The Heart of a Fox

by T. Isilwath

  “How long were you out?” she questioned, placing a tentative hand on his back.

  “If it’s Monday? Two days. I got back on Saturday,” he replied, shivering.

  “Where did you go?” She couldn’t help herself from asking. So much of his life was a mystery to her now.

  He didn’t answer right away, and she could feel his hesitation. She wondered if this was how things were going to be between them from now on.

  “A friend’s,” he finally said, before he doubled over. “I’m sorry. I need…”

  “Right,” she answered, helping him as he rose on shaky legs. Together they staggered to the bathroom where he dry heaved into the toilet.

  “If you’ve been out for two days, I doubt there’s anything in there to bring up,” she commented, sitting on the edge of the tub while she held back his hair.

  It was a poor attempt at levity.

  “Tell that to my stomach,” he answered, retching.

  The heaves finally subsided a few minutes later, and he slumped to the cool linoleum floor, panting. She stood and stepped over him to get to the sink.

  “Here,” she said, handing him a paper cup full of water.

  He sat up long enough to accept the drink and down it while she resumed her seat on the edge of the tub.

  “Thank you,” he said, crushing the cup and tossing it into the trashcan.

  She nodded. “Feeling better?”

  He sighed and let his head drop back to the floor. “A bit.”

  “What would have happened if I hadn’t been here? Would you have come out of it on your own?” she asked, trying to sound nonchalant but failing as her true concern for him came through.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I much cared either way,” he finally admitted, his voice resigned.

  She frowned and snorted through her nose. “I’m not worth dying for, Akihiro,” she scolded.

  He looked at her and his eyes said everything. “I lived for you… over four hundred years. What makes you think I would not die for you now?” She scowled. “I would have thought you would have fought for me,” she snapped back irritably.

  “Fought who? If there was an enemy who threatened you, gladly I would fight, but this was you, my vixen. I could not go against you,” he replied em-phatically.

  “You’ve gone against me plenty of times,” she countered, rolling her eyes.

  His eyes turned sad and wounded. “Never on something so important. I could not force you to accept me. That would have been unthinkable.” They fell quiet for a moment, the only sound in the room the grumbling of Akihiro’s upset stomach. He was still breathing shallowly and his color concerned her. She wondered if she ought to go get a blanket for him so he wouldn’t be cold, but she found herself unable to make her legs move.

  “So what now? Will you stay?” he asked, finally breaking the uncomfortable silence between them.

  “I don’t know. We need to talk,” she answered honestly. She had no doubts that she was just as uncertain and gun-shy as he was.

  She saw him swallow and nod his head slightly. “Yes.” Seeing him lying there, naked on the bathroom floor, his very countenance a picture of defeated resignation, she softened. She was still unhappy that he had kept the truth from her, but she could understand the impossible position he had been in. And even though she still felt the sting of his deception, she still loved him and wanted him in her life.

  That knowledge helped her make peace with how she was feeling and gave her the courage to break the stalemate. But she wasn’t going to let him off scott-free, however. He was going to have to earn her trust again, just as she would have to earn his.

  “First of all,” she began in a harsh tone, making him look up at her and perk his ears forward. “No. More. Secrets.” She punctuated each word with a tap of her fist against the tub.

  He stared at her for a long moment, then she saw hope come into his eyes.

  He struggled to sit up but she did not help him, and she waited until he had steadied himself against the toilet.

  “What do you want to know?” he asked, his palms open towards her.

  “Everything. You’re going to tell me everything,” she demanded.

  He nodded eagerly. “Of course. I always planned to reveal all,” he answered, his tone willing and cooperative. “It was never my intention to keep the truth from you after I had revealed myself.”

  She bit the inside of her cheek to keep the rush of anger and betrayal from making her say something she would later regret, and she gripped the edge of the tub with both hands. He saw her do it, but said nothing and waited for her to be able to speak again.

  “You can start by telling me what you did after I left you in Japan,” she finally told him, opting to begin with something that was marginally neutral.

  He relaxed a little and gave her a wry smile. “May I get dressed first?” She realized that he was still naked on the cold bathroom floor and chuckled, relaxing as the tension broke.

  “Yes. And I’ll make lunch. Is there any food in this place?”

  He looked thoughtful for a moment, then shrugged. “Coffee and ramen noodles?” he offered sheepishly.

  “I’ll scrounge around in the cupboards. If I have to, I’ll borrow some eggs from Mary Hope in 309,” she said, rolling her eyes. Bachelors were all the same.

  “Okay.”

  They stood and left the bathroom. When they got to the hallway, he turned to go back to the bedroom and she headed for the kitchen. While he got dressed, she searched through the pantry and cabinets, and found an old box of mac n’ cheese and a can of tomato soup. Unfortunately the bread was staging a revolt so she had to throw it away, but by the time Akihiro came out of the bedroom, she had coffee and lunch ready.

  When she heard him approaching, she looked up and was shocked to see him in Michael’s form with the fox bone choker around his neck.

  “I don’t have any clean clothes that can accommodate my tails,” he explained. “The only set I have here is filthy.”

