nose. “Maybe you aren’t a baby,” he conceded. “But I’d still rather hear about Kyra.” He turned away, flicking Duke’s nose with his tail as he went.
“I’m coming too,” Duke squeaked desperately. “Bye, Marlon.”
“Bye, then. Don’t let him push you around out there.”
“Uh-huh,” Duke agreed, following his littermate out of the den.
The outside world continued to amaze him, even though he’d been allowed out for two weeks now. He was restricted to the settlement of the pack. It was very big, bordered by a circle of flat rocks that would be good for sunning, if you could get past the undergrowth growing around it and in all the cracks.
The walls had two openings: a large one that was the main entrance, and a smaller one for dogs to slip through more discreetly. This one was for leaving scat outside where it wouldn’t stink up the place. Duke and Patel weren’t allowed out of this one without their mother coming too.
Duke wagged his stub tail. He liked to stay with his mother, but today she was out “stretching her legs.” Why she had to leave, he didn’t know. He stretched his legs all the time without ever leaving his nest.
Patel pricked his ears. “Look, Duke. There’s Tanfeet.”
Duke followed his gaze and noticed their father standing on the long, flat rock in the center of the pack’s home. Tanfeet was a big ginger dog, and, frankly, a little scary.
Patel wasn’t scared of any dog. *Just as well,* Duke thought resentfully. *We have to see them every day.* Duke was known to adolescent dogs as “Patel’s runty brother.” *What’s so wrong with being runty? They’re just jealous that I have more sense in one dewclaw than they do in their whole bodies.* Curl always said that the smallest dogs were the smartest, anyway.
Patel was gone now. Maybe he had returned to Marlon and was demanding more Kyra stories. More likely he was causing mischief elsewhere.
Duke felt a familiar pressure in his brain, like a giant paw pushing on it. His littermate was always doing this! They were supposed to stay together. Couldn’t he be obedient for once in his life?
Now he was beginning to get a headache, and it was spreading to his heart. He crept off toward his den. This chilly air couldn’t be good for him.
“Are you all right?” It was his father. Tanfeet had stretched his neck toward Duke, as though unsure what would happen if he got close.
“My chest is all tight,” Duke moaned.
“Maybe you had better see a healer,” Tanfeet advised. “Maybe you’re just panicking again. Patel’s fine; he didn’t run off. But you should get something to calm you down anyway.”
Duke felt frustrated. Tanfeet didn’t understand. He wasn’t sick, he was just stressed. No disgusting leaf or root could change that.
He couldn’t protest, because Tanfeet had picked him up and was bringing him to the clinic. He didn’t like it there; the residue of blood made the place reek.
The oldest of the healers, Wasp Wings, met them at the entrance. *Why her?* She was mean and least likely to be sympathetic.
“What’s wrong with him this time?” Wasp Wings growled.
“I’m not sick,” Duke snapped.
Tanfeet gave him a sharp nip on the ear. “You will not speak to your elders that way!”
*So I’m not allowed to tell her off when she condescends me? You do it all the time.*
Wasp Wings pushed two leaves toward him. “Newborn Neurotic here is probably just having another anxiety attack. Eat some chamomile. You’ll live.” She turned away.
Duke hated chamomile, but he ate it anyway because Tanfeet was watching. Why did grown dogs always have to act as though this was a problem for *them?* Were his feelings less valid because he was a puppy? At what age did he suddenly go from being a nuisance to a real dog with a real opinion?
“All right,” said Tanfeet. “Go on ahead — you’d better stay in the den today.”
Duke narrowed his eyes and stomped off. Why did everyone have to bother him all the time? They were clueless!
His tummy still hurt because he hadn’t had anything besides the leaves to eat today. He was too afraid of the other dogs hanging around the food store to get anything on his own. He would wait for his mother, luckily a huntsdog, to return from her trip.
Just then he heard some high-pitched barking. The other pups were playing. Curl was friends with Brownie, another bitch with a litter of three. They were a moon older than Duke.
Patel had joined, making up for the absence of Sour. Sour, the dark gray dog with red patches, hung back from joining his siblings in their play. Duke had heard whispers that Sour was strange. *Everyone thinks I’m strange, too. Maybe we can be friends.*
The other pups were doing exaggerated play-bows and swipes, and Sour snorted quietly. Duke sat next to him. “Do you know what they’re playing?”
“They’ve been inspired by that confounded bear story,” Sour replied.
“You mean Kyra and Fang? It looks like Daisy’s being Kyra. She looks funny.”
The biggest of the other puppies reared back and bellowed. “My eye! My eye!”
“Where’s his eye?” Patel whispered loudly.
Daisy, a small black-and-cream bitch, scooped up a pebble and started knocking it around. “This is his eye. Feel my claws, Fang!”
“This is disturbing,” said Duke.
“You can’t feel an eye that you’ve lost, idiot!” Sour snapped at his littermates. “What were you saying, Duke?”
“I don’t know why they have to play this game. It’s weird. What do you do for fun?”
Sour tipped his head. “I listen to the pack life.”
“Is that fun?”
“It’s very interesting. There’s a lot to be learned from it.”
Daisy trotted up to them. “You can play with us if you want, Duke.” She fixed her rich brown gaze on Sour, then back on him. “Sour’s an oddball. He never plays.”
