Noel (Angel Paws Holiday) by Taylor Jordan

Author:Taylor, Jordan [Taylor, Jordan]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Short Stuff Press
Published: 2013-10-03T05:00:00+00:00

~ ~ ~

Peter wakes, listening. He cannot think what has roused him. Wind screams and bangs against the house. It doesn’t usually bother him. Yet, even half asleep, he feels sure a sound woke him.

Bang, clatter, whoosh. Just the wind after all. Perhaps a branch cracked.

Rrwwof!

Peter sits up. The dog is barking. Barking right outside the house, not from the barn where she zealously guards her assorted family. But Noel never barks unless there is truly a problem.

He scrambles out of bed, hitting the switch on the lamp. Nothing happens. He’d been expecting that. He grabs a flashlight on the bedside table.

More barking, impatient.

“I’m coming, I’m coming.” He scrambles into jeans, wool socks, a sweater.

The house is still warm from lingering electric heat and the glowing wood stove. Peter takes a deep breath before pushing open the back door to find Noel barking up into his face.

“What?”

Noel, a huge, white snow beast, steps back, gazing at him as she wags her tail.

He casts the light around the farmyard, or tries to. The beam illuminates walls of blowing, churning white. He can hardly remember a blizzard like this. And on Christmas Eve.

He looks back at his dog, aiming the light over her head.

“What’s up? Want to come inside?”

The question is a joke. He has tried to get Noel in the house for years. Before they were gone and Peter inherited the farm from them, his parents tried to get her inside. She treats such things with contempt. Her place is in the barn and fields with her charges. Nowhere else.

Now she gazes up at him, dark eyes squinted in the wind. Calm, unruffled by sheets of snow plastering across her shaggy coat. She does not appear upset, as she would have if one of the animals was ill or injured. Yet, she has seen fit to wake him. He’s only known her to do such a thing in an emergency—a lambing ewe or colicky horse.

Investigating this nighttime call would mean coat, boots, a trip to the dark barn. Not something he can welcome with open arms just now. If only she would tell him what the trouble is. But that is one thing Noel has never been skilled at.

“Just a minute.” He closes the door in her face and turns back into the mudroom for his boots and parka.

Outside, Noel remains silent for about two minutes. After that, she seems to grow concerned lest he return to bed. She starts barking again. A huge, thundering bark which cuts through wind and walls and into his eardrums like explosions. His father used to tell him the only thing more impatient than a woman waiting supper on you was a sheepdog waiting for you to answer a summons.

Finally, boots, hat, coat, and gloves on, flashlight in hand, he throws the door wide and steps out.

Noel quits barking, wagging her tail.

“You’re welcome,” Peter snaps. “All right. Lead on.” Head bowed in the wind, he trudges down steps, toward the barn, light ripped away by ice and wind.

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