FOX, A Hero's Journey. Book 2 The Road: part one.
Michael Gray Griffith
With his family dead, and the Spirit Foxes deciding he’s to small to live, Fox is left to die alone in the destroyed den.
Alone, but for a Crow that is waiting to eat him.
Chapter
Other spirit foxes joined the Spirit Vixen. They moved in close, observing Fox suckling, all of them grumbling.
The Spirit Vixen looked up. Mother was hiding in the fog of the dream.
“Get out of here!” the Spirit Vixen growled. “Go on!”
“I want to see him,” Mother replied.
“Don’t worry, you will. Look how skinny he is. He’ll be dead in a week.”
Mother said nothing. Instead, she looked at Fox once, then, head down, turned and melted away.
More spirits arrived, all of them nervously searching the dream’s distance. They brought news of other litters, telling the Spirit Vixen of strong, well-fed cubs—some born in the cities. And they spoke of the sickness.
Fox awoke. Lifting his dream head, he looked around, but at the sight of so many spirit foxes, he curled up against the Spirit Vixen’s belly and tucked his tail between his legs.
All but the Spirit Vixen ignored him. As they talked amongst themselves in dreaded tones, she watched the small cub, trying to figure out where he was and what was happening.
Another spirit fox arrived—a young vixen, flustered and concerned.
“They’re coming,” she said. “We have to go.”
All the spirits lighting the dream shifted as if shoved. For the first time, Fox could guess at their number: fifty, perhaps more.
The Spirit Vixen called for calm. They tried to obey, but as Fox studied them, he could see the fear in their eyes.
“Let’s go,” one whispered, and so they did.
Fox moved closer to the Spirit Vixen, hoping to strengthen her resolve to stay. He found her eyes. She looked at him angrily, a fire in her gaze. But the flames were fleeting, quickly extinguished by the waters of disappointment. As he watched the flames die, he realized she was no longer looking at him but through him—through him and far away.
“Please,” the young vixen urged her. “We have to go.”
The Spirit Vixen nodded—a small nod that gave the last of the spirits permission to leave.
Alone with the Spirit Vixen, Fox watched her raise her weary eyes and fix them on something behind him.
Fox turned and saw it: a dot, a white dot growing larger, quickly.
Whimpering, he turned back to her for advice, but she was nowhere to be seen.
The approaching dot became two foxes, then two became more.
Fox looked around for somewhere to hide, but finding nowhere, he rolled onto his side and offered them his belly.
The approaching foxes became a pack—hundreds of them, all bright. In complete silence, they tore past: a stampede of hunters chasing those that had fled.
Fox whimpered as they passed. Closing his eyes, he realized he could feel them with nerve endings he didn’t even know he had. When they were gone, trembling, he opened his eyes and found he was wrong.
They had not all gone. A large male had remained and now stood before him.
This was the Spirit Fox, and he glowed so luminously it was possible to believe he was part fox and part sun.
Coming forward, head and tail up, he studied Fox as if Fox were a piece of rotting food—or worse, a human. Then he ignored Fox, looking through him just as the Spirit Vixen had done. Except, where her eyes had given in to regret, his appeared simply annoyed. Then, without reason, he stopped, turned, located his disappearing pack, and followed them.
Fox watched him go. He waited. Waited some more, then finally accepted, as the dream’s fog churned, that in all this space, he was alone.
Chapter
This pen was different. Circular, it had slats for the foxes to sleep on, and above them, four fixed cameras, their lenses protruding through the pen’s high wire roof. Beyond the roof was the ceiling with its ample, frosted skylight.
Inside the pen, ten foxes watched the scientists and laboratory technicians who, through the wire, observed and recorded their behavior.
The foxes had all believed they were coming to the small cages, resigned to the fact that they were about to die. But now they were here instead. Confused, they paced around the pen, rubbing past each other as they watched and were watched.
They had been given water and food, but none had been weighed, measured, or injected.
Time passed. Their hackles settled. They drank. They ate. They yawned as they waited, and finally, they slept.
Spirit foxes turned up, drifting around and above them, ignoring the two young males who, desperate to mate, fought over an old vixen.
The new fox was brought in through a door different from the one they’d been brought through. Inside its small cage, it growled as the humans carrying it placed the cage on the floor. Through the mesh door, it glared at the other foxes. These foxes, sensing its presence, began pacing and sniffing the air. In this fox’s ear was a bright red tag.
The cage was brought to a specially designed access door built into the wall of the main pen. Then the door of the small cage was opened, and the fox jumped out.
As it entered the pen, Professor Chute and the other scientists and technicians came to the wire. The other foxes watched this new fox too. Initially, none would go near it, and it would not go near them. But time passed, and with it went the foxes’ suspicions. The new fox did not smell or look sick. Taken for being just another fox, it mingled with them, smelled their behinds, rubbed up against them, and ate their food.
Transferred by touch, the virus traveled into the other foxes’ gullets, where it found cells to hide within. Once hidden, it began replicating itself exponentially. Finally, these infected cells collapsed, and suddenly free, the new viruses rushed to bury themselves into all the cells nearby. Hidden, they began the cycle again, and again, and again. Just before morning, a technician filmed the first fox vomiting.
Chapter
Crow dropped to the entrance of the den and peered into the gloom. Cocking his head from one side to the other, he could see nothing but the clumps of dirt that had collapsed from the ceiling. The only way to search it thoroughly would be to enter it. But he didn’t like holes. Still, the cub had to be in there. Where else could it be?
