Children of the Fox

by Kevin Sands

  “Dreams are in your head, Cal. This is real.” She said it patiently, like talking to a very dim child.

  “I just put my hand through a painting,” I pointed out.

  “Ah, I see your confusion. That’s not a painting. It’s a window.”

  “To where? The Land of Frozen Sheep?”

  “It would take some time to explain,” the fox said. “And time is what I’m a little pressed for at the moment. So if you’ll come with me . . . ?”

  “Where?”

  “I want to show you something.”

  “I don’t want to see it.”

  “You don’t even know what it is.”

  “I don’t care.” As the fear faded, anger swelled in its place. I was almost surprised by the heat of it. “I don’t want anything from you.” I pulled up the sheets and turned away.

  “Don’t be such a baby,” she said.

  “Leave me alone, talking fox.”

  “Don’t make me come over there.”

  “Or what? You’ll— OW!” I whirled around, rubbing my backside. “You bit me!”

  “These teeth aren’t just for show,” Shuna said. “Now get out of that bed before I lose my temper.”

  Anger still burned inside. But I didn’t want to get bit again, and I felt sort of stupid fighting with a fox. So I stood. I wasn’t even dressed, just a pair of underpants.

  She ignored my glare and padded from my room. I followed her out

  and found myself on a dusty road cutting through the sand of a desert. The dunes stretched off forever.

  And everywhere, right and left, were doors, stuck in the side of the road. All of them were closed, except the one I’d just exited. I looked back and saw the bedroom where I’d lain.

  “What . . . what is this?” I said. The sun above us was bright, and tinged with blue, but gave no warmth at all. “Where are we?”

  Shuna grunted. “That’s complicated.”

  She trotted down the road, passing several of the doors. Each one looked different. Some subtly so, just slight differences in the grain of wood or adornment. Others were made of metal, or stone, or materials I couldn’t place. One we passed was bright and pockmarked. It looked exactly like a giant orange peel.

  “Don’t touch that,” Shuna said sharply.

  I pulled my hand away. “Why? What is it?”

  “It’s not so much the door. It’s what’s behind it that’s the problem.”

  We continued on. After what must have been half a mile, Shuna stopped. She sat, waiting before a door of petrified oak. It reminded me—too much—of the door to the Eye’s cavern in the High Weaver’s laboratory.

  “Go ahead,” Shuna said.

  With a deep, nervous breath, I opened the door

  and stepped into a woodland paradise. The sun rose overhead, the light dappling through a canopy of forest green. Ancient oaks towered impossibly high, their roots littered with acorns. Moss covered the trunks, and I smelled the fresh, earthy scent of the forest.

  Twenty feet away, a fawn stretched her neck, nibbling leaves from new shoots that branched near the base of a giant oak. I watched her, amazed, until the deer suddenly noticed something was amiss. Her ears twitched. When she saw her new visitors, she bounded away, springing through the forest with marvelous grace.

  Shuna paid the deer no mind. Nose low to the ground, the fox led us through the trees to a trail that sloped gently downward. It opened onto a circle of grass, grown tall and wild. In the center was a pond, its surface smooth and clear.

  “Here we are,” Shuna said. She walked me to the pool.

  “It’s very pretty and all,” I said, “but I have no idea where ‘here’ is.”

  “This is a junction.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “I know. And I’m not going to tell you. Look into the pool.”

  “Why? What’s in there?”

  She flicked her tail. “The future.”

  CHAPTER 45

  I stared at her. “The future?”

  “Well, one possible future,” Shuna said. “That depends on you. Look into the pool.”

  “You’re going to show me the future.”

  “I will,” she said, exasperated, “if you look into the pool.”

  This was absurd. My first thought was that the fox was running some sort of gaff on me—which, come to think of it, was even more absurd. I glanced into the water

  and then I was standing on a ridge atop a valley.

  “What in Shuna’s name . . . ?” I said.

  Shuna shook her head and sat beside me. “You thieves. Always with the curses.”

  Nestled in the valley was a village. There appeared to be some kind of festival going on. People assembled in the green, surrounding a platform with a sawed-off oak in the center.

  I didn’t recognize the place. I didn’t recognize the land surrounding us, either. Mountains rose on one side of the valley, with a vast, endless grassland on the other. The tallest mountain was smoking; it had to be one of the Seven Sisters. “Where are we?”

  “Somewhere far from Carlow,” Shuna said. “Watch.”

  The crowd rustled in anticipation as six men pushed their way through. They were dragging a girl along, her hands bound behind her back. There was something terribly familiar about the way she moved.

  “That’s . . .” I began

  and then we were standing amid the crowd. The people moved aside, jeering, as the men hauled the girl toward the platform.

  It was Meriel. Her dress was torn. Her arms were covered in welts and cuts, face bruised, jaw swollen. There was some odd scribbling on her forehead. She stared into the distance, barely flinching as the people spat in her face.

  “Meriel!” I shouted.

  “She can’t hear you,” Shuna said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because we’re not actually here.”

  Meriel faced the crowd, proud and defiant, but she was scared; I could see it in her eyes. As she passed, I could just make out the strange words someone had inked above her brow.

  feyc anrygán

  “What does that mean?” I said. “Why are they doing this?”

