‘I’ve killed foxes who …’ A-magyr started to say, but Camio interrupted him.
‘Swallow it,’ he said, ‘the time for talking is over. You do too much of that.’
A-magyr bristled, sinking low into his legs, so that his body arched downwards and his look of menace increased. He did indeed look a formidable opponent, with his head low and horizontal, his teeth bared, his ears flat against his skull and his eyes burning ferociously at Camio. Camio stared back and this time he was pacing, more with his hind legs than his forelegs, so that he was constantly on the move, yet remaining on virtually the same spot the whole while. Every so often he would snap at the air, just in front of A-maygr’s face, daring the old dog fox to make another move.
‘I’ll tear you …’ began A-magyr, but this time he did not need Camio to tell him to shut up – he knew he had lost a small advantage, just by opening his mouth. It had not been necessary for Camio to say anything. He had forced his opponent to fall back on words, twice, and had won the first psychological victory. A-magyr had allowed himself to be beaten into oral defence. While they faced each other they constantly calculated the moves each might make and what countermoves would be required to obtain the upper position. If I do this, he will do that, or that, and then I will do this and this, and he might come back with that, and so I will … The positions, the actions, the reactions, the leaps, the folds, the hits, the whip-fast strikes, the runs, the side-steps, the raking claws, the snapping jaws. These convoluted thoughts, few of them conscious, incessantly revolved inside each fox head, until one became unsure, and his lack of confidence showed in his eyes. The other then went in immediately for the kill.
Inside a split second, Camio was astride his opponent and the other was on his back, paws in the air, staring at the savage face which looked down into his eyes. Camio’s teeth were bared back to the gum and hovered over the neck of this adversary. A-magyr slowly turned his head away, exposing his throat. Now both his jugular and belly were open for the teeth to tear, should Camio wish to take advantage of his superior position.
However, he did not go for A-magyr’s throat. Foxes do occasionally fight to the death, but more often, once they have gained the upper hand, they allow a retreat to take place. A-magyr had been broken, which was perhaps worse than a death. His spirit had been crushed within him. He was lost in his shame, and the fact that they both knew this was enough. The battle was over. The loser slunk away, tail between his legs. This is not to say there would be no more fights between them, but A-magyr would have to have a very good reason for attempting the same thing twice. With Camio, at least, his confidence had been shattered, and a great psychological advantage lay with the newcomer.
The newcomer heaved a sigh of relief, thinking that if all rural foxes were like A-magyr he was going to have a hard time establishing himself. Camio was certainly not going to leave without giving the area a good try. He was weary of the city and the so-called ‘suburbs’ which seemed as dense and limitless as the city itself. He was also sick of trains and travelling. It was time to put his paw-print on a piece of clay and say, ‘I’m not moving from here!’
Camio entered the depths of the wood and found a place to lie in the half-exposed roots of an old oak. He sank wearily to the earth and there he rested until the evening.
Camio woke as a sun the colour of drying blood threw dark lanes through the woodlands. There were blue clouds of midges hanging above the woodland floor. He climbed to his feet and drank some murky water from a hollow in a rotten tree. He opened the bark with his teeth and found bugs beneath, which he ate quickly. Above him, the pigeons were settling for the night and sparrows peppered favourite plane trees, creating a disturbance with their clamour. He cleaned some of the dust from his coat, and then decided to explore the remainder of the woodland.
He found a fox’s earth at one point, but the occupants were out and he did not wish to violate a home without being invited. As he was leaving the spot, on the edge of the wood, a vixen came out of the trees and took a brief look up into the night sky, before noticing he was there. Camio studied this female of the species. She was, he decided, a mature but attractive creature – very attractive – and he found himself walking towards her, wondering what to say. For once in his life he felt tongue-tied, and though he felt like howling or barking at the moon, his conversation seemed buried somewhere at the back of his throat.
The vixen glanced at him and then made to leave the place.
