InsaneJournal

Wings and Penny: Dancing with the Devil
[OOC: 'Dawg', 'Mushroom Grove' and all related elements © theWhisper.]

It began as any other night might have. It was dark outside, and the air was cold, but the leashes were out and the coats were on, and Johnny was waiting at the door with their beloved friend, Dusty, also on leash and in coat. What else could this all mean but an expedition? And who were they to pass up an expedition?

Cari wasn’t coming of course, not that she minded this time. She simply regarded them sleepily from her blanket by the radiator, purred good-naturedly at them and closed her eyes again. It was certainly odd to see the Van so relaxed about not being invited on a walk, but there it was. Beth seemed perfectly happy to leave her there; she was talking to them in that high excited voice, saying ‘walk’, ‘walk’, ‘walk’. ‘Johnny’, ‘Dusty’, ‘friend’, ‘car’, ‘walk’. That was really as much as they needed to understand, and tails wagging furiously, they charged out the door.

Dusty greeted them avidly, and together the three of them piled into the car door that was held open for them. Together they curled up on the seats, smelling of leather and Johnny and Dusty and some strange sort of flower, eager for adventure. Penny pressed her nose to the window, her ears high. Wings sat up, peering over her shoulder out into the dark, and Dusty whined eagerly. This sort of thing didn’t happen often, and they were going to milk it to the full.

As the car engine roared into life, and they swayed out of the driveway and away, the dogs braced themselves against each other into the turns, always scrambling across the seat and piling themselves atop one another to watch the world blurring past them, fast, faster, faster than any of them could run. The excitement was mounting by the minute, bubbling within them all. Travelling this way was all very well, but just wait until they got outside! The wind in their ears and faces, the crystal air in their lungs, the feel of the earth thudding satisfyingly against their paws as they launched themselves into the air with each flying stride.

“Wonder where we’re going?”

“It’s not the park, surely? We’ve been in the car too long for that.”

“Oh, oh, I bet it’s the beach. Ahah, see look, I told you, I told you I told you! Oh, smashing!”

But it wasn’t the beach, as the three of them discovered upon tumbling out – though Wings and Dusty knew better than to rub Penny’s nose in that. They looked around, questing with eyes and nose with considerable interest. There was water here right enough, but it was water they had never seen before, in a place they had never seen before. Moreover the water smelt clean, fresh, not strong and briny like the sea.

“I know this place,” Dusty murmured, edging up between Wings and Penny. “Johnny’s brought me here before, both in the day and in the night. Come on, come look at the waters!”

The White Foam River flowed past them with a great rushing sound that sang to the heart of each and every one of them. Even Penny wasn’t willing to brave the cold for a swim in its dark, icy depths., but the three dogs edged as close to the bank as they dared, watching the moving water with interest.

Eventually Penny gave a sharp yelp of sheer joy, and charged off downstream. Wings followed her, and Dusty cantered easily in their wake, the three whippets – two sleek, one bulky – flying along the bank. Penny gave tongue to her adrenaline rush, barking a piercing challenge at the rushing water as she dashed alongside it.

From the car parked up above on higher ground, Beth and Johnny watched their dogs play. Johnny nudged her shoulder, grinning.

“Still think this was a bad idea? I told you I’ve taken Dusty out here before. He loves it.”

“You and your night-walks, Johnny. Though they do seem to be having a ball, I’ll give you that.” Beth gave him a brief glance from her hazel eyes before she returned her gaze to her dogs.

“This place is amazing! Don’t you think?” He spread out his arms and spun around to encompass the flowing river, the faint lights of the town in the distance behind them, and on the other side of the bank, the wild plains and forests stretching off into the distance. Johnny’s eyes gleamed as he stared out into the darkness.

“We gotta go hiking out there sometime, Beth. We could take the dogs, camp out. It’d be fun!”

Beth laughed softly. Her eyes were still on her whippets, racing the river. “Maybe. We’ll see.”

---

He could hear barking. Barking. What was the meaning of this? Lazily he perked a floppy ear, the ear nearest to the sound, and his heavy wrinkled jowls drew back across his teeth as a low rumble started in his throat.

If there were other dogs here, he would soon fix that.

