Most of the plants followed suit, all except those like shepherd’s purse, groundsel and chickweed, which are prepared to battle through the winter as individuals. The frogs buried themselves in mud and changed their breathing habits, taking all their oxygen from the water, since they need very little while they are dozing the winter away. The owls sharpened their claws, honed their beaks, and like most carnivores prepared themselves for a hard time.
A-sac never returned and eventually O-ha and Camio realised that he was not going to come home. Camio said that the white fox had probably found a vixen and settled with her. O-ha agreed, saying that there were plenty of peculiar females around who would want a potential mystic for a mate.
They moved, with Mitz, to an earth on the embankment of the railway loop that was in the process of being built to accommodate the town. At first there were quite a few humans around, working on the rails, but they had no time to bother foxes and like the builders in the face, were even quite pleased to see them. Mitz became friendly with another group of young foxes, just along the track, and Camio said that it would not be long before she moved in with them. Mitz denied this, but the signs were definitely there.
The frost crackled across the land, covering tree stumps in hard white crystals, turning them into gravestones. Brambles became thick wire with metal hooks that caught the coat. Ice crept across the world at night, in thin layers that formed thicker wedges, until water was scarce.
The town continued to expand and food became easier to find, in the bins, outside homes and restaurants. Foxes and kestrels ate well, if not on the waste food itself, on the rats and mice that appeared out of nowhere to cohabit with the humans. Of course, man did not realise the rodents had arrived, since they kept a low profile, but the foxes did. So did the kestrels. In fact it was the exceptional human that even noticed the hawks and foxes, let alone mice and rats.
O-ha was more at home in the embankment than she had been in the scrapyard. An earth was an earth to her – it should be fashioned out of the material which made its name. She was still a rural fox at heart (a rustic, Camio called her in play) and disliked and distrusted the town. The gerflan on which she lived was a compromise: something between face and hav. She did not like eating worms out of the gutters in the street, she preferred to dig them out of the ground. They seemed to taste different straight from the soil. Slugs and snails, too, were somehow more tasty from a leaf than they were from a wall.
She wondered how she would feel once the trains began to thunder along the line. Camio had told her that one got used to the vibration and the sound, but she wondered how much he actually knew and how much he believed he knew. There was a difference. Camio often repeated what other foxes told him as if he had experienced the thing himself.
‘I’ve seen down the new sewers, they’re quite wide,’ she heard a fox tell Camio. Later she heard Camio use exactly the same words when mentioning the sewers to Mitz. When she challenged him, saying, ‘You haven’t seen the new sewers yourself. You haven’t been near them yet,’ he replied, ‘Oh, it’s too complicated to start explaining that so-and-so told whatsisname, who passed it on to him, who carried the tale to her – much easier to repeat what you’ve heard.’ ‘But that’s dishonest,’ she said. ‘Oh, is it?’ he answered, unperturbed.
Yet she still thought more of Camio than any other fox alive. And it was not as if these aberrations were harmful. They meant very little, in real terms.
From her hole in the long grass at the top of the bank she watched the bright, steel rails being laid. They looked magnificent. She admired their clean, straight dimensions. There was great beauty in a strip of steel, she decided. It looked cold, hard and efficient, just like a fox should be. The soul of a living fox, she decided, should be modelled on a steel rail. It should shine, but it should be immune from injury, devoid of anything but stark, capable toughness. This was the ascetic fox coming out in her. She enjoyed the austere life of living in a hole in the ground, without any embellishments, just the bare earth. In fact she was a warm creature inside and confused her distaste for material comforts with a desire to own a severe spirit. She felt the two were one and the same. Camio frequently told her that she was a caring creature, and that just because she did not like soft beds did not mean she had a hard soul. O-ha grieved over this. Some deep teaching from somewhere, perhaps her parents, had left her feeling it was wrong to be emotional.
