The Heart of a Fox

by T. Isilwath

  She wrote in the journal every night. It marked the passage of time and helped her distinguish one day from another. In a world where life was unchanged from day to day, it was easy to lose track of time. If it were not for the entries in the journal, and the calendar in her insulin pump, she would have completely lost all sense of time. For her, and the forest, the world was a season, and the season was Summer. In the pages of the blank tome, she recorded all of her dreams, activities, adventures and discoveries. She hoped one day to share it with Michael and Elisi, to sit with the Storyteller and relay all of her tales, and to look back on her time in the forest from the familiarity of her modern day home.

  The daily doses of insulin, carefully parceled out in the minimum units required, never let her forget where she had come from and all that was at stake. She had managed to reduce her insulin intake by a third and she hoped it would be enough. The twice weekly changing of the infusion set reminded her that cleanliness was essential in order to prevent infection, and compelled her to bathe every other day, weather permitting. She also used those days to perform the ritual of going to water as a way of purifying her spirit as well as her body, and every night she prayed to Spirit for her continued good fortune. She prayed before the fire, sending her prayers up to the heavens with the smoke, but she knew she was living on borrowed time. She only had four vials of insulin left, and each day that passed her supply dwindled even more. She estimated that she had about 115 days’ worth of insulin remaining with her current usage.

  After that, she was on her own.

  In her dreams she was back home in western North Carolina, in the small apartment she shared with her fiancé where he made breakfast on the days when he did not have to work and sent her off to class with a nuzzle and a bagged lunch. She dreamed of the little comforts of the modern world, of hot showers and blueberry pancakes and indoor plumbing. She saw her grandmother sitting on the porch of her tiny home, rocking in her chair as her age-wizened fingers separated flax from seed. And many of her dreams featured Michael: his smile, his voice, his gentle touch. He had been the cornerstone of her world for eleven years, and she was bereft without him. She missed him as one would miss a limb, and she had no idea if she would ever see him again.

  Recently, however, she had begun to dream of her new home underneath the king tree and of a red fox who came to visit her. It seemed that Michael was reaching out across the years and distance that separated them, and he had come in the form of Fox. Fox settled into her dreams, crawling on his belly into her hollow to lick her fingers and curl at her feet. He ran with her along the game trails of her imagined hunts, his light paws making no sound on the ground beside her, his furry tail flashing red and white amid the deep forest green. In her dreams Fox comforted her and she was not alone.

  ********

  Joanna paused on the trail and listened. It had been many days since she had heard a voice other than her own, but she always checked to make sure she was the only human in the area. Her explorations had revealed a dirt road about two miles away, and she sometimes haunted it, perched in a tree out of sight, listening for words she recognized with her limited knowledge of Japanese, searching for answers to questions she could not ask for herself.

  It also eased her loneliness somewhat. She could not actually speak to them, or join them, but it was nice to hear another voice. She’d never been in a situation where she could not seek out other human beings. Back in her time, if she had wanted to be alone, all she had to do was go into the forest or lock herself away in a room, but she could always come out when she wanted and return to her people. Here she had no such choice. But even though she understood why she could not hop down and talk to them, she still longed for human contact and listening to the voices of the travelers was better than nothing.

  From examination of the clothes worn by the passersby and their weapons, she had determined that Japan had yet to be opened to trade with the outside world. There was not a firearm among them, not even on the armed escorts that sometimes flanked some of the more important travelers. She had also seen warriors that she could only classify as Samurai, with their steel and leather armor and deadly katanas. Sometimes they rode in tight ranks of mounted soldiers carrying banners with symbols painted on them, probably the crest of a local daimyo: one of Japan’s famous provincial warlords of the Feudal Era also known as the Sengoku Jidai.

  So far her presence had yet to be discovered by any of the small settlements beyond the borders of her chosen territory. From what she had seen of the villagers, they stuck close to home, tending their gardens and venturing into the “deadly” forest only when necessary. One village about five miles to the south had a good-size Shinto shrine complex associated with it and several larger buildings interspersed with some peasant huts. She ventured in that direction only when she had to and only under the cover of darkness to avoid discovery.

  In addition to the normal inhabitants of the woods, and the humans who carved a living along the edges, there were other creatures that shared her forest. These creatures felt different, often sinister, and the trees warned her whenever one was near. Sometimes they were brutes, huge and lumbering, with terrible faces more beast than man, and they were not human at all. The trees had no name for these beings, only that they were “Other,” but they Felt of the supernatural, of that power which could not be seen or understood, and she avoided them. Often she would feel them tingling on the edges of her awareness, and she would hide or hurry the opposite way.

  None of these Others ever ventured close to her camp, and she often wondered if the trees were somehow responsible for that. She knew the circle of the cedars felt different from the surrounding forest, as if there was an invisible barrier which separated them from the rest of the world. The trees were ancient and powerful, and she suspected that the circle had once been a sacred place. It was possible that the Blessings that had sanctified the area remained intact, continuing to protect the clearing long after its original purpose was forgotten.

