Now Mary felt the opposite of safe. The helicopter shone a light on previously unsupposed dangers. It was scary out here. Pitch-black. Not a soul in sight, apart from, perhaps, the one they were searching for. She had no idea how many houses and flats backed onto the woods, who lived in them, or how many gates opened onto this land. She knew just three of her neighbors by name. Why had she thought it safe to come into the woods at night? And why, in her terror, was she grateful to the sycamores for hiding her with their hands from the whirring overhead? She felt all the fear of the pursued and all the guilt of the pursuing.
The noise was a long, jagged thunderclap. It whipped the air into a vortex that drilled cool blasts down to the fox’s snout.
Hairs blew out from his ankles. He put his paw on the blackbird dirt mound to guard the bird. The dark was busy with voices. He strained through the sky alarm for another sound, the one that jabbed his ear close. Grating, scraping. Impossible to make out. Rumble fading. Rumble rolling away. And. There.
Clunk.
Human preparing to exit den.
The barbs of a feather bristled between his teeth, and he fuzzled them with his tongue. He regretted leaving the bird. But he had to. His feet trotted while he bent one ear back to the human Female on the move through the ferns / one ear forward to the new noise.
The air began to wobble as the helicopter circled again, chopping and dicing. The pilot and copilot looked down on east London, laid out with its venous strings of orange lights. Below them the woods were a small rectangle of pure blackness. And then they steered the helicopter west.
Mary took her hands off her ears. That bloody thing had drowned the sound of him. She waited until the rumble had completely faded, and then, in the new quietness, she heard a bolt shot. She imagined Michelle unfastening the multiple locks of her back door.
Mary set off again, striving toward the brambles as her fox dipped his paws in and out of undergrowth. Why didn’t he wait? She groped her way along the boundary wall, hit the ironwork of a gate, its handle warm as a hand, grappled along a chain-link fence, round a hornbeam—and at last she saw him, barely fifteen feet ahead.
He looked different in the dark. His fur was tinged gray, as if she were seeing him through night-vision goggles. She walked toward him, and with each step she took, he acquired color. She was warming him through gray-brown to auburn. Mary hauled herself toward the next trunk, breaking the stem of a bindweed heart with a moist snap.
Like a frog bone.
He was coming to life before her eyes, less than ten feet ahead of her on the path. His feet stilled; his muzzle addressed her. She approached cautiously, waiting for the moment when she would cross the line, trip the invisible switch, and vanish him. Was it him? It had to be him. There was only him. Six feet and closing. Five feet, four feet. Her last step. Eye to eye. She sighed.
Her sigh, warmer than the warm air, blew on his muzzle and made it twitch. Hot and cold currents swirled his whiskers.
Mary liked the way his face wrinkled. It looked like snout for “hello.”
“You’re OK,” she whispered, dried ferns crunching beneath her knees as she crouched. She had hoped he would copy her—that they would sit together awhile—but he stayed on his feet, forelegs locked decisively at the hinges. “Where have you been? I was worried about you! I tried to stop them…” She watched one ear pitch away from her, and her heart sank. She knew him well enough to understand when his attention was elsewhere. “Won’t you sit?” she said. A twitch pulsed in his cheek. There was no point trying to persuade him. He was the great uncrackable code, and even trawling his eyes as close as this, she had no idea what he meant, except in relation to herself, and she knew that he was leaving. His eyes answered hers with interest rather than deference. He would share only so much. That’s what he was saying. He was honest enough to tell her, and in his amber eyes she found kindness, something more alike than unalike. It was the same color she saw inside her own lids in sunshine.
Her hand snaked out toward him on the woodland floor. They both looked at it a moment, some foreign thing that had traveled between their worlds. Then he dropped his snout and licked it.
In hindsight, that was his farewell gesture. In an instant he faced the opposite direction. He seemed to have interchangeable front and back legs. His nose skimmed the ground, shoulders rounded in his posture of habitual industry, as if he had dropped something along here earlier and was intent on finding it.
