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Authors: Kathi Appelt

Maybe a Fox (8 page)

BOOK: Maybe a Fox
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The girl's boots crunched on the shattered particles. She picked one up, a long, dangerous curve that looked too sharp to pick up. Then she ran across the yard to the trail, close to where Senna was hiding, and threw it as hard as she could into the woods.

“You messed up, Sylvie! You ran too fast!”

The girl sank down and buried her head in her knees. Senna lowered her body to the ground and slunk forward. Inch by inch she crept, hidden by the growing darkness and underbrush. The crying girl's scent washed over Senna, and she breathed her in. She smelled familiar, but how? Why?

The girl was solid, not sleek like the other animals of the forest. She wore yellow cotton, a yellow cotton shirt, almost the same yellow as the humans' den. Her feet carried the scent of miles traveled in woods and fields and along the river. This girl was a creature of the woodlands, like her own fox family; Senna knew instantly the girl's family had been here a long, long time. But unlike her fox family, the girl's family was coated with a layer of sadness.

There was so much sorrow here.

Senna listened, trying to understand. She snuffed the air. A familiar scent was imprisoned in the fibers of the old cotton shirt draped around the crying girl. The knowledge of it was buried and faint, carried somewhere deep in her bones and her blood. She pricked up her nose and breathed in again.

Suddenly she heard the footsteps of a heavier human coming toward the girl. Senna watched. It was a male, tall and strong, but also, Senna could tell, weary, exhausted.

“Come on, Jules. It's time to go in.” His voice was quiet, tired.

Jules. Jules.
At the sound of the word, something prickled through Senna's body. Jules. That was the name of the crying girl. Jules. The name sank into Senna's fur. Jules.

“Dad.” The girl named Jules called the man Dad. Senna now knew two names. Not fox names, human names.

She watched the girl named Jules and the man named Dad walk back into their yellow home. All around her the air filled with sense and memory. Senna breathed it in. The gray-green bars trembled over her head, and all around her.
Kennen,
they whispered. A reminder.

Jules was a human girl.

And Senna was a Kennen fox.

They were linked, the two of them. Jules and Senna. But what did that mean? Senna snuffed the air again, reaching for the familiar scent. She waited in the brush, hoping that Jules would come back outside. But the yellow house was quiet.

Then she heard her mother, far away, calling her home.

Senna.

Sennnnnna.

Senna turned and ran toward the sound of her mother's voice.
Senna.
Faster and faster, she ran, as fast as her legs could carry her, but not before she looked over her shoulder one more time at the yellow human house.

18

A
fter dinner that night, Jules stacked all the papers and books that Sam had delivered to her these past weeks atop the kitchen table. Dad shook his head at the size of the pile. “I think you need to start by sorting.” Jules nodded. She was good at sorting, wasn't she? She had sorted her rock collection about a million times. But homework and rocks were two different things. She liked rocks. Loved rocks. Homework? Not so much.

“Come on, Juley-Jules,” said Dad. And then, she couldn't believe it, he added, “I'm counting on you.”

There it was, Jules's dad, counting on her. A small ache blossomed in the back of her throat. She swallowed hard, and then . . .
Kapow!

The shot rattled the windowpane. “That was a little too close!” Dad said. Jules agreed. Even though she was used to hearing the occasional gunshot, it seemed like there had been a lot of them lately.

“That bear's gotten a little too big for his britches. Seems like everyone in a three-mile radius is after him.”

Most bears retreated into the woods and kept to themselves once spring came and there was food to eat, voles and rabbits and mice and mushrooms and slugs, even. But not this one. He was still out raiding trash cans and chasing barn cats and rummaging through the sugarhouses, where sap collected from the maple trees was boiled down into syrup. Mr. Archer, the owner of Archer's Sheep Farm, was especially intent on ridding the area of the bear. He was determined not to lose even one of his sheep to it.

