The Heart of a Fox

by T. Isilwath

  “There is no need to thank me, Joanna-sama. Everything I have done, I have done freely from my own heart. There is nothing that I would change.” She nodded and kissed him: a sweet, goodbye kiss full of heartbreak and longing. He kissed her back, gathering her close to him one last time.

  “I love you,” she whispered fiercely.

  “And I love you.”

  He reluctantly let her go and stepped away from her.

  “Goodbye, Akihiro. Please be safe until I see you again.”

  “And you, Joanna-sama. Please be safe until I find my way to your side.”

  “I will. I promise. Now you’d best get out of sight so I can go get someone to help me carry my things.”

  He nodded and slipped away into the trees, hopping up into the tall branches where he would be hidden by the dying leaves. He watched as she made her way to the camp and waited until she returned with two of the soldiers in tow. Each of them picked up a piece of her baggage, and the three of them walked off without so much as a backward glance. He followed them, keeping to the highest branches, until he could see where the camp had been.

  All of the tents and supplies had been dismantled and packed away, and much of it was already gone. He saw the two humans in white greet his vixen as she came into the clearing, but he could not hear what was being said. He stayed there, his heart pounding and his hand clutching the journal that was tucked into the chest of his kosode, and waited.

  He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting to see, but the sudden appearance of an opening in the air shocked him. It looked like a swirling vortex of light and dark colors that he wasn’t even sure was real until he saw one of the soldiers walk into it. He gasped and tried to still his sudden quaking.

  The fox was howling loudly in his mind, protesting the loss of mate and partner, and no amount of cajoling seemed to bring it comfort. Tears fell down his cheeks as he watched the soldiers carry Joanna’s belongings through the opening, and soon all that were left were Joanna, the two humans in white and one last soldier bringing up the rear. He held his breath because he knew that if he tried to breathe he would scream, and he bit his lip until he tasted blood.

  The two humans in white went through the opening, and he grabbed the tree branch next to him, splintering it with his grip. The soldier took Joanna’s arm and guided her to the opening. He strained as a moan escaped his lips, and the fox raged against him, trying to force him to put a stop to the unthinkable loss. The soldier and his vixen stepped into the vortex, and he watched them vanish. The opening flashed with bright light, then disappeared.

  It was only after she was gone that he let himself give voice to his grief, and his howl shook the forest. He jumped down from the tree and landed in the clearing, his nose to the ground where his vixen had just been so he could catch the last of her fading scent. The journal in his kosode shifted forward as he bent over, and he touched it. It and the blanket shawl were all he had left of her.

  He opened it to the inside of the front cover where the photograph of his vixen with her human betrothed stood in their Cherokee finery, and smiled gratefully that she had left him an image of her for him to look upon. But he did not want to have to look at Michael. He growled low in his throat and reached up one hand to take the photograph by the top left corner.

  He intended to rip out the image of Michael and just leave the picture of his beloved in the book, but as his claws began to tear the glossy paper something caught his eye. Pausing, he creased his brow and looked at the photograph more closely, not quite sure exactly what he was seeing. He blinked a few times to bring the image into focus and stared, stunned, at what he saw.

  Choking, he let his hand fall as his eyes grew wider and wider, and understanding came to him in a great revelation. His mouth cracked into a wide, almost hysterical grin, and he began to laugh.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Turning her back on Akihiro for the last time, and fighting the tears and confusion she was feeling, Joanna walked the last few yards to the soldiers’

  camp. She emerged from the trees and was almost immediately surrounded as the men and Nurse Nancy spotted her.

  “Oh thank God,” the woman breathed, taking her arm. “When you disappeared from the camp last night, we were worried that you’d been taken…”

  “I went to my camp to get my things,” she said. “I left them just a few yards down the trail.” She pointed behind her. “I need someone to help me carry them. I’m too weak to lift anything heavy.” The nurse nodded vigorously and indicated two of the soldiers to accompany her. “Yes, yes. You and you, go with her.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” they answered and fell in behind her as she led the way back down the game trail to where she had left her things.

  “Here they are. This is all of it,” she told them as they came upon the pile of luggage and her backpack.

  She picked up Iris while the two soldiers each grabbed her rollaway suitcase and her camping gear. A rustling in the trees caused one of them to spin and reach for his weapon, but she waved her hand.

  “It’s okay. There’s nothing there,” she assured him. Akihiro had told her of the ogre attack so she knew they were hair-trigger.

  “What about the fuzzy-eared freak?” one of the men asked harshly.

  She winced and swallowed the urge to snarl at him. “Akihiro isn’t here. I sent him away.”

  She knew that wasn’t true. She could feel him close by, but she also knew that he would keep himself safely hidden. She didn’t know how well he would be able to keep his promise to her, but she knew he wouldn’t be stupid enough to get caught before he even had the chance to try.

  “Hmph,” the soldier snorted, but sheathed his gun.

  Without another word she led the men away, not daring to look back lest she give away Akihiro’s location. By the time they returned to the camp, most of it had been taken back through the Gate. Both Nurse Nancy and Doctor Haskell were waiting, and she watched as the soldiers took her things through the Gate.

