Hunter's Moon

by Garry Kilworth

  When he heard the fox cub calling plaintively, he said to Sona, ‘Sounds like they’ve grabbed another fox – a young one. We shan’t get any rest if she keeps that up.’

  ‘Poor creature’s probably frightened. How would you like to be locked up in a cage?’

  ‘Well, of course I wouldn’t,’ replied Stigand, ‘but Betsy must have told her that there’s nothing to worry about. She usually does, you know.’

  ‘Perhaps Betsy wasn’t around when the cub arrived? Sometimes they lock her away, thinking she’s going to frighten any fox they bring in.’

  ‘True. True.’ Stigand began to play with one of his own cubs, knocking her off the altar into the water. The cub squeaked in delight. The fox in the cage became louder in her complaints. Stigand sighed.

  Sona said, ‘Well, if you’re going to reassure her, you might as well do it now, before the sun comes up. You know how irritable you get when your coat dries up.’

  ‘Of course I get testy – it’s uncomfortable. So do you, as a matter of fact. All right, I’ll go and have a word with her, if you think it’ll do any good.’

  He slipped from the altar into the cool waters of the stream and swam to the bank. Once on dry land, he waddled the length of the garden to where the cage stood, and peered through the wire at the little fox that was whining in the corner. He cleared his mind of the Mustelidae in which he had been conversing with Sona, and gathered together his command of Canidae. He prided himself on being fairly adept at languages, and refused to punctuate his speeches with words of his own tongue. What came out was rather stilted, rather precise, but perfectly correct. He was quite sure of this because his badger cousins often remarked on how fluently he spoke Canidae, and swore they could recognise no difference between his use of the language and that of a fox.

  ‘Hello, smallish fox,’ he said. ‘You make quite a clamorous noise for one such as your dimensions.’

  Mitz had never seen an otter before, but her education had been good and her mother had provided her with descriptions of every animal she might ever encounter within her own land. (Camio had provided many that were not indigenous, despite O-ha’s warnings that the cubs might get overloaded with information, and alongside pictures of otters, deer, stoats, weasels and the like, were exotic creatures called elephants, tigers, boa constrictors … ) She stopped yelling and regarded the chocolate-brown creature for a moment, thinking how smooth and sleek it looked in the moonlight.

  ‘Better,’ said the otter. ‘Better indeed that you should fall to quietness on this wonderfully still night, with the stars like stipple on a silver-sided trout …’

  The other seemed to be something of a poet, which was appreciated by one who loved chants and songs as she did, though the otter’s syntax seemed to lack a certain discipline.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  ‘Fine question. Quite logical, if I may say so. My name is Stigand. Stig-and,’ he pronounced it very precisely, in order that there should be no mistakes. ‘I have my holt not far from this region and your complaints have been borne by the wind to my sensitive ears. It is a peaceful night, a tranquil hour – almost holy in its silence – and what a pity it is to spoil such a beautiful night with wailings, unless they be wassails, if you view what I intend. Might I comprehend your own title?’

  Mitz struggled with the sense of this speech which seemed to become more convoluted with each sentence. It was not that the words were strange to her, but they seemed to turn in on each other and the overall effect was a little bewildering.

  ‘My title? Oh, my name. Mitz.’

  ‘And you are almost young, I think?’

  ‘Almost, yes. I’m just about to leave the earth. At least,’ she sighed, ‘I was before this human abducted me.’

  ‘Ah, this is one of the motives why my confederate, Sona, alluded that I speak with you. I have undertaken my journey from the crystal waters of my brook to inform you that there is no requirement for you to be unhappy. This human is not dangerous. I think the dog might have said something?’

  ‘Yes, she did, but you can’t trust dogs. At least, I can’t trust them …’

  ‘Not in the typical course of history, that is true,’ replied Stigand, ‘but here the dog is like the pair with which it cohabits – soft as summer mud to the very medium of its soul. One considers vaguely how such sentimental creatures survive in the mainstream of human activity, but one must judge from the rich supplies of food that they do, rather.’

  ‘So, you think I can trust them all?’

  ‘Without dubiety. The dog can be trusted. The humans can be trusted. Is it certain that we shall now entertain silence?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Mitz.

  ‘Good,’ said the otter, and turned to go, but then seemingly as an afterthought, it asked, ‘My fox talk. You find it well founded in excellence?’

  ‘You speak it very well,’ replied Mitz, ‘only …’

  ‘Only?’ There was a stiffness in the word.

  ‘Only – if only all creatures were as good.’

  The otter nodded.

  ‘This is how I think of things myself, but then otters have this precise gift. Goodbye smallish fox.’

  ‘Goodbye, Stigand.’

  So Mitz spent the rest of the night in quiet contemplation of the world beyond the cage. She heard the hooting of an owl, and the rustlings of the small creatures of the grasslands. With the early morning came a mist that wound itself around the fruit trees in the garden and clung to the branches of the bushes. The day drifted in and spiders’ webs trembled at its coming, the prismatic dew sparkling as the sun shone through the drops. Melloon increased in strength and dandelion seeds began to detach themselves from their host and floated over ground covered with windfalls. As the sun warmed some of the more violent balsams – the jumping jacks and touch-me-nots – there were minor explosions and seeds went flying through the air like pellets from a shotgun. Finches arrived to breakfast on these and other small kernels.

