A. C. Rosenfeld

The first assessment of my Masters in Writing, we had to choose from four prompts. The prompt I chose was, “Write an account of a real event or incident from the point of view of an animal who experienced it.”

This was based on the historical event of the flooding of a small village in Northern Italy to make way for a new hydroelectric dam. While this is based on a historical event, none of the characters in this story are based on real people.

I was born in the valley of three lakes.

Crags of rock surrounded the valley, with trees that clutched to their sides like moss on the drinking well in the center of the village. The moss that tickled my ears when I drank from the well in the shadow of the spire, sometimes falling off into my fur and traveling back with me to my friend’s home.  

My friend and I loved each other very much. 

His hands were warm on autumn mornings when the village was beginning to plan for winter. The first nights of frost were spent at my friend’s feet, in front of the blazing hearth, with his child laying his small head on my stomach. 

I helped my friend as much as I could; when the sheep were brought down from the mountains, I was there. When a cow broke from her enclosure and insisted that she would not go back in, I calmed her. When a child was lost, I was the one who found her bloated body washed up on the shore of the lake. 

But the trips to the top of the mountains that surrounded our valley were my favorite. 

In the summers, it was the only way to flee the heat that pulled at my fur. The mountains held the cool wind for themselves. They were greedy for it. If I was a mountain, I would have been greedy for it too. 

From the top of the mountains, you could see our tiny village and the spire that held the loud bells, a freckle on the landscape. My friend’s son had many freckles, and whenever I saw our village from the tops of the mountains, I thought of him. 

My friend’s son loved me very much, almost as much as my friend did. When my friend hit me for eating part of a wheel of cheese from the table, his son buried himself into my fur and cried for me when my friend wasn’t looking. He promised that one day, when I was too old to work and he had enough money, he would take me to another village to live out the rest of our days together.

“My father wants to work you until you pass away on the mountains, little one,” he told me, “But I’ll take you with me when I move away from this tiny village. He won’t stop me. Will you go with me to Merano, little one? Or Bolzano?”

How could I tell him no? I loved my friend more than anyone in the world, but his son promised to let me rest. His cheeks tasted salty, and he laughed when I licked them. 

But I would not be old for many years. I contented myself watching my friend’s son grow taller and was happy when he joined us in the mountains. One day, my friend stopped coming with us. 

It made me guilty, how happy I was. His son never beat me when I made a mistake. I still loved my friend the most, since he was the one who saved me from the winter when I was a puppy, but I felt warm near his son. I was perfect in his eyes.  

We gathered the sheep together for several seasons. When we were bored, his son would throw sticks and rocks for me to bring back to him. Sometimes I would play the game Eating Something Suspicious Until He Notices and Then I’ll Eat It Faster Just to Annoy Him, but I think I was the only one who enjoyed that game. 

It was unusual, then, when his son stopped coming up the mountain, and my friend resumed the work.

It was a month before his son returned. He was skinnier, and his eyes were wide and dark. When he reached down to pet me, his hands shook. He smelled like other humans, how they stank when they spent too much time away from the water. A dense, ugly smell. 

But I didn’t listen closely as they discussed where the son had been. All that mattered was that he was back, with his hands resting on my rump, his fingernails scratching absentmindedly at my skin. 

But then he mentioned leaving again, and I let out a whine. 

“It’s all right, little one. I’ll be back,” the son promised. “I’m strong. I won’t be killed so easily.”

He met my eyes and smiled. His eyes didn’t crinkle like usual.

My friend muttered, “I’m not sure there will be a place to come back to, Giorgio.”

His son stiffened. “What do you mean?”

My friend sat forward in his chair and rested his head on intertwined fingers, his elbows on the table. “The electric company is moving forward with the project from a decade ago, the one that will flood the village.”

“That’s impossible. There are people here, an entire village!” the son raised his voice. “They can’t truly expect us to leave, just like that.”

My friend shook his head, “There’s nothing we can do. The war has depleted every resource we have. With you gone, there will be no young men left in this village to defend it. We must take what we can get, and they’re promising us money.”

“What money could they give you? What money is worth our homestead, our blood that’s buried beneath our home? Nonna and Nonno are here, mother is here, is there a monetary gift that can replace them – “

“Enough.” My friend’s voice was low and dark. I shrunk back, sure that he would raise his hand against his son, but he didn’t. 

He continued, “There is nothing we can do Giorgio, and I don’t want our final night together to be like this. Please.”

My friend’s son’s eyes were bright in the light of the fire. He pushed out the chair from underneath him and replied, “I can’t spend my last night in Resia with a coward.”

He slammed the door open and stalked off into the night. 

