Gaspar Lindoso, who keeps goats above Kaldeira, says a shadow mastiff is a dog. A real one, he says, only black all the way through and fed on whatever light is left over. The surveyor who came up the valley in September says the reverse: a shadow that has picked up a dog's habits and has nothing inside it to feed. They argue across Gaspar's wall every evening, and I spent the season sitting on that wall between them. Each is right about half. The animal stands four feet at the shoulder, deep in the chest, with forepaws too big for its legs and a coat like wet felt whose edges fray and trail a hand's width behind it when it turns. Its left ear is torn in a ragged V. A cracked leather collar with a split iron ring hangs at its neck, and the eyes are the green of sulfur flame, the only part of it that holds still.
In October the days shorten and it ranges wide, working the Rabanal Flats at dusk after goats and any stray dog. Where it has lain, the ground stays cold to the palm until noon and the grass goes the gray of old rope. That is how it is tracked. By December, with snow glare on the slopes, it keeps to the north faces of walls and barns, and its bay is felt in the breastbone more than heard. Nobody in Kaldeira whistles outdoors once the sun leaves the ridge. Gaspar's niece forgot this at nine, and he put a hand over her mouth before she finished the note. The mastiff answers whistles, they say, and it answers from closer than the whistler expects.
The thaw thins it. In April rain the coat runs like ink in water, and I could see the road through its flank, though the eyes did not dim. It hunts at noon then, under cloud. Shepherds set a lit lantern on the north side of the fold, since it will not cross lamplight, and sleep with their backs to the wall. By July, under a hard sun, it lies pressed flat beneath the hay wagon or the well house, a spilled coat with a pulse. Gaspar swears it is the same animal that took his grandfather's setter before the war. I have no way to check that.
On the morning I left, an iron ring lay on top of the wall where the two men argue, split through one side and furred with frost, though the stones around it were warm enough to sit on.
- Classification
- Shadow-bound hound
- Habitat
- Hill pastures, barns, north-facing walls
- Danger
- High
- Size
- 4 ft at the shoulder
- Activity
- Nocturnal
- Realm
- Shepherd country uplands
- Binomial
- Umbracanis grandipes
- Diet
- Goats, sheep, stray dogs
- Temperament
- Patient, territorial, unblinking