by S. M. Beiko
I finally stopped, trying to calm the shakes trilling up and down my spine. I crumpled into an alcove with high, bright windows facing the snow-buried football field, pressing my head against the glass. The sudden coolness quieted my pulse, allowing me to breathe again. What’s happening to me? An antibiotic-induced hallucination, huh, Phae? List of possible side effects: nausea, dizziness, and visions of rabbit genocide as far as the freaky eye could see.
I looked out the window into the trumpeting sunlight, the clear day full of wondrous light — one of the only upsides to a Winnipeg winter. It struck the untouched snow and made the world look incapable of the violence I’d just seen. And then I saw her, enormous tail brushed over her feet as she huddled under the bleachers, watching me. Waiting. There was a look on her face that I knew all too well, that I’d seen for so many years peering up at me from the backyard . . .
I went down to my locker to gather my stuff. I’d worry about my school absence later, and maybe I’d be able to cover it up before they called Deidre. I beelined for the football field, and there I found Sil, sitting in the same spot. Still as a statue.
“You know, you look awfully familiar,” I said to her, trying to frown as loudly as I could underneath my snowman layers. “And not just because you saved me from Death or anything.” I knew that she had something to do with the destruction of the stone fox, and the creepy gem inside it. Or that she probably was the stone fox, since I had recently become an expert on the improbable. But she just tilted her head, pointing her chin at me with no trace of her earlier fox-grin.
“Fine,” I puffed, looking around to make sure no one was watching. “Look, I have about a zillion questions, and if I don’t get some answers soon, my head is going to explode. Literally. Not to mention that this new eye you gave me is totally faulty.”
At that she scoffed, getting up and shaking snow crystals from her coat. “I didn’t give you anything, pup. It’s a spirit eye now, a gift and a burden from the Moth Queen, and something you’ll have to get used to.”
Her spiel didn’t reassure, but I shrugged. “Well, that’s the straightest answer I’ve got from you so far, so I’ll call it progress.” Just then, I saw a few kids coming around the fence beyond the football field. “Okay, we’re going to have to continue this convo elsewhere. Come on.”
But before I could protest, Sil jumped directly into my arms and was thrusting her nose aggressively at my parka zipper.
“What the hell!” I cried, scrambling and torn between keeping a good hold on her or flinging her into the snow. Either way, the spectacle was on the verge of drawing too much attention to us.
“It’s freezing out here,” Sil whined, finally snatching the zipper in her teeth, climbing inside, and burrowing against my chest. She clung in there defiantly, taking up a ton of space that I didn’t know was under the jacket in the first place. “And besides, you rode here. It’s faster if we travel together, and a fox running alongside you isn’t exactly subtle. Now zip up!”
I teetered, but I had to admit she was a nice heat generator.
“For a wild animal from Manitoba, you’re a bit of a wuss.” I grudgingly zipped us up, making sure the passing kids were none the wiser, and with one arm protectively at my chest, I made my way to the bike rack. Just as I mounted, Sil repositioned herself and poked her head out of my jacket from under my chin. I grunted. She was panting, eyes wide and taking in the scene like a kid at Christmas.
“Real subtle,” I sighed, feeling the snow tires grip the icy roads as I posted for home.
*
We slunk in through the back door, Sil on the lookout while I peeled off my tack. Deidre had texted that she would be out until the late evening due to some extended work meeting, and Arnas’s car was mercifully missing from the driveway. Still, it didn’t hurt to be careful.
“And you’re sure he didn’t see you this morning?” I hissed, following Sil’s perked tail out of the kitchen and towards the main staircase. But the fox’s mind was elsewhere, it seemed. She was peering up the stairs, considering what I assumed was the master bedroom on the third floor. My grandmother’s room.
I jumped in her path as her paws touched the first stair. “No, no, no. We are not going up there. In fact, we aren’t going anywhere. You promised me answers. No more distractions.”
