The Heart of a Fox

by T. Isilwath

  When the bull-beast had attacked the travelers, she had known that there was nothing she could do to save them. Here it was only a single victim and two men. She knew, she just knew, that she could overpower the men without any trouble. She had surprise and her alien appearance to her advantage. Even more so she knew deep down in her soul that saving him was the right thing to do. The man with the bow stopped a few paces away, but the man with the katana ran up to the figure in the net. As he raised his blade to strike, all thoughts of dissent were shoved aside, and she made her move.

  Screaming a battle cry, she burst forth from the forest, hurling her spear at the man with the bow and striking him in the foot. As he cried out in pain and went down to his knees, she slammed her body into the man with the katana, knocking him away from the prone figure in the net. He fell to one side and, as he tried to right himself, she brought up her foot and kicked him in the head.

  The blow wasn’t hard enough to kill, but it was enough to knock him out, thus leaving her with only one opponent, and he was trying to yank her spear out of his flesh. He looked up at her in abject terror as she yelled again and ran for him. He screamed and scrambled away, freeing his foot by breaking the thin spear, and he ran down the road as fast as his injury would allow. She did not follow. From what she had seen, the netted redhead needed her help more than she needed to knock out the second man.

  Turning around, she walked past the inert body of the first man and moved to the redhead’s side. He was panting, making little noises of distress, and trying to pull the net apart, but his movements were sluggish. At first she was confused because the source of the Other-sense she was feeling appeared to be coming from him, then he rolled and looked at her.

  She gasped as two amber-brown eyes stared back at her from a narrow, pale face. His hair was an unruly mop of muted red, and there were things peeking up from on top of his head that looked like animal ears.

  ‘What on Earth?’

  “Korosanai de kudasai,” the redhead choked, his eyes full terror and pain.

  He looked young, little more than a boy.

  She tried to figure out what he was saying from her little knowledge of Japanese. ‘Kudasai… a form of please. Koro is a form of the verb to kill.

  He’s… he’s begging me not to kill him.’

  Empathy touched her heart and she knelt down next him, wracking her brain for the right words. She’d only taken one year of Japanese plus a six week remedial course, and she had no doubts that she knew more Japanese from watching sub-titled anime, than she did from going to class.

  “Daijoubu desu yo,” she replied haltingly, trying to tell him he was okay.

  “Ta… tasukete kure...” he pleaded.

  She recognized the word for help and did her best to look comforting.

  “Daijoubu datte,” she said, hoping she was telling him it was all right.

  “Onegai!”

  ‘He’s saying please. Hai is the word for yes.’ “Hai.” She nodded and began to gently untangle the netting. He had wound the ropes around his fingers, and she noticed that his nails were extremely long and sharp. He said something else, but the words were slurred and she didn’t understand them. He was also growing weaker and his eyes were glazing over.

  ‘Probably from blood loss, ’ she thought worriedly, counting not two arrows, but three sticking out of him.

  He’d been shot in the upper portion of his chest just under his right shoulder, in his left thigh and, the worst of them all in her mind, in his lower abdomen. Blood stained his coarse tan-colored clothing in huge, wet swaths of dark red, and she feared he’d bleed to death right there. When she finally freed him from the netting, he was barely clinging to consciousness.

  Clear of the net, she got a good look at him and the first thing she realized was that he was not human. The things on his head were animal ears, and they looked remarkably like a fox’s black-tipped ears. In fact, he looked a lot like a human fox. His hair color was the same as the pelt of a red fox and his face, while almost wholly human was fox-ish with a thin nose and narrow chin. His eyes were amber-brown like a red fox as well, and they were round and wide like a European’s eyes not slanted like an Asian’s. But the real clincher that he wasn’t human was the obvious fox tail sticking out of the back of his pants.

  ‘A fox. He’s a fox…’ She knew the word for fox. ‘Kitsune.’ “Kitsune desu ka?”

