Scion of the Fox

by S. M. Beiko

  The frenzied wind and the snow it bore on its back froze everything. The flakes suspended mid-air twinkled like daytime starlight, and Phae’s long, ebony tresses climbed up her back, possessed and hypnotizing. They rose and knit on her head a heavy black crown of horns, all at once dark and shimmering, until they crackled blue, pulsing with veins of light. The light cascaded from the antlers and lit up beneath Phae’s dark-brown flesh. As it passed down her head and neck, her eyes came back to her, and she breathed.

  The crown fell away slowly like shifting feathers, and the snow followed suit. Phae’s hands released the head of the Deer that had passed on her power, and her life, and Geneve’s body fell limp in the snow before us all.

  “Phae?” I whispered, alarmed that she was staring catatonically into the distance. I followed her gaze and watched as the does got to their feet, each ducking their heads in a sort of reverent sadness towards us as they turned to leave, returning to their self-imposed exile.

  The old buck with the large antlers hung back. “You now have the Grace of our Family on your side, young Fox. Use it wisely and well in your quest to dispatch the river demon.” And he looked to Phae then, who seemed to be fully awake and aware now. “And to you, New Daughter. Guide your friend well, and return to us for guidance should you need it. You bear an Ascendant’s power now.”

  “Yes,” was all she said, tears running down her cheeks.

  He blinked his great black eyes and faded into the trees with the rest.

  When I thought I would have to now reach out to Phae to offer a hand of support, instead her hand found mine. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you or understand.”

  Perhaps it helped that the element of the Deer Family was spirit, because something had reached down into Phae’s core and rocked her. She seemed different. I smiled. “Ah well. No one’s gonna believe you now. We’re even.”

  Though something great had been moved in her, I was grateful that pragmatic, brass-tacks Phae remained. “Take me to Barton. We have to hurry.”

  *

  I would have been lying if I didn’t admit to feeling a bit envious that Phae knew what she was doing more than I did, and she’d only been at this for less than an hour. She got us to Barton’s place with singular purpose, and she led us into his house without restraint. I wondered if the power she had been given came with the years of experience of its former user. If only I’d been so lucky. Sil still seemed diminished, but at least she was alert, and I stood back with Rebecca and David as Phae laid her hands on my friend.

  She seemed to be searching for something, hands floating uncertain over his chest, calculating. After a moment, she said, “There’s so much darkness inside him. It’s hard to see his spirit anymore.” She spoke with certainty, and for a second it worried me. “It will have to be drawn out.”

  Barton had been writhing, drooling, and snapping his teeth since we arrived, and even with Phae at his side, this didn’t stop. It seemed Sil’s solution had been more temporary than she’d hoped, and what was left of him seemed alien and beyond saving. But Phae looked at him like a practised surgeon, ready to cut the affliction out with her bare hands.

  Her eyes drew back into her head, the whites fading to the same blue I had just seen in the forest, and her hands pressed hard onto Barton’s chest. He howled, and the wound in his chest seemed to pucker like a mouth and, worst of all, laughter chittered out of it. Rebecca’s knees buckled, but I was there to catch her. David bolted and took her from me as a tremor ran under our feet, and Barton’s sports trophies and alarm clock and anything not nailed down rattled. Phae seemed unfazed, but I ran to her side and did my part to hold Barton down.

  “You cannot have him,” the wound-mouth croaked in too many voices. “We are hungry and we have eaten him and Mother wants him.”

  Were these the voices of the thousand black worms Sil had said were inside him, crowding around for a taste of Barton’s soul? Phae concentrated harder, and the mouth twisted. When I looked down, I saw that her hands were inside Barton’s chest, past muscle and bone and up to the wrist in oozing black tar. I wanted to scream, but I wouldn’t show fear to these monsters, not when I had cut so many of them to pieces in my righteous vengeance.

  Phae spoke to it in a calm, professorial tone. “He is not yours to have, and his spirit remains. Your mother has too many children, anyway.” The tarry offal that Phae was buried in tried to resist her, until it turned as blue as her eyes and started to dissolve.

