‘A-ho has undergone a release,’ said A-konkon. ‘He’s quite happy where he is.’
‘I know he’s gone to a nice place,’ she said. ‘A better place than this – but I still feel terrible. He might be happy, but I feel bad. I don’t understand why. I mean, if the land beyond death is a happy place, why do I fell so bad?’
A-konkon folded his paws over one another and looked her directly in the eyes.
‘Grief is a complex thing,’ he said. ‘We do not grieve because someone is dead, but because they are no longer alive. They have left us.’
‘You mean, it’s selfish.’
‘It has selfish elements, certainly, but there are all sorts of other emotions entangled with bereavement. We might feel guilty because we treated them badly at some time, or because we feel responsible for their death …’
She saw a lot of truth in this last statement.
‘… the fact is, we can’t reach them any more, to talk to them about these things, so they’re difficult to work through. The important thing is not to idealise A-ho. He was not a perfect fox – he had good and bad in him, like all of us. He made mistakes, he had his faults.’
O-ha wanted to argue with this, but wisely kept her tongue.
‘What I’m trying to tell you is that although we believe A-ho has gone to a better land, we still have to work through this storm of emotions within us, to prise them out slowly, and leave us to get on with life.’
‘Believe?’ she contested hotly. ‘I know he’s gone to a better place. I saw the fox-spirit, remember.’
‘You saw, no one else. Think. If we believe in something strongly enough – which we all do about the Perfect Here – then isn’t it possible that our brains, fevered by emotion, might produce what we want to know?’
‘You mean, I had a hallucination?’ She was getting very angry with A-konkon.
‘It’s possible. Anything’s possible. The Perfect Here is possible. What it is not, is a certainty.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, coldly, ‘for your help.’
‘You’re entirely welcome – I shan’t expect payment for a couple of months, but once the weather turns and the hunting gets better …?’
Before she left she again asked A-konkon if he could offer some advice about finding a new earth, but he shrugged that question off impatiently.
‘Material needs are not my concern. I can help your soul, your mind, but not your body. You must do that for yourself. Personally, I think an earth is an unnecessary luxury.’
Nevertheless, unsatisfactory as her talk with A-konkon had appeared to be, she felt a little more fortified. He had angered her to a certain extent, with his useless words, and there is nothing like anger to oust other less welcome emotions. He might not need an earth, but in her condition, she certainly did. Later, it came to her that A-konkon might have said what he said on purpose, in order to redirect her anger. It had raised her out of her apathy and got her searching for a new home.
She decided he was a very wise fox, after all. His methods were so subtle they had almost escaped her.
It was at this time too, that she began a project quite difficult for a fox. She began composing a song in her head to her departed mate. The first lines were: You came and went, like a season never … But eventually she decided to abandon the song lines since it was such a thought-consuming task, which worried her even during sleep, and she had more practical things to concern her. It upset her a great deal that she could not complete this artistic monument to A-ho, since once she had all the lines in her head, she could sing it to the wind and it would be in the world forever, as permanent as a mountain. The wind would re-sing it for her, in the reeds on the marshes, in the branches of a tree, around the corners of buildings.
However, it was painfully slow and difficult to complete such an enormous task, and O-ha saw the impossibility of abandoning herself to this creative work, while she was searching for a home, thinking about her cubs and generally coping with the ache of bereavement. Strangely enough, grief did not help her in her efforts at composition. It intruded, got in the way of those old feelings, those old ways, in the life she had enjoyed with A-ho. One of the reasons for this, she had to admit to herself, was a tiny icicle of resentment towards A-ho, for abandoning her, for going away and leaving her behind. This cold spike of bitterness, she knew, was unreasonable and quite stupid of her but she could not deny its presence in her. A-ho had not died on purpose and she felt terribly guilty having such a grotesque emotion at such a time, but it would not go away.