‘Wait,’ said Camio, quickly. ‘Could we – talk?’
She stopped, but remained on all fours, as if still prepared to leave within the moment.
‘Talk?’ she said. ‘About what?’
‘Well, I’m a stranger around here …’
‘I know that.’
‘… and I wondered if you could give me some information, about the lie of the land, that sort of thing. I recently escaped from a zoo and I’m… I’m a little lost.’
‘A zoo? I don’t know what a zoo is.’
‘It’s a place where they lock animals in cages – like chickens, you know? – so that humans can come and look at them without being bitten. Not a very pleasant place, if you happen to be in it, rather than visiting. However, I got out, and here I am.’
‘What’s all this got to do with me?’ She seemed very haughty and superior, and for the first time in his life Camio was suddenly concerned about his antecedents. It had never occurred to him before that there might be something inferior in coming from a background of suburban foxes who had discarded their cultural origins as being less important than learning who emptied the trash cans outside the restaurants and on what day.
‘Well, nothing I suppose …’ a flash of inspiration came to him, ‘… unless you have a regard for hospitality? I’m a strange fox in a strange land, and I need help. Is that to do with you?’
She looked a little contrite at this, but still the impatience showed on her face.
‘If you could be more specific, I’ll try to direct you to wherever you’re going. I can hardly help you if you don’t tell me your problem.’
Before he could stop himself, he threw all caution away and plunged in head first. It came out all of a rush, the words tumbling over each other like torrents of white water, and even before he had finished he could see by the coldness in her eyes that he had made a terrible mistake. He had been too rash, too impetuous.
‘I need a home, and a vixen to share that home, I’ve been alone too long, maybe I’m not easy to live with, I don’t know, but I’m tired of wandering, I want to settle down, have a family, be a father-fox with a mate again … I know how this must sound, since we don’t know each other, but I’m not a fox to hold back my feelings. I saw you, with dying sunlight behind you, and you looked so – so beautiful. Such a fiery red and – beautiful.’ He plunged into desperation as her look formed droplets of ice in the air between them. ‘You have such delicate lines. Your scent is like a drug to me – it makes my head spin. And your voice! A thousand nightingales …’
‘You want to be a father-fox, again?’ The haughty look was redoubled. ‘The trouble with you rangfars …’
‘We what?’
‘… you travellers, or whatever you like to call yourselves – you think you can walk into a parish, stroll into a strange covert, and make up to any female that takes your fancy. No doubt you have dozens of so-called mates, over the whole country, all panting away for the devil-may-care dog fox that calls when he feels like it, when he’s in the vicinity. Well, let me tell you that I am one vixen who is proud to be an ord, one of those you secretly find very boring and just want a quick once-over with before going back on the road again. No, I do not find you attractive, whatever-your-name is – I assume you’ve actually got a name – and I don’t wish to share my home or my life with someone who just walks out of nowhere and will no doubt go back there twice as fast, once the business has been done. Don’t bother to say good night.’
She turned abruptly on her heels a
nd began to walk off, when he shouted, ‘Camio.’
She turned again, as if he had yelled a common insult.
‘What?’ she said.
‘My name – it’s Camio – and I think that’s one of the most magnificent speeches I’ve ever heard. I’m just sorry I had to be at the sharp end of it. Listen, I’m not a rangfar or whatever you call it – we say longtrekker back home – I’m just an ordinary fox in extraordinary circumstances. I didn’t ask to go on the road – it was thrust upon me. I was captured, drugged and put in a cage. I don’t know where my home is, but believe me, if I did I would go there in an instant. No one likes to have to start again. Fact is, I don’t know where it is and I don’t think I’ve got a bat’s eyes’ chance of finding it again. The world is too big. I’ve tried city life. It doesn’t suit me. So I came out here, on the train, and here I’m going to stay. I’ve already had a run-in with one of your local foxes, someone called A-magyr, and I had to thrash him to enter the wood. Now I get the treatment from a vixen – a very hoity-toity vixen, I might add, who thinks she’s better than me, but hasn’t seen anything of the world, or done half of what I’ve done. Well, let me tell you, madam – I’ve had better welcomes from a cage full of monkeys. And I’ll find my way around here without your help.’
