Perestroika in Paris

ONE

Paras had won her race. She had jumped all the jumps with a great deal of pleasure, and, she thought, in excellent form. The number-two horse, a chestnut gelding from down south somewhere, had been so far behind her that she hadn’t been able to hear his hoofbeats on the turf (and of course the crowd was yelling, too). She had, she thought, almost danced across the finish line. Everyone was happy—the jockey did a backflip off her, the groom gave her a kiss, and Delphine, her trainer, gave her a hug and three lumps of brown sugar, not to mention an excellent feed of carrots when she was all cool and calm after the race.

Since it was the last race of the day, and, indeed, the year—it was early November—the van, which already had its four horses, had left before her race began, so as to come back and get her, but now the van was late, the stable was empty, and Rania, her groom, had, she said, gone to the bathroom, and why not in the stall, thought Paras, but she could never get an answer to this question.

Twilight was descending over the vast green expanse of Auteuil Racecourse. The jumps had dimmed into dark shapes against the still vivid green grass. Admiring this, Paras did something that she often did—she pressed against the door of the stall, and this time something happened that had never happened before—it swung open. After a moment, Paras stepped carefully out onto the fine, crunchy gravel and snorted. Everything remained quiet. She could see now that every stall was empty and dark—in fact, the green of the racecourse was the brightest color around, so bright that, for a moment, she didn’t dare head out there. But Paras was a very curious filly.

At her feet were several items that Rania had left behind—the grooming box, full of brushes, Paras’s blue blanket, and something that Paras knew was called a “purse.” This was the only thing that interested Paras—she had seen lots of purses, and heard even more about them—she had, in fact, just won a purse, and so, she thought, this would certainly be it. She dropped her nose, snuffled a bit, and found the handle. She picked it up, and trotted out of the stable yard onto the racecourse. Really, she thought, for a horse who had just run a long race, and with fourteen jumps, she felt quite full of beans. She kicked up her heels and gave a squeal.

To begin with, Paras had no idea of making a getaway. Not only did she like racing, and Delphine, and Rania, and her “owner,” Madeleine, and several of the other horses, as well as her nice clean stall up there in Maisons-Laffitte, she really didn’t know much else—none of the horses did. All had been born on pleasant farms in the country, and all had come to Maisons-Laffitte when they were hardly more than babies, and all had been galloping and eating and riding in the van and racing and galloping and eating and racing for quite a while, as long as Paras could clearly remember, actually. It was an active life, and in Maisons-Laffitte there was plenty to see of a morning, especially if you raced over jumps. But the horses did talk among themselves about what else might be out there. Some worldly ones who had traveled from down south, or from across the sea, had seen different courses. They lorded it over the others a bit. There were also those who talked about escaping this life, but they never talked about what else they might do. Paras did not think that any of them were as curious as she was.

And here was the grass—turf, they called it, but grass, really, as thick and green and appetizing as it could possibly be, and a racehorse never got to eat a strand of it, never even thought of doing such a thing. A racecourse was for racing. Paras took a few bites.

It has to be said that the grass was delicious—sweet, fragrant, flavorsome, and a little fruity-tasting. A mouthful was excellent chewing—not too light, but not at all tough, like hay. And it was nice to bite off the living stalks. She walked along, nibbling, occasionally trotted, occasionally kicked up her heels, and even reared twice, just for the fun of it. She was careful to keep track of her purse, though, and always circled back to retrieve it before she got too far away. Pretty soon it was completely dark, but Paras didn’t mind. She could see quite well in the dark.

She romped and grazed, and minded her purse, sniffed a jump here and there, and recalled her race. She inspected interesting herbs and bushes, got into the woods, and then there she was, at the side of what she knew was a road. Roads were for vans—she had traveled many a road.

Across the road were several interesting sights: More trees, more paths. Some tall buildings. Another road that ran between them. Cars—she was quite familiar with cars—parked and quiet beside the buildings. Here and there, the buildings were lit up. There was grass, and it was that, in the end, that lured her across the road. Her shoes rang on the pavement with a pleasing resonance. She lifted her tail and arched her neck and blew out her nostrils a few times. Soon she had left the park far behind.

NO ONE KNEW that Frida lived in the Place du Trocadéro, but she did. Frida was an elegant German shorthaired pointer, ticked all over, but with a brown head and two brown patches on her back. She sat proudly here and there about the Place, making believe that she belonged to this human or that one and was simply waiting to be taken home after a nice walk. There were so many crowds around the Place du Trocadéro that no one noticed her, and so much food thrown out that maintaining her figure was as easy as could be. She was also careful to groom herself from top to bottom every day. Frida was intimately familiar with the Place, because her former owner, Jacques, spent a lot of time there—seven roads entered a nice roundabout that encircled a small green space with plenty of trees and bushes, which meant that the cars had to slow down, which meant that Jacques was more likely to receive a contribution. Up the hill was a crowded cemetery where Jacques liked to sleep when the weather was warm; Frida went up there in the evenings. Two large buildings separated by a slippery exposed area that Frida didn’t like (Jacques called it the Palais de Chaillot) overlooked a large park full of paths and trees that swept down to the river. This meant that there was always a place to run around, and plenty of humans strolling here and there—also good for contributions. Frida bathed regularly in the pool below “the Palais.” You could not be a dog in Paris and be dirty or smelly—if you were, the gendarmerie would take you in for sure.

Frida had never been taken in by the gendarmerie. Jacques had impressed on her that such a fate was unspeakable—every time he even saw a police car or a policeman in the distance, he got up off the pavement, picked up his dish, his mat, and his guitar, and led Frida into some alley or other. Jacques knew every alley, every courtyard, and every cemetery, especially on the west side of the river, and he and Frida had slept in many of them. And then, one morning, in a courtyard a little ways down the river, he didn’t wake up, and here came the gendarmerie, and Frida slipped away. She watched from a distance as they picked him up, put him in a van, and drove him off, and she never understood that. They left his guitar behind. Frida visited it twice and sniffed it for evidence of what had happened, but she could not figure it out. It was hot and bright and the leaves were all over the trees when they took him away, and now it was getting cold and the leaves had fallen, and Frida had to admit that, in spite of the occasional pats she got from passersby, she was a lonely dog, and not quite sure what to do. Jacques had been her only friend, and Jacques had had no friends. How to make a friend, either dog or human, was a mystery to her. It was not only that Jacques had been solitary and protective, it was also that dogs in Paris, on leashes, neatly garbed, kept to themselves. If Frida approached one, it barked instantly, loudly, reporting her misbehavior.

Which is not to say that when she saw Paras by the light of dawn, cropping grass inside the fence of the Place du Trocadéro, Frida knew that they were going to be friends. She knew nothing at all except that she had never seen such a thing before. Here was a horse, not attached to a carriage, a light, graceful-looking horse, wolfing down the grass. Frida plopped down on her haunches as if Jacques had ordered, “Frida! Assieds.” Frida stared. Frida barked two barks. The horse’s ears twitched, but it didn’t lift its head.

A dog had to be careful around horses. They had big feet and big teeth, and they could be quick or they could be clumsy. Jacques had sometimes liked to give the white carriage-horses a bit of apple when the drivers weren’t looking, but he had never allowed Frida to sniff or explore them. Even so, Frida finally stood up and hopped over the little fence and approached the horse, not so much to sniff the horse itself, but to investigate that item near to it, an item that looked very much like a leather purse. As far as Frida was concerned, there was nothing quite as fascinating as a leather purse. Humans carried them all the time—big and small, fragrant and not so fragrant, always clutched tight. Out of leather purses came all sorts of things, but most especially coins. When Frida and Jacques positioned themselves carefully on the street, Jacques picking tunes on his guitar and Frida looking alert and friendly, the coins had rained into their dish. Frida had come to understand that they were good things, mostly by watching Jacques smile as he counted them every evening.

Frida slid in her quietest and most bird-stalking manner toward the purse, nose out, head down, ears pricked. The horse continued to munch the grass.

Maybe if the purse had had a zipper Frida would never have been able to open it, and this story would have happened differently—Delphine would have found Paras and taken her home to Maisons-Laffitte, and Frida would have had to think of some other way to gain a friend. But in fact the purse had a magnetic snap, and opened quite easily. Once the flap was open, Frida pushed the purse a little bit with her nose, so that the contents were revealed, and what she saw in there was money. Yes, there was also a lip gloss and a hairbrush, but mostly there was money, made of paper, in all shades (a dog sees red as brown and blue as blue, green as pale yellow). She knew which ones Jacques found exciting—Frida did not have much experience with the palest ones, but once, outside Saint-Michel Station, when Jacques had been playing and singing, a tall man in pointed-toed boots and a big hat had walked by, stopped to listen to the entire song, and said, “Thanks, brother,” then dropped one of those pale notes into the bowl. Jacques had to snatch it up before it blew away. Now Frida nudged the flap closed and stepped back.

She bumped smack into the horse’s front legs. The horse was standing over her, staring down at her. That was how interesting the money was—she hadn’t even heard the horse approach. Frida froze, and the horse sniffed her, snorting a little bit (which was frightening), but not showing her teeth. Frida cleared her throat and sat—with dignity, she thought. The horse touched noses with Frida, then put her nose on the purse. Frida knew this meant, “The purse is mine.” Frida sneezed. She often did this when she was nervous. Finally, she managed to say, “Are you lost?”

The horse said, “I don’t know.”

Frida said, “Are you from around here?”

The horse said, “I don’t know.”

Frida had never been to the racecourse, even though it was only a few kilometers away.

Frida said, “What’s your name?”

The horse said, “They call me Paras, but my real name is Perestroika, by Moscow Ballet out of Mapleton, by Big Spruce. I am a descendant of Northern Dancer and Herbager, and I go all the way back to Saint Simon on my dam’s side.”

“What does that mean?” said Frida.

“Those are my ancestors. Some were very good racehorses—”

“Did one come from Moscow?”

“Where is Moscow?”

“It’s in Russia. You can hear people speaking Russian right here in Paris.” Frida had heard her human, Jacques, and another busker talking about this from time to time. They said that Russians loved Paris. She said, “You must know that ‘Perestroika’ is a Russian word.”

“I didn’t know that,” said Paras. She’d thought it was a nonsense word, like “giddyup” or “Wowsiedowsie.” It had a sharp rhythm, too, like the rhythm of a good trot.

Frida began to think that maybe the horse didn’t know what she had in her purse, either.

Paras said, “I am a filly, three years old, soon to be a mare.”

Frida said, “Filly? Mare?”

“Female.”

Frida thought, “You think I don’t know that just by your scent?,” but she didn’t say anything.

The sun was now completely up, but nothing was going on in the Place du Trocadéro, which never came alive until lunchtime, anyway. Frida picked up the handle of the purse in her teeth and walked away, to the part of the grassy area where not so many humans might see them. Paras followed her. Frida dropped the purse in the grass. For now. Frida sat and regarded the horse. She said, “What do you eat?”

The horse glanced around and said, “What do you eat?”

“Oh, it depends. Sometimes a little onion soup. A bit of steak, if I’m lucky. Lots of bread. Cheese. Old croque-monsieur. The occasional leg of chicken or lamb. Bones. It’s a varied diet around here. Heavy on the cheese.”

“Oats? Maize? Hay? Apples? Carrots?”

“Well, the Pâtisserie Carette has some nice apple tarts, and they serve grated carrots in some of the salads. But it’s expensive.”

“What does that mean?”

Frida regarded the horse some more. She was so big and yet so dumb. Well, “innocent” was a better word. Obviously, she had been taken care of her entire life and had no idea how the world worked. Frida offered, “Nice purse.”

“Is it? How do you know?”

“Have you looked inside?”

“Is there something inside?”

Frida didn’t say anything, and Paras returned to cropping the grass.

After a moment, Frida went over and lay down right beside the mound of dirt where the flowers had been in the summer and the spring. She didn’t curl up tight, the way she did to go to sleep. She assumed her thinking position, her head up, her forelegs out in front, and her hind legs tucked under her, a position in which she could keep her eye on things, but also relax a little. It was certainly true that a dog did not live all her life on the streets of Paris without learning how to recognize a sucker when she saw one. The horse seemed to like the purse, and Frida did not have to steal the purse in order to steal all or most of the money. She could nose it out of the purse and scoop it into her mouth and take it to her spot in the cemetery and secrete it there. She had a big mouth, and she was adept with it. If, for example, you grabbed a pigeon for your morning meal, you had to do something about the feathers, and Frida had done that sort of thing a few times. How to take the money was not the point.

Could a dog with lots of bills leave Paris altogether and go back where she came from—back to the place Frida did remember, but not well, where there were plenty of trees and huge fields to run in, where there were pheasants and geese and partridge and deer, animals that were beautiful and inspiring and difficult to stalk? She hadn’t stalked any of them, because she was only a puppy, but her mother, and then the other dogs she knew as she got older, had talked all the time about ways to approach, how to go undetected, avoiding anything that would make a noise, like a fallen leaf or a twig. And then Jacques had taken her away (had he bought her or stolen her? She never knew) and brought her to Paris. With lots of bills, could she pay her way on the train and get back to a place like that, as Jacques had? A year ago, she and Jacques had taken the train to a city called Lyon, where Jacques had left her in a room alone almost all day and had also put his guitar away. Yes, they had had a bed to sleep in, but in the end, sleeping in a bed didn’t make up for those tight four walls that made both of them nervous. They had taken the train back, and even though the leaves were off the trees and the puddles were hard and cold, they had been quite happy when they returned. And they had made a lot of money, too—Jacques had had her sit in front of the dish without her wool coat on, and the shivering had upset the ladies passing by in their fur coats, and soon they’d have a pile of coins in the dish. It might be nice to go to a place where she didn’t have to pretend all day and all night that she had a right to be there when most of the humans she saw all around her did not think that she did have that right. But she had to admit to herself that she didn’t know how she would do that, even with lots of money.

PARAS UNDERSTOOD perfectly well that Frida was a dog. Dogs had their uses. Delphine had a dog in the stable yard—a small, bright, spotted dog named Assassin, a Jack Russell terrier, who spent all night and most of the day hunting rats, although she was willing to chase a ball and give the rats a rest around suppertime. Assassin and Paras had discussed the rats from time to time. Paras didn’t mind rats, and neither did most of the other horses. You always knew when a rat was around—they made a lot of noise and had a distinct odor, and if they ate a few morsels of grain or bits of hay, well, it wasn’t much, in the end. Assassin did not personally hate rats, either. But, as she explained to Paras, there was something about the way they moved—low and quick along the floor and then into a hole!—that just drew her like a magnet. She was good at rat killing, and the pleasure of the game had only increased of late, because, as she killed off more and more rats, the ones she hadn’t killed got to be the smart, fast ones. Whereas she had formerly gotten a rat every couple of days, now she was down to a rat a week, and more avid than ever. Assassin had a busier life than Paras did around the barn, and sometimes Paras envied her: she was not bored, ever. Paras gazed at the dog for a moment, then said, “Do you kill rats?”

“I hate rats.”

“Why?” Must be a dog thing, Paras thought.

“They taste very bitter.” In fact, she had only eaten one—already dead, in the street—just to try it.

“Why would you eat one?”

“Why else would you kill one?”

“Our dog at Maisons-Laffitte kills them all the time. She snaps their necks and drops them and walks away.”

Frida sniffed, then said, “Do they give her dog food, then?”

For some reason, Paras was embarrassed to say that they did. She said, “She doesn’t like it much.”

“Some dogs will eat anything,” said Frida.

After a moment, Paras said, “So—is that what dogs talk about all the time? Food?”

Frida put her nose to the ground, smelled a few fading plants and the damp soil, then said, “Yes. What do horses talk about?”

“Who won the last race. Who’s going to win the next race. A few spend all their time making excuses, but I don’t like to talk about that. Everybody talks about their relatives. Some horses won’t talk to you if you aren’t related to Northern Dancer, but other families aren’t as snobbish.” She thought for a moment, then said, “To tell the truth, the last day has been rather nice, no blah-blah-blah about Dad’s family and Mom’s family and brothers and sisters.” She thought for a moment. “We talk about the jockeys, too.”

“What are those?”

“When we run in races, the jockeys go along. Some stay with you better than others.”

“They run, too?”

“No, they ride us.”

The dog looked startled, then said, “That must slow you down.”

“It does, but, between you and me, not every horse knows the way, so they have their uses. A lot of horses won’t admit it, though. There’s a lot of complaining.”

“What are you chasing?”

Paras pondered this question, then said, “I don’t know.”

That seemed to end the conversation.

Paras went back to cropping the grass, but the morning was passing, and Frida knew that eventually the cafés would open and humans would show up, stalking their lunches. And they would certainly notice a horse and a dog by themselves in the Place du Trocadéro. How to solve this problem for Paras, Frida had no idea. It was one thing for a dog to position herself in an alert and friendly way here and there about the cafés and shops, but a horse was considerably bigger than a dog and expected to be attached to a carriage. At the same time, humans stalking their lunches in Paris sometimes didn’t notice what was going on around them. And there were a lot of statues all over the city—for example, way up there on a pedestal above them was a black horse that never moved, with a tail that appeared to be waving even when the wind wasn’t blowing. Frida had never seen anyone look at that.

The purse would catch the eyes of certain humans, though, and Frida did not want any human looking into the purse, so she went over to Paras and sat down in front of her, waited patiently for Paras to sniff a few more bits of grass and take another bite, then said, “You can stay here, if you’re quiet, but you”—she didn’t say “we”—“should hide the purse. It has… money in it.” Then she said, “Humans love money, and someone might take your money.”

“Does it taste good?”

“No.” Frida had actually tasted money from time to time, just out of curiosity. Then she said, “But if you are going to live in Paris, you need plenty of it.”

“What do you do with it?”

“You give some, a little, to humans and they give things back to you.”

“Like what?”

“Like… carrots and apples.”

Paras looked at her and pricked her ears. Then she said, “What is ‘Paris’?”

“It’s where we are. This city. Don’t you know anything?”

Paras said, “I told you. I’m only a filly. I won’t be a mare until January first. Then I’ll know lots more things. How old are you?”

Frida didn’t answer. She didn’t know.

For a moment, Frida thought that, in spite of the money and the purse, the horse wasn’t her concern. She could go back to her little cubbyhole up in the cemetery and pretend that she hadn’t seen Paras and that her life was the same as always. But then she thought that, if her life was the same as always, she didn’t quite know what she was going to do. Just talking to Paras had been a change for her—even the dogs who didn’t bark at her, when they looked at her face, then looked for her collar and leash, and saw that she had neither, simply looked away. Frida sighed. Sometimes the thing that you wanted to do did make you sigh, just because it was a hard thing to do.

It was not a pleasant day now. It had started out sunny, but the clouds were scudding in and the wind was picking up. Frida did not smell rain in the wind, but the leaves that hadn’t been cleaned from the streets were lifting around them. Paras noticed, too. Frida said, “Are you tired?”

“I am,” said Paras. “I had a hard race yesterday, and I was exploring most of the night.”

“Do you lie down when you are tired?”

“Of course I do,” said Paras.

“Well, I think you should take a nap. I’ll show you a spot.” And she led Paras around the little grassy park to the spot where there was a hedge and some other bushes. She said, “Maybe if you curl up next to the hedge and make yourself as small as you can, no one will see you.”

“What will happen if they see me?”

“They will take you to jail.” Jacques had always told her that if she wandered away from him, looking like a dirty stray, she would be put in dog jail, and it would be even more confining than that room in Lyon.

Paras could tell from the way Frida scowled and shivered when she talked about it that jail was a bad place, so she followed her over to where some bushes were cut into strange shapes and she nestled down as tightly as she could in a more or less hidden spot. She tucked her back legs underneath her and folded her front legs, and curled her neck around and tucked her nose in beside her hooves. She was a limber, slender horse, and a nimble bucker, so this was the way she liked to sleep. Frida brought along the purse, and pushed it under the hedge with her nose. She made sure that the magnetic lock was closed and the purse itself was well hidden. She said, “After lunch, I will come up with a plan.”

“Lunch?”

“It’s when humans come here to eat. But the cafés are all shut up today, so they are going to eat inside. That’s good for us.”

Paras was sleepy, indeed. She blew the air out of her nostrils and let her eyelids drift closed. Pretty soon, she was making a ruffling noise with her lips. Frida sat nearby and watched her, as she had so often watched Jacques before he disappeared.

TWO

It may be that the humans around the Place du Trocadéro did not notice Paras—maybe they were busy, or cold and looking down at their feet as they trotted from building to building. It may be that the leaves were blowing around and the clouds came and went, and the sun and shadows flickering together blinded the humans to the sight of a bay filly, nicely grown, sleeping by the hedge below the statue of the other horse that stood in front of the giant building. But there was someone who was watching, who had seen the whole thing from the beginning, who knew perfectly well that Frida lived in the neighborhood and that she was a free dog, and this someone was Raoul. Raoul was a raven, and he had a nest in a tree just down the Rue Benjamin-Franklin. He lived there alone most of the time. He was different from the other ravens he knew in that he liked Paris. The others, especially the females and the chicks, preferred the woodland to the west, which the humans called the “Bois de Boulogne,” or the countryside. Raoul had seen plenty of that, but for a bird his age, which was old old old, there was more to do and more to see in the city, and not so many arguments. Ravens were an argumentative lot, and Raoul had had his fill of it. Perhaps the other ravens didn’t know that he had a mate, Imelda, who was almost as old as he was. The two of them had plenty of offspring, so many that they had parted amicably when she had indicated to him that she was tired of reproducing, and also of listening to what she called his never-ending observations.

He watched Paras sleep for a while, then watched Frida get up and walk over to the only café where the tables sat in the open, and nose out a piece of bread that had slipped under a chair and been missed by the cleaners. After she did that, she sat near a medium-sized child and stared into the child’s face, and, sure enough, the child handed her something else, maybe a piece of cheese. Then the child’s parent scowled and shook her finger, and Frida walked away. A few times, Raoul had tried to persuade humans to give him things he wanted, but they had just laughed at him. However, it didn’t matter. Raoul would eat anything—he especially liked ants, which were tiny but crisp and salty—and he was, he would admit, a little fat.

Raoul flew back to his nest and curled up in there. It was in a good spot—protected on one side, but with a view of the neighborhood. The neighborhood was full of birds, ones that Raoul considered frivolous, like sparrows, buntings, warblers, swallows, and tits. Not to mention woodpeckers in the trees, and thrushes on the ground, and pigeons, pigeons everywhere. Paris was a city of birds, and if the starlings were kings, then the ravens were knights. The avian city was a raucous place—most of the time Raoul couldn’t even hear what the non-bird population was saying, the Aves were so loud.

