Maybe a Fox (5 page)

His shoulders started shaking, and he covered his face with his hands. A sob worked its way up into Jules's throat. Dad rubbed his eyes, pulled her close, and wrapped his arms around her. He rubbed her back, right between her shoulder blades. Just like she always imagined her mother might have when she was a baby. The sob escaped her in a huge flood of tears. “Dad,” she gasped.

“It's okay, Juley-Jules,” he whispered. “It's okay.” And right there, in front of the sheriff, he said, “My little girl,” and even though she wasn't little anymore, not at all, she climbed up into his lap like she had a long time ago, and he rocked her, back and forth, back and forth, like he had when she was so much younger.

“Juley-Jules,” he said again, his pet name for her. “It's okay.” She held on as hard as she could.

But it wasn't okay.

Sylvie was gone.

And Sylvie being gone was the worst “not okay” in the universe. Jules had not tried hard enough. If she had yelled and screamed at Sylvie to stay there, maybe Sylvie wouldn't have gone to the Slip. If she hadn't put that chunk of gneiss in the striped sock in the closet, knowing that Sylvie would think it was a perfect wish rock, then maybe Sylvie wouldn't have gone to the Slip. If she had grabbed better hold of Sylvie, her hand and not just her mitten, then maybe she could've kept her there. She hadn't held on tight enough. There was the single orange mitten, right there on the table. Proof.

At last Dad stopped rocking and handed her a dish towel to wipe her stinging face.

“I love you,” he whispered.

And Jules knew that was a true thing, so true it made her heart hurt even more, because he loved Sylvie just as much. Maybe even more. And she and Sylvie had broken the biggest Do Not. How many times had their dad told them never to go near the Slip? So many.

“It's my fault, Dad,” she sobbed, pushing the towel away. “I should have made her stay.”

She felt him shake his head against her own. “No,” he said. “You and I both know that nobody can make Sylvie do anything.”

That might be true, but it only made it worse. Jules felt an alarming flash of anger at her sister. If only Sylvie hadn't run so fast. If only she had stopped in time. If only the tree root hadn't been there. If only the snow hadn't covered it up. Sylvie would have seen it. She would have kept her feet dry if only, if only, if only. If Sylvie were there this very minute, Jules would scream at her the way she'd wanted to this morning, when she'd shut herself into their bedroom.

But Sylvie wasn't there. Sylvie wasn't ever going to be there again.

That was the worst thought of all, so horrible that Jules's mind scrabbled for a way out of it. Now she snatched the towel back to stanch the flood of tears that wouldn't stop pouring from her eyes. Dad held her tighter.

The Maybe game came into her head.

Maybe you turn into an albatross and fly across the ocean.

Maybe you turn into a giant sea turtle and crawl up on the sand by the light of the moon.

Maybe you turn into a mermaid and swim around the world.

She wiped her face again. The game wasn't helping. She couldn't see Sylvie as a bird or a turtle or even a mermaid. She could only see her as Sylvie, running and running and running, her hair swinging back and forth across her shoulders, the blue hair band with buttercups pushed behind her ears. Running so fast.
So that
 . . . what? Why was Sylvie's burning wish to run faster?

How would Jules ever find out now?

T
he baby girl fox, Senna, came into the world in darkness, thirty feet below ground in the den dug out of cool brown earth. She was the middle child, born between her older and younger brothers, the three of them separated by minutes.

The first thing she knew was the feel of her mother's tongue.
Shhh shhh shhh,
cleaning her off, licking her into life and warmth and love and safety.

The second thing she knew was the feel and smell of her brothers' bodies pressed against hers as their mother nursed them, their front paws kneading her belly.

The third thing she knew was that there was someone waiting for her, someone she needed to find. After the rough tongue of her mother had given her a second cleaning and smoothed her wet fur, Senna sniffed in the darkness. Back and forth she rolled, pressing her paws into her sleeping brothers' backs and bellies. Despite her mother's warm milk, she didn't go to sleep like her brothers.

Sleep,
said her mother, in the language of fox.
Sleep, little Senna.

