Free Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits by Peter Dickinson, Robin McKinley Page B

kids wanting extra lessons. Miri was good with kids, especially the ones torn between adoring horses and being scared to death of them. Some of these then transferred their adoration to Miri, and would only take lessons from her. Every time she looked at her schedule for a space to shoehorn another lesson in, she thought of the indoor arena, and found time.
    She knew her mother was hoping she’d forgotten about the dog . . . but that Jane also knew her well enough to know that she would not forget.
    So one day—finally—at lunch she said, ʺCarol’s mom cancelled, poor Carol’s sick, and I moved Harriet to last thing. If you can spare me, I’m going to the pound this afternoon.ʺ
    Jane gallantly refrained from sighing, and said immediately, ʺOf course we can spare you. Remember to buy dog food on the way home.ʺ
    Miri suppressed a grin. Her mother also knew her well enough to know that if there was no farm dog by dinnertime, it could only be that a roc had stooped from nowhere, picked up the car with Miri in it, and was bearing them away to an unknown island in the Pacific.
    She drove very carefully on the way to the pound. She had had her license from the moment she was old enough to be legal, and had been efficiently backing horse trailers around corners at the farm some time before that; it wasn’t the driving. It was that today was a special day. Today she’d have—she’d finally have—a dog. It wasn’t even only the dog: this would be the first time she’d done something clearly, absolutely, definitively hers. She loved the farm and the riding stable, and had every intention of staying there for the rest of her life. (She even had the site picked out to build her own house on, if she managed to acquire a husband who had a job that earned genuine money so they could afford to. But the site was only on the other side of the driveway plus a few trees from the old farmhouse. There was six A.M. breakfast for horses to think about, and you wanted to be within earshot for sounds of trouble.) And budgeting for the indoor arena was her idea (maybe she had one or two of her father’s genes after all), but it was still something she was doing with her mother. A dog would in a way be the first step toward making the riding stable genuinely individually hers too.
    Ronnie was behind the counter at reception. ʺSo, how does it feel to be a grown-up and have to start paying your own bills?ʺ he said jovially. Ronnie coached the local Little League team Mal had been on, and had six dogs of his own, all from the pound. He tended to specialize in the hard-to-place ones, so he had three-legged dogs, blind dogs, old dogs and hyperactive incontinent dogs. He also had a very patient wife.
    ÊºIt feels okay. I’m only working forty-two hours a day for seventy-five cents an hour—that’s pretty good, isn’t it?ʺ
    Ronnie whistled. ʺYour mother’s getting soft.ʺ
    ÊºYes, that’s what I thought. So I decided I’d better get a dog fast before she tightens up.ʺ
    ÊºGood plan.ʺ He lifted the end of the counter and came out. ʺI’ll take you round. Do you have any idea what you’re looking for?ʺ
    ÊºNot really. Something that can put up with a lot of cats and people and won’t chase horses.ʺ
    The pound was nearly full, so there were a lot of dogs to look at. And most of them were barking. Miri began to think there were more advantages to cats than she’d realized. Her head started to hurt, and it was hard to look at each dog, especially the barking ones. But shouldn’t she want a dog that barked? In case it happened to be on the right side of the house the next time someone tried to break into the tack room.
    They turned down a row of large runs. ʺI also don’t want anything that it takes two days’ salary to feed for one day,ʺ said Miri, as something that looked like a cross between a St. Bernard