When Fox Is a Thousand

by Larissa Lai

  “Diane was here,” Artemis began.

  “I know, you idiot. She was here too. Why did you tell Ming? How could you be so stupid?”

  “Don’t yell at me.”

  “Why the hell not? You’re the one that fucked up.”

  “Did she trash your house?”

  “No. She hurled plenty of abuse my way, though.”

  “She didn’t trash your house?”

  “No, but –”

  “Well, goodbye then.”

  “Don’t you dare hang up on me.”

  You are familiar, no doubt, with stories of forbidden love, where the soul of the lover, quite unbeknownst to her, leaves her body to be with her beloved. But perhaps you have never heard of such a thing happening for more complicated reasons.

  There was once a student who did not keep to her books as much as she should have. Indeed, she was rather vain. She spent much of her time casting her eye about looking for reflections of herself in mirrors, in lakes, in flowing rivers and other moving creatures. If she liked what she saw, she would gaze endlessly at the reflection until it melted away or transformed into something unbearably hideous. If she did not, she turned her eyes politely to the side and pretended not to notice.

  One day in a garden (for as you know, meetings in stories of this sort always take place in gardens) when the air was redolent with the scent of roses, she met a painter. It was not the painter’s beauty that struck her, although the painter was very beautiful. Rather, it was the painter’s awkwardness, which was at once endearing and annoying, but terribly magnetic all the same because she saw herself in it.

  “Who is that painter?” the student asked her friends. But none of them could tell her. She watched the painter investigating the roses, studying the range of tones from the base of a petal to its lip, wondering how to translate scent into colour.

  Eventually the painter meandered down the path. The student followed her. She trailed her past roses, past marigolds and maple trees, all the way to her home. She followed her straight through the front door of the house. Nobody tried to stop her. Indeed, nobody even noticed that she was there.

  The walls of the house were covered in stupendous paintings, so realistic that as you walked down the hall, you believed yourself in a forest, surrounded by strange beasts with glittering eyes. When you strolled into the main reception room, you could easily believe yourself beneath the water, pushing aside wavering alien plants, seaweed, and shimmering fish that flashed by like angels or sudden memory. Sitting in the painter’s room you might think you had fallen into a sky of tumbling stars; the dark was so realistic it enveloped the student like breath.

  The painter lit a candle, illuminating the student’s face. Without a word she took out a chess board. They began to play. They played and drank right through the evening and the following day, enjoying themselves immensely. But on the third day things got competitive. Perhaps they had tired of one another’s company. The painter shifted the pieces on the board slightly when the student was not looking. The student replaced her own defeated queen in the middle of a game when she thought the painter was too drunk to notice. And so it went until the accusations began to fly.

  Suddenly, they both drew pistols from the depth of their coats, but the student was a faster draw. She shot the painter in the head. The body fell to the ground with a clunk and blood sprayed over the chess board. Shocked at what she had done, the student hurried to the front door, dissolved right through it, and fell unconscious. When she woke, she was lying at home in her own bed. Her friends were gathered around her with nervous, exhausted expressions on their faces. They told her she had fainted in the park and remained unconscious for three days.

  There was a place where time was not yet a measurable thing, where it didn’t stretch like a long jet of water shooting into the night, but meandered and twisted, curling and eddying without haste or care. It was a place where the dead moved among the living more easily than they do now. In that place grew a tree. Not the kind that spreads haphazardly, allowing anything to blow through its branches. This was a closed tree, shaggy with leaves. The leaves were small. Precise points and sharp angles. If you stood under the tree, a curious thing revealed itself. The tree was entirely hollow inside, a planet composed of space and dark branches. The leaves all pressed outwards, competing for sun and air. Inside, it was dark. Not the sweet, warm dark of sleep and enfolding arms, but a troubled dark, broken by chips and splinters of light that fell through before the greedy leaves could spear them. Enough light to make shadows and feed the spirits that lived in the elbows of the branches. Here and there, a small pale leaf hung without the strength to push to the surface.

  The trunk was ten times as thick as the torso of a strong man and robed in grey-brown bark dense and wrinkled as the skin of a sorcerer. Its roots trammelled the ground above and below, rearing up like horses now and again, displacing earth. Who knew how far below the ground they reached? They could have marked trails to cities inside the planet.

  Buried in the loamy soil beneath a heap of leaves and bracken was the body of a young woman.

  PART 4

  When Fox Is a Thousand

  “I have heard every rumour in the book. I don’t think I can stand it anymore.”

  Artemis rolled over on her futon, absently brushing the dirt – which probably came from the soles of Diane’s shoes – off the bed, without actually waking. She pulled the spare sleeping bag that had survived the rampage unharmed up around her chin.

  “They’ve checked out every Asian man who owns a leather jacket, they’re so sure it’s gang-related. Couldn’t pin it on anyone local, so now they’re saying it’s a New York-based triad. They say three members flew in, did the deed, and flew out. Even have plane ticket stubs to prove it. Drug related, of course.”

  “I heard the body was clean.”

  “Yeah, so? Drug-related family retribution. Orientals are into that kind of thing.”

