Gar’s head jerked up.
‘Eh? Ahhhhh! What you do? You eat my inspiration! Ah! Fox! Uncultured fox. Destroyer of dreams. You eat him. You eat up my dream-bearer!’
He climbed to his feet looking absolutely disgusted and went towards the entrance to the sett. O-ha called after him, but he shook his head. ‘Your friend is crush my philosophy. I go home. I go where animal is not all the time eating, thinking of belly. I go …’
He disappeared down the hole. O-lan was looking distressed and said helplessly, ‘What did I do?’
O-ha shook her head.
‘He told you – you ate his dream-maker. He was using the bee to do something inside his head – I don’t know what, but it was important to him. Never mind, you weren’t to know.’
O-lan flopped down beside her.
‘Well, I’m sorry I upset him. You’ll tell him that, won’t you? I don’t like upsetting anyone.’
‘I know – I know.’
There was a long period of silence, but O-ha knew that the other vixen had not come to merely pass the time of day. She suspected that a favour was about to be asked: O-Ian’s expression was one of disinterest, and that always made O-ha suspicious.
‘Well?’ she said at last, unable to contain her impatience, ‘what have you come to talk about?’
O-lan turned an innocent-looking face on her acquaintance.
‘Why,’ she said, wide-eyed, ‘I just thought to come for a chat. You know how much I like chatting with you, O-ha. How are you getting along? Isn’t it time you moved out of that badgers’ sett and into your own earth again? It can’t be good for you, living with those grumpy creatures – they’re always in a bad temper – well, not in a bad temper, but sullen, you know?’
‘They are in fact very nice animals – placid and self-contained. They just look dour, that’s all.’
‘Really?’ O-lan flicked an ear. ‘Well, you know them better than anyone, I suppose. Just look at that hav,’ she said, directing O-ha’s attention to the devastation of the land around the wood. ‘All our fine fields, the heath, all gone.’
There were half-built houses below now, and streets were beginning to form networks in the churned clay and mud. It seemed that the builders were determined to get some people into the new town before the winter arrived. They worked night and day to that effect. Trinity Wood had so far not been touched, but there were rumours that it would be drastically pruned, when the time came. The new fox, Camio, was telling others that it seemed as if the wood were destined to become a park – a place where humans would walk their dogs and put up devices for their young to play on – and, he said, it would be landscaped. Trees would be cut down and areas cleared, but if his experience was anything to go by, a lot of the old wood might remain untouched. Humans liked to think they had a wild wood in the middle of their town: somewhere they could go to find a little natural life.
‘I would like to think they would make it a nature reserve, where only those humans that want to watch the animals through glasses would be allowed to go, but unfortunately, I don’t think that will happen. The wood is too central, and anyway, hooligans would ignore any signs that told them to keep out of the wood.’
This Camio seemed a bit of a know-all to O-ha, and she was inclined to treat the hearsay (she had not spoken to the animal herself since that night he had accosted her on the edge of the wood) as dubious information, not to be taken at face value. He probably thought he knew what he was talking about, she decided generously, but there was every reason to suppose he was mistaken. No one had approached Trinity Wood, and she had never heard of a garden, for that was what a park seemed to be, which was for the use of all. Gardens were private things, attached to individual houses. No, this impertinent new fox had got it all wrong and was afraid to admit it. She hated boastful animals, and it seemed that Camio was so full of himself he got carried away.
‘Yes, it’s very sad,’ replied O-ha. ‘We’re losing our ancestral highways, our hideouts, and many of our soaks and waterholes. You can’t walk through brick walls. There are new ones, of course, but they aren’t the same, are they?’
O-lan nodded.
‘Still, it’s very exciting. All that hustle and bustle going on down there – and Camio says that when it’s finished, it’ll be easier to get food than in the countryside. They waste so much, those humans. It won’t be like the farmers, or the country people, who use their scraps on the pigs and chickens, or are too poor to throw away anything. These humans are quite different. They’re all as rich as those in the manor house, but not as mean.’
