Still, while Mia grumbled and winter froze everything to stillness, Uly’s heart continued to glow. He couldn’t help it. He was never meant to have any of this. He was meant to live out his days in the stone den or perish the moment he set paw in the wide world. Every day he was out with Mia felt like learning a secret he was never supposed to know.
“Mia?”
“Yeah?”
“If we find—” He gave his muzzle a shake. “Sorry. After we find your mom … what will you do?”
“You mean if winter doesn’t eat us for breakfast?” she said.
Uly swung around and hopped backward, facing her. “It’s gonna have to catch us first.”
Mia limped. “It’s not gonna be much of a chase.”
He swung back around, hopping beside her. His tail drooped while he searched for the right words. “Do you think you’ll ever … start a den? You know, so you don’t have to keep running into new, scary things all the time? You’d just have your home and the places around it, and they’d be safe, and that’d be it?”
Mia opened her mouth to respond, and his heart flipped over. He kept talking before she could answer.
“I could get a den nearby,” he said. “I could come say hi sometimes, and we could go hunting or something…” He dared a quick look at her. “Is that anything you’d ever think about maybe doing? Maybe?”
The snow fell, reflecting in Mia’s eyes.
“No,” she said.
Uly stared at his forepaw. “Yeah, no. Of course not. I get it.”
She must have forgotten what she’d said to his dad back in the Lilac Kingdom. About starting a den with him. Either that, or she’d never meant it.
Mia was silent a few steps. “It’s just … families can up and die. Just like that. Or they can leave you and never come back.”
Uly watched his breath make clouds, hoping she couldn’t see his disappointment. “You don’t have to explain.”
The sun winked out on the horizon, and the foxes looked up as clouds swept across the sky.
TWO
THE BLIZZARD LASHED its frozen claws across the valley, enveloping Mia and Uly in torrents of white. Flakes whipped their eyes. Frost stung their ears. The snow piled higher and higher until they could no longer walk but had to pounce, carving a groove through the drifts.
“W-w-we h-h-h-have to f-find sh-sh-sh-shelter!” Uly called.
Mia’s chattering teeth were response enough.
After a long, limping journey, they came to a dip in the land. A river ran at the bottom, rushing under a field of snow. They followed the river to a grove of pines, whose limbs hung heavy with white. They wriggled under the weighted branches and stepped onto a soft bed of dead needles. The river ran free here, save a section in the middle, which froze around the broken branches of a toppled pine, creating a snow-covered bridge.
It was warm in the grove. There was shelter around the trunks.
“This w-w-works,” Uly said, jaw trembling.
Mia took one sniff at it. “No.”
He tried to catch her eyes. “Why not?”
“It’s just no good, that’s all. It’s wet and there’s no sand. And something could sneak in here while we’re sleeping, and just … no.”
Uly looked at her hind paw. She was more injured than he was.
He sighed. “Okay, Mia.”
They scaled the roots of the collapsed pine and then crossed its snowy trunk to the opposite embankment. Steam drifted up from the dark space between the trunk and the iced-over river. And with it came a scent. It was hot and overly sweet. Like moldy fruit.
They made it across the bridge and slipped out of the pines. The open air made their eyes ache and their bones tremble. A plain of white mounds stretched to the horizon.
Uly sniffed. “I s-s-smell d-dirt.”
They followed the earthen scent to an opening in one of the mounds. Its lip curled with an old root that hung with icicle teeth, piercing toward the ground.
Uly glanced at Mia. “Wh-what do you th-think?”
She blinked. There was no sandy loam. No sipping creek. Icicles were fragile and see-through and no kind of cover. But her entire body was trembling, and the only paw she could still feel throbbed with pain.
“I guess so,” she said.
“Oh, thank g-goodness!” he said, bounding to the icicles. “I’m g-gonna sleep for a w-week!”
“Wait.” Snff snff. Mia sniffed at the dark space. “There’s something in there.”