  The voices came from beneath the window. She was tired. She pulled the covers over her head to shut them out. But the voices grew louder as the men beneath the window became more engaged in their conversation.

  “You know that closet-case faggot I told you about? What’s his name? Jimmy? He thinks it was queer-bashers who mistook the girl for a man. But he’s too afraid to say anything about it for fear they’ll ask questions about him. Williams, the one with all the Oriental girlfriends, he thinks it was racist skinheads and we should be watching Pender Island a whole lot more closely. Chen says there’s no way it could be skinheads. He believes the gang theory, or at least that’s what he says. I wonder if he’s worried about losing his job.”

  She got up and went to the window. She opened it and leaned out. Cool, damp morning air rushed into her nostrils. There was no one there. She returned to her bed, bones packed with the lethargy that comes from not wanting to acknowledge something that has happened, no matter how close it may be.

  She closed her eyes against the slow light that filled the room, watched the lids pulse red. The red faded not to black, but to white, the whiteness of clean white sheets on a white bed. Curled like a question mark in the hollow of her own weight lay a woman. A perfect, sleeping face, flickering eyelids, slack jaw, red lips. Diane. She leaned close. It was not Diane but Ming sleeping on the cloud-white sheets. Artemis’s heart was suddenly pumping with uncontrollable rage. In the bright light that poured over the bed she reached for the woman’s neck. Flesh oozed between her fingers. She wrung and wrung with a fury that saw nothing but bright light and white sheets. A trickle of blood ran past perfect lips. She woke screaming just as the phone began to ring.

  “I’m looking for Artemis Wong.”

  “Speaking.”

  “I hope you don’t mind me contacting you like this. I talked to the woman who adopted you.”

  “My mother. Jeanne.”

  “Yes. She gave me permission to call. I’m your biological mother.”

  She gave an address in Richmond. The
y agreed to meet that evening, but after she hung up the phone, Artemis decided not to go. At midday, she changed her mind. At three she changed it again. Who was this woman, barging into her life as though she had right?

  The forest lay in deep twilight. It was a short walk through the woods to the bus stop, but at the moment it felt as though trees covered the whole planet, as, she reflected, they must have once. There was nothing but greens and browns and shadows and small fragments of light like broken glass scattered across the path. The smell of oxygen combined with the purple smell of decay. The ground was tender as flesh. She stepped into the dark as though entering her own house through the back door and began to work her way up the path.

  The first time she was not even sure she saw a fox cross in front of her. The second time the creature moved more slowly and she was more certain of the flash of red.

  Around a bend in the path stood a woman. She wore a pair of snug-fitting Levi’s, fraying at the hems and a hole in the left knee, and a white T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. The leather of her steel-toed army boots was brown and nubby in places and looked as if it was ready to give. Beneath a revolutionary workers’s cap, the stranger’s long hair flowed freely in the wind, and Artemis noticed that the back was shaved off, right to the occipital bone. In the grown-out ends, there were traces of a blonde bleach-job. All the air in the forest was relatively still, but there was a breeze that kept the stranger’s hair constantly in motion, crossing her face and coming free and crossing again, and the face seemed different every time it emerged. Artemis had a vague feeling she had been in this woman’s presence before, but she didn’t know when or where, and in the stillness of the forest the planet seemed to spin around so fast she could not be sure of anything but the trees.

  “Where are you going?” asked the stranger.

  “I’m going to catch a bus to see my birth mother in her apartment in Richmond,” said Artemis.

  “And how do you know you will get there safely?”

  “Of course I will. It’s only a short walk to the bus stop and then the bus will take me right to her door, almost.”

  “Did you hear they found a woman’s body in Stanley Park last night?”

  “No, I didn’t,” said Artemis, wondering for a moment if she ought to be frightened.

  “Never mind,” said the stranger. “We’re a long way from there.”

  This kind of talk made Artemis nervous. She began walking up the path towards the stranger who stood directly in her way. For a moment Artemis was worried that the other woman might not take the hint and step aside. She hoped she wouldn’t have to say something rude. But the stranger turned and walked beside her in long, even strides.

  “What are you bringing your mother?”

  “Maybe roast duck if I have time to pick one up from Hon’s.”

  “And what route do you plan to take?”

  “Whatever bus comes first that will go over the Oak Street Bridge.”

  “Hmmm,” said the stranger, “I see.”

  Artemis didn’t see how, but the moment her back was turned, the stranger vanished into the sunlight winking on the ground beside patches of shadow.

  Her legs were aching by the time she got to the gravel shoulder where the bus stopped. She wasn’t sure why. She’d just been lying in bed all day and the walk up the path was quite short.

  The bus wound through the streets and got to the Oak Street Bridge just in time for her to see the whole city glowing orangey-gold in the sunset and the small blue streetlights coming on. Wind rushed through the open window.

  There was a bit of a jam on the bridge because of roadwork. A woman in a hard-hat with an orange flag waved them by.