  He looked up at her, blinking slowly. “Hai…” he replied, his voice growing faint, and she noticed that he had razor sharp canines on both jaws.

  “Daijoubu desu yo. Tasukeru,” she stammered, fumbling for words.

 

  She hoped he would understand. Of course how to say: “You’ll be okay. I just have to pull this arrow out of your chest.” had never come up in her conversational Japanese classes. Right now, the phrase seemed much more appropriate than, “Please tell me how to get to the train station.” She’d have to take that up with her professor when she got back.

  It was frustrating for her because it was obvious that he was petrified, and she didn’t know how to tell him that she wasn’t going to hurt him.

  “Buji,” she said, remembering the word for safety.

  That he seemed to understand because he nodded. “Doumo Arigatou.”

 

  “Douitashimashite,” she responded automatically. She reached over to put a hand on his shoulder, but accidentally jostled the arrow in his chest, and he let out a strangled cry of pain.

  “Gomen. Gomen nasai,” she blurted hurriedly. His answer was a low wail as he dropped his head back to the ground. Her heart ached for the pain he was in, and sunk as she wondered if there was any hope of saving him. There was a time element as well. She knew that the one who got away would probably come back to check on his friend, and she didn’t know how soon that would be. Besides, there was nothing she could do for him there. She had to get him back to her camp where she could at least try to treat his wounds.

  “Ikouze,” she said, trying to get her arm under his shoulder. He moaned, but did not protest, and tried to roll over. She got behind him, lifting him up from underneath his left shoulder. He hissed in pain as his stomach muscles contracted around the arrow in his abdomen, but kept twisting his body around to his right side. Once there, she supported him under his right arm, taking his weight so he wouldn’t put pressure on his injured right shoulder, and let him rest a moment because he was breathing heavily.

  “Onegai. Hayaku,” she pleaded. He groaned and shifted, pushing off with his good leg. She braced and took all of his weight, noting that he wasn’t all that heavy. Then she lifted him up from under his arms, gritting her teeth as her thigh muscles strained, and pushed him into a standing position.

  “Yoshi,” she told him.

  She took a moment to grab the nets, slinging them over her shoulder because there was no way she was passing up the opportunity to obtain them. In the two seconds it took her to rise to her own feet, he was already doubling over, but she caught him before he could fall and braced him against her body.

  ‘Okay, now what?’

  She moved beside him, supporting his left side. He was trying to balance on the injured leg, but she could see that it was barely usable.

  “Ikouze. Hayaku,” she urged, giving him a push. He nodded, gasping, and took a small step.

  “Yoshi. Motto,” she persuaded. He said something in response, but she had no idea what it meant. She looked at him, and he gave her an odd look in return, but then slowly slid one hand around her shoulder. He was taller than her, but not by much, and his injuries made him lean forward, which put them at almost the same height.

  “Ikouze,” she repeated and guided them towards the forest. They moved slowly, limited by his tiny, hopping steps. She could tell each movement was agonizing
to him, but he kept going, and she was amazed at his tolerance for pain. He was reaching the limits of his endurance, however, because his grip on her was weakening.

  “Sumimasen,” he said.

  “Ii desu yo,” she replied.

  His next sentence was jibberish, and she shook her head. “Gomen nasai.

  Sukoshi shika nihongo wa hanasenai,” she replied, repeating one of the lines she had memorized diligently in preparation for her homestay.

  “Sou ka,” he answered with a little nod. They went a little further and he stopped, panting, his body leaning heavily on hers. “Sumimasen,” he said again, then used his right hand to point to the arrow on his belly. “Dokuya.”

  “Dokuya?” she repeated.

  He nodded. “Un. Doku. Oni-gumo.”

  “Oni-gumo…” ‘Gumo is a variant of the word for spider…’ “Wakaranai.”

 

  He let out a little sigh and squeezed his eyes shut as his body trembled with another wave of pain, and this time when his legs gave out there was nothing she could do to stop him. He moaned and collapsed, his eyes rolling back into his head. She went down with him, falling to her knees, trying to cushion him.

