The Heart of a Fox

by T. Isilwath

  She knelt in the hollow of the great king tree, listening to the forest giant greet her and send her warm welcome, and slowly unpacked from their seaside adventure. She pulled out her journal and turned to the last entry. She had been combining entries on the same page to conserve space, but still the journal was about 2/3 full. The date on last night’s entry was August 6th, day 92 of her accidental exile, and her insulin pump confirmed that it was August 7th. She fished out her pen and wrote three or four lines as an entry, telling only the barest minimum of the remainder of the trip and her return to the grove. Then she put the journal aside and set about unpacking the backpack and putting things away.

  She unzipped her rollaway suitcase to return the bathing suits and beach clothes she had brought, and her hand touched one of the small photo albums nestled among the clothing. She paused for a moment, letting her fingertips brush across the faux leather cover, then bit her lower lip as she carefully pulled the three little books out. Each one held fifty 4x6 printed digital photographs, and they were color coded according to subject. The red one contained pictures of the trips she and Michael had taken either alone or with friends, and showcased the landscape of North Carolina and the United States’ East Coast. The blue one had pictures of family and friends, including some pictures of her deceased parents and siblings at their California home. The green one was all Cherokee and Native American, including pictures of her tribesmen in their regalia and photographs taken at gatherings and dances.

  She had created the albums on-line and had them printed out in order show her host family a small sampling of her life in America. Now they were the only visual reminders she possessed of her lost home and loved ones, but she hadn’t looked at them since the accident. In fact the only picture she had seen was the one of her and Michael in dance regalia inside her journal.

  For some reason her hand trembled as she touched the plain covers, her fingers reading the creases in the leather like Braille on a page. She wondered if there was some cryptic pattern to it that she could crack; like maybe one could read the lines on leather the way a palmist read a person’s hand. Maybe she could divine the future by following the creases and know her fate. But she knew the albums didn’t hold her future, only her past; a past she wasn’t likely to ever see again.

  Quelling the butterflies that fluttered in her stomach, she picked up the blue album and opened the cover. A picture of Elisi, her long, gray hair twisted into an elaborate weave befitting of her position as a Long Hair Elder, smiled back at her in black and white. The women of the Long Hair were known for their intricate (and often outrageous) hairstyles. This one was conservative as far as some styles went, but would still be considered excessive by Anglo standards. It looked beautiful on her grandmother, though, and it was one of her favorite pictures of the old woman. She could just see the years of wisdom and experience etched in the lines of her age-wizened face, tempered by the youthful, mischievous twinkle in her dark eyes.

  It was amazing how much grandmother and granddaughter looked alike.

  Both had the same nose and eyes, and their hands were almost identical: long-fingered and strong. It was Elisi’s hands that she remembered most. Whether it was weaving or planting or mending, Elisi’s hands were never empty.

  Her earliest memory of her grandmother was when she was seven and her grandfather had died. The whole family had flown back East for the funeral.

  With Grandpa gone, Nancy was Elisi’s only surviving direct relative. There had been a boy: her mother’s full brother, but he had died in an accident when he was in his twenties. Her father had hoped for a reconciliation, but Nancy had fought too long and too hard to leave her Native past behind, and the gulf between mother and daughter was too wide. The gulf between grandmother and granddaughter, however... That was a different story.

  She had watched as her grandmother’s hands deftly weaved a bracelet from flax and tiny colored beads, and she remembered being in awe of the old woman who was facing the death of her husband with such dignity and grace.

  Her siblings, James and Sarah, had been afraid of Elisi, but she had been drawn to her with a fascination she could not explain. She had felt safe with her grandmother, as if Elisi held the key to understanding why she had always felt out of place in the Anglo world, and why being there with the People felt more like home than anywhere else. In hindsight, it had been an eerie kind of fore-shadowing of what was to come, but she hadn’t known that back then. By the end of the week-long trip, the bracelet Elisi had made was tied tightly around her wrist, much to her mother’s consternation, and it was still among her most prized possessions.

  ‘Will I ever see you again?’ she asked silently, touching the image.

  The second photograph was of a very young Michael, just barely thirteen and newly moved to North Carolina. He was skinny and goofy-looking with shoulder-length hair and a big toothy grin. The picture had been taken in February of 2002 just after he had asked her to the middle school’s Valentine’s Dance and she’d said yes. His happy whoop at her reply had made her laugh for the first time in months.

  They had met when the school counselor had put her with a group of other kids who had recently relocated into the Qualla Boundary or other North Carolina Cherokee lands, and he was there at her first meeting in November. Everyone had known her as the 9/11 kid, and they tended to treat her very carefully, as if they didn’t quite know what to say, and the very fact that she had lost literally everyone in her immediate family made others a little wiggy around her.

  Michael was the only one who didn’t treat her like an alien. He’d smiled at her in his shy way and offered her the seat next to him. She had been very nervous because it was her first activity outside of school or her therapy sessions, and she was glad for the offer because otherwise she would have continued to stand there looking stupid. She’d sat down with her hands in her lap and not said much throughout the meeting, but afterwards Michael had spoken softly to her.