  “Just watch.”

  The six men walked Meriel up the platform. A seventh joined them. He was a head taller than the others, his long hair tied in a ponytail. And he was holding an ax.

  Meriel didn’t fight as they pushed her up the steps. She didn’t react at all, in fact, until she saw the headless body of a man slumped near the edge.

  Her stoic expression crumbled. “No!” she cried as she broke free from the men holding her. She ran to the body, hands still tied behind her back, and knelt beside it, weeping. “No!”

  The men gave her no time to grieve. They tore her away from the body and dragged her over to the stump. She ripped her shoulders from their grasp, but this time, she didn’t go anywhere. Defiant, blinking away tears, she knelt on her own accord.

  I turned to Shuna. “Stop this.”

  “I can’t,” the Fox said.

  Frustrated, I tried to run toward Meriel. But I couldn’t move. My body was frozen. It was like I was trapped in a nightmare.

  Meriel bent over the stump, forehead against the wood. The crowd hushed as the executioner stepped forward. I watched in horror as the giant raised his ax and then

  I was back in the grove with Shuna.

  My heart pounded against my rib cage. “What . . . was that?”

  “Look into the pool,” Shuna said.

  I looked down, expecting to see the end of Meriel. Instead

  I stood on the edge of a burning city. The air was thick with the sting of smoke and the choking stench of sulfur.

  “Where is this?” I said, but I already knew the answer. It was Carlow. The stinking smoke came from
Bolcanathair. To the north, the volcano had erupted, blowing half the mountain along with it.

  Thick gray clouds billowed from the gash in the rock, blotting out the sky. Lava poured from the crater, streaming into the valley, flowing into the far edge of the city. Flakes of ash rained down. Within seconds, I was covered in gray.

  I stood with Shuna on the rampart of one of the old city towers. Houses crumbled as molten rock flowed through the streets. The roads leading out were jammed with carriages, people fighting and screaming as they fled toward the farms to the south. On Lake Galway, most of the boats had already left the dock. Thousands swam after them desperately. At the edge, the water boiled, the lava sending steam hissing upward as it flowed into the lake.

  “Over there,” Shuna said.

  I looked and saw a boy sprinting over the rooftops. He leapt with reckless abandon across gaps twice his height, slipping, stumbling, but never managing to fall.

  It was Lachlan. Flame trailed in his wake. The boy panted, looking behind him after every jump. He was fleeing something, but not the volcano. I couldn’t see what.

  My heart skipped a beat every time he took to the air. He made one last leap, skidding across the roof, ceramic tiles popping away under his heels to shatter on the street below. His skid took him to the gutters, and he hovered there, bent at the waist, arms windmilling for balance.

  “No,” I whispered.

  Somehow, he managed to right himself. He blew out his breath and grinned. Then he turned and made a rude gesture toward the volcano. “Ha ha!” he shouted.

  Then a flaming sword punched through his chest.

  Lachlan’s grin vanished. From behind him, a flaming figure rose—the Lady in Red, it was the Lady in Red—and pulled the fiery blade from his body.

  Lachlan looked confused, almost disappointed. Then he fell from the rooftop

  and we were back in the grove.

  “Enough,” I said to Shuna.

  “Look,” she said.

  My eyes went automatically to the pool

  and it was bitterly, bitterly cold. We stood in a log cabin, its windows missing. The reek of the volcano’s fumes was gone. All I could smell now was the cloying sweetness of winter pine and the rotting must of mold. Flakes of snow fluttered through the window, landing on my arms with the breeze.

  The woods that surrounded the cabin were a thick, snowy white. Inside, everything was decay: dusty furniture, rusted tools, a table missing a leg. A third of the roof was gone.

  “Why are we . . . ?”

  My words faded as I saw the figure in the corner. It was Gareth. He lay curled under a blanket of rotted shingles, hands tucked between his legs. He looked like he was sleeping. But I knew he was already dead.

  He looked so thin. I mean, he’d always been thin, but now he was absolutely skeletal. His cheeks lay so hollow that I could see the outlines of his teeth. A layer of frost covered his clothes. I wondered: Had he starved, or had he frozen to death first?

  It was too much. “Stop this. Please,” I begged Shuna

  and we were back in the grove.

  I tore my gaze from the pool, stumbling backward. My feet tangled in the grass, and I fell, my scars aching, my heart aching worse. “Enough,” I said. “Enough.”

  Shuna spoke softly. “Don’t you want to see what happens to Foxtail?”

  I buried my face in my hands. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “I thought you might want to know.”

  “Why would I want to know this? Why?”

  “Because,” Shuna said, “you can change it.”

  CHAPTER 46

  I sat up, a knot in my chest.

  “I can change it? How?”

  “You have to get the Eye back,” Shuna said.

  “Get it back? From Mr. Solomon? And that . . .” I didn’t really know what the Lady in Red was. “That thing?”

  “Yes. You might try and fail. But you just might succeed and change the future.”

  No.

  I couldn’t accept it. It was too much. It wasn’t fair.

