A Black Fox Running

by Brian Carter

  During his vigil above the ponds Wulfgar saw flocks of birds flying over the moors on their way south. Often the sky was dark with them. Some tumbled to the ground and died of exhaustion but they were not worth eating.

  After a night of fog that crisped on twigs, reeds and grasses the blizzard returned. Wulfgar and Stargrief lay in Holly Tree Cave while the wind raged and sculpted the drifts around the foot of the rocks, and when at last stillness returned the ponds froze over. Birds that made their customary flights to the water quickly perished, but Scrag the heron kept a hold on life by fishing the Aish Cottage reaches of the brook.

  Pale light touched the treetops, the snow crystals sparkled. Every rut in the lane by Beckaford was hard-edged like iron under the snow. It hurt Scoble’s feet through the thin soles of his wellingtons, but he pushed on and shot pigeons at the bottom of the wood. The walking had left him hot and close to vomiting, so he rested on the parapet of the bridge before checking his snares.

  All but one was empty. Furzegeld, a young dog fox from Hayne Down, had died in the manner animals dread. Scoble kicked the stiff body. One morning it’ll be Blackie, he thought. But I don’t want him dead straight off, I want him to know that’s goin’ to happen. And after I’ve done with un the devil can grab his soul.

  He knelt and loosened the wire. Something dark swooped by his head. Crows were settling in the trees, knocking off the powder snow, making it smoke.

  ‘Seven black birds in a rowan,’ he whispered.

  Crows were good signposts. They pointed the way to carcasses, to wounded beasts, to fox kills. He had once owned a cat with seven toes on each paw and a temper like blackthorn. The mark of Satan was on her, he thought. Crows and black cats and foxes. The naked trees crowded in on him and the shadows soaked through his skin to chill his blood and take away his breath. The sky swam and he screwed up his eyes to fight the panic. Lying in the field hospital he had tried to tell the doctor about the foxes but he couldn’t. The Germans were easy to fight. They came in lines across the field. You picked a target, squeezed the trigger and a gap appeared in the line. Foxes weren’t like Germans. They were part of the dusk and only took on their animal shape at night.

  He put the fox in his bag and marched up the lane to Beckaford. The crows followed him, hopping from branch to branch. At the entrance to the farm he lifted his shotgun, but the trees were empty. The sky was full of racing, grey clouds and flocks of plover. A fit of coughing took him by surprise and doubled him up. He slapped his knee while his lungs surrendered phlegm. If you cough like that, Leonard, said Corporal Wellan, every bloody Hun in Flanders will pinpoint our position. Best get down the line for a day or two. Where was Corporal Wellan now? Where was the sergeant major and all the other blokes who never took the piss? He wiped his mouth. A blurred brown streak paused in the middle of the field and became a hare. The plover were black bullet holes in the sky.

  Stormbully’s primaries buckled as he turned on the wind. The valley was brimming with light. The buzzard cut across the Western sky and reconnoitred the burrows of Emsworthy. Snow hissed over the tussocky slopes.

  Shiv and Chivvy-yick dragged the coney from the hole and sat beside it grooming their whiskers.

  ‘It ain’t exactly the plumpest drummer what ever munched grass,’ Shiv said.

  ‘A skinny coney is better than a fat promise,’ said Chivvy-yick. ‘Things ain’t goin’ to get better and you’d better believe it.’

  ‘What about the others?’

  ‘What others?’

  ‘Snik-snik, Thornwise, Wind-razor and – ’

  ‘They can eat pony dung,’ Chivvy-yick grated.

  Shiv sniggered and closed his eyes in blissful anticipation of entrails.

  ‘Have you ever tasted a goose egg?’ he sighed, but his companion was no longer with him.

  The buzzard had hit the fitch patriarch from behind, sinking his talons into neck and lower spine. For the first time in his life Chivvy-yick was speechless. In the split second the hawk required to get a good grip and flap skywards the stoat writhed. Then something cracked behind his ears and the living world vanished. Looking up Shiv saw the buzzard catch the wind and hurtle over Seven Lords Lands, the late deceased Chivvy-yick hanging from his feet.

  ‘No more than a bird’s snack,’ Shiv told the family later, after he had gorged himself on coney.

  ‘There he was and there he wasn’t. The old buzzard grabbed him before Mighty Fitch could wink.’