He thought of cawing but dismissed the idea, as the noise might attract other scavengers—ones larger and more capable of killing than he was. No, he would wait. Eventually, hunger and its sidekick, thirst, would bring the cub out.
Underneath the soil, face curled into his belly, Fox listened to the bird.
For two days and nights, Fox remained buried. Breathing the stale air that seeped its way down, he slept, stirred, and lay awake, listening through the light covering of soil to all the sounds of the surrounding bush.
He could not hear Mother. He could not hear Dint. He could hear the wind, though, and the magpie sentries warbling an “all clear” to their clans foraging below. He heard insects too, especially the ants scrambling over the soil above him. And he could hear Crow.
Muscles aching, he journeyed into the dreamless night of the long second day.
On the third day, he awoke to find his fears and his ability to endure had been defeated. Hunger and thirst had conquered them, and past his aches and cramps, his lungs were desperate for clean air.
With a gasp, he burst up through the soil.
After the stale breath of his stomach, the air of the den was delicious. Its sudden rush left him giddy. Quickly, he pulled himself out of the dirt and stretched. His legs tingled with pins and needles. His spine and neck creaked as his vertebrae worked their way back to their usual position. Around him, the den was destroyed. Dint and Mother were nowhere to be seen.
Coming closer to the mouth of the lair, he peered out from the shadows. The bush appeared unchanged—only the emptiness was new, and like a stinking blanket, the stench of the Man and the Dog smothered the odor of his missing family.
Hunger groaned. He shifted position, trying to calm it, but it took no notice. Studying the trees and the endless distances between them, he picked himself up and, swallowing the last of his fears, walked toward the opening.
The sun’s brightness, after such a long stretch of dark, throbbed against the back of his eyes. He blinked repeatedly, waiting for them to adjust, and sniffed the air, listening as he did.
Once acclimatized, he peered up at all the surrounding trees. There were a few birds here and there, and behind them, a brilliant blue sky. He could not see, hear, or smell Crow.
Perhaps the bird had given up. Thinking back, he realized he hadn’t heard it since early yesterday, when it had been cawing at some magpies. The magpies were still here, picking their way around the base of a eucalypt.
Hunger groaned. Thirst rasped.
Holding on to his heart, he stepped into the world. And Crow cawed.
Yelping, Fox scurried back into the den, crouching behind the piles of caved-in roof. Slowly, he raised his head and looked outside. There, in the mouth of the lair, stood Crow.
He was a confident bird, severe in his colorless feathers, his head cocked to one side, peering into the den. Fox could see thoughts shimmering across and below his small, black eyes.
“Kill him,” an inner voice whispered. Hunger agreed. In Fox’s head, he imagined himself charging out of the den and dragging Crow down.
Before him, the bird was still cocking his head this way and that. While summoning his courage, Fox took in his own body. He had never really evaluated his own growth before. His black puppy fur was gone, replaced by the coloring of his mother. He looked back at Crow. The reason this bird had almost killed him before was because it had had the element of surprise—the element that was now his. He could still feel the shock of Crow bursting out of the dark. But then, as fear tried to hold him back, he also saw Dint fighting the bird. Dint, who was now gone. This rush of hate was all hunger needed to light his fuse. Without warning, Fox exploded.
But he wasn’t fast enough. His first pounce landed short, and by his second, Crow was a squawking blur of wings, feathers, and claws. And then he was gone—perched and cawing from a nearby tree as Fox sulked back into the den.
Hours passed, and with hunger wearing him down, Fox again came to the entrance of the den and peered up out of the mouth. He peered at Crow.
Crow cawed.
Fox glared.
Crow cawed again.
But as Fox scrutinised the bird, he found Crow’s eyes had become more difficult to read. They had changed, somehow. They kept their colour, their severity, yet still they’d altered. It was as though Fox could see thoughts debating: each new thought putting forth clever arguments, rebuttals, and possibilities. As Fox continued to watch, he felt a coldness seep through him.
Finally, the bird shook his head and looked away. After glancing back at Fox one more time, he flew to another branch further away. There, perched, he looked at Fox and cawed.
Fox cocked his head one way, then, as Crow waited, he cocked it the other.
Crow took off again, flying a few more trees away, where he landed on a low branch and cawed once more.
It was as though the bird wanted him to follow.
Why?
Fox moved back into the den. It was a trap. He knew it. But he also knew that, trap or no trap, this den—his only earthy refuge—could no longer sustain him.
The bird cawed. Fox looked back at it. Could this black bird be offering him life? What other choices did he have? Braving it alone? How? Unable to hunt, unable to find water, as far as he knew, he was unable to do anything other than hide in a hole. And while the bird was dangerous, it would still have to kill him.
He came back to the mouth of the den and peered intently at the bird as Crow, black as night, watched him.
Crow cawed again, impatiently. Then, a moment later, he watched as Fox, tail between his legs, left the den.
Nervous, the little cub stumbled over the undergrowth that grew too high for his legs. A healthy distance away, the cub stopped and glared, his gold eyes trying to decipher the clues to his fate.
Fox was unable to decipher anything, but it was clear to him that dark secrets were mulling over inside that black skull.
Without further ado, Crow lifted into the air, flew to another tree, and cawed again.