Baby Senna lay awake and quiet. She wiggled her way closer into the soft fur of her mother's belly. She sniffed the air and smelled her sleeping brothers, her sleeping father.
Sleep,
her mother told her again,
sleep, little girl.

Where was the Someone?

She cocked her tiny round ears and listened, but there were only the sleeping sounds of her brothers and father, only the rough tongue of her mother. Finally Senna closed her eyes and drifted off. But as she did, a whispery word flowed over her from somewhere far away.
Kennen.
The word appeared to her as bars of gray and forest green hanging in the air, drifting toward one another, passing through one another, always moving.

Kennen,
the bars whispered. Senna watched in the darkness of the den, and as she did, the gray-green bars passed on through her, leaving behind small bits of worry and wonder, like invisible drops on her newborn fur.

E
very day that Elk had been at war, Sam had written a wish on a rock,
Elk return
. And Elk had come back. But Sam knew that his brother wasn't completely home. It was as if Afghanistan had kept a part of Elk and sent the rest of him back to his family.

Elk Porter and Zeke Harless had been best friends their whole lives. They had enlisted in the army together, and they had been deployed to Afghanistan together. The Shermans, the Porters, Mrs. Harless, all of them had gone to the airport to wave good-bye. They had stood under the steel-blue sky as the airplane lifted Elk and Zeke off and carried them thousands of miles away to the other side of the world.

If Sam had known that it would be the last time he'd see Zeke, would he have said something to him besides “Bye, Zeke”? Would he have done anything differently while Zeke and Elk were gone? Should he have thrown wish rocks for Zeke, too? Would that have made any difference?

It was impossible to know.

Before they shipped out, Sam had hardly known a day without his brother or Zeke. Now Elk was home and Zeke was not, and Elk hadn't said a single word about Zeke. If anyone mentioned him, Elk stood up and walked out of the room.

Now Sam sat on the empty seat of the school bus, heading home. He pressed his forehead against the cold glass window and looked out into the passing trees. Tall and solemn, they looked weary from the long winter that never seemed to end.

They were passing the border of Mrs. Harless's property. It was said that her great-great-great-grandfather marked his tract with rock cairns. No one knew specifically where the originals were now. Some of them had likely been knocked apart by growing trees, or pulled over by bears searching for grubs. Some might have been toppled by the Whippoorwill when she flowed out of her banks after a heavy snowmelt.

Elk and Zeke used to hunt for cairns all the time. They'd found five or six, and when Sam was big enough, they let him tag along too. But there was something else made of rock that they all wanted to find: the Grotto, which wasn't a true cairn so much as a shallow cave. It was thought that the rocks surrounding the entrance might be carefully placed in an orderly way, like those stacked in an old gate maybe, or an old archway. They had looked for it all one summer, along with Sylvie and Jules, searching along the animal trails and along the paths that led to the Slip on both the Sherman and Porter sides of the river, looking for anything that might be a rock structure or a cave entrance.

All they'd found were a bunch of stone walls and the foundation of an old cabin. But abandoned foundations and crumbling stone walls were everywhere in Vermont, bordering roads and property, marking trailheads and rights-of-way. They'd even found some of the old original cairns, or what might have once been old cairns: a stack of rocks that seemed too even for nature to have set it that way, or a set of matched stones that were crisscrossed in a certain manner.

But no Grotto. And that was what they truly wanted to find. Especially Jules, with her fascination for rocks. Jules, with her special hammer and her hand lens that she wore on a lanyard around her neck. Half the time Jules's backpack was weighed down more with rocks than books. Elk even called her Rock Girl.

As Sam stared out the bus window, the trees looked as lonely as he felt. Elk was probably out there right now, driving his four-wheeler along the old paths, stirring up the birds.

Was it possible, somehow, that Zeke's spirit was out there in the woods? What about Sylvie's spirit?

Just as Elk couldn't talk about Zeke, Sam had a hard time thinking about Sylvie. It had been weeks since she drowned. Two, maybe even three. Sam hadn't tried to keep track. All he knew was that they hadn't found her. His throat tightened, and he pulled his jacket up around his ears. And as he did, a flash of rusty red flickered between the trees. He sat back. Blinked.

