Karen returned from her office with a stack of loose paper, which she arranged messily on her lap. She read silently for a few minutes and no one said a word. “This one,” she finally said, “is new. It doesn’t fit with what you were talking about earlier.” She rubbed her belly with an open palm. She was frowning slightly. “But it’s been bothering me, and I’d like to try it out.”
“Is it a love story at all?” Anna said. “Will we be scared?”
“Yes,” Karen said. “No. It’s about a forest, and two foxes, and a wolf.” She hesitated. “And a woman,” she finally said. “You might find it upsetting because you have children. But it is about love. It begins as a love story, but it becomes something else, too.”
“Okay,” Sasha said. He was fiddling with the fire. He couldn’t get it to work, and there was a brief silence as Karen regarded him. He quit fumbling and sat down. Then she began.
“ONCE UPON A TIME,” she said, “in a tall, thick forest that grew next to a northern village, a small fox lived with his wife. For many years they’d been content, their days together long and full. But when it came time to have a child, and they found they could not—for each child they conceived arrived stillborn, some fur but no breath, and left a stain of blood upon the snow—they were visited by great sadness. Over time this sadness bloomed a shadow, and soon grief hung on their door. The forest fell dark, the nights became long, and the joy they’d previously felt in each other’s company could no longer be found. Days passed with no words of comfort. When, at night, they reached for each other, it was like touching air. This cannot go on, thought the fox. And so, one day he left his tired wife sleeping and returned only as the sun was going down with a human child they could call their own.
“His wife met him at the door. He handed the bundle to her as though it were a great gift, and the small child seemed to glow in her arms. He cried softly, he cuddled, he burrowed directly into his wife’s neck. He was unafraid. She let out one happy sob and brought the swaddled child inside. That night, they fed him milk and meat, poured water from a basin, bathed him with their tongues. He grabbed playfully for their bristly fur. They made a bed out of branches and sang him asleep in a tidy corner of their den.
“In bed that first night, she reached for her husband. I didn’t know what I’d do, she said quietly. Before long, she stole from their bed and returned with the sleeping child in her arms. They listened to the wind outside. It began as a whisper, then grew louder and more fulsome. Boughs cracked and fell. Then it stopped, and it seemed the forest was as quiet as it had ever been.
“In the morning, the child stirred, stretched, and opened his eyes. Welcome, she said. We have been waiting for you our entire lives, and we have so much to tell you.”
KAREN CLEARED HER THROAT. “However,” she said, “bringing this child into their home did not come without complication. For in doing so the fox had broken the oldest rule in the forest, which was this: the separation between the village and woods must always be maintained. This meant that no matter how happy they were, they would always have to hide this child. Any transgression, even a slight breaking of this rule, meant death.”
“By whom?” Anna said.
“Wolf,” Karen said. “He patrolled the woods and kept its boundary. He’d been around in one shape or another for a long time, and killed whomever he pleased, including, years ago, the fox’s father. And the second complication was this,” she continued. “The fox had not found the small child by the river, abandoned for the nuns, as he had told his wife. He’d stolen him from a small house near the edge of the forest. This was not an impulse. He’d watched for weeks from the woods. He’d heard the child’s cry, seen his mother soothe him, and waited patiently until one day, as he knew she would, the woman left her child alone on a blanket on the porch. The fox didn’t hesitate. He slipped on his father’s magic cloak, took on the form of an old man, and, breaking the rule, stepped quickly out of the forest. As he ran away with the child in his arms, he heard the woman calling for him; her cries were like the screaming wind. It was the most desolate sound imaginable.”
Here Karen paused. Sasha had started fiddling with the fireplace again.
“He’d taken the child and left the woman, who had no one else, no husband, no parents, all alone,” she said. “But he thought: what is her unhappiness, compared to ours? This was something he could never tell his wife, for she was kind and knew something of loneliness, and would not forgive him for his cruelty.”
