not mad at you; I’m just extremely disappointed in you, and worried about what’s going on in your life.”
“But mo-” Kodi began, but his mother’s stern eyes stopped him.
“Now I wish I could sit her and tell you what’s what, and try to help you, but I’m busy”
Kodi raised his right ear and looked at his mother with a wonder; but he made sure to keep it silent and hidden behind his eyes.
“So instead,” Jenna continued quickly, noticing Kodi’s curious move of an ear. “Your father’s going to have a word with you. And I have no idea how upset he’s going to be.”
Jenna turned slowly, “So let’s hurry.” leaving her warning about Balto’s wrath echoing distastefully through Kodi’s head. How angry can my father be? Kodi asked himself timidly. At that moment Kodi realized that he had never actually seen his father in an angry state. He had seen his father when he was quite frustrated and upset, but never actually, angry.
Jenna took five steps forward, and stopped. “Hurry up!” She nipped. “Your fathers waiting.”
Kodi began to follow after his mother with his head hung low. His shoulders heaved his legs forward in a way that made it look like his knees weren’t bending. Inside Kodi’s mind, Kodi was fighting his body to make him stop, to move slower, or to run the other way and hide. But his mothers leading way made him unwillingly move forward.
Jenna cast a single eye over her shoulder to make sure her son still followed. Questions flowed through her brain, and she kept her single eyes securely locked on Kodi’s forehead, wishing that her questions could go into Kodi, and Kodi would start talking to her, answering all the mysteries. Yet Kodi was silent.
It took only a few minutes for the two to move through the dark streets and reach the edge of town and the wall of black between humanity and the wild. Jenna stopped out in front of the telegraph office under the warmth of the light and looked out into the darkness where she figured Balto’s boat would be. She let her hind legs bring her tail to the snow and she watched out of the corner of her eye as her son moved up to her shoulder and stopped.
Kodi began to let his tail drop to the snow, when Jenna spoke suddenly. “Don’t sit down. I don’t have anything to say to you I’m busy. It’s your father who wants to talk. He’s waiting out on the boat for you … And remember that me and your father are going to talk after this and decide a punishment for you”
Kodi’s hips stopped half-way down, and came back upright. A wonder passed through his mind at his mother’s strange words of being late, but Kodi began to walk into the darkness of the arctic night in the general direction of his father’s unseen boat without a second thought to it. His gate moved slow and painful; and his mother, in some way, could feel the pain emanating off of him as his tail vanished.
Kodi moved into the darkness, then stopped and turned to look one more time at his mother. Silence surrounded him as he watched his mothers hate, and worry, filled eyes. He knew that she was worried for him, and he knew that what she probably heard was an absolute shock to her senses and made her angry and frustrated. Kodi couldn’t blame her. But what would his father’s reaction be? In a few moments, Kodi would surely know.
Jenna watched her son move into the darkness in a less than prideful way. She closed her eyes and shook her head despondently. Something had gone wrong with her son, and now only Balto could figure out what that was. Her feet moved and pressed up against her weight, brining her standing. She looked one more time at where he son had been, and turned to walk back into the streets, her fur bristled against the cold and her face flush with hope.
Darkness surrounded Kodi and began to close in on him. It chocked the life from him, strangled him, raped him, and left him for dead in a snow bank. That sickening feeling that Kodi had got when he left the boiler room began to come back in full force. The snow under his feet gave way ever third step, dropping his belly right down into the snow. The usual trail that would be etched in the snow was nowhere in sight A wind began to come up in the wide-open planes of the arctic, pursing Kodi’s fur and driving bits of ice and snow right down to his skin. Eyes clenched against the cold he pushed on.
Kodi’s eyes began to grow accustom to the darkness and cold. His father’s dark and ghost ridden boat began to appear before him off to the right; it was still a ways off, but with every step it grew closer and more defined.
