Toby Part Eleven: The Lost Shall Be Found

Luna smiled, enjoying the calm, easy feeling of a hand stroking her head, massaging every trace of anxiety from her mind like water from a fountain washing mud out of her fur.  Connie was kneeling next to the basket, petting her.  Toby was sitting on the opposite side smiling at her, standing vigil like some canine guardian angel.  And in between them were the objects of his protection: six perfect little puppies lay snuggled up in a pile against the curve of her stomach, fast asleep.  Somewhere outside her visual notice, a fire burned in the hearth and filled the room with warmth.  The husky mix closed her eyes and thought, ‘It doesn’t get any better than this.’

A cold breeze blew into the room and Luna shivered, moving a paw to pull her children in close.  But her paw met nothing.  She opened her eyes and stared into the basket.  No trace of the puppies, not even impressions on the blankets where their bodies had been.

“Toby?” she asked.  “Where are the kids?”

Toby just looked at her blankly.  “I think Connie took them somewhere,” he replied.

Luna turned her head to look at Connie.  As she did, she became aware that the room had changed.  The fire was no longer crackling in the hearth, and the room had grown dim and otherworldly.  She could still see the floor and the walls and everything else, but she felt an odd floating sensation, as if the house had become some miniature of outer space.

Connie had mysteriously been teleported over to the kitchen door and was walking in their direction, but she was moving slower than her steps should have carried her, as if the floor were going the other way and she were walking only just faster than it.  Her face and body were lit as in the room’s previous brightness, even though all around her was darkness.  As Luna watched, Connie too began to fade into the void.

“Connie!” barked Luna in fear, wanting to run to her girl but somehow unable to do so.

Connie, seemingly unaware of what was going on, held out her hand and said something, but no sound left her mouth.  As she was within inches of reaching Luna, she faded away completely.

“Toby, what’s going… Toby!” Luna cried.  For now he too was being ingested by the gloom.  He was hanging his head in sorrow, and just before he vanished she heard him say, as if from afar, “It’s my fault, Luna.  It’s my fault.”

“Toby?  Connie?  Kids?” Luna called out to the suffocating stillness.  Over and over she cried out.  “Anyone?  Please?  Where am I?  Somebody help me!”

She began to run through the cosmos that had swallowed everything else up, calling, “They’re lost!  Everything’s lost!”

Then a touch on her head slammed everything back to normal.  Once more she was in the room.  Connie was there, staring at her in concern.  “Luna?” she asked.  “What’s wrong, girl?”

Luna forced her breathing to come down to normal and stared around.  Toby was nowhere in sight, and neither were the kids.  And as the clouds of her dream drifted from her mind, she knew that the kids never would be.

Sometime later, Luna heard a familiar scratching at the pet flap.  “Can I come in, or are you getting dressed?” came a joking voice.

She rolled her eyes.  Normally she would have laughed at the joke, but after her nightmare she didn’t feel like laughing.  But in as cheerful a tone as she could muster, she answered, “Come in, Toby.”

The familiar brown face poked through the doggie door.  “So, what’s up?” he asked brightly.

Luna shrugged, working hard to hide her discomfort.  “I’m fine,” she replied.

She tried to keep her mind on the conversation, but some twitch of her ears of flick of her tail must have betrayed her emotions, for at last he asked, “Are you alright, Luna?”

 She nodded wearily, although she was tired of the question and even more so of the fact that the real answer was ‘No, I’m not fine.  My body’s such a wreck I can never have puppies.’

Toby sensed her unease.  “You want to go do something?” he suggested.

She shrugged.  “What did you have in mind?” she inquired.

“I don’t know,” he replied.  “I was thinking maybe we could go to the crystal caves again, if you like.”

She smiled.  Toby wasn’t perfect by any stretch, but he did try to cheer her up whenever he wasn’t trying her patience.  “Sure,” she agreed.

As they strolled the streets of Nome, Luna’s ears picked up the sound of tiny barks.  ‘Don’t look,’ she told herself.  ‘Do not look.’

But despite her efforts, her head turned as if an invisible pair of hands had seized it and forced it to point in the direction of the sound.  There on the side of the street sat a long-haired black and white female dog walking around, trailed by a litter of puppies like the Pied Piper leading, as it seemed to Luna, all the children in town.

