‘What does this game consist of?’
A-lobo climbed to his feet and shook himself.
‘Come on – I-I-I’ll show you.’
He walked leisurely down to the rails and Camio followed him, very curious now as to what was going to happen. A-lobo selected a spot in between the rails of one track, lying across the chunky gravel, his head on a wooden sleeper.
‘Like this,’ he said.
Camio went and lay beside his new friend, wondering what they should be sniffing or listening for. Perhaps A-lobo knew of some kind of creature, a rat perhaps, that travelled underneath the rail, and he was waiting in ambush for such an animal?
‘What are we waiting for?’ he whispered, after they had been lying there for some time.
‘Sssshhhh.’
So Camio went quiet again. It was pleasant enough, between the rails, with the warm sun on their backs and the breezes passing overhead. He could almost drop off to sleep, except that a train might come along. He closed his eyes and dreamed of a land where there were no trains or cars, and where the mountains had white tips to them. The sun ran warm fingers through his russet coat until even his fleas were dozing. He remembered such a day, in the old land, when he had been with his mate by a stream which cut through the suburbs. The humans hardly went there any more, since most of the bank had been concreted and fenced off from the street and much of the water ran through underground tunnels. So there were fish to be had, in the shade of bridges and building overhangs: careless fish, that were easily snapped from the water when they rose to feed on the surface. He and his mate had eaten their fill and were sunning themselves on the concrete, with the trucks rumbling by creating pleasant vibrations …
Camio woke with a start. The rails were rattling and jumping as if they were alive! There was a noise in the near distance, which grew louder by the second. Even the gravel was beginning to tremble as if it were hot and excited.
A train!
Camio jumped to his feet.
‘Train coming!’ he yelled.
As he leaped away he felt the slipstream of the monster blow him sideways, and the scream of its passage through the air stunned him with its mere volume. His brain jangled with the roar and rush of wind and sound, as he came down heavily on his side, striking the hard earth between the rails and the grass verge. Just inches away, the railway train still careered along the steel strips, its wheels singing a loud metallic death song which hurt Camio’s ears and drove terror into his heart. He thought it would never stop: that it would go on forever, or until he was completely insane. Never had he been so close to a train before, and he knew that if he had been just a moment later in jumping, there would not have been enough meat left from his corpse to satisfy a small carrion crow. Most of him would be plastered upon metal, a smudge of hair and blood. The machine was indeed a mighty beast that punched great volumes of air out of its way as it sped along, invincible, immortal, irresistible, and noisier than a thousand foxes screaming their banshee screams in unison.
Then the train was gone.
Camio, still badly shaken, staggered to his feet and looked around him. Poor A-lobo, he was sure, had not got away in time. Yes, there he was, lying between the tracks as still as death, his ragged, moulting coat fluffed by Switter, or whatever the spring breezes were called in this strange land. Poor A-lobo. How pathetic he looked, lying there on the sharp gravel, his nervous soul twitching its way through his mouth, finding the passage from this now useless body a slow, laborious task.
Suddenly, the corpse sat up! There was a dull gleam in A-lobo’s eyes which reminded Camio of the time he had seen another fox eat an unusual, viridescent mushroom with a livid bloom on its canopy.
‘You’re – you’re alive,’ said the amazed Camio. ‘But the train – it went right over you.’
‘Ahhh – that’s – that’s the game,’ replied A-lobo in a voice like honey trickling from a fractured beehive. ‘The excitement – wonderful, wasn’t it? Every time I do it, I say to myself, this is it, this is the day you die, A-lobo. Always, as the train thunders over you, its metal hooks missing you by fractions, there’s the feeling of panic, the almost irresistible urge to run. But you have to resist it – to run is death. To run is the end of all. So you lie there, enclosed by roaring metal, spinning steel on both sides and a rushing river of steel above you, knowing if you move a muscle you will lose your head – lose it completely – you can almost picture your severed head, bouncing along the gravel – your limp, squashed corpse being dragged along like a red rag. You lie there as still as stone, enduring the terrible noise, until the light returns and the sound recedes, and you know you’ve done it again. You’ve beaten fear. You’ve met it face to face in mortal combat and you have won – won, won, won. The elation! I love it.’ His face had a faraway look on it: the same kind of look that the jackal had had when telling Camio about The Land of the Lions.
