by Zoe Chant
Godiva patted Doris’s shoulder and cackled. “And everybody likes to be right, when being right is good.”
She walked out into the night. Doris heard the car door slam, and turned back to her house, which was half packed up. Some things she was taking, but most of it she was donating to homeless shelters.
She passed into the kitchen, thinking about Godiva as she washed the teacups. Then she decided, why not pack them now, while she was at it?
So she took them down, thinking about each as she wrapped them and nested them in boxes. These, she’d drive over herself.
When she got to the top shelf, she reached for the oldest cup—and then froze when she stared down at the fragile porcelain, and the fading painting of . . . a dancing fox with several waving tails, amid lotus blossoms.
Doris knew enough by now to recognize a Chinese teacup, from the imperial period.
Her mind arrowed straight back to her great-grandmother, and her words, The magic was good to me. Maybe it will be good to you.
Doris looked up in wonder. Had her great-grandmother known . . . ?
She smiled as she gently packed the cup and then closed the box, ready for a future full of love and surprises.
A note from Zoe Chant
Thank you for reading Silver Fox! I hope you enjoyed it. If you haven’t read the first book, which introduces Joey and Doris, it’s Silver Dragon.
If you’d like to be emailed when I release my next book, please click here to be added to my mailing list. You can also visit my webpage, or follow me on Facebook or Twitter. You are also invited to join my VIP Readers Group on Facebook!
Please consider reviewing Silver Fox, even if you only write a line or two. Reviews from readers like you help me keep writing!
As a special thank-you, I’ve included a bonus story about Xi Yong and Isidor, The Luck of the Qilin!
Special Bonus Story
The Luck of the Qilin
By Zoe Chant
Xi Yong found it much easier to hear people address his Daoshi, or mentor, as ‘Joey Hu’ instead of Tian Hu Jiu Wei when he encountered the respect in the eyes of the American university people, both professors and students. Then the name, too casual and too shorn of meaning, transformed to one of affection and respect. He found he could speak that name when he used English, but in his own mind the man who had taken him from an unbearable situation to one of hope would always be Daoshi Hu, or Mentor Fox.
So when Xi Yong saw his Mentor Fox come back from his evening at the high school with a smile that held kindness but no joy, and eyes full of pain, he, too, felt the pain.
The boy and girl wolves did not notice at first. Xi Yong liked them both. They reminded him of puppies in their exuberance and their quick-changing emotions, full of the brightness of life.
“Hey, was it fun, bossing high schoolers at a dance?” Vic asked.
Vanessa pushed up next to her brother, bouncing a little on her toes. Though both were in human form, they were cub-like as they bumped against each other in their anticipation and pride. “Did you see we cleaned up the place, so she’d like it? Uh, where is your mate?”
“She went home to a well-earned rest,” said Mentor Fox.
“Wait. I thought . . .” Vic began.
“She didn’t want . . . wasn’t it good?” Vanessa’s tone fell. Xi Yong could see her wolf-shadow drooping, tail down.
“It was an excellent evening,” Mentor Fox said, in the light voice he used when shielding others from his emotional turmoil.
“But?” Vanessa asked.
“Friend-zoned,” Mentor Fox said.
“I thought . . . I thought that didn’t happen with mates. That it was one look and fireworks.” Vanessa clapped her hands. “Next thing you know, wedding bells and everything.”
“Idiot.” Her brother affectionately cuffed the back of her head. “No rush for weddings. Fun first!”
Xi Yong hesitated. He did not want to admonish them—they were too new to one another for that—but how long would it take for them to see how their words hurt their grand-uncle?
Mentor Fox forced a smile as he led the way into the house. “Oh, I haven’t given up. The hardest challenges are always the most worthwhile.”
The twin wolves brightened instantly, their wolf shadows pricking ears and tails flagging. Xi Yong liked them the more for their flow of good spirits.
“We should get our rest as well,” Mentor Fox said. “We have a hard hunt ahead of us.”
