The Stray and the Strangers by Steven Heighton

Author:Steven Heighton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Groundwood Books Ltd
Published: 2020-07-24T12:54:22+00:00

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At times after the boy went to sleep, curled under piled blankets, helpers would gather in the food hut. They would sit around the droning stove, drink tea and talk.

Kanella liked the hut to be packed and cozy this way, but more and more now the voices sounded uneasy. Often the helpers nodded toward the boy while they talked. Kanella watched through half-open eyes as she lay in her den or, at times, on the ground beside his cot.

One night, the sleeping boy began to whimper and thrash. He threw out his arms as if fending off danger.

The helpers fell silent. He kept repeating the same sounds, baba and mama.

The young woman stood up. Kanella was on her feet now, too, the hairs of her ruff hackling. She sniffed the boy’s face and licked his cheek. He continued to squirm. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the helpers watching.

She hopped up onto the cot beside the boy, then glanced at the young woman, who said, “Good girl, Kanella!”

She lay down beside the boy and burrowed her nose beneath the layers of wool. The boy’s panting breaths began to slow. Still asleep, he draped an arm over Kanella’s back.

With her head under the blankets, she couldn’t see the helpers, but she heard them talking again in that uneasy tone. Several times she heard her own name.

“If they send him to the big camp, I doubt there will be a Kanella there to comfort him.”

“In Mordor? Fat chance. No comfort there for love or money.”

“Maybe we’ll be able to keep him here till we find his parents.”

“Looks like Kanella hopes so, too. Don’t you, girl?”

Despite the voices, Kanella drifted toward sleep. The warmth of the boy and the blankets revived a good memory of lying in her old burrow, nestled against the other pups and the enormous body of her mother.

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