Work Text:
Stoat, dog, living bird, dead bird, excelsior, plaster, twine, badger, snake, horseflesh, river mud, cobblestones; this place where I live is rich and satisfying, with uncountable delights for a dog of my gifts. The house's wealth of scents changes in comfortable, familiar ways according to the weather, the season, the animals and humans that come and go; the smell at the beginning of summer one hazy afternoon at low tide is not the same as the way it smelt two days later at midnight, after a rain, when the stoat had taken up residence in the attic.
I lived by my nose when I was first whelped and tottering around the streets and alleys that reeked of dead rats and living cockroaches. I knew I'd found my boss when I smelled kindness and not cruelty from him. I have a home now, and steady occupation which is food and drink to such as I.
So early one morning when I smelt a change in the air near the house – carriage wheels, horse, lavender cologne, carbolic soap, lime-cream, tobacco, nitric acid, well-aged leather (deliciously imbued with a fine hint of manure), well-tended wool, and all coming closer – I knew that I was needed once again. I needed no barking to gain attention, but I let loose a few yelps for pure joy. To be given the chance to do one's very best is the joy that lives in all who work.
The two walked into the house, smelling of concern. I barked again for eagerness as the boss came to open my cage and lead me to them. I knew these two and had worked with them before. Despite the great handsome nose the tall one boasted, he did not have my gift; when something required precise deduction, he came to me. Sometimes the other one came instead (although he was kind to me I did not like him much, for his was the smell of the men in white coats who cut up dead dogs); today, both came. I accepted their hands on my head as the boss tied my lead, and followed them out the door and into the small carriage, resting on their feet.
River smells faded as the streets told me their businesses (farrier's, papers, garments, barber's, sweets, furniture, beer, flowers, pastries). Smoke, coal, steam, hot iron, noise – I shivered but their hands reassured me; I was afraid but stepped forward into the monster, where a world of new smells comforted me (tea, leather, wool, sweat, perfume, paper) whilst I took my place between them on the floor of their carriage. They smelled anxious but alert and confident; this was important, what I had to do, and they knew I could do this. The rocking room was pleasant; I slept.
When I awoke I knew we were in the country (grass, reeds, clean river, trees, barley, fertilizer, uncut stone). I missed the good honest smells of the city and the dirty river, but I was not here to smell what I liked. Some smells I like very much (cheese biscuits) distracted me, and their hands were a comfort while I ate. When we left the rocking monster that smelled of iron and fear, we entered another carriage (the horse had recently fed on timothy hay and swedes; the carriage had been made from the same trees that stood around us).
The smells became wilder as the carriage went through great stands of trees (rabbits, stoats, birds, badgers – wild cousins of my own house-mates) and emerged near a green hill with a big house. Three people awaited us there in a dark clump – country police (sweat, dust, manure, beer, butter, grass, tobacco, beef, cabbage and potatoes, tallow soap). Further up, toward the house, I smelled 'mother' smells and fear and pain, and another male (not-police), and more police.
I understood the work I was to do, and pulled on the lead as we alit the carriage to let the two and the police exchange their own vocal greetings.
These two, and the boss, wanted me to find that sad mother's children – who must also be children of that not-police male. Three children – girl, girl, boy, of human ages matching a roamer pup and two basket pups – their smells were distinct from the two and the police and the horses. Here was where they had been, playing and unconcerned, when they had been found and frightened and their smell changed.
The police had things for me to examine; two toys, a handkerchief, a paper. I set to work, starting with the toys.
A wooden duck. It had belonged to the boy. Boy: just walking, dressed in a cotton pinafore, fond of chocolate biscuits (a wonderful smell, but its hint at poison is why I do not eat them myself), and of playing in muddy grass; healthy, well-fed, no fear-taint (too young to fear the stranger). Washed with lilac soap – a long time ago. He would be carried by any captor, so his smell would be a secondary trace for my purposes.
A rag doll (I wagged my tail – a rag-doll carries a thousand clues to a porcelain doll's mere hundred). Girl: older than the boy but still very young, stronger walker, patent leather shoes that had been polished that morning, toast and bramble jam with tea. Far less smell of mud or grass – she did not like to get dirty or play on the ground or lawn, and her dress would look cleaner than the boy's clothes. Buttercups, strong; she played with flowers, the smell was all over her hands and so strong on the doll it was even visible (a few white sprinkles amid the grey). The same lilac-soap smell, much stronger than on the boy though as old. Fear-smell, and hunger-smell and frightened tears – she knew the captor was bad, she wanted her family and home (and would want her doll very much). Also carried, or made to walk a little bit. Keep a sharp nose for buttercups and bramble jam along the trail.
A handkerchief – clever child, to leave behind such a valuable collection of evidence. Girl, not adolescent but not small either – she would be made to walk, as she was too big and heavy for a captor to carry. Smell of bark and sap and grass; she climbed trees and played on the lawn. Leather shoes, unpolished that day and full of all the smells of her home. Paper and leather; books. More chocolate biscuits, tea, jam, apples that matched the sour smell of fruit in a nearby tree. I felt my ears and tail go down as I caught a trace of 'pack leader'; she was not just the eldest of the three but carried her responsibility for them in a way that nearly matched the smell I caught from the mother and father.
Now a paper with writing on it. The pup-stealers had left this with the dropped handkerchief, where the children had been. I collected all the different smells on it – several people had touched this, but with a little work and some winnowing I would fine it down.
I now had the top notes I needed for my work, all collected in the space of a few moments.
