Just totally snowed under by work etc this week. Have the new opening to #FoxBook as a thank you for being here despite my non-brain-ness :3 <3
Trigger warnings: The dog starts out dead. It’s not described in horrific detail, but if that’s problematic for, you skip the first 400 words and start at the **** below. Also, there’s a miscarriage mentioned in the second scene – only mentioned in passing.
CHAPTER 1
Six years ago, my dog died. It was the first day of autumn—not by the calendar, but by the fresh bite in the morning air, the golden quality of the light as it lit the main road through town in the mid afternoon.
Sailor was a big, black shaggy thing, something like a Newfoundland, a lively shadow in the golden light, and I was eleven.
I’m sorry to be starting any story this way, but the fact of the matter is, this where it all began.
I’ll spare you the awful details. Enough to say that Sailor had got out of the yard somehow, and had been hit by a huge semi careening down the highway that split our tiny town in two as it blatantly ignored the speed limit.
I saw it happen.
And although I cradled him in my lap as the smell of burnt-out brakes and hot asphalt and turning leaves filled my nose, his giant, furry black head all of him I could fit, there was nothing I could do.
There was nothing anyone could do.
I knew that, but it didn’t stop the knot of frustration and guilt in my chest, or the taste of bile in the back of my throat every time I closed my eyes and saw the truck hitting him, again and again and again.
It took years for that vision to fade.
But that evening, only a few hours after it had happened, everything still felt fresh, and raw.
Sunny, my sister, was only nine at the time. She cried for hours, just sobbing like she’d never breathe right again.
I’d cried a little, at the scene with Sailor’s head lying in my lap as his big, brown eye stared up at nothing.
It had been mercifully fast, there was that.
And the driver had copped a massive fine—speeding, reckless driving, I think they even defected his truck—and came to visit us later, a big, pot-bellied man standing on our front verandah, shuffling his royal blue cap round and round and round in his hands as he apologised.
But that evening, with Sunny sobbing her heart out on the couch in the living room and Mum and Dad trying desperately to console her as [dinner] burned on the stove, I couldn’t cry, even though the acrid scent of burnt [something] prickled the back of my throat and the corners of my eyes.
I was the eldest, and I had to be responsible.
Possibly, if I’d been just a little more responsible, Sailor wouldn’t have died.
**** So I slipped out the glass slider from the family room to the deck while Sunny cried, glancing up at the two storeys of our moody grey house behind me before jumping heavily down the three steps from the rail-less deck to the lawn, and set out for the gate in the back fence.
I couldn’t cry, and I didn’t want to add anything to an already chaotic and stressful situation inside—but I couldn’t stay there, either.
In the gaps between the gum trees to the west, the sky tinged to red and gold at the horizon, the sun sinking slowly into oblivion. I’m pretty sure I didn’t know the word oblivion back then, but I knew what it meant, how it felt—and I wanted it, desperately.
Anything would be better than the gaping hole in my chest.
And so, because I didn’t know where to find it or how to get there, I stalked through the bush, pushing myself until I breathed hard and my lungs ached and sweat ringed me, chasing the way that hard exercise elevated me above my constantly looping thoughts.
Directly above, dark, heavy clouds obscured the sky, and the air was thick, heavy, humid.
Beneath the smell of dry gum leaves and even drier dirt, I could catch the hint of ozone, and occasionally the wind turned cool for a breath as it gusted against my skin, promising a late evening storm.
I walked harder, faster, outrunning the video looping in my mind of the truck’s impact.
When the first drops of rain spat at me from out of the sky, I barely noticed. My skin was filmed with sweat, slick and salty, and the peppering of rainwater barely added to it.
That was at first.
But within minutes, it became clear that those first pattering spits had been just the early foreshadowing of a storm darker and more intense than any I remembered.
Thunder rolled across the sky, distant and grumbling at first, a lazy background chorus to the intense melody of the rain as it splattered down on grey-green leaves and red-tinged twigs, turning the silvered bark of an old, dead gum to deep grey and making the spiky, tussocky grass seem oddly luminescent in the dying light.