  She had seen one of the Others up close once, when it attacked a group of travelers on the road and killed several of them while she could do nothing but helplessly watch. It had looked like a minotaur from ancient Greek mythology, half man-half bull with deadly horns and claws. Its victims had screamed and scattered, running for their lives as it trampled and ripped its way through them with a savagery that seemed to be fueled by unbridled rage. Surprisingly it did not eat any of the humans it had killed, but left the bodies where they fell, bloodied and mangled. When it was gone, she had ventured down from her hiding place to see if anyone had survived, but all of them were dead.

  She had scavenged what she could from their packs, taking everything she thought would be the least bit useful. These people knew how to survive in the age she found herself. There was no telling when something of theirs that was left behind might make a difference in her own chances of survival, and she felt no remorse or guilt in taking from the dead so that she might live. Among the food, clothing and other equipment was the all important bow and arrows.

  There was also what looked like money: pieces of silver with little stamps on them and copper coins as well. These she took because she never knew if there would come a time when she would need currency, but she left the jew-elry on the bodies of the women alone. She had no need of baubles, and the small bracelets and pendants the women wore were probably the only wealth they could call their own. She laid out the bodies side-by-side, knowing that someone would eventually come to see to their fate, and when she’d checked on them two days later, they were gone.

  The wind in the trees brought the scent of rain, and that did not bode well for her plans to bake her fish. She needed a steady fire to heat the rocks she would use to make the earthen oven and heavy rain would preclude that.

  Quickly she made her way back to her camp to see if she could get back in time to warm the rocks. Once the oven was ready, and the fish buried in it, it wouldn’t matter if it rained as long as it wasn�
��t a deluge.

  Unfortunately the clouds moved in before the rocks were ready, and she was forced to parboil her fish with Japanese radishes and other vegetables. After dinner she pulled out Iris and sat in the entrance of her hollow to watch the gently falling rain as she played the guitar. The canopy of the trees did much to act as a natural umbrella until the boughs became too saturated to hold any more water, but even then the density of the branches still afforded some protection. Her hollow, of course, was nicely waterproof, at least so far.

  Iris didn’t like the damp, but a quick tuning kept her in playing form, and she needed the practice to keep her fingers nimble. She played three songs just as a warm-up, then put Iris back in her case and returned to watching the rain.

  Around her the king tree breathed, the cadence of its respiration calm and soothing. The tree was content and she felt its happiness surround her.

  While not the life she would have chosen had she had a choice, she was not distressed. The forest was peaceful and beautiful, and she felt at one with it. If she was never rescued and returned to her rightful time, she knew she could be, if not happy, at least at peace. Her biggest fear was running out of insulin before she was found, and dying without ever having the opportunity to say goodbye to the ones she loved.

  On September 11, 2001 when her parents and siblings had died in the crash of their airplane into the Twin Towers, her greatest regret had been that she had never had the chance to say goodbye. She had carried the survivor’s guilt inside of her for years, blaming herself for living when they had died. If she hadn’t contracted a sinus infection and had to stay behind at home when everyone else went to Boston, she would have been on the doomed airplane and died with them. She wouldn’t have been forced to leave her California home, and everything she knew, to move across the country and live with a grandmother she hadn’t seen since she was seven.

  One of the biggest breakthroughs in her grieving had been the Journeying she had undertaken to find her family and have that final talk with them. In the Journeying, her loved ones had assured her that their deaths had been quick.

  They had admitted to being afraid and confused when their plane was hijacked and diverted, but the actual fate of the aircraft had been kept from them until the last possible moment. In the end, the resulting explosion had killed them upon impact. They hadn’t felt a thing nor did they want her to blame herself for living. She was the only surviving member of her family, and it was up to her to carry on their memory.

  Now it was she on the proverbial plane, hijacked by accident and hurtling towards an inexorable fate with no way of telling her loved ones how much they meant to her. Every night she prayed that Michael and Elisi would be comforted and not grieve too much. The Cherokee believed death was part of life, a rest from the physical world, and they did not grieve excessively for the lost loved one because they knew they would see each other again.

  The Cherokee spirituality taught to her by her grandmother, the same spirituality that her own mother had rejected, was now one of her greatest comforts. Spirit lived in everything. It had no bounds or limitations; its wisdom was infinite and hers for the asking if she gave thanks and kept herself pure of heart. She had not been abandoned by all that she knew, and she often felt Spirit close to her, especially when the severity of her situation began to get to her.

  Every night she asked the question, “Will I die here?” only to receive no definite answer. All she would ever receive back from Spirit was a message for patience and fortitude, which she interpreted to mean that the future had yet to be decided.

  Every night she promised Michael that she would find him, either in this life or the next, because they had vowed that they would be together and such oaths weren’t meant to be broken. It was what made the dreams of Fox so important to her, because she felt they were his answer. He could not be with her in body, so he was there with her in spirit, sending his totem to look out for her and remind her that they were never truly apart. As long as they sat under the same sun and looked up at the same sky, no matter what distance separated them, they were still together.

