The Heart of a Fox

by T. Isilwath

  “When did she leave?” he asked. He had to find her. Whatever reasons she had for leaving, it was too dangerous, and she was too sick to be out there alone.

  “Yesterday. Mid-morning. She wished me to tell you that all of her belongings are now yours,” Kaemon replied immediately.

  Akihiro frowned deeply. “She has more than a day’s head start. I would love to stay and demonstrate how unhappy I am with you, Kaemon-sama, but I must go after her. She is alone and not herself. I fear her disease has begun to affect her mind. I have to find her before she gets hurt.”

  “I wish you luck, Akihiro. If I could have stopped her, I would have. Kami go with you and give you speed.”

  “I need to get some of the maitake I gathered, but I will leave the rest here.

  If I am not back with Joanna-sama within three days, please see to it that the mushrooms are properly dried and stored.”

  Kaemon bowed. “I shall see that it is done.”

  He nodded. “Good.”

  Pushing his exhaustion aside, he ran back to the shrine, grabbed one of the mushrooms from his bag and ripped off a piece, stuffing it into his kosode. As he turned to leave, Suzuka stepped into the room, her face worried and sad.

  “Hanyou,” she said, her voice soft and concerned.

  He moved past her to the engawa, not about to let her try to stop him. “Joanna-sama has run off. I must go find her,” he said briskly.

  The miko nodded. “I know.”

  “If she dies, I won’t be back,” he told her, feeling a need to prepare her just in case she never saw him again.

  Suzuka blanched. “Akihiro, please don’t do anything rash.” He blinked at the sound of her using his name and paused to look at her.

  “The village needs you,” she added.

  He shook his head, smiling without mirth. “I can make no promises,” he answered, then looked behind him. “I have to go. Goodbye, Suzuka-sama.”

  “Goodbye, Akihiro. Safe journey and good luck.”

  He nodded once then leaped off the engawa and raced down the path towards the river. There he headed downstream just as fast as his tired body would go. He imagined that Joanna would try to conserve as much energy as possible by simply allowing the boat to travel at its own pace. When he reached the rapids, he checked the banks for any sign of Joanna taking the boat out of the river, and he was very upset when he did not find any drag marks or footprints.

  ‘She could not possibly have tried to navigate the boat through the rough water on her own…’ he fretted, scouring both sides of the river.

  It was getting dark. If he didn’t find Joanna before the sun went down, he would have to continue his search in darkness. His night vision wasn’t as strong as it could have been because the moon was waning, but he knew he would be able to see if it came to that. Still, the idea of his vixen spending the cold night alone in the forest made him growl. It was bad enough that she’d already spent one night out there; he had no intention of giving up until he had found her.

  He was about half a ri downstream from the rapids when something caught his eye. Upon closer inspection, he realized that it was part of a boat that had obviously been smashed into pieces.

  ‘Is this the boat Kaemon gave her?’ he wondered, dreading the answer as he pulled the cracked and splintered planks of wood out of the water.

  A short distance away, he found part of the overturned hull and, when he flipped the broken shell over, he discovered a pack made from the same black material as Joanna’s “suitcase.” The sight of the ragged, abandoned pack made him nearly mad with grief, and he began tearing up the riverbank looking for any sign that his vixen had dragged herself ashore. He searched for any clue as to where she could have gone, but he found none, nor did he find her body.

  It was odd that he actually considered the lack of a corpse a good thing, although he knew that his search was hampered by the river itself. Of course, it was just like Joanna to use his inability to smell through water against him.

  Kaemon might have thought he was doing the right thing by giving her a boat, but not even his keen fox nose could track a scent across deep water. Joanna had to have known that so, if she’d survived the breakup of her boat, it would have been logical for her to keep to the water in order to hide her trail.