‘Camio, Camio, doesn’t anyone talk about anything else these days?’ snapped O-ha. ‘I’m sick of hearing that fox’s name – and he doesn’t know everything. He just thinks he does.’
O-lan’s eyes opened wider in surprise.
‘No, he doesn’t know everything, and he doesn’t pretend to, O-ha. He’s just giving us the benefit of his experience. He’s lived in a town after all.’
‘So he says,’ sniffed O-ha.
‘And there’s no reason to suppose he’s not telling the truth, is there? My goodness, O-ha, you have got a down on him haven’t you? And he speaks nothing but good of you.’
‘Does he?’ she said quickly, suppressing a flicker of feeling deep inside her breast.
‘Yes he does – and I think you would do well to take notice of that. You’ve been too long on your own.’
O-ha acknowledged an ironic thought.
‘Oh, I understand. We’re match-making are we, O-lan? Getting poor O-ha, the pitiful, lonely vixen, a new mate? Well, I don’t need one thank you. I do very well on my own. I like living on my own. It’s less troublesome and I’m fond of not having any responsibilities. All right?’
‘Yes, of course. We know we don’t need dog foxes to fulfil us – I’m not suggesting that we do. A vixen can manage very well by herself. But what about cubs, O-ha. Look at my cubs. Don’t you want a family? It’s delightful …’
‘I’m sure it is,’ snapped O-ha, ‘but I’ve no time for such things. I’m not interested in dog foxes, cubs or anything else.’
O-lan rose to her feet, looking sad.
‘Oh well, you know your own mind best. I’d better get back to my litter. I’ve been teaching them how to hunt. They’re doing very well, but they’re getting lazy. I must say this face has got into everyone’s lives. My cubs are saying they’ll have no need to hunt once the town is there. They’ll just pick things up in the streets. I must admit I don’t like the idea that hunt-and-search skills will not need to be taught – I think we should keep the old ways as long as possible, don’t you?’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said O-ha. ‘These new foxes, they’re impressive, but they don’t realise the harm they’re doing. They don’t realise we have a history, a culture behind us, which is thousands of seasons old. They’re a bad influence on us. Hunting skills will always be needed. Searching for fungi, wild roots and vegetables – this will always be necessary. I for one am not going to let such things drift away from me.’
O-lan blinked.
‘Oh, I don’t think Camio is saying that, O-ha. He is as good a hunter as anyone I’ve seen, and he certainly doesn’t advocate that we ignore all our old ways, our skills. It’s the cubs – they’re getting unmanageable, that’s all. When they reach a certain age, they think we can’t teach them anything. They know it all, already.’
‘I still think that there are bad influences around, which need to be curbed.’
‘If you say so.’
With that, O-lan left her to herself.
The day following this conversation, there was a hunt. When O-ha heard the horn, the hallooing, the shouts of the hounds, she froze in her chamber. Gar went to the entrance to the sett and poked his nose out, and came down later with the news that there had been great battles on the land outside. Other humans had come to interfere with the hunt, by spraying things on the ground to confuse the hounds, and generally causing consternation amon
g the riders. Some of the huntsmen beat the interferers with riding whips, and then the workmen on the roads around the wood helped the newcomers turn back the riders. It seemed they were angry with horseriders coming into the building sites and knocking down their makeshift fences.
‘Oh, what onmedlan,’ he cried, becoming more excited than she had ever seen him before. ‘Such happenings! Such anger! I never saw such glorious things. And the dogs – they ran this way, that way, sniffing, screaming in frustration. I saw them – they shake their head like this,’ and he gave a furious demonstration of a hound that had sniffed something unpleasant, ‘and run around like this,’ he raced around the inside of the chamber. ‘It was good to see this. You should see this happenings, O-ha.’
She lifted her head from her paws.
