The Fox's Forest

In the darkest reaches of a forest whose trees never whispered its name, there lived a fox. She was not the smallest of her sisters and brothers, but her family reckoned that she was unlikely to continue the family's tradition of grand seductions and shadowy games. Even so, her mother said philosophically that there was more than one way to steal a chicken, and she would find her way into some foxish story.

The fox found a certain contentment in her days: lapping dew from flowers (there was a family legend that one of her great-aunts had delighted in starting contradictory trends in the language of flowers during her days at court), or fitting her paws into the patterns made my fallen branches, or gnawing on bones until they were as white as death, as white as desire deferred. It was not a bad life for a fox.

One day the fox pricked her ears up at a human's tread. Although she was not the cleverest fox in the forest, she knew enough to watch from the shelter of a tree, whispering to it that her fine red pelt was the color of the shadows.

The human was a black-haired woman in a coat that had once been beautiful, with maple leaves embroidered in a zigzag across the breast. She carried a sword knotted with a gray cord, and the fox knew enough to know that some great shame had befallen her. The woman was looking directly at the fox.

"I am not a hunter of foxes," the woman said. "I know your people are cunning and worldly beyond compare. I come to beg a boon."

"If you know the tales of my people," the fox said, "then you know that we always ask a price, and that we ask for things that no one wise should ever give."

The woman's face was still like water on a windless day. "Perhaps that's so," she said. "But I am desperate, and the desperate have few choices."

"Tell me," the fox said, noticing how the woman looked too thin for her bones.

"To unknot my honor," the woman said. "I must bring to my liege red leaves from a forest whose every leaf is red. I thought such a place might be known in the lore of foxes."

"Is a lord who would ask such a thing worthy of your service?" asked the fox. Her oldest sister, who delighted in impossible tasks, would have despaired of her.

"I wronged her," the woman said. The fox knew it was improper to inquire further. "But you see, that is why I came in search of foxes."

The fox's youngest brother would have known of such a forest, and he would have sent the woman to fetch a peony carved from pink jade, or the heart of a stag with three antlers, or the moon's name written on spider silk. But the fox had never had any talent for such games. She said, simply, "I would offer you a bargain if I could. But the truth is that I have no answers for you. You will have to seek elsewhere."

The woman was still again. "I suppose I will," she said. "Thank you in any case."

The fox knew it was no use asking her family. They were foxes, after all. She did not offer comfort in velvet words or kisses, but walked with the woman to the edge of the forest. During those nine days, the woman told her of the lands she had seen, of cranes dancing and crows calling and temples of carved stone high in the mountains. By the time they said their farewells, the fox was quite in love, but she would never say so. She would have worried the gray knot loose with her teeth if it would have helped, but she knew that human honor did not admit such easy solutions.

After the woman left, the fox began telling the woman's stories to the wind and the rain and the trees. It was as if the woman had left a piece of her heart behind, and the fox was enough of a fox to savor hearts. And if sometimes the fox dreamed dreams of the woman's thin face, the woman's ungloved hands, she kept them to herself.

Trees in a great forest--and any forest where foxes make their home is great in some way--can see a long way, and trees talk even when foxes are not there to whisper to them. Trees also do not share foxish notions that every gift must end in a bite. They saw the woman coming back on the road she had departed by, and they saw that she came empty-handed.

As the fox slept, as the woman neared the forest, the trees, without any fuss, changed their leaves from green and gold to red.

The fox was surprised indeed to wake to a world of rustling red leaves, and even more surprised to find that the woman with the gray-knotted sword was kneeling a little distance from her.

"I know that this is your doing," the woman said, "and I know there is a price to be paid. Name it."

The fox would not speak, but as she looked at the woman, her eyes said what her mouth would not.

The woman could have listened to the fox's mouth, but instead she listened to the fox's eyes, the fox's heart. She had asked the price, after all; and sometimes prices are gladly paid. Perhaps, during her days away, she had thought about the kind of liege she served, and what that was worth to her.

As for the fox's mother, she said that she had always known her daughter would find herself in a foxish tale one way or another, and no one could argue with her.

for sara

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