But Carlo stood at the door, nuzzling the knob and wagging his tail, like he needed to go out.
“Well, how did you come in, you great beast? Surely you can go the way you came and don’t need the door.”
He wagged his tail, whined a little. He had to go, that was that, and he needed her to open the door this time. If one could predict the rules, there’d be no need to ask questions at all, would there?
When she stood up to get the door, he bounced in place, jumping back on his legs—he was as tall as a person when he did that. He’d run when she opened the door, like a cannonball. He could run again.
“I want to go with you.”
The letter felt cold in her hand. It didn’t answer any of her questions. None at all. Perh
aps if she asked them in person—but she had come to dislike visitors, and visiting.
She’d open the door, and he’d run so fast his legs would be a blur. She could never keep up with him when he ran. But Carlo always came home. However far ahead he ran, he’d always come back for her.
She knelt and held his stout head in her hands, looking into his clear brown eyes. “Don’t forget, when you’ve gone far enough ahead, come back and get me.” A kiss on the nose, like she gave him when he was a puppy.
She opened the door, and in a flash he was gone, running into darkness.
“A piece of Immortality,” she said, holding the letter tight in both hands, close to her heart. “That’s what I’ve always thought a letter is.”
Carlo returned to fetch Emily twenty years later.