  “No, no!” the wound screamed, its cries for mercy blending into Barton’s. But the light dug into his flesh, and she wrenched her hands out of him, pulling fistfuls of black mass with them. The light ate it up greedily, and it dissipated into spectral dust. At last, Phae put her hands on Barton’s head and chest, and the wound closed, his skin returned to its healthy shade. His spasms weakened until his breathing was the only movement he made.

  He opened his eyes and took us in. Phae came back to herself and looked worn out and slightly troubled, but she smiled down at Barton almost beatifically. No one moved, afraid to break the spell of the miracle.

  “M-mom . . . ?” Barton croaked, throat probably shredded from shrieking like a banshee all day. “Why am I tied to a bed and surrounded by girls? And also half-naked?”

  Phae and I jerked back as the Allens untied their son and wrapped him in their arms. “Gah, guys, you’re choking me,” he said weakly. They pulled away, shaking and relieved and crying. Barton still looked mildly disoriented.

  “These girls saved your life, son,” David said, running a hand over Barton’s fuzzy hair. The small family turned to us, and I knew that this was what I had been searching for in the last few days of struggle and death. The look that comes with life restored, with a happy ending that no one dared think was a possibility. A family would not be torn apart today.

  Sil and I met gazes across the dishevelled bedroom, and she dipped her head at me with newfound respect and something that had always been there — belief that I could make things happen. Make them right.

  Barton smiled at us, despite looking like he needed to sleep for the next ten years. “Makes sense. I had a feeling about you.” He nodded at me.

  “I had one about you, too,” I shrugged, unable to keep from grinning back. Not knowing what else to do, I half-hugged Phae and pushed her forward. “But she’s the real hero. Phaedrapramit Das, your healer.”

  Phae raised a hand in a shy half-wave, still not sure what to do with herself, flung as she was into something she probably didn’t fully understand. “Hi,” she said quickly, averting her eyes, since Barton was still mostly naked. If he’d had the energy, I’m sure he may have blushed.

  “Thank you,” Rebecca muttered through her tears. “And I’m sorry.”

  I felt suddenly taken aback, my smile faltering. “Why are you sorry? I got Barton into this mess. The least I could do was get him out —”

  “It’s not that,” she sighed, reaching for Barton and speaking more to him now. “If we hadn’t have done what we did . . . none of this would’ve happened.”

  Barton looked confused, and I realized how little he knew about any of this, or the sacrifice his parents had made on his behalf to protect him. I suddenly felt as though we were trespassing on an intensely private moment.

  “What do you mean?” Barton asked.

  “Rebecca,” David warned, putting a hand on hers. He looked at us with sad eyes. “We have a lot we need to talk about. But Barton needs rest.”

  Thankful to take that as our cue, Phae, Sil, and I turned to leave. “Wait!” Barton yelled, sounding desperate. “Wait.”

  We stopped, hesitant to go any farther, but unwilling to leave it like this.

  “You came to me because of the dreams. Because there’s something about them that’s real . . . because there’s something coming for us, isn’t there? And it’s not just whatever attacked
us today. It’s something worse.”

  That was about the size of it. “Yes.”

  “I could . . . I could see it. I could hear it. Hear her.” He shuddered, grasping his sweat-stained sheets. “She was whispering in my ear, calling me to her and to the dark place. I tried to get away from it, but the voice followed me. Until I realized that the voice was inside me. And it was so cold.” I could follow this vision clearly, because whenever I passed over the river I faced the same dread. I clenched and unclenched my fists.

  “I know,” Phae said before I could. “I saw it when I reached inside of you. And I heard her voice, too. She tried to come inside my head and talk me out of helping you.”

  David ran a hand over his face. “Zabor is more than a voice or a bad dream,” he said. “Right now she’s half asleep and still able to control an army. Things will only get worse. And now she’s starting to realize that she might be opposed for once.” He looked directly at me. “She won’t lie down if you face her.”