  ‘By tomorrow he’ll be a smelly mess of hawk droppings,’ Thornwise gloated.

  ‘Yiss, and I an’t sorry,’ said Snik-snik. ‘He was a greedy sod.’

  Remembering the rabbit he had scoffed, Shiv struggled to pin an indignant expression on his face.

  Servicemen were brought in to dig the trains out of the drifts along the edge of Dartmoor. The roads remained blocked and the villages were without bread and milk. Farmer Lugg made an effort to reach Haytor Down by horse-drawn sleigh, but the snow at Emsworthy Gate was piled ten foot deep and the clouds promised fresh showers. Driven before the wind his Blackface sheep had run up against a wall and the snow had covered them where they huddled. Most were starving and many were dead. The survivors chewed the wool off the backs of the fallen. The moors had become a vast deepfreeze packed with the carcasses of ponies, cattle and sheep. Songbirds sat quietly in the hedges and gave themselves to the cold. The waterfall at Leighon froze solid and the Becca Brook tinkled feebly under ice.

  Starglit and Lazuli were both dead. The kingfishers lay together in the nesting hole above the pool that would never hold their blue reflections again. And on an evening of arctic dreariness Wulfgar found the dipper lying as hard as a nut beside the brook. He thawed out the little body on his tongue and ate it whole.

  The foxes killed a brace of rabbits on Horridge Common but there was hardly enough meat off them to feed a cub.

  ‘I think it would be wise to split up,’ said Stargrief, turning his back on the rising easterly.

  ‘You always look as if you expect the moon to drop on you,’ said Wulfgar.

  ‘It galls me to be a nuisance.’

  ‘You’re a selfish old mouse.’

  ‘Selfish?’

  ‘Your death would sadden us all. Keeping you alive isn’t any trouble.’

  He gazed affectionately at the ancient animal. It was too cold for jokes and banter. Snow and the noise of the gale sealed them off from the rest of night-time Dartmoor. They lowered their heads and walked back to Greator Rocks.

  ‘She has returned,’ said Stargrief, hesitating at the mouth of the cave.

  Wulfgar’s nose had also detected Rowanfleet. The vixen was curled up sound asleep in the corner.

  ‘I’ll leave when the snow stops,’ Stargrief continued.

  ‘No you won’t. There’s room here for ten foxes. If you go I’ll hunt you down and bring you back by the scruff of your neck.’

  The vigorous smell of fox softened the air of the cave, which had been hard and wintry. The animals lay with their fur puffed out, breathing gently. The night was loud but Thorgil the badger and his sow heard nothing in Leighon Sett, for they had passed from sleep into the coma of hibernation. Above them life had slowed and in many cases had stopped altogether like the frozen mill wheel at Bagtor.

  ‘It isn’t a good time to be alone,’ said Rowanfleet.

  ‘No,’ said Wulfgar sadly. ‘You look so thin. When was the last time you ate?’

  ‘I had a cabbage yesterday from the garden of the house by the little river down there.’

  They spoke in whispers for fear of waking Stargrief. The blizzard had passed and the morning had the dead quality of moonlight. A robin fluttered onto the ledge close to the roof. Its weak cheeping reminded Wulfgar of spring in Wistman’s Wood and the voice of the first coal tit nestling. And Teg. But the memory was sweet. He found he could recall the joy to his heart easily, and it was gold-edged like a leaf catching the sun full on.

  ‘I wanted you to come back,’ he said.


  They smiled at each other.

  ‘Look,’ Wulfgar said. ‘The bird up there carries the sun on its chest.’

  ‘It has risen for us,’ Rowanfleet said. ‘Out of darkness comes light.’

  ‘Out of love comes life. You are the vixen in the White Vision.’

  ‘What is the White Vision?’

  He placed his chin on his forepaws and told her.

  ‘Like the croodling of a constipated woodpigeon,’ Stargrief yawned when the tale was finished.

  ‘How long have you been awake?’ said Wulfgar.

  ‘Too long.’

  ‘Wasn’t I bardic enough?’

  ‘You were plain and straightforward.’

  ‘That’s how I see it.’

  Stargrief sat up and scratched.

  ‘The snow’s stopped,’ he said, ‘but more will fall.’

  His gaze settled on the vixen and he sighed.

  ‘The bones are poking out of your fur, Rowanfleet. We’re all like leafless trees.’