  “Oh,” she answered. “But… an illusion doesn’t get rid of them, does it? I mean, they’re still there, I just can’t see them, right?”

  “This form is not an illusion. It’s an actual shape change. The choker holds the spell, but I am truly in this body,” he answered.

  His reply surprised her and she cocked her head for a moment before deciding that the particulars of his human form were best left for later. There was one thing that she was very curious about, however, and she couldn’t stop herself from asking him, “I see. When did you get the second tail anyway?”

  “I don’t know. I woke up with it,” he answered simply, scratching at the base of the aforementioned tails.

  “Woke up?” she repeated, pouring the coffee.

  “Yes.”

  “When did you wake up?” she pressed, turning to face him as he approached the small kitchen table.

  “That’s later in the story. First you wanted to know where I went after you left me in the forest,” he reminded her, sitting down across from where she was standing by the counter.

  She put a cup of coffee and his portion of lunch in front of him, then sat down opposite from him with her own cup of coffee. She watched him as he took a sip from his mug, sighing and closing his eyes as the hot liquid went down his throat, and she smiled. He always had liked her coffee.

  “Thank you,” he said, indicating the food.

  “You’re welcome. If you’ve been out for two days, you’re probably starving.”

  “I am,” he admitted. “But I should go easy. I don’t know how my body will react to food after those dry heaves. This soup and mac ‘n cheese is perfect. Thanks.”

  She nodded and waited while he ate a few bites to see if he would keep it down. He burped a couple of times, but didn’t seem to be rejecting the food, and they both relaxed a little bit.

  “The first thing I did was go back to the village. I brought all of the things you had left behind and gave them to the shr
ine. I knew Suzuka and Kaemon would distribute them properly,” he told her, beginning his tale.

  She cupped her hands around her mug. “What did you tell them about me?”

  “The truth. That your people had finally found you and that you had gone home,” he answered, eating more quickly until he was digging into the food like a starving man.

  She smiled. At least that hadn’t changed. No matter what form he wore, he could still eat his weight every day and not gain an ounce.

  “Did you tell them I was from the future?” she asked, making herself focus.

  “Not then, no. I would tell them later,” he replied, drinking a swig from his coffee cup and finishing off his soup. The mac n’ cheese was almost gone as well.

  She gave him half of her portion of lunch. She had no doubt that he’d eat it and want more. He accepted the food with a grunt as he drank more coffee.

  “What did you do after you brought my things to the village?”

  “I went in search of my uncle, Tetsuhiro,” he answered between bites.

  “Your father’s younger brother,” she prompted.

  “Yes. It took me six years to find him, and many times I thought he was dead, but I did finally find him. He was in the North Country, deep in the mountains.”

  “What did you tell him?” she asked, watching him eat. Akihiro had always been at his most talkative when he was distracted by food, and it looked like that hadn’t changed over the centuries either.

  “Everything. I had your books with me and I showed them to him. He agreed to help me if I would tell him of the future.” She poured him another cup of coffee and he gave her a nod of thanks.

  “You said you’d hoped he would. Did he keep his end of the bargain?”

  “Oh, yes. He helped me a great deal. He taught me many things as well. He trained me in my kitsune powers and taught me how to fight.”

  “Is he still alive?” she questioned.

  “Yes. I’ll take you to meet him. He’s a financial analyst on Wall Street,” he replied, slurping down the last of the tomato soup she had given him.

  She laughed out loud. “Now that is something I wouldn’t have expected.” He smiled and shrugged. “He’s very good with money. He manages both of our fortunes,” he answered as he scraped the bottom of the bowl of mac n’ cheese.

  “Fortunes?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

  He blinked at her. “You did give me all that information so I could use it to make money, remember? I spent years selling maitake mushrooms to the Shogun in Kyoto to amass enough capital to invest.”

  “Wow,” she blurted with a shake of her head, then forced herself to refocus. “So… you found your uncle and he trained you. Then what?”

  “Then I waited,” he answered, looking at her and mirroring her position with his hands around his coffee mug. “I stayed with my uncle until we heard news of a new warlord in Owari named Oda Nobunaga who was waging war with his neighboring clans. That was when we knew the timeline was getting close. I left the North Country and returned to the village. Ichiro had died but Kaemon and Suzuka were still there. Kaemon had married and had two sons

  and a daughter like his father,” he dropped his eyes, his face turning thoughtful and sad, “Suzuka never married.”

  “Why did you go back to the village?” she asked, offering him the rest of her lunch. She wasn’t hungry, but he refused and pushed it back at her.

  “Many reasons. Firstly was that I felt an obligation to Kaemon and his sister. I’d essentially broken my promise to Ichiro, and I felt a need to make reparations. And also because I wanted their help in the coming years,” he said, finishing off his second cup of coffee.

  “Help?” she repeated.

  “Yes. It was getting harder for demons like me to hide. Humans were increasing in population and moving into areas where they had never ventured before. Many demon clans were leaving Japan in order to escape, but I knew that integration was the only way for us to survive. I went to the village to show them that humans and demons could live side-by-side in peace,” he explained as he stood up.