  Still, by the time she got to Hon’s there was only the slightest hint of natural light left in the sky, like the dampness of a just-wiped counter-top. She was pressing her weight against the cool glass door when the stranger from the woods nudged the door open on the other side, arms loaded with boxes of sweet cakes and roasted meats. She winked at Artemis. Too astonished to do anything else, Artemis winked back.

  The butcher grinned at her. He abruptly ended his cheerful Cantonese conversation with the previous customer and asked her in English what she would like. She answered in Cantonese, her accent stilted.

  “Half a roast duck, okay!” he said. “You Japanese, or what?”

  She shook her head and smiled an embarrassed smile. He took a glossy duck down from its steel hook in the window, poured the juices through the neck hole into a waiting bucket, and expertly cleaved it in two.

  The same woman Artemis had seen in the woods behind her house and again in the butcher shop answered the door.

  “You’re late,” she said.

  “You’re not my mother, are you?”

  The woman shook her head gravely.

  “Who are you, then?”

  “Better come in. This will take some time.”

  Artemis hesitated for a long moment before stepping over the threshold.

  Then she remembered a stormy night on an island somewhere far away, the rain passing back and forth across the hills like cattle.

  “What big eyes you have,” said the strange woman.

  “I don’t get it,” said Artemis.

  There were plates of meat on every surface: the desk, the side tables, the coffee table, the window sills. Tall red candles and long sticks of incense made the place glow and flicker like the interior of a temple. She laughed at the absurdity of it.

  “What’s all this for?”

  “To feed the ancestors. They’re hungry tonight. And to celebrate my birthday.”

  “How old are you?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “I think this is weird. And it really wasn’t very nice, the trick you used to get me here.”

  “I wanted to make sure you would come.”

  “Well, I’m leaving now.”

  A look of dismay crossed the woman’s face. “No, please don’t leave. I went through so much trouble.…”

  “I don’t know you. And I find this all much too strange for me. I have enough problems as it is, without some weirdo trying to suck me into her life.”

  “Look, I’m very sorry. I didn’t mean to trick you. I’m not used to the conventions of this … country.” (Had she said “country” or “century”? Afterwards, Artemis wasn’t sure.)

  “Goodbye. Please don’t call.” Artemis turned to the door.

  “No! Come back. I’ll tell you everything.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  But the woman began in a voice that was mesmerizing and otherworldly. “There are creatures who live below the earth and creatures who live in the air above it. And there are those who can travel between both. Foxes, we are called.” She crouched low to the ground and then sprang up towards the high loft bed that dominated the room. The Levi’s, T-shirt, cap, and boots fell away and landed on the floor with a soft fabric thud, except for the steel-toed boots, which landed with a loud crash. A diaphanous green robe that might have been made of moths’ wings fluttered down, swirling and billowing as it covered the Fox, bestowing the power of flight. Her hair sailed up like a black cloud and swirled around her. All the candles in the room blazed and the incense smoked madly like a barely contained house fire.

  “Come here,” said the Fox.

  Artemis approached the bed with some trepidation.

  “Come on.”

  She began to climb the ladder up the side. It seemed to go on forever. She crawled onto the bed and sat at a respectful distance from the imposing figure of the Fox.

  “It’s all right. Come closer,” said the Fox.

  Artemis edged a little closer.

  “Really.” The billowing and fluttering calmed down considerably. Artemis moved closer. The spirit gestured towards her lap and Artemis shyly placed her head there.

  “Now,” said the Fox, “I’m going to tell you a story about a nun in a red cloak.”

  THE NUN

  A B
uddhist nun was walking to the temple in her flowing orange

  robes, with a bowl of tsai to share with her sisters.

  “I thought you said it was red,” said Artemis.

  “But in my mother tongue, red and orange are the same thing.”

  On the way through the woods, a Fox crossed her path, waving a bushy tail.

  “Where are you going, and what have you got in that bowl?” the Fox asked.

  “Buddha’s Delight and mock duck made of wheat gluten,” said the nun, “and I am going to the nunnery to share it with my sisters.”

  “Oh,” said the Fox, and took off into the woods.

  As soon as she was out of the nun’s sight, she turned into a spirit and flew to the nunnery, where she hid herself in an urn and howled like a human ghost until all the nuns fled in terror. Then she came out of the urn in the form of a beautiful young woman with long flowing hair and a gauzy green dress. She found an orange robe in a small storage room and covered herself with it. She waited for the nun with the tsai to arrive.

  As the nun approached the temple a gentle breeze shook the trees. No hair got in her eyes because her head was shaved. As she came through the door, she called to her sisters, but no one answered. When she walked into the main hall, the young woman appeared as if out of nowhere.

  “All the sisters have gone on a pilgrimmage, but left me behind to greet you,” said the young woman. “I am the new novice.”

  “What long hair you have,” said the nun. “You should shave it, if you want to stay here.”

  “The better to charm you with,” said the Fox.

  “And what delicate skin you have,” said the nun.

  “The better to please you,” said the Fox.

  “What tender lips you have,” said the nun, and kissed the fox spirit before she could speak again. And so they fell in love and lived happily ever after in the temple, even after the gwei lo came from overseas and tried to convert them to Christianity.