“Fox,” he said, turning automatically to tell Sylvie and Jules. But of course neither of them were there. And the fox he'd heard the day Sylvie drowned hadn't brought anyone any luck, had it?

He stared at his knees, willing himself not to cry. All he wanted was to get home. One stop. Another. Finally it was his turn. As the driver pulled up to the end of his family's driveway, he hurried down the aisle, not looking at anyone as the bus rolled to a stop.

He tore down the steps, ready to run up the driveway, but someone stood in his way.

Elk. The bus lumbered away as Elk hauled Sam into his arms and squeezed him hard. So hard it felt good.

I
n the above world, the days grew longer. In the birthing den, Senna and her brothers grew too. Fast, the way little foxes do. Soon their parents would lead them through the complicated earthen tunnels to stand at the brink of the above world.

In the meantime, there were the brothers. Older Brother smelled of milk and earth, Younger Brother of fur and pine sap. Older Brother was the quiet, calm one. Except when Senna began batting him with her paw.

Play with me! Play!

And up he leaped, paws out.

Pounce!

Growling and pushing,
bat bat bat
. Older Brother and Senna rolled and wrestled and nipped gently, gently.

Senna. Older Brother. They hated being apart more than even a few inches, down there in the below-world den.

Younger Brother, on the other hand, had their father's restless nature. He couldn't wait for the above world. He wanted to trot through the woods, along the trails. He wanted to hunt.

Senna knew about the above world. She did not know how she did, but there it was. She also knew that Older Brother would welcome the sun and the wind. He would be happy. He appeared in Senna's mind as a brown ceramic jug on a flat rock by the river. Younger Brother would be trotting off, muzzle to the air; he appeared to her as a shiny piece of twisted tin, flashing sparks in the sun.

What would Senna herself be like? Her paws itched to be out there, running. She could feel the dry earth underneath her pads, smell the clear, sunny air of day, and the starry sky of night.

It wouldn't be long now. Senna could hardly wait. The gray-green bars hovered in the air of the den, colliding into one another, whispering.

And while the mother fox watched her babies grow, she knew that soon, very soon, she would need to lead them to the above world.

But not yet. She wasn't ready yet.

J
ules now lived in a new time called After Sylvie.

After Sylvie, Dad drew a line between their yard and the woods. It was the newest Do Not. He had taken Jules's hand as if she were a toddler and walked her in a circle around the perimeter of their unfenced yard. “
Do not
leave this area,” he said. Even though the line was unseeable, Jules knew it was there. “Not to be crossed,” her father said. On the other side of it was the rest of the world: the woods, the river, the fields, the road, the bridge, Sam's house across the river. The Slip was there too.

After Sylvie, all Jules could think about was the Slip.

After Sylvie, Mrs. Harless came by their house every day and brought them soup. Split pea soup. Cabbage soup. Chicken soup with noodles. Soup that never seemed to cool down.

After Sylvie, the bus quit stopping at the end of their drive because Jules stopped going to school. She couldn't stand the thought of it. Getting on the school bus without Sylvie, walking through the big double doors without Sylvie, facing all her friends, all Sylvie's friends, everyone either looking at her or trying not to look at her.

No.

After Sylvie, Dad stayed home from work. He couldn't bear to leave Jules even for a minute. Jules didn't mind. She didn't want to be alone without her sister.

After Sylvie, Jules organized and reorganized her rock collection every day. She spread them out on her bed like always. Then she rearranged them into dozens of Sherman Galaxies, beaming the tiny LED sun across their glistening surfaces, shining her magnifier on them so that she could see the nearly invisible lines and cracks, the small chips of mica or pyrite or talc. But she ignored the categories—metamorphic, igneous, sedimentary. She still knew their names, but she didn't want to separate them. No more perfect vertical and horizontal rows. Just the far-flung Sherman Galaxies.

“Do you want to look through your rocks out in the kitchen?” her dad had said to her a couple of times. “Or the living room?”