For the rest of the day, Raoul thought of Paras as simply an oddity—something that would pass as all oddities did, and Paris was full of oddities, always had been. Out in the country, the days were monotonous, the sun came up, the rain fell or it didn’t, the wind blew first from one direction and then another, the grass grew, the females and the chicks squabbled about every little thing.

PARAS SLEPT for a long time, and woke up nervous. She was not in her stall, either at Maisons-Laffitte or at the racecourse, and she did not recognize the bizarre cubical plant that ran along her back and made it itch. She was lying in dirt. She snorted and nearly jumped up, but then she saw Frida, sitting with her front feet neatly together and her haunches square. Frida said, “You slept for a long time. It’s dusk.”

And certainly it was; the sky was darkening more rapidly than the earth. The buildings all around, though, retained a pale glow, and that was what told Paras that she had made a terrible mistake when she pressed open the door of her stall at the racecourse and gamboled out into the world.

Frida said, “Of course, the days are pretty short now.” She shivered. Paras shivered, too. Paras extended her foreleg and lifted herself, then shook. Leaves fell off her back. She grunted. Frida stuck her nose under the cubical, inedible plant (Paras had tried a bite), and pulled out the purse. Paras had forgotten about the purse. Right then, a raven flew in front of Paras’s nose and landed on the grass between her and Frida. Paras was wondering how to get back to the racecourse—really, she had been very confused, but getting back to the racecourse was the best idea—and Frida was wondering if her new friend, and, okay, her new source of funds, was going to disappear. It was because she was wondering this, and therefore distracted, that Frida didn’t go for the raven at once. She had never killed a raven, but a bird was a bird was a bird, and she was a bird dog. However, the raven cocked his head and looked her right in the eye, and she dropped that idea. Paras, the curious filly, leaned forward and stretched out her nose and sniffed the bird. He allowed this. He said, “I speak seven languages.”

Neither of the other two said anything, so Raoul preened himself a bit, then said, “French, English, German, Spanish, Romany, Basque, and Chinese. You may not know this, but all birds speak Chinese; however, there are so many dialects that sometimes we have a hard time understanding each other.” He cleared his throat and marched around in a little circle, slowly lifting his wings and lowering them, then spreading his tail. He said, “Tell me your names, please.”

Paras said, “Perestroika, by Moscow Ballet, out of M-M-M—”

“Thank you, that is sufficient. And you?” He lifted his wing at Frida. She said, “Frida.”

“That’s all?”

Frida nodded.

“I am Sir Raoul Corvus Corax, the twenty-third of that name. My establishment is just over there, on the Rue Benjamin-Franklin, but the family estate is out in Châteaufort—that’s straight to Versailles, then right.” The horse and the dog looked at Raoul blankly, as horses and dogs so often did. He cleared his throat again. “Let me say that, from my aerie in that tree”—he lifted his right wing this time—“I noted that you two damsels seemed to be in distress.”

“I’m hungry,” said Paras.

“Ah,” said Raoul. “Please correct me if I am wrong, but as an Equus caballus, you dine on rough grasses, small plants, grains, seeds, root vegetables, and apples when you can get them.”

Paras nodded.

“A nutritious diet high in fiber, but let me say, as an Avis, low in variety and piquancy. No doubt when you come to, say, a fly or a cricket in your hay, you spit it out?”

“I do.”

“And yet,” said Raoul, “the entire insect kingdom is both flavorful and nutritious in the extreme—concentrated doses of trace minerals, and many naturally occurring remedies for whatever ails you. Ahem.” He looked at Frida, who said, “I’ve tried those things.”

“I’m very hungry,” said Paras.

“I believe that I can come to your assistance, and enable you to realize your destiny here in the wonderful city of Paris. I am told by my far-flung correspondents, mostly albatrosses, that this is the finest spot in the world, and I know it well. And let me say this, you are fortunate in one or two respects, even in addition to your serendipitous encounter with myself. It may look from here as though verdant and well-watered fields are absent from our vicinity. But an aerial view, could you somehow attain such a thing, would persuade you differently.” The dusk had now advanced. They waited until there were no cars anywhere. Paras hoisted herself to her feet, and then Raoul said, “Follow me.”

And so they did, Frida suspiciously, Paras hungrily. Raoul flew ahead of them, swaying lightly in the breeze, maybe half a meter above Frida’s head and two meters in front of her. Frida carried the purse. Paras seemed to accept that the purse had become the dog’s responsibility. Raoul brought them to the road, to a low fence, less than a meter high. The approach was terrible, Paras thought. She was just attempting to gauge the footing when Frida pushed it open with her nose and went through. Paras followed her.

The path ran downward beside a high curving wall and was, in one place, quite narrow. But Paras caught some bites of grass, and took a drink from a small pond. The grass was short and not very tasty, so she tried a few leaves here and there. When the path widened, however, they came upon a rolling green prospect. Paras snorted. Raoul lifted his wings, stuck out his toes, and landed on a tree branch. He said, “I think I may say that this is the pride of my domaine. The humans have named it the ‘Palais de Chaillot.’ ”

“You own this?” Frida set down the purse.

“What is ownership these days?” said Raoul. “I oversee it. That is my only claim.” Then he said, “You said you were hungry?” He lifted his wing and gestured in a large semicircle, taking in the entire park. “The insect kingdom is yours for the asking, and, of course, small children and older adult humans are always dropping things as they wander in their aimless way around the greenery and the paths.”

Paras began grazing, but she was still careful to step around benches and bushes. Frida did not want to look hungry, but she was, so she checked under a few of the same benches and bushes without taking her eye off the purse, and she even got up on her hind legs and peered into a trash bag. Her reward was a half-eaten shish kebab wrapped in a pita. A human had taken a bite or two and tossed the rest, still in its paper, into the garbage bin, which was full, so the sandwich was right on top. She found it a nice change from cheese. Raoul hopped along the paths, snapping up this and that. When he got near the purse, he touched it with his beak. Frida was certain he would not be able to lift it, but even so, she said, “That’s the horse’s purse.”

Raoul pecked at it.

Frida walked over, picked it up, and carried it a few steps away, where she set it down and sat over it.

Raoul said, “Is this a precious object?”

“In a way.”

They stared at each other. Finally, Raoul said, “Ask yourself, do not Aves live free and clear of such things as possessions? What is a nest but a temporary assemblage of bits and pieces—of trash, if you will—collected and molded into a comfortable, but always ephemeral, dwelling? Most Aves live to see the world, not to claim it. Even territorial Aves, such as myself, make their claims as a gesture, merely to start an argument with other territorial birds. We live to fly. We live to argue. What is in the purse?”

“Money,” said Frida. “Lots of money.”

“Aves use money all the time.”

“They do?” said Frida. In all her life in Paris, she had never seen a bird pay for anything.

“I have a ten-euro note right in my nest. You get it nice and wet and press it for a bit, and it makes a superior bed. Sturdy, soft, smooth.”

“You found a ten-euro note lying around?”

“Yes. On a desk. Through an open window. In and out in a matter of moments.”

Raoul went back to pecking the border of the path, and soon enough came up with a caterpillar. He pecked it, tossed it, opened his beak, gobbled it down. Paras continued to graze. She was now just a dim figure in the darkness, but Frida could hear her. Time, she thought, to take the purse and slink back to the Place du Trocadéro; this raven, this Raoul, could show Paras the way to the racecourse, the best place for her. But she had to think about it, so she lay down, and then she stretched out, and then she rolled, and then she rolled back the other direction, and between one thing and another, she was a little surprised to hear a loud clipping and clopping from the other end of the park. Raoul said, “Where is she going?”

Frida said, “You can fly—you tell me.” And Raoul soared into the dark.

Paras was, indeed, a curious filly. The fact was that the grass in the park that swept down the hill to the river in front of the Palais de Chaillot was good enough to satisfy her appetite temporarily, but not delicious. And so she wandered along, taking a bite here and there, trying a few leaves, wondering, as she had so often in the past, what was ahead, where the bright lights were. She quickened her step and then crossed a narrow street.

All her life, Paras had heard the humans talking about her—she’s nervous, she’s sensitive, she’s spooky, be careful, she can get out from under you in a second. The way Paras saw it was that she was interested in lots of things, and there were lots of things that she had never seen before. Unbeknownst to the humans, she was farsighted. There had been many times, out on the racecourse, on the training track, and even in the barn, where she had looked up and said, “What’s that?” or, “Do you see that?” and the horse beside her had said, “What are you talking about?” If there was something to look at, a smart and curious filly was obliged to look at it, and she did. Delphine had learned over the months just to let her look. Quite often, when they were out training, Delphine let her stand there on her own, her reins loose, while she stared at the trees or the other horses or the wind blowing over and through the jumps, and then, when Paras figured out what she was looking at, she went along, doing her job. Now, at the end of the park, which was dim and green, she saw something she had never seen before—a group of small horses in proud, alert postures, standing absolutely still, not even grazing or nosing each other. She stepped carefully toward them.

She would have thought they’d snort or turn their heads, or at least flick their ears, but they did nothing of the sort. They only stood there, their necks arched and their nostrils flared. She got closer, step by step, then stood very quietly, and finally stretched out her neck and sniffed one of them. He was cold and hard, and smelled something like a truck. She snorted and backed up.

Frida, glad she had found Paras, said, “Haven’t you ever seen a carousel before?” She leapt up onto the platform that the horses were standing on and sat down. Raoul swooped over Paras’s head and landed on the haunch of the nearest horse, where he fluffed his wings and then assumed a knowing posture. He said, “Perhaps you ladies do not understand the demands of offspring. They require entertainment, none more so than humans, who seem to take years before they start foraging for their own sustenance, and so what is there for them to do? We Aves often discuss this mystery, the idleness that is endemic among humans, and yet they thrive—”

Paras touched the curving mane of the horse again with her nose and said, “A useless beast.” She was disappointed and turned away.

It was now that the curious filly made her choice, and she made it just for that reason—she was curious. She could have turned left, gone back up the grassy hill. She could have stared at the fountains and the brilliant façades of the golden buildings that stretched grandly to either side. But, instead, she followed the scent of the river, and the sound of her own hooves ringing on the pavement. She crossed the bridge at a trot, tossing her head. She said to herself, “Why not? Let’s see what’s over there.”

DELPHINE AND RANIA had looked for Paras for eighteen long hours. The night she escaped, taking the purse and Rania’s phone, Rania had had to wait, impatiently, for Delphine to return with the trailer. It was almost midnight, but they had unhitched the trailer, driven around Auteuil, peering into the dark as best they could, then gone back to Maisons-Laffitte. In the morning, they got up, fed the other horses, came back into town, drove around the Bois de Boulogne and Longchamp, everywhere they could think of. A very long day, and now Delphine was alone and extremely tired, but unable to give up. She and Rania had passed Paras twice the night before without seeing her—once when Paras was curled up, sleeping in the Place du Trocadéro, and once when she was following Frida down the garden path. The reason they didn’t see her then was that they were not looking for her—they assumed that she was lost in the Bois de Boulogne, which was a very large park, many kilometers around and many kilometers across. The reason Delphine didn’t see her this time, when Paras was standing just beneath the Tour Eiffel, was that she was looking in the other direction, toward the river. Delphine did get a funny feeling, though, and so, just beyond the Avenue de la Bourdonnais, at the Avenue Bosquet, she decided to turn around. She drove south again. But by the time she was passing the Tour, Paras had noticed the pond that was outside of the tower lights and had walked into the darkness. Delphine got to the Pont de Bir-Hakeim, decided not to think crazy thoughts, and went across the bridge, back to the Bois for one last look.

THREE

The pond beside the great four-legged brilliant thing that Paras could not see to the top of was inside a low fence, but this time, the footing of the approach was fine. Paras backed off five strides or so and popped over it. The grass inside the fence was rich and deep, and the water in the pond was good enough. In Paras’s experience, everywhere you went, the taste of water was different. Here it was rich and dirty, but with a sweetness, too. She was thirsty, and drank her fill. Frida soon appeared, and she, too, jumped the fence. Her form was good, Paras thought, in spite of the weight of the purse between her jaws—knees tucked, a little kick of the hind legs to clear the top metal bits. Frida took a drink. And then the screaming began. Paras was startled, and snorted and reared, but Raoul, who floated in, wings stretched, and landed on a low branch overhanging the pond, cawed dismissively and said, “Mallards. Common. Anas platyrhynchos.”

Sure enough, the screecher was a shining green duck, plump and well preened. He waddled toward them, stopped, and screamed again. Behind him was a duller bird. Raoul said, “She would be the wife.” He sniffed. The wife quacked several times: “I don’t think you should do that, honey. I think we should mind our own business. Lower your voice! Look at her, she eats grass! What’s the harm?”

Paras walked along the edge of the pond. It was entirely fenced in, but the fence was low, and there was plenty of vegetation. She could see that dawn was approaching, and this seemed a favorable place to take another rest. Frida yawned. Paras yawned. Paras went to a spot in the lee of a wall, lay down, and curled up. Frida hid the purse, and then lay down beside her. As she drifted off, Paras realized that her decision had been made.

The mallards were named Sid and Nancy. Sid allowed Paras and Frida to sleep—he had other matters to attend to, particularly preening, which was time-consuming, but if you wanted to swim, it had to be done. When the horse and the dog woke up, though, he felt that he had to make explicit his view that they had invaded his territory: he screamed himself hoarse, in spite of Nancy’s incessant advice to calm down. Finally, he flew away. Nancy sighed, shook her head, and flew after him. Late in the night, they came back. The horse and the dog were still there, and so was the raven. Ravens, in Sid’s experience, lived off the efforts of others and considered themselves very smart. He pondered screaming at the raven, too, but he suspected that the raven would ignore him, or perhaps get some other ravens and mob him. That would not be a pleasant experience. Sid decided to keep his trap shut. Nancy, he could see, was relieved.

IT DIDN’T TAKE Paras long to adjust to her new surroundings—daylight hours inside the fence, in the shadow of the bushes, nighttime roaming the Champ de Mars. Adjustment to new events was something she was used to, and, anyway, the grass in the Champ de Mars was flavorful, quite comparable to the grass at the stud farm where she had spent her youth, thick and juicy, and there were other small plants and tufts of delicious weeds here and there, enough to hold her interest. In some ways, the Champ de Mars reminded Paras of places she had always known—it was green and enormous, like a big pasture, though flatter. Houses encircled it, cars ran through it, but not across the grass. There were trees and ponds and places to lie down for a good roll. Beneath the giant tower, she could smell the river and see the hill rising on the far side. At the other end, there was yet another grand building, but not many people went in and out of it, at least at night, when Paras was out and about.

Frida was not so sure about the Champ de Mars—it was too exposed for her taste, and there were so many humans around that Frida worried about the purse. Jacques had brought her here only once, in an attempt to play his music for humans standing in line at the base of the giant tower, but he and Frida had been sent off by an abrasive fellow in a uniform. Paras evidently liked it, though, and so Frida decided to stay. After a few days, she found a soft spot among the bushes beside the pond and dug a deep hole. She was good at digging—she had sharp toenails and strong paws. The effort was satisfying in its way—once the hole was big enough, she could not only hide the purse in it, she could curl up on top of the purse and take a rest. She enjoyed the hole. She felt good in the hole, maybe the best she’d felt since Jacques had been carried off.

The real question for Frida was what to eat. Though she was a hunting dog, she was not much accustomed to game, given all the scraps of human food she had eaten over the years. She caught a vole, but the flavor was pretty rank. She did not feel comfortable stalking and killing Sid and Nancy as she came to know them. There were other birds. Sid often said to her when he saw her staring at one, “Go ahead! Kill it! I know you want to!” But in fact she didn’t know how to, except by chance. She had yet to see a rabbit. Squirrels weren’t worth the trouble. And there was plenty of money. The scent of a nearby meat market was very strong—depending on the breeze, it wafted over the entire grassy park, saying to Frida, “Beef, lamb, pork, chicken.” It drew her, and so, one morning, perhaps the third morning after she and Paras settled next to the pond, she trotted toward it, right down the allée, under the trees, and then up the first street and the second, as if she were following her master home from her walk. When she found it, it reminded her of Jacques, who had quite often gone into such places and come out with some bones for her, or a piece of chicken. She lingered outside the door, but she knew that she could not appear hungry or desperate, or the shop owner would call the gendarmerie. She went back to the pond, stopping at a trash bin to snare a rind of cheese and half of an egg sandwich.

She returned the next day and the next, but remained undecided about her strategy. She was sitting quietly beside the vegetable market, enjoying the scents from the meat market. It was a sunny day for so late in the year, and the doors of both shops were open. Ladies with bags and baskets had been going into and out of the vegetable market, but now the traffic had slowed. The proprietor stepped into the street, his arms crossed over his chest, and regarded her. Frida straightened up, as if she’d been ordered to “stay” by her owner, and tried not to look at this man. He was tall, with a big nose and big feet. He wore a long white apron. He stepped closer, and his eyebrows lowered, as if he were wondering about her. He looked one way up the street, and then the other, and the street was empty. Just for the moment, there was no one to pretend that she belonged to. He came toward her, leaned down, stretching his hand out as if to grab her.

Frida knew that there were some dogs who would have snarled and maybe bitten the man’s hand, but she was not that sort of dog. What she did was offer him her paw and look him in the eye, then look away. The man laughed, shook her paw, and said, “Bonjour, mademoiselle.” After a moment, Frida politely removed her paw. The man stood up, smiling, and went back into the shop. He returned and tossed her a small roll, which, of course, she caught neatly and gobbled down. Then she rose and trotted away, very dignified, back to the Champ de Mars, where Paras was curled up for her afternoon nap and the mallards were floating in the water the way they always did, Sid in the lead and Nancy just behind him. Raoul was nowhere to be seen.

Frida took a drink from the pond, which stank terribly of duck.

It was the sight of a plastic bag filling up with a puff of air and lifting itself out of a garbage bin that reminded Frida of what Jacques had taught her about money. When it drifted to the ground and skidded off, she ran after it, secured it with her paw, and took it between her teeth. Here she had spent the entire summer scuttling about, pretending to be owned by someone, and losing lots of weight, when what she really had to do was perform a few tricks. Humans were pushovers for tricks. They always laughed and gave you a treat. How many times on the street with Jacques had she rolled over, or covered her eye with her paw, or put the toy in the guitar case, or balanced the piece of bread on her nose and then tossed it and caught it? Jacques, of course, did tricks, too—playing songs and sometimes singing. Tricks got you money, and then you took the money and exchanged it for what you wanted. The thing she must do was put some of the money into the plastic bag, then carry the bag to the meat market.

It could not be said that the bag was easy to manage in the breeze rising off the river, but she did uncover the purse, nose it open, and take a bill in her mouth. She then scratched at the bag with her paws, and, when the edges came apart, pushed the bill between them. She picked the whole unwieldy object up in her mouth, then kicked the loose dirt back over the purse. She looked around. The only humans she could see were running ones, rushing away through the trees. Running humans never looked at a thing, Frida thought. Perhaps they could not do two things at once, which was why she had never seen even the fastest ones catch a pigeon.

But the meat market was not open. The succulent offerings in the windows were dark; the lights were off. Even the fragrance had dimmed, though it was quite rich and varied just at the base of the door. Frida felt her haunches sag in disappointment. And then she saw that the proprietor of the vegetable shop was standing in his doorway, his hands underneath his apron. He smiled and said, “Mademoiselle!”

There was a table just inside the door. Frida trotted over to the proprietor (she felt that the trot was a dog’s most self-possessed and dignified gait), stood up on her hind legs, put her paws on the table, and spit the bag onto its surface. The man looked at her, then picked it up and saw the note inside. He laughed. There would be no chicken, Frida thought, but there would be a roll, and maybe cheese. She went farther into the shop. She stood on her hind legs and looked into every bin. The man, Frida thought, was actually rather intelligent. If she paused at the bin, he put something from that bin into the bag. As a dog of the streets, she had eaten plenty of vegetables, and though it was true that she had no use for a raw potato (fried potatoes were quite a different matter), she didn’t mind green beans or carrots or even a leaf or two of romaine. And her bill didn’t go very far—a bread roll, beans, carrots, romaine, another bread roll. The man took her bill politely, smoothed the handles of the bag into a circle, and held them out. Frida opened her mouth, and he gave her the bag. Then she left the shop, heading briskly down the street as if her master were waiting for her. She could hear the man laughing as she ran.

Paras was still lying down when Frida returned, but she was awake. Raoul was perched on her rump. He had just finished telling her what he knew about the word “perestroika,” which wasn’t much, something about either always making plans or letting things turn out as they would and making the best of that. (“If that wasn’t horseracing,” Paras thought, “then what was?”) Now he was telling her about an argument he was having with another raven, who claimed the head of Benjamin Franklin, which was immediately below Raoul’s nest. “Everyone knows that a raven’s territory is spherical,” said Raoul. “It is widest around the nest, and then diminishes outward. I have almost no claim to the hillside below my nest, but the head of the statue is well within my territory, and I could make a case for the lap, too—”

Frida dropped the bag in front of Paras, and it fell open. Paras nosed out a carrot, bit it in two, and munched it down. She said, “How delicious! I’d almost given up hope. You’d think they’d plant a few of these in such a large park, but I haven’t found them.”

“I bought it,” said Frida.

“Ah, commerce! A concept, I must say, that we Aves have given the world.” Raoul flapped his wings, but it was only a flourish of self-congratulation. He didn’t fly away; rather, he sidestepped over to the bag and helped himself to a green bean. This drew the attention of Sid and Nancy, who walked out of the pond and stared. Paras took another carrot and bit it in two. Frida ate the second half, then one of the small rolls. It was fresh and delicious. “No apples?” said Paras.

“I don’t quite know what an apple is,” said Frida.

“Malus domestica,” cawed Raoul. “A waxwing will eat an apple.” He coughed as if this was an unusual affectation. “I have tasted apples.”

Sid and Nancy waddled closer, then sat down. No screaming or quacking. Frida took the second-to-last piece of bread out of the bag, carried it over to them, and dropped it. Jacques had never minded sharing his food with others. Sid ate part of the bread; then Nancy ate the rest. Sid said, “We’ve eaten apples. A child tossed us some bits just a few days ago. They’re all right.”

“I love them,” said Paras.

Frida knew this was a hint.

The next day, Frida supplied herself with another bill and went to the market earlier in the day, just when every shop on the street was opening. She of course went to the meat market first—she could hardly help herself, the fragrance was so enchanting—but the woman who kept the shop was sweeping the step. She waved her broom at Frida and said, “Ahh, shoo, shoo! Get!”

Frida backed away and sat down, still staring at some pale, fat, featherless carcasses in the window.