Constantly aware of the bird’s position, Fox stole a moment to look back at the lair. For the first time, he saw the fallen tree it was nestled under and the endless trees behind it—the ones he had only heard. From here, it was almost impossible to see the broken mouth of the den.
He yearned for his family, then remembered Crow and swung back, ready for a fight. But Crow was perched where he had left him.
Crow cawed, waited, then flew off deeper into the trees.
With hunger prodding him, Fox lifted to his feet and followed.
Chapter
They walked for miles, and although Fox knew he had to be on guard, he found it impossible to concentrate on the mundane chore of watching where he was stumbling. Everywhere, trees rose with their snake-curved limbs to the altering sky, their olive canopies alive with the brief sights of birds betraying their positions with sharp, cutting squawks. Everywhere, there were ants. Each nest demanded that he stop and sniff it. A few were only collections of dispersed, easily missed holes, defended by sluggish, unobservant sentries. Others were mounds of dirt that rose to the level of Fox's head, covered in agitated crowds of raised, pincered occupants, all determined to see off this cub.
Ahead, Crow cawed.
Fox obeyed and rushed to keep up—for a while. Steps later, the criss-cross tapestry of trails—birds, animals, and even a human—tempted him with their scattered secrets.
In his mind, he was able to transform some of the trails' odours into mental pictures of their owners. He could see their size and knew the direction they were heading. He could read the earth. Not only read it, but every few steps, more words were being added to his dictionary.
Remembering that he should always be monitoring the bird, Fox looked up. Perched in a tree, Crow was not looking at Fox. Instead, he was looking towards an approaching noise. Fox could hear it too. Whatever it was, it was the loudest animal Fox had ever heard. Louder than the Man and much, much louder than the Dog, it was grumbling towards him, its great bulk hidden by the trees.
As Fox listened, its voice grew louder. So loud that the air he was breathing began to shudder. Terrified, he looked up to Crow and found the bird studying him.
It is a trap, Fox thought. A trap that he had walked into, which was now closing in around him. He spun around but had no idea where to run. Whatever this enormous animal was, it was not only about to burst through the scrub and devour him, but it was obviously faster than he could ever be. Helpless, hopeless, he tried to escape to the only safe place he knew: sleep. Curling into a ball, he closed his eyes and whimpered.
As Crow watched him, his puzzled head cocked to one side, the animal exploded past the trees, its volume decreasing as it moved away.
By the time Fox realised he was safe, Crow was already flying through these very same trees.
Fox didn’t understand.
Begrudgingly, he followed. Passing between two eucalypts, he shoved his way through a fence of scrub that finally revealed a clearing larger than he could comprehend.
The clearing stretched right and left, curving itself into a wide path. It was as broad as a tall, fallen tree, and its centre was grey and flat, with a broken white line running the length of its middle. It did not look like earth and was separate from any surface he had seen to date.
From just over the other side of the white lines, Crow, perched on a small grey lump, cawed.
Frightened, Fox pushed himself back beneath the sharp leaves of the bushes. Hidden, he pondered what other choices he had as the trees rose into the unconcerned sky. Closing his eyes to escape, he burrowed his way below his consciousness. Maybe if he closed his eyes tightly enough, this view would not be here when he opened them. Perhaps, if he imagined hard enough, everything would return to his birth den: to Mother, curled all warm and smelling of food, and Dint asleep, as he so often was.
Crow’s caw opened his eyes.
Nothing had changed. The bush was alien: similar, but not home.
Turning around, he peered through the leaves and studied the beckoning Crow. For whatever his reasons were, this bird was the closest thing he had to an umbilical cord. Realising this, and although consumed with fear by the presence of the road, he crawled out from underneath the bushes and trotted, with his tail wrapped beneath his belly, towards the waiting Crow.
Chapter
Crow was perched upon a dead rat. The rat’s back was broken, its side opened in a long tear, vomiting its sun-dried entrails onto the road.
Hopping off the rodent, Crow disturbed a cloud of flies.
Fox was confused. He looked down the road both ways, sniffed the rat and the road near its body—his breath annoying the agitated flies. He looked up to Crow. Crow, a safe distance away, cawed as if he was taking it for granted that Fox understood.
Fox did not understand. Eyes on Crow, Fox took a bite of the rat.
Crow exploded. Wings out, he cawed and cawed. Fox backed up, ears back, and growled.
Crow stopped and cocked his head one way, then the other. Finally, he came forward, cautious goosestep after cautious goosestep, and touched the rat with his beak. Following this, he flew back to the side of the road they had come from and there, cawed.
Fox didn’t understand.
Crow cawed again, but Fox stood where he was, mystified.
The bird flew back and once again touched the rat before flying back to the side of the road.
Fox understood, and this excited him. Quickly studying the corpse, he picked up the rat's tail in his jaws and began dragging it off the road. Then he stopped and looked up. From his right, in the distance, came a roar.
Crow cawed, a sense of urgency in his tone.
Fox thought of leaving the rat, but the thought of letting this roaring creature get it and eat it first made him re-grasp its tail and pull like mad.
The roar grew louder. The road below Fox's paws began to vibrate. The creature sounded enormous—bigger than the last.
To a rustle of leaves, Fox, bum first, dragged the rat out of the road’s view. A moment later, a car passed, its belly full of humans.
Astounded, Fox poked his head out and watched it disappear.
Crow landed on the earth behind the bush, keeping, as always, a healthy few meters between himself and Fox.