Mary tagged him as far as she could, but he was too quick. Beneath her feet a dry crackle broke, and a wispy fragrance of ash rose, which made her think she must be where Mark had guarded the fire yesterday, and her fox was drawing her toward Eric and Michelle’s. She tried to keep up, but at some perfect point where distance equaled darkness, he began to silver and fade for her, as if his fur were intercut with night’s invisible stripes, and it was no longer possible to know for sure if she was seeing him or seeing the night behind him. He vanished in stages, reappeared, vanished. It was impossible not to wonder: he was alive, but was he still hers? Because the one meant nothing without the other. She watched him where she could. It was like watching through the wrinkled pane in the lounge, through glass warp and time warp, a moving picture that overlapped and jumped, that repeated and cut, and through which all things were possible.
CHAPTER TWELVE
There was a baby on the back step. A white bundle, downward sloping, spilling two arms and a head, the head looking at the edge of the step precariously. Not really looking. The eyes were shut. One hand lay beside an ear, fingers stiffened into a fist that might have held something or lost something. Such a beautiful hand: its sliver of palm was streaked with shimmers of purple and blue, veins rubbed with moonlight.
The surprise came not from seeing the baby, but from seeing what was around her. A baby on the back step. It was the step that was wrong. She was meant—Mary turned to check she was alone before she finished the thought. She was meant to take the child into the house.
All she needed to do was open the door and walk inside.
* * *
FROM THE WOODS, or further away, the owl hooted again. This was the first night Mary had heard him; now she had heard him three times in—how long? An hour?
She drew the baby tightly to her chest.
Flora brimmed in her arms. Small, but so much. An overflow of snuffling life. Or was it Mary’s own feelings spilling as her fingers fidgeted to contain her, to hold her all? She bumped a palm over the baby’s bottom and clasped the little foot tucked beneath, socked inside its sleeping bag. This little foot. She squeezed, and the toes paddled, stirring in her stomach the memory of the flutter, distinct and delicately convulsive—oh! there it was again—that had told her, five minutes ago, that Flora was alive.
Mary’s thoughts flickered to Michelle and then to Eric, but she knew neither was right. Flora being here was nothing to do with them. The baby was a gift from her fox, and the thought made her mouth fall open. She drew a deep breath, sucked in another draught of night medicine. The air tasted clear and dry and tangy with green spice. She had to try to balance herself, her arms and legs and what they did with the things that spun in her head. In the woods, watching him slip from sight, she had felt certain she had lost him. But plainly, the opposite was true. All these weeks of comings and goings, bringings and takings, the egg, the nappies, the rag doll. This was the moment in which that collection of belongings, looked back upon from what she presumed to be a happy endpoint, lined themselves up into a new kind of sense. Because she could see now that what he had brought her, what he had laid at her door, more than any individual gift—yet presented most vividly to her in this incredible little girl she was squeezing—was the power to create a future. And it began right here at her back step.
Fine hairs on Flora’s cheek stood alight in the moon like silvery reflective fibers. If Mary was careful, and leant in slowly, she could stroke the hairs with her own cheek hairs. “What shall we do, Flo?” she murmured, study
ing again the baby’s sealed eyes, the stray yarn of purple vein. He had brought her, but he had not explained the rest or even said whether he planned to join them. Mary leant on the handle of the back door, sinking into it the weight of her own tiredness. She pictured her bed. How heavy she felt, her hot hand and the handle welding into one dull lump. It was the movement of the door that jolted her as if from a dream, but it had opened, really opened, and as she clung to it to keep her balance, it swung her inside. The idea had been to lie on the duvet with Flora, but now that they had entered the house, the bedroom seemed miles away, up stairs, around corners. So she carried Flora into the lounge. “Funny,” she said as she felt behind her for the sofa cushions. “This afternoon I was imagining what it would be like if you lived here.” Flora did not flinch or look to see where she was. She felt where she was, and that was happy. Mary knew this because of the way she nuzzled deeper into the warmth of Mary’s chest.
She had the baby. He had brought her the baby.
* * *
THE GATE FRAMED the view down to the house, where a chink of light had sprung like a whisker-line crack in an eggshell. The light widened. A giant paw toyed with its corners, stretching it out. Then it stopped growing, and a human shadow fell through it. He waited for darkness to return the way darkness always returned, but tonight the light triumphed. A bright hole bitten out of the night.