Over the next month the high, dark winds without names rushed heavy clouds over the land. Shadows swept across the wastelands and over the face. The mating period came around, but a sudden fall of snow trapped Camio on the far side of town. He struggled to reach home but though he fought his way through drifts, it was three days before he reached the earth on the gerflan. By that time, O-ha’s desire was waning. She was irritable with Camio for not being around at the same time, and when she finally accepted that it was not his fault and the mating took place, the oestrus was over. There would be no cubs. Mitz was not slow to state that she thought this was a good thing. She did not entirely approve of O-ha having litter after litter of cubs.
The men finished work on the railway and the trains began to use the loop. At first O-ha thought she would never get used to the noise, but gradually the trains seemed to become quieter, until she had to concentrate to hear them at all. Of a night time, she used to like lying side by side with Camio, staring down at the trains going by, all lit up. She wondered what the fox-spirits of the Firstdark thought about these modern times, when humans hurtled from one place to another inside glass boxes. She thought of the fox-spirits as being rather conventional, slow to change. After all, they had known the earth when it was young. When there were no machines at all, and men were running naked through the forests, killing things with sticks and stones instead of guns. The fox-spirits had seen a lot of changes and would probably see more. No doubt they would be there to witness the end of the world when it came.
Fox mythology said that one day all the waters would rise up and reshape themselves into A-O’s ancient foxform, which was like an ordinary fox only a thousand times larger and with eyes so full of severe compassion that no mortal could look directly into them. A-O would then begin swallowing the sun, moon and earth, in that order. In this way, the ghosts of all dead foxes would become part of A-O.
So, contemplating her immortal state, O-ha daydreamed. It was only when she slept that the nightmares came, of black bars falling across a wide bright field of snow, the chase, and then … finally, the shadow of her pursuer fell across her path. She had seen that shadow seasons ago, when A-ho had still been alive. She had gone to the duck pond at the farm in the middle of a Ransheen night. She had crossed the frozen pond to get at the coop, but half-way over had looked down and had seen a dark shadow under the ice. Now, in her dream, she looked up to see the shape that cast the shadow – or was it the shadow that cast the shape? She was confused. Was the thing above her head or below her feet?
She woke, whining pitifully in her distress.
Chapter Thirty Two
It was Ransheen and the world turned to bone. The sky had moved down on to the land. Shapes were lost to the sight, even in open spaces, and scents and sounds were whisked away by blizzards, upwards, to be buried in the grey above. Creatures became statues, freezing in their tracks, their eyes like flints.
Life had become hard for the creatures of the face, since heavy snowfalls had brought the town to a standstill. Restaurants had closed temporarily, there were no rubbish collections, few people ventured out at all. The foxes who relied on waste food to live found the sources had disappeared. Starvation moved into the homes of the animals and took up residence. O-ha, Camio and Mitz became thin and wasted creatures. Their bellies pinched tight beneath their fur and their eyes burned dimly from the depths of hollow sockets. In desperation they ate snow, trying to fill the pits of pain inside them. Any scrap which even had the appearance of food was hastily devoured. Camio ate some unidentifiable piece of trash and it made him
ill. He lay close to death on the floor of their earth on a day when Ransheen gnawed at the bareboned land with fine sharp teeth.
On such a day, O-ha decided to raid the farmhouse on the edge of the face, for anything that was available. It was during such weather that farmers forgot to lock up the chicken coop, or failed to shut the barn door on stored vegetables. The three foxes were so desperately hungry that she knew she had to risk the journey, even in such appalling conditions. Camio was not fit for the enterprise, so she decided to brave the blizzard alone. The townspeople remained in their houses, only heading out when they had to replenish their own stores. There was still no throwaway food to be had in the streets.
Camio, from his sickbed, tried to dissuade her from the trip.
‘Why don’t you wait a little while longer? Perhaps the blizzard will clear up soon?’
‘Perhaps it won’t,’ she said, emphatically. ‘It’s no good – I’m going, and that’s that. If we don’t get something to eat, we’ll die anyway.’