His breath misting in the cold air, he got to his feet, shaking out the bits of twig and dirt from his snarled coat, and lumbered steadily towards the source of the noise. The rumble intensified to a growl, vibrating his great barrel of a chest. He had come here for peace and quiet. How dare his slumber be disturbed by dogs!

Ah well. He had not had a proper meal of meat since the puppies he had miraculously found and devoured some time ago. The behemoth’s eyes gleamed coldly in the darkness. Mice, rats and voles were all very well, but there was nothing quite like a freshly-killed dog.

He could see them now as he peered through the reeds by the riverside: slender, cavorting shapes on the opposite bank. Three of those skinny creatures that seemed more like large, drowned rats than dogs. Ugh. He detested them on sight. Two shining white, and one a darker colour, though it was the darker one that seemed the foolhardiest. It was certainly barking the loudest.

He had been in the wilds for several days already, and his thick coat was tangled and woolly and dirty enough to camouflage him as long as he needed. Quietly, he slipped into the dark water and crouched low, crocodile-like, with only his head and the top of his back showing. He began to paddle, letting the current sweep him downstream towards the playing, dancing sprites.

---

Penny was panting her laughter as she slowed her pace just a fraction to spin around in circles and leap around her two friends. Wings leaped up to clasp her around the neck with his forepaws, she snapped at his head, and they wrestled on their hind-legs until Dusty came skidding into them and knocked them both over. The three of them tumbled, righted themselves and sprang to their feet again, all too happy with this place and this night and this run, and this company. They knew that sooner or later would come the call to return to the car, and they intended to get as much out of this particular walk as they could.

The copper-coloured bitch at length broke away from her two friends, gasping with canine mirth as she stumbled down close to the water. The moon, large and white, was reflected and fragmented in the water below, dancing over the roiling waves in a million tiny glinting dots and splodges. There was something floating in the water – a log perhaps, or a patch of weeds – that she took only passing notice of. Loving the way the moonlight gleamed on the water, she barked sharply at it, making a couple of air-snaps in its direction.

“Look, boys, look! I bet I could grab that, I could. Not that I’d want to right now of course,” she added hastily, just in case either one of them might decide to dare her to try. Her whip-tail wagged.

“But I’m so glad we came. It’s so lovely out he- oh, oh!”

Her words twisted into a startled yelp, and she jumped and jerked as if bitten by a fly, but there was something that had caught hold of her leg. Something large and dark with huge strong jaws, and Penny gave a frightened cry for help as she was dragged down into the water.

Dusty started, unsure of what to do, but he felt the rush as a seal-and-white streak of movement surged forward from behind him and plunged headlong into the river. Now alone, shocked and afraid, the bully whippet could do nothing but raise his voice in a terrific howling scream for the humans. He shifted on his paws, wanting to rush to Johnny but unwilling to leave the place where his friends had disappeared. Johnny would fix everything, he always did.

“Penny and Wings in the river, in the river, Oh help, help! Help!”

The humans had seen everything from their perch. Beth, attuned to her dogs, had heard the change in Penny’s voice at once. She had never heard her whippet bitch sound frightened before, but there it was, and it had torn into her stomach like a chill wind. Then came Dusty’s awful scream, and the pair had taken off running straight for the spot.

Dusty greeted them anxiously with a wagging tail and clinging paws, his eyes very large and dark in the moonlight. There was no sign of the whippets, and Beth gave a choked cry as the realisation began to sink in. Johnny grabbed her shoulders immediately, but he himself was shaking.

Dusty, infected by their growing panic, whimpered, trotting close but not too close to the bank. Then, suddenly, a head broke the water, further downstream and out in the middle of the river.

“There! There!”

He began to run as fast as he felt comfortable with, barking the alert. Beth and Johnny, catching sight of it too, followed him.

It was Wings, swimming furiously, his teeth tight in the thick neck of... what was it? Another dog? A bear? It was huge, and it was trying desperately to get its own jaws into the whippet. Wings had not thought of his own safety when he dived after Penny, but at least he seemed to be gaining the higher ground now.

He had by sheer luck managed to snap at the thing before it went underwater. He was no bull-dog bred to bite and hold on in grim death, but he was a sighthound and a snap-dog, and his bite itself was formidable. One dizzyingly quick chop from those long jaws was all it took to disembowel a rabbit in mid-flight, and his bite caught the thing on the nose and flayed it open.