  Mitz fell asleep just as the household began to stir, and she dreamed of her home, of her mother and father, and the dream was full of anxiety.

  She was awakened by the man who came to give her water and food. Then he sat with her for a long time, after having edged himself gradually inside the cage. He made crooning noises the whole time and slowly reached out and touched her once or twice. She watched the hand warily, but did not snap or bite. Eventually he took her up in his arms and stroked her, though she remained stiff and unyielding. It was true that his touch was sure and firm, and if she had to be handled she preferred such a grip. The man knew what he was doing.

  Betsy came out into the garden a little later and when the man saw that the two animals were not going to attack each other, he allowed the dog to go up to the cage.

  ‘How did you spend your night?’ said Betsy.

  ‘How do you think? Would you like to be locked up in a strange place?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t, but you couldn’t be in better hands. He’ll probably let you go today or tomorrow.’

  This was the best news Mitz could have heard. She sat up immediately and said, ‘Are you sure? I mean, how do you know?’

  ‘Oh, he never keeps you foxes for very long.’

  Mitz was relieved.

  ‘I think I believe you,’ she said. ‘There was an otter here last night …’

  ‘Oh, Sona? Or was it Stigand?’

  ‘Stigand. Rather pompous but friendly. He said I should trust you. Since he had nothing to lose by telling me that, except a peaceful night, I decided he was right. My parents will never believe this – me, making friends with a dog. They’re a little prejudiced you know. I suppose most of the older generation are …’

  Betsy said, ‘Well, you can’t blame them. We’ve been at each other’s throats for centuries – ever since men started using us for hunting foxes. Fortunately all that is changing. Some humans find the idea of hunting abominable and try to disrupt it when they see it happening. There will always b
e some of them that will never accept you – but that’s the way of the world.’

  ‘I think the hunts only stopped in our area because the town was built and they can’t go charging through the streets on horseback.’

  ‘That may be right, but I know they have friends that want it all stopped. I’ve spoken to the dogs of these people. They go out on some days to spray things on the ground to mess up the scent.’

  At that point, Betsy was pulled away, since they had been talking to each other for several minutes and the man never seemed sure whether or not their conversations were friendly.

  There were continued efforts on the part of the humans to gain Mitz’s friendship, and she finally found out the reason. As she was being fondled and stroked, a collar was slipped over her head and fastened. She was angry. What were they trying to do to her? Dogs wore collars – and very occasionally, cats – but these were domestic beasts and the collar was to foxes the mark of a slave. She tried to get it off with her hind legs, but it was quite secure. Unlike those leather collars she had seen on dogs, the one she was wearing was quite thick in places, and had a little strip of steel poking out of the side. Betsy came over to look at her.

  ‘Very smart,’ said the dog. ‘Such a nice shape, too.’

  ‘What are they trying to do to me?’ growled Mitz. ‘Turn me into a dog. If they try to put a leash on this thing …’

  ‘They won’t,’ said Betsy. ‘It’s not that kind of collar. He has a device – you know how fond humans are of their devices – which somehow connects with the collar you’re wearing. When he sets you loose, he wants to be able to track you – find out where you go each day. And night.’

  ‘Spies!’ Mitz snapped. ‘You mean they want me to lead them to my family, so they can annihilate us all in one go. Gas us, like they do the badgers sometimes. Genocide. Well, they won’t get that out of me. I shall walk in the opposite direction. Lead them to the nearest dog pound …’

  Betsy shook her head.

  ‘No, no. You don’t understand. All he wants to do is look at you. It’s this business he’s been up to all the time. He watches, scratches marks on a piece of paper, or growls into another of his devices, and just watches – nothing else. I can’t explain it, but he certainly won’t harm your family. He wants to find out all about foxes. My guess is, once he knows what you’re all about, he’ll inform his pack leaders – they’re like us dogs in that respect – and there will be a greater understanding between humans and foxes. That can’t be bad, can it?’

  Once again, Mitz suspected Betsy of being an agent of the man and his tricks. But then, what about the otter? Why had he bothered to sooth away her qualms? The man fed the otters, of course, but she doubted they needed such hand-outs. They were perfectly capable of catching their own fish. In fact O-ha had told her that they were better at it than men themselves. The otters could probably feed the humans, if that was the way of things.

  So, what was she to think? The collar was uncomfortable, but not unbearable. It was merely an irritant. And she was not being treated like a dog. The man, according to that great floppy beast with the sad brown eyes, merely wished to find out what foxes were doing when they were out of the sight of men. It did make a little sense. If she could just be sure that this was not a trick to discover where the fox hideouts were situated. Men had wiped out the wolves because they had known where to find the creatures. Men knew foxes well enough to realise that following one of them would not lead them to a whole colony, or they would have found out some way to do that before now. They knew well enough that foxes worked in family cells and the most, the very most, you could get at one time was eight or nine. From a fox point of view, that was enough, but it certainly did not spell the destruction of the whole fox race.