Fox dragged the rat out of the bush and, despite still being in shock at the size of the car, took his first bite of the rat.
Crow exploded again.
Fox growled, but this time, after Crow stopped, the bird just glared at Fox and waited.
Fox wasn’t sure he understood, but as the bird scrutinised the cub’s every move, Fox ripped off one of the rat’s rear legs and, wondering if this was what Crow wanted him to do, tossed it over to the bird.
With a quick jab, Crow picked it up in his sharp black beak and rose into the trees.
They ate in silence for hours, turning simultaneously to monitor each car that passed.
It got late. Fox, now underneath the bushes where he lay on his full belly, woke and realised he’d nodded off. Shaking his head clear, he looked up and found the tree where Crow had been empty.
Tensing up, he looked everywhere, then everywhere again, but Crow was nowhere. He was gone.
Chapter
With the bird's departure, the surrounding bush gained a silence that sound could not dislodge. Even the grumbling growls of the odd passing car could not remove it.
Underneath the bush, Fox waited, wondering what to do. Hours passed. Then, as the sun readied to leave, he decided to seek out the burrow he could taste on the gently stirring air. It was a tenuous scent, almost drowned in a combination of odours rising from the humans' road and the engulfing bush. At the first traces of the night, he crept out from underneath the shrub and, hesitating while standing for the first time in hours, re-sniffed the moving air for the den's location. The scent of the den, still subtle, wafted in from the direction of another fallen tree. Rotting, the tree was encrusted in a mishmash of smells. Lichen grew underneath its bulk, where ants, in cities initially excavated by termites, bustled. On top, other plants that had attached themselves to its cracked surface were not only feeding on the monolith's decay but also concealing the entrance of the den with their drooping branches.
Using his nose to guide him and his ears and eyes to survey the building shadows for danger, Fox crossed to it. Pausing outside, he cowered, ready to make a hasty retreat at the discovery of a previously unsensed occupant. He took a deep sniff. The hole's air was a pungent diary written in the lingering ink of dried shit. An old diary: the den was empty.
He entered, squeezing between the draping leaves. The interior’s only occupants were a few bustling insects. These became Fox's evening meal, their crackling shells disrupting the silence that had held the burrow for weeks. Fox took the silence for safety and, allowing this sense of security to relax him, began searching the walls for more grubs.
Although he was not hungry—his stomach still bloated with the meal of the rat—he was not accustomed to an overabundance of food. This hate of hunger saw him devouring more than he had ever eaten in one sitting before. Quickly, he was sick, vomiting up the last insects he had devoured, then sat there, next to the excrement, unconcerned because he knew he could always eat it later.
Night fell, and from outside, in the vulnerable world, came the sound of an approaching car. He had seen dozens of cars today, so was more curious about the ever-hanging shapes and colours than concerned. As he peered through the curtaining leaves of the hole’s entrance, listening to the approaching roar, he began wondering how, in this dark, it could see where it was going.
Then he cringed as the car rounded the bend and illuminated the entire scrub with its two bright, unnatural eyes.
Scrambling backwards into the walls, terrified that the car could see him, he squinted as the den’s womb exploded in light. Whimpering, he curled into a foetal position. He could not stop himself. Then he tried to fall asleep. He couldn’t, but when he opened his eyes, the car and its light were gone.
Unable to fathom the car's ignorance, Fox relaxed back into his adopted home. But soon, other sounds came—sounds that left him squinting through the leaves. He could hear twigs being crushed beneath small, careful paws. He heard human rubbish being crumpled and ripped apart somewhere near the road. Above, nocturnal birds released their hollow calls, notes that hung forever in the gently moving air until other birds, far off in the distance, returned them. But he knew these calls. They didn’t frighten him. Then, though, he heard one sound that did.
Something large was eating what was left of the rat. Crawling to the very rim of the den, Fox located the dead rat and found it.
Hearing something, the huge feral cat stopped chewing. Lifting its head, it looked his way. A ginger tom, it was several times larger than Fox and was now sniffing the air, trying to identify the owner of the sound.
Fox looked back into the den for somewhere to hide. There was nowhere.
The cat’s ears twitched. Its tail, curled in the air behind it, snapped its end back and forth. Eyes glued to the leaves covering the hole, it took a step.
Fox tried to growl, but nothing came out. It was as if his body had become frozen.
The cat took another step. If Fox hadn’t been watching, he wouldn’t have known this: the cat’s steps were perfectly silent.
And then their eyes met. This was all that the cat required. Now it knew its prey could not fight back, it forgot its careful steps. In an attacking blur, it lunged forward.
The cat was so fast that, instead of turning, hiding, or even growling, Fox froze, his eyes wide as he watched it charge.
With a thump, the Dog-Fox slammed into the cat’s side.
As Fox watched, his little brain unable to accept that what he was seeing was actually happening, the predators fought. The Dog-Fox was all over the cat, its front paws holding it down, its jaws gnashing as it tried to secure a bite. Below, the cat was scratching and snarling, its front claws digging into the Dog-Fox’s face.
The stronger of the two, the Dog-Fox, ploughed the cat across the ground until the cat rolled backwards and the Dog-Fox rolled over it. This was a mistake. In the collapse, the cat found freedom. It didn’t last. With a single leap, the Dog-Fox was on its back. The cat crashed to the floor, its upper body slamming into the fallen tree, its claws ripping down the den’s covering leaves as it did.