  Barton stared at his parents with a mix of awe, exhaustion, and frustration. “So you guys . . . you know what Roan’s talking about? You knew about all of this?” His jaw tightened. “You knew my dreams were real, and you tried to convince me I was sick.”

  Rebecca’s face twisted as if holding back a sob. “We just wanted to protect you. That’s all we wanted.” I knew her intentions had been good, but I had to summon everything I had to stop from scoffing. If only she’d been honest with him. If only my parents had been honest with me.

  Barton was a better person than I was, though; he searched his mother’s face, and instead of allowing himself to become instantly angry, he looked back at me. “I know I’m not much, and that I’d probably just be a hindrance . . . but I want to help you in whatever you have to do. I sort of . . . have a feeling that it’s my destiny. Maybe I’ve always known that.” He took his mother’s hand, though she tried to hide her tears behind it.

  Sil finally spoke up, sounding confident despite how ragged and tired she looked. “A Rabbit, a new Deer, and a Fox cub.” I let the “cub” jab go. “All five Families must unite to stop Zabor. At least now we have a start.”

  And that was when Rebecca’s vision seemed to clear, waking up to Sil’s words and the brevity she once possessed as a leader within her Family. “The Owls are against you. They know everything you’re doing, every move you make. I know, because I’ve been passing information on to them.” Her eyes fell. “They will do everything they can to keep you from uniting the Families. You must avoid them, and stay away from Arnas at all costs.” I had forgotten all about that. Deedee said that Arnas and Rebecca were close. No wonder he’d screamed at me to stay away from Barton after trying to run us down.

  “Arnas is my uncle,” I said, more for Barton’s benefit, “and living with him makes it pretty hard to stay away from him. He’s . . . well, he’s mostly harmless.” I hoped that streak would continue, since he was resorting to brute force with SUVs to getting his point across.

  “Don’t be fooled,” Rebecca warned. “He might seem harmless, but he has some power now. He’s the one who . . .” She looked at Barton, trailing off. Colour rose in her cheeks.

  And then I knew what she was going to say, as though all this spirit-ness had given me prophetic autocomplete. He was the one who severed my son. Arnas was the one who performed the ritual on Barton. I flashed back to him on the phone all those times.

  I stopped her there, because I knew this was something the Allens would have to cover in private. “It doesn’t matter now. All we can do is move forward.”

  David nodded, though his slight shrug made him seem skeptical. “It’s a good attitude, but the past is tangled up in this, too. Arnas has more than just a desire to save himself. It has a lot more to do with your parents than you think.”

  This day, really. Barton nearly turned into a demon, Phae at my side full of wisdom and power, and everything coming at us with the smothering force of an avalanche. All I could do was stuff my hands in my pockets and try to seem calm.

  “I think we could all use some rest.” I smiled, trying to call up some essence of leadership I knew I’d have to work hard at. “We just have to stay strong. And do it together.” It wasn’t much of a rousing speech, but it seemed to do.

  When we left the house, I kept Sil’s observation of us, this patchwork “team,” close to my heart; a restored Rabbit, a brand new Deer, and a Fox with barely a clue. There was still a long way to go, and two other Families to convince, but now it wasn’t so much a mythological pipe dream. We could bring this demon down.

  And maybe we’d even survive.

  Part III

  Flame

  The Owl’s Offer

  Eli has always preferred the old-fashioned method of film development. There is something about the tactility of images, the achievement of chemical composition making a moment in time physical. He built the darkroom himself — because my whole life is a dark room, he heard in a movie, once — and he spends much of his time here. His Family is all about big spaces in the air, suspended within and beyond the sky and the universe, but sometimes it suits him to burrow deep into the earth in an effort to appreciate it when he takes wing and leaves it behind.

  He rubs his chest absently. It is also here that he’s as alone as he can be.

