The Dogs of Winter Read Free Page A

splayed my fingers across the grate, thought about the red coat that was not the red coat, and finally slept.

    Something grabbed my foot and yanked me from my sleep.
    â€œI’ve almost got it!” a voice said.
    I scrambled back, pulling my foot away, and banged my head on the bottom of the bench. A dirty, narrow face with beady eyes glared at me.
    A giant rat had come to eat my foot! I shrank back in horror and tried to make myself as small as I could.
    A grimy hand reached for me. It was not a rat. It was a boy!
    Another face appeared next to his. A bruise shadowed a dark eye. Its husky voice said, “Why, it looks like a little bear all curled up in its winter den.” Holding out a hand, it said, “Come here, mishka , little bear.” The voice and the hand belonged to a girl.
    I looked from the girl to the rat-faced boy and back. She called me little bear. My mother called me little bear.
    â€œHave you seen my mother?” I asked the girl. “She is looking for me.”
    The rat-faced boy laughed. “Yeah, right. All our mothers are looking for us.”
    The girl jabbed him in the side with her elbow. “Shut up,Viktor,” she snapped. She peered at me under the bench. “Did you lose your mother on the train?”
    I shook my head. “I lost her before,” I said.
    The girl nodded. “It’s been a long time since you’ve seen her?”
    I blinked back tears. “But she is looking for me,” I said.
    The girl held out her hand again. “She won’t find you hiding underneath a bench,” she said. “Come on out, little bear.”
    Four children encircled me. I could not tell their ages or their size. Their mothers dressed them in cast-off clothes either many sizes too big or too small. Still, where there were children, there were adults. They would tell me how to find my mother.
    â€œMy name is Tanya,” the girl said. She pointed to the rat-faced boy. “That’s Viktor.”
    A girl with a baseball cap and a cigarette tucked behind one ear jabbed her thumb at her chest. “I’m Yula and I make more money than anybody else.” She pointed to a dark-skinned boy with dreamy eyes, “Mr. Glue Head there is Pasha.” Viktor snickered.
    â€œMy name is Mishka Ivan Andreovich and I am five years old.” I stood as tall as I could in my Famous Basketball Player shoes. “I have to find my mother. We live in the town of Ruza.”
    Rat-faced Viktor laughed and waved me away like an annoying fly. “We’ve all lost our mothers, stupid.”
    Tanya glared at him. “What do you know? Maybe hismother is looking for him. Ruza is a long way from here. If we bring him to her, she’ll probably give us money.”
    â€œI don’t believe in mothers,” Viktor said. “There is no mother looking for him, and he’s too small to keep.”
    I started to ask him how he could not believe in mothers. Everyone has a mother, even mean, dirty children. I started to tell him about the red coat and the black button and how my mother read to me every night from the book of fairy tales, and how everything changed after Babushka Ina went to heaven and my mother began to forget and he came into our house, when a low, lazy voice from the shadows said, “As always, Viktor, your imagination is limited by your pea-sized brain.” The rat-faced boy flushed. His eyes shifted nervously from side to side.
    â€œHe is useful to us precisely because he’s small.” The voice stepped from the shadows, cigarette smoke streaming from his nose.
    The tribe of children fell silent and stepped back from me. I rubbed the black button in my pocket with my thumb over and over.
    He flicked the cigarette to the floor and stepped close. He took me by the shoulders, turning me this way and that. “How old are you?” he barked.
    â€œFive,” I whispered.
    He nodded and pinched my arm. “Small for your