During this speech A-lobo had not stuttered once and Camio noticed a confidence in the animal that had not been there before, that was absent for most of the time. Clearly ‘the game’ did something for A-lobo, which helped him, but whatever it was, Camio did not need it. He could do without it quite well.
‘You almost got me killed,’ he said, not without a little anger.
A-lobo looked surprised.
‘Did I?’
‘You should have told me – given me the choice,’ replied Camio. ‘I would like to have been given the choice.’
‘But you would have said no.’
‘Of course I would – its madness …’
‘And you would never have got to try it. You might have liked it, but unless you try it you can’t find that out, can you?’
‘I don’t have to jump into a fire to know I’m going to burn.’
A-lobo shook his head. ‘I’ve heard that sort of argument before. It’s not the same thing.’ He paused, then asked tentatively, ‘D-did you enjoy it?’
‘Enjoy is not a word I would associate with my feelings for this game of yours. I jumped – the train almost hit me. No, this kind of foolishness is not for me.’
A-lobo shrugged, nodding his one-eyed, one-eared head.
‘Well, I’m sorry about that. My mate did the same thing, the first time she tried it. For a long while she just watched me do it, and then one day she tried it herself. She panicked though and jumped just before the train reached us, like you did.’
‘So, she must have told you the same thing I have.’
‘She didn’t tell me anything. The train hit her. She’s dead.’
Camio was too shocked to say anything for the moment.
The pair of them spent the rest of the day looking for sandwiches along the line and finding what A-lobo called gubbins. It passed the time until evening. Some humans came along the line during the darkness, to light up the track with lamps, and they had a fire going in a punctured oil drum, which filled the night with fumes that A-lobo gulped greedily down into his lungs. He was disinclined to move just because the humans were nearby, so Camio stayed with him, but remained cautious the whole time they were there.
Towards dawn, he said to A-lobo, ‘I think I want to get away from here – out of the city.’
‘L-leave the face? Whatever for?’ The stutter had returned.
‘I’m not used to it. I think I want to get out a bit, on the edge of this face of yours. How far is it, do you know? Could I walk it in a night?’
A-lobo shook his battered head.
‘I don’t know, but I think it’s a l-long way – much further than you think. I’ve walked these r-r-rails all over, and I’ve never been where the buildings stop. Maybe you should think about st-staying?’
‘No – I’ve made up my mind. I’m going as soon as I can.’
‘Th-th-then the only thing I can suggest is, you jump a train.’
‘Do what?’
‘There are some t-trains with big open box-cars and no people in them. If I take you to the place where they stop for the n
ight, you can get inside one and wait until it halts again, out of the ci-city. I knew a fox who did it all the time – went everywhere on trains. You can do it if you’re not afraid …’
‘I’m not exactly happy about the idea, but I think it might work – providing I don’t get caught.’
‘I think you’ll be all right. Th-these men don’t carry guns or anything. They m-m-might chase you a little way, but have you ever been caught by a man on foot?’
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘Well – there you are then.’
That night A-lobo took him along to the depot, where trains were lying idle, waiting for the morning to arrive before moving off to places unknown. There was a faint hope in Camio’s breast that he might find himself in his own home, or perhaps The Land of the Lions, if the train went fast and far enough. It was only a very dim hope though, because if he had learned one thing at the zoo, it was that the world was vast and the chances of finding a single square mile on it, by accident, was a very remote possibility.
They found him a suitable box-car, with straw in the corner for him to lie underneath, and then they said goodbye.
‘Y-you think we’ll see each other again?’ asked A-lobo.