  At the time, her therapist was still giving her high doses of anti-depressants, and Elisi was slowly weaning her off of them, but on that day she’d taken an extra dose just to deal with the stress of going to the meeting in the first place. She’d also had a mild sedative with her just in case she needed it. In hindsight, she wondered how she’d even been standing with all the drugs she was on in those days, but Michael being almost “normal” had helped her feel more at ease.

  After that, they’d sat next to each other at the meetings, and then graduated to sitting together at lunch and study hall. Slowly they’d begun to “date,” although nothing official had ever been decided between them. By some unspoken, mutual agreement they had simply ended up spending all of their free time together. There wasn’t any real explanation, it just was, and they both accepted it. She felt safe with Michael, and knew he understood her in ways only someone who had suffered could.

  Three months after they had met, he’d asked her to the Valentine’s Dance.

  It would be their first official date, and the next picture was the portrait taken by the photographer at the dance. She’d worn a straight, black dress with a bright pink sash like something out of Marylin Monroe’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes movie, and Michael had dressed in a black suit with a sport coat and a starched white shirt. Elisi had done her hair, keeping it tasteful by Anglo standards, although her grandmother had lamented the lost opportunity to showcase Joanna’s long, glossy, black hair in a traditional Long Hair style. They had gone with Tommy Robinson and his date. Tommy’s father had picked them up in his truck, and the four of them went to the dance together.

  The fourth picture in the album was from her sixteenth birthday. Michael had gotten a tiara from a party store and dressed it up with ribbons from a ribbon shirt, some feathers and a couple of leather tassels. He’d put it on her head and proclaimed her a Cherokee Princess, which was a laugh because the Cherokee didn’t have princesses, but in keeping with the theme she’d taken Elisi’s walking stick and dubbed him Sir Michael of th
e Whacked Sense of Humor. He swore fealty to her on one knee and promised to always be her Champion, which was probably the most memorable gift she’d gotten that day.

  That and the new “engagement” ring he’d bought her because the “diamond” in her old one had clouded.

  She looked down at the 1/4 carat round solitaire she still wore on her finger and turned it towards the flame in the tallow lamp. When the light struck the diamond at just the right angle, it threw off sparkles and rainbows that reflected on the shelter walls like her own tiny mirror globe.

  ‘Michael, my knight in buckskin and feathers, are you fighting for me now?’

  It pained her to think of him, of the agony he must be suffering. Very few people knew it, but he was emotionally dependent upon her and had been for years. Their symbiotic relationship had been mutually enabling, allowing them to continue to be codependent far longer than was healthy for either of them.

  ‘You must be out of your mind with worry. Have they figured out what happened yet or do you pound on their doors every day, demanding that they find me?’

  She traced the outline of the next picture, which had them sitting on the porch of Elisi’s house. It was a close-up of their faces. Michael had his chin on her shoulder and both arms wrapped around her from behind.

  ‘You always had to know where I was. What are you doing now?’

  She sighed and closed her eyes, breathing in and out slowly to cleanse her soul and clear her mind. Sometimes, if she was quiet and still enough, she imagined that she could reach out across the gulf that separated them and feel Michael close to her. She sent him comfort and love, even if it was tinged with a little sadness. She realized that in praying never to return to her era, she was also sacrificing her future with her fiancé.

  ‘My heart, please forgive me, but you know I have no choice. The consequences are too dire. Let me go, my beloved, and I will see you next time.’

  Coming out of her prayer, she wiped away the tears that had escaped her closed eyes and returned to looking at the photographs. Some of them made her smile while others brought fresh tears. Oddly, the pictures of her deceased family members brought a strange kind of comfort, because she believed that she would be reunited with them much sooner than she had anticipated.

  She was flipping through the red-covered album when the tingle of her Other-sense told her that Akihiro had returned. Her heart beat a little faster at the thought of seeing her fox, and she allowed herself to feel relief that she would no longer be alone. She knew that, now that she had all but renounced her dream of returning to her time, she could entertain the idea of staying with the half-demon, and perhaps even become his mate. Akihiro had made it plainly obvious that he adored her, and she had no doubts that he would leap at the chance to court her favor.

  ‘But that would be a disaster. First of all, if I am rescued, I’ll have to choose between him and Michael. Second of all, by his own admission, he’s still a boy. Third of all, if I let him get any closer to me than he already is, he’ll probably follow me in death. He might follow me even now for all I know.’

  She knew very well that, under certain circumstances, suicide was considered an acceptable form of death in the Japanese culture, and she wouldn’t put it past Akihiro to decide that he couldn’t live without her. No. It was best for everyone involved if she stayed merely his friend, and did not seek to take their relationship any further than that, no matter how nice it would be to have a bedmate and lover.

  ‘Friends can hug and snuggle though,’ she reasoned, but then pushed the idea aside. The Japanese were not overly demonstrative and allowing Akihiro to share her blankets, in all but the most extreme of circumstances, would likely send him a message that she didn’t want him to receive.

