They sat naked as the wind whistled gently through the twilight-shadowed trees. Danny twitched and took a sniff of the air. Ben was scratching his leg absent-mindedly. The sun was beginning to set in the distance.
Ben had been less fazed by it all than Danny. The kaleidoscope of tantalising smells was wild beyond memory. Ben just accepted the new menu of experience. Danny found it unsettling.
The last thing Danny remembered had been the unending waterfall of blood. There had been an enormous explosion. Books were flying everywhere, randomly at first through the blackness in which they were held suspended. The books then took some order from out of the chaos. The books were flying around them in the sea of blood that poured through the surrounding blackness. They looked like little winged creatures in a dance.
One book had suddenly flown straight into Danny's head and his whole body had dissolved into the red mist. He experienced a sense of flying apart - a peaceful disembodied unity. For a moment his consciousness had continued within the separate flying chunks and then it too deserted.
What he imagined constituted his soul had awoken, in one piece, within the body of a large moth-eaten black Labrador dog. There was more than a hint of Alsatian to him also, noticeable mainly by the large upward-pointed ears. Ben was a small, fierce, brown and white terrier missing part of his left ear.
‘Is that you Ben?’ Danny projected his thoughts at the small, ragged terrier. The look the small dog gave him was unmistakable.
‘Hungry? I can smell rat! Let’s go,’ Ben replied telepathically.
‘Ruff,’ barked Danny and the two dogs set off in hunt of food.
Eventually they caught a small rat and they both smelt faintly of fresh blood, a few drops of which still clung to Ben's snout. Hunger had been a powerful canine thought - one their possessors could do little about. A few hairs were all that remained of their rodent quarry. It appeared to be late afternoon by the red of the setting sun. The forest had an ancient, faraway air to it.
It was some time before Danny and Ben had fully remembered their former more human selves. They had both been surprised to find their self-consciousness was still there, a little sharper and wilder perhaps but the same otherwise. In fact the telepathy seemed quicker, smoother somehow. Danny asked Ben telepathically if he remembered anything of their journey. Ben just sniffed the ground. Danny knew that meant, 'I'm none the wiser about it than you'.
Danny cocked his head to one side and listened. He could hear large footfalls against the softly hollow forest floor. His human mind wanted to stay, rooted in fear to the spot where he stood. His dog body ached to run. He was about to unleash himself into the darkening forest when the footfalls grew louder. A pause of silence preceded by a split-second the leap with which it appeared.
There, right before him, stood the most terrible, fearsome looking dog he had ever seen. Its grey and white wolf-like hair was steaming from expiration. The dog towered over him. Danny's animal instincts kicked in and he launched himself backwards only to find his path blocked by a tree. Ben reared off to his right cowering and growling simultaneously. For such a small dog he looked very aggressive, as if he'd bite and not let go though death might pass him by.
The giant wolf must have been five-foot-tall at the shoulders. It looked like it could bite a man's head clean off. Yet it just stood still, calmly surveying. Its coat was white with tufts of grey here and there. It was a magnificent animal, like a giant Siberian husky.
The dog’s eyes locked onto Danny's. He'd never seen eyes like this before. They seemed as old as a millennium, if not more. The air between them seemed to thicken and crackle with expectation. Danny heard an echo from deep inside his own skull, a slow buzzing sound, like a thousand bees buzzing in harmony. The dog's eyes hypnotically 'unwound' him as the circular sound slowed. The black pupils moved in a tiny circle in time to the internal noise. The sound stilled and all fear was gone, all calmness restored.
Danny edged back from the tree and looked up toward the giant. A voice issued forth. It was the dog talking but the sound was neither telepathic nor coming from a body. It seemed to issue directly from the air surrounding the animals.
‘I am Zafearon. I am not of this realm but I have come to you in your hour of need. You entered the Etherial Blood, within the artery of the One Mind and have become lodged halfway through your journey in this forest. You are upon a planet that has never known humans, at the very edge of this Sapient Realm galaxy.