Kapow!
Another shot, this one farther away. Jules felt a rush of pity for the bear. Weren't mother bears supposed to tell their babies to steer clear of garbage and syrup and sheep? Where was its mother? For a second she felt anger toward the mother bear. But then she realized that maybe the bear was just like her, without a mother, and he had forgotten everything she ever told him about being a bear.

And that led to another sorrow.

“Dad,” she said. “I don't remember her.”

“What are you talking about, honey?”

“Mom. You and Sylvie always talked about Mom together. Stories that you remembered.”

“We did. Yes, we did.”

“But I don't remember her.” Her throat tightened. “I'm sorry, Dad.”

Dad pulled a chair up to the table and pushed the pile of homework to one side. Then he rested his hands palm down on the flat surface of the table and looked right into Jules's eyes. “You don't need to be sorry, honey. You were a tiny little thing when she died. I'd be surprised if you remembered anything more than a few flashes.”

“But it was your ritual,” she managed to gulp out. “There's no one to remember Mom with now.”

“Juley-Jules,” he said. “There are plenty of other rituals. Old ones, new ones. Like popcorn and a movie with my favorite eleven-year-old. That's a ritual I can get behind.”

After a minute Jules nodded. Yes. That was a ritual she could get behind too.

19

S
enna was fox through and through. In the weeks since her birth, she and her brothers had grown fast, the way foxes do. She had lost most of her baby fluff and her coat was a deep auburn color, with tips of black on her feet and nose and tail. Her mother and father guided her and her brothers in the ways of fox, ways that had been passed down for generations. A thousand years of fox knowledge soaked into Senna and her brothers.

But Senna also knew things that her brothers and parents didn't, because she was Kennen. Unlike Younger Brother, who was linked to the wind, his element; and unlike Older Brother, who was linked to water, Senna was linked to the human girl Jules.

The day she asked her mother about the gray-green bars that appeared sometimes, colliding soundlessly in the air around them, her mother had shaken her head.

“You are Kennen, daughter.”

That was all she said. But her voice was filled with a sad wonder, and the gray-green bars appeared just at that moment. Senna stared at them, following their movements with her eyes. Her mother's eyes were on her. It was then that Senna realized her mother didn't see the gray-green bars. Her mother didn't hear the whispered
Kennen
. Her mother wasn't linked to a human, the way her daughter was, and this worried her mother.

But why?

Being Kennen made sense to Senna. She
did
know things that Older Brother didn't know, but wasn't that a good thing? She knew, for example, that the enormous cat, the one shadowing the young male human who walked through these woods, was no threat to her or her fox family.
Catamount.
He, too, had a purpose; Senna was sure of it.

20

T
he morning of Jules's return to school came too soon. She knew she had to go back because her father was going back to work, and she couldn't stay there all alone with just her rocks and occasional visits from Mrs. Harless and Elk to keep her company. But she still . . . Did. Not. Want. To. Return. Not yet. There was the homework she hadn't done, for one thing. There was the school bus with Sam but not Sylvie, for another. There was the thought of all the faces that would be staring at her or trying not to when she walked through the big double doors, for another. There was, there was, there was . . . way too much to think about.

The night before, Jules had pulled the orange mitten out of her hoodie pocket. For the millionth time, she rubbed it against her nose. Sylvie's scent was stronger in the Flo-Jo T-shirt than the mitten. The mitten smelled more of wool, lanolin. But the shirt held Sylvie's smell like a cup. Jules pulled the neck out and tucked her nose into the yellow cloth. Coconut. She went to sleep that way, holding the shirt against her face the way a baby held its blanket.

But the shirt that was such a comfort all night filled her with dread in the morning. School. Without Sylvie.

She walked to the kitchen, sat down hard, and curled her toes around the rung on the kitchen chair. She used it to keep herself anchored.

“Jules,” Dad said, breaking her spell. “You okay?”

She slumped down and tugged at her hair. When was the last time she had brushed it? Yesterday? Two days ago? Two weeks? She couldn't go to school with her hair in such a tangle, could she? She looked at Dad and noticed that his own hair was turning gray around his ears. The gray was something new. She tugged harder at the knot in her hair and looked at the stack of undone homework at the end of the table. A homework mountain.

