The Heart of a Fox

by T. Isilwath

  He knew he was putting on a display, and possibly annoying her, but he’d noticed that her scent would change whenever he showed his true abilities, and it wasn’t an unpleasant change. In fact, she would smell a bit like the young women smelled when they saw a man they liked, but having never been on the receiving end of such emotions, he wasn’t positive. She did smell good, however, and he liked the looks she gave him, even if they did make him want to preen and fluff his tail, and bring her a dead rabbit…

  He shoved those thoughts aside when he realized that he was acting like a fool and concentrated on the task at hand. On the way out to the hill, she had tied one team of oxen to the back of one of the wagons and led them all at once, but on the return trip he drove one wagon while the gray was tied to the back of the one she was driving. He had marveled at her ability to control all of the beasts at once without any difficulties, but when he mentioned it to her, she’d merely smiled and said she had just asked them to cooperate and they did.

  Many of the villagers stopped what they were doing and stared as he and Joanna guided the two wagons full of rice up the main road to the drying barns.

  In previous years, two large barns with movable racks had been built to allow the rice to dry out of the elements.

  The threshing grounds were next to the drying barns, and they consisted of one large enclosure about twice as big as the drying barns, with several flat, hard surfaces used for striking the panicles of rice to separate out the grain.

  Rice was threshed with an ox, then the used stalks were transferred to a smaller area where they were hand threshed to harvest any grain that hadn’t been shaken loose. Both the drying barns and the threshing grounds were used not only for rice, but for all the harvested grains that the villagers grew in their own gardens.

  Akihiro had helped to build both the drying barns and the enclosure for the threshing grounds about twenty years ago when both Keitaro and Genkichirou were still alive and still somewhat intrigued by the half-demon who wanted to live near their village. He remembered cutting the huge trees that formed the structural base of the buildings, carrying them and settling them in place. He’d amazed the villagers with his strength, and his ability to measure distance in his mind so that each support post was exactly in line with all of the others.

  By the time they were finished unloading the rice and returning the wagons, oxen and the gray gelding to their proper places, it was almost time for the evening meal so he and Joanna went to wash up for dinner and headed back to the shrine. Because Joanna’s diet had to be carefully controlled, she still prepared the majority of their meals. Unfortunately, religious rules forbade them from cooking any meat except fish at the shrine, so if they wanted to eat rabbit or other game they had to prepare it in the forest. He’d converted a natural clearing near the shrine into a camp with a fire pit and logs for sitting, and he and his vixen spent most of their evenings there. Tonight was no exception, and he caught two fish for their dinner while she built the fire and got things ready.

  The scent of her blood, and fresh blood at that, almost made him drop his catch and leap to her side the moment he smelled it. As it was, he came tearing into the clearing, claws ready and a snarl on his lips, but his vixen just looked at him with mild surprise. She was sitting by the crackling fire, waiting for him to return, and she was holding some strange new object in her hand. The blood-scent was coming from a small cut in her palm, and he went to her immediately.

  “Joanna-sama, you’re bleeding!” he said, dropping to his knees beside her.

  “It’s okay. I’m just checking my blood sugar.”

  ‘What?’ He blinked at her and looked at the thing she held in her hand. It was small, blue and made of “prastak” from her time, and it had a funny little strip of paper sticking out of the top.

  “But…” he managed, confused, then saw her shake her head and sigh.

  “Damn, you distracted me. Now I have to do it again,” she complained.

  “Do what again?”

  She ignored him and rummaged in a small red bag that she had placed on the ground. She pulled out a long, thin stick made of more “prastak” and un-screwed the top. While he watched, she took a tiny, white stick, tore off the top to reveal a metal tip, and put it inside the larger stick. Then she screwed the top back on, did something with her thumb on the side of the stick, turned the tip of it to the meat at the base of her left thumb on the inside of her palm, and pressed a tiny button. There was a faint click and the scent of her blood assaulted his nose as he saw a red droplet well up on her skin.