  ‘How will he get his collar back, if he lets me go?’ she asked Betsy.

  ‘Don’t suppose he’ll want it back. If he does, he’ll just find you and take it, without any fuss. You worry too much. What you should do now is just accept it, forget about it, and once you’re free and you see him sneaking around out of the corner of your eye, or catch a whiff of his scent, then just ignore it. Once he lets you go, he won’t bother you much.’

  ‘There’s not much privacy in this world, is there?’ grumbled Mitz.

  ‘Lord no,’ said Betsy, ‘not where humans are concerned. They say cats are curious, but to my mind they don’t come anywhere near humans in that respect. Some humans want to know anything and everything. They’re the best kind though. Those that don’t seem to fill their time destroying things. Well, it’s nearly time for my meal. My advice to you is, don’t worry. You can spend your life worrying and it’s not worth it.’

  With that the big hound lumbered off towards the house. Mitz was left to an autumnal afternoon, full of wasps feeding from the ripe fruit and the sound of crows out in the havnot, beyond the stream. She listened to the ‘Oh, ja, oh ja,’ of the latter until she was sick of them. Captivity was getting on her nerves and she wanted to be back with her own kind.

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Mitz fussed over the collar for a long time, scratching at it with her hind legs and trying to force it over her head. The exercise was useless. The collar was fastened very firmly and in the end she gave up and decided to accept it for the time being. She realised that if she took it off now, the man would only replace it anyway.

  In the early part of the evening the man came out of the cottage carrying a box with a metal rod sticking out of the top. From the way he played with it and kept staring in her direction, she guessed this was the device which Betsy had told her about, for tracing her once she had been set free.

  After the man had finished experimenting, the woman came out of the house and they went together down to the brook. Mitz could hear Stigand splashing about in the water with his family and she guessed the humans had gone to ‘look’ at them. These two people were certainly very keen on watching the private lives of other animals. Later the couple collected windfalls from the orchard and the acidy odour of fermenting fruit was in the air. Melloon was a plum time, with richly adorned skies in the evening, and full-blown smells drifting just above the ground. Even a fox looking for her first earth could spare the time to appreciate the opulence with which nature decked the world at this time. Swollen yellow pears hung succulent in the evening air, and the trees were blotched red with apples. Mitz’s thoughts soon turned to hunger.

  She was given another meal at which Betsy was allowed to be present. The dog chatted to her while she ate.

  ‘He’s going to let you go, now.’

  Mitz said, ‘But I don’t know where I am. I feel I’m a long way from home and I’m not sure if I can find my way back again.’

  Betsy scratched her ear and shook her mournful head.

  ‘Oh, he won’t do that to you. He knows what’s what. He’ll take you to the spot where he found you and let you go there.’

  ‘Not back to the human’s house?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. I imagine the reason he was called to get you was because you worried them by being there. He’ll let you go somewhere outside, near to the house. I’ve seen it all before.’

  Once it was dark, Mitz was encouraged to go into the small carrying cage again. She resisted this, not because she did not trust the man, but she hated being confined to a small space. It made her heart thump in her breast and as soon as she was in she felt like screaming. However, she eventually entered and tried to keep calm, as she was carried to the vehicle. The woman was there too, still smelling of wildflowers and honey, and she stroked Mitz’s back with her fingers through the cage. The woman did not come on the journey, but Betsy did, clambering into the seat next to the man and sitting up like a human to stare out of the front window.

  ‘Doesn’t this frighten you?’ said Mitz, as the vehicle roared and that funny sensation began again in her stomach.

  Betsy said, ‘No, I like it. I suppose when you’ve been driven around since a puppy, you get to enjoy it.
I find it quite exhilarating.’

  ‘Oh, I find it exhilarating all right,’ said Mitz. ‘It’s just that I think my stomach has difficulty in keeping up with the rest of my body. It keeps dropping behind a little. You sure we’re safe?’

  ‘No, he’s a terrible driver, but I wouldn’t worry about it. If he ever does have an accident, we won’t know anything about it. He drives so fast. If we hit anything we’ll be – what do you foxes call it? – gubbins? – gubbins on the highway. We won’t feel a thing. Just try to relax and enjoy the ride. You won’t get many of these in your life, I can tell you.’

  ‘That’s the best news I’ve heard today,’ replied Mitz, firmly.

  Lights flowed by on the outside of the vehicle and Mitz crouched in the bottom of the cage until the ordeal was over and everything stopped spinning. She was taken out of the back and saw that she was in the street where she had been shadowed by the ridgeback. A shudder went through her as she remembered that he might be still around.

  She called to Betsy, ‘There’s a huge dog loose – a hound called Sabre. He’ll kill me if he catches me.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ shouted Betsy. ‘We’ll be following you on foot. I won’t let him touch you.’

  ‘You’d protect me? Against one of your own kind?’