  Photo development by hand takes patience and care, and he prides himself on having these traits. They are what have raised him, along with the Ancient power he’s been given, to the great annals of his forebears. Towards the Seat of the Paramount. And perhaps these traits will take him beyond that, but Eli has never been one to speculate that far into the future. Everything hinges on each step, and each has as much significance as a single note in a powerful score. You cannot jump to another measure when you haven’t completed the first. He smiles as he drags the photopaper through the development fluid, sweeping his hand like a conductor.

  Shapes begin to coalesce into an image. He has seen her face before, in digital form (what a lazy means of photography), and then once face to face. They’d had a moment. She had no interesting features, nothing to set her apart (aside from that very Bowie-esque set of mismatched eyes), and Eli doesn’t find her to be particularly pretty. But as her face blooms in the photo, he finds himself mesmerized. Something fearsome lurks beneath that pallid, naïve visage. It fascinates him, the haunted eyes and the lips parted in confusion, how she looks more a sheep than a Fox. But perhaps she is deceiving him with intent. She is an obstacle to be removed. For now, he can look at this picture of a troublesome idiot and puzzle over why she bothers him, and why he cares enough to look.

  The voices rise and shuffle inside him uneasily. Eli winces, flexing his chest tighter and asserting control. Not here. Not now. Leave me to myself. The voices seem to chide him, but whether by his will or no, they dissipate. For now.

  Recovering, he clips the photo next to the others in the series he has snapped in days since; pictures of the dead girl at the train tracks and the empty-gazed Roan, who was just as culpable of the crime as the river hunters who exacted it. Eli is proud of his work, and the work that will come of it. He casts a glance at his large computer monitor, which is currently streaming the live news broadcast of another body discovered at the Red River bank off Lyndale Drive. Same trauma as the first victim — eye ripped out, heart gored, red hair — except this new victim seems to have had her hair sawed off with a blunt instrument, maybe even chewed off. Some initially thought it was an animal attack, but now officials suspect foul play, possibly gang related, and very indicative of serial killings. Who could be responsible for such violence? Why are they doing this? We must stop them before it’s too late.

  Eli looks back at the picture of Roan Harken, and smiles.

  *

  “Ouch. You look rough.”

  “Um, thanks,” I said, trying not to rub my cheek. I’d covered the massive bruise there with some of Deedee’s
thick and creamy foundation and didn’t want to think about how that only made me seem more obvious.

  But Barton didn’t pull any punches, despite being in rough shape himself. He wheeled up, grimacing. “What happened to you?”

  I leaned into the bank of lockers, wondering if I could get away with taking a nap inside of one. “Sil and I spent a lot of time in the summoning chamber last night, fifth night in a row. She’s, um . . . she’s showing me how to conjure spirits and fight them. For practice.” I didn’t bother lowering my voice. If anyone was listening in, they probably thought I was talking about a long night of LARPing.

  “So it isn’t going very well, hm?” Phae interjected as she appeared beside me. I self-consciously touched my face and, in doing so, rubbed off some of the makeup.

  “Damn!” I hissed, wiping it on my pants. Before I could make it any worse, Phae took my chin in her hand, and I felt warmth rush into my face. The ache in my cheekbone vanished, as though my cells and nerves had undergone a sudden case of amnesia.

  “The fewer questions about what you’re doing in your spare time, the better,” she said, fingertips sparking effervescent blue until she hid them in a fist.

  I sighed. “Looks like we all have a lot of work to do.” Phae had been experimenting with her newfound powers and insights for the last few weeks and found them trickier to tap into than when the Deer elder had first transferred her powers over. It suited her to practise on me, since getting injured had become the norm lately.

  “Yeah, you guys have it real tough,” Barton muttered. “Roan gets to learn how to hone her firepower, and you get to heal her minor scrapes. And then there’s me. You still sure you can’t regenerate these?” He motioned to his legs. “I’d appreciate getting in on the action instead of being constantly benched.”

  Phae hugged her books tighter to her chest. “It just doesn’t work that way, Barton. I can’t heal what was never there.”