‘Monkeys?’ she said, in a small voice.
‘Man-like creatures, with a little more sense than the hairless ones – though not much more,’ he added, recalling their empty chatter and their willingness to imitate human actions.
‘Where did you get a name like “Camio”?’
‘I told, you, I’m not from around here.’
‘But so far as I know, foxes all over the country take a letter from A-O, depending on their sex.’
‘Then I don’t come from this country. Don’t ask me how I got here, because I don’t know. Some say we were flown through the air, inside a man-made bird called an aeroplane, but I’m not sure that’s true, so I don’t repeat it.’
‘And you fought A-magyr?’
‘Fought, and beat A-magyr – his own mouth beat him, that is. I think he prefers to rant and rave rather than fight, but one usually leads to the other where I come from.’
She regarded him for a little while longer as they stood several yards apart in the gloaming. Her attitude was less superior than it had been before, but she still maintained a certain poise, a kind of affected pose which had invisible walls around it, so that he could not approach her without feeling he was desecrating holy ground, or violating some sacred trust. He did not understand why this should be so, but it was, and he knew he wanted her very badly. He wanted to call this high-minded, proud vixen with an obviously impeccable lineage stretching back to the most noble of all foxes, Menxito, his own. He wanted her beside him while he slept; he wanted her with him while he hunted; he wanted … her.
His mind was a turmoil of passion, which was kept under control with difficulty. He knew they could not mate: it was not her time. But the thought that when her time came, it might be him, sent his brain into a spin.
‘What do you want to know?’ she asked, her tone softer.
‘I’ve said – do you have a mate?’
‘No, and I’ve no wish for one. My mate was killed by the hounds, some time ago. You may want to start again – Camio – but I’ve no wish to. I intend to enter my old age as a female stoad.’
He thrilled to hear her say his name, but answered in a steady voice, ‘I’m sorry – about your mate. It wasn’t that big bastard down at the great house? I saw him as I came by.’ Secretly, he was glad she had no mate, not daring to believe his luck, and could not be sorry for the death of somebody he had never known. He felt a little guilty, too, for having such selfish thoughts.
Her back bristled, but she said, ‘No, not Sabre. He has other things to answer for. Now, I must …’
She turned again, and walked away into the wood. Camio watched her go, then did a little dance on the grass in the moonlight. No mate. She has no mate. He kept telling himself, over and over again. He stared down the slope from the wood, into the surrounding area. And what have we here? A town being built, by the looks of it. A new town. Well, well. A nice suburban area, with new houses and new restaurants. A lovely vixen without a mate. A local bully whom he had thrashed and so established himself. He was on top of the world. How could anything be better? And if this snooty vixen did not like him now, because she had lived the country life, close to natural things, a green environment full of apples and pears, and the scent of bryony – if this madam of the woodlands, with her high nose and dainty step, and rows of ancestors steeped in culture – if she would not take notice of him now, she would do soon. He was a fox who knew how to survive in the streets, amongst the bricks and mortar, the fast vehicles, the baby carriages and roller skates, the many boots and high-heeled shoes, the iron grids, the sewers, the vacant lots, the alleys, the roof-tops – yes, the roof-tops, where the foxes glided, from one building to the next, unseen by those in the street. He knew this man-made jungle, its ways, whys and wherefores. The fox and the kestrel hawk – they knew the face, and how to stay alive within its walls. She might know where to find a tree fungus, but she would not know that mushrooms and toadstools grew in the cracks of shaded buildings, or at the base of gravestones, or under wrecked cars at the breaker’s yard. She could climb a tree, but could she climb a garage, walk the length of a gutter some thirty feet off the ground?