I stood under a grey gum with stains down its trunk that the rain was turning orange, arms wrapped around me, shivering hard—and for the briefest instant, thought about not going home.
Mum and Dad would pitch a fit.
And I had to be responsible.
I turned, t-shirt plastered to my skin, dark hair sticking to my face and clinging to my neck, and began trudging my way back.
The storm closed over properly, clouds rolling over the horizon and cutting off the thin scythe of blood-coloured sky, making the bush dark and unwelcoming in the premature night.
Lightning flashed.
Thunder cracked hot on its heels.
I jumped—and stared hard at the gap between two ghost-barked trees, where for a second, I was sure I’d seen a pair of eyes.
Nothing moved.
Nothing except the drenching rain, anyway, weighing down the branches that tossed fitfully in the wind.
The smell of wet dirt and soaked bark rose around me, undercut by eucalypt and ozone.
If anything had the power to wash away the hurt inside me, this storm was it. I tipped my face to the sky, imagining the rain washing over me had the ability to wash inside me as well, and the raindrops splattered hard on my face.
More lightning. More thunder, cracking over top of the constant hiss of the falling rain.
And in the distance, something eerie, lifting the hairs on the back of my neck: a strange kind of high-pitched howl, a cry that rang with moonlight and distance, cutting straight through the noise of the storm.
Bolts of lightning streaked across the sky—one—two—three in the space of half a second, followed immediately by a growling crack of thunder so sharp and loud it vibrated in my chest. I ducked instinctively.
There, in the corner of my eye…
I froze, crouched down with my arms over my head.
The strange cries came again—but they were closer.
I stared hard at the place, low to the ground, where I was sure I’d seen something small, maybe the size of a cat.
Flash. Growl.
There. Right there. A small animal, pointy ears, light coloured chin and throat…
The strange, eerie cries came again, and my heart pounded fiercely. Whatever was making the noise, it was close. Really close.
The little creature across from me reacted too, flattening itself to the ground.
My jaw twitched.
My heart pounded.
Stay? Go? Run? Freeze?
The hairs on my neck prickled again and goosebumps broke out all over my arms.
Cold dread formed a knot in my stomach.
Something was coming.
Something worse than the storm.
I had to get home.
I made it halfway to standing—and a series of strange, awful noises made me freeze again. They were sharp, clacking, squealing sounds, like someone knocking two echoing stones against each other, interspersed with high-pitched yowling…
And the creature in the darkness screamed.
I threw my back against the tree behind me, pressing hard against it. My heart hammered.
I peered back and forth in the dark, eyes wide.
Rain drenched down, but my throat was dry.
My pulse pounded faster.
The little creature screamed again—and as lightning flashed, I saw it on its back, legs slashing wildly at the air as something attacked.
The awful, clicking-yowling noises grew louder.
I slapped my hands over my ears, gasping. Water ran down my face, getting into my mouth, my eyes.
It was hurting. Whatever the small thing was, it was getting hurt, and I’d seen enough animals hurting today.
Something in my chest snapped.
I flung myself across the ground, leaping a couple of tussocks and a fallen branch before I tripped to my knees. I crawled closer, desperate, gasping for air through the heavy curtains of rain.
I couldn’t see it. Where? Somewhere here, near the base of that tree…
The yowling screeched right next to my ear. I cowered against the ground, spiky grass pricking my face, wet earth smell smothering me—but now, there was a strange mustiness too, a cousin to wet-dog smell.
At the next flash of lightning, I saw it. The creature was a fox—and something barely visible was attacking it, only the gleam of eye or flicker of teeth visible in the gloom.
But the damage was real enough.
The little fox’s side had been opened right up, and in the bright, stark flashes of heavenly electricity, the blood was dark, thinned by the constant rain.
No.
No more animals were going to die today.
Not when this time, I could do something about it.
