by Rosie Best
The fog was like a fixed, contained column of smoke, or a cloud that had come down to earth – or as though the legendary London fog of the 1800s had returned to one incredibly specific spot.
I was staring at it, wondering if something in the road was on fire, when it moved. I gasped, scenting something tangy and sparkling on the back of my tongue, and crouched back on my haunches. Tendrils of fog reached out, like a thousand tiny tentacles, and then the rest of the cloud followed, rolling along the street.
Another movement: a man in a leather jacket turned a corner and came walking down the street, right towards the fog. I watched him walk right up to it and not give it a single glance. As he passed it, the fog swirled its tendrils out around his head, but then drew back.
Hadn’t the fox-man said…?
“Please. The fog...”
Was this something only fox-people could see? What was it? What was he trying to tell me about it?
I got to my paws and took a deep sniff of the air. That tangy scent again – something like electricity, but less physical somehow. It tasted of bright lights. It filled my jaws with imaginary fizzing. I couldn’t feel it, I just knew it.
Magic? I wondered.
I took a step forward.
“Hey! Vixen!”
I skittered around, my claws clattering on the pavement. There was another fox standing behind me. He was a male, with a grey streak between his eyes and deep red socks on his paws. He smelled of male and fox... and something chemical I didn’t recognise. There was something at his feet... a small black bag with something lumpy inside.
“Yes, you,” he snarled. His black lips drew back, showing me his teeth. I felt my fur bristle and my throat tighten. “Get away from that thing,” the fox barked.
I turned back. The fog was closer now. It reached out its tendrils and rolled forward, faster, right towards me. I took a couple of faltering steps away. The fog kept coming.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Don’t ask bloody stupid questions, just run!”
I felt something snatch at my brush and yelped, tugging it away from the grasping tendril of fog. The other fox turned and bounded away in a flash of orange. I leapt after him. He turned into an alley like a fuzzy bullet and I skidded along in his wake. He was all line and muscle and grace as he jumped up onto the back of a car and a tall council bin and the low roof of a garden shed. I tried to follow, but I slipped on the car, leaving ragged scratches in the paintwork and sliding off again.
“Come on,” he shouted down from the shed. I looked back. Fog-tentacles were coiling around the corner of the building, glowing bright and dirty orange in the street light. I took a shaky step back and jumped up onto the car, steadied myself and made the leap up onto the bin, and then to the thankfully rough and graspable roof of the shed.
As soon as I’d made it, the fox was off again. He jumped down into a scrubby garden and headed for a tiny hole under a fence.
“Wait,” I called, jumping down after him. The impact was hard on my paws, but I recovered.
He hesitated for a moment, tossing his head. More of his composure seemed to return to him and he preened, looking down his nose at me. “Do you want to lose it or not, darling? Let me tell you, that thing’ll do more than pull your pigtails if it catches us.”
I followed him across two gardens, up a slippery climbing frame and over a row of garages. Finally he jumped up through a metal railing onto someone’s private balcony and came to a halt. I clambered after him and sat, panting and staring.
He smirked at me. He still looked like a fox, but I could read his smirk in the way his eyes narrowed and his ears twitched. I felt so clumsy next to him, and it wasn’t just that I was new at this. Something told me this fox had more grace and poise than I’d ever have.
“What was that? Who are you?” I panted. “Are you like me?”
“If by ‘like me’ you mean ‘a shifter’, then yes,” said the fox.
“Shifter.” I rolled the word around my mouth. “Wait, how are we talking? Are we making sounds?”
“My word,” said the fox, “you really are new to this, aren’t you, love?”
“I have absolutely no idea what’s happening to me,” I admitted.
“Well,” he said, sitting back on his haunches and curling his brush neatly around his paws, “it’s certainly lucky for you I came along. Top tip: you don’t want to get caught in the fog.”
“Um. Thanks,” I said. “Um. My name’s Meg.”
“James Farringdon,” the fox said, getting to his paws and giving a deep bow. “It’s been a pleasure, but I should really be going.” He picked up the bag in his jaws again. It rattled.