  “What are you doing!” he cried, aghast and struggling with his fox side that screamed at the smell of her blood. ‘Vixen hurt! Vixen bleeding!’

  She looked at him as she touched the funny white paper to the drop of blood and the end became dark with it.

  “This is how I have to do it now because I took my insulin pump out,” she said, showing him the thing in her hand.

  It had a magic window like her old medicine pouch, and he recognized the writing in it as her blood number. It flashed 110, and he was both relieved and appalled at the same time.

  “You… you have to cut yourself?” he gasped softly.

  “It’s just a little prick and only one drop of blood. It’s no big deal. This is how I had to check my blood sugar before I got the insulin pump with the built-in meter. This one is really good in that it lets me test on my palm and arm instead of the tip of my fingers. Older models needed more blood and my fingertips were always sore,” she explained calmly.

  He flattened his ears against his skull in distress and reached out to take her injured hand in his own. Then he lowered his mouth to the wounds and licked them, sealing the cuts with his healing saliva. She sighed and put her arms around him as he rested his cheek in her palm, still cradling it in both of his.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  “It’s okay. It’s my fault. I forgot to warn you. I know how much the scent of my blood drives you crazy.”

  “I thought you were hurt…”

  “I understand, but I’m all right. It’s all right,” she soothed, stroking his ears.

  But it wasn’t all right, and he could still smell her blood even though the wounds were healed. He hated the new magic box already. She pushed gently on his shoulders and he slowly pulled away, but he kept his eyes downcast.

  “Here. I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry. Let me roast these fish you brought, and make some miso, and we’ll have a feast,” she offered, obviously changing the subject.

  “Okay,” he agreed, but his voice was flat.

  He heard her sigh then felt her hand on his shoulder.

  “Aki… Aki, I’m sorry it has to be this way,” she said softly, and he raised his eyes to look at her. “But I couldn’t leave the pump in while it was empty.

  There was too great a risk of infection. I had to take it out.”

  “I know,” he replied, dropping his gaze to the ground again.

  “It’ll be okay. You’ll see.”

  He nodded and tried to cheer up because he knew his sadness was upsetting her. “Okay,” he answered, his voice closer to normal, and she smiled at him.

  She took the fish and began preparing them for cooking while he sat and watched her. She made small talk and said something about going hunting for ducks in the morning now that all the rice was in, and making his favorite meal where she roasted the birds in the underground oven. He grunted and made all of the appropriate noises that made it seem like he was listening when he was actually still calming down his fox blood.

  While the scent of her wounds was slowly fading, his protective instincts were still in an uproar, and he had to keep himself quiet and still while it settled down. If she was going to be cutting herself every time she had to check her blood number, he was going to have to become acclimated to smelling fresh blood, and he didn’t know how he was ever going to manage that.

  ‘I could never get used to the scent of your blood,�
�� he moaned silently, tucking his hands close to his chest and staring into the flickering flames of the campfire.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Akihiro was in a “funk,” as Joanna called it, for the rest of the night: quiet and somber, and he stayed that way clear into the following morning. It wasn’t that he wanted to be so distracted and serious, but every time he began to feel somewhat normal, she had to cut herself again. She did it two more times before they went to bed that evening, and the last time was right as they were preparing to go to sleep. The good news was that her blood number was good all three times she checked it. The bad news was that the scent of her blood was still sending his fox instincts into fits. The only thing that made it better was his ability to lick the wound healed afterwards so he wouldn’t feel so helpless.

  In the morning, they ate breakfast together and hunted for two ducks, then he went into the village to help with the threshing of the rice while she stayed behind to prepare the underground oven he had dug the night before. Stalks that had been drying for two or three days were ready to be threshed, and the rice was then prepared, measured, and collected into sacks. It was the most important part of the rice harvest because it dictated how much rice there would be to pay the taxes, and how much would be left over for the villagers. As such, every grain of rice mattered, and he often used his keen nose to sniff out panicles that still had rice in them.