“Got it, boss,” Vic said, throwing his fingers up in a salute.
The twins ran off.
Xi Yong waited to see if his mentor wished to speak.
“I failed,” Mentor Fox said in Chinese, letting his pain show. “But I’ll keep trying. Always.” His aura rippled, the shades of blue warming toward green and gold. “No one ever told me how painful it is when one’s mate will not, or cannot, respond. It’s good for me to understand from the heart, and not just from the head, how it feels when one’s mate can’t hear, or feel, the promise of joy that their mate has to offer.”
Xi Yong remembered the quiet woman from the lunch party. Hers was what he thought of as a water nature, clean and good, but its current now flowed too fast, over rocks and ever narrowing banks. Those rocks and shoals must be the result of difficult life experience. “Does she not sense it?”
“The evening was wonderful until the very end. I think she sensed the bond. Yes. I did see the awareness in her eyes. My mistake was in suggesting we meet again, just the two of us. I thought we both had a good time. What could be more natural than to take this next step?”
Xi Yong waited as Mentor Fox sank into a chair and put his head in his hands. “But not to her, it seems. The worst of the pain I feel right now is remembering how Doris shrank into herself after my question. I had in one moment lost all her trust, tentative as it was. Why can’t she trust? I don’t believe that was caused by a single encounter. It seems more a role—or an anti-role—that Doris’s life circumstances have forced her into. That sort of thing isn’t cured with compliments, no matter how genuine.”
He sighed. “So I parked the car a few miles off and took a run to clear my head before facing the twins. I know you comprehend the pain of being required to deny one’s nature, whatever that might be. But say the word if my unburdening creates a burden for you.”
“I am honored to listen,” Xi Yong said, with a bow to show his sincerity.
Mentor Fox’s aura lightened with relief.
“You know my own fear,” Xi Yong said.
Mentor Fox put his hands together. “I truly believe that there is a possible mate for everyone. I respect your grandmother greatly. She is an excellent person in both mythic form and human. But her desire for descendants influences how she defines the world. She is wrong that only males and females can bond as mates. I believe, very firmly, that love transcends the conventional views of gender.”
Xi Yong bowed his head. “This has been my hope. She is seldom wrong, but I trust that she is in this.”
“It’s a shame that the current cultural pressure in China is against men loving men, in particular,” Mentor Fox said. “But remember how very old Chinese history is. It was not always that way. Consider the story of the emperor who so loved his beloved he cut off the sleeve of his priceless robe rather than disturb his lover’s sleep.”
It was a story of love and tenderness, Xi Yong’s favorite—not just because the emperor and his beloved were what westerners called gay (he liked that word, with its connotation of happiness), but because the meaning of the story corresponded deeply with the qilin principle Do no harm. It also honored affection, and the sacrifices one made out of generosity of spirit.
“You have introduced me to a new life here,” Xi Yong said. “I will keep faith that you are right in your conviction.”
“You’ll see. It might take time. It certainly did with me, as you can see,” Mentor Fox said, laughing, and his aura shimmered with the brightness of sunlight on water.
He leaned over and patted Xi Yong’s shoulder. “Get some rest. We’ve a long day ahead tomorrow.”
In the morning, they would be traveling to the mountains in search of the dragon Cang. Xi Yong felt eagerness leap inside him, light as his qilin. He couldn’t help feeling as if some sort of destiny awaited him there.
***
All four woke before dawn, ate, and got ready.
They left their cell phones behind as the twins wouldn’t be able to use them in their wolf form. By the time they shifted back to their human form once their hunt was successful, they would probably be far beyond cell towers. Mentor Fox was certain that the red dragon would hide somewhere far from cities.
Xi Yong had learned to drive on old, battered vehicles, so the Jeep was easy to adapt to. They drove in silence, the cold air whipping through their hair. It seemed strange to Xi Yong to smell the familiar ocean brine on the air, but to see palm trees and plants native to California. It was every bit as strange as looking west for glimpses of the ocean instead of to the east.