‘I – I was afraid. Poor A-ho – it was as if it were happening all over again. I was afraid.’
Gar became tender, realising that she had rerun her old ordeal in her head while the horn had been sounding and the shouts had been ringing through the countryside.
‘Oh, ya. I see. Well, never mind. I have report to you the things I see, and this is true. I think we get no more hunts in this place now. Maybe the workmen burn down the manor – that would make nice bonfire, eh?’
‘Fire is never good, you know that, Gar.’
He nodded his great head.
‘Ya, yes, is true. One of my silly dreams.’
He left her then. Later she went up to the surface, to look around. The workmen below were preparing to leave for the night, locking up their site sheds and leaving their great machines silent. Why hadn’t they used those machines in battling with the riders? thought O-ha. But then humans had their rules too, when dealing with one another. They were not without a vestige of culture.
The moon came out, a hazy light in the heavens, and O-ha made her way to the farm, picking her way carefully between the digging machines that smelled strongly of steel. Gip had died early that summer and a new dog had taken his place. She had not yet met this new hound, and did not particularly want to. However, as she approached the farmhouse, she was aware of him sitting outside his kennel, a chain attached to his collar. His pose was a forlorn one. He looked miserable and dejected, and despite her hatred for dogs, she felt sorry for him. She could not imagine anything worse than being restricted to a few square feet of ground, a prisoner on a chain. Then she recalled that Camio had been in a similar position. How had he stood it? She would have killed herself – ritual suicide, ranz-san – rather than submit to such terrible treatment. He must have had a high survival instinct. There was a saying that ‘foxes know no tomorrows’. It was the present, always, that counted.
She crouched by one of the barns and stared at the dog, whose large mournful head looked up at the moon. He seemed familiar.
Suddenly, the hound smelled her, and lifted his head. O-ha prepared to flee, thinking that his yelling would have the farmer running out with a gun, but the dog did not cry out. Instead, he called softly ‘Is that a fox out there?’
Without thinking, she replied, ‘Yes.’
‘Ah.’ He placed his head on his paws with a sigh.
O-ha was desperately curious.
‘Why don’t you yell for your master?’ she asked. ‘I’m up to no good, you know. I’ve come to steal chickens.’
‘Get on with it then. I’ll start yelling once you attack the chickens, if I feel like it. Right now I’m in two minds.’
She was amazed at this talk.
‘But you’re a farm dog. You’re supposed to protect the place.’
He snorted then, through his cavernous nostrils.
‘Farm dog? I’m no farm dog. I’m a hound – a hunting hound. I’ve run down more foxes than you’ve caught chickens. I’ve broken them – broken their necks …’
‘Breaker!’ she breathed.
His head came up again.
‘Yes – that’s my name. How do you know my name, fox? Famous is it? Famous among foxes, eh?’
‘You killed my mate,’ she snapped, ‘towards the end of winter. There was a hunt. You chased me along a road, to the wood, then my mate took over and you killed him.’
‘Not me. I’ve not caught a fox for a long time. That’s why I’m here, in this place,’ he looked around him in disgust. ‘This is my punishment, to be trussed up here, chained. My usefulness as a hunting hound was questioned. I was given a trial, and here I am – talking to foxes from the end of a chain. You must be feeling good, seeing me like this, when I was once a hero of the pack, a hound looked up to by all. It must make you feel good.’
She remembered then, that A-ho had not been caught by the pack, but dug out of the earth by stable boys, then thrown to the hounds, once he was dead.
‘No, I don’t feel good. I still hate you, but I don’t like seeing any animal chained. You could tell them I’m here …’
He made a grimace.
‘Let them find out for themselves. Only, don’t go near the chickens or the ducks, or I’ll have to make some sort of row. I suppose I still have a little honour left in my bones. It might not be much, but it’s there. And don’t come near me. I’m a trained killer. I’ll have your neck.’
‘I know,’ she said.