Chapter Five
There was a storm, with rain coming down like lead shot and battering the saplings, forcing them into a position of genuflection. They bowed low, as if the weight of the heavy, black bull-clouds was borne by their supple stems. Giant goat-gods fought in the heavens, their eyes flashing in terrible anger, their great skulls crashing together and shaking the skies. Through this driving rain, light and noise, O-ha stumbled around, looking for a home. She was still numb with the shock of her loss to be concerned by the weather, but it hampered her search.
For a whole day, O-ha searched Trinity Wood for any empty earth, or something that could be turned into a home for herself and her unborn cubs. She found an earth on the north side, but it turned out to be occupied by a stoad, that is an elderly fox whose age entitled her to a certain respect and esteem. A-magyr had hinted earlier that he was a stoad, but in fact he was far too active to fall into that category. This one was a testy vixen who did not want a young parent-to-be invading her earth. She screeched at O-ha, telling her to find some other place.
‘Have you no heart?’ said O-ha. ‘My mate has just been killed and our earth filled in. I need somewhere to stay, just for a while.’
‘No heart, whatsoever,’ snapped the stoad. ‘I lost it a long while ago, and I don’t remember the last time I had a mate, so you won’t get any sympathy out of me on that score. Dirty, messy creatures, dog foxes – wouldn’t want one anyway,’ she muttered.
O-ha was too weary and dispirited to fight with the stoad and she left, to wander the woods again. By the time the moon was high, she had found a large oak and was curled up in a hollow between the half-exposed roots. It was cold and damp, however, and she knew if she did not find shelter soon, she might put her unborn cubs in danger. The hard edge of winter was cutting into her like a blade. There was snow in the air and Ransheen had increased in force since the darkness had fallen.
One day, she thought to herself, we shall win some victories back over men and dogs.
In this way, she kept her spirit warm, if her body remained frozen. They were in fact, idle words, since the damage was done and nothing could repair it. She was entitled to her wrath, but as with most creatures, it would remain contained and not be transmuted into direct action against her enemy. O-ha would remember, and possibly never forgive, but to attempt to punish the perpetrator of the crime would do nothing to restore A-ho to her side and would probably result in her own death.
The following morning she shook a light fall of snow from her fur and staggered to the edge of the wood. There she dug as well as she could in the humus, looking for earthworms to eat. She found a rotten log, full of dozing woodlice, which she devoured along with bits of sodden wood. Then she licked what moisture she could from the grasses, in the form of snow, before setting off again to search for a home.
The day seemed full of angles and sharp edges. The sky was a hard blue, with little relief. Even the sunlight seemed cold. Her body trembled as she wandered in the hav beyond the wood, along the ditches and hedgerows. Once, she came across another pair of foxes, O-lan and A-lon, but they told her there was no room in the earth. The vixen was pregnant, like O-ha, and would soon be having a litter.
‘We’d like to help you,’ said O-lan, ‘but our earth is small. It’s clay and you know how hard clay gets in the winter. You can’t scrape out a hole big enough to store an acorn, let alone a place big enough for another fox. Sorry, but there it is.’
As she stumbled away, A-lon ran after her and she turned to face him.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’ve just remembered something. There’s a colony of badgers on the south side of Trinity Wood – a large sett. Why don’t you ask them if they’ll take you in? It’s a fairly common arrangement, you know, for badgers to share their homes with us. You’ll probably be expected to contribute to their larder occasionally, but – well, you haven’t got a lot of choice at the moment, have you?’
‘You think they will?’
‘You can ask. One of my brothers lives with badgers. He gets on all right with them … and I have a friend –’
‘A-lon!’ called his mate, probably a little worried about the length of time he was spending with this homeless vixen.
‘Well – good luck,’ he said.
‘Thanks – thanks very much. I’ll give them a try if nothing else turns up.’
She spent the rest of the day searching, occasionally grabbing a bite of this or that, to keep her on her feet. She found some running water in a ditch. By the time evening came again, she was still in the same situation. Being near to the south side of the wood, she searched for the entrances to the badgers’ sett. There was a depression in the snow at the base of an elm which she cleared, and found a hole. She went down, into the darkness, and along a sixty-foot tunnel. The smell of badgers was strong in her nostrils and she could hear them moving about in adjacent chambers. While she was not afraid of badgers, she felt insecure in one of their tunnels. They were extremely powerful creatures who could certainly kill her if they wished. She was by no means sure of a welcome.