  Darkness fell and she lit one of the little tallow lamps she had scavenged from the dead travelers. Her little hollow was getting full from all of the things she had managed to scrounge and make. She had lashed a drying rack together from vines and sticks, and bunches of herbs hung from it. Gathered roots and vegetables were stashed in cloth sacks and tucked into the far corners. Folded clothes and fabric were stuffed by her suitcase, and the reed mats were rolled up next to them. All of her weapons and hunting equipment had their own place near the front of the hollow, and the rain tarp was placed in such a way that it could be pulled across the entrance.

  The small lamp provided all the light she needed to perform her nightly tasks and soon she was ready to crawl into her sleeping bag. The soft rain had stopped so she let the tarp stay folded and left the hollow open to the fresh air to keep it from becoming stagnant. Blowing out the lamp, she slipped into her bedding and snuggled into the downy softness of her bag. She hoped that Fox would visit her in her dreams again as she let sleep come up to take her.

  She woke late that night because the forest was agitated. Even her stalwart king tree was expressing distress, and that unnerved her. Normally such anxiety was only reserved when imminent destruction of the forest was nigh, but when she asked the trees if she was in danger, their answer was no.

  :They are coming,: several of them said.

  ‘Many? An army? Do they come with fire?’ she asked, hoping that the humans of the age did not try to tame the forest by burning it down.

  :No. Soon, oh, soon, soon,: they answered.

  It had her rattled and that drove up her blood sugar, something she definitely didn’t need.

  ‘Is it humans?’

  :Others. Others come. Poison. Death.:

  So it wasn’t humans, but more of those things that lurked in the woods, and she was heartily glad that she could stay in the safety of the circle of trees.

  Other than going down to the stream to fetch water, she remained in her clearing, staying silent and limiting her movement. She felt some of what the trees had warned her of when she left the influence of the circle of cedars. There was a tingle creeping up her spine, and it made all the hair on her neck stand on end.

  If she had ever felt such a feeling of wrongness and foreboding before she did not remember, and it made her want to hide and never come out again.

  She huddled in her hollow with the tarp closed over the entrance, feeling much like an ancient Hebrew in Egypt, door marked with Lamb’s blood, waiting for the Angel of Death to pass by. She heard nothing, and if anything the forest was eerily silent, as if it was holding its proverbial breath as well. She took some small comfort in knowing that the threat might not be all that close by. The forest was a singular organism and would react the same way if a danger was within its heart or along its farthest boundary.

  Sometime after dawn, she felt the tension snap and release like a broken rubber band, and the anxiety in the trees flooded out of them in a great rush.

  For the first time since she woke up, she breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed.

  ‘The danger is gone then?’ she asked.

  :Gone. Gone,: they answered.

  ‘It’s safe to go out?’

  :Safe. Safe now.:

  ‘Good.’

  She decided to check the road for any sign of what had passed through overnight. She ate the last of her rabbit and dried fish for breakfast, then put on her hunting leathers, took her spear and hunting knife, and headed out to the road. As she neared the road, she felt anxiety coming off the trees but this time the concern was localized, and she didn’t perceive it as a global threat. It seemed that some of the trees that bordered the road were upset by something that was happening, and she wondered if it was another Other attack on a group of travelers. There was a faint tingle of Other touching her senses, but it was weak and did not come across as being threat
ening so she wasn’t all that concerned. She was more worried about being discovered so she kept to the trees and stealthily approached the road with caution.

  Angry shouts came from the direction of the road, and then the smell of something truly foul being burned as thick, white smoke wafted towards her, almost making her sick. She was trying to clear her head, and get upwind of the horrible stench, when she heard a crashing in the woods made by something running for its life. She was almost to the road when she heard more shouts, this time identifying two distinct male voices, followed by more crashing, and then a horrific, bloodcurdling scream.

  The scream galvanized her into action. It was the cry of a man in agony, and the trees around her reflected the victim’s panic. She rushed to the edge of the forest, straining to see what was happening, and arrived just in time to see a red-haired man collapse as he was snared by weighted nets thrown over his body. The man screamed again, rolling, fighting at the netting, and she could feel his terror hurdling at her like a freight train. Before she could run out to offer aid, however, two more men came into view, and she shrank back to avoid being seen. One carried a bow, but it was not drawn with an arrow, and the other was unsheathing a katana, no doubt in preparation for a killing strike.

  She froze for a moment, not sure what to do. The snared man was dressed in light colored clothing and did not appear to be armed. He writhed in the net, and she caught a glimpse of at least two arrows sticking out of his body. His pain and fear broadcast out to her as he struggled to free himself.

  ‘Save him.’

  She didn’t know where the thought came from, only that it echoed in her mind like his gasps and whimpers.

  ‘But I’ll reveal myself,’ she argued, hesitating.

  Her eyes fell on the helpless man, knowing that if she did nothing he would surely be killed. Time was running very short. If she was going to do something, she would have to do it very soon. She warred with herself, fighting with the side of her that wanted to interfere and the side that did not want to risk her own safety. The two sides battled as she watched the figure writhing in the net, her breath short and shallow.