  “Iie,” she begged, shaking him.

  His eyes cracked open but his pupils were dilated. “Dame da,” he breathed faintly. “Sumimasen.” He gave another soft gasp then passed out, his body going limp. She stayed next to him, looking around and feeling momentarily at a loss. They had only gone a very short way, but at least they had made it into the forest.

  She moved to rub her temples, but her hands were stained with blood.

  “Damn.”

  Hastily, she wiped her hands on the ground to wipe off the blood. Since he was in no condition to help her, she had no choice but to carry him. Putting him in a fireman’s carry was out of the question because of the chest arrow, and also because he would bleed all over her leathers. While small blood stains weren’t difficult to get out of her buckskin jerkin, large ones were, and she had no way of making a new set, at least not easily, and brain tanning took weeks.

  She could use the nets and make a travois, but dragging it would leave a very obvious trail, and she wanted to conceal her tracks. The man who got away might come looking for his victim, and he might bring friends, and there was no way she was going to lead potential enemies right to her camp.

  She took off her leathers, leaving on the black T-bar support bra and black spandex bike shorts that she wore underneath them, and tied them around her waist. Then she wrapped the unconscious man up in the nets to make an impromptu sling that she tied around her shoulders. She braced him into the small of her back and used her legs to pick up her burden.

  While he might not have been terribly heavy, he was still dead weight, and she was trying to cover her tracks as much as possible. Even though it was cold and wet, she took to traveling up the stream that ran by her camp, trusting her boots to give her adequate traction on the sometimes slippery rocks, and approached the camp from the opposite side that she normally would. When she finally got him to her camp, she was exhausted, covered in sweat and his blood, and uncertain if she could do anything at all for him.

  The cedars greeted her and reacted to her situation with alarm, but they did not seem to think that her guest was a threat. She took her rain tarp and laid him out on it so his blood would not stain the ground and possibly draw unwanted attention to her camp, then tried to decide what to do next.

  ‘Get the arrows out.’

  To get the arrows out, she first had to get him out of his clothes so she could see the wounds, and she set about removing his blood-soaked garments.

  He was dressed as a peasant in a pair of loose tan pants with overlapping gus-sets to accommodate his tail, a matching cloth belt, and a short cream-colored kimono tied with another belt. He wore nothing on his feet, and his soles were rough and calloused, no doubt from years of going barefoot.

  Even though they were horribly stained, she tried not to damage the clothes so she could attempt to repair them later. The pants came off when she broke the arrow shaft and lifted the material over it. The kimono was a different story, and she had to do a lot of gentle persuading to get it off without ripping it further. Then she shoved the blood stained clothing into a net and tied that into the stream so the blood wouldn’t dry before she had a chance to clean them.

  With him now naked, his inhuman appearance was even more obvious. His body was definitely that of a young male, but his lower abdomen and pubic area were covered with soft, downy white hair like a fox’s underbelly. His head hair was the red fox color, shorter on the top, but growing long enough on the sides to cascade down his shoulders to the middle of his back, and his black-tipped fox ears poked out of it like two fuzzy triangles. The hair looked coarse, but was actually very soft and silky to the touch.

  Turning him over to see if any of the arrows had pierced him clean through, she saw a narrow strip of red fox fur running along his spine from the nape of his neck all the way down to his backside and ending at the base of his fluffy fox tail. Other than that, and the white hair on his belly, he was hairless on the rest of his body. His skin was tan and smooth, but she noticed the remnants of numerous healing wounds and some scars that looked like whip marks on the back of his shoulders. His nails were sharp claws, about an inch long on his fingers and half as long on his toes. They were dirty from his earlier struggles, but she noticed that there was no blood underneath them.