I pulled at the lead, and the two gave me my head. I circled the area, collecting, casting out. (The police got out of my way or I nudged them aside without another thought.) The boy, the elder girl, police, the mother, the elder girl, the two, the father, younger girl, police, boy, police, elder girl – out they went, away. (I was also able to cast away their lingering scents from the paper.)
What remained for me to detect: Coal tar soap, two kinds of tobacco, whiskey, beer, dye, cotton and wool, unlit gunpowder, laundry soap, bear grease, brass, polished leather, unpolished leather stained with manure, onions, steel.
I had the children-thieves. Two men, one dressed in clean clothing and one in shabbier unwashed wool; one with polished boots and one in old cracked footwear; one that smelled of 'pack leader' and one that smelled of 'fighting dog'. They had a gun and a knife, unfired and unbloodied – they had threatened the children and made them frightened, and made the elder girl smell like 'pack leader'.
No tracks in the grass, no footprints – but the gravel of the road let me know where all the smells, the two men and the three children, were headed. I bounded after the stolen and frightened pups with the two and the police behind me; paws and booted feet crunched on the gravel.
The trees closed in over the road (I discarded their scents as I worked). Not long after the strong smells faded into horse and wagon smell (unvarnished wood, the mare was two years old and had sores). The children's smells mingled now with burlap and barley – they'd been hidden in the wagon. My hair hackled for a moment but I dropped my head to catch the top scent instead of growling. The police and the two would set their teeth to the pup-stealers, not I; my work was to find them. My walk turned into a steady trot; they all trotted to keep up with me.
Top scent, top scent, top scent – off I veered from the road and into the woods. Barley on the road, lilac and coal tar off the road – they'd left the cart and moved into the woods. I noted briefly that my paws were sore; how long had I been working? The sun was lower but still bright. The smell of police had disappeared into the background about the same time that I'd left the road. It was only the two, and I smelled steel and gunpowder stronger from them; their gun was out. Danger. I kept to my work, though my hair lifted. I was no fighting dog; it was not my place to worry about danger.
The trail got stronger. We were not as far behind them as before. More fear from the children, and cold and hunger. Even the cruelest fighting dog knows not to harm pups – I snorted and kept working, dismissing the ways of humans for a wiser dog to ponder.
Terror, mixed with buttercups and sour apples. Just as strong, the smell of the 'fighting dog' one. I froze. The two are well-trained, and froze with me. I felt a hand on my head and a soft word of praise from the tall one. The children's presence shouted up from the ground ahead, as did one of the two who'd stolen them – but humans cannot hear as far as I can, and we were stopped out of his earshot. The whitecoat-smelling one changed, and smelled more like 'fighting dog' himself. The tall one tied my lead to a tree. Ah, no more nosework.
My hearing is not as acute as my nose, but a pup could have followed what happened. The two crept forward, vanished from sight, and all three did some shouting. After a very brief time the tall one returned and untied me; I bounded forward to finish the job. Paying no attention to the reeking thief – now on a tight lead himself and under the whitecoat-one's gun – I leaped to a wide clump of dirt and branches that could not hide buttercups and apples, and dug at it hard.
The tall one made a piercing whistle that brought the police. With the tall one directing, two of them helped lift away the boards and branches, and out like bells rang the signs of the three children – huddled like newborns in that dark cold pit, shivering, streaked from fear. They were bound, and the youngest had a cloth over his mouth. They stared at me with terror – did they think I was a brute of a fighting dog, to hurt them? I made the friendliest face I could and the tall one called softly to them – as gentle as a bitch reassuring her litter. One police wiped his eyes and climbed into the pit, speaking just as softly; I could smell that he had sired children of his own.
When all three children were out and freed, the police were very busy taking the child-thief in hand, and the two had their heads together. I was not idle; I lay down amid all three children, licking their salty cold faces and feeling their sticky hands petting me over and over. The youngest pulled my ears and laughed a little, but the eldest hugged my neck hard and cried into my fur (I licked her face more than the others; poor pup, to play pack leader at such a young age!).
The police took me and the children back to the road, where one had procured a carriage (we had walked a good long time, and my paws were now very tender) to take us back to the children's home. The two remained behind with one police.
During the time I was at the children's home I was the luckiest creature in all this land. I received the tears and hugs of the mother and father as well as the children, I was quite inundated with hands and praise from all the police and the house servants, and presented with a beefsteak that would have fed five of us at the boss' house. I only just finished the feast when the children emerged from their bath after their own meal; I dozed before the fire with my head pillowed on the eldest girl's lap and with the younger girl braiding my long tail-hairs; the boy slept with his head pillowed on my stomach. It was quite nice, at times, to simply be a dog.
But when I smelt oak and lime-cream and tobacco and coal-tar and stained leather and nitric acid and loam and blood, I awoke. The two were alone in the house with the family; the police were gone, their traces fading away with the smell of the other thief (whom they had clearly stayed behind to catch at the abandoned den). They, too, were welcomed as I was by the household (with considerably fewer pats and hugs); fed sumptuously, and given shelter for the night as it was far too late for us to return to the city by that time.
After their own meal the two retired to the rooms given them, and I to a bed made for me near the fire (the children having finally gone to their own rooms as well).
Alone at last, I licked my worn pads. The day was over, my stomach was comfortably full, and my charges were safe with their mother once again. Soon I would return to the dear old scents of manure and cobblestones, creosote, sulfur, rats and street rubbish, the river at low tide; back to the stoat, the badger, the dogs and birds. I had done my work well, and the boss would be pleased.