  Tracking by water was difficult, but not impossible. It meant that he would have to use his other senses to make up for what his nose couldn’t smell. He still had his eyes and his quick mind, and he knew her habits because he had spent so much time with her. It would be easy enough to imagine what she was going to do. But if that was so, why was he having such a hard time tracing her steps? It was as if she had just disappeared.

  For a brief moment, he wondered if her people had finally come for her; if her long-absent fiancé had finally found his way to her side. If that was true, then he would never find her, and she would be lost to him forever. But he couldn’t imagine her leaving without saying goodbye and Kaemon hadn’t given any indication that Joanna was going anywhere other than off to die alone. If the fabled “Michael” had finally come, he would have hoped that he had meant enough to Joanna for her to find him and assure him that she would now be safe. He hoped that their friendship, at the very least, was worth that small courtesy.

  ‘Unless that Michael just took her and didn’t give her a chance to come back,’ he thought dourly, picking through some rocks in the shallows that looked like they had been recently disturbed. He stopped the moment he saw tanuki paw-prints.

  Sighing, he washed his hands in the water and tried to remain calm. He hadn’t found a body. That meant Joanna could still be alive. He just had to figure out what happened after her boat broke apart.

  ‘She would have been swept downstream…’ he reasoned. ‘Maybe I haven’t gone down far enough.’

  He grabbed Joanna’s battered pack and took off downriver.

  It was dawn before his exhaustion forced him to take a small rest. He’d spent all night searching, but still his efforts had produced no results. He swiped a fish from the river and ate it raw, too tired and hungry to bother with a fire. He was soaked from combing the river, and his body and spirits were giving out. The pack full of Joanna’s things was water-laden, but it still contained items that smelled like her even under the scent of river water, so he drew it close to his body as his only connection to his beloved vixen.

  ‘Joanna, please. Please be alive. I could not bear it if you died. Don’t you know that I can’t live without you?’ he silently begged as he held the black pack close. ‘Why? Why did you do this? Why did you leave? Did you think I would not be able to save you?’

  A strangely familiar smell drew him to a suspicious lump in one of the pockets of the bag, and he fished out a small vial. Another whiff confirmed his initial fears and he stared at the vial in disbelief.

  ‘Poison…’

  It was a mixture he was familiar with, the quick and painless choice for mercy killings, and he knew that Joanna had not made it herself.

  ‘Someone must have given this to her…’

  He closed his eyes and took a deep sniff of the stopper, trying to filter out the different scents. Underneath the most obvious smell of the herbs and liquid used to brew the deadly potion, he caught the telltale scent of his vixen’s hands, and under that he smelled the unique scent associated with the old priest.

  ‘Ichiro? Did Ichiro make this and give it to Joanna?’

  His jaw clenched and he had to stamp down his fury. Could Ichiro have been trying to kill Joanna? Did the old man want to get rid of her? Surely the priest couldn’t be that stupid. And why would he want Joanna out of the way?

  Did he think that Akihiro would go back to being the submissive pet that he had been before he had met his vixen? Did Hiroshi want Joanna out of the village?

  He snarled and crushed the vial in his hand, letting the foul liquid spill into the river. His hands tingled with foxfire and he threw what was left of the small container away, following it with a
ball of blue flame that gouged a long furrow into the ground. The blast took the last of his strength with it and he sagged to his knees, his hands hanging limply at his sides.

  ‘Did they kill her and try to make it look like she had left me?’

  No, Kaemon and Suzuka hadn’t been lying to him. He would have known immediately if they weren’t telling the truth. So if Ichiro and Hiroshi had anything to do with Joanna’s disappearance, neither the miko nor the young priest had any knowledge of it.

  “Joanna…” he breathed. “Where are you?”

  He raised his head and looked up-river towards the rapids. He knew he’d already been there, but the only thing that made sense was to go back and look again. If he could find out where in the rapids the boat had broken apart, then he might be able to retrace the path the water would have taken her. The chances were slim, but for now it was all he had.