Again, the cat caught Fox’s eye, a moment before the Dog-Fox dragged him away.
The Dog-Fox did not intend to let the cat back up. On top of it now, its jaws clamped to the back of its neck, it held on as the cat scratched, snarled, kicked, and twisted.
Even after the cat’s spirit light had left its body, the Dog-Fox held on, refusing to let go until he’d felt the cat’s body slump.
Finally satisfied, the Dog-Fox lifted its head and stretched its neck. A fully-grown male, he was almost two meters from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail. And he had been hurt. But oddly, not by this cat. Fox could see the healed scars running down its snout. Deep scars. There were more below its left ear: scratches and puncture wounds.
The Dog-Fox ripped into the corpse as though it hadn’t eaten in weeks.
The fickle wind changed, stirring through the Dog-Fox’s fur and bringing to Fox, who was hiding behind the last remaining leaves, the scents of the animals the Dog-Fox had killed. There were the scents of rabbits, rats, and mice, the subtle essence of a magpie, and then, over and above these, the smell of a vixen and her cubs. His fur was covered in their scent, and the scars spoke of a horrendous fight.
As he understood, Fox exhaled in shock—a gasp that saw the Dog-Fox lift his head.
Fox felt warm urine run down his leg. Before him, the Dog-Fox chewed and studied the fallen tree. Fox was sure it could see him, but unconcerned, the Dog-Fox returned to the cat and took his next bite.
Fox knew he couldn’t stay here. With nowhere in the den to hide, he peered down the side of the tree. Along its length, there were gaps he might be small enough to squeeze into. Before him, the Dog-Fox, facing away, chewed.
Fox ran. Bursting through the leaves, he focused on the closest gap and did not see the Dog-Fox turn and see him.
The Dog-Fox did not run. Leaving the cat’s corpse, it approached the gap where Fox was struggling to squeeze under and, while chewing, casually took in the abandoned den.
Frantically, Fox scraped his way further under the tree. The wood was damp and soft, crumbling against his back. Needing to know if he’d crawled in far enough, he glanced back and found the Dog-Fox’s face. Head on the ground, the Dog-Fox was glaring at him.
Fox growled. The Dog-Fox didn’t. Instead, it took its time studying the gap beneath the tree. Then it sniffed the damp earth that Fox was pressed against. Suddenly, it backed off.
Fox breathed a sigh of relief, then yelped as the Dog-Fox began furiously digging.
Fox looked to see how much further under he could crawl. There was some space—not much.
Still, the Dog-Fox dug, stopping only to shove its snout under and snort before sniffing. Every time it did this, its snout reached further in.
Fox reached the place where the tree met the earth. The only place open now was forward, along this narrow seam. It was difficult to crawl into. Ahead, even with his brilliant eyes, he couldn’t see a thing. The Dog-Fox encouraged him: its snorting and digging chasing him into this dark. And then Fox’s nose thumped into wood. He had run out of space. Unable to look back, with nowhere left to hide, and knowing too that even if he could get out, he could never outrun this fox, he escaped to the only place of safety he knew . . . sleep.
Closing his eyes, and closing them tight, he felt his overwhelming fear drive him to sleep. It drove him so deep that even when he heard the snarling yelp, he was unable to wake up.
Chapter
The fox with the red tag stood in the pen. Around him, all the other foxes lay dead, and the pen was soiled with vomit, feces, and blood. He stood, glaring at the scientists as they talked amongst themselves.
The fox was not sick. As the others had started running, snorting, and finally hemorrhaging, he had remained unaffected. Inside his ruddy head, the whimpering and dying sounds of the others haunted him.
He was a carrier. The first. The virus was in him but would not kill him as quickly as it had the others. Instead, it would use him to spread itself to other foxes. And from what the scientists had learned from him, they would now create more carriers and experiment with them.
The scientists had no idea how long the virus would take to kill a carrier, but they were convinced that it would. Today, though, they were not willing to wait and find out. This fox’s role in the birth of the virus was simply to spread it to these two dozen now-dead foxes. He had done that. The next chapter in his short life would be a detailed autopsy.
As the two technicians entered the cage, each carrying a dog-catcher’s pole, he backed up to the rear wall and growled as the loops came for his neck.
From behind the wire, Professor Chute watched, then straightened his lips as, a moment before the fox made his inevitable break for freedom, the fox looked over, found his eyes, and glared.
Chapter
When Fox woke, the sun was up, blunting everything the night had sharpened. Confused, he took his time edging his way out, but his senses quickly informed him that the Dog-Fox was gone. The cat’s body was still there—or what was left of it. Its fleshy bones were now the interest of flies and ants. The Dog-Fox was missing.
Relieved, though very confused, Fox realized he was thirsty. On the verge of leaving, as he moved over the Dog-Fox’s scrapings, he smelled blood. Near the edge of a hidden root lay one of the Dog-Fox’s claws: its base red and fleshy from where it had been ripped out.
The sun’s weight was a celebration. Stretching, Fox shook the dirt from his coat and began chewing grass and licking up the dew.
As the morning aged, he bit at the cat’s corpse, then left it to capture the small grasshoppers that rose awkwardly above the wildflowers that fell beneath his pounces. White butterflies fluttering in complex flight paths too close to the ground also disappeared down his throat. Beetles followed them, then ants and any other insect he stumbled across. For a while, he sniffed the remnants of the thoroughly devoured rat, now covered in ants and maggots.