“What, now?” I sprang to my paws. “Can’t you… I mean… can’t you tell me more about this? What’s a shifter? Is it just like shapeshifting? How did this happen? Am I... am I safe?”
“Ish,” said James through the mouthful of bag. He blinked at me and then put it down again. “Look, dear, I’ve been doing this for a while, and there’s not much more to say. We’re people who can change into foxes. What you choose to do with that is entirely up to you.” He licked his muzzle thoughtfully with a thin pink tongue. “Although... which one died?”
“What?” I shook my head.
“You’re new. So one of the others must have died.”
“There are others?”
James rolled his eyes. Fox-face and everything, they actually rolled.
“Well, yes. Did you think it was just you and me?”
I sat back on my haunches and scratched my ear. After a couple of scratches, I realised I was doing it with my back leg.
“So, what? I got it from the dead guy? Like a disease or something?”
“That’s how it works.”
So, it wasn’t the stone. I frowned. But then the stone and the fog and the shifting – how are they connected?
“Can you describe him?” James Farringdon asked, his claws flexing impatiently on the balcony. “Was he black?”
“Um... no, er, he was white. Short hair. Brownish.”
“Ah. That would be the nurse chap. Too bad, he was a bit of all right. Now, please don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m going to leave now and I don’t mean for us to meet again.”
If there was a right way to take that, I couldn’t figure out what it was.
“Why not?” I whined.
He narrowed his eyes at me – I thought I could sense another little smirk. “I generally avoid the Skulk. I don’t play well with others. Good morning.” With that he took up his little bag, turned and leapt off the balcony, sprang from fence post to car roof and disappeared into the darkness.
I stared after him for a few minutes, my mind racing.
He hadn’t mentioned the jewel. Could it be it had nothing at all to do with the shapeshifting? But then what was it? The man had been a nurse.
One of the Skulk.
CHAPTER FIVE
The next morning, Gail barged into my room to wake me up for breakfast at half past eight, even though it was a Sunday. The full strangeness of the night’s adventure came screaming back as I sat up to glare blearily at her, and I got my legs tangled in my blanket and faceplanted onto the floor. Then when she’d finished tutting at my gracelessness and left I made it to my chest of drawers only to find there was a spider in my bra.
The day only got worse from then on.
There are a couple of problems that shapeshifting into a fox just doesn’t solve. Lack of sleep is one. Replacing lost keys and Oystercards and mobile phones, without having to explain how the “mugging” also left you naked, is another.
And then there’s my mum.
“...ready by five,” she said, at breakfast. I blinked. She gave me a look as though, hangover or not, I was getting on simply her very last nerve. I’d been wolfing my muesli and not listening to her. “Margaret, will you please come back to planet Earth for just two minutes? The party starts at six, so I’d like you to be ready by five, understood
?”
Oh God. What party? I crunched slowly on my mouthful of wholewheat grains to cover the fact I was racking my brains.
“I’ll have Gail lay out your outfit,” Mum went on. My heart sank.
“Mum, there’s no need–”
“No excuses, I won’t have you turning up in jeans like last time.” Her lips pursed and her thin fingers tightened on her knife as she spread a violently thin layer of jam on her wholewheat muffin. I braced for a rant – how she didn’t care if it was fashionable it had been so embarrassing and the people had been so important and how everyone was shocked and she was humiliated by my constant rebellion and...
Gail saved me, for once.
“Excuse me, Mrs Banks,” she said, taking a respectful loitering half-step into the room. “I have the Chief Whip on the telephone.”
Mum rolled her eyes, took a long and deliberate sip of her tea and then stood up.
When she was out of the room, I turned to my dad.
He was there too, depending on what you mean by “there”.
My dad was like the Invisible Man, if all the Invisible Man wanted to do was read the paper and not pay corporation tax. Once in Year Nine he came to a Parents’ Evening and met all my teachers, sitting and listening attentively as they went through my aggressively mediocre grades. I saw them shake his hand and make eye contact with him. And then I’d been summoned to the Year Head and told off for not bringing anyone.
