Sympathy for the Devil - By Tim Pratt Page 0,181

gone.

“Dog! You coming?” she says, and I run to catch up.

We walk a long time. Mr. Moon lights the way. There’s honeysuckle in the air, thick and sweet, and the further we get from that house the happier she is. Her step gets lighter, like she’s shucking off some burden, and she starts in laughing from time to time.

We walk on and on. I flush a fat rabbit and chase it a while. She takes a big meat sandwich out of her bag and gives me half, and we drink our fill from a spring running by the road. She picks up an old stick and throws it as she walks along, and I bring it on back and she throws it again.

By and by the road under our feet changes, from hard-packed dirt to blacktop, smooth and oily and smelling from tar. The sky is changed now, the wind is dry and hot, the trees and brush all gone. And it’s a puzzlement to me; I can smell the desert spread out all around us, sand and heat and open sky, but there’s water up ahead too, a powerful lot of it.

“Look, dog. There it is.” Off in the distance I can see a city, tall buildings and lights shining and blinking, and cars, and people—more than I’ve ever seen. And something else, a thick, rank smell the Dark Man taught me. Money. Bright lights and noise and money, that’s the place her heart yearns for.

She pulls a pack of cards from her pocket, does a one-hand shuffle like she was born with the pasteboards in her hands. She spreads the cards out to make a fan and flutters them back and forth, and the ace of spades jumps out and dances along above us in that hot dry wind a second before she catches it neat as neat and slides it back in.

“They do what I tell them, now,” she says. “I’m going to be the queen of the tables, dog, how’s that sound to you?”

That’s what’s different about her, what I couldn’t place. This dream is the future, after the Dark Man learns her what she wants to learn.

“Cards? You doing all of this to learn cards?” I ask.

“I’m going to be a queen,” she says again, not paying me any mind. She’s shuffling the cards again, makes the joker jump up this time. The breeze picks the card and pulls it up out of the deck, and it lands on the blacktop at my feet before she can catch it. The joker is the Dark Man, and he winks up at me. She makes a little tch sound and picks up the card, puts it back in the deck.

Her clothes are changed. She’s wearing a dress, shiny spangles and beads, her hair is long and kind of curly, on her feet little bitty shoes with tall heels, and her fingers all covered in rings.

You’re going to end up in the cupboard with all the rest, I think. But I won’t speak. He’ll beat me enough for what I’ve said already, I don’t want more than that. No more. Nope.

Nope.

“Listen,” I say. “Don’t you understand? He don’t work for free. You gonna lose your—”

Off in the desert comes a sound, raucous and ugly. It throws my mind into confusion and perplexes my tongue.

A rooster crowing.

Just like that we’re back under the oak tree, air all moist and close, skeeters and no-see-ums digging at us. She’s skinny again, and tired and sick, and I am just a dumb dog.

She jumps up and grabs her bag. “Three more Sundays, dog, and I’ll leave this place forever.” She runs on down the road, back to that tarpaper house.

Across the river, Red Rooster crows again. I head on home.

Seventh Sunday

My back hurts, and my head. The chain is too tight, and it’s rubbing off all the fur about my neck.

Just after sunrise, Red Rooster comes strutting down the road like he owns it. He’s been to the crossroads. I pick my head up slowly. My ear bleeds, little weepy drops.

“Was she there? She still sick?” I say.

He struts on past, like I’m not there.

I’m hungry.

Eighth Sunday

The Dark Man takes the chain off and gives me dinner.

Thank you, boss, I say.

Red Rooster has just come back from the crossroads again. He tosses his head, comb waggling. The Dark Man squints at him and Red Rooster finds elsewhere to be, quick as he can.

The Dark Man lays his hand on my head, and