  She watched him as he rummaged through the cabinet over the refrigerator and pulled out two packages of ramen noodles. He sniffed them, then tossed them down to the counter and worked on finding a clean bowl.

  “Did it work?” she asked, smiling.

  “Mostly. My knowledge of the future helped a great deal. When Ashikaga Yoshiaki was installed as Shogun by Oda Nobunaga, I knew it was 1568. By then forty-three years had passed since you left me, my vixen, and I knew the second of my benchmark years was close at hand,” he said as he dumped the noodles into the bowl with some water and nuked them in the microwave.

  “The defeat of the monks at Mt. Hiei,” she confirmed.

  His eyes turned feral as a predatory smile came to his lips. She’d never seen that look on his face before and it made her shiver.

  “I was there when Nobunaga attacked. I watched as the monks fell and I felt my father’s death was avenged,” he said proudly, leaning back against the counter.

  “After that, I returned to the village and helped as much as I could. They were good years, happy years. Kaemon became a wise old man. Suzuka and I reached an understanding. We were good friends.”

  “I’m glad,” she said.

  When the microwave beeped, he took the bowl of hot ramen out and returned to his seat. She smiled and watched him as he downed the steaming food, almost heedless of the temperature.

  “But… my knowledge of the future brought trouble and hunters would come looking for me.”

  “What kind of trouble?” she questioned, furrowing her brow.

  “It’s amazing who will come when they hear you know the future, and what they will do when you tell them something they don’t want to hear. And I was stupid and didn’t keep my mouth shut when I should have sometimes,” he admitted wryly.

  “A trait you have yet to outgrow,” she quipped with a smile.

  He smiled back and finished the ramen noodles along with a third cup of coffee.

  “Kaemon feared for my safety, and he thought it would be better for me to go into hiding until I was strong enough to protect myself. So I agreed to go to sleep until the Meiji Restoration. They made a special place for me under the main sanctuary of the shrine, and Kaemon used the last of his spiritual powers to place me into a dreamless sleep. Then he Sealed me into a special chamber that later became part of an altar dedicated to Inari.

  “But the eruptions and earthquakes of 1793 weakened Kaemon’s Seals and broke the spell that kept me asleep, and I woke up seventy-five years early.

  After I regained consciousness, I went in search of my uncle again. He had taken the form of a wealthy merchant and we left Japan together, eventually ending up on a Spanish ship bound for the New World.”

  “That must have been a fun trip,” she commented dryly.

  He rolled his eyes and made a face. “You have no idea. All I can say is thank god you taught me how to swim. When we landed in 1817, we settled in Boston then moved to New York. We worked on building our fortunes using the information you had given me. We invested in Westward expansion, textile industries in New England, and the railroad, but when President Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law I began getting ready to go to Oklahoma.

  When the Treaty of New Echota was signed in 1835, I left New York and headed to North Carolina.”

  “That’s when you went on the Trail of Tears,” she stated, her hands gripping her coffee mug a little too tightly.

  He nodded and cast his eyes to the table, and she saw him clench his teeth.

  “Yes. It was a terrible time that still haunts my nightmares. Never before had I seen such brutality and cruelty. It strikes me to my heart to this day. It was one of the most shameful things the U.S. Government has ever done.”

  “I can’t even imagine what that must have been like.” It was true, and understanding that Akihiro had actually gone on the Nunna daul Tsuny made Michael’s
deep-seeded anger and resentment towards non-Indians make sense.

  What he must have seen and suffered during that long winter of 1838…

  “It was the worst time of my life. I felt so helpless and out of my depth, but that is also where I met the ones who would become my family, and I did my best to keep them safe. Once we were in Oklahoma, I watched over them and their descendants until it was time for me to become Michael. In 1988, I was

  “born” to a woman I had previously chosen, and she raised me as her son.

  When she died, I stayed in Oklahoma until July of 2001. After that… well, you know the rest.”

  He fell silent, staring down into his coffee mug with a pensive expression on his face. She looked at him, wondering when and how he had chosen the form he now wore, why he had created Michael in the image that he had assumed. She knew that her feelings of betrayal stemmed from his change into human form and his insinuation into her life as a human boy.

  “When did you decide to become Michael?” she asked. It was a hard question to ask, but she needed to know.

  “I didn’t. I always knew I would be Michael,” he replied, looking at her.

  “You did? How…”

  He raised his hand to silently tell her to stop and rose to his feet. “Wait here. I’ll be right back,” he told her and left the kitchen.

  When he returned, he was carrying an old buffaloskin pack that she had seen before. He’d always had it, but she’d never asked what was in it because it supposedly contained special Medicine. He placed the beaded leather pack on the table and undid the ties on the flap. Then he pulled out a carved box made from cinnamon wood and opened the lid to lift out a tattered, well-aged book.

  “My journal!” she gasped as he handed it to her.

  “I promised that I would return it, my vixen,” he said with a smile.

  She touched the worn cover reverently, surprised to find that it had survived the centuries. “It’s in remarkably good condition for its age.”

  “The cinnamon wood box has preservative qualities and it was placed in the chamber with me when I was Sealed so it was well protected,” he explained.