I’ve got a chance, he told himself. I’ve got a chance to make this place my home.
Chapter Twelve
Gar and O-ha were sitting outside the sett, amid the wild flowers on the edge of Trinity Wood, lazing in the hot noonday summer’s sun. Gar was watching a bee making crazy flight patterns in the air, flying from bloom to bloom, but taking the longest possible route between each. It was one of those days when foxes emptied their heads of care and allowed Frashoon to ruffle their coats with warm fingers; days when they dreamed of their own sowander, where their spirits would rest forever amongst the grasses of the Perfect Here. It was one of those days when the minds of badgers turned to philosophy and invention.
O-ha had learned that badgers were wonderful creatures for thinking up great sayings, great truths, by which others could live their lives, but forgot them the moment the mood passed. Badgers were marvellous inventors of the most delicate, intricate devices, but never got around to producing any of them, either because their paws were inadequate for the task, or, most likely, once they had invented it in their minds, they lost interest, because that was where the fun was – in the inventing – not in the making.
O-ha had not much patience with this side of badgers. They appeared to be the most impractical of creatures: dreamers and story-tellers, whose great minds were of little use because they had not the tools – the hands of man – nor the determination to carry the schemes through to a conclusion which resulted in something tangible. She said this to Gar.
‘Ha,’ he said, ‘you fox are wintrum geong – young in winters.’ He watched the crazy bee through narrowed eyes. ‘Importance of dreams is not in using – importance is in having. You think dreams must mean something real, that fantasy bad for the soul. All wrong, all wrong. Fantasy just as important as reality. Reality is feeding body – finding food for keep alive. Fantasy feeds spirit. Soul need food same as body, and dreams, philosophies, stories, creations all food for spirit, see?’ There were some scratches in the dust, where earlier he had tried to show her an invention he had just thought up for getting honey out of hives without disturbing the bees. To O-ha they were incomprehensible marks on the earth, which might have been useful if she could grasp the practical use behind the idea, but since she could not she had dismissed them as worthless. He pointed to the scratches.
‘Here is wonderful idea, full of sticks that move against each other, vines that pull, forked twigs that push, stones that swing – but it is wonderful because it swefna cyst – how say? best of dreams. I see it all, up here,’ he nodded his head,
‘how it work, push, pull, swing, honey in paw, bees all happy. It fill me with delight, to see this picture in my head – my mind all golden with dream. If I try to make,’ he snorted, ‘it become something else. No longer dream, but something of world. Inside is best. Once come outside then something lost to spirit. Something gain for body, but something lost for spirit.’
‘But how useful it would be.’
‘Useful, yes, but badger not care for useful unless absolutely necessary for life to go on. Badger not want to lose dream – syllicre dream – just for sake of useful. See?’
She sighed. ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t, but it doesn’t matter. You are what you are – I’m different. I don’t suppose we can change one another. I wish I could invent things. I would build something to catch those hounds – Breaker and Sabre – and then …’
‘Then you would be sorry. Faehde – no good, this vengeance.’
‘That’s easy for you to say, Gar, but I have a dream too. My dream is full of blood and satisfaction.’
The badger shook his big head.
‘I think that is nightmare, not dream. Blood and satisfaction not go together well, not well at all.’
He went back to studying the bee, which was going berserk amongst the blooms, seeming to prefer certain colours to others. Blue was a favourite. Gar slipped into his philosophying mood.
Out of the trees, further down the wood, came another fox. It was O-lan, one of the ‘perfect pair’. O-ha called them that because they never seem to argue or fight over trivial things, seemed absolutely happy in one another’s company, never crossed one another in talk, and professed to live in bliss. The boring, perfect couple, she thought to herself, rather maliciously.
Gar was still muttering away to himself in a contented fashion, as O-lan approached, treading daintily through the wood edge grasses. Gar’s eyes were still fixed on the bee when O-lan absently snapped it out of the air and swallowed it.
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