Father Fox

Snowflakes caught amber beams of twilight. The fox called Father shivered on its trail through the woods. Stuttering wails echoed off trees as the vulpine wanderer felt the deep night wrap its clawing hand around the world.

Infantile cries led the fox to two shivering forms intertwined. Bald little things looked into the sunset orange eyes of their savior.

“Who are you?” asked Father as the children cowered away in the shadow of a banyan tree. Twined teeth chattered in the frost. “Unfinished creations of the gods? Where is your fur? No wonder you freeze.”

Using its own magic, the fox brushed a fluffy hand over the boy’s head, leaving fur in its wake. He held the chin of the boy but the vulpine magic was running low. He used a slow acting spell on the neck of the boy that would take hold with time. Father gave the last of its magic to give the girl a mane of hair longer than the boy’s.

Still the two unfinished children of the gods shook with cold and terror. Using effortless transformation magic all foxes possess, their savior grew large enough to encircle them in its flame coloured fur. Warm in the embrace, the children slept.

In the morning, both children rested their heads on the paws in their sleep. Though they were bald and lacked the magic of finished creations of the gods, they had an innocence it had never known before. Taking a form like their own, but older, the fox woke them with a kind smile. Spared from death by the kindness of the fox, their bond to it was the first love they had ever known.

Father raised them, teaching them to speak and hunt. Boy became a man. Girl became a woman. They had children. Their children had children.

The slow spell cast on the boy began to work as he aged. Hair sprouted across Boy’s face and chin of the child who the flame haired shapeshifter had taken as his own.

Watching his children wither with time hurt the fox. First the old man died, taken by another winter. Years later the woman followed. On their graves, the fox carved its own image to claim them as its family. Tears rolling down its cheeks, the fox departed. People didn’t need him anymore.

Taking its true form, Father wandered the world once more. As a finished creation of the gods, he was immortal, not doomed to die like people. Father grinned as it remembered how the name had come about, teaching the boy to raise a pea pole for growing the plants the child had pointed to itself and asked, “pea pole?” The fox had laughed. The boy, knowing he had erred, pointing to the girl asked again, “pea pole?”

Among its own kind, the fox called Father reached its hundredth birthday. Father’s second tail grew as it slept that night.

Walking in the forest, Father inhaled a scent that sent his heart fluttering. Black nose twitching, he followed the aroma into a glade of hydrangeas. Sakura petals glided down through the air from trees all around.

Following the twitching branches of the azure flowers, Father found a vixen.

“Hello,” he said.

“Good morning,” she replied. Her voice was the call of destiny. Her breath was the sweet scent of fresh blood. “What brings you to my glade?” she asked, her tail catching the light with every tone of gold and copper, tipped with lily white.

“I only knew I followed the scent of perfection. Now I know it was you.”

“Aren’t you a charmer, Mister Fox. Tell me, what is your name?” Her eyebrow rose as her head tilted.

His canines glittered to be called charming. His night black whiskers flexed when he smiled. “I’m Father. It’s fantastic to meet you. What’s your name?” Lost in her golden eyes, he was drooling.

“My name is Mother, It’s fantastic to meet you, Father.” Her nose ate up his scent. “You don’t smell so bad either. What big paws you have.”

“All the better to pad through the world to you, beautiful.”

“What sharp, glistening teeth you have,” she made a sound that was happiness and flirtation all in one. Mother ran her tongue along her own perfect meat rippers.

“All the better to catch a meal for you, my russet maiden.” His ears pricked up to devour the glory of her words. His tails curved downwards.

“What deep, golden eyes you have.” She screamed, jaw wide. Her ears flattened.

“All the better to admire your grace,” he said, dancing away from her playfully.

She leapt and followed him. They circled. Blue blossoms flitted over their sunset and copper fur as they flirted through the flowers.

“What beautiful tails you have. Two? How distinguished,” she said with an edge of playful mockery.

“All the better to know the world, my dear. For I have walked this Earth a century and seen great wonders. Come with me, see dazzling beauty only eclipsed by yours.” He pounced at her.

She reared up and caught him, opening her jaws wide. “My, what an enormous ego you have!” She nipped him and leapt away.

“All the better not to shy away from your majesty,” Father said. He bowed to her, then sprang after Mother. “Will you be my mate?” He jumped at her again.

“Not so fast my fantastic two-tailed fox. Show me the world beyond my glade. A full moon rises this night. Show your worth by the next and I will be your mate forever.”

They tumbled in the flowers, rolling through shrubs and petals. They kissed with nips and bites. They ran until their tongues lolled out of their mouths. Azure skies faded to onyx speckled with twinkling diamonds. Father and Mother’s tails bobbed in time as they ran through the world with growing joy in their hearts.