  “Why me?” I said, voice breaking. “Why me? I can’t help them. I can’t even take care of myself. Look at me.”

  I held out my arms. The scars wrapped around my back, my shoulders, my stomach. I waved at my missing eye.

  “Look at me!” I screamed. “Look at what they’ve done to me!”

  Tears welled hot in my empty socket, stinging in the open flesh. “What more do you want from me?” I raged. “What more can I give?”

  I curled up and lay there, heaving with great, wracking sobs. I heard the grass rustle, then felt the Fox’s warm fur against my skin.

  “I’m sorry,” Shuna whispered, and I wrapped my arms around her, crying. She stayed there, leaning against me, where I could feel the beat of her heart, until I let go.

  I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand. “Never thought I’d get to hug a Spirit.”

  “Was my fur nice and soft? Bet it was.”

  In spite of my sadness, she made me laugh. I sat there in the grass, eye to eye with the little fox, and to my surprise, I actually felt better. It was like a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

  Why me? I’d never really asked the question before. I’d always just thought the world was unfair. Yet it was something I needed to understand.

  “Why is it me? Why do I have to stop Mr. Solomon? Why can’t it be someone else?”

  “Because I have no one else to turn to, Cal. No one else knows what’s going on.”

  “So tell them.”

  “I can’t,” Shuna said. “It’s against the rules.”

  That didn’t make any sense. “What rules? You’re a Spirit. Who makes rules for you?”

  “I can’t tell you that, either.” She flicked her tail nervously. “Honestly, I’m not even supposed to be talking to you right now. If anyone finds out, there’ll be trouble. Big trouble. Trust me.”

  I wasn’t sure I did. “Who would find out?”

  “My sister, for one.”

  “You have a sister?”

  Shuna looked to the sky, exasperated. “Doesn’t anyone read the old stories anymore?”

  I frowned. What stories? Then it struck me. “You mean . . . Artha? The Bear? That’s your sister?”

  “Embarrassing, isn’t it?”

  “That doesn’t even make sense.”

  “Why not?”

  “For one, you’re a fox.”

  “I’m going to tell you a little secret, Cal.” She leaned in—and whispered as loud as she could. “I’m not an ordinary fox.”

  “This is absurd,” I said.

  Shuna shrugged. “Rules are rules. It’s what keeps the world from chaos.”

  “So what is it you want me to do?”

  “I told you. You have to stop Mr. Solomon. And you have to do it soon.”

  “Stop him from doing what?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Then how am I supposed to stop him? I don’t even know where he is. Where is he?”

  “I can’t tell you that, either.”

  Now I was losing my temper. “No. Forget it. If you won’t help, I’m not doing a thing.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to help,” Shuna said. “I can’t. This is the sort of thing you have to figure out by yourselves. You have friends, Cal. Rely on them.”

  “What can they do?”

  “Well, Gareth’s pretty good at finding things, isn’t he? Try him.”

  I didn’t see how that could help. Gareth had already searched for information about the Eye and come up empty. “Can’t you even give me a hint?”

  Shuna sighed. “I’m probably going to regret this. But . . . look. Think it through. Mr. Solomon wanted the Eye, right? And there was something else he needed, too?”
>
  Was there? I couldn’t recall him asking for anything else from us. Unless she meant . . . “He needed the Eye by the end of the week.”

  “That’s interesting,” she said. “Why would he need it by then?”

  “How should I know?” I said, frustrated. “All the pages about the Eye were missing.”

  “Yes,” Shuna said, annoyed. “That was my sister’s doing. She’s clever—a little too clever, that girl. Always knows just how to dance the line.”

  The Fox paced the grass, pondering. “The information is out there,” she said finally. “Gareth’s just looking in the wrong place.”

  “So where’s the right place? No, wait. Let me guess: you can’t tell me.”

  “You’re catching on.”

  My face grew as hot as my temper.

  “But,” Shuna said, “my sister has been bending the rules a bit. So, in this case, I think I can get away with a little hint. Give Gareth this message: Three. Twenty-two, first. Four. Then follow the sheep.”

  I stared at her. “That’s the message?”

  “Gareth will understand. This is, after all, his favorite sort of thing.”

  “This is utterly insane. No one’s going to believe I talked to Shuna.”

  The Fox turned serious. “I don’t think you’ve been listening, Cal. If you even mention me, things will go very, very badly. Even worse if you tell them you saw the future.”

  “But . . . I have to tell them,” I protested. “Otherwise, why would they go along with me? It’s madness to chase after Mr. Solomon.”

  “Perhaps you haven’t noticed, Cal, but you’re already all a little bit crazy.”

  I glared at her. “I bet you’d make a really nice rug.”

  “With this fur? Exquisite.” Shuna stood. “Time’s up. We have to get back.”

  “Wait,” I said. “I have more questions.”

  “Then you’d better ask them quickly.”

  She led me out of the woods, back onto the endless desert road.

  “The Eye kept calling me ‘foxchild,’ ” I said. “Mr. Solomon called me that, too. What does it mean?”

  “It’s a very old term,” Shuna said. “Think about it. What are you?”

  That threw me a bit; the Eye had asked the same question. “A . . . child?”