Chapter 6
Night 61
I returned the next night, having been able to see Demik for a few minutes in the morning through bars again. I didn’t tell Mej about my solo visit. Nor anyone else—sure they would come up with ways to stop me.
Instead, I’d been able to sneak from the jail in the early hours of morning when Demik knew the shift of the guards would change.
Then a few hours of sleep in the stray den at home, before presenting my ideas to Qualin and Vicos for how badly the clan needed to move on.
Qualin was always kind to me. Vicos was dismissive. Even Skeen only tried to soothe and say not to worry. No one had any reason to rally around anything I might have to say. Or even to take me seriously.
Mej on my side would have been something, but Mej was not. Who I really needed, who we all needed, was Demik. Mej and Demik both. Without Demik, even the part of the clan who was inclined to move on—to flee human interference—was not motivated or led forward to take action. While the majority who wished to stay and negotiate would never be swayed as long as they had Mej’s support. The two embodied both sides, while I embodied an outsider with no stakes in this hunt.
Adding to my own tension without Demik, and without finding anyone who would listen to me at home, it turned out the men had not forgotten the wolf attack, no matter Mej’s explanation.
Two groups of three men took rifles and dogs and tramped about the forests all day after a wolf to shoot at. Instead, they shot a total fox up north along the river, and let their dogs tear her apart as she tried to escape across the water. The pelt was worthless this time of year. The men returned to the settlement boasting about who was the best shot, who had the fiercest dog, and who had rid the world of the most vermin like foxes and short-tailed weasels in his day.
I pretended I could still not follow the English as they stormed around the settlement, laughing.
After sunset and bed, I slunk out once more.
I used my stone trick on another man who stood guard, reading, listening to nothing, and again wedged my way into Demik’s cell. In the quiet, I only curled in his lap while he held me in fur. I could cry in fur without making any noise. Demik could hold on, both as silent as possible in the still jail.
Human beings weren’t all bad. There was the beautiful music they made, and soft cotton, apple pie, and Frank’s big laugh and shop of sweets and treats. I didn’t believe Demik that all humans were bad, or all white men evil, their intentions set against Earth Mother.
But I didn’t believe Mej and Komu anymore either—that pale humans were benign or could be reasoned with and safely lived alongside. Surely Earth Mother gave us a wide enough world to share with all, even human beings, who must have their place in it. That night, though, after listening to the men’s boasts and smelling them and hearing that total vixen’s screams up the river, and the human laughter while they called encouragement to their dogs to rip her limbs from her living body, I couldn’t quite see that place where men fit anymore.
It was that second night in the cell with Demik, with the bad thoughts and the silence as the bars faced me from the inside, that I saw the memories.
Like when I was unconscious after the shooting, it started like a dream. Listening to Demik’s lungs, held close in his arms while all my fur senses were sharp, it seemed a place between waking and sleeping.
I scented mountain slopes running away from the river valley, saw bursting colors of wildflowers, and heard the light padding and quick, panting breaths of my best friends, my new family: Demik, Mej, Komu, and Ondrog bounding with me up those slopes.
There was the waterfall, the leap, all in skin now. We swam, twined our bodies together below the white spray and the midnight sun, and never had to part, never had to interrupt this life. They were one with me, and I them: our bodies, our spirits, the way we worked toward a single goal.
Demik had been afraid to let me get too attached to him too fast, wanting me to find my own people. Mej had no such fears, yet maybe hadn’t meant to let himself return such love. Komu found his own freedom out from under Mej in this new space with me—a space he was willing to fight for. Ondrog also hadn’t wanted to let himself grow attached to me, a mere fox. Yet this strength, this bond, had brought us together and gave us the path to follow. A path not only about survival, but about making survival worthwhile with love.
So it was all about them at first. The memories merging to dreams in Demik’s arms. Longing to be with them in any way, any form, as long as we were close. Dreams of the trails we’d crossed, the waterfall, the journey together. Sharing our hunts on glowing nights. Sharing our bodies on sunbaked rocks. Sharing stories of ourselves and where we were going.
Then came the cage. Before them, there had been the cage.
A thick wood board that my claws could not tear through, though I dug. Iron bars, spaced a paw’s width apart, close and thin and almost breaking my teeth as I bit and bit at them. Above, more solid wood, pinning me down.
Dig, dig, dig in that wood until I wore my claws down to blood. I bit the bars until they rusted with my saliva. I screamed and cried and bit myself when I could find nothing else to bite.
The man pushed in meat at me sometimes, or splashed a little water in a tin dish that I was also always biting or tipping over. Nothing else. No berries or grass or eggs or fish. Just a chunk of beef or venison every few days or so, a splash of water when he thought of it. Sometimes brown bread instead. No more.
“Step right up! Five cents a head! See the black fox of Alaska! Fresh from the Klondike gold fields! Buy your outfits here, gentlemen! Right here and stock up for a year of the trail! The Northwest Mounted Police will not allow any miner into the country without a year’s outfit. You can get that, lock, stock, and barrel right here at Sunny Sam’s! Yes, sir, we know a thing or two about the Arctic here at Sunny Sam’s. Why, was it not yours truly who brought this black fox out of Alaska? Yes, sir, you can trust Sunny Sam’s to know exactly what you’ll need up there in the frozen northland. Going well equipped is the only way to strike it rich, gentlemen! Here, young sir, like to be the first in Seattle to see the Klondike’s black fox?”