She felt a pat on the head; the man said, “Ah, dear girl, you have returned again! The chicken is indeed very lovely.”

Frida had found with Jacques that if she was still and steady and opened her eyes very wide, he was more likely to do as she wished, and, indeed, the man held out his hand, took her bag, and removed the bill from it. Then he went into the meat market. She stepped carefully up to the window and touched it with her nose beside a pile of meaty bones, and he put two of these in the bag, paid for them, and came out. He did not give her the bag, though. Instead, he carried it to his own shop. Frida followed him. When she was across the threshold, he took two coins from the register and said, “Mademoiselle, I owe you two euros from your previous visit.” Frida indicated that she would take something from each of the bins closest to the street. When she had spent all of her money, the bag was heavy in her jaws, and she knew she would have to set it down more than once on her way back to the Champ de Mars. But the bones motivated her.

The bag broke as soon as she set off.

The man clucked, clapped his hands, and said, “Oh dear!” And then he gave her another bag, this one sturdy.

Between them, Raoul, Paras, and Nancy identified the fruits—orange, apple, pear, another apple, lemon, banana. Paras took the two apples; Raoul had seen lemons but never tried one; and Nancy took the orange. No one knew what to do with the banana, so they left it beside the pond. Frida carried the bones to her hollowed-out retreat and gnawed them happily.

THERE WAS a human who knew that a horse lurked about the Champ de Mars. He had seen her the first morning, inside the fence around the North Pond, when she stretched and snorted and hoisted herself to her feet, then made her way to a bit of grass half hidden by some bushes. His name was Pierre, and he was the head gardener of the Champ de Mars. Pierre loved the Champ de Mars, thought it was the oddest spot in Paris—out west, right along the Seine, flat enough to have begun as a hundred-hectare training ground for the students in the École Militaire, then large enough to host horse racing (before that moved to Longchamp), then to host what was now called a world’s fair, not to mention the Tour. It was full of grass and trees and gardens and cars and ponds and trash (Pierre did the best he could with that), over a kilometer long and half a kilometer wide, peaceful sometimes, busy other times, especially in the summer, but not so much now, in the late fall.

That first morning, he’d watched the horse for a while, and his immediate instinct had been to have her caught and vanned away. But she was a beautiful horse—a rich bay with a long tail, a thick mane, and large, expressive eyes—and the more he looked at her, the more he thought that, at least for now, she gave the Champ a certain style: every landscape needs a figure in it, perhaps especially a figure that is only intermittently visible, that is mysterious and alert. He caught sight of her often, and watched her when he could. He saw from her footprints and her manure that she was jumping out of the fenced area to graze in the evenings. Perhaps the tourists didn’t notice her, or, if they did, thought that because she was inside a fence during the day she was provided by the authorities as a picturesque gesture. Perhaps his employees did notice her, but it was not for them to say anything if he didn’t. So everyone wordlessly shoveled up what she left, as they cleaned up after dogs and cats and birds and foxes and once an ocelot that had escaped from its owner on the Avenue de Suffren, a much more troublesome beast than a horse. Pierre knew he should wonder where the horse came from, and report her, but, for now, he reassured himself that he was not in Animal Control, and if they wanted her, they could come and look for her themselves.

FOUR

Although Frida didn’t like the mallards because of the smell, and Raoul continued to disdain them as common common common (you saw them everywhere—did Paras realize they would mate with any Anatidae?), Paras considered Nancy good company, and extremely patient. Sid, Nancy said, did not live here all year round. He appeared every autumn about this time, decked out in green. He stayed with her for a while, and then flew south. He was sensitive to the cold. Winter migration was statistically the norm, but if you lived in Paris, well—Nancy cocked her head, then went on—it was an issue between them, but she was a homebody. She liked her territory. The pond had frozen over completely only one time. Down south (she had gone with him once), you had to put up with chaos. The worst of it around here, according to Nancy, was that, in addition to her own six or eight or ten eggs (one year she laid twelve), if she didn’t hide her nest well, other eggs could turn up, and there you were, you had hatched some completely alien little thing before you knew what was what. Her last bunch had just flown off a month before. Nancy pushed them out as soon as they could go—she realized that she was a bit impatient about it, but they were well cared for and strong, and she felt that she needed at least some time on her own, didn’t Paras agree? Paras of course agreed, since she liked to have a lot of time on her own.

In half a year, late in the spring, there would be another migration—only the drakes that time of year. And good to see the back of them. A drake plus ten nestlings was too much. “What were the nestlings’ names?” asked Paras idly.

Nancy shook her wings and cocked her head. She said, “I have no idea. It’s your mate who names you, not your mother.”

“For horses,” said Paras, “it’s humans. Our dams just call us ‘sonny’ or ‘honey.’ But humans don’t seem to know the difference between two horses unless they name them, so we allow it.” She confided in Nancy that, even if a horse didn’t have showy white markings, he or she always had distinctive cowlicks and dapplings and ways of moving. It was a mystery to all the racehorses that they had to wear not only jockeys but brightly colored cloths so that the humans could tell them apart. In even the most crowded race, every horse knew who was who. Some horses found the politics of it all quite nerve-racking, but, as a front-runner, Paras didn’t pay much attention to that.

Sid was a bossy one, but Nancy quacked that she could not complain, and she had never closed herself off to him, as some ducks did, not only to interlopers, but to their own mates. He was a good provider, and a duck had to be fat, because the ducklings would slim her down to nothing if she didn’t take care of herself ahead of laying time. And anyway (Nancy lifted her wings and tossed her head), Sid knew how to shake a tail feather. Quack-quack-quack. Paras found it soothing to walk around the grass, taking bites of this and that and listening to Nancy. Where, she asked, did the drakes go? Nancy had no idea. Of course, they said that they roamed far and wide—to the mountains, to the oceans, etc. But a duck had no way of knowing. Except for that one sojourn to the south, Nancy had lived in the Champ de Mars for years. It was an excellent spot, no matter what certain mallards said about other neighborhoods. There was plenty of cover, plenty of water, plenty of food. The noise didn’t bother her—she hardly heard it anymore.

“It is noisy around here,” said Paras.

Much of the noise was made by Sid, whose high-pitched mode of expression made Paras’s ears flick. Sid was in charge of the nest, and he had decided that this year, since Paras and her friends were always present, they needed to build it in a safer spot. So he marched about the pond and the neighboring groves, trying to make up his mind. “There, you see,” he said, “the outer edge is too far into the open. Very dangerous, but if we make the nest smaller, that has its dangers, too. We haven’t lost a duckling in three years. It’s a point of pride for us, and I speak for Nancy as well as myself, because we each have our duties and responsibilities, and my responsibility is the nest.” Sid stepped carefully, looked here, looked there, kept going. “Can’t be too far from the water,” said Sid. “Very vulnerable if they have to walk far. Owls at twilight, hawks during the day, foxes anytime, dogs for that matter, cats. You ask anyone, mallards are fair game.” He coughed and glanced over his shoulder and shuddered. “Rats.”

“I don’t mind rats,” said Paras. “They clean the place up.”

“They are ruthless. There has never been a rat who let an egg be!” screamed Sid. He walked up the face of a large rock, and plopped down in the sun. Sunny days were few and far between lately, but Paras didn’t much mind the rain. It was easier to live outside in all weathers than it was to be confined to a dark stall, unable to see much, but hearing every little thing, day and night. All the horses complained about being cooped up, even the least curious ones. And then, when the humans took you out, they got spooky when you were startled by something. The better riders just sat there, and said, “Ah-ah,” but a sensitive filly like Paras could feel in her very bones that their hearts were pounding. If you lived out, there wasn’t much that surprised you. Paras could see things all over the Champ de Mars—humans large and small, dogs large and small, birds of all kinds soaring and swooping. If you lived out, every noise had a reason, every sight a before and an after. No surprises. Pretty soon, Nancy joined Sid on the rock, and both of them seemed to go to sleep.

Paras stretched, shuddered all over, and stepped out into the open space. In the last few days of rain, there hadn’t been many humans around; the sunshine would bring them out, so Paras thought she should go for a little trot before they showed up. She jumped the fence and headed down the allée, head up, ears up, pace brisk. It felt good. She flicked her tail and rose into a canter. The footing was firm, wet but not at all slippery. She enjoyed the sound of her own hoofbeats. She had been bred to race thirty-two hundred meters; a good gallop gave her the opportunity to blow out her lungs and get some exercise. At the big building at the far end of the Champ, she came down to an easy walk, turned around, and trotted back, pausing here and there to take some bites of grass. The few humans running not far from her either didn’t notice her, or pretended not to notice her, but their dogs kept barking: “Who are you! What are you doing here! I never saw you before! You don’t belong here!” Paras ignored them, and if a human looked her way, she lifted her head and trotted all the more proudly. Frida said that there was a way to conduct yourself “as if” you had your own human about. You were calm and proud and never threatening, because you didn’t want to scare anyone. You kept your distance—humans did not like strange animals to come too close to them—and you did not ever look at them unless they were looking at you. In that case, you could give them a friendly glance—I would like to know you if I had the time, but I am busy at the moment. The other important thing was to be as clean as you could be, and so Paras tried to roll in wet grass as often as she could, and to stay out of the mud. Paras was a well-bred horse, so she liked to be clean, anyway.

When she got back to the pond, Frida had returned from the market. There were, of course, fragrant apples and pears, arugula, a few carrots, and an artichoke. Paras ate the artichoke first. It was a bit like taking medicine, but she enjoyed them—you couldn’t eat sweets all the time. Of course, Frida had also brought Nancy’s, and especially Sid’s, favorite item—blackberries.

It was Paras who noticed the boy.

There were occasionally boys in the Champ de Mars, and there were occasionally girls, but boys and girls were always attached to regular-sized humans. If she had ever in her life seen a solitary boy, Paras could not remember it. But now here was a boy. He was, in addition, staring at the five animals eating their treats, his feet wide apart, his hat pushed back on his head, and his hands in his pockets. As Paras watched, he took two steps toward them and stopped again.

Raoul finished his arugula and noticed the boy. He cawed several times, flew upward, and landed on Paras’s haunches. Frida said, “What are you talking about?,” because the wind was blowing in the wrong direction for her to scent him; then she saw the boy. Raoul said, “Chase him off.”

“Oh dear,” said Frida.

“What? What?” screamed Sid.

Paras knew that Sid was upset because the boy was not far from the building site of the new nest. Nancy kept her opinions to herself.

Frida said, “I saw this boy down the street from the market. I didn’t realize that he was behind me.”

“He followed you and you didn’t even notice?” cawed Raoul.

“The bag was very fragrant. I couldn’t smell anything else.”

“Chase him off,” cawed Raoul.

The boy held out his hand.

Now Raoul started walking around in small circles, cawing like mad. Twice he flapped his wings, but the boy didn’t understand the hint. He just stood there. Paras could see that Nancy and Sid were torn between eating the remaining blackberries and taking off. They kept watch on the boy and snatched a few. Frida sat. The boy took another step toward them. He was looking at Frida, but then he glanced at Paras. Frida suddenly stood up, and said to Paras, “Let’s go.” She took off, running away from the boy, toward the other side of the Tour, a less protected part of the Champ de Mars. Paras cantered after her. In a green area beyond the other pond, they stopped and looked back. Raoul had flown away; Nancy and Sid were nowhere to be seen. The boy was standing, staring down at their treats. He squatted and touched something, then stood up and walked away. In the grand panorama of the Champ de Mars, he looked very small.

PARAS HAD a dream. Perhaps it was the apples that gave her the dream, but she didn’t dream of apples—she dreamed of oats. She was standing in a summery green field with other horses, nibbling shoots of grass that grew among the yellow flowers. A gate opened, and a fellow came through, wearing a hat and carrying four buckets. He hooked the buckets to the fence, and Paras and the other horses went over and thrust their noses into the buckets and started munching on the oats. They were sweet and crunchy. When she woke up from the dream, it was early—not even the barest shimmers of light at the far end of the Champ de Mars. Frida was stretched out beside her. Paras rolled up onto her chest and then levered herself to her feet. Frida didn’t wake up.

If a curious filly wanted to walk down a street, her hooves clanging on the pavement, to look into windows without being seen by humans, then this was the time to do it, the only time when all was quiet. She crossed the field, glanced down one street, then turned down the next one. There may have been humans who awakened in their warm beds, looked at the dim windows, and said to themselves, “What is that noise?” They may have pulled the covers over their heads and decided they were dreaming, or they may have gotten up, looked out the window, and seen nothing. Possibly, it was that time of day when the security guards stationed here and there and a couple of members of the gendarmerie had the greatest difficulty staying awake, and so they didn’t watch the street as carefully as they might have. At any rate, Paras loitered and stared as she strolled along. Doors were closed, awnings were rolled up, windows were dark, the smell was mostly the damp pavement itself. She touched her nose to the cool metal of the automobiles, and the cool surface of the glass, and the stone buildings. She sniffed iron fencing, and nipped off tiny fugitive plants that grew through cracks in the pavement. She looked ahead, she looked back, she even looked up. A single dog was out and about, but he circled around her, his head low, his tail low, his ears low. He looked like a sad dog, not at all the proud beast that Frida was. There were cats here and there, squatting in corners, their paws tucked under their chests, their eyes slitted. They saw her—she knew this, because their heads turned as she passed. One, a black one, gave off a low meow as she walked by. Paras nickered in response. She might have seen a fox, too, slipping around a building, waving its orange brush, but foxes were elusive.

Then she saw a light in a window. She stopped and snorted. A figure within the light was busy staring at something, touching it, shaping it. Paras watched. The door was slightly open, and a strip of light fell onto the pavement. And a scent billowed out. Paras was drawn to the scent. She stepped closer.

Anaïs sensed that she was being watched. She glanced up and saw nothing but the darkness of the big windows that looked out onto the Avenue de Suffren. She had set her baking pans on the tables in the shop, and would carry them into the cuisine when they were ready. She shook off the feeling and went back to forming her rolls, her favorite part of baking. She had already baked the baguettes and the larger loaves. The croissants and petits pains au chocolat were in the ovens. Henri would arrive soon for the tartes and the galettes. But Anaïs was trying something—a roll with a hint of sweetness, cut into diamond shapes and dotted with fennel seed, then baked until the fennel seed turned crisp and golden. She heard a noise and looked up again. A horse’s head shone in the window, nostrils flared, ears pricked. Anaïs nearly jumped out of her skin. The two pans rattled as she bumped them. She exhaled, “Ahh!” The horse’s head turned to one side and then turned back, still staring. Anaïs coughed. Then she pulled herself together, wiped her hands on her apron, and went over to the coffeemaker. She picked up two lumps of sugar and went to the door, which she opened carefully.

The horse stood still for a moment, then approached her. It took one lump of sugar carefully off Anaïs’s palm, then the other one. The horse’s lips were velvet. Anaïs put her hand on the horse’s neck and stepped out into the street. The horse eased backward. Anaïs looked toward the École Militaire, and then she looked toward the Quai Branly. No one in sight. The horse’s neck was soft and warm, and Anaïs could not help stroking it under the heavy black mane, down and down. The horse dropped her head as if enjoying it. The air was cold. Anaïs shivered, stepped closer to the horse.

Anaïs didn’t have much experience with horses—she had ridden in a carriage twice and watched races on the television. About horses she knew only that they ate sugar and that they liked oats. Except that now she knew a third thing, that they had warm, fine coats. She stopped petting the horse and stepped back into the comfort of the bakery. In the corner, in a bin, Marie, who managed the café side, kept a supply of oats. Anaïs found a bowl and scooped some into it. When she went back outside, the horse had continued down the avenue. It was staring into a lighted shopwindow at bins of vegetables. Anaïs called out “Hello!” and made a kissing sound with her lips. When the horse turned its head, she rattled the oats in the bowl.

Paras did not know the concept of dreams coming true—in fact, she did not quite know that a dream was different from being awake. She did know that after her dream of the oats she still felt hungry, as if she hadn’t actually eaten any oats, but she was too young, as yet, to be philosophical about it. Nor did it strike her as an unusual coincidence that, having dreamed of oats, she would now be offered some. But she did feel that Anaïs was a remarkably sympathetic human—similar to Delphine in her demeanor, but requiring nothing, and not likely to pull a halter from behind her back and put Paras in a stall. Paras did not want to return to a stall. She finished the oats and licked the bowl. Anaïs laughed. Then she petted the horse two more times along the warm spot under her mane. She stepped back and said, “I hope you return.” Paras tossed her head, then continued down the avenue until she saw the grass of the Champ de Mars reappear. Anaïs went back to her workstation, but not before washing her hands and arms scrupulously and changing her apron. She knew so little about horses that at first it didn’t occur to her to report the animal. If a horse lived in Paris, and could stroll down the street gazing into shopwindows, Anaïs thought, then that was the horse’s business. Later, though, thinking back on her experience, she thought: if, indeed, it was an actual horse.

FIVE

One morning, after a cold rain the night before, Frida was making her way to the shop. Frida avoided cars automatically—cars sometimes moved in unexpected ways—but she was an alert sort of dog, and no car had ever come near her. On this day, she could see that the cars were slipping, jerking, acting awkward and dangerous. She pressed herself a little closer to the shops. And then it happened: two cars screeched and bumped. An old old woman had stepped into the street, stumbled, fallen to her knees, and there was the boy she had seen in the Champ. He took both of the old woman’s hands, and she struggled to her feet. One of the cars had rammed the trolley she was pushing. The boy looked frightened, but the old old woman seemed unaffected. The boy pulled her back onto the sidewalk, grabbed the trolley. Cars began to honk. Frida trotted over to the boy as he stood beside the old old lady, and Frida did something she had seen a Great Dane do once: she stood against the old lady, leaned into her. In a moment, the old lady regained her balance. She was a polite old lady—she reached down and petted Frida on the head. Frida accompanied the old lady and the boy to the vegetable shop, and sat quietly next to the dented trolley outside.

Although his shop was in a prosperous neighborhood, Jérôme was familiar with troubled lives. The village he had grown up in, north of Toulouse, was not a wealthy one, and, of course, here was Madame de Mornay, a regular but infrequent customer, who lived right down from the shop, on the Rue Marinoni. Madame was a hundred years old, Jérôme suspected, and she had in her care a boy of eight or so, who must have been her great-grandchild. The dog was sitting calmly outside. Jérôme had gotten into the habit of selling vegetables to her every other day, and of including a marrow bone or two in the bag. Usually, the dog brought a ten-euro note, but sometimes she brought a twenty. Once she brought a hundred-euro note, and though Jérôme was surprised at this, he carefully made change (how could a dog carry a hundred euros’ worth of vegetables?), rolled the bills up, and tucked them in among the leaves of the head of romaine she bought (and why would a dog eat romaine?). Jérôme had grown convinced that some housebound owner was sending her out, and now he thought that this must be her.

Madame was blind but alert. She made her way deeper into the shop. Each thing she asked for, Jérôme gave to the boy, who placed it in Madame’s hand. Madame felt it over carefully. Jérôme held a basket, and the boy put each item into the basket. Then the boy paid, Jérôme handed them the bag of vegetables, and they left. Outside, the boy put the bag into the trolley and went into the meat market, then the bakery. The boy never spoke, nor was he spoken to, but he seemed to know exactly how to serve Madame. She kept him dressed in nice clothes, and she made sure, somehow, that he did as he was told. Madame was invariably polite and always paid in cash. She, too, was nicely dressed, and never without a hat. But Jérôme suspected that their life on the Rue Marinoni was a sparse affair. That the boy should, one day, appear with the dog did not surprise Jérôme. She was a beautiful dog—large for the streets of Paris, but elegant. However, Jérôme was saying nothing—the dog paid her bills.

Jérôme watched the dog follow the boy and the woman. They rounded the corner and disappeared.

The woman, Frida knew, did not realize she was following them, but the boy did. He turned and looked at her several times, even whistled so that she would approach him, but Frida kept her distance. They came to the end of the row of buildings, to a door in a high fence that was covered with ivy and other plants so thick that even Frida could not see through them. The boy took a key from his pocket and opened the gate, helped the woman in, then pulled in the battered trolley. Frida heard him open what must have been the door to the house; then he came back to the gate and stood there, staring at Frida. She approached him, licked his hand, but did not enter. Gates would always close. Jacques had made sure that she was suspicious of that. Frida trotted away.

MADAME ÉVELINE DE MORNAY WAS not yet a hundred, but if she lived for three more years (and one month), she would be. Her grandfather had come from Domme, a lovely hill town on the banks of the Dordogne, a place Madame had loved to visit. He had come on one of the first rail lines, built during the Second Empire. He had made a great deal of money in soap and creamy lotions scented with lavender and verbena, then bought this house abutting the Champ de Mars, not far from the École Militaire. Éveline’s father had been killed in the First World War—she was three years old at the time and didn’t remember him. Her husband and her brother had been killed in the Second World War. Her son had died in Algeria, and her grandson and his wife had died in an automobile crash on the Périphérique. She now had this one child left—his name was Étienne. He was eight years old, almost exactly the same age as this twenty-first century, a century that Madame had never expected to see. With each death, Éveline had closed a room or two in the large house she lived in, and now she and Étienne made use only of the cuisine, the dining room, her father’s old study, which she used as a bedroom, and the small library, which now belonged to Étienne. There was a telephone, but it hadn’t rung in years—maybe Étienne didn’t even know what that sound was. Étienne had taught himself to read—there were books not only in his room, but all over Great-Grandmama’s house—and after that, he had taught himself to count, to add, to subtract, to multiply, and to divide. Others might have said he was dangerously isolated, but he was used to it, was leery of other children. What his great-grandmama told him of the outside world didn’t make him want to go out there, and he thought that if he could learn to do these things on his own, there was no reason to make himself known to the other children or at the school.

But sometimes he did feel lonely. For a while, he’d enjoyed the company of a neighborhood cat, but the cat had vanished. After that, he’d left crumbs for a pair of pigeons on the sill of his window, but the pigeons remained shy. He’d been watching Frida now for two weeks, and he knew for certain that she lived beside the pond to the north of the Tour, and that a horse lived there, too.