Sil looked as if she were ready to bolt past me in another demonstration of defiance or explode into the flaming creature I’d seen last night. She was as unassuming as a small dog, but I wondered seriously what it would take to cross the line with her. I stood my ground anyway.
Instead of exploding, she sighed with her whole body, looking wry but suddenly tired. “Answers. You always think it’s as easy as an explanation, except you’ve forgotten to ask the right questions. The answers I have for you will never feel like the ones you want.” She turned from the stairs and padded around the corner to the main floor hallway. She glanced back at me as I remained behind, perplexed. Are you coming or not? dared those penetrating eyes.
I sprang after her.
Sil was leading me down to the basement, which was more like a glorified storage cellar. As we descended, our path lit by a handful of struggling bulbs swaying over the grim affair, we found ourselves in a labyrinth of boxes and ghostly sheet-covered mounds. The basement had the same footprint as the house, and I had avoided coming down here for fear of causing an Indiana Jones–type cave-in or poking around in something I’d regret.
Sil navigated the box-corridors as though she’d set up the pathways herself. Spiders scattered overhead among wilting cobwebs and old piping, and just as the chill and musty smell was getting to me, we hit a wall.
“Man, I knew we’d get lost down here,” I muttered, folding my arms tight into my chest. “Can’t you give me your extremely cosmic answers somewhere a bit more habitable? This house is full of heated rooms, you know.” I touched the wall. It was cold, caked in mud and the grime of age. On this side, the foundation was stone, original and hundreds of years old. There was nothing there.
“But this is the only room I’m interested in.” Sil tilted her head at the wall, pawing it.
“What room?” I started, but Sil had already performed a quarter turn, tail erect and pointed at the wall like a bushy finger. The tail ignited, flames catching the stone grooves of the wall. The fire extinguished just as quickly and the stone crumbled to dust, revealing a door that definitely hadn’t been there a second ago. Pleased, Sil looked at me, dependent on my opposable thumbs to keep the plot moving.
“Okaaay . . .” I said, pausing before I grabbed the door handle to ask what I hoped was the right question: “Should I be prepared for booby traps, too?”
Sil actually rolled her eyes.
“Oh come on, it was a valid question!” I protested.
I clicked the rusted handle down and pushed inward until the door gave. An ancient sigh of air pushed past the threshold. What little light the basement afforded showed a set of rock-hewn stairs descending into emptiness. The last time I’d seen a pit that dark had been in the chest of the Moth Queen, and I wasn’t about to lead the way.
Sil’s tail lit up again, the fire moving through the bristles like bright water. Our only torch. “Handy,” I quipped, and I followed her down the stairs, quick to close the door behind us, and somehow sure that the stone and dirt we’d burned away was gathering again on the other side.
The air around us was thick with shadow, and my hands stayed plastered to the wall as we made our way down. It was spongy and cool, pungent with the heady smell of peat. We were way beyond the house now, heading down a passageway that had obviously been dug out, but I couldn’t tell more than that. I could see nothing beyond Sil’s tail, and as I felt my way down each new step with my toes, I expected to pitch forward and crack my head open.
Naturally, I was getting nervous, and my worst response to anxiety was not being able to shut my mouth. You
wouldn’t, either, if you had visions of things fluttering out of every shadow, arms outstretched . . .
“Down into the inner sanctum, eh?” My voice was close in the narrow cavern of the stairwell, the words dying in my ears as the earthen walls absorbed the sound. “Like the Batcave! Or, um . . . a dungeon? Preferably not that, though. If I, uh, had a choice. Do I get a choice?”
The stairs curved. So far, what was the weirdest part about all of this? The whole nearly-being-dragged-off-into-Styx-by-a-giant-moth thing? The new eye that could see a bunch of wacky stuff I couldn’t, and didn’t want to, understand? Or the hidden staircase that descended into the bowels of the Earth beneath my estranged, comatose grandmother’s house? These things all stacked up equally, and it was quickly becoming apparent they all had to do with the family I barely knew.