“False,” said Sour. “I do play with moss balls sometimes.”
Duke didn’t say anything. He couldn’t think of the right thing, anyway, with Daisy staring so intently at him.
Patel and Daisy’s brother Bear followed her. “Why don’t you play?” Patel asked.
“Because I’d rather listen to politics,” Sour replied. He paused. “And the medical sciences.”
“He eavesdrops on healers,” Bear translated, his shaggy fur bristling. “Then he comes back and lectures us on how reckless we are.”
“You bolt your food and sneak out at night! You’re setting yourself up for indigestion and thicketpaws — or worse,” cried Sour. “It’s important.” He sounded almost desperate, Duke realized with a touch of irritation. He didn’t like the clinic, and he didn’t like being given medicine he didn’t need, but Sour was his new friend. *I bet he wouldn’t give me chamomile all the time.*
“If you love the healers so much, just be their mate,” Bear huffed.
“Go ahead and be a flower-sniffer,” Daisy added.
Duke couldn’t ignore the anger constricting his chest anymore. “Pipe down!” he snarled at the other pups. “Healing is important. I suppose you’d rather die of distemper! Maybe we’d be better off that way — it means two less sneering coyotes in this pack!”
Bear blinked at Patel. “What’s up with him?”
“I’ve never seen him mad before.” Patel gave Duke a placating lick between the ears. “Don’t worry. It’s okay.”
“I’m not a newborn!” Duke growled. “And I’m not a neurotic!” He turned away from Patel. “Go away!”
Patel looked hurt. He had not joined in the tormenting of Sour, and Duke knew he was just trying to help. *I’m not in the mood for “help.” I don’t need it!*
Bear brushed Patel’s shoulder with his plumy tail. “Come on.”
Patel hesitated for just a second.
Daisy stayed longer. “Sorry, Sour. And Duke.”
Sour snorted.
“I mean it,” Daisy insisted. “You’re not a flower-sniffer. And I’ll stop wolfing everything down, if you really care that much.”
“I do,” he murmured.
Daisy pressed her muzzle to her brother’s chin. As she was turning around, she also licked Duke’s nose.

Duke spent the rest of the day in high spirits. His mother returned with prey, and he was hungry. He ate an entire robin.
The good mood lasted until it was time for bed. The leader’s cave belonged to Tanfeet and the royal family. Their nest was made of ferns and moss and lined with feathers. When the Snowy Season came, a rabbit pelt would be placed under the pups. He pressed against Patel and shut his eyes, but couldn’t help overhearing his parents at the mouth of the cave.
“Cherry told me you brought Duke to the clinic again today.”
“I had to. Wasp Wings said it was an anxiety attack.”
“An anxiety attack — at two moons old?”
“He’s a runt. Why shouldn’t he have weak nerves?”
“I was a runt too. Do I have weak nerves?”
Tanfeet raised his voice. “They seem pretty fragile right now!”
“You’re the one who’s yelling; do be quiet!”
“Anyway,” Tanfeet went on with venom in his voice, “at this rate, there’s no hope for Duke at all. He’s pitifully small and he panics every time Patel leaves him.”
“At least Duke listens to me. Patel is supposed to stay with him. You know that.”
“A momma’s dog can’t survive in the wild.”
“Mother knows best.”
Duke’s heart sank lower and lower. He felt Patel’s tongue rasp against his cheek. “It’s my fault,” he whispered. “I should never have left you.”
“They’re arguing about me, not you,” Duke mumbled.
“Sour and I are going to make up a game we can all play. Then Tanfeet won’t be mad at you anymore.”
The argument was still painfully audible. Curl huffed, “He’s a puppy! You don’t have to drug him up!”
“I’m not drugging him up, the healers are. They’re doing a good thing for him!”
“No, they aren’t! All pups get scared when they’re lost and alone.”
“Lost in his own settlement! I’m telling you, Curl, he’s incompetent!”
“He’s more competent than you, you mange-ridden old lump.” Curl whisked around and stalked to her nest. The pups quickly pretended to be asleep.
Duke felt her tongue on his body — his pitifully small, skinny body, he realized with self-consciousness.
Patel couldn’t keep down a whimper. “We don’t want you to fight because of us,” he said, tugging on one of Curl’s floppy ears.
“It’s a grown-up problem,” she told them. Duke pressed his face into his mother’s curly harlequin fur. “Little pups like you don’t have to worry.”
“But we are worried,” Duke retorted. “It’s not fair. I hate Tanfeet!”
“He’s your father and he wants what’s best for you,” Curl murmured. “He just seems mean because he doesn’t want to look scared.”
“He doesn’t have to be scared at all. I’m not sick. I swear to God I’m not sick.”
“I know you aren’t. When you grow up, and you’re big and strong, your father will realize that too.”
Curl smelled like the forest, but Duke didn’t feel scared of it anymore. He let it paint a picture in his head of when he was grown. He would be a huntsdog — soldiers scared him — and he would catch the tastiest prey his father had ever eaten. Tanfeet would be so proud that Duke would get to be Head Huntsdog right away. Every dog in the pack would be his friend and they wouldn’t say he was a runt anymore.
It was a glorious vision. Duke yawned and let his mother keep licking his fur until he fell asleep.
His last thought was, *I might be leader too.*