THE CHILD GREW QUICKLY. He learned to turn over, and soon he was sitting by himself. Wherever the fox’s wife went, the child followed her with his eyes, and if she was ever out of sight, he balled his fists and cried quietly until she returned to him. Goodness, she’d say, and sweep him into her arms. I’m not going anywhere.
Each morning, the fox woke before the sun, warmed milk on the stove, brought the sleeping child to his wife. Just a little longer, she’d say to him with the child in her arms, and then I will come help you gather wood and wool for the winter. As the sun went down, he’d return to their den in time to hear his wife humming the child to sleep.
They clipped his fingernails, put them in a jar, cleaned the wax from his ears. They bathed him in the brook, sopped the folds of his legs. Gently washed behind his neck, wiped him clean and dry. They sang late into the night. Soon he fell ill with his first fever, and a fearful stillness descended on the home: perhaps, they thought, this was how they’d lose him. But the fox’s wife dipped a cloth in cool water, spread it across his uncreased forehead, hushed his cries, and waited for him to return to himself. Soon he did. Now you are ours, she said.
And so their early days as a family passed. They were careful, they kept to themselves. There was no before, only after. They were as dear to each other as could be imagined.
“BUT NOTHING LASTS FOREVER,” Karen said, “and soon the weather turned and a sharp feeling began to nag at the fox. He didn’t know what it was. Or, he did know—he had lied to his wife, and he dreaded being found out; and he was afraid that Wolf, who had killed his father, would hear of what he’d done and come for him. No one in the forest had seen Wolf in ages; that didn’t mean he wasn’t there.
“But there was more to it than that. There were days when he spoke to no one, and no one spoke to him; when the child would cry if he held him; when his wife became impatient with him. He felt excluded, and soon began to feel sorry for himself. He wanted to say: you should be grateful for what I’ve done! I put my life in great danger for your happiness! But then, of course, he would remember that he’d lied to his wife and told her he found the child by the river.”
Karen turned a page and continued. “She too noticed the distance growing between them. There’s no such thing as too much happiness, she told him one night. She picked up the sleeping child’s arm and dropped it gently. Everything else sorts out.”
Nils adjusted his legs. It seemed that the couch had grown softer, and now curled around them in the dimly lit room. Anna had her eyes closed. Suddenly, the fire whooshed to life, and Sasha sat down next to Karen. He put his arm around her. “There,” he said. In the low firelight, and sitting beside her, he looked older than he had during dinner. “That’s better, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Karen said. “Much.”
WITH WINTER CAME DARKNESS and snow, the sense of an ending, but also the turning and blossoming of something else, and one cold morning the fox wandered a great distance from home. He stepped lightly, followed a path cut by a frozen stream through the woods. He had no destination in mind. Bare branches, encased, glistened with ice. There was no sound that was not muffled, and the gray winter sky felt dense and close.
Soon, and for reasons he couldn’t understand, he began to feel light-headed. He paused to catch his breath. Suddenly, he had a vision of the forest from a great height, as though he soared above it. He shook his head. Next, he smelled summer grasses, though they were buried in snow. This is strange, he thought. I must be very tired. He fou
nd a small hollow under a great oak tree and soon fell into a deep sleep in which he dreamed he was wandering the forest, looking for a handful of berries he’d lost. Then he dreamed of his wife before their child—he saw her in bed, waiting for him. His body began to quiver. It was not a dream he wanted to end. But soon the image of his wife began to drip at its edges, and he felt fear rise in his throat. His wife gave way to a vision of Wolf, lurking in the forest, watching him with his viscous, yellow eyes. He could smell Wolf’s decaying breath. His father was there.
WHEN HE WOKE, it was to the sound of anxious chirping. What have I done? he thought. When he arrived home, his wife met him at the door. Where were you? she said. I was worried. Nowhere, he said. Well, she said, we have news.
With this she stepped aside. The child sat in the middle of the floor. Then, with one chubby arm, he reached for a stool, pulled himself standing, and began to take his first steps.
He’s been working all day just to show you, his wife said. She was beaming.
