was so startled that he nearly toppled from the oak trunk he’d been drowsing on: all day he’d been keeping watch and seen nothing larger than a grasshopper, and now here was a bright-furred vixen. He had never seen another fox before, but he knew: younger and smaller and a female, but fox. Instinct told him also that the way she held her ears and tail erect meant she expected his submission.
I hunt here.
Pax felt an urge to run back to his crude nest and press himself into the remaining stalks, as if retreating to his pen, but he resisted it – what if his boy came back and he wasn’t here? He flattened his ears to show he meant no threat, but that he would not leave.
The vixen paced over, and Pax drew in her scent – as familiar as his own, but also exotic. She sniffed and bristled in distrust at the human scent on him.
Pax had been born with that same instinct as well, but distrust is no match for kindness administered consistently and unmeasured, especially in creatures new to the world. Pax had been only sixteen days old when Peter had rescued him – a fatherless, motherless curl of charcoal fur, his eyes barely opened – and it wasn’t long before he’d come to trust the quiet, gangly boy who’d brought him home.
The vixen poked her pointed snout in to sniff him more closely and bristled again.
The scent is my boy’s. Have you seen him? Pax shared the most important features of his human – the naked round ears; the towering legs, so improbably long that Pax always feared he would topple over when he ran; the black curled hair that grew to different lengths, then became short again.
No humans are here, but they are approaching. Just then, Bristle’s head rose as if jerked on an unseen wire. Her ears pricked, trained on a slight rustling in a nearby tuft of broom sedge. Her rear began to twitch, gathering energy. She sprang high and then, paws tight over her black nose, dived into the grass with a flash of white-tipped tail.
Pax sat up, alert. In a second, Bristle’s head reappeared, and in her jaws was a wood rat. She leaped clear of the grass, bit through the rat’s neck, then dropped it to the ground.
Orphaned before he’d been weaned, Pax had never eaten raw prey. His hunger rose at the blood-scent, and so did his curiosity. He took a cautious step closer. Bristle growled, and Pax retreated to watch from a safe distance.
He grew hungrier as she crunched bites. He thought of the brimming comfort of his kibble bowl, the pleasure of Peter’s hand-fed treats and the ultimate reward: peanut butter. He needed to find his boy. His boy would feed him.
Before he could ask about the approaching humans, Bristle picked up what remained of the rat – a single hind leg with its long tail – and stalked off with it dangling from her jaw. Pax watched as she wove her way between the grass tufts, becoming only flashes of flame and white. Leaving. He was swept by the memory of his humans’ car roaring away in its stinging spray of gravel.
Just before she slipped into a fringe of ferns at the wood’s edge, she paused to glance at him over her shoulder. At that moment, a sharp snap from the fallen oak startled her. It was followed by a red streak of fur that hurtled from the dried foliage, flew over the weeds, and landed on her back.
Pax flattened himself. He could hear the vixen’s yips as she scuffled with her attacker, but they sounded more irritated than afraid. He poked his head up. Bristle pounced on a ball of fur and bit it hard. To Pax’s surprise, a smaller, skinnier version of herself unfurled at her paws.
Pax was stunned. Never had he suspected that foxes might soar like birds, whose swooping arcs were not like any movement he himself could achieve.
The little fox flipped to his back and gave his belly in submission, but this seemed only to make Bristle angrier, her chattering now punctuated by jabs and nips. Pax bounded over, overcome by curiosity.
The skinny fox startled at the unfamiliar human scent and looked over Bristle’s shoulder. His eyes widened when he spied Pax, and he scrambled to his paws. Friendly, he announced to Pax; brother but not littermate of the vixen. Play!
Bristle bared her teeth and snarled at her brother. Dangerous. Stay away.
Pax ignored Bristle’s warning posture and met the greeting. Friendly. You FLEW! BIRD?
The little fox bounded back to the fallen oak, then sprang on to its trunk. One fork of the dead tree angled up. The small fox walked lightly along its length. He looked down to make sure Pax was watching.
Pax dropped and tucked his paws under his chest, but it was hard to keep from leaping on to the tree to try it himself. He had climbed the walls of his pen, of course, but he’d never been higher than its six feet. His brush twitched.
The vixen stalked a few steps away and then dropped to the ground. She rolled on to her side to gaze directly up at her brother, her love for him obvious now. He was the runt. He’s small, but he’s tough. I don’t want him with me when I hunt. But he follows me. She tossed her head and growled at Pax, as though blaming him for her brother’s play.
The runty little fox stepped out along the branch, tail poised for balance, then coiled himself and leaped out over the heads of the earthbound foxes. He landed in a clump of burdock beside the road and then burst out covered in burrs. He tore around in mad circles, as if soaring had filled him with an excess of joy that had to be spent through his legs, and then flung himself on to the ground to roll out the rest.
His sister pounced on him. Too close to the road! While she pulled the burrs from his coat, she scolded him for the recklessness of his flight. But Pax marvelled at it – a good five full-bounds he’d travelled without touching paws to ground. He would try the feat himself one day.
When Runt managed to get to his feet, he lowered his head and nuzzled his sister. She knocked him back to the ground, only mock-rough this time, and then sat on him, pinning him down. He struggled a little but never really tried to upset her, and he protested only meekly when she began to groom him.
Pax settled himself a respectful distance away. After a while, her brother now properly subdued and her irritation spent, Bristle retrieved the morsel of rat and dropped it in front of him. She lay down and began to lick her paws, then to clean her face with them.
Pax edged closer, so low that his belly brushed the ground. The company of these two young foxes drew him, whether he was welcomed or not.
Bristle stretched out in a patch of slanting sunlight. Her damp cheeks glistened like the pumpkin-coloured wood of the table where Pax’s humans ate their food, brilliant against the white of her sleek throat.
Pax looked over at Runt, who was sniffing the spot where Pax had slept. His coat markings were identical, but not as vibrant. His fur was sparse and tufty in places, and his hip bones protruded at sharp angles. He reared back suddenly and pounced in mock attack.
Pax watched as Runt tossed the toy soldier into the air and then pinned it down, over and over. He had done the same thing as a kit. He trotted over and joined the game, and Runt welcomed him as though they had played together since birth.
Bristle got to her feet. Bring it here.
Her brother ignored her for a moment but then, as if he had been judging the limits of his sister’s patience, he loped over and dropped the toy at her paws.
Bristle issued a throaty rattle at the soldier. Human. Leave it. Home.
