by Emily Butler
“ ‘Countess Marguerite’ is easy enough,” said Zoose.
“I thank you for that,” replied the fox, who may have nodded in a dignified sort of way, although it was too dark to be sure. “I was highly born, but I felt—I feel!—for the plight of common workers. The oppressed, one might say. Normal folks, as the expression goes. The salt of the earth.”
“Bumpkins,” agreed Zoose. “I know a few.”
(Bumpkins? wondered Freya. She did not doubt that Zoose knew more than his share of bumpkins, but was flummoxed by this newcomer and the bizarre direction her tale was taking.)
“Indeed,” continued Marguerite. “I fought injustice wherever I found it. I sheltered the homeless in my castle. I campaigned for women to have the vote. Do you know what the vote is? Well, I wanted women to have it. And children too! I spent my fortune buying everyone bread and shoes. In the end, the aristocracy had enough of my agitation. They kicked me out of the country! Out of Poland.”
“That’s foul play!” said Zoose, outraged. “Thuggery!”
“Do you mean to say,” Freya probed, “that you were exiled because you clothed and fed the needy?”
“Just so,” said the fox with a sniff. “They deported me to the North Pole!”
Freya pressed her beak together, but a rampant need for correctness prevailed. “You are aware that this isn’t the North Pole….”
“But it’s close!” Zoose interrupted, as if to console Marguerite for not having been banished far enough. “Let’s not stand on ceremony! It’s very close!”
“And I am very tired,” said the countess, yawning adorably. “I can hardly keep my eyes open. Do you have a place I could rest? Just for the night. I would never want to impose.”
These words signaled that introductions were over and that it was now time to turn in. Zoose, obedient as a puppet, delved back under his pillows, but not until he’d offered the best one up for the fox’s own use. Freya was a less eager host but did not want to be thought boorish by this sophisticated stranger. She moved her nest of cotton batting closer to Zoose’s corner and made room for their guest. Marguerite arranged herself atop a pillow, occupying half the tent (or rather more than half) in a matter-of-fact way that did not invite discussion. Soon both she and Zoose could be heard snoring softly, leaving Freya to marvel at how quickly it had all happened.
Freya thought about the preposterous demands of foreign travel. Sharing cramped quarters with a vagrant (though quite gorgeous) fox? Who could have predicted it? Marguerite seemed genteel enough, but Freya was bothered by the invasion. It was so improbable, so sudden! On the other hand, Zoose was utterly unperturbed. He’s bewitched, she decided as she surrendered to nervous, fitful dreams.
The next morning, Freya and Zoose gave several tender pieces of bear liver to Marguerite. She ate them up quickly, with dainty snaps of her sharp white teeth. In return, she dug into a large, spangled bag of her own and presented them with a quantity of roasted peanuts. Freya scrutinized the food with uncertainty—it did seem irregular to be carrying a stash of peanuts around on an ice floe in the middle of the Arctic Sea. And was it absolutely necessary for Zoose to make such a show of eating each and every one?
“Honestly, Zoose, one would think you’d never seen a peanut before,” she ventured as he bit through another hull and harvested the contents.
“Come to Papa, you delicious thing,” he said, ignoring Freya and flipping a peanut into his mouth. “And thank you, Countess. Imagine trading a piece of rubbery old liver for such a treat as this. We’re taking advantage of you is what we’re doing!”
Freya had to object. “You love bear liver. It tastes like custard, you said!”
“Not even custard tastes like custard when you have to eat it every day,” replied Zoose.
Marguerite smiled magnanimously and then went back to licking her front right paw. Freya was compelled to notice that every so often she winced and let out a short bark of pain.
“Are you in distress, Marguerite?” she asked.
The fox nodded. “I stepped on an icicle. Nasty thing! It went right through my poor foot!”
“Oh, Freya will fix you up!” volunteered Zoose. “Freya, grab your article of whatsit! You must have something in there that will put the countess right again.”