Prey fell to their games. They feasted on rabbits among the trees of a place people called Far Thing Wood. From the shelter of the trees they watched the town that had grown from a village there.

“There are so many,” Father said. “They numbered in the dozens when I last saw them.”

“There must be hundreds now. Do they breed like rabbits? Where is their fur?” Mother asked. “They have no magic to them. Yet they have crafted mighty works.”

Wattle and daub huts had become houses with well thatched roofs. A tower stood guard over the town, looking down from high above the trees. The foxes caught the scent of fresh sap from the stumps of trees by the edge of the wood. Fields spread out across an open plane between the treeline and the town.

Mother’s hackles rose. “Your pups run wild. I want to go.”

“Then we will leave them to it, my dear,” said the two-tailed fox as his eyes darted across the cultivated landscape. The natural perfume of nature was gone. Unfamiliar scents of metal on wood and burning coal assaulted his nose. The taste of bile rose up his throat. “Follow me.”

High on a mountain, overlooking a world of magic, the foxes gazed into each other’s eyes.

“I have never been happier than I am with you,” he told her. The aurora shimeyed across the golden orbs of her eyes. Perfectly round and blue, the moon nestled in the dancing colours of the northern lights.

“Then nevermore shall we be parted for more than a hunt.” She licked her lips, hunger in her eyes. Night black lips glistened with her passion. She showed her teeth in a grin.

“Nevermore,” echoed a raven above them.

“Leave us!” Both foxes barked in unison.

“Private moment, bird. Begone or be eaten.”

“Nevermore!” The bird flapped its wings, silhouetted against the magic of waves of light that washed across the sky.

When Mother woke the next morning, her hundredth birthday, she had two two tails behind her and a litter growing within.

Mother’s belly swole with the brood within. The pair slowed their travels. Settling beneath the roots of a banyan tree, they made their den in an abandoned burrow. After fifty days and nights, Mother gave birth to five pups.

Kit was the first, born at midnight and named for a word in the language of foxes that means one who rides the night. Marlon, instantly shortened to Marl, had a grey tone to his fir from the moment he emerged. Third was Tod, asleep moments after birth. Nick was fourth. Tamamo was born last, Father’s only daughter.

Though they nourished their children with love, nature and death had their way. Nick, the wild child of the litter, wandered off as the others slept one night. Father imagined the roguish pup chasing his favourite prey, rabbits.

Searching together, the family walked from horizon to horizon. Years passed, the pups grew into adults. Tiring of life on the move, Tamamo transformed herself into a woman to live amongst humanity. Naturally, able to look however she wanted, she became a great beauty. Artists came to paint her. She extolled the virtues of foxes to all she knew.

Tamamo set up a temple to foxes, teaching humanity to respect the vulpines. To those who followed her teachings, they were the messengers of the gods. Foxes brought luck to the kind, and disaster to the greedy or false.

In robes of the finest thread, embroidered with prancing foxes, she taught many the value of harmony with nature. Her flame hair stood out amongst the brown heads of her townsfolk. Her walnut eyes had tints of gold to them that transfixed any who saw her.

Still searching for Nick, the family left Tamamo to her life among people. Years became decades. Father’s third tail was followed closely after by Mother’s. Their boys grew their second tails.

With each tail, their magic increased. On the brightest days and in the darkest nights, no prey escaped their sight. They ran with the haste of the wind. Their wounds healed faster than ever before.

Time still had a word in their appearance. Father and mother found silver hairs amongst the copper of their muzzles. Aches and pains woke them.

One fine spring morning, Father and Mother returned to Tamamo’s village. The two foxes transformed themselves into traveling singers. Father wore an orange hooded cloak with brown fur trim around the hood. The brown leather gloves were an impulse since the fox had seen a warrior wearing them and enjoyed the look. Mother wore a saffron coloured sari. The illusions they cast made their outfits look cut from the same vulpine patterned cloth.

Instead of their daughter’s house, they found a burnt husk surrounded by orange flowers of every kind. Roses, tulips, dahlias, day-lilies, poppies and more grew in memory of Priestess Tamamo of the fox temple.

Mother fell to her knees at the sight that needed no explanation. Mud on their knees, they held each other, sobbing as the people of the town crowded around them.

“Did you know her?” asked a man whose wrinkles were a map of his hard working years.

“We came from far away hoping to see her,” father said honestly. Fire’s scent had washed out of the blackened timbers. Moss covered some of the beams.

“The great priestess died a year ago. Her husband and children were at the temple when the house caught fire. She was old. Never stood a chance. She’s sorely missed. The whole town knew her.”

“You knew her?” Father asked.