  ‘But we’re alive and will be so when next summer is dead,’ said Wulfgar.

  ‘The summer doesn’t die. It is stripped like the trees and gradually re-made so we never take it for granted.’

  Wulfgar thought of this in the context of his feelings for Rowanfleet and did not argue.

  ‘Give us a song, Old Mouse, and I’ll go out and catch something fat to see us through the day.’

  ‘What sort of song?’

  ‘The Winter Song,’ said Rowanfleet.

  Hunger had silenced the robin. Stargrief shut his eyes and began to sing.

  The Winter Song

  Still are the trees at dusk,

  Gold is the mist at dawn,

  And the vixen softly walking

  Leaves footprints on the lawn.

  Gold are the winter lights

  In the dark lake of the sky;

  Breath of frost, kiss of snow,

  And the vixen’s midnight cry.

  The stream bares white claws

  And gold are the vixen’s eyes;

  Two pools where the heart may drink

  The glory of sunrise.

  Gold are the frozen tors

  Flashing in the sun,

  Then the Star Place radiant

  Where dog and vixen run.

  The robin fell dead to the floor but the foxes did not touch it.

  ‘An omen?’ said Rowanfleet.

  ‘At night the clouds hide the stars?’ said Stargrief. ‘As if Tod doesn’t wish to confide in me.’

  ‘Is it an omen?’ asked Wulfgar.

  ‘It is a dead bird,’ said Stargrief. ‘The valley is full of them. If they’re all omens I’d have to live another fifty seasons to unravel their mysteries.’

  Wulfgar laughed and stretched.

  ‘Come on, Rowanfleet,’ he said. ‘If we’re hungry, other animals must be hungry. The rabbits will be out grubbing for rabbit fodder. They get very slow and daft when their guts are empty.’

  ‘I supppse I’d better stay put,’ said Stargrief gruffly.

  ‘Yes, lie still. Get your strength back, compose another song, read the runes, doze,’ Wulfgar grinned.

  ‘Real dog fox stuff,’ Stargrief said in a voice as cold as frost.

  Rowanfleet moved like a cat and smiled at him with her eyes. She is already grooming the unborn cubs, he thought. Winter, spring, summer, autumn. The cry, the fighting, the coupling, the birth, the caring, the dying. And will the Star Place be so different? Will all the vixens we love become one perfect creature?

  The icy morning made his teeth ache.

  KNOWING THE ICE LURCHER

  They went over the drifts with a faint, biscuity crunching of pads on frozen snow. The glare had narrowed their eyes to slits. Both Wulfgar and Rowanfleet were thin and dishevelled. The gales that raked the high ground on the eve of St Valentine’s Day brought the Haytor Clan to the brink of disaster. Even the rabbits were dying of starvation and the foxes were forced to root for cabbages under the snow at Hedge Barton. A vixen and three dogs were shot trying to break into the hen houses of Widecombe. But Stargrief survived and remained cheerful on a diet of vegetables and carrion. He was a great scavenger and rarely came home empty-handed.

  ‘The trapper was hiding in the rocks near Crow Thorn yesterday evening,’ he said.

  ‘Did he see you?’ asked Wulfgar.

  Stargrief shook his head.

  ‘I came up behind him.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He was just sitting there coughing like an old sheep.’

  ‘Waiting for me,’ said Wulfgar. ‘That one is truly strange. He has the patience of a cat.’

  ‘He was alone,’ Stargrief said. ‘I’ve been asking around. His new dog hasn’t been seen for ages.’

  They patrolled the hedges by Kelly’s Farm and ate the wasted bodies of sparrows, chaffinches and blue tits. Despite the weather Rowanfleet could not disguise her happiness. The wind had dropped and the air was sharp and exhilarating. Her breath escaped in little white puffs as she loped along, printing her scent on the starry night. When the moon rose the farmland became suddenly radiant. The silence had a silvery gleam.

  ‘No matter what happens the stars won’t stop shining,’ Stargrief said.

  They stared at each other through the stillness, their eyes twinkling cold and blue, like Vega. A vixen cried from the trees above Lustleigh.

  ‘She is hungry and miserable,’ said Rowanfleet.

  Stargrief cocked a leg and left a wiggly, yellow signature in the snow.

  The foxes hunted through the small hours and returned to the farm at dawn to kennel in the Shippen. Here they discovered Queenie under the straw eating a rat.

