Dogland

Dogland
If you copy this story, please include this notice and this introductory material.
Dogland is a novel published by Tor Books. The following text is not the copyedited version (I don't have a file of that), so don't blame Tor for minor mistakes.
This is available under a Creative Commons "Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported" license. For more information, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/.
You can learn much too much about me, and also my wife, Emma Bull, at www.qwertyranch.com.
--Will Shetterly
--
DOGLAND
by Will Shetterly
This novel is dedicated with love to Mom, Dad, Mike, and Liz.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
: The Way to the Feast of Flowers
Chapter Two
: In the Foundations of Dream
Chapter Three
: Things Seen in Black and White
Chapter Four
: Building in Blood
Chapter Five
: Things Seen in Color, Part One
Chapter Six
: Things Seen in Color, Part Two
Chapter Seven
: Learning to Swim
Chapter Eight
: Seeking Plunder
Chapter Nine
: One Hundred Breeds
Chapter Ten
: Wrestling With Angels
Chapter Eleven
: Not Long Before the End
Chapter Twelve
: Peace on Earth
Chapter One
The Way to the Feast of Flowers
It was a dream, then a place, then a memory. My father built it near the Suwannee River. I like to think it was in the heart of Florida, because it was, and is, in my heart. Its name was Dogland.
Some people say you can know others if you know the central incidents that shaped their lives. But an incident is an island in time, and to know the effect of the island on those who land there, you must know something about the river they have traveled.
And I must warn you before we begin, I don't know that river well. I visit that time and place like a ghost with poor vision and little memory. I look up the river and see fog rolling in. I look down the river, and the brightness of the approaching day blinds me. I see shapes moving behind me and beyond me, but who they are and what they do, I cannot say. I will tell what I know is true, and I will invent what I believe is true, and that, I think, is all you can ask any storyteller to do.
I learned the Nix family history from the stories Pa told. Even at the age of four, I suspected that Pa's stories might not be perfectly true. When Pa said we Nixes came to North America as indentured servants working our way out of debtor's prison, Grandma Bette would make a face and say he couldn't know that. When he said we Nixes had Lakota and Ojibwe blood in our veins, Grandma Bette would say she wasn't prejudiced, but it simply wasn't so: she and Pa and his brothers and sisters were dark because her people were Black Dutch, from a part of Holland where everyone had black hair and black eyes. And then Grandma Bette wouldn't say a word for half an hour or more, a very long time for Grandma Bette to be quiet.
Pa usually told the family stories when driving to the store with Little Bit and me, while Ma stayed home with Digger. Little Bit would sit on the front seat of the station wagon with Pa, and I would stand in back, straddling the transmission hump with my arms wrapped over the front seat. After awhile, Little Bit or I would ask for the Little Big Horn story, or the Light-horse Harry Lee story, or another of the Nix family histories, like:
"Tell us 'bout that bad man."
"What bad man is that?"
"Our great-great-great-great-great-great grampa!"
"That's a lot of greats."
"'Bout the bad man!"
"You mean the horse thief?"
"No." The horse thief story was hardly a story at all. A Nix was caught for stealing horses and hung, that was all. Pa only told that story when Grandma Bette was visiting.
"'Bout the bad man."
"In jail."
"An' the train."
"An' the man ran off with his wife."
"That story! Tell us that story."
"Tell us that story. Please?"
"Pretty please. Pretty please tell us that story."
"Well, there's not much to tell."
"Please, Pa! Please, please, please!"
"Well, okay. There was this man--"
"A Nix."
"--a Nix." Probably a farmer. Most forgotten Nixes were probably farmers. "And some fellow ran away with his wife." The farmer was old, forty-five or fifty, with stubbly, hollowed cheeks and staring eyes. He wore overalls. His wife was young, barely twenty, pretty and plump and blond. The other man, a lanky salesman with clean-scrubbed skin, was from the city. He wore a nice suit and had a shy smile, and he parted his hair in the middle. "They were on a train. They thought they'd gotten away."
"But they hadn't, had they, Pa!"
"No, they hadn't." The couple sat side by side in the train. The wife-stealer sat by the aisle with his hat in his lap. He wore a green plaid suit, and he kept twisting the hat, a derby, with his smooth, clean fingers. He grinned his shy