  Looking at his battered form, she tried to decide which arrow to attack first and went with the one in his thigh. Of the three, it was in the least critical place and had much less chance of causing a severe hemorrhage. Grabbing it by the broken shaft, she gently pulled it out, trying not to yank too hard and rip his flesh even more than it already was. She was also afraid that the arrow was barbed and might catch on his thigh muscle to do even more damage. It turned out that the arrow wasn’t barbed, but the metal tip was coated with a pungent black paste that clung to the head even after she had pulled it out of his body.

  ‘Poison. That was what he was trying to tell me about the arrows. He was telling me that they were poisoned. Doku oni-gumo he said. He also said do-kuya. Doku must mean poison. These arrows are tipped with the venom of a poisonous spider, ’ she reasoned. ‘Which means it paralyzes the victim. Damn.’

  If the poison paralyzed, then it was no wonder that he kept getting weaker.

  The very fact that he’d been able to stand up and walk what little distance he had managed must have been a supreme effort. What she didn’t know was if he would be able to fight off its effects or if the damage was permanent.

  ‘Get the rest of the arrows. Treat the wounds as best you can. If he dies, it won’t be because you didn’t do everything you could.’

  She went after the arrow in his chest next, being as careful as she could. It appeared to be located too high up to have pierced any vital organs, and the bone of his shoulder blade had prevented it from going through his back. It too was poisoned, and the wound bled more profusely than the one on his thigh.

  She blotted it with gauze from the first aid kit, but she knew she didn’t have enough bandages. She would have to use what she had, then boil some of the clothing she had scavenged and cut them up.

  The last arrow was the one in his abdomen, and it was the one she was most concerned with. If it had pierced his bowels, the fecal material in the colon could contaminate his abdominal cavity and cause infection. She knew from all of her studies in wilderness survival that belly wounds were the worst.

  To get the last arrow out without further ripping up whatever it had gone through, she had no choice but to perform an impromptu surgery. She built a fire and sterilized her hunting knife in the blaze, then gently and carefully cut the flesh around the arrow shaft to widen the wound. Blood gushed out of the hole along with the stenc
h of ruptured innards, and she shook her head.

  ‘Should I just put him out of his misery now?’ she wondered, as she gingerly pried apart the layers of muscle and flesh to dig out the arrow.

  It made a sickening sucking sound as it came free, and she looked into the wound to see how bad things were. The twisting, glistening cords of his intestines gleamed wetly in the light she shined down into his belly, but amazingly the arrow had only nicked his small intestine causing the source of the smell.

  She knew the nick wasn’t good, but at least it was better than a full severing, and digging a little further down showed that the arrow had missed his colon and his kidneys.

  ‘He might make it. If his intestine heals without getting infected, he’ll be okay. That’s if he survives the poison.’

  She blotted and cleaned out as much of the blood and ooze as possible, happy to see that he was already starting to clot, then got out her sewing kit and boiled some thread to sterilize it. She sterilized the area around the wound with alcohol and began to carefully sew him up, thankful that he showed no signs of waking. She used a smoldering branch to cauterize the wounds on his shoulder and thigh, took the gauze and bandages in her first aid kit to wrap him up, and slathered the gauze pads with anti-bacterial cream.

  Triage procedures complete, she moved her bedding to one side of the hollow and spread a reed mat down nearby. Then she took the bedroll from underneath her sleeping bag and put it on top of the mat for cushioning. She cut open one of the cloth sacks she had and used it as a makeshift sheet to drape over the bedroll, and placed him on top of the new “bed,” covering him with another sack-made-sheet and two blankets from her stash of bedding.

  ‘I’ve done all I can. The rest is up to him.’

  Leaving him in the hollow, she cleaned the bloody tarp and his bloodied clothing, hanging them from a clothesline she made from a length of rope strung between two trees. Then she cleaned herself up and went to hunt on some nesting grounds she had discovered a few days earlier. She took one of the nets with her, weighted with stones for throwing. If she was lucky, she could catch a few ground birds with a well timed throw when they flushed. Her hunting skill was all the more important now that she had another mouth to feed, and she knew he would need a lot of food to fuel his recovery. If he lived.