  “How are you feeling?” Doctor Haskell asked her.

  “I’m fine. I have my insulin pump/glucometer now. It was with my things.”

  “That’s good. I can download the history and get a picture of how your blood sugar was doing before you ran out of insulin. It may give us some insight as to what to look for as far as long term effects,” the doctor answered.

  “I’m glad.”

  She looked at the vortex created by the Gate on the other side, and once again despaired the consequences of using the Gates for time travel. ‘Well, there’s nothing I can do about that. They figured it out and found me. Whatever they do with the knowledge now is out of my hands.’

  “Well?” Dr. Haskell asked. “Shall we?”

  She took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Let’s go then,” he replied, then he and Nurse Nancy went through the Gate just ahead of her.

  The urge to look back was almost overwhelming. She could feel Akihiro watching her, and she wanted so desperately to see him one last time, but she fought it. He wasn’t safe yet, and she had to make sure that he wouldn’t come to any harm.

  ‘But what if they come back and try to look for him…’ she thought wildly.

  The remaining soldier must have misconstrued her sudden panic for reticence because he took her elbow and urged her forward gently but firmly.

  “C’mon, miss. It’s time to go.”

  She gave him a quick glance and nodded. “Yes. Okay,” she replied and allowed him to guide her through the Gate.

  She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t terrified. After all, the last time she had gone into a Gate it had malfunctioned horribly and sent her hundreds of years into the past. This time, however, the trip was completely uneventful, and she emerged, clinging helplessly to the poor soldier’s arm (she had to give him credit for bearing her grip without so much as a wince), safely on the other side.

  Several people in military uniforms and medical coats were waiting fo
r her when she shakily stepped down off the platform. She recognized Dr. Haskell and Nurse Nancy among them.

  “Welcome back to the twenty-first century, Miss Tindall,” a man greeted, taking her hand in his gloved one. He was a high ranking something if the bars on his uniform meant anything. “I’m Colonel Levy. I’ll be coordinating the investigation into your extraordinary adventure.”

  “Yes, thank you. It’s good to be back,” she replied. His grip was firm, and she had no doubts that, if she tried to bolt, she would easily be subdued.

  “We have a room ready for you at the hospital. You can understand that we need to keep you under wraps for a few days while we run some tests and debrief you.”

  She nodded. “Yes, of course.”

  “Very good. Dr. Haskell will escort you to your room.”

  “Would you please tell me where I am?” she asked as she was handed off to the familiar man.

  “You’re at the naval base in Yokosuka, Japan. It’s a state of the art facility with one of the best military hospitals,” Dr. Haskell answered breezily as he escorted her out of the Gate room.

  “Great,” she said, but there wasn’t much enthusiasm in her voice.

  “We’ll get you settled into a room and begin running diagnostic tests right away. There’s also a number of officials who are eager to talk to you.”

  “Okay,” she replied and allowed them to lead her away.

  She tried not to pay too much attention to the armed guards.

  A “few days under wraps” turned out to be a mandatory three-week isolation for observation. She wasn’t happy about being confined to a hospital room for twenty-one days, but she knew she had little choice. During that time, she rested and waited and endured countess diagnostic tests and endless meetings with officials from several government agencies and military branches.

  Because of the time travel element of her accident (and its obvious ramifications) she was now officially under the jurisdiction of the Army, and they would be ensuring her safe return to the mainland and footing all of her medical bills. Several representatives from the Air Force, the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, and even the NSA, also wanted to talk to her and get her side of the story.

  It seemed that everyone was as baffled as she was by what had happened, and no one really knew what had caused the Gate to time shift, but she had managed to glean from one of her more enthusiastic interviewers that they hadn’t been able to repeat the time travel since she had been “rescued.” She couldn’t help but feel an immeasurable amount of grateful relief at that knowledge, even if the poor engineers had no idea why it had worked twice for them, then stopped. Wherever he was, Akihiro was safe, and no one was Gating back to try to capture him.

  Preliminary imaging diagnostics yielded promising results on her tests. Of the two major complications of diabetes: heart disease and kidney disease, her tests were coming back normal on cardiac function and only mildly below normal on kidney. She had some minor neuropathy in her feet and hands, and, as she had suspected, the retinal bleeding that accompanied diabetic retinopathy. There was medication she could take for the neuropathy if the symptoms worsened, and she was scheduled for an evaluation at Duke University’s famous Eye Center once she got home.

  Physically she had weathered her ordeal very well. Emotionally, however, she was faring much more poorly. Aside from the numerous debriefings she was subjected to, and the isolation she was forced to endure, the mere act of re-acclimating herself to the modern world was proving very difficult. Everything was too loud, too bright, too hectic. The smells overwhelmed her. The incessant hum of electricity drove her to distraction. Food filled with chemicals and additives made her violently ill.

  She wasn’t sleeping. She wasn’t eating. The stress of the situation was sending her diabetes into a tailspin that the hospital staff was desperately trying to get under control. Her emotional state crashed. A phone call to Elisi and Michael only made her worse, and she spent the next hour in hysterics that the staff saw fit to medicate.

