Underhowl- Rise of the Pures

Chapter Five

Chapter Five 

Jeda woke up to Buster rummaging around the room. He walked out of his comfortable bed and stretched himself thoroughly, and then walked with Buster down the stairs. After taking their time to walk around the Announcement Arena, they then trotted down another corridor to a large room full of dogs. They were all chatting loudly. 

    “We have breakfast here.” Buster explained. “As well as lunch and dinner. Come on, the pups eat over here.”

    He led Jeda to the far left of the room where many small dogs were hungrily chewing food. The smallest ones were eating chicken wings, while the larger ones were eating bones. Buster brought some bones to eat, and Sunny took one to eat with a few of her friends. As Jeda lay down to eat his he noticed some of the puppies looking at Jeda suspiciously, some of them angrily. He noticed another dog, a silver dog that looked like a greyhound, watching Sunny take her bone to her friends, but then another dog glared at Jeda. To distract himself, he looked at where all the adult dogs were eating. Some of the dogs were doing the same as the puppies. Again trying not to notice them, he saw a group of dogs in the furthest corner of the room.

    They were eating a little higher than everyone else, and that’s when Jeda noticed the platform that stuck out of the ground. He supposed it was the High table, both figuratively and truthfully. Looking closely, Jeda saw three wolves and seven other dogs. Two of the wolves were Fabio and Corrine, but Jeda couldn’t tell who the other wolf was…

    Before he could ask Buster, a loud booming voice sounded near the puppy-eating-area-

    “NO! Burying bones is against the rules!”

    Jeda was scared of the voice but nobody else seemed to notice it.

    “You can only eat here, no storing! Underhowl is not a pantry!”

    Jeda spied the voice- a rounded female dog scolding a little brown and gold puppy.

    “Who is that?” Jeda asked. Buster took his concentration away from his bone.

    “Mrs Taylor. She is part coyote, part Golden Retriever. She is the mother that has the most puppies right now, with seventeen.”

    “Seventeen?”  Jeda gasped.

    “Yeah, but they’re a nuisance though. Let’s count them…”

    Together they counted the puppies. They were all small and cute, some golden with long noses, others brown with large eyes. The all seemed to be making trouble of some sort, and Mrs Taylor was running around wildly trying to keep them in order.

    Jeda was counting a small puppy that was walking away from Mrs Taylor, when again he looked at the High table. Fabio and Corrine were stripping the flesh off their bones. A fox was talking rapidly with them while they replied simply. The third wolf wasn’t talking. It wasn’t eating either. A jackal said something to it, and it just nodded in reply.

    Jeda’s attention was diverted as something caught his eye. A dog dashed from the door and straight to the High table. It was skinny and quick, and darted straight to Corrine. Whispering a few words into her ear that Jeda couldn’t hear over the chatting dogs, Corrine’s eyes widened in shock. She stood up and followed the dog out of the room, closely followed by Fabio. Jeda knew something was happening.

After finishing their bones, Buster was showing Jeda some other things, but Jeda wasn’t concentrating. He wanted to know what Corrine and Fabio knew, whatever the news the skinny dog said to them. It was definitely important.

    Buster was just showing Jeda the hospital when everyone stopped moving. An echoing howl was travelling through the corridors, bouncing off the walls, loud enough for everyone to hear.

    “What’s that?!” Jeda shouted over the noise.

    “It’s Corrine howling- something’s happened!”