He could taste the Dog-Fox’s trail. It drifted away into the bush. He peered into the distance, sniffed the air for his presence, but tasted only trees and birds. Reassured, he looked up for his missing bird, but Crow was nowhere to be found. Too excited to fret, he turned his energy into becoming a collector: a storehouse of sounds, smells, and sights.
The surrounding trees were scarred black by a bushfire. He sniffed the vivid green shoots bursting through their blackened bases. Later, he chewed a few branches out of existence or picked them up and ran them through the scrub, snagging spiderwebs that collapsed onto his face. For a while, he sat and watched a clan of magpies who were watching him with mild concern, warbling secret messages in their lyrical language.
Clouds passed.
Cars. So many cars. Fox grew bored of them.
Finally, his first day decayed into a new pink sky, which too dissolved into the night.
Mouth reeking of insects, he took another few bites of the cat’s corpse, then wandered, head up, back under the tree where he squashed himself in.
Quickly, the other sounds, recognizable from the previous night, returned. But tonight, Fox wasn’t as afraid.
Later, fear did come back, though, as he heard and smelled others chewing at the cat.
Chapter
The rabbit fled. Head forward, it powered through the undergrowth, irises wide to see in the dark. It was desperate to reach its burrow. It knew its only chance was underground. It had kittens there, and other family. It hadn’t wanted to travel this far from home, but sweet, sweet grasses were hard to resist, especially when making milk.
She was moving so fast the earth below was a blur. The sky, too, was a blur above—all that was in focus was the dent in the ground.
Home.
And then she rolled, arse over head, as the hunter caught her. Face down, she squealed and scratched, but she knew she would not escape.
Death was a determined shudder, shaking the last bit of her stubborn light free and sending it hunting for her species’ Spirit Trail.
Vixen, still pumped from the hunt, raised her head and evaluated the surrounding bush. She could hear nothing dangerous, but then, out here, there was nothing for her to fear, bar man.
Bringing her fine-boned features down, she sniffed the rabbit. She’d known those new grasses would bring a rabbit. For two days, she’d staked it out. Now it was time to eat the dividend of her investment.
Her mother had been a sensational hunter: she was better.
In the distance, a car passed: the Ranger’s ute. Her ears had learned to tell it apart from the other cars. Audibly, she followed it until it had faded, then, picking up the rabbit like a mother picks up a cub, she carried it off to the greater shadows.
Chapter
The new day awoke as though in an identical routine to the day before. Fox didn’t notice: he could only think of water. After licking up all the dew he could, he sniffed the air for clues of water. He could only smell wildflowers.
Passing cars aged the morning, as did magpies browsing the roadside. As it aged, blue and rainless, it found him annoyed.
With his gums beginning to cake, a stronger breeze found him. He stared up into the endless blue and tried to daydream a large grey cloud into its stretch.
No luck.
He began searching the surrounding landscape for the bird, but coming up Crow-less, sat down to wonder which direction would best take him to water.
The more he pondered, the more he failed to notice the passing cars.
Noon came. Noon left, and each possible way he could go, except from whence he’d come, offered no clues.
Perhaps water was everywhere, all around him but just out of sight? Perhaps it was rare? He didn’t know. And what if, while searching for water, he happened upon other foxes, or the Dog-Fox?
He ate some more of the cat, then sat and stared across to the other side of the road. From here, it looked and smelled identical to this side: moved by the same breezes, accepting and returning the same birds.
Water had to be somewhere… It had to be.
He reached the roadside. Listening for cars, he paced in a little circle as he generated the courage he needed to cross it. But as he went to run, he smelled something familiar. Looking up, he found Crow. Fox jumped up with joy. The bird didn’t understand. It didn’t understand the cat’s corpse either. It sat there on the branch, studying the remains of the cat, then, looking back, perplexed, at the little cub, who was so excited to see him, he was pissing everywhere.
Chapter
Crow was not a laughing bird. For two years, he’d eked out a living in this small and isolated park, surviving on his pluck and skills. But now, as he sat here waiting for this cub to catch up, he found himself sniggering every time the cub stumbled over a stick or yelped as a soldier ant nipped its sniffing snout.
Fox suddenly realized he had not checked Crow’s position for ages. Stopping with a jolt that saw Crow jump too, he found the bird perched and peering at him from above a patch of ferns. There was something wrong with the view. It was slightly blurred. He didn’t understand at first, then, coming closer, realized it was a mist. Hungrily, Fox began gulping large mouthfuls of the wet air without caring where it was coming from.
Crow watched the little cub rising onto his hind legs and biting at the droplets. Back at the road, he’d noticed the cub’s dry lips. He’d known what it meant.
Fox felt his tongue breathe back into life. Revived, he became aware of a strange clicking sound. It was louder and more evenly spaced than any insect he had heard. A series of slow clicks, followed by another series of the same, only these were manic. As it sped up, the cloud of vapor thickened and rolled through the ferns. Pushing himself through the leaves decaying around the base of the ferns’ squat trunks, he emerged into a treeless clearing. It was enormous. Not only did it dwarf the road, but a road ran around its far edge, like a hem. There were humans playing cricket on the grass and sitting on wooden benches. They scared him initially, but as he watched, he realized they were too engrossed in their activities to notice him. He could smell meat cooking. Drinking from small handheld containers, the humans were chatting and laughing like the magpies near his den.