Freya duly fetched her Article of Faith and returned to Marguerite, opening it to take out a roll of clean cotton bandaging and some antiseptic cream. (Was it her imagination, or was the fox examining the contents of her pouch with a covetous fascination?) Marguerite lifted her paw, and Freya took a look—there was a small cut on the pad under one of her toes, which Freya dabbed with the cream.
“Ow!” yipped Marguerite. “Is it very bad? Am I torn all to pieces? Gashed?”
“Good grief, it’s just a nick,” said Freya.
“Hallelujah,” breathed Zoose, sounding truly relieved. “Mind you don’t leave a scar, Freya, whatever you do.”
“Leave a scar? On the bottom of her foot?” Freya was peeved by his earnest solicitude toward the fox. It was wholly out of proportion to what the situation required. Zoose was overdoing it, and not by a little! She unrolled the bandaging, nettled.
“In Poland, there was nothing the court physician couldn’t do,” Marguerite said as Freya cut a bandage to just the right length. “He could bring a person back from the dead, nearly. He reattached the king’s own tail after a hunting accident! It was a miracle. But you will do your best, I am sure.”
Yes, Your Highness, I will do my humble best was what Freya almost said. But she kept this and other thoughts to herself as she wrapped the bandage tightly around the fox’s paw and ankle. Then she tied the ends into a square knot and stood back.
Marguerite stretched her leg and put some weight on it. The bandage held well. She did a low arabesque, and then twirled winsomely.
“Good as new,” she acknowledged.
“Even better!” added Zoose brightly.
Freya said nothing.
They spent the day on the ice floe. Zoose scampered ahead, intent upon showing Marguerite all of his favorite places. Marguerite rewarded him with gracious smiles; periodically she pricked her ears in his direction until he was almost undone by his desire to please her. Until now, Freya had been unaware that Zoose had any favorite places, and she lagged behind. When they reached a hummock with one side that sloped evenly to the ground, Zoose sprinted all the way to the top.
“Freya, come up here!” he called. “Show the countess that thing you do! Countess, you’ve got to see it! Freya can flump onto her belly and streak down the ice like a rocket! It’s a real pip!”
“Oh, how comical. Flump onto her belly! I should love to see that,” said Marguerite so smugly that Freya felt an actual stab of pain. Executing a perfect belly flop took a great deal of daring and technique, and Freya had both. But she would no sooner flop down the ice in front of Marguerite than fly to the moon.
“Not for all the tea in China,” she said, and waddled back to the tent by herself. Zoose could play the clown for the fox all he liked, but she had better things to do. She doubted they would miss her overly much.
In the evening, Zoose and Marguerite returned, glowing from their romp across the ice. They lounged against the largest pillow and shared some peanuts with each other. They scarcely seemed to notice that Freya was there. Now she worried that she had been too touchy, and that in fact they hadn’t missed her in the slightest. Was she really so dispensable? How easy it was to become the third wheel! Abashed, she offered to check the fox’s bandage.
“Say, Freya, what was that story you started in on last night? The one with you swallowing glass?” asked Zoose. It was clear that he was acting under some compulsion to be amusing, lest Marguerite become bored with their company.
“Really? Am I to be storyteller as well as nurse?” asked Freya as she retied Marguerite’s bandage efficiently.<
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“Oh, don’t be like that. Nobody tells a story like you do!” said Zoose.
“I do not mind a story, myself,” purred the fox. “One that suits. A befitting story, with a moral.”
Marguerite’s virtuous tone rankled Freya. “It was nothing. Just a silly thing I did when I was a chick. I was walking along the beach with my mother when I spied dozens of pieces of sea glass. They were so irresistibly bright and in every color—jade and turquoise and even vermilion! I pointed them out to Mother, and she said they were mermaid tears. She warned me not to eat them. What was she thinking? Naturally, the moment she turned her back, I swallowed as many as I could!”
“No, you didn’t!” exclaimed Zoose. “What happened?”
“Only what you might expect. I got a cracking bellyache, and Mother guessed what I’d done. She told Father, who held me upside down and shook me until I vomited up every last piece of glass.”