She came to a point where the tunnel opened up into a chamber and a voice cried, ‘Feond oder freond?’ in harsh tones. Although it was completely dark in the sett, O-ha had a good mental picture of her surroundings from senses other than sight, which included an awareness factor which could not be named or even explained, but which animals who live underground have developed through countless millennia. She knew she was confronted by a large, elderly male badger.
‘Fox,’ she said, not understanding the guttural tongue of the badger. ‘I … I lost my earth. The humans destroyed it.’
‘Guman destroy? Ah, I speak some fox. You lost, eh?’
‘No – I was wondering, hoping that you had some room? A spare chamber? I have nowhere to live.’
The badger grunted.
‘Ah, no-home fox, eh? We got plenty room. You want stay, eh? I ask the others. You wait here. No move yet, see.’
‘I’ll stay here,’ she replied, relieved.
There was a shuffling from the other side of the chamber and then silence. She waited for some time before there were sounds of the badger returning. By this time she was getting used to the unusual smells of a foreign earth, and had begun to feel more confident.
‘Others say you stay – most say. You no bother us, eh? You keep yourself and no bother. I show you bed, top level.’
‘That’s very kind …’ she began to say, but the badger merely said gruffly, ‘Follow.’
The badger took her up to the second level, to a chamber which felt quite roomy and which had dry bedding on the floor. First, she marked the chamber under the disapproving eyes of the badger, then she regarded the dry grass and leaves. She was not used to a bed, having a fox’s ascetic nature, but this time she sank gratefully on to the warm leaves, her eyes closing almost as her head touched her paws. She heard the badger saying, ‘You go out through top hole. No come through my hole no more, see …’ Then she was asleep.
On waking the next morning, she stretched out a paw to touch A-ho. She wondered, sleepily, why she could not hear or smell him. Then bewilderment followed, as she failed to recognise anything about the dark chamber in which she found herself.
‘A-ho?’ she whispered, a little afraid. Where was he? Out hunting perhaps, hoping to surprise her with a rabbit or some other kind of food? Where was the scent of his marks? Why did the earth not smell of his warm, musty fur, his sleep-odours?
Where was this place in which she found herself?
She searched the floor for her mate, still confused, and wondered whether she was still asleep and dreaming some horrible dream. If she could just speak with her mate, then she might be able to orientate herself.
Then, at last, she remembered the events of two days ago: the hunt and the fox-spirit leading her to her mate’s torn body. She remembered that A-ho had gone: would never return. The sense of loss was even more overwhelming than it had been the previous day and night, since the full impact of his death descended on her like a heavy coat, smothering her. Grief, the pain of the spirit, is worse than physical hurt, since it has no remedy outside time, and because no sufferer can see into the future to a point where the pain ceases, it is eternal. Such grief brings with it almost total internal collapse. The body walks around, while the spirit lies still, in an agony of darkness and despair.
The previous day she had woken in the wood and remembered that A-ho had gone, and this had immediately choked her spirit and caused her to acknowledge her pain, but waking and forgetting he had gone, then to remember, was far worse. It was something she would do many times, for seasons out of time, and it would never cease to cause her spiritual torment.
With heavy heart she found the tunnel and was about to go along it when she recalled the badger’s last words. She was not to use that way. There was a second, narrower, exit on the far side of the chamber and she found that this led to the surface within thirty feet, without entering any other chambers. She went outside and visited A-ho’s sowander just that once. Thereafter she never returned to that exact spot, since there was no comfort to be had in crossing the path of the dead. Also, it was a dangerous place. She had a duty to her unborn cubs now, and her responsibility to them was more important than her own feelings anyway.