Then Fox’s attention was distracted by his initial quest: the clicks. He turned from the people and found man-made pipes that stood a meter tall, each connected by one thick hose. They were spraying out a powerful streak of water. The water started slenderly but broke as it lengthened until it imitated rain. Then, past these, down in the center of the clearing, was a pond. Its surface was populated by ducks, coots, and gliding black swans. He could smell the water and all its murky ingredients and realized, as he did, that he recognized the smell. Suddenly, he could see Mother lying in the den on that last night. He could smell her coat, which had been sullied with the odor of this water. Fox tried to, but simply could not comprehend the connection.
When he turned back to see if Crow was still here, he found the bird where he had left him: his black eyes glaring at him in wonder.
“How did you kill that cat?” Crow cawed.
As Fox tilted his head to the side and let his quenched tongue fall out of his mouth, Crow realized Fox hadn’t understood a word.
Chapter
Once freed, the foxes disappeared into the island’s scrub and struggled to remove the blue collars the humans had fastened to them. Most could not do it. Learning to live with them, even though, now and again, the collars beeped, they began hunting, mating, and finding dens. But while dens and mates were plentiful, food was not. It had been. There was evidence everywhere of a large rabbit population. Their burrows, hair, and long-dried droppings were everywhere, along with the skeletons that did not lie in the burrows but in the open, as though the rabbits had just dropped dead.
Not one fox had found a live rabbit.
But then, as they faced the reality of starvation—sat on the small island’s beaches and pondered the distance to the far-off mainland—the humans returned and saved them. They began dumping sheep carcasses at fixed points around the island.
At night, despite smelling these humans close by, the starving foxes came and ate.
Chapter
Mother moved through the forest as she never had when she was alive. Like liquid, she passed through objects that before, when physically bound to the earth, she had been forced to move around. But she did not relish this ease of movement. With dour ghost eyes focused on her destination, she ignored the rain that fell through her and hoped.
A small mob of roos eating the new shoots passed, as did countless spiderwebs catching the raindrops that the morning sun would transform into dangling jewels. Then she paused. A rabbit was sitting near its hole and sniffed the air as though it could smell her. She knew it couldn’t. There was nothing to smell. To another fox, she was made of soft light; to most other things, she did not exist at all.
The rabbit turned its head, its eyes piercing the wet night for that which it could sense. In the end, she came so close she could see her reflection in its worried eyes.
“What are you doing here?” the Spirit Vixen asked as her pack emerged from the darkness and, on flowing paws, surrounded Mother.
Eyes on them all, Mother held her ground. “I’m going to see him,” she said.
The Spirit Vixen did not say anything, but as Mother moved forward, she did not get out of the way.
Mother stopped again and calmly, but firmly, said, “I want to see him.”
From all angles, the spirits moved in.
“When you say him, I take it you mean,” the Spirit Vixen began, “the cub you were going to leave to the dog.”
“I came back!” Mother growled.
“We know, and in doing so, lost them both,” the Spirit Vixen replied.
Mother said nothing.
Understanding what this meant, the Spirit Vixen drifted closer.
“And anyway, are you sure he needs to see you? Seeing how, when you were around, he was starving, and now you’re not, he’s not.”
Mother tried to hold her head up, but a tremble passed through her and stole her strength. Looking down, she found she was standing over a puddle, and in the water, her ghost was waiting.
“I just want to see him,” Mother whispered.
“I know,” the Spirit Vixen said. “I do know, but he’s ours now. Do you understand? And I’m not going to lose him to anyone. Anyone at all.”
Mother looked up to this and found the Spirit Vixen waiting.
“Get her,” the Spirit Vixen said, and as one, the pack descended.
Chapter
Winter subsided, and spring filled the park with wildflowers and the roads with the tourists who came to see them.
Fox continued to pull the road-killed animals, which Crow had found, off the road, or pull items of rubbish Crow had come across to somewhere safe where they could both eat them and bury them. The humans left more food than Fox had ever imagined could exist.
As Fox grew, it took him less time to reach the new corpses. His stumbling through the bush became bounding. Instead of being timid, he tore across the roads and strode across the clearings, hiding at the first hint of danger. It helped, too, to have an extra set of eyes in the sky. In fact, it was this caw—the “beware caw”—that was the first word of Crow’s that Fox thoroughly understood. Crow’s caw for food, and then Fox’s yap for the same word, followed this first word almost immediately. Simple necessity saw other words quickly added and understood. Names for other animals, water, distance. By the end of summer, with Fox almost half-grown and both of them well-fed and healthy, they were, without realizing it, constructing a language: a language constantly, effortlessly evolving.
Simultaneously, Fox continued to learn the language of the bush. He’d come to recognize thousands of smells and sounds—especially dangerous ones. There were many foxes, many cats, and all of them were hungry: all of them hunting. More than a few times, he’d crossed that Dog-Fox’s scent. Because of this, the dens and hiding places he preferred were the smaller ones: ones where he could slip into, like he had that night under the tree.
Not that he fit into spaces as small as he had then.
Still, despite knowing he was more vulnerable, the nights had lost their terror. A fear remained, but it was a healthy fear. It woke him to any unusual or worrying sound and let him sleep through the rest.
He slept best of all in a den below a large boulder. It was a deep den, whose opening faced the setting sun. It smelled of generations of sleeping foxes, and its ceiling was the bottom of the rock itself. The foxes, who were long gone, had dug the den deeper as the years had progressed.