‘It’s a bad time,’ was all he added.
‘Mitz will look after you,’ said O-ha. ‘She’s outside now, getting some ice for you to lick. You need water. I wish we could find you some grass, but it’s buried deep under the snow. Perhaps soon, once it begins to thaw …’
‘I shall be all right. Don’t you worry about me.’ He did not look all right. He lay full length on his side, panting, his ribs sticking through his ragged fur like small wire hoops. O-ha was frightened to nuzzle him since the skin was so taut it seemed as if it would split open at the slightest pressure.
Mitz came in then with an icicle in her mouth. She dropped it in front of Camio, then flopped down beside him. It seemed an effort for her to keep her head upright.
‘There,’ she said breathlessly. ‘That’s as clear a piece of ice as you’ll ever see. Outside in the light, you can see right through it – and it sparkles. Where are you going, O-ha?’
O-ha had been edging towards the exit, mumbling her orisons.
‘Out. I have to look for food. You see to Camio. I won’t be long.’
She knew that Mitz thought she was going to search locally, so she hurried out of the earth before the vixen discovered that her mother was going on a much longer journey, to the farm. She would have insisted on going with her.
O-ha struggled through the shoulder-high snow, ploughing forward with effort. It got into her mouth and nostrils, and the going was hard, but she was determined to make it to the point where the streets sloped upwards to Trinity Parklands, before she had a rest.
The snow had fallen in soft lumps at first, laying that crisp under layer which crunched beneath the paws. At that time the air had that stillness, that deadened effect, which tells all creatures even before they even leave their homes that there has been a fall of snow. The world looked pure for a day. There followed three days of a different kind of snow. One that came in on the back of an angry Ransheen, driving in hard, in small, gritty flakes. This was the snowstorm that was still raging as O-ha battled against the drifts, her eyes stinging in the flailing wind and ice.
Her legs quickly became tired but she forced them to carry on. When she fell into the deeper drifts, she burrowed her way through. There was a terrible pain in her stomach which she knew was being echoed inside Camio and Mitz. Her head felt light, however, and not quite part of her. She forced herself to think of things other than her own agony, her own situation.
Mitz! She had started calling her daughter Mitz at long last, finally giving in and dropping the prefix. How is she ever going to get a mate? thought O-ha. She’ll meet a dog fox, tell him her name, and he’ll think … well, there was no reasoning what he would think. Still, the vixen was grown now. There was nothing more O-ha could do about it. At least the collar had gone, had slipped off when Mitz had lost weight and her face had been pared down by lack of food. That collar had been enough in itself to turn any dog fox’s thoughts away from her daughter.
She forced herself to think these thoughts, to keep her mind from her hunger and waning strength. There were pictures at the back of her brain, of foxes lying dead in the snow, bodies frozen solid. They too had set out in search of food, had eked out their last few wisps of energy, had fallen and never risen again. Well, if it was to be like that, it was as good a death as any. She had had a good life – some tragedy, admittedly, but what vixen gets through the seasons she had seen without tragedy of some kind?
She found herself in a tunnel of snow and followed it to the end, emerging at the foot of the slope that led to Trinity. So far, so good. There were very few people abroad, which gave her one less thing to think about. In any case, humans relied on their eyes, and the visibility was so poor they would have to be on top of her to see her.
She began climbing the slippery street, her paws skidding on the ice the cars had formed from packed snow. Her stomach pulled, once or twice, as if it were on a line, someone yanking the other end. She fought back the pain and continued the slow climb. The blizzard increased in strength, and Ransheen threatened to throw O-ha back down the slope, like a rag. Sleet whipped along O-ha’s right flank and she closed the eye on that side. If there were scents in the air, she could not smell them, and any sounds were lost in a banshee howling. They were dangerous conditions for a wild creature.