“Kindest woman to walk the world. Most beautiful too, I reckon. Even in the end. Don’t think there’s a man about who’d deny a passion for her. There’s a statue of her in the temple now. I’ll take you, if you like.”

Helping Mother to her feet, Father nodded. With a paw in the shape of a hand, he wiped tears away. Cradling his grief stricken mate, he walked behind their withered guide.

What the old man called a town was in a city by all rights. A wooden fort in the heart of the place had a tower of packed stone and earth. A fox’s head fluttered from the flagpole atop the tower.

Standing on a plinth half their height, Tamamo’s heavenly face beamed down at them with eyes of carved stone.

“Not how you expected your pilgrimage to end I guess,” said the old man solemnly. “I’ll leave you to it.”

“She had children,” said Father. “That’s something I suppose.”

“How could she have aged? She was immortal.” Burying her face in his shoulder, Mother wept again. “Perhaps because she’d been in human form for that long.”

There was no better news of their other children. Kit had been run over by a knight riding at the gallop through the dark by moonlight. His mate told Father and Mother he had crawled home to say his farewells before he drifted into his final sleep.

Tod had been hunted down by men with hounds. His brood had been stealing chickens for years. Farmer’s at the end of their tether hunted the second born pup and his family until only one of his sons lived to tell the tale.

Marlon had drowned, watched by his mate and pups.

Childless, Mother and Father wandered abroad in the world. People were finding ever more ingenious ways to compensate for their lack of magic. Spears Father had taught them to hunt with were replaced by bows and arrows. Animals that spent any time in human company seemed to forget their own magic, apart from the cats whose powers and range of talents rivaled even the foxes.

By the time Father had his fifth tail he’d lost track of Tamamo’s descendants, though the human family remained in the city where her temple gathered dust. Children of The area were often born with ginger hair which turned hazel with age. A new religion had swept over the lands in waves of violence people called war. Followers of the Lylat Crusade fought in the name of the Allfather.

Myth said the Allfather had grown the first man and woman from the seeds of the banyan. The god had saved them from a beast of the winter forest by binding it to them in servitude. To Allfather’s children, it was the right of people to treat animals as they willed and to exploit the bounty of the world.

Wary of humanity, Father and Mother took to high mountains away from the towns and cities. Two centuries passed in wild habit. They hunted, fed and slept. By then Father had more silver hairs than orange. Mother’s flame coloured fur faded to daffodil yellow.

Their magic waxed as their caution waned. Forgetting humanity’s cruel ingenuity, they returned to Tamamo’s city as foxes.

Father’s preternaturally keen nose scented fresh meat from across the city. It lay on a butcher’s slab in an alley as the pair approached. Licking their lips they looked at a cut of beef that would feed them for days. Stepping across the iron frame in the dirt, they snapped at the meat.

The trap snapped shut on both.

“Got them!” The jubilant cry of a man dressed in black snapped their heads to a port hole above.

“Look at the devils. Allfather protect us. No fox has tails like that. Demons. Possessed for sure. Summon the priest.” A man in furs from head to toe had a crossbow trained on them. Another bowman took aim by his side. “Shoot them. The priest can say his words over the corpses when we burn them.”

“Don’t.” Father spoke the human tongue for the first time in centuries, his voice high and screeching to the ears of men. “Please don’t kill us.”

“Hark. It speaks. Only a monster could have a voice like that.” The first bowman growled. “Shoot them.”

“Please,” begged Father. His voice found more human tone as it eased back into the forms of speech.

“NOW!” Both men fired.

Father turned his body to face the bolts, saving mother from the steel.

“No.” Mother pressed her muzzle to his. Blood welled around the protruding shafts of oak. “He is your Allfather, dolts.” Her voice was rage and grief, all the cold of a winter that would smother ungrateful humanity. “He saved the children in the forest.”

The priest came. She built a pyre in the street, chanting the words of the Allfather. The cage was placed in the fire. People of the city came to watch the spectacle. Mother pressed her nose to Father’s to feel his fading breath.

Help me, said a voice in Mother’s mind. I will open the cage before the fires consume you. You can flee then, but I have a better idea.

Who are you? Mother wondered.

Tamamo. The fire at my home was a ruse to fake my death. I had lived too long for a human. There have been many fires. Many lives. Mother, aid me. It is time people remembered who their father is. We can heal him.

Fire spread around the cage. Jeers turned to gasps as the crowd watched the bodies of the foxes turn into pure light and melt through the bars.

Snowflakes caught the amber light on that summer’s day as the Allfather himself towered over the city.

Bolts fell from bleeding wounds.

“I’ll forgive you, children. You knew not what you did.” The man who filled the sky became a fox. “Now you know. You will remember, or face my wrath.”