  ‘We wondered what had happened to you,’ Stargrief said.

  ‘It’s bloody cold on the open moor,’ said the collie, making room for the foxes and nudging the rat towards Stargrief.

  ‘I nearly died but I remembered how I lived before I became an animal. Farms mean rats and chickens. Tonight I’ll lie here. Tomorrow another farm. Man ain’t so busy in the snow and dogs leave me alone or bring me food.’

  ‘Eat the rat, Stargrief,’ she added quietly. ‘Plenty more rats in the barn by the house. Wait here and I’ll go and get a couple.’

  ‘We’ll come with you,’ said Wulfgar.

  ‘No. The dogs will bark and man will come. Dogs know me. They help me catch rats. Why don’t you stay? I never go hungry.’

  ‘We’d only bring you trouble,’ said Wulfgar. ‘Travel alone, Queenie, and may life always be good to you.’

  The storm breached his sleep and roared in his dreams. The rocks vibrated and the woods went rushing away on the wind’s spring tide to meet the new day. He lay still, imagining the sky choked with dead creatures and he the only fox alive. The flotsam of his thoughts danced on the surge and shift of light. He inhaled the cold reek of winter and subsided for a moment into Rowanfleet’s warmth. Outside the drifts were higher than a pony and the wind had cut them in clean geometric shapes. Flurries of snow continued to dance across the mouth of the cave.

  The foxes had not eaten for two nights; Stargrief’s gut rumbled and gurgled as he stretched his legs and yawned.

  ‘Tod! What a winter!’ he gasped. ‘In my long life there hasn’t been snow to compare with this.’

  ‘Perhaps it is the first of The Three,’ Wulfgar said.

  ‘The Three?’ Rowanfleet said anxiously.

  ‘Wasn’t the story told in your mother’s clan?’ said Stargrief.

  The vixen shook her head.

  ‘Then I’ll tell you about the end of the world,’ the old dog fox said in the deep, slow voice he reserved for bardic occasions.

  ‘And it will happen this way,’ said Tod. ‘There will be three bitter winters, one after the other. Rivers and lakes and even the sea will freeze. Snow will pack on snow and the wind will blow ceaselessly from the north. And the sun will give no more heat than the moon.

  ‘After the three long winters the spring w
ill forget its green promises and no summer will appear to break winter’s spell. Ice and snow will endure for ever and all the stars will go out, and the sun and moon will vanish. The darkness will be blacker than the blackest peat mire. Loathsome and cold the night will last for ever. No scent. No warmth. No life. Eternal winter.’

  ‘Must this happen?’ asked Tod’s companions.

  ‘But Tod didn’t reply. It was near the end of his life here and he was drifting in and out of visions.’

  Rowanfleet shivered.

  ‘The stars don’t care if we die,’ she said. ‘When a fox dies they don’t cry. The hills never sob.’

  Wulfgar lowered his head and went outside. The vixen’s words had conjured up a memory of the lone running on the bleakest part of the moor at the bleakest time of his life. Teg, Oakwhelp, Dusksilver –

  ‘The snow’s stopped,’ Stargrief murmured, feeling his friend’s sorrow.

  A forbidding dawn brightened slowly into a day of pale, golden sun. They wandered down the snow slope to the ponds and crossed them on the thick ice, which was littered with the remains of redwings and fieldfares. A pair of skinny, desperate-looking dog foxes sat by the solid waterfall. The Becca Brook had frozen to the bottom. The only sound breaking the hush was the swish and thud of snow sliding off the trees. Romany and Moonsleek had gone down the River Teign to the sea.

  Chest deep in the recent drifts under Holwell Tor Wulfgar, Rowanfleet and Stargrief stood and sniffed the air. ‘Nothing,’ said Stargrief.

  And they thought of The Three Winters and were afraid.

  One by one the rooks left the beeches and flapped up the valley. They were like vampire bats with their long, heavy wingbeats, but Elder was not among them. The arctic night had claimed her and half a dozen other members of the Holwell Commune.

  The foxes climbed to the top of the tor. Ahead of them the white dorsal fin of Hay Tor cut the haze of blue, cloudless sky. It was like being on a snowy roof. Flying at two thousand feet Stormbully saw the three black specks moving across the down. The whole of the moor was filmed with light that hurt the eyes. He gave a cat-call and sailed over Yarner to quarter the farmland of Bovey Tracey.