RAOUL WITNESSED Frida’s adventure from his perch on a second-floor railing down the street from the vegetable shop—he also observed with some amusement the human fracas that ensued when the two automobiles hit each other in the street, and their drivers jumped out and began cawing loudly about who was at fault and who should have been paying attention. One of them shouted at the old old lady, but she marched on, oblivious, her hand on the boy’s shoulder, Frida at her side. Nor did the boy turn to look. Now Raoul sailed along above them, riding the lightest of breezes, simultaneously keeping an eye on Frida and watching for stray frites on the sidewalk—sometimes he could swoop down and scare off a pigeon; it was good sport, he thought. The lady kept her hand on the boy’s shoulder and seemed to react to nothing. When they stopped at an intersection, she looked nowhere, and as they crossed the street, she paid no attention to the cars nearby. At last, when the boy and the old old lady came to their house, Raoul swept into the nearest hazelnut tree. After Frida left at a run, he floated about the place, glancing in through this window and that. All was silent and dark. The court was overgrown with grasses and weeds, but he was pleased to note some late blackberries, thick and brambly in one corner. He perched on the old, heavy branches and picked here and there among the half-fermented berries. When the boy appeared at one of the lower windows, then opened it, Raoul flew off.

But he stayed away from Paras and Frida for the time being. They might be oblivious to the brouhaha about the mallard nest, but he could not be. Any bird knew that a nest was a nest, and subject to the whims of fate. In the fork of a tree, on the ground, under the eaves of a building, in the corner of a chimney, in an attic, in a thicket of bushes—anywhere you built a nest, something could happen to it. Who was it, Raoul tried to remember, some dove he had known years ago, so proud of himself for building the nest in a warm, quiet, hidden spot that turned out to be the engine of an automobile. When the owner of the vehicle returned from his vacation, the nest had gone up in smoke. Sid had none of the sense of larger perspective that every bird should get with age. He would not accept that each spot had its advantages and disadvantages, and that fate would take its course no matter what. He asserted that he had been here and there with his band of drakes, to the ocean, to the ice, to the sandy shore, but Raoul Corvis Corax, the twenty-third of that name, had his doubts. It would come as no surprise to Raoul if it turned out that Sid and his band had made it no farther than Lac du Der-Chantecoq, where they strutted around, bragging about Paris all summer, and swimming in the calm of that domesticated body of water.

All the same, his own nest seemed empty and dull to him. He was so bored with his nest that he had let his rival, Maurice, enact his claim upon Benjamin Franklin’s lap, which Maurice had promptly ratified by defecating in every possible spot. Raoul thought he was spending too much time flying back and forth to the pond, urging Sid to come to his senses and build the nest. Winter, real winter, was at hand. Paras was as furry as a kitten.

That evening, Raoul arrowed back to the Rue Marinoni. He perched on the stone sill of the single lighted window. Inside the room, the boy sat in his bed with his back against the headboard. His covers were drawn well up, but he held a book in his hands. Raoul watched him for a bit. Through the next window over, he saw the old old lady, still and maybe dead (though that was impossible to know without pecking her corpus here and there). Her nest was spare and neat. There were three surfaces, and on each surface there was a single object precisely in the center.

Raoul jumped to the next sill. This room was so grand that Raoul could not see to the end of it. It was dark, quiet, and cold—he could feel the cold through the glass. There were many objects in the room, as in all the rooms of every human dwelling that he had ever spied into, but all of the objects were swathed, even the objects hanging on the walls near the window. The room seemed to have been waiting a long time for the coming of someone. Raoul flew back to the lighted window, landed on the sill, pecked lightly on the pane. The boy looked up.

ÉTIENNE WAS READING Vingt mille lieues sous les mers. There were two copies of it on his shelves, a very old copy that was hard to hold, and a newer copy. He had read it once before, but he understood it better this time. He was up to the part about Atlantis. When he imagined the sea, he thought of the Seine, but there would be no other side, and the boats traversing it would be bigger than houses. Étienne didn’t mind not understanding things. There were many things that his great-grandmama did not understand, but she was patient about it; whatever it was, she sought to touch it or to hold it or to smell it, and after she had been with it for a while, she would nod and smile. She could make very nice food in her little cuisine even though she was unable to hear anything and, Étienne thought, did not see much anymore, either. Each morning, he stood in front of her while she sat in her usual chair, and she touched his hair to discover if it was tangled, his shirt to make sure it was buttoned properly, his shoes and the cuffs of his pants to know that he was neat, straight, and ready for the day. She herself wore the same clothes almost every day.

A raven was perched on the windowsill, and once again, it pecked the glass—Étienne saw him (was it a him?) do it. The raven then cocked his head and looked at Étienne, as if he was asking him to open the window. It was very late—the clock said almost midnight. It was cold outside, and Étienne’s pajamas were thin, but he slipped out of bed and opened the window. He could have sworn that the raven nodded his shiny black head before hopping into the room. Étienne was a little surprised, but not terribly surprised. Animals in books did all sorts of things, and that was mostly what Étienne knew about animals, or about anything, for that matter. Since the weather was cold, he closed the window after the raven entered. Étienne went back to his bed, and got under the covers.

Now the raven hopped to the table, then onto a stack of books, then onto the back of Étienne’s desk chair, then onto the rim of the lamp shade. He looked here and there, every so often pecking something. He stood over the core of an apple on the corner of the desk, pecked it, dropped it. Finally, he hopped to the footboard of Étienne’s bed and looked at him, cawing mildly, not making much noise or, Étienne thought, arguing about anything. At last the bird fell silent, and the two of them stared at one another. It occurred to Étienne to reach out and pet the bird, but he decided against it and kept his hands warm under the covers. A moment later, the bird hopped to the book, which was lying open on the counterpane. He turned his head back and forth, looking at the white, shiny pages, then tapped the book gently with his beak. Perhaps he decided that there was nothing in it for him, because he suddenly lost interest and walked across the bed, then flitted to the windowsill and pecked at the glass again. Étienne got up and opened the window. The raven flew into the very dark night (clouds, no stars). Étienne closed the window. No book he had ever read spoke about such a thing, but Étienne was not surprised. If every new thing were to come as a surprise, he knew he would be surprised every hour of his life.

SIX

Now that she had explored the Champ de Mars, eaten oats out of Anaïs’s bowl a few times, and in general made the best of her surroundings, Paras could not quite remember, or even imagine, her former, regimented life. To stand in a stall all night and most of the day? To hear the other horses banging their buckets, kicking their walls, making grunts and whinnies, pawing the straw, knocking their chests into the door? To go out always at the same time every morning? To eat what they put in front of you day after day? Yes, she had banged her stall door when she heard the food coming, but it was not exactly because she was hungry, it was because she had nothing else to do. Paras knew that she had left because she was curious and didn’t know any better, not because she was dissatisfied, but, well, this freedom, these friends she had made, and this strange field were all more intriguing than anything else she had ever seen. When the grass was spare or the ground was frozen and the wind howled, it occurred to her to go back, but she was well aware now of what she would be giving up. Horses did what they were told—every yearling learned to be led here and there, learned to spend most of his or her time in a stall, learned to be groomed and tacked up, learned to step forward and step back, learned that humans had their foibles and their faults, but it was better to go along and get along. Every two-year-old you met had already been mounted, ridden, galloped, and, sometimes, raced. Horses who got injured came back and reported that they had stood around day after day, week after week, with nothing to do and no one to relate to—a good reason not to get injured.

Delphine and Rania had treated her kindly, and she had had no complaints about them. The other woman she saw sometimes, her “owner,” was also kind and gave her plenty of cookies and carrots. Not all of the other horses she spoke to out on the course could say the same, and some of them, even the nice ones, quite resented how they were handled—the whipping and the spurring especially. Or their trainers hardly knew their names, much less their preferences. And she had enjoyed racing—the hot, stretching efforts of the galloping, the coiling spring over the fences, the exhilarating sense of competition. Here on the Champ de Mars, there were no winners or losers, just humans and animals and birds going about. A canter was a canter, a trot felt good (especially when it was cold, and it was getting colder by the day). But the thrill of racing seemed a part of the past, something worth giving up in order to be able to satisfy her curiosity and do things as she pleased. She enjoyed Frida and Raoul and Nancy and even Sid. There was an owl who dropped by in the night, when Raoul had gone to his nest, and the owl had a few things to say. There were foxes who appeared, even though Frida told them repeatedly to stay away, barking with that deep, resonant bark she had that was so startling when you first heard it. Possibly, there was a human, too, because from time to time a carrot or an apple or a lump of sugar would appear on the concrete abutment beside the pond, and certainly these treats were meant for her, since they were horsey sorts of treats. But that human, whoever it was (and Paras did not think it was the boy), was making himself or herself scarce.

Sid made up his mind about the nest. He put it exactly where it had been for the last three years, among the weeds under the thickest branches of the trees to the north of the pond, not far from where Paras curled up each day—she could just see it from her spot. Once it was built, Nancy made a home of it—she wallowed about in it, stamped on it, worked it into a comfortable shape, then settled in and stayed there for long periods of time. After completing his work, Sid took off, with complaints, for the south. “Screech-screech-screech, you should come with me, I won’t be gone long, I will linger around Évry in case you change your mind.” Nancy put her head under her wing. After Sid was gone, Paras asked, “Where is Évry?”

“A day’s flight. He says that every year, even though I never go.”

For many days, the weather was tolerable and the grass was thick enough in spots; but it got dark earlier, and the number of humans in the Champ de Mars diminished day by day. Paras was hungry, and she visited Anaïs more often. Anaïs was not like Delphine or Rania—she was shy with Paras, and, Paras thought, a little afraid of her. She rarely came too close, and she put her hand out to touch Paras as if it were at the end of a pole. But her touch was gentle and smooth. She would lay her palm under Paras’s very abundant mane and stroke her from the cheek to the shoulder slowly, her hand flat, like a smooth cloth. Paras had always been ticklish with the curry comb and the brush, but she had enjoyed the rag they used to shine her up so that the sunlight gleamed off her coat. When Anaïs gave her the oats, she held the bowl away from herself, as if Paras might step on her (she would never do that), and Paras was careful to eat slowly, neatly, not spilling any oats onto the pavement. She offered Paras a few other delicious things, too—bran, wheat bits mixed with molasses (something Delphine had fed her as a treat). She mixed shredded carrots in with the oats, and once she had fed her an apple tart. Each time Paras visited her, she lingered as long as she could, but if the sky was beginning to lighten, or the dogs were waking up, or an automobile could be seen passing on the Quai Branly, Paras made sure to walk away, always in a different direction, so that Anaïs would not see her heading back to the pond. She had never seen Anaïs in the Champ de Mars. Anaïs, like all humans, had given her a name; it was “Chouchou.” Since Anaïs was at the shop every time Paras went there, Paras assumed that the shop was where she lived.

Paras’s coat was thicker this year than it had ever been—if she were still at the racetrack, Rania would have clipped her by now, and she would be wearing blankets, light during the day, heavy at night, and even a wool square over her haunches during training. Her coat kept her plenty warm, though—as long as she stayed fairly dry, it fluffed up nicely whenever she moved around. Trotting about, really moving, was the most warming thing, but she was, as always, careful in her choice of when and where to get this exercise. Her fluffy coat was the reason, when she left Anaïs this time (honey, shredded beets in the oats!), that she got back to the pond without realizing what Frida pointed out after she jumped over the fence. Frida said, “You do understand that you’re covered with snow, don’t you?” Frida was lying with her forelegs and her hind legs curled underneath herself. Now that she thought about it, Paras could just feel a little cold weight along her spine. She put her head down and shook herself. Snow lifted off and fluttered around her. Where it landed, she touched it with her nose. It was light and intriguing.

Frida said, “Look where you came from.”

Paras turned around. She hadn’t thought she was trotting through snow. She knew snow—quite often it crunched under your hooves. Once, when she was a yearling, she and her three companions had been let out in new snow. They had frolicked and floundered, the thin, frozen surface giving way so that they dropped through it and then leapt out of it again. Now she saw that the whiteness receded into the distance, and there, in a long line, leading to the spot where she had jumped the fence, were her hoofprints, round and dark in the smooth, blank field. Frida said, “You’d better hope that those fill in by morning.”

Paras looked upward. The air was thick with sparkling flakes; a light breeze whirled them around, but they fell and fell, into her face, into her eyes. She glanced at the pond—it was white, too, around the edge. Paras crunched through the ice until it was in fragments around her cannon bones, cold and sharp. The water in the middle was covered with a film of ice that was not yet white, but almost. She tapped it with her nose; it broke; she took a long, freezing drink.

Frida sighed.

Paras suspected that she was thinking sad thoughts—she had come to understand that many of Frida’s thoughts were sad, that there had been that human who had mysteriously disappeared, that without a human a dog was a little ill-at-ease in a way that a horse was not. Dogs, evidently, saw humans as friends, whereas horses saw them as co-workers. “Well,” said Paras, with her newfound sense that everything would work out, “at the moment, I’m tired and full, so I’ll sleep, and then we’ll see.”

“What are you full of?” said Frida.

Paras pretended not to hear. For now, she wanted to keep Anaïs to herself; anyway, she didn’t think Frida would care for oats.

After Paras curled up and went to sleep, Frida lay still for a long time, trying to keep her feet warm and her nose curled under her knee, but more than once, she could not resist looking at those hoofprints. Finally, she rose to her feet and slinked away, looking back once to see if Paras had awakened, but no—not even her ears flicked. Frida knew from her recent experience that a horse didn’t sleep as much as a dog did, but she was asleep now. Frida took off at a run.

Frida could follow the hoofprints perfectly well—not only by sight, but also by smell, and the fact of the matter was that even a human would notice that Paras had defecated on the dirt road to the north of the pond. What surprised her was that the hoofprints went to the other side of the Champ de Mars, away, from Jérôme’s shop, toward the Avenue de Suffren, a street Frida had explored several times and had never found of the least interest. She might have enjoyed exploring the soccer field, but the fence was too high, and she might have visited one of the dogs she heard barking in the area, but all of them seemed to be safely locked in upstairs rooms. She had visited one vegetable shop, but the man there stayed inside, unlike Jérôme, and none of the customers had noticed her. Nevertheless, the hoofprints stopped at this shop. As far as Frida could tell, everything all up and down this block was closed up tight. She sniffed all the doorsills, growled at a couple of cats but asked no questions, and looked at the hoofprints again. Next to the vegetable shop was a bakery. Frida paused, put her forefeet on the windowsill. The light was dim, and she could see nothing. The glass was cold, with frost creeping upward in tendrils; she could smell nothing. In frustration, she gave a little whine. The door opened, and someone wrapped in white exclaimed, “Out! Out! Get away, bad dog!” Frida backed up into the dark street, and ran off. It was snowing harder now—Paras’s hoofprints had nearly disappeared. When she got back to the abutment, Paras hadn’t moved, and Nancy was so soundly asleep that she didn’t even flinch when Frida touched her with her nose. Nancy, she thought, was a fool—a dog was a dog, and a mallard was a mallard. Frida might exert all of her willpower but still be overcome by instinct, especially if Nancy were to move, but Nancy remained as still as a rock—her feathers, fluffed, were chilled, too. And so instinct did not kick in. Frida lay down in her spot and thought happily about carrying her bag to her usual shops early in the morning, when Jérôme was just taking in supplies and organizing them. He might give her something ugly—something that humans would not like, but that was fine with a dog. He’d done that before. She fell asleep and dreamed of a nice knucklebone.

Paras woke up first, and she did not understand where she was. Something was hanging over her. Something else was all around her. The only warm spot was right beneath her chest. She shook her head and blew out her nostrils, and the air that came out was a white fog. Then she shook herself, and with that, the whiteness encompassing her splintered and fell in little pillows to the ground. She realized that it was snow, that the branches that normally arced above her as she slept had been weighted down with it. They now trembled and lifted, and she could see the world. Not that there was much to see—the earth was white, the trees were white, the pond was white, the sky was white, and the air, too, was still white with flakes drifting downward in the stillness. She turned her head. Snow was mounded against her side almost to her withers. She made her skin shiver; the snow shivered, too, and slipped off.

It was only then that she began to feel cold, and to feel cold meant, as always for a horse, that she had to move. She stretched her foreleg and started to stand up, but Frida was there instantly, saying, “Be careful! Be careful!” She dropped two carrots in front of Paras’s nose. How disappointing‚ they were tasteless, floppy carrots—but she ate them. Frida pressed closer. She said, “The snow is higher than my chest. I had to bound over to the market. It took me forever and was exhausting. I could hardly bring anything back. The streets are not much better than the Champ. No cars anywhere.”

Thanks to Anaïs, Paras had had that full feed—oats, honey, beets, but also bran—almost more than she could eat, though she had eaten every morsel. She was not hungry—but she did expect to be hungry. For the first time in many days, she began to feel a little nervous.

She hoisted herself to her feet.

Thoroughbreds are nervous horses—you heard that all the time, and it was a compliment. It meant that they were quick and smart and attentive. There were non-Thoroughbreds up where she had trained and mostly lived, in Maisons-Laffitte, and all the Thoroughbreds congratulated themselves on not being as dull as those others, with that odd hair around their fetlocks, and those heavy heads and thick coats. You might not be a winner (and every Thoroughbred was well aware of who won, who placed, and who showed), but at least you were a Thoroughbred, and that counted for something. But to be nervous meant to run here and there, and it was pretty clear, even if Frida had said nothing about it, that running about was not a good choice right now.

UP IN MAISONS-LAFFITTE, Delphine was also looking at the snow, and there was more of it than there was down in the city. She had just finished shoveling the walk that led from her small house to the road. Soon she would get on the little tractor she kept for barn work and push the snow away from the horses’ stall doors, out into the middle of the yard. And at some point, the men who took care of the entire training facility would plow the roads. The horses would keep their blankets on today, and she and Rania would take them out into the yard and walk them for an hour around the pile of snow. She had ten horses; all this would take most of her day.

She didn’t have to worry about them for the moment—the night before, she had given them each an extra hay net to get them through the morning as well as the night.

None of her stalls were empty; she still wondered and worried about Perestroika, but another horse had come to take her place, to be trained for the spring season. There was a stall nearby that she used for storage—if Paras turned up, she could put her there. But she had lost hope. No one said it, but everyone thought it—Paras was surely dead. Perhaps she had wandered from Auteuil to the Bois de Boulogne and died there, and her carcass, stripped by vultures and foxes, was hidden in a ravine somewhere. Perhaps she had been kidnapped. A stolen horse might be doing something somewhere. Paras’s markings were not unusual—a plain white star, two little cowlicks in typical spots, otherwise, a red bay, no white stockings. Delphine would recognize her, but to the average person she would look like a multitude of other horses. Delphine had scrutinized horses at all the racetracks she’d been to—in Deauville, down south, in Chantilly—for that telltale luxuriant forelock, those intelligent eyes, those wide nostrils, but she had seen no horse that looked like Paras. She had contacted the racing authorities at France Galop, she had put up signs, she had advertised in newspapers and on Internet forums, she had told all of her friends more than once, she had called all the stud farms in France, England, and Ireland, just in case a mystery mare might show up to be bred, though how a thief might pull that off, she had no idea. But someone else might—a fellow trainer named Louis Paul (and everyone knew that wasn’t his real name) was said to have stolen horses in the past. And he didn’t like women trainers, said they were ignoramuses and deserved no support. Once in a while, he went out of his way to mock her if she didn’t do well in a race. There were plenty of stories about ringers in the racing world—horses disguised to look like other horses so that they could run in a race they might win. She had notified Animal Control. Of course, a stolen horse could be sent to the slaughterhouse, but for what? A handful of euros? And surely any slaughterhouse would recognize that Paras was sound, well fed, young. Delphine had contacts at a few slaughterhouses, too. It was a mystery, as if the horse had vaporized into space.

She, Madeleine, and Rania had taken it very hard—Rania hadn’t wanted Delphine to agree to train the new horse, a gelding named Jesse James, but Delphine could not do without the income, and it had seemed too sad to do as Madeleine wished—as Madeleine offered to pay for—to hold the stall, empty, bedded, waiting for the filly’s return. The race Paras had won was not prestigious—it was not as though, at least at this point, she was worth hundreds of thousands of euros—but, unlike many owners, Madeleine didn’t care about that. What all three of them cared about was the filly, soon to be a mare, Paras herself. As a trainer, Delphine thought she might have been harder-hearted than Rania or Madeleine. Training racehorses was a business; you had to accept that anything could happen and still you had to get on with it. And she had gotten on with it, but she couldn’t give up the conundrum. Paras was Delphine’s very own cold case.

Of course, the other mystery was what had happened to Rania’s handbag, which might have disappeared at the same time—when Rania came back to the stall from the bathroom and found the door open, found the grooming box tipped over, found Paras gone, she had forgotten about everything but her phone, even though her handbag was full of money—she had put her whole week’s salary down on the race and won her bets. Paras had been something of a long shot—12–1—but the horses that ran second and third had been even bigger long shots—30–1 and 50–1—and since she had bet on all three of them, she had won a number of euros that Delphine shuddered to calculate. But Rania had been much more upset about losing the horse than about losing her winnings, and Delphine had not punished her for being careless—when you have to pee, you have to pee, everyone knew that. What everyone did not know was, what in the world had happened? The handbag had never turned up—Rania’s keys and credit card and phone had never turned up. Only her little mirror lay there on the gravel outside the stall, glinting in the deepening dusk—a clue, but a clue that no one could understand.

Without telling Madeleine, Delphine had spent a hundred euros of her own to call an animal psychic. They had spoken on the phone; the woman, who was in the west of Ireland, had taken her credit-card information before “casting about.” Delphine had given the woman—Áine was her name—all of Paras’s particulars, including color, date of birth, cowlicks, racing history, breeding—and at her end of the line, Áine had cast about so long that Delphine had thought the line was dead and said, “You there? You there?” Finally, Áine said that Paras was walking down the street, looking into shopwindows, but since she herself had never been to Paris and didn’t know French, she could not say what was written over the shops—all she knew was that the windows were dark, but that Paras seemed healthy and active. These remarks were so ridiculous that Delphine simply put them out of her mind and swore that she would never be fooled again. Walking down the street, looking into shopwindows, indeed! What was she looking at? Designer platform heels? A hundred euros down the drain! But even so, she found a single grain of comfort in the fact that a voice—a rather deep, warm, and lilting Irish voice—had not said that the horse was dead. She pulled her hat more tightly down over her head, and marched, shovel in hand, across the road to the stables. She still had to shovel the snow away from the door to the storage barn where she kept the little tractor.

The horses saw her coming. None of them talked about Paras much—only six of them had known her, and she had not been one of those fillies who are friendly and agreeable to everyone. When she disappeared, the horses from England (there were two of these) assumed that she had been sold away. The horses from France said, if she had been sold, why were the humans so upset? Jesse James, the single, solitary horse from America, asked if she’d been running in a “claiming race,” like they had back where he had come from, where, if you ran, another owner could pay some money and take you straight to his barn, but his accent was very strange, and no one answered him. According to the other horses, he was related to Paras—he had Northern Dancer everywhere in his pedigree—but because his grandsire was Nijinsky, he was big and brawny, a chestnut. Today, though, no one was worrying about Paras—it was cold, their blankets were dirty from lying down in the muck, the hay was a little dry. When all was said and done, they were Thoroughbreds—a day inside, a day walking, was not a good day.

