For Love of XiA Short Story by Virgil SyonidDisclaimer: This story depicts natural violence which some readers may find upsetting. Reader discretion is advised.
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Note to the reader: Xi, when used as a name, is pronounced "she".)
The day that Xi came into young Kafiye Tüzün’s life was a good day.
On that day, Kafiye had received a gift from a merchantwoman. He was a Croatian sheepdog pup, fourteen weeks old, imported to a part of the world where pet dogs were rare and long-haired dogs were almost never seen at all.
Kafiye’s mother had nearly fainted when the squirming, whining pup was presented to her daughter. Kafiye was not the kind of child who could be pleasantly surprised by a puppy. She suffered from crippling phobias—fear of everything from darkness to fire to the tiny sand flies that congregated on her oil lamp at night—and she lurched from panic attack to panic attack with such regularity that her mother rarely brought her out of the house.
The stubby-nosed Xi, his tiny paws windmilling in the air, his black nose snorting loudly to protest his having been plucked out of his basket, would look like a slavering demon to Kafiye. The poor girl couldn’t walk into the light of the outdoors without jumping at her shadow. If she left the fenced-in yard around her hut, it was always after a lengthy session of coaxing and encouragement. Once outside the yard, she refused to take a single step unless her hand was tightened vise-like around her mother’s fingers.
To Kafiye, a puppy would seem like a monster. A snarling, clawing, befurred
monster.
Or so her mother had thought.
Until, in one of life’s profound and unexpected twists, Kafiye had bravely held out her arms and taken possession of the bewildered Xi, supporting him by his haunches so that his head could rest on her shoulder and his ear could brush up against her face.
“You are his protector, you see?” The merchant had told Kafiye, speaking in Pashto. “You give him good meat and clean water and a place to sleep. You keep the parasites out of his fur. You keep him safe from the boys in the village.”
Kafiye had nodded, wide-eyed and somber. She understood.
Kafiye’s mother had needed to sit down just then or risk collapsing. She’d taken a quarter of an hour and many deep breaths to come to terms with Kafiye’s impossible leap of faith. On the journey home, her mind screamed whenever Xi whined, kicked or nipped at Kafiye’s ear. When the puppy’s tantrums were met with a scolding
tssh and a loud cluck of the tongue to show that Kafiye meant business, her mother struggled not to stumble for the mounting weakness in her knees.
The sense of surrealism persisted into the coming week as Kafiye embraced her role as Xi’s protector. A girl who’d once refused to set foot outside her yard without her mother was seen accompanying her brother to the butcher’s hut in the village, making sure there would be good scraps left over to feed her dog. A child who’d once been cowed at the sight of a spider was discovered carting Xi over to the handle of an ancient water pump where a wriggling hersiliid was waiting to be gobbled up. The same child was seen brushing away the sinewy remnants of the hersiliid’s web so that she could pump water into a calabash for Xi’s water dish.
At the end of the week, having witnessed Kafiye fall asleep with Xi clutched in her arms, Kafiye’s mother even dared to put out the oil lamp beside Kafiye’s cot.
When the morning had come without incident, she’d been moved to tears.
Three weeks later, after waking to the sound of thunder rolling down from the eastern mountains, she’d thrown herself out of bed in anticipation that Kafiye would start howling in terror when the next peal shook the walls. Instead, she’d seen her daughter sitting cross-legged with Xi in her lap. Kafiye was silhouetted against the baleful moonlight that shone through the hut’s lone window, peering out bravely into the blackness of the eastern mountains. Her hands were cupped over Xi’s floppy ears.
That sight had made her mother cry.
Kafiye’s remarkable transformation continued for three months, during which time her confidence grew by the day. Her crippling phobias and insecurities evaporated like the morning dew when Xi was beside her.
The pup followed Kafiye everywhere. He lie beside her when she did her chores, ran beside her when she visited the granary, chased the chickens when she tended the yard, hovered around her ankles while she helped her mother prepare dinner. For three months, Kafiye fed him, watered him, brushed his fur, sang to him, petted him, and fell asleep with his warm body in her embrace.
For three months.
Until an autumn Friday—a trip to the granary along a stone path through the foothills. Kafiye had volunteered to go. Xi would be with her.
At the midpoint of the trip, a large female snow leopard emerged from the craggy rocks thirty feet ahead of Kafiye and Xi. They sensed its presence at the same time—the stink of urine clinging to its fur and the glare of its malevolent eyes set upon them.
Within five seconds it had closed in on them by several yards and bared its yellowed fangs.
Xi had been trailing behind Kafiye. He charged ahead to face down the interloper. Even as the leopard closed in another ten feet, inside of attack distance, Xi did not back down. Barely more than an 18-inch-tall ball of fuzz, the pup stood fast in front of Kafiye.
He started to bark. Loudly. As loudly and threateningly as he could with his juvenile lungs.
He barked with the temerity of a dog ten times his size. His high pitched cries danced off of the rocks, filling the air with his fury.
The leopard licked its chops. Growled lowly.
The practiced killer had no patience for such things.
It rapiered forward, blowing past Xi and striking Kafiye in her chest. Kafiye was hurtled backward into the rocks, the leopard almost on top of her. Her back and head struck the ground hard.
A moment later, she screamed as the leopard’s jaws clamped down on her right shoulder. It was a crushing bite that drew blood instantly. She was helpless to struggle against it, pinned down by the predator’s weight.
She’d have blacked out had the leopard not suddenly released its grip on her shoulder. Kafiye caught a glimpse of Xi’s sharp teeth buried in the leopard’s flank, biting all the way through its stinking, mottled fur into flesh. The pup’s jaws were clenched so tightly that his forepaws were raised off of the ground. He hung from the leopard using his rear legs as a fulcrum.
The snow leopard hissed madly, twisting in the air to shake off its attacker. When Xi refused to cede his grip, the leopard rolled onto its side. It convulsed against the ground with predatory diligence, hammering Xi’s head between its rear quarters and the rocks below. After three devastating blows, Xi’s lower jaw broke—a sickening crack of bone—and the leopard’s flesh came free.
The predator was on its feet again in an instant. It seized Xi in its jaws, eliciting a terrible yelp of pain as it bit down into the pup’s neck.
Kafiye was dazed. Paralyzed with fear. The scene around her unfolded as though she was buried in a thick haze.
She saw the snow leopard carry her weakly struggling pet back over to the rocks from where it had emerged.
She heard the tearing of flesh and Xi’s faint, plaintive cries that begged for her intervention—since snow leopards do not kill their prey silently or quickly.
And she heard Xi’s final labored breath. A whisper so loud in her mind that it seemed to dwarf the thunder rolling down from the hills. A testament to her failure as Xi’s protector.
Xi was gone.Xi was gone, the whisper told her.
And then there was silence.
~ Friendships Are Warm ~ True Passions are Fire ~ 