Belly lowered, negligible crackle, into brambles. He drew his tail close. Long fur ruffled short fur. Body wriggled flatter. Just one ear left standing. Eyes half closed to the light that bobbed toward him. Giant cat eye. Its yellow edges fuzzed. He crouched his haunches. Thigh scripped on his heel. The light came through the gate: human Female with the loud bark. Walking asleep again. She dripped the wobble light down her path away from him. Going where she always went. Her den. Opposite end—
Safe to move.
He was so dab on his way. Worms flinched as he toed their lawn roof. He sniffed every pat of paw on the ground. He slooped up a string of chicken / chicken they’d left. Thought of the blackbird. The grass stopped. Scuff scuff, clip clip, up, onto stone. A thrum came in his throat telling him. Bulldog. Squatting dark and lame in the house, with a healing thing on her head like the mastiff once wore. She was not going to bark.
He slinked along the path. He passed his dig and lifted a leg. No time for digging now. Quick spray. Remind them. My dig. Whoa. The hole was big and light, warm air falling out. Still and sticky with a cloud of sweet—the smell that fruits in their food dens. The vapors sprinkled his muzzle. His claws snicked the floor. Find the thing that made the smell!
He stepped up a ledge, a ledge, a ledge, pads muffling on the tufty stuff. He tunneled his own dens down under tree roots or into the welcome beneath sheds. But look what strange. Humans dug their burrows up.
His paws stealthed in single file.
At the top, which should be the bottom, his snout jerked left. Snared by the rush of sticky ripe. In the rotten pleasant air, the flavor bred and multiplied. Up another ledge. He opened his mouth and let his tongue snaffle the promises that swarmed his snout. He had nosed through all the passages to. Buried treasure! Same joy as finding a cached rat.
Loud growls flicked his ear. The infant breathed noisily. Liquid gurgled through her tubes. In this part of the burrow the ground felt thick, soft, akin to hutched rabbit. His claws curled in to check, but it was not rabbit. It was another dried matted fleece thing these humans liked. One low wooden hurdle to—
His feet sank and wobbled on her resting place. He pulled out a foot, a foot, a foot, ankles clicking with the strain. Warm, pelty, plump stuff surrounded him. He’d opened up a fleece-lined nest and jumped inside.
The human cub slept in a long sac, layered and downy. He sniffed at the nearest edges of her, where the sac lay flat and empty. Tugged at a loose fold of stuff, but. His top and bottom teeth clashed. He tried to clamp his jaws round enough of the stuff to get a proper grip. His lips slopped and sucked at the tucks and folds while he toiled to perk it up into a small scruff. He laid the side of his face on her chest, and she rolled her head, making room in her sleep for his ear. He pulled and dragged and lifted the sac. She landed with a squirrel thump.
He opened his jaws, swiped around his mouth with his tongue. Fluffy wisps of her cocoon had stuck on it, making him dry. Just sniffing her, the saliva came back. But he kept panting. Had to. Bunch up. Enough. Sac for a strong grip. Avoid tipping the load to the head end. She lay still, not trying to escape even when he parted his jaws. The time most made one last try. Escape-wise, carrying-wise, she was easier than a squirrel.
Bump, bump, bump. That was her, making that noise. They were going down, which was like up in his own earth, heading to the surface at the bottom.
Her head was first into the garden. His shoulders, paw, snout. Some strange new beast they made. He put her down on the grass. He licked her mouth and nose, and she tasted of she smelt. She was delicious. He licked the same place. Licked and. Too many to count, these licks. Her skin was pure sweet milk, and he lapped it up. He could lick and lick and the flavor would never go away.
Down the garden they went.
He pulled her through the hole he had burrowed under Mary’s fence.
