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Most nights, Fred and Ethel slept contentedly in their corners Occasionally, and not solely during thunderstorms, they preferred to snooze in a pile with Mom

Even made anxious by thunder, they would not venture into Aiven with the phrase Let’s bundle

Nickie did not know those words, but Fred and Ethel rose from their sheepskin berths in expectation of a for limp by recent events, Amy needed rest; and this would not be the first time that elusive sleep had come to her more easily when she nestled down in the security of the pack

"Okay, kids," she said "Let’s bundle"

Ethel sprinted three steps, sprang, and Fred followed On the bed, assessing the cos turned, turned, turned, like cogs in a clockworks, then curled, dropped, and settled with sighs of satisfaction

Re bedside with a mouthful of slippers, Nickie stared expectantly at her new olden obeyed, relinquishing her prize

Amy put the slippers on the floor beside the bed

Nickie picked theo soe dark-brown eyes were as expressive as those of any hus about the appearance of this breed, but nothing o out You pottied e came home"

The beauty of a retriever’s eyes is ence so evident in the co to coaze and concentration

"Give," she said, and again Nickie obeyed

Confident that repetition would ied where she put thee of the bed and returned them to the floor

At once, Nickie snatched the These are lovely slippers, and I’ rid of them"

Chin on her paws, Ethel watched with interest Chin on Ethel’s head, Fred watched fros want discipline and are s are those with gentle masters who quietly but fir as in war, the better part of valor can be discretion

This time, when Amy took possession of the slippers, she tucked thearded this developrinned, perhaps in triu to be on the dog end of the leash" She patted the mattress beside her "Nickie, up"

Either the retriever understood the co over Amy and onto the bed

Fred took his chin off Ethel’s head, and Ethel closed her eyes, and as the other kids had done, Nickie wound herself down into a cozy sleeping posture

All the hed as the dogs had done when they had settled for the night

To ensure that the bungalow re for thirty , and she vacuumed all the floors once a day Nickie would add to the work load-and be worth every htless, afloat on a rising sea of sleep, into which she began dreamily to sink

She was hooked and reeled back by a line cast from the shores ofbarefoot through the woods in my dream

Amy’s eyes opened from darkness to darkness, and for aflood that filled her throat and lungs

No The game with the slippers could not have been for the purpose of re in the woods

This new dog was just a dog, nothing more In the storms of this world, a way forward can always be found, but there is no way back either to a time of peace or to a tis have an air of mystery, an inner life deeper than science will concede, but whatever the true nature of their minds or the condition of their souls, they are limited to the wisdom of their kind, and each is shaped by the experiences of its one life

Nevertheless, the slippers now under her pillow reminded her of another pair of slippers, and the recollected words replayed in herbarefoot through the woods in un to snore softly Fred was a quiet sleeper except when he dreaer A, theake, and not just awake but also watching her in the dark

Although Amy’s weariness did not abate, the possibility of sleep receded froer, she reached out to where the dog was curled, expecting that her suspicion would not be confirloom, her hand found the burly head, which was in fact raised and turned toward her, as if the dog were a sentinel on duty

Holding its left ear, she gently ertips rubbed the back of the ear where itto purr like a cat, this was it, and Nickie submitted to the attention with palpable pleasure

After a while, the golden lowered her head, resting her chin on Amy’s abdo barefoot through the woods in o raised the drawbridge between these memories and her heart, but now they swam across the round be soft?

It’s soft but it’s cold

It’s a winter woods, is it?

Uh-huh Lots of snow

So dream yourself a summer woods

I like the snow

Then maybe you should wear boots to bed

Maybe I should

And thick woolen socks and long johns

As Aan to race, she tried to shut out the voices in her mind But her heart pounded like a fist on a door:an audience

She petted the furry head resting on her abdoainst memories too terrible to revisit, she instead sus that she had rescued, the abused and abandoned dogs, hundreds over the years Victims of human indifference, of human cruelty, they had been physically and emotionally broken when they came to her, but so often they had been restored in body and lory

She lived for the dogs

In the dark she rim times had sustained her: "‘The woods are lovely, dark, and deep But I have proo before I sleep’"

Head resting on A, not this , was the sentinel on duty Gradually her heart stopped pounding, stopped racing, and all was still and dark and as it should be

Chapter 14

At the s, dawn descended, pressing darkness down and ard, and away

Traffic noise began to arise from the street, the wheels of commerce and occasionally a far voice

On the kitchen table lay the drawing of Nickie and two studies, from me facial structure than the first

Brian had begun a third study This one involved only the eyes in their deep sockets, the space between, the expressive eyebrows, and the lush lashes

He continued to be enchanted by the task that he had set for hi in the dog’s gaze that was of great importance, an ineffable quality that words could not describe but that his inexplicably enhanced talent, his seee froe, capture and define

The irrationality of this conviction was not lost on him An ineffable quality is, by its nature, one that can’t be defined, only felt

His deter’s eyes, until he found what he sought, was nothing less than a compulsion The extreht to the task perplexed hih not sufficiently to make him put down the pencil

In Rembrandt’s famous Lady with a Pink, the subject doesn’t communicate directly with the viewer but is portrayed in a reverie that makes you want to enter her conteives her nearer eye a heightened color contrast, a clear iris, and a perfectly inserted highlight that suggests a

Brian had no illusions that his talent approached Rembrandt’s The subtlety of the translucent shadows and lu’s eyes was so far superior to the quality of anything he’d drawn before, both in concept and execution, that he wondered how he could have created it

He half doubted that the draas his

Although he was the only presence in the aparth he had watched the series of pencils in his hand produce the ily convinced that he did not possess the genius or the artistry required to lay down upon paper the startling dimension or the luminous mystery that now informed these finished eyes