All in all, I really hoped Cecelia wasn’t keeping a catacomb down here, with me as the newest addition.
“What do you know about your parents?” Sil asked suddenly. Could she read minds, too?
That stopped in my tracks — though not for long, since Sil was intent on keeping her pace. I swallowed that familiar stone of resentment, swelling with memories and things my parents and I would never get to do together.
“I . . . in what context? Like what they did for a living? What colour their hair was? Their favourite food?” Veterinarian and horticulturalist. Crimson and blond. Thai food for both. These things were written on the inside of my skull from trying to keep close the fading memory of these people who made me. And who were involuntarily fired from the job of parents, midstream.
Sil snorted. “So not much, then. Can’t be helped. I’m sure they were just waiting for the right time. You were quite young, after all.”
“Right time for —” I stumbled, trying to catch myself on the wall and scraping my hands instead. Thankfully, we had reached level ground, and my cranium was intact for another day.
When I composed myself, Sil was looking up at me, her body the only light in the room, giving off a soft halo where she stood. She tilted her head, appraising me as usual.
“There’s almost too much to go over, and not much time to do it in,” she huffed, shaking her head. Without warning, a shockwave rose from the base of her tail to the tip, finishing with a bright flash. I shielded my eyes, peeking over my forearm to see tiny globules of light floated around us. Sil flicked her tail, and they shot across the room like meteors until each found a home in the wick of a candle, or the heart of a lantern, and the room was fully illuminated.
The floor beneath us was polished black granite flecked with veins of silver. It shone in the candlelight and I could see myself in it clearly when I looked down. The patterns of the rock culminated in concentric circles, and as I gazed into them, I found the reflections of half-filled bookcases, closed drawers, glass shelves with plants and precious stones, and assorted bric-a-brac that I couldn’t identify in the candlelight. Needless to say, though, compared to the house above us, this room was fairly empty, and everything was built into the walls to keep the ground clear. Whatever this was — chamber, glorified arena — I had zero ideas. Sil sat inside the centre circle, but by instinct I stayed rooted by the stairs, wondering what would happen if I tread farther.
The walls were made of earth, roots tangled like an intricate tapestry. Dug into the far wall was a hearth, but no flame burned inside it. I pointed at it, thinking I was being clever. “You forgot to light one.”
“Did I?” Sil murmured. I think she was waiting for a reaction to this place, to her air of intense mystery. I puffed out my cheeks instead.
“Well, it’s something, all right,” I admitted, shrugging as my hands found my pockets. “I think I was expecting a lair filled with weapons and gadgets and whatnot, but maybe I watch too many movies.” My attempted casual air was undercut by my eyes darting around, waiting for an axe to fall.
The fox’s eyes narrowed. Again I wondered how far I could push her. One minute she was a long-suffering sidekick, the next a prickling beast trying to choose between my jugular and my heart.
“You haven’t asked why I mentioned your parents.”
My spirit eye twitched. It hadn’t acted up since school, and I was waiting for it to give me some clues, since Sil was making me work so hard for them. It was painful talking about Ravenna and Aaron at the best of times, especially down in the depths of God-knows-where I’d found myself. Resentfully, I tried her avoidance tack.
“Give me a script so I’ll know what to ask, then.” I folded my arms. “You said the answers I wanted from you wouldn’t be the right ones. So why bother asking anything?” Yes, I was dying to know what this chamber was for and why my grandmother had it under her house, but I didn’t want to give the fox the satisfaction.
Maybe she grinned, maybe she snarled. But her lips crept back over her pointed yellow teeth. “The thing about foxes is that it’s not in our nature to give straight answers. It’s more important that we help humans find them on their own. You’ll learn that soon enough.”
