Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones Page A

time to sleep, or to die either. Kathleen was there the next minute, undoing the rope, “There, Leo. I hope you weren’t too lonely. Walk!”
    He was forced to stagger off to the meadow for a walk. His paws hurt, his legs ached, his back ached. He became convinced he was dying. He waded miserably into the river, and, when that failed to soothe his aches, he sat on the bank with his head hanging and eight inches or so of purplish tongue dangling from his jaws.
    “Oh dear!” said Kathleen. “Leo, I don’t think you’re well.”
    She brought him home. He fell on the hearthrug with a thump and went straight to sleep.
    “Robin, something’s wrong with Leo,” said Kathleen. “I think he’s ill.”
    “Distemper, perhaps?” said Robin. He and Basil rolled Sirius about, shouting, “Wake up, Shamus!
Rat!
” They woke Sirius up. He groaned piteously, to show them he needed to be left in peace to die, and fell asleep again. “Leave him,” said Basil. “He may sleep it off.”
    Sirius slept until Kathleen’s bedtime, and only a strong sense of duty roused him then. He staggered to the kitchen, where he ate and drank hugely. Then he limped upstairs after Kathleen, wanting only to go to sleep again. Kathleen saw that playing games was out of the question. She read him the story of Bluebeard instead. Sirius could hardly keep his eyes open.
    “Silly fool!” said Tibbles, stepping delicately in through the window.
    “Yes. I’ll know another time,” said Sirius. Then he fell asleep and, to Tibbles’s disgust, he snored and twitched. He dreamed he was out in the street again, running with four dogs just like himself.
    To Kathleen’s relief, Leo was quite restored in the morning. He bounded willingly out into the yard and did not seem to mind being tied up at all. “You
are
a good dog,” she said, and she hugged him uncomfortably before she left. As soon as she was well away, Sirius sprang up and slipped his collar off. He found that Tibbles had prudently bolted the bottom bolt on the gate again, but that was no trouble now. It went back with one swipe of his paw. He used his nose to lift the latch. Now he knew the Zoi was somewhere near, he told himself he would take things more steadily and search until he had found it.
    As he was shutting the gate, Sol stepped up above the house.“You must be right,” he said. He seemed irritable. Fierce little spurts of light shot from him. “Something did fall in this area somewhere. But it’s very odd. I just can’t see it—and I can see every stone and every blade of grass.”
    “Could it have gone into the ground?” asked Sirius.
    “It must have done,” said Sol. “So I can’t think why Earth hasn’t noticed it. It came down with a big enough thump. Yet there’s no damage. Is a Zoi something very small and dense?”
    Sirius sat down and tried to marshal vague green memories. What
was
a Zoi like? The trouble was, it was something he had used every day for long ages, and it had become so familiar that he had barely noticed it. “I don’t think it was always the same,” he said doubtfully. “I—I can’t describe it.”
    Sol spurted spiky annoyance. “You’re worse than the rest of them! Think, can’t you!”
    “I can’t,” said Sirius. The warm dog thoughts sat just behind his eyes again, and he felt miserably stupid. “But I’d know it when I saw it.”
    “Don’t droop like that,” said Sol. “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault I was sharp. I’ve been having a rather annoying time trying to find out about Zoi. Everyone tells me something different. The only thing they agree on is that I seem to have had a narrow escape. The thing must have gone right past me. They say I was lucky not to have my sphere go nova.”
    “Oh, no,” Sirius said, out of his green memories, without having to think. “Whoever told you that didn’t know much about Zoi. They can’t act unless someone has hold of them.”
    “Ah,” said Sol. His spurting plumes floated