She drifted around the farm, finding some gubbins out at the back, hanging on the corral fence. The cows watched her with round eyes as she crossed her shadow over it twice, then ripped it from its wire. They said nothing, their mouths busy the whole time, chewing, chewing. She thought they were very silly creatures, but there was little point in saying so.
When she had performed the ritual chants and drunk from the pond, she returned to the sett. She fulfilled the requirements of entering-the-earth, for even though this was a sett, she was a conventional creature and did not like to deviate from the proper procedures necessary to fox security. The badgers were having a gathering when she arrived, and she listened to their strange language, their old, old tongue, before dropping off to sleep.
When she woke she went through that terrible routine of thinking A-ho was still alive, but came to her senses sooner than she used to. It was probably meeting Breaker that was responsible for slipping back into old habits.
She left the sett and for the second time since his death, visited the sowander of her old mate. She passed through the spot several times, imbibing the spirit of the place, which gave her a tremulous feeling in her heart. She told herself she was there to pay her respects to A-ho, but buried beneath that acknowledged reason was a subconscious desire to obtain his approval for something – for someone. The face she put to world was strong and unyielding, but inside she was very lonely. The badgers were kind and she was especially fond of Gar, but they were no replacement for a mate.
So the messages went out from her heart, to her erstwhile mate, hoping for some guidance from him: some sign which might tell her whether he approved or not of what she wanted to happen in the near future.
Nothing happened. It is the living who must make the decisions on their own lives. She went home desperately disappointed, but refusing to admit it to herself.
‘A-ho knows how I feel,’ she told herself, ‘that’s the only important thing.’
The dream came again. Fear and the chase. She dreamed she was in a bright place and struggling to walk. Suddenly, black bars fell across the ground. They were like …
Chapter Thirteen
The summer ended and Melloon was sweeping across the landscape like a grand shaggy fox. The river began to gather more scarlet hues upon its surface during twilights and ripe fruit and nuts fell to the earth. Around Trinity Wood the town was taking shape and the first occupants were moving into completed dwellings, though many roads were still unmade and dozens of houses were still empty shells, some without roofing. The evacuation of the animals had continued throughout the warm months. Some animals were determined not to recognise the human invasion: to ignore it as long as possible. Prominent among these was A-konkon, visionary, mystic among foxes.
/> He had been born ‘A-kon’ on the far side of the river, in the crypt of a church, the spire of which could be seen from the wood, piercing the sky on the other side of the valley. Often, when the river mists curled up from the water, it was the only thing that could be seen on the distant ridge. The repetitive syllable was added to his name at three months old when it was realised by his mother that he had special powers. It was said that A-konkon was able to recognise as many colours as humans themselves, the result of laying as a cub beneath the great stained-glass window which arched over the church altar, soaking up the brilliant hues projected by the sun on to the stone floor. During his childhood he had also imbibed much that was sacred to humankind, listening from the crypt below the altar while their religious services went on overhead, and falling into a trance under the murmurings and organ music which came from above.
After his parents had left their breeding earth, in the church, A-konkon still returned to ponder over the symbol of the cross, to listen to the choir filling the church with its howling and baying, and to wander amongst the gravestones. His presence was tolerated by the humans whose church it was and who had certainly known of his mother’s breeding earth and yet had not interfered with it. The ancient stones of the old building whispered secrets to the fox, and the buttresses, the beams, the organ pipes confirmed these clandestine utterances. They were secrets which carried little understanding for an animal unversed in the ways of men, but some gleanings of intelligence fell on the consciousness of the mystic fox. There was a strange bright light – a shaft that penetrated – carrying a message from above and imprinting itself in colours on the floor of the church.
‘There is something which is denied us,’ he told other foxes, ‘because man does not believe we have a spirit, a soul. I cannot tell you what it is – there is not one animal in the whole world who understands humans or their language – but I know it is important and we are excluded from it. A-O was not the first, that much I can tell you.’
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