Maybe a Fox (14 page)

She figured he would be angrier than she'd ever seen him. And scared. She was scared too. As she ran, she promised him,
I'll never break a Do Not again.
The sun hid behind a cloud, and the woods took on a deeper shade of gray. She thought she heard a new noise. Footsteps. Were there footsteps over there, to her left?

She looked to both sides to see if she could spot the fox, but she had disappeared. There was no sign of her. Maybe the fox wasn't real after all. Maybe, Jules thought, she had imagined her. She stopped for just a moment, to see if there was any sign of her. Nothing. But then . . . footsteps?

Maybe the bear, she reminded herself. He was a sneaky thing, still lurking around Archer's Sheep Farm across the river and being a nuisance throughout the entire area.

And the catamount, too. Why she didn't feel more afraid, knowing that the giant cat had been in these woods, she didn't know. Maybe the cat wasn't real, either. But hadn't she seen the paw print?

The woods grew dimmer. Jules's senses went on high alert. She took a deep breath and the damp aroma of mushrooms filled her nostrils; another breath, and the sweet leaves of sugar maple.

Her eyesight felt sharper. She noticed the odd shapes of sunlight that splashed onto the ground like puzzle pieces, fading fast, growing smaller in the waning day. With her fingertips, she felt the smooth ridge of the serpentine rock she carried in her pocket. It would be the last one. She would never go to the Slip again after this.

She listened hard for footsteps, but there were only her own, hurrying along. That, and the river, that was all the sound there was . . . until it wasn't. It started with a rustling. She cocked her ears. The sound stopped. She sped up, nearly running now, listening. The light was falling too fast to linger. She couldn't stop now.

Hurry,
she told herself.
Hurry.

She ran. A patch of weak sunlight lit up the trail, casting a soft glow over the old rocks by the path. Sylvie's path. Sylvie had run on every path of the woods. Jules was running in Sylvie's footsteps. Fast. Sylvie was so fast. And suddenly it was as if Sylvie was there, everywhere, in the trees, in the pine needles that carpeted the ground, in the darkening air. The sound of the Whippoorwill rose up. Jules heard it before she saw it, and then she was there, right at the edge, watching the silvery water disappear beneath the rocky outcropping, vanishing. She stood there for a moment, and suddenly the woods were filled with sounds, sounds and more sounds—

the rush of the water

the whisper of the wind

the crash of a large animal running through the underbrush

Bear? Catamount? Human?

Voices?

Sam's voice, calling her, “Jules! Where are you?”

Elk beside him, his footfalls heavier, louder.

Mrs. Harless, crying, “Jules!”

“JULES, JULES, JULES.” Her father's voice.

And foxes, the high-pitched howls of foxes rang through the air. . . .

K
apow!

Run! Run! Run!

At the sound of the gunshot, Senna streaked away from Jules, leaping ahead of her and then darting through the woods toward the bear. She could smell him coming toward them, and he was crazy with pain. His ear. The bullet had grazed the very tip of his ear, and it was on fire. He pawed at it, but that made it worse. He groaned and stumbled through the woods, seeking the path that led to the river. Water. Cold water to ease the pain.

The bear was moving fast now. It was too late to head him off, away from Jules. Senna swerved back onto the path that led to the Disappearance, curving her narrow body just in time to avoid the big maple that marked the trail's beginning.

Never,
her mother had said, in the language of fox.

Run faster,
the Someone said, in the language of Kennen.

Far behind her, halfway across the field, rose the howl of a fox.

Older Brother was sounding the alarm.
BEAR. SENNA.
As Senna ran, she scented her family. Mother, Father, Younger Brother, rising to their feet and emerging from the hollow. Now her mother began to bark, a vixen's cry of warning to her young. She was calling her daughter home to her, home to the hollow. Home.

But Senna ran on. This was what she was supposed to do.

The blood of her ancestors ran swiftly through her slender body, and her heart pounded. It was dusk now, the last rays of the sun slanting across the fields. A new scent.

