Free Dog Boy by Eva Hornung

was not one of them, that he was wild and had dogs. She didn’t move but looked fearfully into the forest behind him. His heart was shaking him, he knew he should run but still he made no move.
    She tilted her head; he saw the fire illuminate full half of her lovely face. She was looking right at him now, into his eyes, and her face glowed in the flickering, sound-filled orange light. Then she opened her wide, broken mouth and was singing again, her back to the other singers, her eyes on him, her arms clutching her sleeping child tightly. He stood like a deer frozen in a beam of light, part of him rising into the black sky with her voice, swelling until he, Romochka, filled all the vast hoop of the night sky above the fire, the mountain and the forest.
    She suddenly nodded to him, her mouth arcing around the black hole out of which her shining voice flooded, and he came back to himself. Eyes still fixed on his, she ducked her head then, in what he imagined was an acknowledgment, even a trusting farewell, and turned, still singing, back to the fire and the other people. He was so happy he couldn’t bear it. He ran soundlessly, sensing Grey Brother and then White Sister swing from different parts of the forest into the trail behind him.
    He went often to listen to the singing after that but it was only after many visits that he saw his singer again. She was alone and ill; her voice had lost the quality that had transfixed him. It fluttered like a sick bird that could not fly, and he was disappointed and annoyed.
    He waited until she was trudging back to her hut and then slipped out of the woods into the light of her flame, just to see what she would do. She shrieked and clutched at her chest, gasping her fear. He was at first pleased, then suddenly very upset with her. She pulled herself together, and they stood facing each other in the deep snow. Her torch crackled between them, its light flickering on the pale forms of the birch trees. The sizzling rubber bound to her stick seemed to him very loud, and he dropped his eyes, embarrassed. Then she sucked saliva back from her open mouth and he looked up. She nodded again at him, but without the language of farewell in it, and, clutching the torch with one hand, she leaned slowly forward and reached out her bandaged hand. She brushed his cheek with the backs of her bare fingertips, her eyes smiling. He spun and bounded off into the snowdrifts of the forest, feeling as though, after all, she had sung as before.
     
    The cold deepened. The dogs were restless, day and night. Hunting wasn’t too hard at first: everything was struggling on the mountain, animal and human. The dead were quickly buried in snow, but they could make several trips out to any fresh carcass before they lost it.
    Romochka’s cosy life as a puppy the previous winter was like a dream. He had to stay put in the den, drinking from Mamochka whenever she appeared and eating what the dogs brought in for him. With all the dogs out hunting, and no puppies, the den was bitterly cold. Mamochka didn’t have enough milk to fill him and barely enough to warm him up. He put on the tights, the three pairs of trousers, all the long-sleeved garments, pulled socks onto his hands, feet and head, and huddled in the greatcoat, shivering. He shook out a hair-encrusted blanket from the bed and wrapped it around himself. He tried to cajole a dog into staying with him, something only White Sister really understood. He would wait, shivering, cuddling her close until the others returned.
    He slept fitfully and dreamed of the singer, her voice wringing the air with the power of a snowstorm, yet so sunny, so starlit, so strong a howl for a moon! Sometimes he felt tied and helpless within its knots and coils; other times he had wings and he saw himself and her as shining birds. Sometimes he dreamed she was his first mother and it was his name she was singing. He named her one evening, rummaging through his mind for the human word,