At Mentor Fox’s direction, he took a narrow road into the hills overlooking San Clemente, where the treacherous red dragon’s lair once lay. They reached a grand manor and parked.
Xi Yong waited by the Jeep as the twins shucked their clothes and shifted to their wolf selves. Though they, like most shifters, cared nothing for human nakedness around other shifters, he looked away to grant them the privacy they did not think to ask for.
Instead, he watched Mentor Fox shift. Mythic shifters did so in characteristic ways, often as an expression of personality. Mentor Fox was jaunty and graceful as his form rippled into shimmering silver. And then there was a prancing fox, forelimbs sprightly, head cocked at that inquiring, smiling angle that had become so familiar ever since Xi Yong’s father had introduced Mentor Fox to their family.
Foxes ordinarily were small. But as a mythic shifter, Mentor Fox was larger than ordinarily foxes—no smaller than the two wolves who sat side by side, tongues lolling. He had not even brought all his tails out of the mythic dimension into this world—just the one—but even so he was magnificent.
Xi Yong had rarely seen Mentor Fox with all his tails plumed. That sight was awe-inspiring, never forgotten—stories about nine-tailed foxes went back a couple thousand years, some expressed in poetry about how the fan of tales brought shimmering light into being.
Mentor Fox turned to the twins and gave a soft yip. He and the two wolves loped toward the house whose aura was still tainted with violence and twisted desires. They took a last sniff around the estate, making certain that the scents had not been overlaid with fresh ones.
While they did that, Xi Yong gazed up at the slowly vanishing stars. He drank in the peace and beauty of the sight, though his heart sent up the silent question, Is there a mate for me somewhere, looking at these same stars?
The click of toenails broke the reverie. Mentor Fox rejoined him, shifting between fox and human between one step and another. “We’re ready.”
The twins flanked him, still in their wolf forms, jaws grinning as they quivered with anticipation. Though they didn’t look alike in their human forms, as wolves they were very similar, big and gray, beautifully streamlined in form.
Xi Yong climbed into the Jeep and started the engine.
Mentor Fox shifted back to his fox, and Xi Yong sensed in the golden glimmer of his aura how the world enchanted him with its astonishing variety of scents. He sensed how Mentor Fox’s heart, though still heavy with defeat, beat stronger: he would not give up on his mate. He would never give up.
But this quest had to come first. For now.
Mentor Fox and the wolves bent their noses to the driveway that revealed the distinctive aroma of Cang’s human minions in their vehicle.
As the three hunters began to run, Xi Yong followed.
***
And then there came the encounter with Mentor Fox’s mate, and the necessity of hiding their true selves and their mission while staying with the human woman’s family. They were good people—any qilin could tell—but their rowdy, boisterous nature was very different from what Xi Yong had grown up with. He found himself enjoying the hours of guard duty in the forest, keeping an eye on Cang’s lair while basking in the solitude.
Xi Yong loved the slow exhalation of trees. He knew that the sough and hush of foliage was the wind whirling its way around the world, but it sounded like the breathing of those stands of sky-reaching pine. Their air was so pure it made him heady.
As a qilin, he walked tranquilly in the air a few inches above the snow. He could not fly, but he could run with the wind without touching down. His heart sang as he ran lightly across the top of the snow, smelling wood and water, and watched the last of the silver-edged clouds drift toward the sunrise still a long ways off. In beauty such as this his spirits lifted. But duty did not permit him to roam the forestland as he willed.
He was on guard duty when Mentor Fox came up the hill, following a pair of wolf shifters whose spirits roiled with the yellow of greed and the red of anger. Xi Yong withdrew into the mythic realm so that the two would not smell him. Mentor Fox had the wolf shifters covered, so Xi Yong circled the compound, checking to see if anyone else went in or out.
Are you here? Mentor Fox asked him on the mythic plane.
Here, he replied.
These two came to Doris’s house tonight. Mentor Fox’s mental voice was polite as always, but Xi Yong sensed the tight, protective anger underneath. It was not directed at him, but Xi Yong felt ashamed; he was the one on guard duty.