I snatched at a branch on the ground that turned out to be more of a twig, and launched myself toward the creature. I had no idea what was attacking it, but I screamed and waved my handful of twiggy leaves anyway, batting them in the air over the fox like I knew what I was doing.
The horrible clacking cries ceased abruptly.
And with one long, low rumble, the rain began to ebb.
Still gasping for air, I scrambled to the fox and lifted it carefully into my lap, only realising now that at least part of the wetness on my face was tears.
I huddled over, trying to shelter the poor creature from the slackening rain, running my fingers over its cheek—over and over and over and over.
“Please,” I sobbed, throat tight and aching, chest constricted. “Please. Please don’t die. Please.”
Another gust of cool air washed over the clearing, taking the last of the rain with it—and lifting the goosebumps on my arms again.
I shivered, drawing the fox close, like it was a stuffed animal I could hug for comfort—its comfort or mine, I couldn’t say.
“Please. Please don’t die. Please.”
Something shifted in my lap.
Around us, the world stilled, dazed from the storm, but also something more, something watching, something waiting, as the bush held its collective breath.
The only sound was the occasional drip of rainwater from the gum leaves onto a fallen log—no insects, no wind, no rustling of leaves. Just… stillness.
And the fox, who shivered in my lap.
The clouds parted, revealing a triangle of glittering stars that caught in the fox’s eye as it blinked open and stared up at me.
My chest snagged.
My throat ached from crying, my sinuses hurt, and a headache was forming in the back of my head.
But the fox blinked up at me—alive.
I ran a finger down it again, from nose to cheek to ear to shoulder, all the way down its side to its thick, bushy tail—and the wound in its side began to close.
Laboriously, it hauled itself to its front legs.
I tried to stop it—“No, it’s okay, you can stay here, I’ll look after you”—but it lifted its top lip to show half-hearted teeth, and staggered away.
As it did, I thought perhaps its fur began to shrink away. And suddenly, it looked larger in the night—as large as a dog, as large as Sailor…
But I blinked, and it was just a trick of the light, because the creature that darted away into the bushes like nothing was wrong at all was clearly a fox, the size of a large cat or maybe a small beagle, and nothing more.
And if something screamed in the night not long afterward, and the cry sounded horribly, horribly human?
Well. I was halfway back toward home again by then, and I pressed my fingertips to my lower eyelids and prayed my parents wouldn’t murder me for getting home so late.
CHAPTER TWO
My story starts a little earlier than Mina’s. So forgive me for backtracking a little.
I was seven, see, and Mum and Dad had been fighting for a while. And then, one day, they weren’t, because Mum was gone.
It took me a few years to look back on it all and realise what the little stick with the blue plus sign had meant, why things had all gone to worms.
I wasn’t meant to see the stick, of course.
Wasn’t meant to hear them fighting, either, but that didn’t stop them.
I kind of wish I’d known then what I do now, because maybe it would have made a difference… But then again, maybe I wouldn’t have had Mina, so.
I was furious at Dad, of course. Blamed him. In my seven-year-old head, Mum had been the good cop to Dad’s bad cop, and he’d been the one making her cry. Not because he hit her or anything, or even in hindsight that he was any more cruel than a lot of men who aren’t taught to handle feelings well inadvertently are.
But it was still his fault that Mum had left. To my mind, anyway.
I still remember the anger, fury so hot it knotted my stomach and made me want to puke bitter acid, and scream until my throat ached, and smash things until something inside of me smashed too.
If I broke something in the house, though, I’d be the one getting broken—a clip around the ears, at any rate—so I knew better than to throw a tantrum there.
The bush, though? Out beyond the yard, where the gum trees rustled their secrets beneath an endless blue sky? There, if I went far enough, I could scream and never be heard.
There are train tracks, back deep in the bush, way beyond where most people know these days. I don’t know how old they are, but even when I was younger they were a deep, rusty orange, pocked and pitted with age, burned by rain and blistered by the hot summer sun that baked the smell of eucalypts into your clothes, your hair, your skin.
