camwyn | A little bit of the next part of the Diary

I'm currently working on two subsections of the Diary that need to be written out of sequence. (This is so that they do not burst out of my head and leave skull fragments all over the floor.) I thought that I might put up what I had of the first one for your perusal.

September, 1936
The Winkie Country, Oz

It's been more than a month since our assignment in Glasgow and our encounters with the Sirens. I've got the notes I took during that time, but I wouldn't show them to a schoolteacher, let alone a general audience. Right now I haven't got time to edit them into something acceptable - rest assured, though, it'll be done. Later, though. Right now there's something else that's been eating at me.

During the weeks after Glasgow, both the Shadow (under the name of Craig Lamont - one more reason not to trust the man, lifesaver or no) and Lord ~~Wimsey~~ Peter put an amazing amount of effort into investigating the Prufrock company. They got a good amount of information, but not nearly as much as any of us would've liked. Lord ~~Wimsey~~ did his best to get one or more of his people hired so that we'll have an inside line. They didn't want to bite, but that's no surprise. A thief knows he can't be trusted, and he looks at everyone else in the world the same way. The Shadow was working on something similar, the last I heard. I expect he'll probably have greater success. . . The important part is that they carried the burden of investigating Prufrock. England is Lord W- sorry, Lord Peter's, he's told me several times to call him that - area of knowledge, and criminal enterprise is the Shadow's. Not wanting to interfere, I left them to it. There were other things I had to investigate.

The files we got from the Prufrock offices were maps and charts of lands out of children's books. It's one thing for a single group of people to believe in that kind of thing. Crowds have been deceived before. Whole governments have been deceived before (all I will say on this is 'Princess Caraboo'- check the encyclopaedia if you don't recognize the name). This, though- this was different. We'd seen the Sirens and the Mermaids. We'd seen the magic of Dorothy's treasure from Oz. I had no reason to disbelieve any more, and it looked as if the Prufrock people felt the same way. Even if there had been a deception operating, it was one they believed in. The only way to catch them was to find out what, exactly, they were hunting and to get there first. That meant going back to the source - the children's books.

The bookstores of London are run by decent people who don't ask a lot of questions. For the most part a man like me looks to be somebody's uncle, and I didn't see any reason to change that impression. I made sure to wear my civilian clothes on my visits and I left Prince behind - he didn't like that, but I promised him I'd take him to the park and let him run properly when I got back. That seemed to make up for it. The first store I visited had about half of L. Frank Baum's Oz books in stock; the others took more hunting to find. Along the way I picked up more - the works of Barrie first, since we found the star-chart of London and the Mermaid had mentioned the exile of Captain Hook. Then came Lewis Carroll. I don't recall seeing anything about Wonderland in the papers, but it doesn't pay to be unprepared. Another novel, called The Water-Babies, turned up in the same store as the Wonderland novels. There were other Baum books too - things with titles like The Master Key, The Sea Fairies, and Sky Island. The booksellers either think I'm insane, or that I've got a very lucky niece or nephew. I tracked down a few other books as well, particularly the works of Charles Foster Mackay, and I bought what I could. That was more or less all of them, since I'd been staying in League headquarters rather than spending money on a flat of my own.

The Oz books are short enough that I was able to finish two of them at a stretch and still have time before my evening excursions for other reading. I think I had just finished The Lost Princess of Oz when I picked up a book I'd all but overlooked. I don't think I'd ever heard of it before, but the bookseller had suggested it to me for 'your little boy' - Bambi: A Life in the Woods, by Felix Salten. Takes place in the Black Forest. The main character's a roe deer. Would've mostly ignored it, really, since it's got none of the magic or fairyland material that the Prufrocks were after, but. . . well. According to Dorothy the animals of Oz can talk. So can animals from everyday countries who happen to come to Oz. I've seen Miss Poppins communicate with both Prince and Toto as easily as if they were human beings. I've often thought that Prince - or Duke, or King - would have spoken to me if he could. If only because I haven't got enough sense to smell the things they do, or notice the trails they pick up on! The Oz books aren't supposed to be much more than histories, so naturally they don't touch on what the talking animals are thinking. Salten, on the other hand, wrote his book from the animals' point of view.

The first part of the book wasn't anything much, really. It's all typical children's-book stuff at first. I almost put it down in favor of the Mackay, but as I glanced down the page, one of the deer mentioned "Him". That was how they referred to human beings - Him, or He, or His. Every time. Hunters, poachers, farmers - all men were Him, and He was a terrible mystery too powerful to comprehend.