Marguerite coughed and looked away in some distaste. There was a moment of awkwardness. Zoose’s animated face faltered as he realized that the fox’s sensibilities had been offended. How disobliging of her, thought Freya. She might at least thank me for binding her paw! Freya remembered the way the sea glass had tasted as it had lodged in her gullet, hard and cold and not unlike the feeling she had right now for Marguerite. What was the use of being beautiful if one couldn’t manage a modicum of manners? It was just a story about a baby penguin, after all!
“I’d eat an entire bucket of sea glass now to be back on that beach with Mother! There’s your moral!” said Freya.
“ ‘There’s your moral!’ ” said Marguerite, imitating Freya in an offhand way. She lowered her head between her paws and repeated it to herself with a frothy laugh, as if it were the funniest thing she’d ever heard. “ ‘There’s your moral! There’s your moral!’ ”
That night Freya fell asleep remembering how splendid it had been to crash on an ice floe hundreds of miles away from home, with no way of knowing where she was, with nobody to come to her rescue and (most important of all) with no Marguerite.
Freya opened one eye just a sliver, and then squeezed it shut again. Morning had come, and Marguerite was still there, reposed against a pillow. Worse yet, she was watching her. Freya could feel it.
“Wake up, sleepyheads,” cajoled the fox.
Freya lay still and willed Marguerite to leave. She’d cropped up from nowhere—couldn’t she evaporate just as easily?
“Anyone for breakfast?” Marguerite asked. “A bowl of sea glass, perhaps?”
This brought a tiny snicker from Zoose’s corner, and Freya went rigid with fury. It was going to be a very long day indeed if that was how he was going to play things.
Then Marguerite changed tactics. “Freya,” she said, “I adored your story last night. Yes, I really did. I was riveted, as they say.”
Freya opened both eyes. So did Zoose.
“It was very…informative,” continued Marguerite. “I understand you so much better now. You and little Zoose.”
Freya and Zoose sat up. What was she trying to tell them? Her words sounded like a preamble to something momentous. She searched their faces. Were they ready to hear what she had to say next? She bit her lip doubtfully.
Then she relented. “How you must both long to go home. What if I were to introduce you to a friend who could take you back? Safe and sound? No questions asked?”
Freya and Zoose stared at her, and then looked at each other. Their mouths hung open in confusion. “I don’t understand. What is it that you’re suggesting?” asked Freya.
“Oh, well, it’s not complicated. I would have mentioned it last night, but I didn’t want to presume,” said the fox. “I have a friend, you see—an ally. He’s a whale. Do you know what a whale is? Because, as I say, he is one. A whale.”
“Of course we know what whales are,” said Freya, who had seen many whales in her life but had never been closely associated with any. “I fail to see how a whale will get us off the ice.”
“You could ride on his back,” said Marguerite. “It would be child’s play! So easy! And he’d be happy to do it. He could take you to the coast of Sweden, and you could each make your way home from there.” She explained this with exaggerated patience, as if they were simpletons.
“Why doesn’t he take you home?” Freya asked, unable to help herself.
Marguerite sighed with regret. “Impossible. I’m far too famous. I’m recognized everywhere I turn. No, the Defendress of the Friendless can never go home. She has nowhere to lay her head. Nowhere at all.”
Freya was overcome by an intense dislike for the fox, who struck her as more deluded by the minute. Far too famous, indeed! Freya was having none of it. “I need some air,” she fumed, and left the tent.
Then Marguerite confessed her own dedication to “daily conditioning” and followed Freya, jostling her just a little as she swept by. The fox sashayed over the ice, back arched, hips sublime (yet tasteful)—the very picture of refinement. Freya spun around and glared at Zoose, who was half in and half out of the tent. He unshelled a peanut absently while contemplating Marguerite’s disappearing form. Freya couldn’t take it for one more minute.
“Defendress of the Friendless?” she spluttered. “I have never heard anything so ludicrous in all my life, and neither have you.”
“You’ve really gone off your onion,” said Zoose, chewing slowly.
“Just try and say it ten times fast!” said Freya.