  As he headed for the threshing grounds, he took note that preparations for the evening’s festivities were already underway. Strings of painted paper lanterns were being hung from posts all along the main road, and he could smell the cook fires and ovens used to make the food that would be served at the feast. The tantalizing scent of new rice being cooked teased his nose and made his mouth water.

  He joined a group of about ten men who were threshing rice, and they put him on one of the hand threshing floors in charge of getting what the oxen had missed. Around him, the men worked merrily, talking and laughing, but none of them spoke to him other than to give him an order or ask for aid. He was used to their attitude and it didn’t really bother him anymore, but this year was the first time he smiled inwardly when they spoke of their women.

  Around mid-afternoon the men called their threshing to a halt because it was getting too hot, and many of them wanted to rest before the festival. He stayed behind to continue working because Joanna had given him specific instructions to meet her on a particular hilltop just before sunset. She had told him that they were going to have their own celebration, and she would be waiting for him when he got there.

  Not long before sunset, he ceased his work and swept his pile of rice in with the rest where it would be washed, dried again and placed into bags. The rice had to be clean because the sacks would be weighed by the tax collector, and no dirt or stones could be found in the rice or the tax might be rejected or doubled. There were many tales of what happened to villages who tried to “cheat” on their taxes, and none of them ended well for the villagers.

  He headed back to the shrine and was only mildly disappointed to find Joanna not there. He knew what she had told him, but a part of him had hoped that he would see her, and that they would go up to the hilltop together. Instead she had left him a set of new clothes laid out on his bedding, and he lifted the two items in his hands to look at them and breathe in her scent from the fabric.

  One was a new pair of light, tan colored pants made of jute cloth with a hole cut out of the back for his tail, and the other item was a handmade shirt made of geometric patterned cloth instead of deerskin, but the cut was very similar to his leather one. The shirt came over his head and colored ribbons decorated the collar, sleeves, and four other places where the ribbons streamed down in loose strings. He recognized the style from pictures he had seen in Joanna’s books, and he realized that she had made him an article of clothing that was worn by the men of her tribe. Holding the new clothes close to his body, he felt humbled and honored that she thought him worthy of such a gift.

  ‘She must have been working on them while I was away in the rice fields,’

  he reasoned, lovingly running his hands over the seams. The tight, precise stitches reminded him of how she had sewed his flesh together in what seemed like a lifetime ago. ‘Has it really only been four months?’

  Four months of his new life. It was no wonder he still felt like a newborn kit. He gathered the new shirt and pants and headed out to the river to bathe so he would be clean and fresh for his evening alone with his vixen. The water was cold, but he didn’t care, and he made sure to scrub his skin free of all the dust and dirt from the afternoon’s labor. When he was clean, he dried himself off and dressed in the new clothes Joanna had made for him. Then he headed back to the shrine to drop off his dirty clothes before going up to meet his vixen.

  Back at the shrine, he ran into Ichiro, Suzuka and Kaemon, all dressed in formal Shinto garb, as they prepared to lead the religious portion of the celebration beginning with a formal procession. He bowed to them and Kaemon smiled.

  “You will be spending the evening with Joanna-sama?” the young priest asked.

  He blushed and bowed lower. “Yes, Kaemon-sama. I am to join Joanna-sama on the east hill overlooking the village.”

  “So she told me.” The human’s smile widened, and Akihiro got the impression that he was keeping a secret. “I think you will have a very enjoyable night.”

  He blinked in confusion, but did not argue with the man. For him every evening he spent with Joanna was enjoyable, however, he understood the implication that tonight would be special.

  “I see the new clothes Joanna-sama made for you fit perfectly,” Kaemon commented, indicating the shirt and pants.

  He nodded. “Yes. They are very comfortable.”

