Chapter 34: At the End of Dale’s Stroll
IT was the end of December, and the year was coming to a close.
Dale was out for a stroll, walking through the afternoon sun along the snow-covered road. He didn’t usually go too far from the house, but there was a reason why he was all this way out today: he’d found wild rabbit and fox footprints near Soup Forest and found himself quite a way away after following them.
It looked like a competition between the fleeing rabbit and the fox whose pursuit never flagged, and that excited Dale, who’d grown up in a city.
At some point, the rabbit’s footprints disappeared, replaced with the heavy scent of blood, immediately cutting off the story the tracks told.
I get eaten.
That’s when Dale finally realized he might also be eaten by the fox. He was hurrying back the way he came when a wagon stopped by him, and a voice called out.
“Hey! You, you’re the cat from before. Haven’t seen you in ages. Can’t believe you’re alive! Huh. You’ve gotten bigger. So, you’ve been living out here in the middle of nowhere?”
Huh? This person…
It was the merchant who’d left while Dale had been out playing. Fond memories welled up of Dale spending a whole month with this man while he fed him, and they traveled together.
“Would you look at that, you’re alive.”
“Meow!” Long time no see.
Dale butted his head against the man’s leg when he got out of the wagon, and the man stroked his head and back. This made Dale happy. He purred sweetly and rubbed his entire body against the man’s shin.
“Hah, good boy. You’re so clever. You remember me. Hup!” The man picked Dale up. “Your coat’s so shiny, you almost look like someone’s taking care of you. And you’ve put on meat. You must’ve gotten way better at hunting. Well then, I think I’ll have you come deal with my mice.”
Then the man put Dale in an empty wooden box, closed the lid, and set something on top.
Huh? Why? No! I go home! Go home! Want go home!
“Haha! Don’t be so angry. Relax. I’ll take care of you now.”
The wagon set off, and Dale could see the scenery passing by through a hole in the box.
Dale frantically screamed, Help! Snow! Rob! Help! but he was so far away that Olivia didn’t even pick up his inner cries.
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IT was around dinnertime when Olivia began worrying about Dale when he didn’t return. Dale was young and had never once forgotten to come eat his food. He was always sitting in front of his food bowl right at food time so precisely it was almost like he could read the clock.
He does go to play in the forest, but he gets so scared of the wild animals that he never goes in too far. I wonder what happened.
She couldn’t go looking for him while she still had customers, so she decided to start her search in earnest once she’d shut the restaurant after seven that evening.
“Lara, I’m going to go look for Dale,” she said. “You stay here. Arthur should be home soon.”
“Then I should go to look, and you should wait for Arthur.”
“No, I want to go. Please, keep an eye on the house for me,” said Olivia while thinking, I’m the one who can hear Dale’s voice.
“All right. Be careful though. It’s pitch-black outside.”
Olivia put on several layers of clothes underneath her leather coat. The darkness was inky black outside the lamplight, and everything was silent because the shallow piles of snow absorbed all sound.
“How odd,” said Olivia. “Dale doesn’t normally go walking around in the cold and dark like this. Something must have happened. Rob, can you search the area to see if you can find which way Dale went?”
Yes!
Rob went in circles around the yard sniffing, then popped out onto the road like he found something and continued directly south. Luckily, it hadn’t snowed since Dale disappeared.
“His scent will disappear if the snow piles up more. We need to find him quickly.”
Olivia followed Rob at a jogging pace. She wanted to ask the wild birds, too, but they were already asleep.
“Dale! Come out! Dale! It’s time to eat!”
Rob continued steadily. He stopped several times to sniff. When Olivia brought the lamp closer to the snowdrifts one of those times, she noticed the rabbit and fox tracks. And then the cat tracks.
No way.
The cat tracks, which she assumed belonged to Dale, seemed to follow the rabbit and fox.
“The fox wouldn’t attack Dale if it made a successful hunt, but what would happen if Dale showed up just after the rabbit escaped? Dale would be much easier to catch than a rabbit.”
Rob continued at a quick pace. They were already over three miles from home.
I thought he was so timid. I can’t believe he wandered this far away.
Olivia’s stomach clenched painfully as she imagined horrible things.