“What difference would that make? Give the countess a chance,” said Zoose.
Freya felt the cold sea glass in her throat and wondered if she might gag. “If she’s a countess from Poland, then I’m the queen of Sheba! You’re an easy mark, Zoose, you know that? A really easy mark!”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Zoose.
“Yes, you do,” said Freya. She bustled back inside and picked up all the peanut shells she could find. Then she flung them out the front of the tent, peppering Zoose when he didn’t duck fast enough. Everything was topsy-turvy now, and Freya blamed the fox for that. She didn’t trust her one iota. No, not one whit, jot or tittle! But neither did Freya trust herself. Hadn’t she misjudged people and situations before? Made great errors? Miscalculated badly? She had.
Be that as it may, she said to herself, this smells more of fish than of whale. I must be careful.
Accordingly, when the fox returned to the tent and renewed her proposal, Freya was on guard. “Would you care to meet my special friend? My comrade? I am sure he would like to meet you,” Marguerite persevered. Mulish and unbending, Freya folded and refolded a spare cardigan as if her life depended on it, and kept her beak shut.
It was a different matter with Zoose, however. “Why, I’d like that very much,” he said, dismissing Freya’s cluck of disapproval. “Any friend of yours is a friend of mine!”
At this, Marguerite bestowed a dazzling smile on Zoose and turned on her heels, trotting away from the campsite. Zoose followed her, and Freya (refusing to be left out, come what may) followed Zoose. The fox was soon ahead of them both.
“This won’t end well,” said Freya as they struggled to keep up with Marguerite’s brisk pace. “Mark my words, it won’t.”
“You’ve got a little bee under your bonnet,” observed Zoose, panting. “But what’s the harm in giving her the benefit of the doubt? The countess seems like a good sort to me.”
“Please do me the favor of not referring to her as the countess, or I might laugh my head off,” said Freya, puffing and wheezing.
“Oh, so you know what a countess looks like?” challenged Zoose between gulps of air. “Why are you so sure she’s not who she says she is?”
“Call it penguin intuition if you like. I know when I’m being bamboozled!”
“Do you?” he asked. “Because what I see here is a lady who was wronged, who isn’t letti
ng her rank, or as some might say her noble birth, get in the way of helping the likes of us!”
Freya was livid. “The likes of us? A lady who was wronged? Far be it from me to dash the cup of joy from your lips, Zoose, but she’s hoodwinked you from start to finish!”
Half an hour and many differences of opinion later, Freya and Zoose joined Marguerite at the edge of the ice floe. After studying the open water, the fox put her bandaged foot up to her muzzle and issued a shrill whistle. Then she whistled a second time, and then a third. They waited mutely. Nothing appeared to be happening.
“He hears me,” said Marguerite. “We have a perfect understanding, he and I. You’ll see.”
Freya turned to Zoose, rolling her eyes in vindication. But Zoose wasn’t looking at Freya. He was looking very intently at the sea. Freya turned back and looked with him. Then she gasped in amazement. “Well, knock me over with a feather,” she said. A wave had swelled the surface of the water and was coming straight at them. Then it stopped, and from the slate-colored depths a massive form arose—a great, dripping, zeppelin-shaped animal who looked for all the world like a whale!
Water sluiced off its mottled back in great rivulets, churning around its body. The sea bubbled and boiled, and steam rose in vaporous sheets from its skin. Then it reared its head to display a horn, ten feet long and fearsome, growing from its upper lip like a bayonet. Or so it seemed to Freya and Zoose.
“What are you?” blurted Zoose, agog.
“You’re a narwhal,” said Freya at almost the same moment. She had only read about narwhals in books, never imagining that they actually existed. “You’re the unicorn of the sea.”
This amused the whale, whose laugh sounded like a tidal wave breaking against rocky cliffs. It regarded them first with one enormous wet eye, and then with the other. In return, they sized up the narwhal. Their prolonged examination made Marguerite impatient, and she tapped her bandaged paw against the ice. “Introductions, please,” she said. “That’s what happens first. Then the rest.”