If I stood still long enough, I always kind of felt like I might turn into one of the tall, pale-skinned eucalypts, with their scraggly, scrawny branches and messy, bushy leaf-tops.
Except my hair, messy and tangled though it was, was more the colour of the rusted railroad tracks that dead-ended out in the middle of nowhere near the pine plantation.
It was a government plantation, state forest land, and while it wasn’t private property, it wasn’t exactly public, either. Which didn’t usually matter, because no one went that far out into the bush from town, a good couple of k’s with no good reason to head that way. Plenty of pine plantations around. Plenty of pine needles closer to the main road, especially back south toward Albury-Wodonga.
I went there, of course.
On the day after Mum left, but a whole lot before that, too. I knew the taste of pine resin in the back of my throat, the smell of dry needles as I crushed them underfoot, knew the crispness of the air that was always a few degrees cooler than under the gum trees, especially in the peak of summer; knew the feel of the pines’ tough, charcoaly bark under my fingertips and what it felt like when the needles spiked through my hair to my scalp as I ducked under a low-slung branch.
And so, I ran out there, full pelt, sprinting like maybe if I ran fast enough I could save the barely-formed sibling that might have been just heavy enough to hold our little family together, and my lungs ached and my throat burned, and I ran all the way through the cool shade of the pines as they whispered their secrets to me, welcoming me into the dimness of their privacy, all the way through to a clearing full of granite boulders stacked up like a kid building towers out of marbles—or like the skin of the world had been ripped open to show its lumpy spine.
I climbed to the top of the boulders, hand over foot over hand over foot, breathing heavily, fingers tearing at the pale green and bright orange lichen that splashed the rocks, shoes scuffing for purchase, the taste of exertion thick in my mouth.
At the top, I stood, leaning on my thighs, panting, and surveyed the world. The boulder pile was nearly as tall as the trees, and I could see far and away over them, like an ocean of green that turned olive as it transformed from pines to gums, hazing to blue in the distance where the mountains rose in the north.
To the southeast, I could see the gaps in the ocean of trees where the town was, little Jilamatang caught like a bead of water on the elbow of the highway.
I screamed.
I screamed, and I screamed, and I screamed, because from here I could see so, so far, and it wasn’t far enough.
I couldn’t see Mum.
I couldn’t see where she’d gone, where she’d run to—and I couldn’t run to her.
I was only seven.
That’s when he appeared: the Winter King.
I’d seen him before, brief flashes of tan hide between the trees, the faint trace of deer musk lingering in the air—and once, a full set of antlers, discarded in a little hollow in the pines.
I’d seen him before. But I’d never seen him up close.
And he’d certainly never spoken to me.
“What is wrong, young person?” the huge stag said, not so much appearing as fading gently into view on the boulders a little below.
Adrenalin shot through me. My chest constricted. My heart hammered at my ribcage. “W-What do you want?” I said, voice hoarse, husky, raw.
I wanted to back away, but I was balanced precariously on the highest boulder of the heap. There was nowhere to back to.
The stag—the Winter King—tossed his great antlers that made him easily as tall as me, even though I had a two or three foot advantage on the rocks. I was a short seven-year-old—and he was a mighty tall deer.
“To help you,” he said. “Or at least, to stop you screaming.”
My face flushed. My hands fisted at my sides. “You can’t help me,” I said. “No one can.”
“Mm,” said the deer. “I am King of all Winter. What is the expression? Try me.” He gazed languidly at me with one great, liquid-brown eye, and coughed politely.
The smell of ozone drifted on the air. My protests died in my throat.
“I want my mother,” I mumbled, intensely aware of how impossible that was.
He stared at me for a long, long time, long enough that I shifted awkwardly back and forth while a sudden wind poured over me.
The scents of ozone and pine thickened in the air, along with whiffs of the Winter King’s musk.
I sniffed heavily, salty mucous in the back of my throat as I willed myself not to cry.