Toby frowned.  “Why do you keep doing that?”

She snapped out of her chance and willed her eyes to look at him.  “Doing what?”

“That mournful look you get every single time you see a dog walking around with puppies.”

Luna lowered her eyelids and stared at the ground.  “It’s just not right,” she quietly lamented.

Toby sighed.  “Look, I know you’re disappointed.  But you need to let it go.  It’s not going to happen, and there’s nothing we can do about it now.”

“I know that, but…”

Toby’s tone took on a slight edge.  “Look, it kills me too, especially since I’m the cause of it…”

“Don’t remind me,” she interrupted.

“But we can’t change the past.  It happened, and that’s all there is to it.  I…”

She snapped.  “Oh, stop it!” she shouted.  “OK, so we can’t change the past.  But for crying out loud, stop lecturing me about it already!”

Toby was taken aback.  “I-I’m sorry, Luna.  I didn’t think-”

“That’s the problem,” she retorted.  “You didn’t think about it, you just started talking my ear off.  I know I’m taking it hard, but I have every right to, don’t I?”

By now, other dogs had stopped and were staring at them.  Even a few humans, though deaf to their words, were taking in the altercation.  “Luna,” Toby pleaded, “You’re making a scene.”

“Who cares?!” she demanded.  “You have no idea what this is…”

Toby sized up the crowed, considered his bereaved mate, and started to walk away.  ‘One thing at a time,’ he thought.  ‘And there’s only one way to avoid a spectacle,’

“You get back here!” snapped Luna.

Toby disappeared behind a woodshed.  “No,” he replied.  “You get back here.”

“Ooooh!” Luna growled in frustration.  Seething by now, she followed him behind the shed.  “Now, what…?”

Toby sat down.  “Luna, please, just take a deep breath.”

Luna, despite her pain, took a deep breath and then let out a choked sob.  The torrent of emotions inside her was subsiding to a river of pain and sorrow.  “I’m sorry,” she gasped as she quietly lay her head against his shoulder.  “I just… I just wanted it so much, but…”

Toby raised a paw and patted her neck.  What could he say?  ‘It’s all right’ would never work, because it wasn’t all right and it never would be.  ‘Calm down?’  That might set her off again.  Finally he whispered, “I’m here, sweetheart.  I’m here.”

Luna fell to the ground, tears drenching the fur on her face.  Toby circled around, lay down beside her, and leaned against her in hopes of giving her some of his strength.  It was all too obvious she didn’t have any of her own to spare.

“I feel so hopeless,” she whispered.  And she did.  Her heart felt like a sponge that someone had completely wrung out and still continued to wring until the torque broke it in two.

Toby didn’t know what to say, and he decided there was only one place to go where he could find out what to do.

“I just don’t understand,” Toby complained later as he paced like a lion surrounded by a moat of hot lava.  “I mean, I wanted to have kids too, but she’s been miserable ever since she found out she can’t have any.  It’s been two months now and she’s worse than ever!”

Terry sighed.  “Well, Toby, I’m not sure you can understand fully why she’s so upset.  Since I’m not her, I don’t think I can either.  But for one thing, it’s her body that has something missing or out of place.  She’s the one who suffered physical damage, not you.”

Toby didn’t know what to make of this.  “And you think I’m not bothered by…” he started to shout, but she gave him a look.  Not an angry look, or even an impatient one.  It was just a quiet sort of expression that somehow snapped his mouth shut like a mousetrap.

“Let me finish.  The other part of it is that she has certain instincts.  Nearly all females do.  She needs something, or rather someone, that depends on her and that she can take care of.”

“But she acts like it’s the only meaning for her entire existence.”

Terry considered this and replied, “I suppose that’s because to some extent it is.”

Toby’s mouth fell open.  “What do you mean?” he asked.

“Well, try thinking about it this way.  You don’t spend every minute of your time with her, do you?”

He shook his head.

“What do you do when you’re not with her?”

Toby thought for a minute.  “Mostly play with Charlie.”

“And when he’s not around?”

Toby was beginning to wonder where this was leading.  “Well, sometimes I practice tracking.”

“And when you’re not doing that?”

Toby shrugged.  “There’s not much else for me to do.”

“Exactly,” she answered, lifting a paw and setting it down with a thump for emphasis.  “Luna’s not a tracker like you, and her humans aren’t home