Uly gave her a look. “You c-can’t say no t-to this place t-too. If we s-sleep outside tonight, w-we’ll wake up with n-no ears or no tail or n-no us.”
Mia sniffed again, shadows in her eyes. The smell was so familiar.
“Watch,” Uly said. He stuck his snout between the icicles. “H-hello? Anything b-big and mean in there? No? G-great. We’re coming in.”
He dropped to his stomach and used his hind paws to wriggle inside. Mia crouched low and peeked under the icicles. Her eyes adjusted to the faint moonlight. Roots dangled from the ceiling. The walls glistened with frost. And there was that smell that she couldn’t quite place …
“It’s p-perfect!” Uly said, voice echoing. “Better than the t-trees!” He looked at Mia. “You c-coming in or not?”
Something whimpered in the darkness.
Uly jumped. Mia’s eyes went wide. There, at the back of the cave, in a little grass cradle, was a litter of baby foxes. There were five of them—little balls of sandy fluff.
Mia slid the rest of the way inside. She and Uly stared at the kits in shock.
“Those are…,” she said.
“Uh-huh,” he said.
“They’re barely even…”
“Yeah.”
“But where’s their…”
Uly only shook his head.
They remained still, waiting for a mother fox to come snarling through the entrance and gather up her babies. But nothing stirred save the wind, making the icicles clink.
Tink tingl ting.
Five sets of tiny eyes shined at them. Two of the kits whined. Mia realized what she’d smelled. Milk breath.
Uly hopped over and gently nuzzled one of the kits closer to her siblings.
“What are you doing?” Mia hissed.
“Making sure she doesn’t catch cold,” Uly said, smiling at the baby girl. “Ha ha! Stick that tongue back in your mouth!”
Mia remained near the entrance, pawing anxiously.
“What mom would leave her babies like this?” Uly asked.
“Maybe she’s out hunting,” Mia said, eyeing the icicles.
“In this weather? When they’re this young?”
Mia’s heart squeezed. It was true. No mom would wander more than a few tails from her kits’ den at this age. Not unless something had happened to her.
Uly slid onto his belly so the babies could nibble and lick at his face. He giggled, tail wagging. “You guys are way nicer than my sisters! Aren’t you?”
Mia felt sick. “We should leave.”
“Why?” he said, wincing as the babies chewed the ice from his whiskers.
She frowned. “Because they’re not our problem, that’s why.”
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” Uly said. He made a playful yelp. “Who’s biting my paw? Is it you?”
“Uly,” Mia growled, stepping forward. “Don’t get attached.”
“Why not?” he said, without looking up.
“Because…” She swallowed. “Because how are we supposed to feed them when we can’t even feed ourselves?”
Uly’s tail stopped wagging. He hung his head. “Oh. Right.”
Mia turned away, gazing into the winter night. “We’ll find another shelter tomorrow. Until then … just leave them alone.”
She was about to lie down and get some sleep when Uly brushed past her, hopping toward the entrance.
“Whoa, whoa, wait,” she said. “Where are you going?”
“To catch us some food,” he said.
He looked back at the kits. “All of us.”
“You can’t do that!” Mia said. “I’m the hunter. And—and you only have three paws!”
Uly smirked. “So do you. But I’m used to it.”
Mia searched his eyes. She wasn’t used to him acting like this. He usually just did everything she told him to.
“The snow is frozen,” she said. “Hard as stone. If you try to hunt, you’ll break your muzzle.”
Uly stared at his forepaw and shrugged. “I grew up with stone. I’ve hurt myself jumping so many times I’m pretty much made of stone.”
“Well, what if you run into a badger out there? Or—or Miss Potter?”
“Miss Potter would have to be pretty desperate to walk through all this snow with no fur. And if she catches me, I’ll burn her house down, just like you taught me.”
Mia searched the den. “Well then, what if something sneaks in here and tries to murder the babies, and I can’t protect them with my injured paw?”
Uly nosed one of the icicles hanging from the root in the entrance. “If anything tries to get in, these will break.” He pushed the icicle until it fell and shattered with a krinkt! “If you hear that, just snarl real big, and you’ll scare the intruder away.”