“And why will I be learning anything from you?” I snapped. “Oh wait, no straight answers, right. So then, how about I write the story? How does it go . . . I’m the Chosen One for some bad-ass mission that’s way over my head? There’s a solid plot. Well, I mean, it’s obviously me. I don’t know how many other Winnipeg high-schoolers find themselves plucked out of reality by Death or crazy firefoxes, but maybe I’m just being narrow-minded. Yay, lucky me.”
Sil scratched her ear with her hind leg, her uninterested pause successfully making me angrier, and she spoke to me almost as an afterthought. “‘The Chosen One.’ Mm. I never thought of using that term. But what a glamorous life a Chosen One has. Power, respect, infallibility . . .” She lay down in her silver circle, crossing her soot-coloured paws. “But let’s see. What power you have is in an eye that you don’t understand or know how to control. The duty I’m here to give you will turn everyone against you. And infallible? Ha!” This time it was a smirk, definitely. “No, you’ll die; no doubt about that. There, how’s that for a story?”
“So you brought me down to some shamanistic sub-basement just to make fun of me? Fine. Find someone else for your mystical power trip, then, or go back to the snowbank from whence you came.”
Her tail swept back and forth against the granite, the grin still there. “Ah, you see? You’re already figuring things out on your own. Do you feel better?”
The burning sensation rose to my face. “I’m done.”
I turned to stomp back up the stairs, but I was met with a wall of flame climbing from the floor to the ceiling, solidifying in the same black granite that the floor was made of. Terrific. I froze, my head turning slowly towards Sil, who hadn’t moved.
“Taking on this fox form, getting you down here . . . pulling you out of Death’s embrace. That was all hard work. Why would I find someone else when I’ve already put so much time into you?”
I seethed. “I. Don’t. Know.” Could I make that any clearer?
“Good. Then keep your mouth shut and your teenage tantrums to a minimum, and maybe you will.”
I stared into the hard blackness that blocked my escape, the wall that had pretty much entombed me. I didn’t dare touch it. The remnants of my resolve lay in shambles at my feet.
“What the hell is this place and what do you want from me?” I asked the fox, and whoever else was listening.
She huffed through her twitching nose. “We foxes are good at avoiding the straightest path. I wonder what you say to other people when they ask you about your parents? Do you tell them that there is no way they pitched themselves into the Assiniboine like a procession of selfish gerbils? That you both hate them and wish you could understand why you couldn’t go with them? Or do you just smile, and change the subject, and pretend their deaths happened to someone else?”
This time I was shaking, I registered that much. And wh
en I was little, these were the things I’d creep out at night to tell the stone fox, the inanimate statue that I felt was my only friend and who might either make it all not true, or at least tell me why it was happening to me. I turned to her, not because it was my only option, but because I couldn’t turn away again, not now, not when there was so much at stake.
“What does any of this have to do with them? With me?”
“Too much,” Sil said, something like fire rising in her glowing eyes. “Come here.”
My feet were following her voice before my brain could instruct them otherwise. I lowered myself to the floor, legs crossed. She was sitting up now, alert.
“Another thing you’ll learn about foxes is that they don’t run,” she said. “They wait. Even when it’s all falling apart around them, and the wave is coming, they wait.”
The stone scene of my grandmother’s menagerie made some sense now. “Why? Because they think they’ll talk the wave out of it?”
Sil dipped her head down and the air around us suddenly became hot, far too hot to bear. And before I could do more than backpedal on my hands, her body had been ripped apart by swirling fire. It reformed again as a giant, flaming woman with the head of a fox and a wheel of nine tails behind her. The blaze was in my lungs, filling the room with its heat.
“It is because the wave usually doesn’t know what it’s dealing with.” Sil’s voice ricocheted inside my head, behind my eyes, and back out into the room.
“Stop, you’ll burn the whole place down!” I cried, but the flames climbed higher around us and started closing in. “Can’t you stop it? Can’t you just go back to being the fox again?”