The thing gave a great angry roar, and in that instant Penny, scrabbling madly against the current, was swept out of its grip and downstream. Wings paddled after her without a second thought, but the great creature was now coming after both of them together, and as he bore down on Wings, his great jaws wide, the three of them went under.

Wings had managed to grab the back of the creature’s neck, hoping it would at least stop it from getting to Penny again. (Where was she?) As long as he was here, it couldn’t bite him back, at least, and he tugged at the thick folds of skin and woolly fur with all his might, breathing hard, blowing water out of his nose. He thought of playing tug-of-war with Beth and Penny using one of their stuffed squirrels, and then laughed grimly at himself for imagining the comparison.

His jaws were aching, and there was water coming up his throat, and he spluttered and choked as he lost his grip and fell back, coughing. The beast, triumphant, turned on him, only to throw back its head and yell in fury as Penny appeared, slashing at its face. One of her bites had landed on the already-torn nose, and the beast roared at her, lunged, and they all went under again.

The watchers on the bank could only race along and watch as this terrible strange duel took place. How long could the whippets hold out? Johnny was already tearing off his jacket, preparing to dive, Beth was near tears, and Dusty howling in agony for Johnny to do something. All of a sudden they realised that the large bear-dog, or dog-bear, had resurfaced by itself on the far side of the river. As they stared at it, the animal heaved itself onto the bank and shook the water from its coat. It looked somewhat bemused and more than a little cheated, and it snorted into the water before it lurched into the bushes and out of sight.

Dusty barked frantic, empty threats at its retreating back.

“What in the hell was that?” Johnny gasped, staring at the place where the animal had disappeared. Beth was half panting, half sobbing as she collapsed on the bank.

“It doesn’t matter, does it? They’re gone, they’re... my dogs... ” she dissolved into incoherent tears.

It’s your fault.

She might have said it, or she might have as good as said it. Either way she pushed Johnny away when he put an arm around her, and he couldn’t blame her. He waited, feeling like dirt, and eventually she turned around and put her head on his chest, and he wrapped his arms around her and let her cry there until she was spent, while Dusty nosed around their ankles all the time, whimpering and pawing at the bottoms of their jeans.

“Penny and Wings. Penny and Wings. We have to find them. Why are you wasting time here? They’re somewhere out there, wet and cold. We have to find them. We have to go.”

“He’s right, you know,” Johnny said at last, when her sobs had subsided.

Beth raised her eyes, puffy and red from tears. “What?”

“They might be there, somewhere. Maybe they made it to the bank. Let’s go look. All right?”

Beth nodded, sniffling, and he took her hand and the pair of them retraced their steps along the bank, the lone whippet following eagerly after.

---

He was wet, and he was cold, and he had just been attacked by a giant monster that had materialised from the water. None of that was his idea of a good time, but he had risked it anyway. Why, again? He couldn’t quite remember.

He was dimly aware of blurred spots and streaks moving in the edges of his vision. Pale and dark, like the moon on rushing water, and there was something warm on his muzzle. He shook his head, spluttering and spewing water, and everything resolved itself. There was the moon in the sky, winking at them from behind a dark screen of swaying, whispering leaves, and there was a worried copper-coloured face with upstanding ears and large dark eyes.

Penny whimpered wordlessly as he blinked at her, and started cleaning the spit and mud and streaks of blood from his muzzle with her warm tongue.

That was why. Now he remembered.

He coughed again. “What... what was that? Where are we?”

“I hauled you out by the collar,” she whispered, laying her head against his neck. “I thought you were dead...”

“Where are we?”

“I don’t know. Wings, I... I’m afraid. I want to go home.” She glanced towards the river and balked, remembering the thing that had attacked them. “I don’t want to go back there.”

Her own face was mud-spattered and blood-stained, and Wings set about returning her grooming. She curled close to him.

“What shall we do?”

The pied whippet stood up and nudged her with his nose. “Let’s get away from here. We’ll find something to eat, first, and somewhere to sleep. Somewhere that isn’t near here.” He turned, and began to trot off into the night.

Penny gulped, got to her own feet, and tottered unsteadily after him.

In this strange and unsettling world, he was her leader now.