* * *
MARY TOUCHED HER head, felt behind herself for the arm of the sofa her head was leaning back toward. It all seemed certain. A mirthful choke escaped. With the best intentions, he had put her in an awkward position. She straightened her legs and folded a cushion between her head and the armrest. It would be wise to decide upon the most reasonable course of action from this position of exquisitely burdened comfort. The problem was that as soon as she examined the most reasonable course of action, it began to seem foolish. There was no easy way in which to return a baby in the dead of night. It was a path fraught with uncertainty. What would Eric and Michelle say? What would she herself say? She tried to envisage walking to their house, but even that was difficult: she was unsure if she should knock on the front door or back. To make matters worse, when she pictured either door opening, it was not Eric who stood there but Michelle. And at that point, the imagining gave out.
Her eyelids began to wobble. Not to sleep but to rest. It was the warm milk smell rising off the baby’s scalp that made them heavy. That and the rhythm of her breathing, the wisp of a whistle in Flora’s nose. Lie still or she’ll fall, she told herself, even while she cubbied further into the dark hole of rest and the baby a warm weight on her dreams, telling her not to stir, not to turn, to keep them pressed safe.
She was not sleeping. She was only lying there with funny pictures in her head and her brain fuzzed with the effort of trying to stay awake. She was not sleeping; she could still hear the whistle. She had not slept, but time passed quick, slow, quick; she had no idea how late it was when her eyes slammed open in panic, and she bolted off the sofa to her feet, and one hand shot to her chest to clamp the baby’s back. She had not slept; she had only slowly blinked.
Outside, the garden was exactly as she had left it, save the sky tinged with the promise of sunrise. And the snail, who had towed his long silvery string all the way across the patio and hidden it in the ragged grass. She and Flora were so unequivocally alone that the uneventfulness brought Mary to her senses, and she began to resent the fact that she felt guilty and that the guilt had pried her from her cozy snuggle. Eric or Michelle had lost their baby. Not the other way round. So they should come to her. Until then, she would keep Flora.
Mary sat quietly on the back step, scooping the empty part of the baby’s sleeping bag into the gap between her legs. Now she came to think of it, how strange that Eric and Michelle were not here already. She stood again. From the lawn, the top half of their house, the part she could see above the fence, appeared normal. It did not look like a home devastated in the small hours by panic or loss. There was George’s room, adjoining her own spare room, in darkness, and then sticking further into the garden, with the fanlight shut and the curtains drawn, Flora’s room.
Empty room. Mary began to smile. It was ever so slightly amusing to look at it with that knowledge, because now she understood that Eric and Michelle had no idea Flora had gone.
Oh, the relief. She had time in which to act, and she could still be the person who decided how to act. An early train called from the railway line, a short toot without rise or fall, like the cry of a child. If her neighbors didn’t know they had lost Flora, at some point she would have to tell them. “Otherwise,” she said to Flora, “I’ll look like a thief.” Surely there was another way to do it, beyond the absurdity of knocking on their door, the horror of them seeing Flora in her arms before they knew she was missing. She considered tucking the baby back into her cot. But, no, it was impossible to think she could get away with that, that two incursions might be made on the house in a single night without anyone noticing.
“What am I going to do with you?” she said to Flora. “Mmm? I said, What am I going to do with you?”
Flora smiled, a small perfect smile that swam from the depths to the surface of her sleep. It was a reply, a smile by choice. It was there, and then it wasn’t. Her mouth, half open again and expressionless, seemed to deny all trace of what she had communicated. Mary scrunched Flora’s hand inside her own and put it to her lips. “I could eat you,” she said. From one hand or the other came the soft musk of fox.
Another door clicked.
Eric or Michelle, in the garden. Mary looked around, alarmed by the immediate removal of plans A and B. There was no way now to deliver the baby unobserved. No chance to exercise the privilege of the innocent and be the one to inform her neighbors of their negligence. From the other side of the white wall, she heard the metal foot of a chair claw the patio. Then again a quieter sound of furniture being shifted. Someone was looking for something with stealthy purpose, as you might hunt for a frog under a plant pot. Mary squeezed Flora into her chest until she felt their ribs wedge further into their interlocking clasp. Too late to sleep with her till morning. All their windows of opportunity had shut and locked them inside. The fences that wrapped around, the back wall, her own house … They were trapped in their box, waiting for their captors.
How to Be Human Page 16