Rob stopped, having seemingly found something.
“Woof!” Smell blood.
“No, oh no, oh no…”
Here! indicated Rob and Olivia brought the oil lamp close. There was a clump of brown fur and a small splash of blood. Olivia picked up the fur with numb fingers while a terrible vision flickered across her mind.
“No… This isn’t Dale’s fur. This is rabbit fur,” she said.
It looked like the fox had been successful.
Rob busily sniffed the area then whined. Dale smell no more, he thought, looking at Olivia sadly.
If the fox caught a rabbit, it wouldn’t then attack a cat. Maybe he was caught by a different animal? But I don’t see any other animal tracks. Why do his tracks and scent disappear here?
Olivia circled around that spot, searching far off the road, but neither Rob’s nose nor Olivia’s eyes or heart found any signs of Dale.
“What do I do? Dale, where did you go?”
“Hey! Olivia!” came a call.
“Arthur? You came all this way,” she replied to Arthur, who was on his horse.
“I was worried. It’s dangerous to walk around in the dark alone like this.”
“Arthur, Dale’s tracks just disappear. He just vanished.”
“Where? Here?”
“Yeah. It looks like he was following the tracks of a rabbit and a fox. But then, here…”
“Don’t cry, Olivia. It’ll be all right. You go home, I’ll keep looking. Don’t want you to catch a cold.”
“I can’t. Something happened to Dale. His scent and tracks just disappear all of a sudden… Urgh, no, I can’t just stand here crying right now. I need to look for him.”
“Take a deep breath. You can’t hear his mind?”
“No. I can’t hear anything.”
They searched for another hour after that, but there was no sign of Dale.
“Let’s go back for now,” said Arthur. “It’s dangerous to keep at it.”
“Yeah… You’re right.”
The two rode Annie back, with Olivia talking about all her worst fears along the way. “I can only think of one reason why his tracks and scent would just disappear like that. A hawk. If a hawk picked him up and took him away, we wouldn’t be able to save him. Those talons tear in deep, all the way to the organs. We can’t save him. I… I’ve seen animals that went through that before.”
“Just hold up a second, Olivia. You once told me you saw Dale’s past. You said there were all sorts of different people who fed him and gave him different names.”
“Yeah. He likes people. I saw a lot of people all over the place spoiling him.”
“And you said the last one was some guy in a wagon who left him behind?”
“Oh!” Olivia turned to look at Arthur, hope in her eyes.
“Maybe he was being all friendly to some person in a wagon and they took him with them.”
“Maybe. Oh, maybe. That could definitely happen with Dale. And he never bites or scratches even if he is always saying he doesn’t want you to pick him up. That could be it. He got in a wagon. That would explain why his tracks and scent disappeared!”
“It would. I think that’s what happened.”
“Yeah. Yes. He might have just decided he likes some person in a wagon more than me,” Olivia said sadly.
“Don’t think so negatively. Anyway, let’s just get home and have food first.”
“Right. Dale might have taken a liking to that person, or maybe he just wanted to go on an adventure.”
And if that had happened, there was nothing Olivia could do. This road connected the capital with several other cities. Wagons and carriages came and went from all sorts of different places. If Dale was in a wagon, there was no way they were going to find him.
Besides, if he decided to go with the wagon…
When Olivia got home looking crestfallen, Snow came over and said, Dale?
“We didn’t find him. I’m sorry, Snow.”
Hmm. Snow lashed her tail back and forth, then slowly went back to bed. If Dale like it here, he come home.
“Snow…”
If he like it here, he come home, she repeated.
Lara was there, so Olivia just went over to Snow and rubbed her head, but she agreed.
Dale would come home if he liked it here. If he found a place he liked more, he wouldn’t. Isaac, Rob’s former owner, said, “Dogs get attached to people. Cats get attached to places.”
“You’re right, Snow,” she said. “Cats are free to walk around outside. He’ll come back if he likes it here.”
So long as he’s not too far away, she thought. If he was hundreds of miles away, he’d never make it back walking on little cat legs.
Olivia sat down in a daze. Snow, who wasn’t normally that clingy, jumped onto her lap.
I here. No cry, she said, gently licking Olivia’s hand.