At last, the deer cocked his head, great antlers shifting like branches. “I know your mother,” he said simply. “Where has she gone?”
I shrugged. “Away.” I kicked at the granite under my feet, scuffing up more lichen, the sound grating in the emptiness of the forest.
“And she is not coming back, I gather?” the Winter King said.
“No.” I shrugged again, but I was pretty sure, even without knowing really about the baby, and the miscarriage, and the reason for all the fighting.
The Winter King was quiet again as clouds began scudding across the sky.
A crow called, somewhere out in the pine forest.
Something answered him, a yipping kind of yowl.
A shiver rolled down my back. I tried to hide it by shrugging again.
“It is not winter yet,” the Winter King observed. “I am not at the height of my power.”
Hope quickened in my chest. Power? That sounded promising.
“…But there may be a way I can help.”
I couldn’t help the sharp intake of breath, the sudden lighting of my eyes, the way my chest lifted as though someone had breathed life into it. “Help?” I said softly.
Around us, the wind blew stronger, and the smell of ozone thickened.
“There is a way,” the Winter King said slowly, as though he didn’t notice how the wind whipped at us now on our high vantage point, flapping my shirt, mussing my hair. “But it is dangerous, and painful, and I am not fully convinced it would work.”
“What it is?” I said, heart hammering at my chest so loudly I could hear it over what could only be a brewing storm. I inhaled deeply, and the suddenly-cold air hit the back of my throat like cold water.
“I can change you,” he said.
Between us, in the air, colour coalesced. Reddish brown. A flash of white. The sudden gleam of an eye—and teeth.
A fox, spiralling and pivoting and cavorting on the wind, transparent, iridescent—and free.
My grin was fiercer than the fox’s as I met the Winter King’s eye. “Do it,” I said.
“It will hurt,” the Winter King replied. “And I cannot promise it will help you find your mother.”
“I don’t care,” I said, hands fisting until my nails bit my palms.
I imagined Dad, shaking with grief as he realised that his son had disappeared too, that he’d driven both of us away, that neither of us were coming home.
Some imagination. Dad wouldn’t mourn like that if I left. He’d hardly care at all.
Anger hardened in my chest. “Do it.”
The wind wrapped around me, a tiny, localised tornado, all ozone and pine scent and snow.
Cold bit at my fingers, my ears, the tip of my nose and chin.
It hurt.
But it hurt nothing like the pain that enveloped me as the wind closed in.
I screamed.
I tasted blood.
I screamed some more.
Fiery pain shot through my veins, down my arms and legs. I threw my head back to scream again—and light shot out of my mouth, beaming way up into a sky now steely grey and ominous.
The world around me grew.
The trees got taller, the rocks got higher. And I realised, all at once, that the world hadn’t changed at all.
I had.
Rust-red fur burst through my skin like needles.
I shrieked—and it emerged as a yowl.
The wind died away. The world exploded into life, rich and thick with scents I’d never smelled before, more than I’d ever imagined.
There was the smell of the pines, of course, separated into subtle shades of sap and needles and bark. The granite boulders underneath me, mineral and cold.
Somethings small and musty, living in the crevices between rocks, their scurrying trails picked out over the dry rock like seams.
The diminishing ozone on the wind, the musk of foxes and deer, the smell of dirt and decaying logs, the sharp green smell of grass.
A grunt drew my attention. I swung around to where the Winter King had been.
He was fading, mostly transparent, nearly gone.
“It is all my power,” he murmured breathily. “I am depleted.”
And he was gone.
My chest swelled, the air warming again now that the wind had also faded away.
I crouched, the granite rough and grippy beneath my paws.
And I leapt.
Now, I would fly.
Now, I would find my mother.
I thudded to the rocks several feet below, tumbling tail over head before skidding to a stop.
My chest hurt. One leg was damaged. My ear, from the smell of it, was bleeding.
And I learned that even foxes can cry. If they’re sad enough.