He wasn’t mean. He never shouted. He was just a vague pinkish presence at the dinner table and in the hall, like a walking man-sized copy of the Financial Times. I used to think he wanted a son, but actually I don’t think he would’ve been much better with a boy. I don’t think he cared for children at all. Maybe if I’d been a better daughter he would have cared more – but far more likely he would have been vague and useless at the back of piano recitals and school awards ceremonies.
“Dad,” I said, “what’s the party for?”
“It’s a Party thing,” Dad said. I heard the capital P – when you live with a Member of Parliament your ear becomes attuned to it. He didn’t seem to care that I’d forgotten. “Something to do with the budget.”
Good old Dad. It’s nice to have a parent who doesn’t freak out about every little thing I do.
I mean, it’s hard to freak out about anything – or anyone – you never take the slightest bit of notice of. Still, hooray for my dad not being my mum.
I rubbed my eyes. So my presence was required at a Party party.
I should’ve let the fog get me.
I was asleep on my bed, curled up around a sketchbook, when Gail knocked on my door and walked in without waiting. I think she has delusions of being Jeeves. Except that if Jeeves’ boss had said “don’t do that, it’s creepy, and while I’m at it can you stop going through my drawers looking for reasons to get me in trouble with my mother”, Jeeves would’ve listened.
I lurched awake, gripping on tight to the biro I’d had in my hand when I’d dropped off. Gail waved a dry-cleaning hanger at me.
“I have your outfit for this evening.”
“Wass time?” I mumbled, and glanced at the clock. 4.28. Damn. I dug my hands into my hair and sat up, closing the sketchbook on the page full of star-stones and swirly living fog. She laid the dress in its white plastic on the bed and told me to hurry up and get ready, then left.
I glared after her.
What if I turn into a fox, right in front of you, and jump out the window instead? What would you do?
I bet the Skulk doesn’t have a dress code.
I sighed and unzipped the plastic dry-cleaning bag. Would it be the weird broad-shouldered navy blue one that reminded Mum of the Good Old Eighties? It seemed appropriate for the occasion.
It was new. It was pink. I wanted to cry.
I squeezed into it and tied the shiny pink ribbon at my back, staring in the mirror. It had a built-in corset – which was at least the second best thing after a dress that actually fit – and little pink and white ruffles over the shoulders.
I wondered if she’d had it made specially. Because what were the odds that a dress bought off the rack would make me look this much like an undercooked sausage?
I slathered my hair in anti-frizz and went downstairs just in time to hear Mum give a yell and something hit something else with a smack.
I edged into the drawing room with my back to the doorframe, ready to make a hasty exit. Mum was standing by the big gold-framed mirror over the fireplace. She turned, brandishing a rolled-up copy of the dinner menu. Her eyes lighted on me for a second and then slid away to the stairs.
“Gail!” she shrieked.
Gail hurtled down the stairs, faster than I thought it was possible to go without losing her professional poise.
“There’s a spider in the fireplace. Get the trap and kill it.”
“There was a spider in my room, this morning,” I volunteered. “And at school on Friday. It might be the time of year.”
Mum frowned at me, as if I was a lampshade that had come to life and tried to make a political point. I felt pretty much like one, considering the ruffles. “Yes, I suppose so,” she said slowly. It was like conceding the point actually caused her pain.
Suddenly though, I wasn’t sure I was right. I mean, it could have been the time of year. But... that made about six spiders in three days. That’s not normal.
I didn’t know about the one that Mum had seen, but the five that I’d seen had all looked the same. Not just has-eight-legs, is-a-dark-colour, basically-it’s-a-spider the same. They were exactly the same colour, the same size.
I could easily be imagining it. Maybe I was just seeing weird stuff when there was none. It was probably the least crazy reaction I could have to having turned into a fox last night.