SEVEN

Raoul was surprised at the snow, too—in his long life, he had never seen this much snow around Paris. Benjamin Franklin’s lap was a dome of snow, and upon his bald head was a little white hat. An icicle hung from the tip of his nose, and even the back of his chair had a white railing. Raoul had huddled in his nest all night long, and he was hungry, but snow wasn’t bad for your diet. Seeds dropped with the cold and were very nicely visible against the white. The trick was to wait until the sun had come out and melted the top surface. Later in the day, the top surface would freeze again, and an agile raven could hop gently around upon it, extracting chilly nutrients here and there. Also, anything that a human tossed landed visibly on the snow and was easy to see from above. This time of year, humans were rather careless, because they were rushing here and there, buying an abundance of things for what they called vacances de Noël. Some of these things fell out of their pockets and their bags. This time of year, Raoul allowed himself the occasional palmier, some pieces of meringue, even a stray nougat. Young humans, especially, tended to cry for something, eat a bit of it, toss it away, and cry for something more. A discreet Corvus corax could follow a small human down a street, picking up whatever he or she tossed, and be full in a short time. But he had to be discreet—if too many other Aves saw him, they would all be after the goods, and then the humans would chase them off.

The animals didn’t know it, but Étienne did know it: this was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. His great-grandmama had been up since before the sun, preparing herself for her long walk to the Mass. She had put on two pairs of socks, and some sturdy boots, gloves as well as mittens, leggings, a long wool dress, two sweaters, and her coat. Now she wrapped her head in a scarf she had knitted twenty years ago (four-ply cashmere—she could afford that then). A piece of lace, which she would wear during the service, was in her pocket. Étienne stood quietly as she patted him over to make sure that he, too, was suitably clothed. He was. It was a long walk at any time of the year, many times longer than the walk to the shops, but as far as Madame de Mornay was concerned, that only meant that you left plenty of time to get there. They opened the door and went outside. Étienne had cleared the step and the walk to the gate. Now he took along his little shovel, and as his great-grandmama moved down the walk, which had been not perfectly cleared by the city, he scraped bits of snow and ice to either side, widening her path. He was a good boy. The very few people who were out glanced at him and smiled.

It was to be a long Mass, and Étienne and Madame de Mornay got there in good time. Étienne left his small shovel outside, escorted his great-grandmama to her usual spot, about halfway down the center aisle. She did not kneel, but after she took off her coat, gloves, and scarf, set them aside, and put on her piece of lace, she sat quietly, with her hands in her lap, and closed her eyes to say her prayers. Madame de Mornay knew all the prayers there were in the book—she said them aloud even though she could not hear herself. She had once been a faithful churchgoer, in spite of her griefs, but now she could only manage it three times in the year—the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Christmas Day, and the Pentecost. Étienne took a seat behind her. When the church was almost full, and it seemed as though the Mass was about to begin, Étienne eased himself out of the pew, and out the back door. He estimated that he had two hours at least, and he ran for the Champ de Mars as fast as he could go, only stopping at his great-grandmama’s house to pick up a bag of things that he’d been saving for a long time.

The surface of the snow was like a map of which animals had walked where in the course of the morning. Under the trees, along the allées that ran the length of the Champ, the snow was flattened by the footsteps of humans and their dogs, but deeper into the expanse of the Champ, there were the paw prints of cats and foxes, of geese that had landed, walked along, taken off again. Of a hare that had crossed the width of the Champ, and a rabbit that had scurried from one den to another. Squirrels had descended from their homes in trees, scurried across the snow, leaving a few nutshells, and returned to their trees. Ravens and other birds had landed, hopped about, taken off again. And Frida had raced toward the shops—she was cold, and cold made a dog hungry. Her track was straight—away from the abutment, back to the abutment. There were no hoofprints. Étienne ran in loops around the places where he had glimpsed Paras over the last several weeks, but he could not see her. He got tired from running, set down his bag.

Paras could see Étienne, though. From her spot deep under the trees, where she was still curled up (so curled up that she could hear her own stomach rumbling), she could see him rise on his toes with his hands on his hips, and turn in a slow circle, looking everywhere in the Champ. Paras didn’t need Frida to tell her that he was looking for her—she could sense it. And in the cold, dry air, she could just faintly smell a sweetness that would be coming from the bag. She could see that it was a big bag, and she could tell that it was a heavy bag. She had seen many bags in her day—not handbags, but feedbags. She flicked her ears and felt herself getting curious. Without thinking, she gave a little nicker. Nancy, who was huddling in her nest, all fluffed up against the cold, quacked, “Watch out!” But Nancy always quacked that. The boy had his hat pulled down so that only his nose and his mouth were showing. At any rate, Paras didn’t think he had heard her—he didn’t turn in her direction. She lay quietly, but she felt her curiosity getting bigger and bigger. Her nostrils stretched toward the boy. Her neck extended itself. Her eyes opened wider, and her ears went as far forward as they could go. Her tail stiffened, as if she were about to stand up, but she knew that she should not stand up. Or, rather, she knew that Frida had said that she should not stand up. Moment by moment, though, she was coming to think that nothing would be lost by standing up, by walking over to the boy, by nuzzling the bag, by sniffing the boy’s cheek to see what kind of boy he was.

Now the boy jumped up and down, clamping his arms around himself, and then he made a noise like a horse does, blowing air out of his nostrils. He turned around again, looked in her direction for a long moment, then turned away. “He saw you!” quacked Nancy. “But he didn’t see me! You quadrupeds don’t know how to be still, do you?”

Paras didn’t respond.

The boy opened the bag and looked into it. After a moment, he extracted something. Paras could see that it was a large carrot. He dropped it onto the surface of the snow. Although it smelled like a carrot, it didn’t quite look like a carrot; it looked dark against the blinding whiteness. He picked up the bag and walked away, every so often stopping to take out something else and lay it on the snow. Paras couldn’t sniff out what the other things were from this distance.

“He’s tricking you!” quacked Nancy. “Don’t fall for it. You know, they have these ducks that swim in the water. They look fine from above—handsome, you might say—and there they are, floating peacefully in a lake, as you are passing over, and always there is an argument about whether to stop and have a snack or whether to fly on, and the ones who stop—bam, they are dead. And those ducks that were there to begin with, they just keep floating around as if nothing has happened. Humans are horribly treacherous.”

“That isn’t my experience,” said Paras. She could see a squirrel approaching the carrot. She knew the boy had left it for her. The squirrel looked this way and that. Another squirrel was nearby, too.

One thing Paras had learned in the Champ de Mars was that, if squirrels were walking around, then humans were nowhere to be found. She extended a foreleg, hoisted herself to her feet, felt the scratch of the branches as she left the trees and bushes that were her nest. She walked past Nancy’s spot with her head down, and snorted at the squirrel as he reached his front paws toward the carrot, which smelled even sweeter and more delicious up close. The squirrel did not run away immediately, as Paras expected him to. He said, “Might doesn’t always make right.”

Paras had never spoken to a squirrel before. He said, “I’m hungry.” She looked at him, then said, “It doesn’t look as though you are hungry. You still have something in your cheeks.”

The squirrel tossed his head and ran away. Paras took a bite of the carrot, then ate it piece by piece. She looked down the Champ. There was something else that the boy had dropped. She walked toward it.

She had been hoping for another carrot, but it was a head of romaine, a little wilted, more bitter than sweet, though parts of it were crunchy. She ate every morsel, including the fibrous stem end. The next item, not sitting high on the snow but sunk into it, looked like another carrot, but when she bit into it, it had a different flavor, and at first she stuck her nose in the air and wrinkled her lip, but she was hungry, so she ate it anyway. It was large, and by the time she was finished, she quite liked it.

The boy was standing over the next thing, dark and round. He did not retreat when she approached it. He stood still, then picked up the apple (any horse could recognize an apple from far away) and held it out to her, his gloved hand flat. The apple looked and smelled good. She could have bitten it in half right away, but since she was a curious filly, even though she was hungry, she stuck her nostrils against the boy’s head and sniffed. He stood very still, but she didn’t sense that he was afraid—humans could get quite a bad smell when they were afraid. She sniffed the top of his head. Then she waited a polite moment and bit the apple neatly in half, leaving the other half in his palm. She chewed on the apple. Like the romaine, it was chilled, but sweet and crisp.

The bag was sitting at the boy’s feet. Paras did something that she knew was rude, that Delphine would have said “Ah-ah!” to: she put her head down and opened the bag with her nose. The contents of the bag smelled good—certainly more apples, romaine, and some carrots, some other things, possibly a beet. She lifted her head and stood quietly. A long moment went by. The boy took off his glove and stroked her on her cheek, very lightly. Paras nickered.

Off to her right, almost but not quite behind her, something ran across the snow. She swiveled her right eye and saw it was Frida. She did not turn her head. She didn’t want Frida to know that she had noticed her. The boy reached his hand into the bag, and now he had that very thing that no horse could get on her own, a lump of sugar. Paras lifted it neatly off his palm with her lips and took it in. She held it on her tongue and felt it begin to melt in there, the sweetest possible thing. She crunched it down and licked her lips.

Then she saw that Frida wasn’t alone—Raoul was flying along just above her, and they were having quite an argument. Paras nudged the boy lightly on the shoulder, and he did what she wanted him to do—he picked up the bag and started walking away. She followed him, the snow a little watery, a little soft. She could feel it balling in her front hooves, not a pleasant sensation. Frida and Raoul got pretty close, about to where the not-quite-a-carrot had been; Frida came to a sliding halt and sat down. Raoul raised his wings and landed just in front of her. The boy stopped, stared at them, then reached into his bag. He rummaged around for a moment, held out his hand. Paras sniffed what was in it—it smelled sharp and salty, a little like the mineral block Delphine had always kept in Paras’s feeder. Raoul cocked his head one way, then the other, then hopped over toward them. Finally, he flew up and landed on Paras’s haunches, where he took a few steps in both directions (Paras didn’t mind him walking on her—it felt like being scratched). He stretched downward, and the boy held whatever it was toward the raven in his gloved hand. Raoul took it.

“Excellent!” he said. “First quality! Provenance, the Costa Brava, or even North Africa. Very firm, and yet chewy, almost pulpy.”

“What are you eating?” said Paras.

“Tenebrio molitor!” said Raoul, his mouth full. “Mealworms!”

“I ate one of those, once,” said Paras. “It was in the oats.” She wrinkled her nose in the air again.

Raoul hopped over onto the boy’s wrist. The boy’s arm dipped, but he managed to lift it, and Raoul perched there, picking the mealworms out of his hand one by one, then gulping them down. They did look rather large. When he was finished, he dipped his head in thanks, and hopped back onto Paras’s haunches. The boy turned, picked up his bag, and continued across the Champ de Mars. Paras followed him. Behind her, Frida started barking her deep, startling bark. Raoul said, “Ignore her. As I said to her, her life with that fellow, no matter how well intentioned he was, and, yes, I admit it, affectionate for a human, and he did not abandon her—I had to explain to her what death is—”

“What is death?” said Paras.

Raoul said, “I keep forgetting how young you mammals are. But, to finish my thought, he had his own issues, and if indeed he preferred to live out in the open rather than to take shelter, especially in the winter, well, look where that ended up, and, yes, I know he—as we Aves say—‘flew upward’ in the summer, but damage accumulates in every species—”

“What’s the problem?” said Paras. Frida was still barking.

“She thinks you are being captured and put in jail.”

Paras stopped walking. She said, “She has mentioned that. But what is jail?”

“Oh, goodness, you know, a small enclosed space where you can’t get in and out of your own accord, but must always bow and scrape and do tricks in order to achieve some sort of self-realization.”

“A stall,” said Paras. She turned her head to look at Raoul.

“Something like that,” said Raoul.

“On a day like today, there’s much to be said for a stall.”

“Have you ever been inside a house?”

“Where humans live?”

“Yes.”

Paras, now walking along behind the boy, who was carrying his bag and moving at a decent clip for such a small human, said, “I knew a human who lived in our barn. Her horse lived in one stall, she lived in one stall, and her dog lived in the stall between them. Delphine made her move, though.” She thought again. “Sometimes humans live above us. We can hear them walking around.”

“You have enjoyed a very circumscribed life,” said Raoul. “In my view—and, I would guess, the view of most Aves, especially Corvus—there is nothing quite as amusing as observing humans in their own habitats. They sleep on their backs with their mouths wide open, you know, and there is not much of this walking about that you see out of doors, looking lordly and in charge. It’s all lolling and lazing and stoking themselves with food and drink. Gatherings are different. Quite often they flock together in large, bright rooms, and then they plume themselves and establish rankings. I would like to see a healthy flock of Aves fly into the room and perch on their heads. But, by themselves, they are something of a mess.”

All of this time, Paras had been following about two paces behind the boy, and he’d been glancing at her. They’d crossed the Champ de Mars at an angle, taking the same route Frida always did when she headed for the shops. Frida had stopped barking, and was slouching along in the rear. Every so often, she uttered a sad whine, as if she had given up on them and was talking to herself. The boy now paused. Paras stepped up to him, and he offered her another item from the bag, a piece of bread. She could taste oats in it. It was delicious. Raoul landed in front of the boy and lifted and lowered his head. The boy seemed to understand. He opened the bag and held it for Raoul to look into.

“I thought I smelled cacahuètes,” said Raoul.

“What are cacahuètes?” said Paras.

“Your diet is sadly limited,” said Raoul. But he did not explain what cacahuètes were.

They had come to a building, much taller than a stable. A fence covered with impenetrable wintry vines surrounded it. Paras reached out and tasted the dead leaves. Plenty of snow, and the merest hint of a bitter, summer flavor. She spat the fragments out. Frida barked one time, but then sat and stared at them, her ears flat against her head. The boy opened the gate all the way, as wide as it would go. Paras stepped around it, and peered into the yard.

There was not much to see. The snow was not flat—it had mounded against the walls of the building and piled on the windowsills. The sun shone on the snow and the walls and made Paras blink, it was so bright. She snorted and tossed her head. The yard wasn’t as tight as it looked from the outside—spacious enough to walk about in, though not to trot, private in spite of the brilliant sunshine—no branches to scratch her back as she got in and out. Open to clouds and rain and mist and breezes. But right now—not very appealing. Paras made no move through the gate.

Now the boy did something to the black door across from the gate, and then he opened that, too. It was much narrower than the gate, and a horse, or a dog, or a boy, had to climb a step to approach it. He opened it wide. Paras could not see inside—the sunlight on the snow had blinded her a bit—but she could feel warmth billowing out of the doorway like a fragrance, and so, even though Frida barked two sharp barks, and because she was a curious filly, Paras went up the step and through the door (without banging either of her hip bones on the door frame), and Raoul flew in after her. The boy closed the door behind her, and also the gate, and it was a good thing he did, because there was a gendarme on the sidewalk, across the Avenue de la Bourdonnais, who could not believe his eyes. He thought he saw a horse go into a house that he passed every day, a house that he knew was very respectable and had been in the same family for at least a hundred years, but by the time he got there, the gate was closed and locked again. There were no hoofprints visible in the packed snow on the street or the sidewalk, and so he decided that he had, indeed, had too much wine the evening before, on the occasion of his daughter’s engagement party, and that he had better avoid all alcoholic drinks for a few weeks at least. He did see Frida—he stepped toward her in what he considered a friendly manner (she was a beautiful dog; surely, she belonged to someone) and what she considered a threatening manner—he was wearing a uniform, after all. As his hand reached toward her, she backed away (without growling—a good dog never growled at a gendarme), then headed into the Champ de Mars, but away from, not toward, Nancy’s nest and her own den. She made believe she could hear Jacques calling her. The gendarme watched her for a moment, then turned around and went back to his rounds. He proceeded down the Avenue de la Bourdonnais toward the Avenue Rapp, and so he did not see Étienne emerge from the house, lock the gate behind himself, and run as fast as he could, back toward the church.

EIGHT

Every time she went to Mass, Madame de Mornay refused out of hand any sort of automobile ride home. She had her cane, and she had her boy. She allowed the curé to take her elbow and help her down the five stairs out of the church—that was a courteous thing to do, and even when she was a young woman, long long ago, she had allowed her husband to do the same. But then she waved her hand in a gesture meant to indicate that she had no need of him any longer, and she would see him another time, and even though he was worried about the snow (true, the streets were clear by now), he stood silently, with his hands folded, watching her and the boy, who was carrying a small shovel, make their way step by step by step. His predecessor, long retired, had considered her old in his day, and the curé himself was no longer a young man. Every time he saw her, he wondered if there were things he should do to help her and, perhaps, the boy. But he never did anything—he only saw them every so often, and had too much else to think about. He also knew that she would resent whatever he might attempt.

It took Madame and Étienne quite a while to get home, but Madame did not regret the trek. The Mass had been quite refreshing—a lovely performance by the choir (the baritones were especially good this year, their voices rich and expressive—though in fact she could not hear them, and was remembering another choir, from many years ago). She had taken Communion—last in line—and had thought her prayers (in Latin) if she had not said them aloud. She wasn’t quite aware that Étienne had vanished during the service, because he was there with her when the Mass ended and everyone else had left. Perhaps she felt that his hand was cold and his cheek was cold, but that could be an illusion.

They trudged and trudged, and even though Étienne was eager to see what the horse and the raven were doing inside the house, he was, as always, patient with his great-grandmama.

Raoul had not meant to be left inside, with all the windows closed. He perched on each of the windowsills in turn and looked out. When he was finished with the lower story, he flew up the grand staircase and into the rooms that were open (only two of these), and looked through those windows. He pecked at what looked like a grape or two hanging from the ceiling, but the grapes were plaster, and dusty at that. And so, when he saw from the second story that Étienne and the old lady were making their way along the Rue Marinoni, he flew down the stairs, and when the front door opened, he was gone before the old lady had even crossed the threshold.

Paras, too, had made use of one of the windows—she had stretched out in a square of sunshine on a nice thick carpet (though she didn’t really understand what a carpet was), given a groan because she was so enjoying the warmth, and gone fast asleep. Horses don’t sleep very long as a rule, but Paras was tired, and this time she did sleep, giving out quiet little snores that ruffled her nostrils and rose into the silent air of the old house.

ALL OF HER LIFE, Frida had been a dog with a cool head. According to the relatives she could recall from when she was a puppy, a hunting dog had to be—you could not sight a quail or a pheasant, lose your mind, and go running toward them barking. Her relatives, as she remembered anyway, had been proud of their skills. A “good dog” took her time, moved away or moved toward, and only at the right moment did she race at the game, and then always silently, always intently, always moving as little of the surrounding air as possible—those were the rules. With Jacques on the street, she had been cool—standing still, sitting erect, resting herself as poised as a statue so that passersby would pat her head and then, the most important thing, drop coins into the dish. Little dogs might bark, but it was inappropriate for a big dog to respond in kind.

Now, however, she did not know what to do, and so she did an, admittedly, hunting-dog thing—she ran in circles about the Champ, as if she were scouting for game, but she wasn’t, really—it was just that she had no idea what to do. She was looking for something, but it was not a bird—rather, an idea. On a sunny, snowy, still, and chilly day on the Champ de Mars, ideas seemed to be few and far between. Frida ran until she had worn herself out, at which point she realized that she was on the Avenue de Suffren. A few humans were out along the avenue, bundled up in thick coats with their faces wrapped, wearing gloves, and scurrying along. No one, as far as Frida could tell, even glanced in her direction. And running around had made her hungry. She turned off the Avenue de Suffren down the Rue Desaix, a street she did not know well. But there was a meat market there, she could smell it, and even if she knew no one in the place, it was something of a comfort just to lie down on the pavement outside, lean her back against the cold building, and pant for a while. She closed her eyes.

Frida had a perfectly good memory, and the picture of Paras and Raoul entering the gate and the door, and the door being closed behind them, was right there. Perhaps because she was so preoccupied, or perhaps because the air around the meat market was suffused with wonderful odors, when she opened her eyes, she was surprised to see that there was a woman squatting in front of her, neatly dressed in a coat made of a sheepskin (though with the fur turned inward), holding out her fist to Frida. Her fist was loosely clenched, and without really thinking, Frida did what she was supposed to do, she stretched her nose and sniffed the fist. She wagged her tail. It was a short tail, but the woman saw it, and smiled. She petted Frida on the head two times. It felt good. Frida hadn’t allowed anyone to pet her—not even Jérôme, who sold the vegetables—since Jacques died. She had forgotten how pleasant it felt. The woman said, “You pretty thing! You have a coat like silk!” She petted her again. Frida stopped panting and let out a little huff.

The woman stood up and looked up the street and down the street. It happened to be empty. She looked in each direction again. No one. For the first time since the death of Jacques in the spring, Frida was found out. The woman said, “Dear girl! You don’t seem to have an owner. Are you truly all alone?”

No human, Frida thought, but I have friends. Then she remembered the door closing on Paras and Raoul, and Nancy preoccupied with her eggs, and she rested her head on her leg. The woman bent down and petted her again. She said, “You aren’t terribly thin. You look as though someone looks after you.” She squatted down again, and said, “You are a beautiful dog. I wish you belonged to me!” She opened her bag and pulled out a package, then unwrapped it, and offered Frida, very politely, a nice sausage, one of Frida’s favorite items of food, one she hadn’t had for a long time. The woman set the sausage in front of Frida’s nose. Frida did not gobble it down. She sat up, looked the woman in the eye, and held out her paw. The woman took her paw, and said, “My pleasure.” It wasn’t until the woman walked away, back down the Rue Desaix toward the Avenue de Suffren, that Frida ate the sausage. The sausage did not solve her problem, but it calmed her down and warmed her up. It was a very nice sausage, not too sharp, but with plenty of flavor and density. It was a delicious change from cheese and bones.

Frida stood up and shook herself. As she walked back toward the Champ de Mars, she scented the woman—probably it was her sheepskin coat. She scented that she had turned left on the Avenue de Suffren; she scented that she had walked one block and crossed the street; she scented that she had walked another block and gone into a shop, then come out again. She scented that the woman had walked another half-block, then entered a door (Frida sniffed the bottom of the door) and closed the door behind her. Frida stepped back, looked upward. Perhaps she saw the woman looking out the window, but the light was against her—she couldn’t really tell.