  Dragging energy from places he didn’t even know he had within him, he forced himself to stand and make his way back upstream. By now he had gone without rest or significant food for over three days, but he couldn’t stop. He had to find her. He couldn’t rest until he had found her.

  ‘She has to be here somewhere. Even if all I find is her body at least I can die beside her.’

  Once again he found himself staring at the raging water beneath him. The banks of the river were steep, sliding sharply down into the frothing current.

  His eyes scanned the rocks and swirling eddies for what had to be the hundredth time, but he was desperate for any clue. The river seemed to mock him, the rush of the water laughing, teasing, as it tumbled blithely past. It cared nothing for his loss. It answered only the timeless call of the ocean drawing it down.

  His sharp ears caught the sound of cracking wood, and he turned his head just in time to see a branch break from one of the trees upstream. The branch fell into the rapids, and he watched it as it was tossed and rolled by the water. It flowed by him, pitching and bobbing as it was swept downstream, until it caught briefly on a group of protruding rocks. Just as it broke free of the boulders, he saw it drag on something below the surface. His eyes narrowed and he focused on the water breaking around the rocks, trying to see if anything was there.

  His quick fox mind was telling him that there was something worth looking at, but he just wasn’t sure what it was. Whatever was there had been disturbed by the branch and now the swiftly flowing water seemed to be catching on it. Suddenly he saw a flash of bright color as a roll of fabric broke the surface. He recognized the colors immediately and he threw himself into the current, allowing the river to drag him downstream to the rocks. He fought his way over to them and reached out to grab the largest one, then he braced his body against it as he plunged his arm down to grab the cloth. With a firm yank it pulled free, and he looked down to see Joanna’s Cherokee blanket shawl in his hands.

  Equal measures of hope and despair coursed through him as he stared at the blanket. Its presence in the rapids proved that Joanna’s boat must have capsized early on. The blanket was probably tossed from the boat or dumped into the water with the rest of her things, but instead of getting swept downstream with her pack it had gotten snagged on the rocks. If the branch had not fallen into the water and disturbed the fabric, he never would have known that it was there.

  Taking a deep breath, he clutched the blanket to his chest and kicked off the rocks. His body was immediately grabbed by the swirling water, and he let the current take him in hopes of being able to trace the path it would have taken Joanna if she had been thrown into the river at that point. The water spun and rolled him, dragging him under numerous times, and he got a taste of what it must have been like for his vixen if she had suffered the same fate. He was smashed against the rocks, battering his body and filling his lungs with water.

  ‘There’s no way a mere human could have survived this,’ he thought as he was tumbled end over end. ‘Joanna must be dead.’

  The realization made him completely numb, and he found himself having to consciously choose to keep his head above water. It would be so easy just to let himself drown, but then he would never find Joanna, even if she was dead.

  ‘But if she is dead, where is her body? I did not find her body.’

  It was on that thought that he was spun one more time, and his feet hit the soft, yielding streambed. Rolling, he braced his legs underneath him and kicked for the riverbank, fighting his way to shallow water out of the raging current.

  He knelt in the dark silt as he gasped for breath and tried to calm himself down.

  Once he had shaken the wet hair out of his eyes, he was able to see that he had been swept into the delta of an incoming tributary.

  Bruised and battered, he dragged himself out of the water onto the dry ground where he promptly vomited up much of the liquid he had been forced to swallow. Wracking coughs then shook his body and he collapsed at the base of a large tree. Amazingly, he still had the black pack on his shoulders, and the blanket shawl was still in his hands, twisted around his fingers. He brought the wet cloth to his face as he lay there waiting for his body to stop heaving.

  His vision kept dimming in and out, and his body ached all over, but he was fairly certain that he did not have any broken bones. Still, his trip through the white water had taken a great deal of his strength, and he lay on the moss-covered earth in an exhausted heap. He was soaked, trembling, and his breath came in short pants as he struggled to clear his lungs.

