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His mother had said many times: don't go near people. Don't talk to strangers. He'd already done an awful lot of things his mother wouldn't like.

Romochka didn't get up. The warmth from the heating pipes under the ground made him listless. He was around the corner from home but his legs were too heavy to do their job. Even his emptiness was too heavy, pressed into the ground by his sleepy bones. His head was too heavy.

A freezing drizzle fell. The black ice on the pavement began to shine. The gutter filled with black sludge and the white lines on the asphalt disappeared in a reflective sheen. His blue mittens glittered with tiny droplets. He shut his eyes.

He heard a faint noise that was more than the whisper of rain, and much closer than the cars on the lane around the corner. He opened his eyes. Two dogs were taking up all the space in front of him, present just as suddenly as if he had been on one page of a picture book and had now turned to the next. They paced in front of him without taking their eyes off him, crossing each other's paths again and again. One was pale gold all over with a tail that curled back on itself, the other huge and black with cream paws and mask. They stared at him, eyes big and yellow. The rain spangled their fur. He liked dogs, but even he could tell these dogs wanted to hurt him. The dogs snarled at each other just as if he were a dish laid out in front of them and there wasn't enough for two. He wondered whether it was really possible for a dog to eat a boy. He frowned at them fiercely.

Struggling with his clothes, he used the drainpipe to pull himself up. The dogs jumped back. Then a yellow dog appeared out of the shadows on the other side. She looked at him as if waiting: head high, tail low. He let the pipe go and crossed the alley towards her. She didn't move. The two dogs closed in behind with a rub of hair jostling for space and the snicker-snap of bickering. His dog had her ears up.

'Doggie,' he said, and she tipped her head very slightly to one side. One of the dogs behind him growled low. His dog lifted her lip over long teeth and growled back, a growl that travelled around him and was aimed at them. He felt the agitation behind him settle and, glancing back, saw that the gold dog was sitting now, watching. He reached his dog, put out his hands. She flinched, hesitated for a moment, then sniffed his face, his chest, his mittens. She was standing still. Then she waved her tail from side to side, slightly, thoughtfully. The other dogs came up to her then, their heads weaving low, and they licked her face. She licked them each in turn, licked his face too, placing a sticky kiss on the corner of his mouth, then she turned and trotted at an easy pace up another alley leading from the first, one he had never entered. People were filling the streets again, trudging, skittering and sliding along the pavements, but he paid them no attention. He focused on his dog and followed close behind, the kiss freezing on his cheek. The other two dogs fell in behind, trotting along without jostling.

He wondered what these dogs ate for dinner and his stomach sizzled painfully.

They had gone around a corner or two and were weaving in and out of parked cars when he realised he was nearly lost. He thought of stopping his steady trot. He remembered that the apartment was cold and dark, empty even of his uncle's smell, and then, before he could think anymore, he was lost. He concentrated on what dogs ate for dinner. He pictured bowls of diced meat and cabbage, all in a row, with one extra for him. But perhaps dogs couldn't afford diced meat. Perhaps a soup, made with big bones, potatoes and onions. Or chicken soup with noodles. Maybe just potatoes. Hot and steamy. Mashed and buttery. Then he remembered: dogs don't have money! They steal everything, or get given it! It could be anything. Cutlets! Kolbasa! Dumplings with meat! Chuk-chuk! Donuts! Saliva filled his mouth.

They passed throngs of people who were making their way home or to shops after work but no one stopped the boy or asked his name. He was a boy; his companions dogs. There was nothing to show that he was following, not leading. They looked like three obedient dogs, and he like a boy master—neglected, young to be out alone, but everyone knows without thinking that a person with dogs is not lost.

And so it was, trotting with three dogs through ordinary lanes, past ordinary tenements, past ordinary lives, a lone boy crossed a border that is, usually, impassable—not even imaginable.

At first he didn't notice.

—from Dog Boy