I bit and dug and cried until I got sicker and sicker. Then I lay still for long parts of the day or night. The cage was not much longer than my body so I could not avoid the splash from the bucket of cold water once a day to clean it out, leaving the boards wet and gradually rotting below me, my body endlessly damp and chilled, my nose dripping, and my throat inflamed. Still, digging did nothing.
Sometimes my cage was set out in the sunlight and, while I was cowering and blinded, dogs would rush and bark at me, wedging their muzzles against the bars. Children jabbed me with sticks and laughed at the noises I made. Women said I stank and pulled their skirts aside. Men asked how much was a year’s outfit to make the journey north.
I woke, crying, in Demik’s arms. I had been making a noise in my sleep because he was whispering to shush me, kissing my muzzle to wake me.
I huddled against him, shaking and desperate to go, never to enter this cage again as the walls loomed in upon me. I couldn’t think how I’d gotten in here, how to get out, where I’d come from or why.
At last, though, it came to me that I could escape this cage. I did so and, this time, by Demik calling out that he’d heard a disturbance and someone was running around, he got the man to open the front door and check outside so I could dash out and away.
I had to talk to Demik again. I had to get him out, though I could not think how. And I had to know what Seattle was.
Chapter 7
Night 62
I told Mej the next day: I’d been closed in a tiny cage, humans had paid to see me, and I’d been at something called Seattle.
Mej said no; I couldn’t have been. It was too far away. He said I would have heard the name from down south around the coast. The steamers pulling into mudflats at Skagway and Dyea often came from Seattle. That’s where I’d have heard the name.
So I was even more confused, trying to remember the English—yet not wanting to remember at all.
I fretted on the whole journey to see Demik that night, wondering how to change without being heard. All for nothing.
Earth Mother sent us blessings with that same man returned, listening to his musical box and trumpet. I saw it this time. A big box on the desk, a brass trumpet jutting from the box where the woman’s voice poured forth with music.
I was still puzzling over where she and that piano were truly located—a den below the room?—when I reached the bars and now squirmed through to Demik with relative ease, having found the widest place and mastered my technique.
So many things to discuss. While mostly I just wanted to change and be with him, hold him, let him know how much I missed him. I thanked Earth Mother for Mej and Komu and Ondrog being with me. Still, we weren’t complete. Once a fox has known a skulk of five, it is painful to be only four.
And what of Demik? I had all of them, the whole outside world, all the disruption and fear at home. Demik had only this cage, the bars of which could not be chewed through, nor the floor dug away. Now, for a few breathless hours, he had me.
Again, with Demik wrapping me in the blanket, trying to cut the noise, and coughing, I changed behind the sounds of the metallic woman’s song.
There were tears on my face as I kissed him, wanting to talk, to solve this, but none of it seemed as important in that moment as simply being as close as we could and never letting go. Demik too, even more than me, it seemed, was desperate for the contact.
He kissed my face, neck, chest, down my breasts, nosing through my hair, licking my ears, my jaw, my eyelids. I held on and tasted him in return, aching for him to understand how strongly I felt for him. But this cage…
I shook just for being in here. I could not let them keep Demik in such a thing. But I couldn’t think how to stop it.
We clung tight, breathing in each other’s skin, standing against the timber wall at the back of the cage to get away from those horrible bars, blanket around my shoulders.
In the room beyond, out of sight, the red and black clad man started the same music again. Somehow exactly the same.
Demik asked after his family. Was anyone willing to admit they must move on? He said “they,” not “we.” Like he still didn’t think he was going anywhere. It made a fresh pain fill my chest.
“Plenty want to leave,” I whispered. “Only they have no leader and nowhere to go. They need you, Demik. They’ll follow you.”
“You overestimate me.” He kissed my nose. “I am nothing special to them.”
“You’re wrong. They miss you. With your family’s support, you would give them the purpose they’re missing.”
“Even if that were true, how? Break out? Then I could never return here, perhaps never see my clan again. Anyway, there’s no way out. I’m too big for the bars.”
“Have you tried?”
“I can tell by seeing you, Summit. You barely get through.”
“We’ll try…”
“Not now, with Jones improving. You have to get them moving without me. Do they even see what needs to be done? Is anyone making plans to travel?”
“They’ll see with your help.”
“They don’t have my help.” Demik sighed and pressed his face to my neck. “I’m so sorry. I want to be there for you. But I can’t, Summit. I can’t help anymore. You can.” He kissed my lips, held on. “I love you. I know you’re strong.”
“Demik?” I returned it. “I’m beginning to remember.”
He pulled back, looking me in the eyes in the dark.
“But only beginning,” I went on. “I need you there beside me. We’ll find a way.”
“What are you remembering? Your family…?”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to talk about it here. I just wanted you to know. There will be plenty of time when you’re out and we’re going away together.”
“Summit—”
“I won’t let them keep you here.”