Mia scowled. “I don’t like this new Uly.”
He laughed. “Well … I do.” He stared into the night, winter shining in his eyes. “I’ll be back with a big juicy groundhog before … before you can count the roots in the ceiling.”
She glanced up. “Eleven.”
“Um, the pebbles, then.”
“One thousand and twenty-three.”
He snorted. “You made that up.”
She continued to scowl until he hopped up and licked her right on the nose.
“You’ll be as safe as dens,” he said. “And so will I.”
He went to the den’s mouth.
“But—but … what am I supposed to do with them?” Mia asked.
Uly smiled at the kits. “Keep ’em warm.”
A breeze blew through the icicles, parting the dark fur on Uly’s face, making him look … older. Ever since the snow had started to fall, his flower-bud fur had started to smell more like lilac. Though on him, it wasn’t nauseating.
“Uly?” she said.
“Yeah, Mia?”
“I’m going to make you regret that lick when you get back.”
He gave her his lopsided smile. “I hope you do.”
With that, he slipped under the icicles and hopped into the whirling darkness.
Mia watched his awkward arcs until his tail was erased by the flurries.
“Please,” she whispered. “Come back safe.”
THREE
“WELP,” MIA SAID. “Guess I’m stuck with you mewlers.”
She made herself comfortable against the wall opposite the five babies, relieving the pressure on her hind paw. The wind whispered through the icicles, making the babies shiver. Mia tried to ignore them. How was she supposed to take care of kits when she’d barely had the chance to be a kit herself?
The babies kept squirming and whimpering until one of them wriggled out of the snuggle pile and hobbled over to Mia. He tried to nuzzle at her stomach.
“Stop it.” She kicked him away with her good hind paw. “I don’t have any milk for you.”
The other kits soon followed. She pushed them away too, but then they only gnawed at her leg.
“Ugh.”
She hefted herself up and limped to the den’s entrance, where she took up a mouthful of snow. She returned, plopping it in front of the kits.
“There,” she said. She limped to the other wall and slumped to her side. “Now leave me alone.”
The kits chewed at the ice and then started to tremble worse than before.
“You guys have one another,” Mia said, rolling over so her back was to them. “Keep yourselves warm.”
Whines of desperation echoed off the den’s walls. Mia folded her paws over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut. She hadn’t heard sounds like this since Miss Vix had bitten her brothers and sister.
She just hoped Uly got back soon so she could talk him into leaving this place and the babies behind.
* * *
A tiny wet nose poked Mia, drawing her out of sleep.
She blinked open her eyes and found a small, fuzzy face staring up at her.
“What is it, Roa?” she said sleepily.
Her breath caught. She sat up. She saw the den, the kits, the icicle entrance. She remembered where she was.
She looked at the baby kit who’d woken her. Roa. She’d accidentally called him by her brother’s name.
The kit sniffed at her. Mia quirked her head. He really did look like her brother. Wide face. Leaf-tip ears. Rich brown fur. A tiny black lip curled around his pink gums, giving him a permanently confused look.
She swallowed. “Hello,” she said to the pup.
“Aowr-aowr-roo!” His tiny voice sputtered somewhere between a howl and a whimper.
Mia wrinkled her muzzle in amusement. “If I were to name you, which I am not going to do, I would call you Ro—”
The name caught in her throat. Mia’s last memory of her brother was back in the Eavey Wood. She’d hidden in the hawthorn bush, watching as Roa had tried to escape their snarling teacher. She could still remember the panic in his voice: I fail! I don’t pass! I … don’t want to do this anymore!
Mia’s heart pinched. She still hadn’t forgiven herself for leaving him or any of her siblings behind. If she could have just distracted their teacher with her tail, made Miss Vix chase her instead of the others, her siblings could have come north with her and her mom. And they’d all still be alive now, setting off to start their own dens.
The blizzard howled, making the icicles sing.
Tink ting.