The fox knew it wasn’t true, and that she’d said it only to include him. She rested her head on his shoulder.
He will want to go outside, the fox finally said. It’s too dangerous.
I know, his wife said. I’ve thought of that.
She stood and retrieved a child-sized vest she had sewn from the fox’s own cloak, and with a flourish she draped it gently across the child’s shoulders. Now, rather than a human child holding on to the stool, there appeared a small fox. My father would not have liked this, the fox thought. Then he said so to his wife.
Your father isn’t here, she said. And no one will ever know.
“THE CHILD GREW,” said Karen. “His hair was black and knotted, his eyes were like little dark stones. He was sweet-natured, curious about every little thing.” She coughed and adjusted the pages in front of her. “Every morning, before leaving their den, they dressed him in his vest, and every night upon returning they hung it near the fire to dry. They were wary of the magic contained in this cloak, but it allowed them to leave their den, and with the child appearing to all like a fox, perhaps they wouldn’t even warrant a second glance. The child clung to the fox’s back, and they ran through the cold in the falling snow. They trotted, they gamboled, they hunted together. The forest in winter was beautiful, and there were mornings where it felt to the fox and his wife as if the trees and sky and rolling hills, the blue-lit afternoons and evenings, had been created for them alone.
“But still there were some nights the fox could not sleep, and on those nights he found himself wondering about the child’s real mother. Sometimes she appeared to him in his dreams, walking through the forest, calling for her child, heartbroken, bereft. In these dreams, she moved through the woods, looking behind every tree, in every den. Other times he imagined her as a pale, long-fingered ghost who came into the forest not to find her child but to kill whomever had taken him. She moved like the wind; she would not stop. Often, he’d wake just as she had found them, and he would go and stand at the door and listen to the night sounds in the forest until he calmed down.
“This small, small child,” Karen continued. “His wife could not be without him, nor he without her. He would not eat unless it was she offering food. When the fox held him, singing, he would not sleep until his wife gently took him back into her arms. Time passed; they were content. But one night, looking directly at the ceiling while his wife slept, he thought: she is wrong, there is such a thing as too much happiness. If it announces itself too garishly, someone will come to snatch it away.”
SASHA STOOD UP to get a drink.
“What do you do with a story like this?” Nils asked. “When you’re done, I mean.”
“I suppose that when I have enough of them, I’ll put them all together and make a book.”
“I read these stories when I was a kid,” Anna said. “I couldn’t get enough.”
“Right,” said Karen.
“I’m back,” announced Sasha, and sat down near Nils.
“So,” Karen said, and looked down at the pages in front of her. “He can’t stop thinking about this woman, the child’s mother. There are some days when, for reasons he can’t quite explain, she enters his every waking thought. It’s alarming to him, and unexpected. He doesn’t know what to do.”
“Right,” Sasha said. “We got that.”
“No,” Karen said, “like, he really thinks about her.” She stopped here and looked at Anna. “This isn’t a children’s story. It’s something else.”
“I’m sorry,” Anna said. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Excuse me,” she said, and stood. She walked down the hall to the bathroom. While she was gone, no one spoke. The fire was blue at its base, and licked the fake logs in a hypnotic, predictable way. When Anna returned, she sat near the edge of the sofa, close to, but not touching, her husband.
“Where were we?” Karen said. She looked at the page in front of her for where she’d left off.
“He’s thinking about the woman,” Nils said. “The child’s mother.”
“Yes,” Karen said. “Right. Time passed, and this unsettled feeling did not go away. It felt to the fox as though the woman were reaching out to him across some other plane, some dark dimension he couldn’t quite see. He was deeply bothered by this feeling. It would not let him go. And so one day, even though he knew it was not a great idea, he left home and went in search of her.”
THOUGH HE KNEW WHERE the woman lived, the fox was apprehensive about returning. He walked for most of the day and then paused at the edge of the woods. With a backwards glance, he drew the cloak over his shoulders. He felt the transformation in his chest, painful but quick.