‘It’s doubtful, isn’t it? Anyway, you’ll be dead soon – knocked down by a train.’
A-lobo shook his head firmly.
‘No. Not that. Probably the mange, or someone coming up on my deaf side, without me knowing. At l-least I’ll go with the smell of the railways in my nostrils.’
‘If that’s what you want …’
‘Yes – I’m a railway fox. You – you’re one of the strangest I’ve ever met – and one of the best. You talk funny and you say some peculiar things, but you’re a good fox, Camio.’
‘Thanks. Keep your head down for me, A-lobo …’
And with those parting words, he leaped up into the car and buried himself beneath the sweet-smelling straw, ready for his journey into the unknown. He would have been lying to himself if he said that he was not afraid, but there was something of the excitement that A-lobo found in his ‘game’ rushing around his veins. It was to do with reaching out into the unknown. When he had been with his mate, in the old country, he had definitely been a stayner – but now he had done some travelling, why there was no reason not to become a longtrekker. The problem with that was, you never knew when you might end up in some bad part of the world, where foxes were run down by hunters in open-topped cars, carrying expensive guns that were difficult to miss with, even given that they had bleary-eyed drunks looking down the telescopic sights. Or even wander on to a fox farm, where you were kept in cages like at the zoo, and well fed, but where the inmates ‘disappeared’ mysteriously from time to time, even though they were in healthy, prime condition.
Perhaps, now that I’m more worldly, thought Camio, I will become a longtrekker, like my father?
He was thinking about it when they slid the doors shut, leaving him in darkness. After a while the train began to move off and Camio, who did not like the sensation of motion, pressed his head against the wooden floor and hoped that this would not be the train that would separate A-lobo’s soul from his body, even though that body was a little worn and wretched.
Not this train, he thought. I don’t want it to carry A-lobo along with us as gubbins, to the suburbs. It would be a bad way to start a new life. Some other train, when he’s old and grey and his bowels are giving him a bad time. This is my train.
PART THREE
The Coming of the Stranger
Chapter Ten
Spring had arrived on the back of Switter, the breeze carrier, and there were births all around the badger sett: in the bushes, on the ground, under the earth. In the trees of Trinity Wood, eggs were cracking and blind heads, mouths open, emerged from the shell. The urgent cheeping of newborn birds mingled with the mewling of mammal young.
If O-ha had been a weaker fox, she might have resented the coming of spring, but in fact she was happy to smell the apple and cherry blossom, and did not mind the sounds of the young that filled the air. Her heart was still heavy, both for her mate and her cubs, but she contented herself with refreshing her memory of both, sitting once a day in the traditional pose of the mourner, her forelegs crossed and her tail straight out and flat against the ground. Gar realised that his friend was still grieving and came to visit her as often as his temperament would allow.
One evening, they were sitting in her chamber. Gar was remarking on the freshness of the world outside: how clear the streams were in the spring, and how good the soil smelled. Neither foxes nor badgers are much interested in the way the world decks itself out visually, in pretty blossoms, wild flowers and greenery. It is not the garnish that interests them, but the clarity and aromas that such dressings bring with them.
‘You see the gaers – the ‘grass’ you call it – how sweet it is coming to the tongue at this time? Eh? No more hagolian, this hail, bang, bang, bang …’
‘Yes, this is a good season. I like it very much,’ O-ha replied.
‘So,’ Gar said, ‘you were telling me from this halga gast, this spirit-time of foxes – what you call it?’
‘The Firstdark.’
‘Ya – that the thing. We badger have something like, when Fruma-ac-Geolca – this is first two badgers who live on world – they find each other and make love – come ten thousand badgers from this mating, all one time, half, half. Some badger not grow and these become weasel, otter and stoat, who are cousins of Gar but not like by Gar … so, this Firstdark very like same badger, I think?’