  ‘She’s dead. My vixen is dead,’ he thought with despair, the fox in him howling its grief and pain, but he had no energy to give it a voice.

  If she’d been swept into the delta, her body had most likely been discovered by a scavenger and dragged off. All that was left was for him to undertake the gristly task of finding her blood trail, but he just couldn’t muster up the energy to force himself to move. The tears came and he made no attempt to stop them.

  He wept, curled into a ball of abject misery, too numbed by his grief to do anything but cry, and he sobbed harder than he had on the night his mother died. Nothing could ever heal to the empty hole that had opened up inside of him, and he prayed for the strength to throw himself into it so he could end the pain.

  The wind blew cold through his wet clothing, making him shiver, and it rustled the leaves of the trees, bringing with it the sound of a soft sigh.

  :This way,: a voice whispered, just on the edge of his consciousness.

  The words surprised him and he quieted, perking his ears, not quite sure what he had just heard. The wind blew again, swirling the leaves on the forest floor, and a tingle crawled up the back of his neck.

  :This way,: the voice repeated, pulling at him gently.

  “Who are you?” he gasped hoarsely, trying to lift his head.

  There was nothing, no one, anywhere within his senses; he didn’t even feel the remotest hint of demonic energy that would tell him another demon was nearby. There wasn’t even a scent that he could associate with a stranger.

  Another gust of wind blew through the trees, and it sounded like a breath, like the forest was breathing the wind.

  :This way. Tree-sister this way.:

  He looked up and tried to determine which direction the voice was coming from. Directly in front of him was a tunnel of green, formed by the trees flank-ing the narrow stream. The sunlight was shining behind the leaves, creating a ghostly halo effect that illuminated the path upstream. The wind blew down the path towards him, bringing with it the scent of autumn and the whispering voice.

  :This way.:

  The wind took his hair, and a funnel of leaves swirled right in front of his face as he suddenly realized what was happening.

  ‘The trees… I’m hearing the trees,’ he thought with a shocked gasp.

  He’d stopped trying to hear the voice of the forest months ago, but now it came to him like a sibilant whisper, brushing against the edges of his exhausted, grieving mind. He didn’t know how or why he was hearing them after he had been unable to hear them for
so long, but he couldn’t deny the voice in his head.

  :This way,: they called him, and he felt compelled to obey.

  His vixen had always trusted the voice of the trees. He had listened to her ask them for direction to safe camping places and sources of water. He had seen her look to them for guidance, and he had never known their advice to be wrong. Half crawling, he forced himself to follow as they drew him into the forest.

  :This way.:

  He got his feet underneath him as he gained some speed, rising to stand and stagger along the bank of the stream. A few long paces away, he caught the unmistakable scent of Joanna’s blood, and he made his way over to the edge of the water. There he found a small smear of blood clinging to some rounded pebbles along the bank. Closer inspection of the shallow water revealed a deep depression that could easily have been formed by someone sitting in the soft silt.

  ‘Joanna! Joanna was here… She came up this stream. She’s alive!’ he realized, and his body filled with hope. ‘Joanna, I’m coming. Please wait for me!’

  He moved as fast as he could, stumbling numerous times in his fatigue, but his overwhelming need to find his vixen drove him on. The trees guided him steadily upstream until he was simply following their voices with no thought as to where they were actually leading him, and finally the stream brought him to the base of a large waterfall about a ri away from the delta.

  The area around the falls was a semicircle of steep, rocky cliffs creating a bowl effect where the waterfall and the stream were ensconced in a ring of high stone. Knowing what he knew of Joanna’s condition, he felt that it would have been almost impossible for her to climb the steep rocks. That meant that she was either somewhere very close-by or she might have gone back down the stream.

  Unfortunately, the trees now did not seem to be able to tell him which way he should go, and he was too worn out to try to figure things out for himself. He was barely standing as it was, and half of him was convinced that the voice of the trees had merely been a very realistic hallucination.