The baby kit sniffed at Mia’s face. Could she name him after her brother? Would that honor Roa’s death? Or would it mean doom for this kit?
“Fine.” Mia took a deep breath. “I’ll call you Roa.”
The newly named pup curled up by her stomach. The other kits heard their brother’s contented snoozes and slowly followed, wobbling on their tiny legs, no bigger than peach stems.
First came the runt, her tiny tongue poking out of her mouth.
“Well,” Mia said, feeling a squeeze in her throat, “now I have to call you Bizy, after my tongue-tied sister, don’t I?”
Next came a bigger kit, whose fur was dusty and disheveled.
“And you’re clearly Marley.”
The fourth kit let out a seed-sized hiccup, surprising a laugh out of Mia.
“And you, my hiccuppy little monster,” she said, nosing him close to her belly with the others, “I’ll call you Uly. Er … Uly Junior.”
She smiled as the last kit crawled to join them. “And adventurous Alfie makes five.”
Soon all the kits were snuggled close, shivers subsiding, eyelids drowsing, breath wheezing through their tiny nostrils. Mia sniffed at their leaf-fuzz ears, their stem-sized legs, their baby eyes, so wet and blue. She cleaned them, one by one, until their fur smelled as fresh as a dandelion field. And then she watched as, one by one, they slowly fell asleep.
Mia’s heart thawed. And nearly melted.
FOUR
BOUND FLUMPF.
Bound flumpf.
Bound flumpf.
Uly carved a line across the snowy mounds. With every step, the snow tugged at his foreleg, giving his shoulder a sickly bloom of pain.
Still, Uly felt good. Out of the foxes with three working paws, he was the best. He’d survived two adventures on these paws. He’d escaped the belly of the Golgathursh, and he had outsmarted his own father. On top of that, he’d successfully scavenged food for Mia. Sure, it was just a few drops of blood from something else’s hunt. But still.
Uly felt heroic. And he realized what he’d been missing all along. He finally had someone to hunt for. And not just someone. Someones. There were five kits and a vixen depen
ding on him. And that made the deep drifts and the blooms of pain and the endless snowflakes somehow manageable.
He bounded onto a frozen stretch of snow, and his ears scanned the white, hoping to catch the slightest scuffle, a panicked heartbeat, a nostril whistle. But all he could hear was the wail of the wind.
He decided to take a gamble. He widened his paws, leapt off the snow, curled his back, and drove his muzzle through the icy layer. He didn’t pierce far, but he continued to dig with his forepaw until his teeth snagged something spiny. He dragged it out of the snow and then immediately spat it out.
“Great,” he said, staring at the pinecone. “At least we’ll have something to pick our teeth with.”
Uly panted clouds. He was exhausted after just one jump. He looked back toward the den’s icicle entrance, and his ears folded. A falling tree would have traveled farther than he had.
He turned his nose to the wind and sniffed the pine grove he and Mia had passed through. The snow-laden trees cast bolts of shadow across the white. Maybe some creature had had the decency to crawl beneath the branches and freeze to death. Maybe.
“The f-forest is a f-f-feast,” Uly whispered to himself, and hopped toward the pines.
FIVE
TINK TINGL TING.
Mia lifted her head.
She blinked at the moonlit entrance.
“Uly?”
Flurries whirled into the den.
Tink ting ting.
The icicles wobbled again and then went still.
She drew the snoozing kits closer and laid her head back down.
KRINKT!
Mia’s heart leapt as the kits bounced like fuzzy crickets.
One of the icicles had shattered. It was much too thick to have snapped by itself. Something must have brushed it.
“Uly?” she said. “Is that you?”
Only the wind spoke.
She licked the babies’ tiny ears until their pounding hearts settled.
“Stay put, littles,” she said, hoisting herself and wincing. “I’ll check it out.”
The kits whimpered as Mia limped to the entrance and stuck her nose between the icicles. All she could smell was snow. She was about to turn back when something sniffed her ear.
Scary Stories for Young Foxes Page 17