Catamount.

The huge cat had uncoiled himself from the branches of the tree near the cave and was slinking his way to the river, yards from Sam and Elk.

Bear.

Young and electrified with pain from his wound, the bear had reached the river. He was at the Disappearance now, searching for water, for something to take away the fire in his ear. He could taste his own blood. He rose to his hind feet and pawed at the rocks on the ledge. Water.

He was not alone. Senna scented the farmer waiting, silent and still at the edge of the pines. Now he raised his rifle to his shoulder. Now his hands tightened their grip, and his finger tensed on the trigger. He would finish the job he had started.

Run! Faster!

Jules was nearing the Disappearance. Senna had to run faster than she ever had, so fast. . . .

“Jules!”

“Jules!”

“Jules!”

The foxes howled for Senna: Mother, Father, Younger Brother, and Older Brother, his voice the loudest of all.
Come back. Come back. Come back.

“Jules,” cried the man. “Come back! Bear. Hunter.” His voice gave out, but he kept running, almost to the river, almost to where Jules stood now at the Disappearance, where the tumbling water hid the sound of her father's voice, hid the sound of the foxes, hid everything.

Senna got there first. She crouched in the low bushes next to Jules, who was nearly invisible in the near darkness. Blood pounded through Senna's body, the fur rose high on the back of her neck.

The young bear blundered to the edge of the water, next to Jules, who turned in shock at the sight of him. In that moment, the hunter pulled the trigger.

And from the bushes Senna sprang.

F
alling.

She was falling.

Senna was falling, falling.

First there was snow. The white wisps were cold and feathery. Snowflakes gathered fast and light around her falling body. Faces hovered above her, looking down. Jules and Dad and Sam and Elk. The hidden catamount. All of them. The hunter was running toward them, shouting in horror. The bear was gone, fumbling into the woods, his ear on fire.

Far across the field the sound of crying foxes rose in the air.

Senna fell and fell and fell.

Jules's eyes met hers as she fell from the above world into the world between. The girl's eyes were wide and full of something—what? Senna looked into them and waited as she fell, waited for her Kennen senses to tell her what Jules was feeling.

But then the gray-green bars, the ones that had hovered all around her since she was born into this world, shifted from gray and green into a dozen other colors, blue, red, purple, yellow . . . and then vanished in the cool, white air.

It was then that Senna knew she was leaving.

She would not be back.

She was leaving it behind, the above world with its brown earth that gave beneath her paws, the above world with its meadow voles and mice, its slanting sun and tall waving grass and hidden animal trails. She was leaving behind the rushing river and the clouds massing above the far ridgeline. She was leaving behind her family: Younger Brother and Father and Mother. She was leaving behind Older Brother.

Older Brother.

For one long moment then she fought, her paws scrabbling against the fast and falling white snowflakes. She fought to return to the above world—
run, run
—so that she could crawl into the dugout, press herself against Older Brother's warmth, his tawny fur, his solid calm.

Brother.

She struggled hard in that moment. Even as she was disappearing, the memory of those early weeks with her brother came flooding through her—
Pounce! Bat bat bat.
Rolling and tumbling and wrestling on the soft, fragrant grass in that new world.

But the moment passed, and then it was gone.

Too late. Too late.

Older Brother was in the above world now, and she was falling. She released her hold on that world. She let herself fall. And she looked down.

Far below, Senna saw her, the Someone. The woman with the red-brown hair, her arms outstretched. Her head was tilted back, and she was looking up, far up, at Senna. Their eyes met and held. The above world was gone now, and the woman held out her arms. She did not turn away. Love washed over Senna in a wave. At last!

Then her fall slowed. Snowflakes clung to her copper fur. New snow. There was a look in the woman's eyes as she waited, her arms held up and open. Senna knew that look. She had seen it before. This Someone had been waiting for her.

Now the woman caught her, and held her in her arms, arms that Senna had missed for such a long, long time.