‘There is a gate device within this forest that allows its keepers access to the fabled Akashi realm. From there you will be guided onto the Akashi library itself. Here you will find something that the Sapient Ones, the eternal intelligence of the trees, wishes you to have. Apparently it is essential to the future of your mission, or your world, or something along those lines. I forget which, to be honest. I have come far and I wish to go now so I will take my leave. It takes much energy for me to be before you like this. I must go whilst I still can. Do you have any questions?’
‘Yes. Why me? And why are we dogs?’ asked Danny intending the sound to be telepathic. However the surrounding air spoke his words.
‘Why ever not? Is my reply to the latter. And to the former I say, you are but the tip of the iceberg, no more important than the rest, but the tip nonetheless, my friend.’
The giant dog turned and ran toward the open moors beyond the forest fringe. It stopped just before it went out of sight. Speaking telepathically the giant warned Danny and Ben about the pack of man-dogs. Seven men from the feared agency had followed them through the ethereal blood portal. The Sapient Realm had transformed them into a vicious dog-pack. The men wanted to acquire the gateway to the Akashi realm. Their masters craved possession of that which is not rightly theirs. They had used Danny and Ben to get this far.
A whiplash of white light shot past Danny’s head. A small translucent orb about one and a half feet wide appeared. A delicate, high-pitched humming sound accompanied it. Zafearon said to follow the orb. She would help them find the Akashi gate. The man-dogs must not be allowed to acquire it.
Danny and Ben watched the little orb with deep concentration. It pulsed, at about the rate of a human heartbeat, whilst it hovered in the air just a little above and beyond their heads. Danny could see inside the cloudy white orb to its blue heart. Something about the way the globe pulsed made Danny think it was a little impatient, grumpy even. The glow brightened and the orb moved slowly off. It followed the giant dog's path out onto the moors.
Danny thought, 'Hello,' toward the orb. The blue heart of the orb seemed to pause for a fraction of a second as if taken by surprise by Danny's communication. Another pause, then a brighter surge which seemed to mean, 'Follow me'. When Danny and Ben had followed the orb uphill and out onto the moor she took them to the hill summit. All around them they could see forest and hilltops, some green, some bare. The wind whistled as the clouds passed quickly overhead. The odd bird sang in the distance.
The panting of the two dogs, Labrador and terrier kept company with the deep murmur of the surrounding mountain streams. As the team made their way down the hill the orb positioned herself in the middle of a stream some few inches deep. Instinctively the two dogs followed, treading their way through the icy water. The stream gathered strength as they made their way down and soon they found themselves above a rock pool.
The orb hung above the pool pulsing faster – this was the way to go. Ben, the terrier was the first to dive in. The cold water felt warm with sheer body-shock.
‘C’mon dive in!’ encouraged Ben, following the telepathic message with a small bark.
Danny pawed the ground then dived in and was amazed that he too felt warm not cold. The two dogs swam over to the other side of the rock pool and scrambled out onto the grass-tufted rocks. The slippery slime upon the rocks was no match for the supple leather of their paws. As they got out a chill wind blew and the coldness hit them full-force. They shivered and shook the damp from their coats.
‘You won’t catch me,’ communicated Danny, wagging his tail in excitement. The two dogs shot off as one across the grassy upland moor.
The moor led back down into the forest. By the time they had reached the safety of the trees they were nearly dry. They kept on running, dodging through the increasingly moonlit trees until they came upon a large burrow entrance.
They had nearly forgotten about the orb in their excitement. Now she hovered calmly above a large hollow near to the burrow entrance. The whole place smelt abandoned. Nearby a crow was picking at the remains of a large rabbit-looking creature. It was too big to be a rabbit and its ears were too small. The carcass was recent, less than a day old. The crow flew off and the two dogs ate their fill.
The two small moons above them communicated a mixture of yearning and fear. They fell asleep in the dark hollow under the watchful glow of the orb. Once they had fallen soundly asleep, she left them.