During her confinement, O-ha tried to have as little as possible to do with the badgers, simply because they preferred it that way. If she met them in the tunnel, she nodded and said hello, but there was little communication necessary. One evening, however, just before she was due to leave the sett and search for food, the badger who had first spoken to her, came to her chamber. His name was Gar.
‘I come to say how you are?’ he said, settling down.
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘A little lonely, but …’
‘Sure, sure. This is bad thing that happen to your mate. I understand this. Guman, huh!’ He clicked his teeth to show what he thought of mankind. ‘We badger no bother this men. Once they send dog down here – small-middle dog. I bite him – ha!’ Gar bared his ferocious-looking incisors.
O-ha was impressed.
‘You fought a dog?’
‘Ya. Fight him and send him run. We badger very strong animal. We badger, long, long history. We no bother this men, but they all the time try kill badger – some. Many guman not hurt badger, but some … they kill.’
‘Oh, we have a long history too, and they bother us all the time. I don’t know why.’
‘You fox run fast, is why. They like run, guman – run, run, run, for no thing. Crazy animal, guman. Not all. Sometime they give us food, in the little field by house. Watch through window. Look, look, brock eat our food! What they think we do? Push it up nose?’ He grunted, to show his contempt. ‘Gar not worry, though. Gar strong in here,’ he indicated his chest. ‘Men can take old Gar body, but not his soul. Soul belong to no one but Gar.’
She like Gar. He seemed to have found the something which foxes talked about and believed only existed in the spirit world, beyond death.
‘What you should do,’ said Gar, dreamily, ‘is go for long journey. Things happen on long journey. Great things. Make you see the world for sure. Big hill, deep valley, fast, fast river – see all these things. World is big place.’
‘I don’t want to go on a journey. I like my own,’ she said. ‘Boring as that may sound, I like my own. This parish is large enough for me.’
‘I understand,’ said
Gar. ‘Listen, I hear you fox can copy other animal – like sheep, or bird. This is true?’
O-ha said, ‘We can mimic other creatures, yes.’
‘Let me hear – you make bird sound.’
O-ha obliged by chirruping.
‘Ha. That sound like bird. Now sheep.’
She bleated, plaintively, like a lamb calling for its mother.
‘Ha, good. I heard this was true.’
‘Unlagu,’ cried a voice, from one of the other chambers.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked O-ha.
‘Argh, no thing. She asked to be quiet – making noise not allowed, except for chatter-chatter, all time. Loud noise not allowed. Never mind. This is good, we talk. Find out about fox. You find out about badger. What you think, this guman not like fox because run fast, eh?’
‘I think – well, I was told as a young cub that humans have never liked us because we kill chickens.’
‘What means is, fox kill chicken before guman kill chicken, is all. Everybody want eat chicken. Forpan people not like fox.’
She had to confess that she agreed with what he said, but the situation was now well established and unchangeable.
‘Anyway,’ said Gar, ‘they not all hate fox. No, no. I know fox live in guman place. They no kill him. Is only guman on horse – guman with gun – these hate fox.’
‘Those are the only kind I have met,’ said O-ha grimly.
‘Whole world full of other kind. You go on long journey – you see other kind.’
‘I’d rather stay here,’ she repeated.
‘Eall ic waes mid sorgum gedrefed,’ said Gar, incomprehensively and obviously quoting some saying in his own language. ‘Sorrow, sorrow …’ He sighed. ‘Well, I getting back now. Nice to talk. We do some more some time, eh?’ She heard him get to his feet and shuffle out of the chamber, down the tunnel towards his own bed.
She slept after that, dreaming of humans, the secondary fear of foxes. The primary terror, the Unremembered Fear; the Shadow-with-a-thousand-names, all of them forgotten; the White Mask, with its terrible white eyes and white jaws, was never dreamed. It lurked somewhere beyond even the subconscious, deeper than dreams could reach, for its gruesome distorted features marred a face even the bravest of the brave could not visualise without travelling to the borders of madness. Long ago it had been pushed down into the back of the mind, where it could not be retrieved – not without it showed its ugly visage in the land once again, and mercifully that had not happened for some time.
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