Please accept my sincere apologies for the danger to your mate and her family, he sent back. I take full responsibility.
It’s not your fault! Celestial Empress, no. You didn’t see anyone leave, did you?
No. They must have come up from the valley.
Then please don’t blame yourself, Mentor Fox said. Xi Yong glimpsed him briefly at the edge of the trees, a flash of fox fur in the moonlight. I’m going back down. The twins will be up soon to relieve you. Let me know if you see anything.
I shall at once.
Mentor Fox departed, and then the night was still again. No one was moving in the compound, so he drifted along and watched the sky, enjoying cloud-patterns in the night. When the last cloud sailed eastward, he divided his time between watching the gate, and turning his nose skyward so he could observe the star patterns of North America.
Presently the twins came loping up the slope. Vanessa shifted to human form.
“We’ll take over now,” she said. “It’s nearly midnight. Uncle Joey left food for you, and said you were to catch some Zs.”
Xi Yong protested, “You were awake all day.”
She replied, “When we’re on watch like this, we each take a turn running and the other naps for an hour. In wolf form, an hour nap is practically as good as a human night. We’ve got it covered.”
Xi Yong thanked her. She shifted and ran off, unconsciously graceful. Watching the twins gave him joy.
So did the prospect of sleep, for he was tired, but not unbearably so. Back at the house, none of the humans seemed upset about their close call earlier. Xi Yong spent a pleasant couple of hours playing chess with the household members, delighting in their delight. Competitive games were fun for him if his partner enjoyed them, too. The venerable elder called Granny Z clearly relished a good game, no matter who won. It was the same with the younger woman, Nicola.
Presently they departed to their rest, and he and Mentor Fox composed themselves for sleep.
Xi Yong always slept lightly, and never for long.
He always sensed dawn before he saw it. Long before there was light in the sky, he rose soundlessly. After neatly folding his blanket, he slipped into the kitchen, careful to keep the door from banging. His first thought was to make himself some tea before he fixed coffee for the rest of the household, but he froze when he saw a small shape padding about.
It was Pink, the three-year-old, still in her footie pajamas. Sh
e stood on her toes, trying to reach the light switch.
Xi Yong flicked on the lights. Pink gave him a quick smile, and then went to one of the cupboards. Xi Yong was uncertain what to do. Ought he to fetch one of the adults? But he hated to waken someone if it was not necessary. Pink was too small to be left unsupervised, especially in a kitchen full of possible dangers. As long as he remained with the child, perhaps he could wait until those responsible for her appeared.
So he set about filling the tea kettle as Pink opened the low cupboard next to the stove, and then, with both hands, took out a long rectangular baking sheet.
Xi Yong’s first instinct was to tell her to put it back, but he hesitated. She moved so deliberately, and after all, the sheet was metal. It would not break or shatter if she dropped it. So he continued to make his tea as she systematically took out another baking dish, a cookie sheet, another cookie sheet, then two long, narrow bread pans.
These she laid carefully on the floor, then she pattered back to the cupboard on the other side of the stove.
By now the water was hot. Xi Yong busied himself with the tea, then turned to set up the coffee maker for the rest of the household. When he turned back, Pink had found saucepan lids, and was carrying one in each hand. She placed these on the floor, her pajama-feet almost silent as she trotted back and forth to fetch one more saucepan lid.
When Xi Yong had finished setting up the coffee, he turned around to see what Pink was making so carefully with all this cookware. He walked to the other end of the kitchen, and then he perceived what she was doing.
The big cooking sheets formed the body of a humanoid shape. The cookie sheets were legs and arms. The bread pans made feet, and the saucepan lids were hands, the third a head.
She pushed things back and forth until she had everything the way she wanted it, then she trotted out, leaving Xi Yong wondering if he ought to pick up the cookware and restore it the cupboards. He suspected the elders would not be pleased to find these items on the floor, clean as that floor was.