  Sensing his imminent arrival, she sat up a little straighter and put a smile on her face to greet him when he appeared in the doorway of the hollow. His face was flush with exertion and excitement, and he beamed happily at her as he entered the shelter.

  “Tadaima, Joanna-sama. Kaemon-sama has agreed to help us,” he announced.

  “Okaeri. That is very welcome news, Akihiro,” she answered.

  He bowed his head then came to squat by her side. “He says he has heard of your illness and has seen it treated. He will have the name of an herb we can use by the time I go to salt the caves tomorrow. He is also looking for more information in his scrolls. If he cannot find it, he will write a letter for me to take to the Temple at Zenko-ji. It means I could be gone for a few days, but he knows a priest there who is familiar with the medicine we need.” She nodded, not surprised since diabetes had been known to them for centuries, and it came as no shock to her that they had a treatment. Even in her time, many natural healers claimed to use herbs to augment the body’s use and production of insulin, but she had never heard of any herbal concoction that actually replaced it.

  “That’s wonderful,” she replied, sharing in his happiness even if she had her doubts about the effectiveness of the “medicine.”

  “If I must go, I promise not to be gone long. Zenko-ji is in Shi Nano about 46 ri away. I can travel that far in a single day.” She nodded, still smiling, then watched as his ears came straight up when he saw the photo album in her lap, and had to suppress a giggle at his perplexed expression.

  “Joanna-sama… what is that?” he asked, indicating the photograph of her sitting on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C.

  “It’s called a photograph,” she explained, moving the album closer to him so he could get a better look.

  He cocked his head and blinked a few times as he touched the glossy printed surface with one finger. “It looks like you.”

  “It is me. That was taken three years ago when Michael and I went on a trip together.”

  “How is this possible?”

  “With a machine called a camera.”

  “Kaaaa-mmm-errr-aah? What is that?”

  She giggled and shook her head. “Here, I’ll show you,” she offered and dug in her bag for her digital camera.

  Turning it on, she was glad to see that the batteries were still good, and she set the camera to take pictures. Then she pointed it at the entrance to the hollow and took a snapshot. The flash burst bright in the dimly lit space, causing Akihiro to jump in surprise so she took his picture to show him that there was nothing to fear. She wasn’t counting on the flash blinding him.

  “I-i-i-e-e!” he yelled and covered his eyes.

  “Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry!” she apologized, realizing her stupidity.

  “Ouch, ouch, ouch,” he complained, rubbing his eyes and blinking.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I see spots,” he sniffed, his eyes still watering.

  She chuckled. “Don’t worry. They’ll go away in a few moments.”

  “What was that? It was brighter than lightning.”

  “Sorry. That was the flash. Cameras need bright light to take pictures.” He snorted and shook his head, then looked at her with clear eyes. She switched the camera to “display” and turned the viewscreen to face him so he could see his picture on the monitor.

  “See. There you are.”

  He stared wide-eyed at the image of himself and gasped. “That’s me!”

  “Yep.”

  “What magic is this? Is part of me trapped in there?” She almost burst out laughing because several aboriginal and closed socie-ties still believed that photographs captured a person’s soul, and his dismayed question stuck her as funny.

  “No,” she assured him. “A picture is only a likeness, like a very detailed painting or drawing.”

  He took the camera from her and studied the image. “Very detailed? This image looks exactly like me.”

  “Yes,” she confirmed. “That’s what a camera does.”

  “Awesome. How does it work?” he asked, turning it over in his hands and inspecting it from all sides.

  “I don’t really know,” she admitted, plucking the expensive piece of equipme
nt from his fingers before he decided to take it apart.

  “Is it magic like your medicine pouch?”

  “Sort of, yes.”

  “What do you use it for?”

  “For saving memories.”

  “Saving memories?”

  “Yes. Here, let me show you,” she explained, setting the camera aside and picking up the red-covered album that she’d been looking at and flipping to the first page. A picture of her with two of her friends from school as they stood next to the sign for the Nantahala National Forest looked back at her. “This is a picture that was taken when I was a teenager.”

  “Oooh. You look so young, Joanna-sama. Is that your forest?” Akihiro said with amazement.

  “It’s one of the forests that grows near my home, yes.”

  “There’s more than one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your country must be very big.”

  “It is. Even with your speed, it would still take weeks to travel across it.”

  “Weeks? How wide is your country?”

  She mentally did the math, rounding when necessary. He didn’t need an exact figure, just an approximation. “About 1500 ri.” He nearly choked and his eyes grew wider than ever. “1500 ri!” She nodded. “Yep.”

  “That is a big country,” he admitted with awe.

  “Not all of it is forest, though. We have mountains and big, open grass-lands, and even a desert.”

  “Desert? I have heard of these. Haha told me about them when she would read from Ojiisan’s books. They sounded like terrible places.” She nodded. “Yes. They are very hot and nothing much grows there because there is very little water.”

  Akihiro shuddered and crinkled his nose in distaste, and she had to suppress a smile because he looked positively adorable. In a move that was bold for him, he took the photo album from her and began turning the pages.