In the meantime, Étienne was escorting Madame de Mornay through the entryway of their house and into her room. He helped her remove her coat, and he hung it in her closet. He helped her remove her scarf and one of her sweaters, then her boots. He helped her into her slippers, put away her things. She was evidently very tired from her long day, and her lips were moving—he suspected that she was singing a few of the melodies or saying a few of the prayers she remembered so well. He’d seen Paras stretched out on the floor of the grand salon, her nostrils fluttering slightly and one of her hind hooves twitching. He very much wanted to visit her, but he knew that he had to fix his great-grandmama a cup of tea first, and bring her something to eat—they’d eaten nothing since the night before, because she believed in fasting before Mass. There were sandwiches she’d made for her return, a little ham, a little watercress, a little mustard. His great-grandmama yawned, but of course she covered her mouth very politely and patted his cheek. He ran to the cuisine, just happening to close the door to her room as if he had done so inadvertently. He ran past the grand salon again. Paras was still stretched out.

But Paras was not sleeping soundly. She was lying still, not quite ready to get up. Getting up from lying down is a project for any horse, one that a horse must prepare for mentally. Legs are long, bodies are heavy; balance is attainable, but not without effort. Paras had often admired the ease with which Frida moved from lying down to rolling over to sitting up, and Frida was nothing compared with a cat. One of the cats at Delphine’s barn had enjoyed sprawling on windowsills, watching mice and rats from above. Sylvie, her name was. More than once, she had leapt from the windowsill right onto an unsuspecting mouse. Delphine called it “an airborne attack.” Sylvie called it nothing—she disdained making a big deal of anything. The boy ran past. Then he ran past again, at a slower pace, carrying some item, and disappeared. Paras rolled onto her breastbone, paused, shook her head.

Madame de Mornay felt invigorated by the sandwiches and the tea. She patted the bed beside her, expecting Étienne to sit down, as he always did, take a sandwich, and listen to her tell a little story. After a moment, he did; she felt the mattress dip. She gave him the plate, and said, “My dear, I keep thinking of something that happened to me when I was your age.” And then she told him how her own maman, after her father had died, had become quite fond of a man who lived in Normandy, who had a great estate not far from Deauville. She and her maman had gone to the estate twice, and now she could so easily remember those fields, those young horses running in the green grass, so playful. She said, “My life would have been so different if things had gone another way.” She patted his head again, and then said, “I am so exhausted. Old memories are the ones that wear you out.”

She lay down, rested her head on the pillow, and Étienne covered her with the old silk pelisse she preferred for naps. She fell to snoring almost immediately.

In the grand salon, Paras was at last awake and looking about. There was space, she had to admit. Even with all of the items that looked like shrouded haystacks pushed against the walls, a horse could wander around in this place. It was evident, though, both by the smell and by the look, that it had been a long time since any sort of equine had been here. There was no manure, for one thing, which was perhaps unfortunate, since Paras could discover a lot by investigating piles, or even single deposits that had been left by other horses. She was not the sort of horse to snuffle for bits of hay and oats, as some horses did, but every pile of manure deserved a look. Nor did she see hay bins or grain buckets or a drinking dish. That she saw none of these was perhaps not a good sign, but at the moment, she was warm and curious, and so she levered herself to her feet and went to the corner, where she deposited her own little pile of droppings, out of the way, where she wouldn’t step in it (she was a neat and tidy horse—Delphine had always praised her for this). It was a small pile, but it gave off a pleasant odor that made the grand salon seem just a little more welcoming and familiar. After that, she walked along the walls of the room, sniffing, and occasionally licking. It could not be said that she discovered much—only dust, and plenty of that. She sneezed.

And here was the boy. He stood at the end of the grand salon, staring at her. He held nothing in his hand, no apple or carrot, but she walked over to him anyway, and smelled his shirt.

Étienne hadn’t really thought beyond the moment when the horse might come into the house. He hadn’t thought that the horse would come into the house, and so he had made no plans for what he would do with the horse. He had never known a horse—only read about them, and in nothing that he had read did any author say that a particular horse had entered a house and gone to sleep beneath the window. He was a little frightened, but Étienne, a small but determined boy, had been frightened before; he did what he always did, he smiled, looked the horse in the eye. After a moment, he felt comfortable petting her. First he petted her cheek and the side of her nose; then, when she lowered her head, he put his hand under her bushy forelock and tickled her white star. Pretty soon, he was running his hand down her neck.

Paras had a thick coat, smooth and fluffy, not like the wool of the sofa or of a sweater. Étienne let his hand stroke her shoulder. She seemed to enjoy it. She dropped her head and closed her eyes.

But as she was standing there, she smelled that through a nearby doorway there was food and water. She hadn’t eaten a real meal since her last visit to the bakery and café on the Avenue de Suffren. And she was thirsty, too, though she had licked and eaten plenty of snow earlier in the day. She walked toward the cuisine. Étienne saw where she was going, and went ahead of her.

In fact, there was quite a bit of food in the cuisine. Madame de Mornay had a horror of running out of provisions, because she had, indeed, run out of provisions several times in the course of her long life, and she remembered those occasions in some ways better than she remembered the years of plenty. The question, for Étienne, was not whether there was food, but what does a horse eat?

The answer, as far as Paras was concerned, was “Let’s try it and see.” She went through the doorway, which was old and wide, and she clip-clopped first to the sink, where she licked the porcelain in a way that invited Étienne to put in the plug and run some water. He did so, and Paras took a long drink. When she was well and truly finished, Étienne pulled the plug. The next thing she did was to smell the remainder of a baguette that Étienne and his great-grandmama had purchased the day before. Étienne tore it into pieces; they were not especially hard, and Paras chewed them up and swallowed them down. They were not delicious, however, unlike the kale that Étienne pulled out of the refrigerator, which tasted to Paras of sunshine and summertime. There was a lot of it, and she enjoyed it very much, which was fine with Étienne, since he didn’t like kale at all, and his great-grandmama made him eat it because she said it was very nutritious.

They moved on to carrots, parsnips, turnips, sweet potatoes, all of which Étienne was glad to see disappear from the larder (which was deep and wide, half a story dug into the ground, cool enough for extended storage; Etienne went up and down the steps several times, each time bringing up a surprise). Finally, he got to the potatoes. Paras sniffed them, and in other circumstances she might have eaten one, but now she left them alone and looked out the window. The window gave onto the courtyard. She could tell by the light that the day was coming to an end. Without really intending to, Paras continued through the cuisine, which, like the other rooms in the house, was a large space. At the far end was what had once been the door to which purveyors of food and wine had come, bringing everything Madame de Mornay or any other Mornay might need for suppers and parties. It was a large door, the same color as the wall, but Paras could smell that it led to the outside. She stood in front of it for a moment or two, investigating it, and then, by mistake, really, she bumped it with her knee and her hoof. After she did this, Étienne stepped in front of her and opened the door. This courtyard was different from the other one, not quite so large, and because of where it was situated, it contained hardly any snow, though it was somewhat gloomier and more overgrown than the courtyard outside the front door. Paras went outside and got rid of the water she had drunk from the sink. But it was still cold, so, after walking about for a few moments, she presented herself at the door again, and Étienne, who really quite liked her, stepped back and invited her in. He also gave her a lump of sugar.

And that was how the two of them agreed upon what the house was for and what the house was not for. That she had made a small mistake in the grand salon was fine with Étienne. He found himself a bucket, threw the manure out the window into the berry patch, and did a little mopping.

THE MANURE WAS not unnoticed, except by Madame de Mornay, who was still sleeping soundly. If Paras had looked closely, she would have seen, in the corner of the grand salon where she’d made her deposit, a small hole in the wall where the floor molding had chipped and broken away. That hole was the entrance to a rather large estate belonging to Conrad and Kurt, father and son, two black rats who were part of a family of rats who had been living in the walls since long before the Mornays had ever been heard of. The rat family had once been quite extensive, with connections all over Paris, but some years before, a prolific tribe of cats had moved into the Champ de Mars, and reproduced to such a degree that most of the local rats, especially the smaller black ones, had either been wiped out or moved on to the Place des Invalides. Conrad and Kurt sometimes went for days without seeing, or, more important, hearing another rat in the neighborhood. The two main entrances to the rat estate were in the very storeroom where Étienne had gotten the kale and the carrots—one opening was not far from the flour bin (this one was larger, and normally used to carry provisions into the estate), and the other opening was down the wall a ways, behind the lentil bin. Kurt and Conrad and their predecessors had long since given up trying to chew their way into the various bins, barrels, crates, and even bags, because Étienne was not much good at cleaning up spilled provisions, and going down the short staircase had been too much for Madame de Mornay for years now. Kurt and Conrad were fat and lazy, though still much more stylish than brown rats. Many times every day, they went out the exit and in the entrance, picking up whatever Étienne left behind. This was largely the reason why Étienne didn’t realize that the place was such a mess—Kurt and Conrad worked as his cleanup crew.

The estate was an enormous maze that ran all through the walls of the house and had several exterior openings as well. Conrad had sometimes gone out into the world in hopes of finding a rat or two, preferably black, preferably female, to join them in the estate. But the cat tribe was as avid and skilled as they had always been—they were everywhere, Conrad could sense them, he did not want to run into a lean and hungry feline when he was just trying to find a friend. Kurt was thus rather pleased to see, out the second-story window (his own aperture was a hole in the wall just below the sill), a certain canine pacing back and forth in front of the house. She had come at dusk, and now she walked for a moment, paused, lifted her head, sniffed, gave a single, urgent bark, then walked some more. Kurt knew which dogs were ratters and which dogs considered rats beneath them. This dog was just the sort who wouldn’t look at a rat—all about birds, these dogs were. Even though Kurt had never heard of its happening, he could imagine taking such a dog on as a protector. Conrad said that this was a ridiculous idea, but Kurt thought that it was merely “imaginative.” And Conrad agreed that, once you had a horse in the house, just about anything was possible. Conrad was old; Kurt was young. He knew that there were young female rats out there, and he thought of female rats more and more as he matured. He did not intend to give up on finding one of his own until he had at least tried something.

Instead of taking a little nap, which he sometimes did around dusk, Kurt gazed out the aperture until the canine moped away. Then he went through the wall into one of the uninhabited chambers and chewed meditatively on some linen drapes. He knew that Conrad was down in the storeroom, waiting to see what Étienne would leave for them. And it didn’t matter to either of them that the horse might get some of what was rightfully theirs. There were plenty of provisions to go around, and always had been.

MADAME DE MORNAY HAD expected her outing to take a lot out of her, and it did. When she woke from her nap, she was still exhausted. She rang her little bell, the one that called Étienne to her. He came at once, because it was very important to him that his great-grandmama stay in her room, at least until some idea of where to put the horse came to him—the grand salon and the cuisine were both places where Madame de Mornay spent a good deal of time. The library was a possibility, but it had hard, slippery floors, and windows onto the Champ de Mars. And whether Paras could or would be able to negotiate stairs was a question he had to answer. But the Feast of the Immaculate Conception had done Madame de Mornay in. She sat up in bed, drank a mélange of milk and honey with dried chamomile, and fell asleep for the night over her book, which was the last volume of À la recherche du temps perdu, a book she had been reading for eighty-three years and never quite finished. She kept at it, though, because her mother had met Monsieur Proust once at a party.

For himself and Paras, Étienne put together a pleasant degustation of shredded cabbage, withered apples (Paras smacked her lips, they were so tart and sweet at the same time), chopped beets, and more sweet potatoes. He offered her some pieces of cheese, his own favorite, but she wrinkled her upper lip and turned it down, as she also turned down the dark chocolate. Kurt, who was standing just inside the entrance to the rat palace, fluttered his whiskers at the odor of the dark chocolate. He would have liked a taste, but it was something Étienne never dropped and never left on the counter. After her meal, Paras took another long drink of water from the sink, and then went outside. Étienne huddled into his jacket and went outside with her. While they were gone, Kurt gathered up the remains of their meal, and also a single dried anchovy that he and Conrad must have missed from some earlier time. It was a mere fragment, but delicious all the same.

NINE

That night, Frida trotted back across the Pont d’Iéna exactly as if she knew what she was doing, and, in a way, she did. She hadn’t been to the Place du Trocadéro since the leaves were fluttering off the trees; it existed in her memory as a place of comfort and richness—her little hiding place in the cemetery, her enjoyment of not only the provisions but also the well-dressed passersby, the tiny dogs in their purses who would growl at her (for a long time, she’d thought that was what purses were for), the cigarette smokers lounging beside the walls (Jacques was a smoker when he could afford the cigarettes and occasionally he’d splurged on a bottle of champagne—he’d even given her some in her water bowl). Jacques had taken much pleasure in the lights and the busy social scene, had even thought himself, in a way, a part of it, since he had grown up on the Avenue de Messine, and liked walking past his old building when he could. One of Frida’s favorite things had been to sit, erect and proud, on the top step of one of the two buildings at the Palais de Chaillot (she had heard humans talking about it—a museum about buildings in a large building). Jacques hadn’t felt it worth his while to spend the money to go inside, though there were other museums he had entered, leaving Frida to guard his guitar on the street. She had also spent some time, while Jacques was asleep, exploring the cemetery that overlooked the square—he liked it because it was quiet there, enclosed, a good place for a long sleep.

As she trotted over the bridge, she was well aware of the enormous lit Tour over her shoulder, but she didn’t turn to glance at it. She felt that she was somehow escaping its chilly aura. Once, she had asked Paras what she thought of the huge thing, and Paras had said, with bona-fide curiosity, “What difference does it make to me?,” and Frida hadn’t been able to answer that question. Raoul and other birds seemed to view it as a sort of tree/building hybrid, and he had told Frida that various flocks over the years had attempted to colonize it, not pausing to wonder, as he said, “why no flocks had dared come before them—but every bird thinks of himself as an adventurer.” Of course, he also remarked, the humans were not going to allow any flocks of Aves a free hand with that tower, not even Corvus corax in all of their many noble variations.

Once across the bridge, which was clear of snow but icy, Frida took a chance and did a thing she could not have done with Paras in tow, which was to go straight up the hill, beside the pool and then between the two buildings, as if someone were calling her and she had a right to be there.

And, indeed, the cafés around the square were ablaze with light, open for customers even if the night was chilly and slippery. Much of the snow had melted off during the day, or been swept to one side. The streets were shiny, and a few cars and taxis were making their cautious way here and there. Frida went over and sat beside the door of the Pâtisserie Carette, arranging herself so that she was facing outward toward the square, but also half looking in the window. She took a deep breath or two and waited.

With the wind blowing in her face, Frida suddenly felt cold for the first time—all day long, she had been on the move, up the Avenue de Suffren, then back and forth across the Champ de Mars, then pacing in front of the house that her new horse friend had disappeared into. She had been distracted from the chill, first by the boy and then by events. At any rate, Frida was such a big, strong, muscular dog that she didn’t feel the cold the way some dogs did. Her coat was short but dense, well suited for racing into rivers and lakes after ducks or into fields after pheasants, partridges, and other birds. No body of water that she had ever seen had intimidated her, including the Seine itself, which was plenty warm, even in the winter—at least, Frida thought so. But now, in the semidarkness, with the brilliant lights of the pâtisserie shining in her eyes, and the sight of the waiters relaxing, smoking, chatting among themselves as they wondered whether any customers would come in, she began to shiver. Was it fear or dread or cold? Frida herself didn’t know. And the sky above was so dark that Frida could see nothing except the wavering lights of the giant tower across the river.

A voice said, “What in the world are you talking about?”

It was the voice of Raoul. Frida peered into the darkness. He was perched on the railing of the Métro entrance. Every so often, Frida had taken refuge in the Métro, but it was dangerous and loud, and the weather had to be very very rainy for her to choose the Métro. Frida sneezed, then said, “Hello, I was wondering where you had gotten to.”

“I went to my nest, of course. A Corvus of my station has more things to attend to than one horse. But what in the world are you talking about?”

“What do you mean?” said Frida.

“Surely, you realize that you are always mumbling on about something?”

“No,” said Frida. “I didn’t realize that.”

“My heavens,” said Raoul, “I’ve been watching you since the summer. I’ve never seen such a talker. Mumble-mumble this, mumble-mumble that. I thought that that was the way Canis familiaris remembered things, by talking about them all the time.”

Frida felt her shivering intensify. No one had ever said this to her, but she knew instantly that it was true. She hardly ever barked—Jacques had taught her that her bark was excessively loud and therefore dangerous if a dog (and a man) wanted to be left alone. And Jacques had not liked whining, and yet there were so many feelings and ideas that required expression of some sort. Even so, she said, “I don’t really know what you mean,” and Raoul commenced to grumble and chat in a very doglike voice that Frida recognized perfectly as the voice of sometimes her only friend, herself. She sighed. Then she said, “That’s a good imitation.”

“Most Aves are adept at that,” said Raoul. “You know about Psittaciformes, of course. They are an invasive order, but humans like them for their color, I suppose—humans are very shallow in some ways. Corvus are just as adept at different dialects as Psittaciformes, but we get far less credit—”

“What is a Psittaciform?” said Frida.

“A parrot, in common parlance, but of course there are many species. There have to be, because so many earthly beings are reincarnated as Aves. It’s very educational for them. Or us, I might say. I feel that, in my former life, I was a government official; perhaps I was not as effective as I should have been. And look at Sid and Nancy. Terribly anxious, even for common mallards. My guess is that in a former life they were impulsive and careless….”

Frida lay down, put her head on her crossed paws, and closed her eyes. There was a silence, and then Raoul said, “I do tend to go on, I know. It is a feature of age. I have learned so many things in my life that they just force their way out of my beak.” Then he said, “I did peek in the windows at the Rue Marinoni today. The first time, it looked as though our friend was having a lovely nap, all stretched out on the floor, and the second time, she was eating from a very large bin. The boy seems to like her.”

“No good can come of this,” said Frida.

“Difficult to judge that,” said Raoul. “The boy seems to do well on his own, for a boy. My view is that the danger is not to the Equus, it is to the boy. Over the years, I have observed that adult humans are very nervous if an immature human seems to be without a protector.”

Frida’s ears flicked at that word, “protector.” With dogs, she knew, the question of who was the protected and who was the protector was always an open one. When you saw, on the streets of Paris, a human and a dog walking along, it could be either one, no matter how very small the dog was. She had seen dogs who might not even come up to her knees on the alert, not only looking this way and that, but barking, “Stay away, stay away! I will kill you if you hurt my human!” And it was true that, if there were three dogs together, it was the job of the smallest dog to keep an eye out and alert the larger dogs if danger was at hand. Had she been Jacques’s protector? If so, perhaps she had not done a very good job.

Raoul said, “Pardon me, but there you go again. Talking to yourself. Is there something that you would like to communicate?”

Frida forced herself to remain silent for a very long moment, then said, “I suppose that communicating is rather dangerous.”

Raoul said, “I hadn’t thought of that. For Aves, not communicating is very dangerous. You never know when some hawk or owl might take silence the wrong way.” And then he said, “Indeed. I will shut my trap now. Good practice.” He flew upward, and the door beside Frida eased open.

The man who opened the door was not old, and he had a scowl on his face—Frida knew he intended to chase her away, perhaps to kick her—she had seen that in her day. But she felt too sad even to stand up. Let him kick me, she thought. She turned her head and stared at him. He stared back at her, and his face softened. After a moment, he squatted down and patted her on the top of her head. He said, “I have never seen such a sad face on such a beautiful dog.” He stroked her several times, kindly and smoothly, as if he knew just how.

Inside, the man behind the counter said, “Orlande! Close the door. What a wind! I don’t know why we are even open this evening.”

Orlande stood up, backed up, and then bowed, clearly inviting Frida into the pâtisserie. Frida was undecided—the interior of the restaurant was warm and light, and smelled good. There was no one there except the two men, but, still, it was inside. And at that very moment, Raoul flew up behind her and pecked her very smartly just above her tail. She jumped, Orlande laughed, and she stepped into the restaurant. She immediately sat down in her most dignified manner and offered Orlande her paw. He took it, shook it. From behind the counter, the other man tossed something. Orlande put his hand up and caught it, then showed it to Frida. It smelled good—it was a small warm roll. Frida took it politely, dropped it on the floor, ate it in as dignified a manner as she could. After she had done so, she dipped her head. Orlande patted her again.

“Beautiful dog,” said the man behind the counter. “I’ve seen her around here before. I think she might belong to a family who has an apartment down the Avenue d’Eylau, but I thought they went to Cannes for the winter. I can’t imagine that they would leave her here.”

“Who would do such a thing?” said the first man. “André, she has a terrifically expressive face.”

André set a bowl on the top of the counter. Frida could see steam rising off it. It was very fragrant. Beside it, he set a croissant, something she had shared with Jacques several times. He blew on the bowl. In the meantime, although there wasn’t very much space, Frida did a few of her tricks—she put her paw over her eye, she lay down, curled up, and rolled over, she offered Orlande her other paw. After these, as if reading her mind, he took some bread that he had torn out of a loaf and set it on her nose. She paused a moment, then flipped her nose, tossed the bread, and caught it. Both men laughed, and the first man applauded. Then he brought the bowl to her—it was full of chicken broth—and the croissant. She ate carefully, trying not to make a mess. The croissant was delicious.

The view from inside the shop was most definitely different from the view outside—the windows were dark, and Frida herself was reflected in them; there was no surveying the landscape or seeing who might be coming. What with the talking of the two men, the banging of pots and pans, and the scraping noise when her new friend moved a table or a chair, she couldn’t hear much, either, and as for her most important and discerning sense, she felt rather as if she were being drowned in rich odors. Outside, there were plenty of smells—the damp in the air, the leaves, the trees, the birds and animals, the sharper scents of cars and trucks going by, the differing scents of humans (young boys—quite strong; women—almost nothing except occasionally the scent of a flower)—but they drifted past one or two at a time, always from a specific direction, easy to interpret, especially by a cautious dog such as herself. Being inside made her a little afraid to go back outside. It was, indeed, very very dark out there.

Orlande set a dish of water on the floor, and Frida drank it. She was quite full, and warm, too.

The door opened again, and four humans, two elegant young men and two young women in high heels, came in, laughing. André straightened up and began rearranging his offerings, and Orlande smiled, showed the four humans a table. They stepped around Frida without seeming to notice her. The next time the door opened, and another pair of humans entered, Frida slipped out as the door closed behind her.

From the railing of the Métro staircase, Raoul called out, “Good thing you don’t have a long tail.”

“I’ve often thought that,” said Frida. She walked away from the Pâtisserie Carette toward the entrance to the museum, which was dark and no doubt chilly, but faced away from the wind. Raoul wanted to say, “The word among the Aves is that this unpleasant accumulation of frozen precipitation will be gone by the end of the day tomorrow. I gather from passing flocks of Bombycilla garrulus—some may call them waxwings—that warm weather is on its way.” But, conscious of his recent moment of self-knowledge, all he said was “It’ll warm up.”