  Afterwards, she lay in a drug-filled haze, staring at the white walls and dingy window that looked out onto essentially nothing but concrete pocked with a few scraggly trees desperately trying to hold onto life. How she mourned the loss of the great, endless forest, and her beloved circle of ancient cedars.

  In the semi-conscious state between sleep and waking, in the floating, weightless world she drifted in, too lethargic to lift her head and too drugged to care, she thought of Akihiro. Had he kept his promise and lived over four hundred years? Was he waiting for her in North Carolina? Did he wonder why she was taking so long to come home or did he know already that she was trapped, a veritable prisoner of the military? So far there had been no sign of him, although she did have a dim memory of feeling a sense of Other in her hospital room shortly after her arrival.

  “Akihiro?” she had mumbled, her eyes blurry.

  “No,” came the answer from a dark corner. “Go back to sleep.” And she had, the darkness setting upon her like a heavy weight, and in the morning she hadn’t been certain that she hadn’t dreamed it. There had been no tingles at the back of her neck since, and she almost missed it. She’d gotten so used to feeling Akihiro, to using her heightened senses to navigate her way through the wilds. Now her hypersensitivity only served to make her even more uncomfortable, and she longed for the forest of her home.

  Finally three weeks had passed, and her captors seemed satisfied with the answers she had given them. The medication they had prescribed for her emotional state appeared to be helping her stabilize her moods, and she was scheduled to see a psychologist once she was back in the States. They had re-outfitted her with her insulin pump, and it seemed that her blood sugar levels were finally evening out. She was cleared to return home, although it was decided that it would be best for her to travel by more conventional means even if it meant it would take her almost three days to get back to North Carolina.

  Arrangements were made to send her back to the States, and she found herself onboard a military transport on its way to Honolulu. Her final destination was Fort Bragg in North Carolina with layovers in Hawaii and San Diego.

  Everyone was very nice to her, but she did notice that she was not allowed any unescorted time at liberty, not even when she was to spend the night in Hawaii and leave for San Diego in the morning. When she expressed a desire to get some fresh air, she was provided with a very charming enlisted man who was happy to take her for a drive and an inexpensive dinner provided that she was back at Fort Shafter by 8pm. Even with the short leash, she took what she could get and tried to enjoy the beautiful weather so typical of the islands.

  By now she had begun to suspect that the drugs she had been placed on were a little more than simple anti-depressants, and she’d secretly stopped taking them. As a result, the fog was starting to lift from her mind, and she was beginning to see more clearly. She had no idea what the medication had been designed to do, but she feared it made her more pliant and easy to control. She also noticed that she was having trouble with her short-term memory, and that concerned her even more. In the end, she decided that living with the depression was better than living with the side effects of the drugs.

  So far the consequences of her revealing what she knew to the general populace had only been vaguely alluded to, but she knew that there were quite a few individuals who were very nervous about releasing a civilian who carried such sensitive information. She half expected them to flag her as a security risk and try to keep her under strict surveillance, but since they couldn’t repeat the time travel, she had no idea what they were afraid of or what it all meant. And there was no sense looking to her for answers because she had no real concept of how the Gates operated. It was all magic and miracles to her.

  The young man next to her fidgeted nervously. He had taken her to a beachside barbecue shack, and they’d enjoyed Hawaiian pork for dinner as they watched the sun go down. The breathtaking sunset over the Pacific was just like the sun
sets she and Akihiro had shared on the Boso coast. The dying light glinted off her escort’s hair, flashing a deep auburn, and she was suddenly reminded of her fox’s hair.

  In that moment, she missed Akihiro so much. He was the only one who really understood what had happened, what she had suffered. No amount of recitation or recollection could even begin to give justice to what she had endured. No words could fully grasp the magnitude of her suffering. She felt adrift, bereft, and a part of her deeply feared that their last goodbye had truly been their last. She hoped that he would have given her some sign, some tiny crumb of proof that he had lived, but there had been nothing.

  The rational part of her mind reasoned that she’d been kept under such tight lock and key that, even if he had wanted to contact her, he would not have been able to. She was certain that everyone who had any access to her had been thoroughly screened. No one in the Department of Defense or the Department of Homeland Security or NSA wanted anyone to know about the possibility of using the Gates for time travel. Their creation had shaken up the rest of the world enough as it was. She had no doubt that the ability to manipulate time could, and would, spark wars.

  “Is something wrong, Ms. Tindall?” Private Evans asked her.

  She managed a wan, watery smile, and shook her head. “It’s nothing. I’m just so glad to be going home.”

  “You’ve been away for a long time?”

  His reply told her that he hadn’t been given any details, not even a cover story about who she was and why she required a military escort. She wondered if it was some kind of test devised by the upper levels of command to see what she would reveal if given the opportunity. It was crafty and devious, but subtly brilliant, and she had to give them credit where credit was due.

  “Yes. Six months or so. I was lost, but they found me… eventually.”

  “Lost? Where?”

  She gave him a wry, almost feral smile. “I could tell you, but then they’d have to kill you,” she answered with a throaty laugh.