The child’s house was as he remembered: red door, peeling shutters. The garden grew untended and wild. Dry sticks lay across the brittle lawn and he was careful with his steps as he approached.
It appeared that no one was home. He looked in one window, then another. He saw the woman’s bed was unmade. The kitchen smelled of rotting food. The child’s room was untouched, as though he were expected back at any moment.
Then he saw her: thin and dressed in her nightclothes, she sat alone in front of the fireplace. He couldn’t see her face. He cupped his hands to the window, and then, as if she knew he was there, she stood and made her way across the room. She moved slowly and gracefully, walked as though she were the ghost he’d seen in his dreams. Leave, his thoughts commanded him, but he could not. She pulled at him with a strange gravity, and he found himself wanting to speak to her. Her hair was matted and snarled, the hem of her nightgown stained with mud. She had been in the forest, after all.
He retreated to the woods until night fell. He tried to clear his head but could not: it felt as though his brain had become gauze. When it was dark he returned, stood by her window, and watched as she lay down in her empty bed, closed her eyes, and slept. He did not know what to do. Finally, he wrapped the cloak around his shoulders, climbed through the window, and slipped into the bed next to her. She smelled like an animal at the end of its life. Her very breath was sorrow. Even in sleep she must’ve known he was not her child, but nonetheless she curled around him, pulled him to the hollow of her rancid chest, and fell into a deeper dream, the deepest there was. She called to her child, wanting only him. He remained in her embrace and listened.
Finally, he pulled away. He left through the window, closed it, and swept his footprints from the garden’s bed. On the front porch, he left the child’s blanket, and on top of that a pile of small bones. It would hurt at first, he knew, but it was better this way.
“TIME PASSED AND THE FOX JUST … did nothing,” Karen said. “Now and then he returned to the house and lay with the woman, but that soon stopped, and soon he found he could live with the pain he’d caused, and the lie he’d told his wife, simply by pretending he hadn’t done anything wrong. In fact, it was a secret he liked keeping. Occasionally, a vision of the woman haunted him, but mostly she didn’t, and the fox family lived happily for a while. They kept
to themselves, but their old friends understood, and soon stopped visiting. All families turn inward over time. It is what happens when a child arrives. Habits are broken, and new habits are formed, clung to. It’s one of the old stories. It’s how you stay safe.”
There was a loud sound from the kitchen, followed by a rush of water. “That’s just the dishwasher,” Sasha said. “It’s a piece of garbage.”
“Anyway,” Karen continued, “soon the leaves began to change and the days grew cold and short, and the fox, in his state of contentedness, forgot about the woman in the village and what he’d done. But one winter morning he woke early and knew something wasn’t right: the forest was a little too quiet, the sun late in rising. He crept out of bed and went outside. When it should have been light, it was dark. Where he should’ve smelled a crisp winter morning, he smelled something animal and foul. He blinked his eyes and swatted at his nose to clear the stench. And when he looked up, he saw that Wolf had come, and now sat near his door.
“Wolf was enormous and lanky. He moved rarely, and only when he felt like it. His eyes were yellow and depth-less, unblinking; he thought in a slow and deliberate way. The fox hadn’t seen him in years, and he felt his stomach drop in fear.
“It’s so strange, Wolf finally said. A human in the woods. What is she looking for, I wonder? The fox shook his head. He could not speak. I know you’ve seen her, Wolf said. And I know where you go at night. Then he stood. His mouth was a black gaping pit. It’s not something we can have, he finally said. It just isn’t.
“The fox felt urine stream down his rooted leg. He was remembering his father. He closed his eyes and prepared for his own life to end. But when it didn’t, he slowly uncovered his head. He opened his eyes and with relief realized that Wolf hadn’t mentioned his wife or the child. He nodded at Wolf and said he would not see the woman again. At this, Wolf laughed. And then he opened his mouth and commenced with a great yawn. We’ll see, he said. And with that, he turned and walked slowly back into the forest.”
Farthest South & Other Stories Page 9