Frida estimated that she might be able to curl up in the corner of the entrance to the museum, entirely out of the way, and protected, maybe, from guards and the gendarmerie for most of the night. As she lay down on the hard surface, Raoul landed and walked back and forth, continuing to chat. “You know, by the way, that Nancy has laid six eggs.” He wanted to say, “There could be more to come—mallards are a profligate bunch—but she seems to think she is finished. She seems content to be on her own, I must say. I might not have told you that I have a mate myself, and numerous offspring.” He thought of Imelda, her “very large and important family down around Vincennes.” Had Frida ever been to Vincennes? The question almost popped out. In Raoul’s opinion, the Corvus of Vincennes were only exceeded in their sense of self-importance by the Corvus of Tours. But he was coming to understand that all importance is really merely self-importance. Though the thoughts unrolled in his head, he pressed his beak shut. He said nothing more, and so Frida drifted off to sleep—full, indeed, and surprisingly warm.

NOT LONG AFTER THAT, Paras was lying in the grand salon in the dark, enjoying the stillness as well as her own full belly (Étienne had spent the late afternoon soaking a bag of split peas for her evening meal, which he served with shredded cabbage). The house was so quiet that Paras could swivel her ears and hear all sorts of things—the sound of cars skidding along the Avenue de la Bourdonnais, the ruffling snores of Madame de Mornay behind the door of her room, even, perhaps, the sound of Étienne in his room, turning the pages of his book. Paras had long, slender, mobile ears. She had always had good hearing—part of her skittishness. She could hear the rumbles of her own belly, which she knew was a good thing. Étienne had decided, at least for the time being, to rearrange the furniture of the grand salon so that, if Paras was lying down beside the back wall, a blind, deaf, ailing old woman might not be able to sense her there. Paras didn’t mind—it was rather like having a stall with a very high ceiling and very low walls.

Paras was replaying in her mind her last race, her second win, over the hurdles at Auteuil. There had been not so many horses in the race. Her previous win, also at Auteuil, had been rather like a stampede, a rush over the hurdles that had made her so nervous that she simply had to get out in front of everyone and run away. The jumping part was the least of it. Hearing the pounding of hooves and the snorting and roaring of horses breathing behind her like a great wind had driven her forward so energetically that she had not really wanted to stop even after the last jump and the finish line, with the jockey sitting up and turning her. She hadn’t quite understood at that point what a “win” was. But when they did trot back to Delphine and Rania and Madeleine, and when the jockey gave her three exuberant slaps on the shoulder, and when she saw that all the other horses (in particular the gray filly who had come as far as her hip and faded back) looked glum and exhausted, while she felt pleased and full of energy, she saw what winning was and knew that it was good. That had been in warm weather, the course fragrant and green. Her recent win at Auteuil was a more modest and autumnal affair, late in the day, not many spectators, but she had galloped with pleasure, jumped with ease, and stayed two lengths ahead of the chestnut behind her. She was again a front-runner, but out of curiosity rather than fear—it was strange and enjoyable, the way one hurdle seemed to lead to another, not frightening, but only a great big stride and then onward to the next one. She knew that when she was older Delphine would put her in jump races, where the obstacles would be bigger and more solid than “hurdles” (she had heard her say that to Rania). Paras had looked forward to that, so why had she walked (well, trotted) away from it all? Curiosity was the only answer. Or, as she thought now, sheer ignorance. Paras blew some air out of her nose and stretched out flat on her side. At once, she heard another scratching sound, this one inside the wall, and then there was a rat—dark gray, almost black, fat, but rather small, its whiskers twitching—right in front of her nose. She snorted at the odor, and the rat stepped aside but did not run away. He said, “Welcome.”

Paras had a good view of the rat out of her left eye, so she didn’t roll up onto her chest. She said, “ ‘Welcome’?”

“Yes, this is our territory. My father is Conrad and I am Kurt. Our castle is in the walls, but, as you can see, we have several courtyards, of which this is the largest.”

“Do all—” She thought “little,” but she said, “petite animals talk all the time about their property and importance?”

Kurt’s whiskers twitched. He said, “In the first place, size is in the eye of the beholder, and in the second place, the only rats I know are myself and my father. All of the others who used to live around here, even the brown ones, have been killed or driven off by cats. There aren’t many birds around, either, for that matter.”

“What about your mother?” said Paras.

“I don’t know,” said Kurt. “We don’t talk about that.”

Paras, who had, as far as she was concerned, been separated from her own mother, Mapleton, far too soon (but no sooner than the other fillies—it was something the six of them who were turned out together had discussed endlessly), sighed in sympathy.

Kurt said, “My father says that you are a horse. Actually, we both thought horses were mythical animals, so we are a little surprised to see you, but what is, is. Rats are down-to-earth realists. Life is short, tunnels are long.”

Paras didn’t know what this meant, but horses also had their mottoes that were not all that understandable, like “Stay or go.” She ruffled her nostrils. Kurt must have felt comfortable, because he coiled up, twitched his whiskers again, and sighed. He said, “I like you.”

Paras said, “You don’t know me.”

Kurt said, “Your broadcast is calm.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, I see something with my eyes—that you are huge, reddish brown, furry, long-legged. I hear something with my ears—that your heart beats with a kind of roar. I smell something with my nostrils—that you have eaten split peas for your latest meal. I sense something with my paws—that, beneath where you lie, the floor sinks a little bit. And I receive something with my whiskers—that your global orientation is well adjusted.”

“What is that?”

“If you don’t know, I can’t tell you,” said Kurt.

But maybe Paras did know—maybe that was how you ran down a racecourse and jumped the hurdles and felt the ground moving this way and that and were not bothered by it, but found it enjoyable. She said, “You should talk to my friend Raoul. He’s a raven.”

Kurt shuddered. Silence descended, and Paras could hear rustling from Étienne’s room. Then the door opened. Just like that, Kurt was gone, and since she had good night vision, Paras could now see the hole that he disappeared into, half hidden behind the leg of a piece of furniture. She rolled up onto her chest. Étienne’s footsteps pattered around the couches, and he appeared. He immediately stroked her several times on the forehead and the neck. She knew it was time to go out.

She stood up and followed him down the hall and into the cuisine. Her own hooves sounded very loud on the parquet floor. He gave her a drink of water in the sink, and opened the back door. She went.

The snow was gone, the sky was clear, the moon was bright. Paras shook off the chill and walked around, enjoying the very act of moving. A gallop, she thought, would be nice, wouldn’t it? It was true that she hadn’t had a real gallop in a long time; thinking of her races had put her in the mood. Some racehorses saw galloping and racing as jobs they did, with food and shelter as the reward. Certain very good racehorses Paras had met seemed to be complainers, at least around the barn, always cocking a hoof or pinning their ears, dogging it to the practice course, needing a smack with the whip, then kicking out when they got one, but putting on the speed when they knew they had to, maybe so that they could lord it over everyone else and brag about their record. Others enjoyed it too much—everyone in the barn knew about horses who went out for a race and never came back, broken down. But there were those, and Paras considered herself one, for whom galloping was as natural as walking. Her problem had never been the gait—it had been her mix of curiosity and alertness. Delphine and Rania had been good with her, let her do it her way. And yet she had walked away from them. She lifted her nose and sniffed along the top of the fence—there was no looking over it—but she smelled nothing of Frida, nothing of Raoul. She was restless, and she kept walking. Étienne had closed the door—she could see his face in the window, and then she couldn’t, but the light stayed lit. She walked all along the fence, saw that there was a gate, but it was solid. When she kicked it or leaned against it, it didn’t move. She walked and walked. Since she was protected from the wind, she wasn’t cold, though her coat was fluffed up. She made several deposits and watered an old patch of asparagus.

TEN

The snow had presented Pierre, the head gardener, and his crew with plenty of extra work. They had to plow and shovel, though not cart away—Pierre knew that if he made paths the sun would do the rest. This was Paris! The sun in Paris was almost always cooperative. The fact that so few citizens came out early in the morning—using the snow as an excuse to stay home and relax—made his work all that much easier. Pierre didn’t mind snow at all—he in fact rather missed it. His grandparents had lived in Arvieux, and he had visited them often as a child, enjoying many winter sports.

As he and his crew worked, he watched for Paras’s tracks; he had seen them heading east, then fading out in a long patch of ice. He could let some nice hay drop off the back of a truck or a snowplow not far from the pond where Paras and (he thought) that dog lurked about, which he had still not mentioned to Animal Control. Pierre kept his eye on the newspaper and the Internet—but he’d seen none of the advertisements Delphine had placed. Pierre was beginning to think that he had done the wrong thing in turning a blind eye to the animal, in admiring the appropriateness of a beautiful horse in the Champ de Mars, where armies and cavalries once drilled, carriage-horses and riding horses once trotted along.

Could this be a horse who had escaped the slaughter truck? Pierre was not himself fond of horsemeat, but he knew old people who were. There were horsemeat purveyors here and there in Paris—one in Montmartre had neon-lit horse heads over the shop door. This horse was a beauty, though—lovely mover, prideful carriage, rich color, luxuriant mane and forelock, long, thick tail. If they were sending such horses to the abattoir these days, then times were even worse than he had thought.

It was a busy and exhausting day, and Pierre only wondered about the horse every so often. It had to be said that he missed the horse. He kept his eye out for any sign of a mishap—horse carcass rolled up out of the way, broken leg from the ice or snow, starvation, anything else. When he quit work late that night, he was tired and blue. He’d had a wife for a while, but perhaps she had not been able to stand the four cats in the end. She was now living in Montpellier with a man ten years younger than she was who taught at the university. She’d sent Pierre a picture of her apartment—no animals, no plants, no cushions or pillows, and only a futon for a bed. He wished her well.

As he headed for the École Militaire Métro station, he walked down the Rue Marinoni right when Paras was snuffling the top of the fence and pressing her shoulder against the gate. Paras had never seen Pierre except from a distance. She didn’t know that the occasional apple that appeared beside the pond was left by Pierre. Now she smelled him (sweat, grease, gasoline), but didn’t think anything of it. Pierre was so lost in thought that he didn’t notice that the gate in that fence he’d passed so many times was bowing outward, nor did he hear the breaths Paras blew as she investigated her new world. Pierre decided to put off thinking about whether to call Animal Control and what to say (would they themselves be inclined to send the horse to slaughter?) until morning. Meanwhile, Paras decided to go to the door and tap it with her hoof. When she did, Étienne let her right in, and they walked to the grand salon, where she went to her corner and settled herself like a dog. In the evening, when he went to bed, Étienne prayed to Saints George the Dragon Slayer (Etienne didn’t mind thinking about dragons—they were interesting to imagine and there didn’t seem to be any of them in Paris) and Éloi, who were, he had read, the patron saints of horses, though whether they took under their care horses sleeping in grand salons in Paris, he had no way of knowing.

RAOUL WAS SITTING on one of the struts of the great Tour, useless, as far as Raoul could see, to humans, but a wonderful convenience for Aves. A few young Corvi were watching him. He performed several ownership rituals—I know everything about this neighborhood, come to me for advice, I won’t kick you out if you are properly respectful, only respect, that is all I demand, no, request—best not to insert the “demand” gesture. The group of ravens watched him, looked away. Raoul walked around the leg of the Tour that was nearest to him, dropped down into the shadows, and flew away quietly. Freedom was what he cared about, like most worldly creatures of his degree of maturity, but youth cared about power, always had, always would. He crossed the Avenue de Suffren, then the river. He made a tour of the Place du Trocadéro, circled the chilled and motionless statue of the man on the horse two times, flew rather close to a couple of windows just to look, but he didn’t see Frida inside or outside any shop. When he regained his territory above the head of Benjamin Franklin, he nestled there in a sort of resigned comfort—his morning sojourn had taken more out of him than he’d expected it to. He had seen himself in the window of the Pâtisserie Carette, a bit ragged, looking a bit blown-out. There was grooming to be done, and he had only himself to do it.

WHEN THE SUN WAS well up and she knew that it would be blazing through the great window that overlooked the grand salon on the southeast, Madame de Mornay hoisted herself to her feet and made her way to her lavatory, then to her door. She was too blind to really see the sun, except as a welcome brightness, but she could feel it on her arms and her head. She had lived in these rooms in this house for so long that she knew just how the warmth progressed about the place, and just where to go to receive some.

She walked slowly and a bit noisily, but Étienne, who was upstairs looking for a book about horseback riding, did not happen to hear her. She opened the door of her chamber, moved across the hallway, paused, stepped, paused, stepped, paused, stepped again, until she could reach for the back of one of the wing chairs and move, chair by table by windowsill, to her favorite spot. When she got there, she groaned and sat down with a sigh. She was about three meters from Paras, who was standing by the fireplace, sniffing the very old logs piled on the grate.

Paras had eaten her breakfast and gone outside already—horses are early risers.

Over on the desk, Kurt was watching Paras and Madame. He could not help making a squeak or two, but he had no fear of Madame—one of his favorite tunnels opened into her chamber, and he was used to clearing away any crumbs that Madame might drop when she took tea and biscuits in bed.

“Ooh,” said Madame, “good heavens! I am hungry!” She yawned, covering her mouth.

Very slowly, Paras eased toward her, her nose extended. She was as silent as she could be. She stood near Madame, and sniffed her all over, her nose maybe ten centimeters from Madame’s face, her shoulder, her lap, her knees, her feet. Madame was very small: her feet hardly touched the floor when she sat up straight in her wing chair. Madame shifted, then raised her hands, smoothed her hair, tightened her bun. Her hand went past Paras’s cheek but did not touch it. If she had, she would have been surprised, but, perhaps, not afraid—Madame was used to unusual events. Madame thought a soft-boiled egg would be quite lovely, with a bit of bread and some raspberry jam. She called out, “Étienne, where are you?” Perhaps Madame did get a little whiff of Paras, but perhaps not. She had smoked heavily for years—Gauloises. Or maybe she got a whiff and simply did not believe her nose.

Paras thought that Madame had quite an interesting and, you might say, well-preserved fragrance. There was a hint of floral and a hint of dust and a hint, but only a hint, of human. Madame picked up her knitting from the side table. Paras gently sniffed the knitting.

From the landing, Étienne stared down at them: his great-grandmama so tiny, poised in her chair, feeling her knitting with the tips of her fingers; the horse, so huge, her ears pricked, almost but not quite touching his great-grandmama. He coughed. Paras turned her head, but only her head, her ears still pricked. She gently switched her tail. Étienne ran down the stairs and touched Madame de Mornay on the shoulder.

The old woman smiled and said, “Ah, little one! How are you?”

Étienne put his arm around his great-grandmama’s shoulders, and received a light kiss on the cheek. In the meantime, Paras pivoted gracefully on her hind leg. Her hooves clip-clopped on the hardwood floor, but Madame felt them only as a little rumbling that reminded her of the Métro, and she didn’t think anything of it. She was proud of the Métro—very forward-looking and typically Parisian for its day.

Étienne went to the door and opened it wide. Paras walked out into the sunshine. Étienne closed the door. He thought, sadly, that he might never see the horse—his horse—again, since the gate was open. But he went to Madame, took her hand to show that he was with her, and helped her into the cuisine. He had to make sure that she circumvented a pile beside the window, but it was a small pile, perfect for the raspberry patch.

Once they had left, Kurt zipped across the floor of the grand salon as fast as he could (which was very fast), clambered onto a chair and then onto the windowsill. He wished he had managed to get out the door with the horse—she was still out there—but he saw with despair that he had lost his chance. He was a buck, he needed a doe!

Outside, Paras enjoyed the sunlight and a warm breeze. She went over to the partially open gate and looked out. The street was darkly wet. The snow had melted and was flowing into the drains. The humans who were out were, as usual, looking downward, minding their own business, thoroughly convinced that they knew all about everything having to do with their world. Dogs noticed her—tiny little dogs in tiny little blankets trotting by on the slenderest of lead ropes—but none of them barked, and so their humans hurried on. One, a Jack Russell terrier about the same size as Assassin, looked at her steadily, then paused at Madame’s shrubbery and lifted his leg. Paras snorted in derision at this property claim, but the dog ignored her, scratched a little in the wet dirt, and allowed himself to be pulled away by his mistress, who was reading the paper as she walked.

Paras had found her night indoors very restful—perhaps she had caught up on months and months of lost sleep. A grand salon was much better in its way than a stall—more things to look at and explore, quieter, none of that constant sense of the other horses. In order to avoid having to make up her mind about going out through the gate, Paras explored the courtyard more carefully than she had the day before. The sunlight was now pouring in from above, and the snow had turned to slush. The riotous shrubbery covering the fences was brilliant dark green. Paras saw that there was a much larger entrance to the house, up many steps, very grand, like the entrance to a great stud barn. There was another gate, too, across from that entrance, also grand, with much curling brass-work. Paras saw that, just as the old lady had a room, and Étienne had a room, she could have a room—this nicely protected but airy spot, open to the sky, closed to the view of passersby, not quite as luxurious as the grand salon, but perhaps more suited to her needs, and, perhaps, a place that Frida would dare to enter. She walked about, looking here and there, sniffing this and that, listening through the growth to the humans and animals walking along the allée.

AFTER LEAVING the front porch of the architectural museum, Frida moped up to the cemetery. Now that she knew it was there, she could see Raoul’s nest in the tree above the statue of the sitting man, and she could even see the curve of the top of the raven’s head, but he made no move, and she shuffled past him. The cemetery was a quiet place, with many hiding spots among the monuments, which Jacques had made use of. She wandered about for a bit, remembering Jacques, then went back to the street and turned away from the square and moped along the street for a while, her head down, her tail, such as it was, down. Perhaps she felt more alone than she ever had, even after Jacques disappeared. Her only choice, she thought, was to continue up this avenue to the Bois de Boulogne, where she had been a few times. In the Bois de Boulogne, she would try to hunt birds as a way of staying alive. She would dig herself a hole, and she would, perhaps, waste away, and why not? Jacques was gone, Paras was captured, Raoul was a mere bird (for all his talk about Corvus corax), the lady who had given her that sausage had walked away. Mumble-mumble—Raoul was right about that—she knew she was mumbling, could hear herself. Well, she was a mumbler, that was just who she was. She came to an intersection. She was depressed, even in despair, but she saw the gendarme look at her, look around, heard him blow his whistle, knew that that whistle was about her—she could read humans with perfect clarity. She paused only for a split second; then instinct kicked in—she whipped to the left, and headed down that street, toward the river (she could smell it). And as she ran, having thought of a hole in the Bois, she remembered her real hole, the one with the purse in it. How was it that she had forgotten the money?

The gendarme chased her for a bit, then disappeared. He would reappear, she knew, in a vehicle, and so she ducked into an alley and waited until the screaming vehicle zipped by; then she came out of the alley, turned left, and trotted, head up, back the way she had come. There was a set of stairs where she and Jacques had sometimes passed the night—a very private spot that fronted on the river. She found the stairs, went down them, rested alertly for a while, until everything was quiet, and finally emerged into the street that ran along the river. Not long after that, she was at the pond.

“Good heavens!” said Nancy. “You’re back!”

Frida said, “I am. How are you feeling?”

“What do you think? It’s just one thing after another! The water rose to right there”—she gestured with her beak—“and then receded. It was a nightmare. But I can explain these things to Sid until I am blue in the face, and he won’t pay a bit of attention, you mark my words.”

“I will,” said Frida.

Nancy harrumphed and tucked her head back under her wing. Frida went to the spot where she had hidden the purse, and began to dig. The autumn, the rain, and the snow had not been kind to the purse, but because it was made of excellent leather, it now had a nice patina and a delicious semi-rotten odor. As soon as she dragged it out of the hole, she rolled on it, back and forth. Then she stood up and pawed it open. There were considerably fewer bills in the purse than there had been on the night when Paras carried it away from Auteuil. They were damp and a little grimy, but they were intact, their figures and pictures easily visible. In her weeks of shopping for vegetables at Jérôme’s market, Frida had noticed how he received each bill. He preferred the brown and blue, so she had made it a point to take those. He had frowned at the white ones. Almost all of the bills left in the purse were now white. She did not find them interesting, but they were all she had. There were a lot of them.

She took the handle of the purse between her jaws. She normally went to the shop by way of the Avenue de la Bourdonnais, but the gendarmes were still on her mind, so she stayed in the Champ de Mars, simply trotting down the allée, under the trees, past the houses. She could not have said what her intention was, but she knew that if Jérôme saw the money in the purse he would be kind to her. Unlike Paras, and unlike Raoul, she did have faith in humans. Jacques had always treated her with generosity and affection. Jérôme might save her, somehow. Frida trotted along as quickly as she could; though she saw humans turning to stare at her, no one could have caught her even if they had tried. The two that she passed even stepped out of her way. She paused at the avenue where cars passed through the Champ de Mars, but they were few in number, though the sun was high and the snow was gone.

Paras, her ears flicking, heard her coming, or, rather, she heard a dog, and she recognized Frida’s characteristic gait—smart and quick. Paras would not have said that she loved Frida, or even felt affection for her. She might have said that she felt affection for Rania, who brushed her so kindly with that soft brush and fed her four times a day, but she had run off without a backward glance, and she had taken Rania’s purse with her, hadn’t she? It might contain something belonging to herself, Paras, but it had had Rania’s characteristic smell all over it. Curiosity had trumped affection, and done so easily. Nevertheless, when she sensed Frida passing, Paras let out a piercing whinny.

Inside the house, Étienne, who was helping his great-grandmama make her bed, hurried to the window. There she was, in the front courtyard! She hadn’t run away after all. Étienne finished his task, then ran up the stairs to fetch his book about horseback riding.

Kurt, who had emerged from the front tunnel on the premier étage, found his fur vibrating and his eyes rolling from the pitch and the power of the whinny. He had never heard anything like it. He passed out and rolled over, all four paws sticking straight upward.

Pierre, who was standing in the basin in the center of the Champ in his thigh-high rubber boots, cleaning mold and mineral deposits from the face and mouth of the fountainhead, heard the whinny rise on the cool breeze, and though he could not quite tell where it was coming from (he shaded his eyes and looked around), he was glad to hear it.

Raoul, perched on the Tour, also heard the whinny, but, then, he heard all kinds of things that simply told him that life in the Champ de Mars was much the same as usual, no matter what groundlings seemed to think.

Anaïs, who had finished her night’s work and was walking down the Avenue de Suffren, heard it, too, just faintly, because the breeze was slipping around the buildings and carrying the vibrations of the whinny in her direction. The whinny aroused in Anaïs a hope that Paras would show up that night or the next night—with her own money, she had bought the horse some flaxseed to mix with her oats. And there were some delicious apples, Reinette de Cuzy, which had been aging in the cellar. She smiled to herself, and sped up.

