Free Fauna by Alissa York

their skin-and-bones dog were close before drawing the pack from her pocket like a lure. Billy stiffened at the other dog’s approach.
    “Be nice,” Lily murmured.
    “Hey,” said the girl.
    “Hey.”
    “Spare a smoke?”
    Jen was the girl’s name, the boyfriend was Darryl. They gave her directions to a nearby shelter. She couldn’t stay there with a dog, but she could get a coffee and something to eat. Lily might have hung out with them longer if it hadn’t been for the smell. It wasn’t the fact that they were dirty—she wasn’t so big on bathing herself. It was the sugary, deathbed scent Jen and Darryl shared. She didn’t know exactly what it meant—they were her first junkies—but she was sure they were letting themselves and their skinny dog die.
    An hour spent hanging around the shelter doors with the gathering supper crowd told her the regulars all had bugs; the only creature she’d seen scratch itself that hard was a squirrel that had lost half its fur. Every new arrival wanted to touch Billy—she made a note to brush him extra well once they were alone. Most were savvy enough to extend a closed hand for sniffing first, though one solvent-stinking old guy wentstraight for a head pat and raised a warning snarl. Lily gave a sit-stay order when they opened the dining hall door, hoped nobody would be fucked up enough to get themselves bitten before she came back.
    She filed along with the others, filling up her tray. Took a corner seat at a corner table, ate her beans and drank her burnt coffee and stood to go. Not before she learned something, though. Eyes down, ears open. There was a ravine not too far from there where people sometimes camped. It had a highway running through it, but it had a river and a forest too.
    The Don Valley has turned out to be a dream come true—all that good cover, and you can climb up into the city whenever you like. Walk the streets and watch the people, stare through shop windows at treasures you can’t possibly buy—and the occasional one you can’t resist.
    It’s the red book that initially catches Lily’s eye, but once she’s inside Mei King Co., weighing the brocade-covered journals one after the other in her hands, it’s clear she has to go for the black. The dragon pattern is what settles it, a dozen lovely monsters spun from pink and green thread.
    She shows it to Billy when she steps outside. “Pretty, huh? No drooling, now. Remember what I told you about books.”

    Baby, the brain-tumour Shih Tzu, puts the fear of God into other dogs. At first Kate and her assistant, Sandi, put it down to the little dog’s bark—a high, strangled garble that thins to a guinea-pig scream—but whether Baby vocalizes or not, certain fellow patients set eyes on the silky little dog in her basket andstart barking hysterically, while others simply turn tail and flee. It’s not as though Baby could come after them. Even when the tremors are mild, she has little balance left; whenever they swim her in the tank, Sandi has to keep a good grip on the back of her doggy life jacket to stop her lolling like a harpooned seal. More to the point, Baby’s hind legs are all but useless. The best she can manage is to lever up on her forelegs and sway.
    She’s been day-boarding at the rehab centre for a week when Kate finally figures out what the problem is.
    “Look,” Sandi says, folding a towel against her chest, “Baby’s doing yoga.”
    Kate glances up from the screen to see Baby doing a shuddery rendition of the cobra pose. Never mind the fur and the floppy ears, Baby looks like a fat black-and-white serpent making ready to strike. The Australian shepherd they have coming in this afternoon is one of those most upset by the little dog, and now Kate understands why. A breed shaped in the outback is bound to have a healthy fear of snakes.
    “Do you mind carrying her back to the shower room?” she says. “I don’t want Blue to see her and freak.”
    “Sure.” Sandi bends from