“They’re humans. They do whatever they want. You can’t fight them.”
I stared, leaned back from him, my breath catching. That was Mej’s line, not Demik’s. Yet I thought of iron bars and thick wood, digging and biting for … weeks? For seasons? So … was he right?
“No,” I whispered. “I got away. Somehow. I don’t remember how. But I got away from being in a cage. You can too.”
I kissed him, not letting him answer, and again Demik clung to me, felt all over me, kissed and breathed through my skin and hair.
He whispered many times that he loved me and I stopped him again. It was a risky thing talking at all in here, no matter how hushed. We should not also be wasting it with extra words. I knew perfectly well how he felt already.
When I wouldn’t let him talk, we only touched, caresses turning to sighs and an embrace that lasted until I was drifting off against him, yet never truly able to relax while the horror of the cage pressed around us.
I would get him out. It didn’t matter how. It only mattered that it was soon and we would be free together and go. Mej and Komu had to be convinced to join us. The rest of the clan as well. Somehow. So I had to start with my own family: with Mej and Komu to have any chance.
I stayed with Demik as long as I could. Until the music had gone silent and the men were changing shifts again.
This time, a man spotted me on the boardwalk, gave a shout, but I was already gone, dashing into the hills north of the endlessly black and brutal mines.
I must move quickly, must take the days I had to win over the clan.
Only, it turned out, I didn’t have days.
That afternoon, Mej, with Skeen and me, went to town for a visit with Demik. There, the red and black dressed guardsman informed us that Jones had died that morning. So Demik would die on the next.
Chapter 8
Night 63
No one in the settlement besides the few kits went to bed that night. Even Ondrog stayed up talking with the fox families. It was the time to present Demik’s views, to advocate, to be the guide he’d told me to be. But I could not. I did not even try. I only wanted to get away from there.
I could have slunk off to bed and stolen away in the dark. This night, though, I might need help. Komu-sized help.
They argued about the men, the land, the sawmill, the way they were being treated. They argued about Demik and what they could do and how there was nothing to be done. They argued about the future of the Aaqann River Clan, their past, their kits, the end of shifters in a world infested by humans.
They argued and talked. They did not do anything.
I went to bed. Mej was suspicious and followed. Surely he didn’t want to leave the group.
I curled up on Komu’s nest, waiting for Mej to leave. He remained a long after sunset, stroking my hair and telling me he was sorry about Demik.
Now was time to act, not to be sorry. Should I trust Mej? No. He would stop me. He pretended to be almost human himself. While Demik was the one afraid of them. The truth was, Mej knew them the best. Therefore, he was the most afraid. Mej knew all about human armies. So Mej would never let me go. He would do anything, I was sure, to keep me here and safe. While Demik died.
So it couldn’t be Mej. But Komu. Or, if I had to, I could go alone. Not under Mej’s nose, however.
He didn’t trust me. Perhaps he did know, or at least suspect, that I’d been sneaking to Dawson at night and not in bed with Komu or Ondrog after all.
One way or another, he wasted hours of precious time. Then only left me when Komu also came to check on me and Mej ordered him to keep an eye on me: make sure I stayed in.
Komu sat on the bed with me.
I listened, waited, until Mej’s step was gone and only the distant voices of the whole clan could be heard around the fires near the river.
Komu was just murmuring that he was sorry when I sat up so abruptly he jumped.
“Komu?” I wrapped my arms arou
nd him, pulling his head to mine, holding on tight. “Do you love me?”
“What?” Startled, he returned the embrace. “Of course I love you. More than anything.”
“How much would you do for me?”
“Do for you?” Komu pulled back so we could try to lock gazes in the dark den. “I don’t understand. I’d do anything for you, Summit. You know that.”
“Then would you come with me?”
“To leave the clan?”
“To see Demik. Mej didn’t want me sneaking away, but we’ll go in fur. No one will see. We’ll be safe.”
“I … Summit…”
“I have to see him. In the morning it will be too late.”
Komu looked away. “You’ve already been going…”
I bit my lip, watching him, still holding on.
“I saw you last night, heading south. I smelled him on you when you came back this morning… Don’t go back, Summit. Mej is right. It’s dangerous. There’s nothing you can do for Demik. I’m sorry—”
“I have to go.” I lifted my hands to his face, holding on gently. “Please, Komu? Will you help me?”
He wouldn’t meet my eyes but, after a long pause, he nodded.
We left our things there on his bed, changed, and ran through the night, as fast as we could go for Dawson City.
Chapter 9
Komu was a phantom—a sleek bird winging across the ground. Only in sight of the lit jail did he falter. Panting, though the night was cold, speaking already of autumn on our doorstep, he drew up and bit at my face and ears.
I licked his cheek but went on, crouched and darting. I dashed past rows of shacks to the stronger main buildings of town, slipped along the boardwalk, and pressed myself to the wall of the jail. I glanced back. Komu wasn’t there.
No music inside tonight, but voices. There were two men standing guard in the front room: expecting trouble when a prisoner was to be hanged the next morning.
I crouched against the door, listening, almost holding my breath.
Fox’s Night: A Foxy Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (Foxes of the Midnight Sun Book 3) Page 3