  “She is very competent with a needle and thread. I may ask her to help with some mending that needs to be done before some of the offerings can be distributed to those who need clothing.”

  “I am certain she would be more than willing to help you.”

  “That would be very appreciated. I will speak with her about it tomorrow.”

  “We must go. The others are waiting for us,” Ichiro interrupted.

  “Of course, Ichiro-sama. I wish you a good evening,” he apologized.

  “And you, Hanyou. May your evening be pleasant,” the old priest replied.

  Akihiro bowed deeply. “Thank you, Ichiro-sama. I am sure that it will.” He straightened up and waited for the three of them to pass him. Suzuka, who had been unusually quiet, paused and looked at him oddly. He cocked his head in confusion, and was about to ask her if something was wrong, when she stepped closer to him and reached for something in his hair. Her fingers barely brushed against his head, but he felt a slight tug.

  “Suzuka-sama?”

  “This was in your hair,” she said, showing him a damp rice stalk.

  “Ah,” he answered, taking the wilted stem from her grasp. “Thank you, Suzuka-sama. Did I miss any others?”

  He saw her give his head a quick look, her eyes strangely soft for her stoic face, before replying, “No, Hanyou. That was the only one.”

  “Thank you, Suzuka-sama. May you have a pleasant evening.” She nodded just barely with her chin, and he bowed as she moved to follow her brother and father. There was something bittersweet in her countenance that tugged at his heart, and he remembered happier times between them. He wondered if Joanna’s presence in the village was making Suzuka remember the friendship that they had once shared. Perhaps she would begin to treat him more kindly, and he hoped that would be the case. He also hoped that she and Joanna would eventually become friends. For now the two women were polite and civil to each other, but there was still a cool distance between them.

  Once Ichiro and his kits had exited the shrine grounds, he placed his soiled clothing in the room he shared with Joanna and hurried out to join her on the east hill. It was almost sunset and he could hardly wait to see her again. Plus his over-sensitive nose could smell the arom
a of the roasted ducks wafting from the oven pit he had dug, and it was making his mouth water. His stomach reminded him that he hadn’t eaten any lunch, and that made him run all the faster.

  Eagerly, he raced up the narrow trail to the top of the hill where Joanna had told him to meet her, and he cleared the final turn with a powerful leap, soaring over the rocky ground and landing lightly on the edge of the summit. He paused for a moment to catch his breath, and scan the hilltop for his vixen, and his eyes fell on a single figure seated some distance away. The wind brought Joanna’s scent to him, and he breathed deep, his heart thudding loudly in his chest. Joanna seemed to sense his arrival because she stood up and faced his direction.

  The instant he saw her, he froze and wondered if she had finally decided to reveal her Divine form to him, proving that she really was a goddess come down to earth, and he stared at her, completely breathless. Now he understood what Kaemon had silently been alluding to and why the young priest had smiled.

  ‘She promised that she would wear something pretty, but this…’

  She was dressed in blue that wasn’t blue, but swirling splashes of blue and green like someone had taken water and made it into fabric. The blue draped around her, cascading over her shoulders and reaching down to the ground where he could barely see the tips of her black shoes. It swirled and eddied like a wild stream, flowing around her body in great folds of shimmering colors.

  She had also taken her hair and braided it, twisting it into an elaborate weave that circled the top of her head and ended with a braided knot at the base of her skull. Two beaded hair sticks crisscrossed through the knot to hold it in place, and ribbon streamers were hung from the ends.

  When he finally was able to force his legs to move and approach her, he saw that she had lightly painted her face. There was a faint shading of blue above her eyes, and she had rimmed the lids with a thin line of black. Her cheeks and lips also sported soft rose-colored powder that gave her face a warm blush. It wasn’t artificial the way the village women would paint their faces white, but a simple enhancement of her already lovely features. He stood before her, speechless, until she reached to touch one of the ribbons on his new shirt.