Surely it was more likely than the idea that I was being stalked by a spider.
Gail scuttled off to get the spider trap – a gleaming chrome thing that I had never seen actually catch anything except lint – and Mum brushed down her little black dress and turned to me.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said. As if I had even the slightest choice in the matter. “I’ve invited two of the young people who’ve been campaigning to help us pass the amendments to the budget. I’d like you to look after them this evening.”
Oh good. Young Conservatives.
I’m sure there are young Tories who are nice, thoughtful people who want to get into politics to make a positive difference to other people. There are, I’m vaguely aware, young Tories who are sweet, polite, non-white, even female.
Those are just not the ones my mum invites to parties.
She looked me up and down again, and smiled in her stretched-out, thin-lipped way. “Please... try to be a good hostess. If they empty their glasses and you can’t see the staff, volunteer to get them a new one yourself. Try not to let them feel as if you’re not paying them attention. They’re our guests, and they’re boys, so let them do most of the talking and try not to insult them.”
Sometimes I wonder how my mother got to be a successful career politician and yet still had parts of her brain hardwired straight into the 1950s.
She was straightening the flowers on the mantelpiece now, still talking, but in a thoughtful way, almost to herself.
“They’re both charming young men. I’m sure they’ll like you. They’re both at Cambridge, you should ask them about their colleges. I’m sure they’d be happy to show you around. Wouldn’t that be nice?” She turned and looked at me again, and gave a miniscule nod of approval.
I suppressed a shiver. If my mother approved of me, something must be up.
The party was one of Mum’s political schmoozing affairs. A gang of black-shirted waiters emerged from the kitchen, as neat and regimented as if Hilde had just unpacked them from a plastic box at the back of a cupboard. They passed out glasses of wine to the guests as they arrived, and circled the room with little gourmet nibbles on square black plates.
The gue
sts were mostly politicians; friends and collaborators of Mum’s. Ministers chortled over their glasses at lobbyists. A few of Dad’s colleagues and clients turned up too, and stood in the corner of the room, chomping on little green pastries and talking about furniture and concrete cores and Qatari finance. They were mostly white men in suits, but eventually they were joined by a woman. I couldn’t help staring a bit as she walked in. She was black, and wearing a peacock-coloured dress, her hair thickly braided and shimmering under a sprinkling of gold glitter. She was overdressed for the occasion, and I caught Mum giving her a doubtful side-eye, but somehow she carried it off with such panache that she made everyone else in the room look underdressed. I found it hard to believe my Dad knew anyone that interesting.
I lurked by the window, very slowly drinking the lemonade one of the waiters had pressed into my hand and staring at the pointy porcelain ornaments on the windowsill while I listened in to their conversation. It was disappointing: the woman joined right in with Dad’s talk of steel, land deals and billion pound loans. I was willing to bet she was disgustingly rich, just from the way they all seemed to fall over themselves to agree with everything she said, but I couldn’t make out what it was she actually did. I was focused on the polite chatter, trying to catch the woman’s name, when I suddenly heard loud voices on the front step. I peered out of the window, trying to see who was there. I could make out two shadowy figures, but not much detail. They were braying with laughter, like posh donkeys. Mum disappeared to open the door and halloooed them down the hall and into the drawing room.
“Margaret,” she cut across the room towards me with two boys in her wake. “I’d like you to meet Richard and Warren.”
I tried to smooth down my dress and smile pleasantly, though my face suddenly felt like it was made of stiff plastic and I hated myself a bit for caring whether or not they thought I looked like a sausage.
Richard was the taller and better-looking of the two. I observed his square jaw and artfully curly blond hair with the dispassionate gaze of someone who knew that fancying him would make her mother happy and had no intention whatsoever of making her mother happy no matter how fit he was. He was wearing a tweed jacket, suspenders and glasses without lenses in them. Textbook hipster – such a classic look I had to wonder if he dressed like this all the time or if it was some kind of elaborate fancy dress. I decided to call him Hipster Dick, at least in the privacy of my own head.