The local gendarme, who was standing at the intersection of the Rue de Grenelle and the Rue Augereau, had almost convinced himself that his delusions of a horse going into that house on the corner were well and truly past. So, when Paras’s whinny fluttered out of the Champ de Mars and fell upon his ear, he shuddered and went straight into Le Royal for a nice glass of Burgundy. The gendarmes’ union had recently certified his right to have a drink while on duty, and he felt like just a bit of a labor activist by exercising that right.

Frida slowed her trot, pricked her ears, but then continued. She liked Paras, but there was no protection to be found in a horse. Frida had passed where she sensed Paras, was almost to the corner. The whinny came again, even higher and more piercing. It made Frida’s ears tickle. And then again. She stopped, turned, and crawled, though burdened by the purse, under the scratchy growth.

There Paras was, her tail up and her ears pricked, her neck arched. Through the ironwork, Frida said sharply, “Shut up!”

Paras said, “Oh, you found my purse.” She came over and put her nostrils through the fence.

In her heart, Frida rejected the idea that this was Paras’s, or solely Paras’s, purse. Wasn’t she the one who had carried those bags back and forth from Jérôme’s market? Wasn’t she the one who understood that currency was to be exchanged, and thereby benefit the larger economy of Paris? Wasn’t she the one who had hidden and cared for the purse? Left to her own devices, Paras would have dropped the purse somewhere, having lost interest in it. That Paras should claim the purse was unjust, Frida thought. However, it was also true that Jacques had once found a very small purse, belonging to a man, lying open on the sidewalk. He and Frida had walked all the way to the Marais and returned the thing to the man, who had been very grateful, and given Jacques a sizable sum in return—enough for them to spend a lovely night in a pleasant room, where they both took showers and Jacques ordered a tray of food. It was not as though Frida didn’t understand ownership—only that she felt that, in this case, ownership was unfair. She said, “Yes. I did. It’s aged very nicely, I think. But you are making a spectacle of yourself. The gendarmes could be here any minute. I had a close call this morning, over in Passy.”

“I don’t see how we could find a nicer or more private spot than this. The boy is a decent sort, much smaller than a jockey, and he serves a lovely bowl of soaked split peas. Look over there—a little alcove where you could curl up, protected on three sides. I think it’s a nice compromise between inside and out. I am sure he will let me out in the evenings, and with all of these bushes, you could climb over.”

“Or dig under,” said Frida.

Frida flexed her very powerful front feet. She hadn’t had an enjoyable and challenging dig in a while.

When Étienne entered the upstairs library to retrieve his horseback-riding book, he immediately saw Kurt unconscious on the armoire. Owing to months of excellent provisions, Kurt was rather large, and Étienne was startled by his appearance. Of course, he knew that there were rats in the house—he could hear them late at night and early in the morning. But the only rats Étienne had ever seen were pictures in books. Those rats were thin and sinister-looking, with aggressive whiskers, narrow eyes, pointed noses, and bad intentions. This rat had a shiny, dusky coat. His whiskers did twitch, but more as a cry for help than as a threat. He looked, in fact, like a pet. Étienne went over to him and touched his fluffy white belly. It was silky. There was no odor. He stroked the belly. Kurt opened his eyes.

Kurt was intimately familiar with Étienne, in a way that Étienne was not with him. Once, against his father’s, Conrad’s, express orders, he had sat for quite a long time in the moonlight on the foot of Étienne’s bed, watching him sleep. Étienne turned this way and that way, made human noises, once even sat up and lay down again without opening his eyes. Kurt had seen Étienne eating, bathing, helping Madame de Mornay, reading, staring out the window, washing up, going out, and coming back in. He had never seen Étienne doing a threatening thing, and so, when Kurt opened his eyes at Étienne’s touch, he did not feel fear. He allowed the petting to go on, then sat up and yawned, which made Étienne laugh. The piercing noise was gone; Kurt’s world resumed its usual sensory identity. Étienne, after pausing, now began to stroke Kurt’s back, along the spine. After allowing this for what he considered the proper time, Kurt dipped his head in a little bow of thanks, and scurried across the armoire, over the back of one of the covered chairs, and into his tunnel. Étienne watched him for a moment, then found his book.

The digging was going very well—the ground was loamy and wet, and the roots weren’t terribly intertwined. It took Frida only a few minutes to make a hole deep enough to push the purse through; Paras grabbed it with her teeth and dragged it under the fence. It did stink, she thought, wrinkling her nose. Dogs were so peculiar, in their preference for rotten over sweet. Frida dug and dug, achieving a kind of whirling rhythm; finally, she saw that she could safely crawl under the fence, avoiding the pointed tips of the iron bars. Of course, there would be maintenance—there always was with a hole—but the freedom to escape was worth preserving. She stood up and shook herself. Dirt flew everywhere. Then she inspected the courtyard. She sniffed all along the base of the house, and the steps, and the base of the fence. She sniffed the air. The place smelled of age and cats, birds and their nests, dead leaves, and rotten grass. It smelled of isolation, but not filth, like the alley she had lived in after Jacques died. Perhaps because of the effort and pleasure of digging, she did not feel as glum as she had before. She investigated the alcove. She lay down in it, and she decided that it would do for now. In the meantime, Paras continued to walk around until, finally, she sought out a patch of sunshine, went over to it, and lay down. Paras took a nap. Frida took a nap.

Madame de Mornay, too, was taking a nap. Madame’s window looked out onto the courtyard, but since she couldn’t see it, she could only touch the glass with her fingertips and imagine it—a graceful entryway, the brilliant brass gates wide open in the spring sunlight, the semicircular promenade curving past the steps, bordered with plots of flowers carefully tended by Clément, the gardener. An automobile was about to drive in—open top, black and silver. In it was her mother, wearing a gold velvet dress with beading all down the front, and a cloche hat with a waving feather. She would be taking Éveline for a little trip to Deauville—just a few days, to enjoy the ocean and the society of friends. Éveline had packed her own valise, and it was ready beside the door. They would eat fresh crabs in Trouville. In her sleep, she smiled.

ELEVEN

During the week before Christmas, Jacques had been in the habit of locating himself and Frida not in and around the Place du Trocadéro or the Left Bank, where he felt relaxed and comfortable, but near the Galeries Lafayette during the day and in the Boulevard des Capucines in the evening. He would put on his oldest clothes. He played Christmas tunes and instructed Frida to shiver and shake even when it wasn’t very cold. She understood what Christmas was—bright lights and displays, pedestrians everywhere. People exclaimed about what an unfortunate dog she was, then came the clink-clink-clink of guilty coins in the bowl. Once in a while, someone had even taken them to a café and bought them supper—mostly soup, one time a lovely leg of lamb. Christmas was Jacques’s busy season, and though he had grumbled about the hassle and the gendarmes, he was happy afterward. Frida quite liked Christmas. Because of the extra funds, she had eaten many a slice of turkey or goose, occasional bites of foie gras, and some delicious cheeses. Jacques had sometimes bought what he called a bûche de Noël, but Frida had never had a taste—no chocolate for dogs, said Jacques.

This year, Frida waited and waited at the house on the Rue Marinoni to see what Christmas would bring, but by Christmas Eve day, there was still no sign of anything. When Frida mentioned Christmas to Paras, Paras had no idea what she was talking about. Paras was going out every night now, and she, too, had noticed that there were more lights and more humans around (she assured Frida that she was being very careful—there was an hour or two in the deep deep dark when the streets were as deserted as usual). Was Christmas like the Arc, the race most of the trainers and the horses talked about? Was Christmas like the Grand Steeple-Chase de Paris? Races were what horses, jockeys, trainers, and owners got excited about—they talked about them for weeks and months. No, said Frida, but she couldn’t explain any further. Raoul was not helpful—his explanation of Christmas was all about birds of various breeds mobbing and voicing, which was what humans seemed to be doing in the darkest time of the year, and in their most colorful plumage. He opined that it was a mass breeding ritual. However, and he thought Frida should note this, too, it was their most wasteful time of year, and for that he was thankful.

As a dog who paid attention to humans and was also prone to dejection, Frida could see through the window of the grand salon that Christmas was not making Étienne happy, that Étienne would sit beside Paras, his arm across her shoulder, as if he was dejected. Frida knew “dejected” very well. Once in a while, he would lay his cheek against Paras’s coat, and if he was not sad, well, Frida didn’t know sadness.

As a bird dog, Frida also understood the concept of offerings. Above and beyond food were sticks, balls, pinecones, abandoned shoes, inedible dead songbirds—all of which she’d carried to Jacques at one time or another. In return, he had bought her the occasional stuffed toy, knowing she liked to rip the toy open and pull out the fluff, and the occasional rock, because Frida had enjoyed carrying rocks in her mouth on walks. Offerings, she understood, pleased the recipient in some strange way that had nothing to do with food. Staring at Étienne, she felt that an offering might do him good. A rat was a possibility—she occasionally smelled a rat when she put her nose to the base of the door, but she was not going to go into the house just to kill a rat. She went to the purse (which was now stored in a basement window well) and took out one of the white bills. She chewed it a little so that it wadded up, then tucked it into her cheek. She crawled through the hole beneath the fence, careful about emerging—she waited until no humans were around, then shook herself and trotted with her customary flair to Jérôme’s shop. She knew that Jérôme now thought she belonged to Madame de Mornay and Étienne. Perhaps she did.

But she did not want apples or onions or carrots or bread. That was food. She wanted an offering. How a dog might choose an offering was a mystery, but there were plenty of windows to look into, and perhaps there was some shopkeeper or another who would take her money.

The task was more difficult than she had expected. Most of the shops around Jérôme’s were cafés, bread shops, or pastry shops. Beyond Jérôme’s, she was out of her territory, so the best she could do was keep moving and looking. If she seemed idle, a gendarme was sure to notice. In some stretches, she found no shops at all, only buildings that humans entered and came out of. As she trotted lightly along, she tried to remember what Jacques had enjoyed—his guitar, of course, but that seemed impractical. Books, but according to Raoul and Paras both, Étienne had plenty of those. Items of apparel—Jacques had a very soft and sheepy-smelling scarf that he enjoyed wearing on cold days, and occasionally wrapped around Frida—that was a possibility. A bag to carry, a blanket to sit on. She had seen plenty of humans carrying electronic devices (small, glittering, hard things). Étienne didn’t have one, but Frida felt, realistically, that that sort of thing was beyond her. Several dogs passed her, and not only small dogs—a wolfish male who was even larger than she was gave her the eyeball, but he was wearing a quite tasteless spotted coat, and when he saw Frida staring, he put his head down and slunk along in the shadow of his human. A very friendly, curly-coated medium-sized dog with a waving, happy tail also greeted her, but when the owner stopped and looked both ways, Frida trotted on without responding to the greeting. The friendliest owners of the friendliest dogs were the most likely to call in the gendarmes. Perhaps she should find a shop that sold these harnesses and leashes that the other dogs were wearing. Such a thing would be easy to carry to Étienne. But no. A leash could lead to other things, like going into the house and having Étienne lock the door.

It seemed to Frida that she trotted about for a long time, and it was surely true that if she hadn’t had an excellent nose she would have gotten lost. These streets were complex, with many intersections. Finally, she gave up, and made her way back to Jérôme’s shop, where she sat down beside the entrance, spat out her bill, and put her paw on it. The door opened, and a woman came out with two large sacks. Jérôme followed. He stood over Frida, his hands beneath his apron, and said, “Merry Christmas, my dear. How are you?”

Frida mumbled a few things, and Jérôme laughed. She moved her paw slightly, revealing the bill. Jérôme bent down and picked it up, then smoothed it on his knee. He said, “My God! You must be doing your Christmas shopping!”

Frida gave him her paw and he shook it. He held on to the bill, and invited her into the shop. It was empty of human customers.

The shop was tastefully decorated with a few flowers and ribbons. In addition to the usual squashes and potatoes and beans and oranges, Frida noticed boxes that she hadn’t seen before, hard metal, with busy pictures on them. She touched one with her nose, and Jérôme set it on the counter. Of course there was food inside it, but the offering was the picture—humans liked pictures. Jérôme pointed to what smelled like bread, but was circular and covered with treats and decorations. Frida whined. Jérôme put it on the counter. There was another box, one she could see through, and in that one were elaborate cookies of many shapes. Since Jacques had had a sweet tooth, Frida had tasted a cookie or two, though she didn’t like them. She nosed the box of cookies. Jérôme put it on the counter. One more thing, she thought. Jérôme touched a bag of nuts (she was familiar with nuts, because Jacques had sometimes eaten them). Attached to the bag was a tiny humanlike figure with big teeth, wearing a black hat. Frida put her paw over her eye and lowered her head. No sale. Jérôme laughed. After a moment, he placed the offerings in a heavy bag, also with pictures, and made Frida’s change. He put the change in the bag, too. There was not much of it.

The bag of offerings was a good deal heavier than the purse, but Jérôme placed it carefully in her jaws, and then she squared her shoulders and headed back to the boy’s house. Frida was reminded of a time when she and Jacques were working in the Jardins du Trocadéro. A stray terrier had kept pestering Jacques to throw a small stick. Jacques threw it a few times, then hid it. The terrier ran off, and reappeared minutes later with a rake—gripping it between her teeth, right in the middle of the handle, and balancing it as she carried it to Jacques. She dropped it in front of him, and barked, “Throw it! Throw it!” Jacques had laughed to himself for the rest of the day. Frida had had to admit that she was impressed. So now she thought of the terrier and carried her heavy bag down the street. At the very last minute, though, she saw another possibility. A shop door opened, and inside there was a bin full of balls. The door closed. She sat and waited, assembling her dignity, and when the door opened again, she looked into the face of the human who opened it as he was leaving the shop. He smiled and held the door for her. She went inside and over to the bin of balls, where she set down her bag.

The human who now slouched toward her was the type of human she usually avoided—scowl on his face, sour fragrance, lank hair on his head—the type who might give a dog a kick if he thought no one was looking. Before he even got to her, he was saying, “Get out of here, you mutt! No dogs allowed!” Frida retained her dignity, gave him a level look, and placed her paw carefully on the bin, beside one of the balls. Then she nosed her bag. The human stopped with his legs apart, waved one arm, then put his hands on his hips. Frida knew right then that he was afraid of her. Well, some humans were afraid of dogs. She did what she had to do—lay down, rolled over, and then rolled back over the other way. The human took a deep breath. Frida rolled onto her stomach and crawled toward him. Then she waited. Finally, the human reached out his trembling hand, patted her lightly on the head. She waited. He patted her again, this time with more confidence. He smiled. Frida stood up slowly, turned, and went back to the bin, where she put her paw next to the same ball. He came over and took the ball out of the bin, then stepped back and tossed it to her. She jumped up and caught it. She carried it to the human’s very large feet and dropped it. He picked it up, tossed it gently down the aisle, toward the back of the store. Frida ran after it and carried it to him, waiting until he opened his hand before she placed it on his palm (Jacques had been very particular about fetching). The human stared at her, tossing the ball back and forth between his hands, then walked away. Frida sighed, and went to her heavy bag. She took the handles of the bag between her teeth, picked up the bag, staggered slightly, then balanced herself.

But here came the human, with something in his hand. He removed the end of that something with a pop, and out of it rolled another ball. He bounced it, and it bounced very high. Frida dropped her bag, leapt into the air, and caught it. It was light and slightly furry, just the sort of ball she had been looking for. He laughed. She went to her bag and pawed at it, but although she could smell the money, she couldn’t get at it. She dropped the ball into the bag and dragged the bag to the human. Then she did something that Jacques had warned her against. She barked. Only one bark. She put her paw on the bag. The human stepped back, but it seemed he understood—he came over, reached into the bag, and felt around. A moment later, he pulled out a bill. Now he really laughed, and he said, “Well, I have to say, I’ve never seen a dog like you before.” He bowed slightly, and said, “Would you please wait here, miss?” He slouched away. When he returned, he put the thing that the ball had come in into her bag, then helped her take the bag in her jaws. Finally, he squatted in front of her, patted her on the head, and said, “Merry Christmas, pretty one.” He accompanied her to the door, opened it for her, and, after she went outside, locked it behind her.

The sky had clouded over, and dusk was beginning to gather. It wasn’t far to the house now, but the bag was heavier than before. Sometimes she carried it, sometimes she dragged it, but slowly, gently. Though there were no humans about at all, there were lights everywhere, and the faint sound of music, too—the whole city was brilliant. Only Étienne and Madame de Mornay’s house was dark and silent—just one small light in one window. The gate was open. Frida carried the bag up the step to Étienne’s entrance and set it against the door. She was exhausted. She passed Paras without saying anything, and lay down in her alcove. She was asleep at once. Darkness fell.

AN HOUR OR so later, Kurt was watching Madame de Mornay prepare herself for her expedition to the church for Christmas Mass—not Midnight Mass, no more of that, but afternoon Mass on the next day. The room was dark, but Kurt had good night vision, like Paras. The broadcast that he got from her through his whiskers was, he thought, the most interesting thing about her—she gave off almost no signal. According to his rat instincts, she was hardly alive—maybe not alive—and yet she was very active for a dead being. And she was especially expert and adept at grooming, something that rats paid considerable attention to. She laid out her clothes, brushed them off. She let her fingertips wander over the fabric, seeking rips and holes and suspicious little spots that might be stains.

Madame had been reflecting a good deal these last few days, and she was willing to admit that this might be her last visit to the church, at least under her own power. One thing that Étienne didn’t know was that her birthday was January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany. When she was a child, she had celebrated every birthday with a Cake of the Three Kings, really a sweet brioche molded into a circle with some sugar sprinkled over it. There was a tiny little man hidden within, and that had been one of her birthday presents. She had been eight or nine before she realized that others celebrated the arrival of the Three Kings at the Manger as her family did. She would be ninety-seven! How could she be so amazed at that number? She had stopped celebrating birthdays when she turned sixty, but, alas, they had not stopped coming around.

Kurt was quite familiar with Madame’s wardrobe. He recognized that the items Madame was investigating were for going outside. He was ever more eager to get there, and so, watching Madame, he contemplated his strategy for going with her. He had looked into her bag, which was in the center of the desk, but it was a cramped space. He had also eased himself underneath the hat she always wore, but that space would be filled with her head. He might sit on top of the hat and hope for the best, but he was too heavy for the hat, and he knew that Madame would notice if it was out of its customary shape. He might jump from one of the shelves beside the door onto her shoulder, but even if he made it, she would brush him off, probably violently, and then anything could happen. Conrad said that they were safe and well fed, and not every life was perfect, and that doe Kurt yearned for could show up at any time, there was always hope, but she never had, and Kurt had made up his mind to gamble on adventure rather than remain passive.

He’d thought that the boy might carry him outside, but as the days passed after the petting incident, Kurt lost his faith that the boy could be trusted. The boy broadcast a strong signal. Conrad, too, was suspicious of the boy, who was small but quick. Had he ever told Kurt the story of Hector, one of his ancestors? In this very house, many generations ago, there had been a human who left crumbs for Hector, who made agreeable little noises and seemed unusually friendly. After a whole season of this courtship, Hector had finally skittered onto the counter in the cuisine, going for some crispy fried pork fat, and what had happened? That human had banged the lid of a large heavy pot right down upon Hector, trapping him, breaking his tail, killing him. That was a human for you, according to Conrad, and Kurt had nothing to offer in contradiction. Conrad maintained that the territorial disputes between rats and humans had been going on forever and ever and ever and ever. Humans hated the very thought of rats’ claiming the taxes, in the form of food, that were their rattish right, of rats’ making perfectly good use of the otherwise useless spaces within walls. At some lost date in the past, rats and humans might have joined forces against cats, which were much more ruthless than any rat, but humans had been colonized by cats, and so that possibility was gone, and, Conrad advised, Kurt should look on the bright side, enjoy a comfortable life that even brown rats would appreciate.

Now Madame made her way to her bed and turned down the coverlet. She was humming. The room was dark, but that was all the same to Madame. She sat on the edge of the bed and kicked off her slippers, then arranged herself. It was Christmas, possibly her last Christmas. She closed her eyes and, looking within again, decided to remember a single thing from each of her ninety-six Christmases—that would be her celebration. Her first memory, she thought, and a vivid one, was of being carried into the grand salon in her mother’s arms, and seeing the whole room lit with candles. She remembered hiding her eyes against her mother’s silk collar, then turning to look again. She must have been almost two. Her second memory was of a doll, dressed in a red velvet gown, its tiny black shoes sticking out from under the hem of the dress. Perhaps her grandmother’s couturière had made the dress? Somehow the doll and her grandmother rested together in her mind. The third Christmas would have taken place in 1915—she had no memory of it, for it must have been a sad Christmas, the year her father died in the Battle of Loos. In 1916, she would have been four—her memory was of the cuisine, of standing on a stool beside the table, placing bits of candied orange peel on the tips of the meringues that Angélique, the chef de cuisine, was making. That was a happier memory. Madame de Mornay fell asleep.

Paras did not go into the house every night, nor did she visit Anaïs every night. Her days and nights had fallen into a pleasant rhythm, but it was only a rhythm, not a schedule. At any rate, on Christmas Eve, she had a nice long sleep in the courtyard, wondering only once where Frida had been and why she was sleeping and sleeping and sleeping. Paras of course noticed the bag beside the door, but it was not her purse, had no distinct odor. Raoul might have investigated it, but he was occupied in other parts of the city.

And so she shook her head, extended her foreleg to lever herself to her feet, saw that it was light though the sun wasn’t up yet, the perfect time for a meal—she would climb the step, tap the door, perhaps. She rose. She stretched forward. She stretched backward. There was a breeze. She tossed her head. And now the door opened and Étienne came outside, stumbling over the bag as he did. He said, “Hey! What is this?” He lifted the bag and looked at it, then looked inside it, then went to the gate, which he saw was open, and looked down the street. Paras could see that he had no idea that the bag was from Frida. But it made him happy—that was evident. He turned, and said, “Grandmama! Grandmama! Father Christmas has made a visit!” He laughed and went back into the house, leaving the door open. Paras glanced over at Frida, who was now awake. She tossed her head toward the door, said, “Come in with me! Come on! It’s warm in there! You’ll enjoy it!”

But Frida trembled and curled up even more tightly. Jail!

Paras thought Frida might never enter the building. She snorted, went up the step and into the grand salon.

Étienne took Paras straight to the cuisine, where he had already filled her bowl with apples, carrots, and a pear. He petted her on the neck, rested his head against her shoulder. He seemed happier than Paras had ever seen him. Over and over, he said, “Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, my dear! What a Merry Christmas this one is!”