She was about to tell Dad that she wasn't really okay, no, because her hair was too snarled, plus she had too much homework, and she needed to sort through her rocks again, when Dad put his hand under Jules's chin and lifted it so that she had to face him. She could see the dark circles under his eyes and the way his cheeks sagged. But she also saw the firm set of his mouth.

“You can do this, Jules,” he said. “You're my strong girl.”

No. No, she wasn't. Not without Sylvie. The clock said almost seven, almost time to leave for school. Dad tugged on her snarled hair. “Maybe it won't be as bad as you think,” he said. But how could it be anything but awful? The thought of going to school without Sylvie was unbearable. Just like the thought of playing the Maybe game without Sylvie was unbearable.

Where do you go when you die?

Maybe you grow wings.

Maybe you fly away like a bluebird.

Maybe you make yourself so small that nobody can see you at all.

21

K
ennen or not, Senna was still a fox, and the lessons continued for her and her brothers. The Disappearance, the Reemergence, hunting, fading into the woods when enemies were near. And now, the road.

If you must cross a human road, wait in the hollow beside it first. Make sure you're alone. Then cross quickly.

The mother and father foxes tested each kit. When it was Senna's turn, she paused and looked both ways, pricked her ears for noise and her nose for prey, glanced back at her parents, and then trotted across. The pavement was warm and smooth under her paws, a strange but good feeling. Once on the other side of the road, Senna and her brothers looked back at their parents, who were standing shoulder to shoulder, eyes on their kits. Relieved. Then they, too, darted across the road and into the forest.

Catamount.

The giant pale cat was closer than she had ever scented him. She looked up. There he was, stretched along the lowest branch of the maple next to her, his tawny fur almost invisible in the early morning air.

The huge cat was quiet, his muscles relaxed. Not hungry or looking for prey.
No threat.
He blinked at her.
Sister,
he said to her in the language of Kennen
. Sister.
A beautiful word.

22

S
am had told Mr. Simon not to stop at the Sherman driveway. So on the day Jules went back to school, after she managed to sort of brush her hair and to stuff the homework mountain into her backpack, Dad took her to school in his pickup truck. She was wearing Sylvie's Flo-Jo T-shirt underneath her hoodie.

“I'll call the school office to make sure you can ride the bus home,” Dad said, while she pulled her seat belt across her chest.

Jules stared out the passenger window as they drove the seven miles along Sumac Lane, the single-lane road that led into Hobbston and school.

Right before they crossed the bridge that spanned the Whippoorwill, from the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of red zip across her vision. Fox? She twisted around to look out the back window, but the flash was gone. The woods were full of foxes, but they usually kept themselves well hidden. Jules kept looking back over her shoulder, hoping for another glimmer—foxes meant luck, and she could use some luck today—but there was no sign of movement. The fox was gone.

Jules leaned hard against the truck's cloth seat. The little snow fox she had made just before Sylvie died popped into her mind. Sylvie would have loved it. She loved all the snow animals that Jules used to make for their miniature snow people, but the fox—that one would have been her favorite.

“Luck,” said Dad.

“What?”

“A fox. I saw it too.” He gave her a small smile. She wished she could hold on to that smile all day. But too soon, the doorways of the school loomed in front of them.

“All right, Jules,” Dad said. “All right.”

It was as if he was talking to himself. As if this was as hard on him as it was on her. She wished fiercely that they could just go home. Make some popcorn and sit on the couch with Dad's arm around her and watch a movie. Dad was getting out of his side of the truck and coming around to her side. But before she could put her hand on the door handle, someone else opened it.

Sam.

“Hey,” he said. Then he reached behind her and grabbed her stuffed-with-undone-assignments backpack and slung it over his shoulder. Jules watched him as he raised his chin to Dad and smiled. She felt so bad for yelling at him the other day. But if Sam was still upset about it, he didn't show it.

BOOK: Maybe a Fox
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