She reached the gates to the parklands and wearily settled down for a rest. It would have been easy, so easy, to let that last little ember of warmth inside, go out. Just to sleep where she lay and never wake up. Such a tempting … But there were others relying on her. Perhaps they didn’t want to go to the Perfect Here? She had to force herself back up, on to her legs, and continue. The thing to do was keep the farm in mind.
O-ha entered the woods, and once in the trees the going was a little easier. The woodland kept out a lot of the blizzard. There were one or two people about, walking their dogs or in couples, but she kept to the edge, away from the main paths. She passed a small depression at the bottom of a tree. Gar’s sett. But though she had not seen the badger for a long while, this was no time to go visiting. Even in the wood the snow was past her haunches, impeding her progress.
In the summer, when Frashoon came back, she promised herself. Then she would visit Gar.
There was a hole in the snowscape ahead of her. Almost immediately she caught the scent of ermine and nosed it out. The creature was lying still, white on white, having given up its life to the winter. No doubt it had been on a desperate hunt for rabbits who were wisely dying somewhere else, in the relative warmth of their burrows, in the company of others. She made a swift meal of the small ermine, the meat giving her the energy she needed to make that long trek down through the edge of the face to the farm on the far side. She felt guilty, but there was little enough for one, let alone three. O-ha needed the strength to return.
Just as she finished her meal, the blizzard drifted away and the skies began to clear. So startling was the effect that two hunched, heavy-coated humans out walking their dogs emerged from their collars and stared at the heavens. O-ha, too, was stunned at how quickly the blueness took over from the grey. It was as if the sky were in sheets and someone had pulled away the bottom one to reveal a complete contrast.
A few moments later, the sun came out and the shadows of the trees fell in black bars across the now glinting snow.
Familiar scene: black bars on white.
A chill went through her that was nothing to do with the cold.
O-ha’s eyes took in the strange uniform pattern of the shadows: they played across her mind like a tune. She was mesmerised by them. The scene was quite familiar. The trees, the clear day, the white world, and the black shadows like bars … something ran through her mind, a dark shape, tripping between the bars, in the sunlight, in the shadow, running fearful as if in a dream. Over and over played the tune, and she recognised the form. She knew it so well because she had seen it night after night in her restless sleep … running like a dream, through a dream, and it was her and she was the dr
eam.
She looked round quickly as a scent came to her from the direction of the parklands. There were two silhouettes there: a man in a heavy coat and hat, and a dog. The hound was tall and red in the light of the sun. His big-boned skull full of brute strength.
Then the image blurred as she failed to focus on the still scene. It had been enough, that one glimpse, accompanied by the odour. O-ha knew who that couple were. Sabre and his master!
Had he seen her? She waited, her heart beating fast, crouched in the snow. But she was aware of her own red coat against the white landscape. The figures were up-wind, but if the man had even mediocre eyesight he would see her. It was doubtful he would encourage Sabre to chase her, but could he keep the hound back if it caught its master’s interest in a distant object?
Then the wind changed direction, and though it did not blow directly towards O-ha’s enemy, it swirled around the trees, carrying her scent with it. Ransheen, she thought, you traitor!
She looked towards the man and the dog. The hound’s head went up, jerked up, quickly. It stood, almost as high as the man’s chest, and its head swivelled, scanning the countryside. Then the head stopped moving.
‘Fox!’
She heard Sabre shout, the word muffled by the snow.
Was it her? Had he seen her? Perhaps there was another fox? Better to freeze, remain still, just in case, just to be sure.
Sabre began pulling on the leash. The man jerked the dog’s head back, snarling at him. The dog began straining, pulling his master towards the edge of the wood. He was heading straight for the spot where O-ha crouched. It was her he had seen.
She broke cover and began to run, wading through the belly-high snow. The dog, now sure of his quarry, began running too. The man was jerked off his feet, dragged for a while, his body cutting a furrow through the snow. Then the lead was released, a harsh scream of anger coming from the man’s open, red mouth. A hat went blowing away, across the field.
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