It took just minutes for Kodi to move under the great arched bow on his father’s boat. His eyes looked up over his shoulder at the very bow of the boat, expecting to see his father’s denounced form standing above him with trenchant eyes and hair seethed up on end, but only the ghostly hallow of emptiness greeted Kodi from the bow.
“Dad.” Kodi called as he walked around the right edge of the boat. A moment passed for a possible answer from his father, but none came. Only the noise of Kodi’s feet crunching against the snow and a muffled breeze made sound. “Mom said you wanted to talk to me.” Kodi continued, his voice being drowned out by the uninterrupted loosely blowing wind that moved through his father boat. An eerie feeling moved down Kodi’s spine.
Kodi stopped at the bottom of the single plank that reached up onto the slanted deck. Nowhere did his father’s dark form appear. “Dad?”
Nothing.
His paws moved forward against his will onto the plank, which bent alarmingly under his massive male weight. Kodi only heeded this in the slightest; he had been up it a hundred times before and knew that it would hold.
Reaching the top of the plank and looking around the rundown boat with a wary eye, Kodi searched for any sign of his father. He sniffed the air for that musty smell that his father gave off. It was everywhere.
“Dad?” Kodi asked questioningly
There was a rustle from the wheelhouse of the boat, a thumping and scratching sound against the wooden floors. “Who’s there?” Came Balto’s deep throated demand in the middle of scrambling to stand up.
“It’s me dad. Kodi.”
Balto’s head appeared in the door of the wheelhouse. His eyes moved back towards his son and, recognizing him with a grin, stepped full out into the open. “There’s my favorite son.” Balto spoke in a tone higher than any regular dog – which was his way. He then lowered his voice. “But don’t tell the others I said that.”
Kodi forced a laugh at the joke he had heard a thousand times before. “Ha Ha, that’s funny… Mom says you want to talk to me.” Kodi finished meekly but with force to get everything over with.
Balto bowed his head a single time, closing his eyes once to seal his answer of yes. “I suppose I better talk to you, get your side of the story. I see that you’re quite eager to tell me.” Balto winked and stepped forward to sit in front of his son; Kodi sat as his father did. “So why don’t you tell me what happened from the beginning.”
Kodi forced a breath full of anxiety. “Well, you see it’s really kind of complicated-”
“Just start at the beginning.”
Kodi gulped but felt safe to speak in his father’s presence. “Okay. Well, me and the guys were coming back from running the mail, Dusty stayed behind to get some medicine put on her paws. And, anyways, Kirby and Ralph began … uh, taunting me …”
Balto cocked his ear sideways and leaned his head closer. “About what?”
“What?” Kodi asked full of hope that he wouldn’t have to elaborate.
“What were Kirby and Ralph taunting you about?” Balto questioned deeper and full of rigid sereneity.
“So anyways, I kept trying to get them to stop.” Kodi moved on hoping that his father would follow his lead. “But they wouldn’t stop, and-”
“-Kodi,” Balto interrupted gently. “I want to know what they were teasing you about. Was it about you being part wolf?” Balto asked in the most deadly tone Kodi had ever heard.
“No.” Kodi sighed full of relief. “No no, nothing like that at all, they love you, and they love me.”
Balto bowed his head with a relieved murmur. He matched Kodi’s widespread grin. “So they were just teasing you about your crush on Dusty then?”
Kodi’s eyes spread wide and lost. “Um, what?”
“Kodi.” Balto shook his head and smiled. “It’s pretty easy to see that you have something for her, and that’s absolutely normal. She’s a very beautiful girl after all.”
“No,” Kodi balked. “It’s nothing like that, no, no; it has nothing to do with me liking her. It’s got to do with Kirby and Ralph trying to get me to admit to liking her. She’s nice, but not what I want.”
“So then what do you want in a girl?”
Kodi suddenly felt very mortified. “Well, I guess I want her to be … active, and uh, charming …beautiful.”
Balto raised a speculative ear. “Like Dusty?”
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