My little girl,
she said.
My baby.

Then she called her by name.

Sylvie.

T
he fox fell.

She fell from the sky, a red comet blazing back to earth.

Maybe you turn into wind.

Maybe you turn into stars.

Maybe you go to another world.

Maybe you turn into a fox. And you run and run and run, faster than a torpedo, faster than the sound of light, faster than a speeding bullet.

You run faster, so that you can keep the ones you love most safe.

D
ad said it was coincidence, a freakish stroke of luck that had saved her life.

“That fox came out of nowhere,” Sam said.

Elk and Mrs. Harless didn't say anything, but Jules saw him put his arms around Mrs. Harless, and she watched them hold on tight to each other. Mr. Archer kept apologizing, his
I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I should never have gone after that bear, I am so sorry,
his words tumbling out, over and over, like the water that kept tumbling over the rocks into the Slip. It would tumble that way forever.

Later that night, after they had all gathered in the Sherman kitchen, sat around the table and hashed through it again and again, everyone left, and it was just Jules and her dad. “A freak coincidence,” he said again. “A stroke of luck. Thank God you're okay, Juley-Jules.”

Then he had gone to sit in the living room by himself, his head bowed and his hands laced together.

But Jules knew: the fox had saved her life. And maybe someday she would tell Dad or Sam or Elk or all of them how she knew it. But not yet. Not now.

Instead she spread her rock collection out on Sylvie's bed and began sorting. First into the three categories of rocks: igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. Then by size within each category. Then into vertical rows, horizontal rows, and circles. She whispered their names aloud as she worked. “Marble. Slate. Schist. Quartzite. Sandstone. Flint. Dolomite. Agate.”

Tomorrow she would give the agates back to Elk and tell him where the Grotto waited. She would miss them, so similar, but she knew that she had only kept them safe. They belonged to Elk . . . and Zeke. She picked up the chunk of marble, the one that Sylvie had given her for her birthday. It was her favorite, warm to the touch, smooth on one side and coarse on the other.
Like Sylvie,
she thought.

This was the one she would take to the Grotto in honor of the fox. She thought Sylvie would agree. A shiver of sadness went through her, because she wasn't going to see the fox ever again. Sadness mixed with gratitude, because the little fox was the reason she was here, in her bedroom, still alive.

Dad knocked softly on the door.

“Juley-Jules?”

“It's open,” she said, and he came in and sat down at the foot of the bed, careful not to disturb the rocks.

“I'm never going to the Slip again,” she said, in case he was about to bring it up, about to tell her it was forbidden. He started to say something, but stopped. Maybe because he could hear how flat and final her voice was.

The serpentine stone was next to his knee. He picked it up and tossed it from hand to hand, then stopped to read the message.

That Sylvie knows how much I love her.

“Oh, Jules.”

Dad was here. Jules was here. And both of them were safe.

Jules crawled across the rocks, messing them all up, their edges sharp underneath her knees. She didn't care. She put her arms around her dad, and they sat that way for a long time, a quiet Sherman Galaxy of two, rocks tumbled on the blanket beneath them.

T
he fox made his way through the dark woods alone. At one point he half turned and breathed deeply of the air behind him, scenting the hollow, the brush pile from where he had risen. Mother, Father, Younger Brother: all asleep. Even his mother, who had cried for hours. Who had not stopped shrieking her vixen's cry of alarm even after the shot exploded across the Disappearance, even after the leaping streak of red-brown fur had fallen into the tumbling water that bore her body down.

Here he was now, at the Disappearance. The river was urgent, its splashing tumble turned to a low roar as it gathered speed just before the earth swallowed it up. The fox carried the memory of his sister's bright eyes, the way she would tilt her head at him. He carried the memory of the early days, when together they had rolled and tumbled and wrestled together, growling and playing and batting each other with their paws.

The above world had been new to them then. The sun with its light and warmth, the tall waving grass, the smell of pine and thunderclouds and meadow creatures hidden in their burrows.