Fox slept at the rear of this den, tucked up in a crevice where he felt he could defend himself from any attack.
Chapter
In the rear of the four-wheel-drive, the foxes, locked in their tiny, individual cages, rocked. The vehicle was working its way down the dirt road, and they rocked to the motion. On either side of the road, the island spread away. On one side, they could see the strip of mainland in the distance, and on the air, they could taste the kangaroos as the graceful marsupials stood in the trees and watched the four-wheel-drive pass. They could also taste other foxes.
These free foxes were confused. With their blue collars on, they watched the humans in this four-wheel-drive letting other foxes go. Every time the vehicle stopped, another fox was released. All of these released ones wore red collars.
Inside the four-wheel-drive, the foxes, still caged, darted their eyes from the passing landscape to the empty cages before them.
Born in the laboratory, they’d grown convinced that they were to die as their fathers and brothers had perished. But instead of trying to run themselves to death inside these small cages, they were being released. Each had caught glimpses of their siblings tearing off into the bush.
Chapter
The joey was a morning dead. Half its body crushed in a tire’s width, its head was raised, and its small mouth open in a final, frozen defiance of death. No other scavengers, except flies, had found it. Fox could smell their freshly laid eggs as he sniffed the joey’s pelt.
All morning, Crow had been bragging about how, after he’d come across the joey lost near the side of the road, he’d waited until a car had approached before swooping down and frightening it out onto the road.
Sinking his teeth into its undamaged upright ear, Fox gave it one hard tug, which dislodged its flesh from the road. Underneath the buzzing cloud of annoyed flies, he dragged the corpse behind the scrub.
Crow, neck feathers puffed, paced upon his chosen branch limb.
“We’ll never eat him in one go,” he cawed. “We’ll have to bury what we don’t finish, for sure.”
Fox nodded and, enraging the settling flies, tore off bite-sized pieces of flesh for the bird. Opening his wings, Crow flapped without flying as the actual moment of devouring drew close. His eyes, ears, and hunger were unable to register any other occurrence. He was already dropping to the floor before Fox had called him—as was their usual routine. Stuffing the morsels into his beak, he lifted, struggling at first, back to his limb.
Fox watched the bird’s awkward lift and followed vaguely, the odd piece of meat falling free to the leaves.
Secretly, Fox often found himself wondering whether he should try surviving without Crow. He knew where to find water. He had a collection of homely, well-hidden burrows. And how hard could hunting be to learn? If needs be, he could survive on insects until his natural-born abilities honed their skills—or, better still, he could eat out of the bins. But as he churned this over, the delicious odor rising off the dead accident victim reminded him of the bird’s benefits.
Crow was deliriously satisfied. These months of eating meat in trees, unconcerned about approaching cars, were a time to be relished—a lifestyle he did not want to surrender back to the difficulties before pairing with Fox. Just the sight of Fox warmed him. Let the other crows fight amongst their murders over the meager scraps squashed and ingrained near the oil stains on the perilous road. And to think, that all those months ago, he had seriously considered just killing the cub. Mouth full, and full of himself, he went to swallow, then noticed Fox looking up.
Lost in the eating, he had not, as Fox had not, noticed their arrival.
Stunned, his beak fell open, releasing a torn slice of flesh that dropped onto the leaves below.
Four female kangaroos were standing in the shade. Four graceful silhouettes, silent and unmoving, their tails draping the foliage in heavy, arching curves. They were observing Fox and the broken joey. But there was no aggression in their stance, no suspicion—just quiet observance. So quiet, it was as though they wished to be regarded as nothing more than trees themselves.
Without looking up to Crow or taking his eyes off the four silent shadows, Fox backed away from the food. Three of the kangaroos followed Fox’s hesitant retreat into the small bushes, observed him cower as he lay, his tail wrapped around his body.
But one of the females did not follow Fox’s retreat. This one kept her vision upon the joey. Crow noticed a discernible trembling that set her apart from the others: a shiver.
Finally, this female looked over to Fox. Stared at him a moment before bringing her full attention around to Crow.
A strange cold moved into Crow. Crow wrapped his wings tighter to offset the odd loss of warmth. He tried to look away but found he was unable to. For some reason, he couldn’t escape her glare. Then he felt something that he would have thought impossible. Somehow, she was moving inside his head. As he stared at her, almost hypnotized, her eyes began inscribing a mirror of themselves—carving, with some spiritual tool, their living presence into his thoughts. Not only could he feel it happening, he couldn’t stop it. He attempted to close his eyes but couldn’t. He tried to step back but remained glued in place. He yearned to fly away but found there was nothing he could do but endure.
Finally, she blinked and then looked away, leaving an exhausted Crow to collapse onto the branch. Floundering, he struggled to come to terms with what had just happened. His heart filled with fear as he realized her eyes’ inscription had remained.
Finished with Crow, the female bent down to her seemingly ineffective front paws and awkwardly moved to the joey.
While the other kangaroos watched, she smelled its body. Sniffed, as if sipping from its face. Worked her way slowly down to the rim of its awful wound. Quietly, gently, she caressed her way back up to the pained lines of its face and there rubbed the sides of her face against it, coating her cheeks in its odor.
Within the trees, the other three kangaroos turned.
Looking up, the mother found them waiting. Coming back to the joey, she sniffed and then licked the side of its face, then rose to the grey, sculptured curves of her species before, with effortless grace, she ghosted back into the scrub.