‘It sounds like the same. Our Great Ancestor is A-O, who was both male and female in one, and who gave birth to A-wan and O-won, before changing into a great lake of water. Because it could not breathe under the water, the land rose up from underneath to get to the air, and A-O was split into many parts, which are now our ponds and streams, our lakes and rivers. It is A-O we drink to cleanse our souls, and A-O who washes our coats, to cleanse our bodies.
‘A-wan and O-won were giants, left by their mother-father to fight for a place in the new world. They battled with the rocks and stones, who wanted to cover the ground so that they could prevent the trees from coming and casting shade, and thereby sun themselves for eternity. A-wan gathered up all the stones he could find, in his mouth, and spat them out into a great pile. O-won did the same with the rocks. Then they both turned their backs on the piles and sprayed them with earth, using their paws to dig. Soon the trees marched into the land and covered the new hills, one of which we live on now, the other is on the far side of the river, beyond the marshes …’
‘I know it – I know it,’ said Gar. He seemed fascinated by the tales and so O-ha was encouraged to continue.
‘Next, the two giant cubs fought with the wolves and …’ she was about to say ‘badgers’ but changed her mind, quickly, ‘dogs and other beasts, for a right to live in the world. There were many other terrible beasts at that time, put on the earth by the giant Groff, the secret agent of the humans, who were waiting for a chance to sneak into the world when the other animals were not looking. Groff took the clouds and fashioned them into false creatures called gryphons, senmurvs, dragons, chimeras – lots of strange forms – to confuse the foxes and real animals and to do battle with them. O-won found out from a king-hound that she trapped in her mouth, that these fabulous beasts were not real, so she swallowed stone which went molten in her belly, and then she defecated the lava over Groff’s false creatures. The stone cooled and solidified immediately, leaving the gryphons and dragons trapped inside a hard shell. When humans eventually managed to creep into the world, aided by the dogs and cats who formed paths for them from the ocean-of-chaos, they took Groff’s creations and put them on their gateposts and buildings as totems to warn away the rightful owners of the land they had stolen.’
‘Ha! I have seen this creatures, on gate at manor. And on church place. Yes, I wonder then how such ugly things came to be. So, now I understand. Of course,’
he puffed out his chest, ‘at same time badger was making great tunnels through earth, building places for rabbit, mole and badger himselves. Funny thing,’ he paused, ‘we badger sometimes eat rabbit, but sometimes live in same sett and not bother…’ He changed the subject, ‘But then, I think, fox not live underground, eh?’
‘No. In those days we lived out in the woodlands and grasslands, and only had to come down here with the badgers and rabbits when men started to hunt us with dogs. We have lived underground for so long now we’re used to it.’
The pair of them continued to exchange stories about the beginnings of the world, until well into the night, after which O-ha went out to find food. She went into the havnot, chased and caught a rabbit, and satisfied her hunger.
When she was returning to the sett, just as the dawn rays were striking the topmost whips of a crack willow, turning them a yellow-red, a distant rumble made O-ha halt in her tracks. She was using the main highway from the farm to Trinity Wood, and the sound seemed to be coming from the direction of the village. However, it was much nearer than the houses and its exact location was probably somewhere on the road between the village and the manor house.
She licked her nose and tested Switter, but the breeze was too light to carry scents for very far. The sound was of heavy machines, bigger and louder than tractors or any of the farm equipment, though it might possibly be a group of combine harvesters. But why a group? And in this season? She did not understand it. Something was happening in her parish which was out of the ordinary.
Had it been later in the year, during Melloon and shortly before the dispersal of cubs, then she might have put the noise down to vehicles en route for the manor house. Autumn was the time when the humans came out to ring known coverts, cracking whips and hallooing to create a panic amongst the foxes. The juveniles caught out on their own, without their parents, were the most likely victims. Mature foxes, versed in these invasions, usually managed to evade the hunters by slipping away, despite the noise. Foxes born that year, however, were unused to such a row and the less knowledgeable, those unable to keep their heads, often made stupid rushes at the ring of men and were shot down within yards.
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