“Follow him.” My friend’s voice was still low, but the darkness was gone. Tears streamed down his face as he repeated, “Follow him, little one.”  

I did as I was told.

His son hadn’t gone far. He was sitting on the edge of the lake with his toes in the water, his shoes and socks set neatly beside him. His face was blue, like the noontime sky’s reflection in the water. The belltower spire loomed above him, quiet and still. 

He didn’t speak to me as I settled down next to him, but he did press his palm onto my back and bit back a sob. After a few minutes, he managed to choke out, “Why here? Why our lives? We were so peaceful, little one. Couldn’t it have stayed that way?”  

I moved to my side so that my belly was exposed, and his hand moved to the bare pink skin there. I wanted to tell him, don’t cry, Giorgio. Anywhere that you are is peaceful. But I couldn’t. I felt it in my eyes as he gazed at me and watched as fresh tears fell to his jaw. 

He went back to his father, who had fallen asleep at the table. They held each other for a long time, allowing darkness to swallow the fire. 

When they separated, I followed my friend into his bedroom and lay at the feet of his bed. When I awoke, my friend’s son was gone. 

We fell back to the time before his son’s adulthood. I made less mistakes but took more time doing my usual tasks. He didn’t beat me anymore, but his gaze was rough, and his touch cold. We no longer spent the winter nights curled up together by the hearth, my friend electing to bring a blanket to the edge of the water and stare at the lake that would soon swallow us whole. When the bells rang, my friend covered his ears and cried.

The lakes themselves were changing. From the mountains, I could see large buildings growing on their shores, and men, like grains of polenta in the pot over the hearth, spilling over each other. My friend did his best to continue his work, ignoring the scores of families leaving the village.

In the slow warmth of a late-summer day, I found my friend sitting on the steps that led to his home. A piece of paper was crumpled in his fist, and a bit of metal was set beside him. He heard me approaching and murmured, “Now we must bury Giorgio, little one.”

The house lost the son’s scent. His puppy scent, of warm grass and milk and cow manure, of cheesy grain and dark wood and the lake, of everything that he was and would ever be, disappeared first. The second scent, the one he brought back with him from the place that made him tremble, blood, and fear, hung in the air. It filled his room and sunk into his bedsheets. It made me retch out my dinner when we ate inside. 

At some point, we were the last ones in the village. All the animals had been evacuated with their human friends, leaving only the rats and voles and a few cats that had refused to budge. Our sheep were taken by a company of neighbors who snuck them out in the middle of the night, leaving us with nothing to do until the lake rose.

The day that the village was swallowed, three large men came to my friend’s house and took him from his home. I recognized them. They had been there before. They had taken some of my friend’s possessions and had told him they’d be back. And now they were. 

I tried to stop them with what strength I had, barking and pulling on their clothes, running in front of their parade. They patted my back and gave me bits of meat until I calmed down, following the line they made up into higher ground. My friend cried out and thrashed against the other men, calling for Giorgio and a name I didn’t recognize. “Please, let me go back to them! They rest in the village, and I must rest there as well. Let me go back to Maria! I beg of you, let me die with my home! Let me die with my son!”

They brought us to one of the mountains we used to take the sheep. From above, we watched as the water began to snake its way south, spilling into the village at the rate of the rusted water pump that my friend sometimes drank from. He no longer thrashed, his eyes darkening once again as he watched his village flood.

It was odd, watching a place disappear. The valley of the three lakes wasn’t one of prosperity, but there were always people. Now there were no people, no animals, and the trees were drowning.

But where was Giorgio? He promised he would take me to one of the cities, to allow me to rest in a place that he would create for me. How would he find me now that the village was gone? My friend had said he wanted to die with his son, but I hadn’t seen Giorgio before we left. Perhaps my friend had left some sort of message that Giorgio would find when he came back? 

I looked back at my friend. His head was in his hands and his whole body shook. “Please,” he blurted. The men were gone and yet he continued, “Please, take me back to Giorgio.”  

I pressed my nose against his thigh, and he removed his hands from his face. “Little one, would you take me to him?”

He followed me down the mountain until we stood at the shore of the new lake. It was muddy, and I could still see grass below the water. The belltower was the only part of a building that remained. Its single window glared towards us, like the eye of the birds that scooped voles from the grass.

My friend took off his shoes and crossed his hands in front of his chest, muttering something beneath his breath. After a moment, he looked back at me and smiled. His eyes were bright again.

“I’m going to see Giorgio, little one. You’ll stay here and guard the lake.” It was a command. My friend hadn’t made many commands lately. I watched as he descended into the water, his body becoming smaller and smaller until only his head, furless, remained. 

A howl poured from my lips as that, too, disappeared.