It caught my attention. I'd never really given much thought to what most animals must see of men and women; dogs maybe, but others? Never even thought of it. Wolves stay back from people unless the winter's made hunting too hard for them, or unless they smell blood. If you catch one young enough, you can tame it, at least some of the time. Bears aren't bad creatures, unless some fool's been tormenting them. Why, bear-cubs make fair pets, as long as you treat them kindly and keep them outside where they're happier. Caribou just. . . are, I guess. Mink, martens, sable- they don't really mean much until they're on a trapper's load of pelts. They're beasts. It hadn't occurred to me to think about them. But where we would be going, the animals could not only think, they could talk- and if the Oz books really were true histories, then they had a lot to say.

I kept reading the Salten. There were two parts that stuck with me. The first came when one of the deer was struck by a hunter's bullet. After an older stag misled the hunter and his dog, the wounded young stag limped off to hide and recover. Now, I've never been in that hunter's position, but I've had to follow a lot of blood trails - animal and human alike. I’m proud to say that when it's been animal, I've caught up and put the poor beast out of its misery every time. Hunters who give up on their quarry only encourage the wolves. I haven't always been able to track them myself, of course; that's what dogs are for. King was my first really fine tracker, but I'd swear Prince was his equal any day of the week. What I miss, he finds, and he makes sure I see it too. I've been at this long enough to know that I can trust him when I fail.

Maybe it's a little strange to say so, but it's exactly that which made the other part of the book stick in my head. After the young stag recovers, a dog comes into the forest on the trail of a dying fox. There's a stretch of that chapter that burned itself into my brain:

"Let me go," said the fox beginning to speak, "let me go." He spoke softly and beseechingly. He was quite weak and despondent.

"No! No! No!" the dog howled.

The fox pleaded still more insistently. "We're relations," he pleaded, "we're brothers almost. Let me go home. Let me die with my family at least. We're brothers almost, you and I."

"No! No! No!" the dog raged.

Then the fox rose so that he was sitting perfectly erect. He dropped his handsome pointed muzzle on his bleeding breast, raised his eyes and looked the dog straight in the face. In a completely altered voice, restrained and embittered, he growled, "Aren't you ashamed, you traitor!"

"No! No! No!" yelped the dog.

But the fox went on, "You turncoat, you renegade." His maimed body was taut with contempt and hatred. "You spy," he hissed, "you blackguard, you track us where He could never find us. You betray us, your own relations, me who am almost your brother. And you stand there and aren't ashamed!"

The creatures of the forest go on to denounce the dog as a filthy traitor and a spy at the top of their lungs. And the dog answers:

"What do you want? What do you know about it? What are you talking about? Everything belongs to Him, just as I do. But I, I love Him. I worship Him, I serve Him. Do you think you can oppose Him, poor creatures like you? He's all-powerful. He's above all of you. Everything we have comes from Him. Everything that lives or grows comes from him." The dog was quivering with exaltation.

The creatures argue. The dog's rage wins in the end:

At last the fox could not fight any more. In a few seconds he was lying on his back, his white belly uppermost. He twitched and stiffened and died.

The dog shook him a few times, then let him fall on the trampled snow. He stood beside him, his legs planted, calling in a deep, loud voice, "Here! Here! He's here!"

The others were horrorstruck and fled in all directions.

"Dreadful," said Bambi softly to the old stag in the hollow.

"The most dreadful part of all," the old stag answered, "is that the dogs believe what the hound just said. They believe it, they pass their lives in fear, they hate Him and themselves and yet they'd die for His sake."

I had to put the book down there.

All my life, I've been around dogs. When I was a boy of seven, my father - one of the first of the Northwest Mounted Police - brought me my first pup, Shep. Helped me raise him and train him - even bury him, years later. It was the Mounties who taught me how to drive a dogsled and look after a whole team. Yukon King would've been mine from the days when he was a tiny pup if the breeder bringing him to me hadn't had that accident on the trail. Even though Old Three Toe the she-wolf raised him, he only ever bit me once, and that was only because a lynx had just attacked him. He seemed happy enough to stay with me after that, and saved my life more times than I can count. I always treated him well, and in ninety cases out of a hundred, he was all the partner I needed. I did my best to do right by him and his son, Duke.

And, yes, by his grandson Prince. I owe my life to that dog. I could never knowingly do him wrong. I've always thought he served me willingly, and I've tried to be good to him in return. He's not like his grandfather, though. He's never known any life except with people. Yes, his mother was a she-wolf, but dogs and wolves alike can be incredibly loyal creatures. It's just that - well, when you don't know any other way to be, is it really loyalty? Or is it just habit- or fear?

And even if it is loyalty. . . The fox and the hound were almost brothers, and the hound still broke the fox's neck. Prince is half a wolf. "You betray us, your own relations, me who am almost your brother." Prince is as much of the forest as he is of men's making. Maybe more. He's fought the creatures of the forest for the sake of men; most of the time he's fought them at my order. He's never seemed the least bit hesitant about it, but . . .

We're in Oz now. Prince and Toto have come back from their mission. Unless I've got the hour completely wrong, I believe I've got enough time to settle this matter once and for all.

I'm going to go talk to my dog.