Hunter's Moon

by Garry Kilworth

  So here was the first landmark that might help him get back to his parents again.

  However, to reach the railway, he had to cross through that fenced-in piece of havnot, which was not a comforting thought. He did not want to end up in one of those huts with all the other inmates, whatever the reason why they were held.

  He decided to spend the day in the wood and go down there at nightfall, to inspect the fence. He would be able to find a way through, he had no doubt. Foxes, when they have to, can squeeze through a pinhole.

  Chapter Thirty

  A-cam’s fever took a strong hold on him during the night and by the time dawn came he no longer felt able to go down to the fence. His nose was dry and he felt overheated and lethargic. Besides, a group of travellers had arrived with the coming of the sun and their caravan encampment was between him and his goal. He watched through narrowed eyes as lurcher dogs strolled around the camp below, sniffing at anything that they came across. These were very dangerous animals to a fox: they had the savagery of an Alsatian and the speed of a greyhound. They were lean, whippet-like crossbreeds, trained to hunt hares and rabbits, but would undoubtedly settle for a fox if one broke cover. A-cam hoped the travellers would not stay long.

  During that day, he watched the activity below. There was much coming and going; with humans carrying water from one place to another, children running and screaming in play; hissing, rattling old vehicles covered in rust, and with their doors hanging off, arriving and leaving; lurchers nipping each other to get at scraps of food; knotted, swarthy men banging away at old metal; dark women stringing up lines of wet, grey clothes; a dozen radios on different stations, blaring out on full volume. Then the men in flat hats arrived in their black and white car. The hard, dusty men began barking with the soft-cheeked ones in hats, who stood with their hands on their hips and looked everywhere but into the flashing eyes before them. Finally, the black and white car drove away and the camp returned to its normal activities.

  That evening, there was music, which A-cam enjoyed. He listened to the wailing, dancing sounds that came from the stringed device which the traveller tucked under his chin. When birds made sounds like that, it was usually to warn others away from their territory. A-cam wondered if these humans were sending signals to the flat-capped ones, which said, keep away, this is our hunting ground.

  Light from an open bonfire caught the children’s faces and the swirling clothes of the women as they sat or moved around the camp. Later, overriding the odour of mansweat and diesel fumes, came the smell of cooked food. A-cam’s saliva flowed and his stomach churned. His fever was easing now and he felt able to get back on his feet. His nose was once more wet and sensitive, and a useful tool. Without it, he was like a blind hawk.

  He toured the copse, looking for places to dig for worms and beetles. There were fungi to be had, and crab-apples, and sloes. A-cam ate his fill and then settled back to sleep again.

  When morning came, the travellers had moved on. Where they had been was a sea of rubbish. Paper stuck to the chainlink fence, and there were cans, bottles and plastic cartons littering the ground. It seemed that these people, with their hot, narrow eyes and mean hunting dogs, could conjure rubbish from beneath the turf, for they surely could not have produced such an amount of waste all on their own, in just one day?

  A-cam went down the hill and inspected the fence. Moving along it he found a place where he could dig and burrowed underneath the wire. Once he was on the other side, he became a little more wary. There might be dogs guarding the place. It all depended on what was in the huts. Camio had told them about guard dogs, usually Alsatians or Dobermans, which often ran loose inside chainlink fences.

  ‘Keep your wits about you,’ Camio had said, ‘at all times, especially if you see a wooden board fastened to the wire, or on a pole near to it. It’s well accepted that these are warning totems that define well-protected land. These human “marking posts” are not associated with scent or smell, the way ours are, but with sight. They look at it and know that the territory within the fence will be guarded. Since we don’t know what to look for on these totems, and our sight is not as good as that of a human anyway, we must be generally wary about entering such places.’

  A-cam had indeed seen two boards fixed to the wire, though of course when he stared at them they went fuzzy after a while. He wondered what it was that humans could see when they looked at such things. Certainly more than fox, and there were scratches on the boards like the ritual marks foxes made in the dust sometimes.

  He trotted quickly across the flat, empty ground, to the first long hut. Since the dwellings were raised off the ground, he intended to go underneath them, all the way to the other side, walking quickly from hut to hut. He would not run. He had been trained by his parents not to run except in a dire emergency. Running creatures, like deer, only attracted attention with swift movement. If you were a deer in a forest, it was all right. Deer could outrun their pursuers. Foxes, however, were not fleet of foot. At top speed a fox did not stand a chance against greyhounds, lurchers and many other breeds of dog.

  Once under the huts, A-cam was sure they contained foxes. Also there was a chilling sense of passing near to a thousand sowanders. Many foxes had died in this place and the atmosphere was one of terror that had been pressed out of sight by hopelessness and despair. In places like this, animals shuffled their way to a death as certain as tomorrow follows today.

  The scents were overpowering. Under the third hut he found a small knothole and, curious about the inhabitants of these dark, forbidding places, he whispered, ‘Who’s there? Can anybody hear me?’ Then he put his ear to the hole through which bits of dirty straw were poking.

  He could hear breathing from above, and a shuffling. Then a faltering voice which sounded like that of a vixen, said, ‘Is – is that a fox-spirit?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m a real fox. I was just passing by. Who are you? What’s your name?’

  ‘O-sollo,’ came the reply. Then, ‘What are you doing out there? Have you escaped? How did you get out?’

  ‘I didn’t get out – I’ve never been in. What is this place?’

  There was a long silence, then, ‘This is a place where they keep foxes.’ The answer was delivered in a puzzled tone of voice, as if the speaker were not sure of the answer herself.

  ‘What for?’ he asked.

  ‘What for? The disappeared ones could tell you better than I, except that they’re never likely to come back.’

  The ‘disappeared ones’? What did that mean? He was about to leave when the voice said, ‘Listen, can you help us escape? My sister and I are in a cage above your head. Only this wooden floor stands between us and freedom.’

  A-cam paused. He knew he was in great danger. If foxes were kept caged, in long dark huts, it meant that humans would go to enormous lengths to keep them there. What did it all mean? He was in a quandary. His instinct told him to get away from the place, as fast as he could, but the voice above had aroused something within him which he might have recognised had he the time to think about it.

  Then he remembered something his father had told him. There were places called fox farms, where foxes were bred then taken away and … nobody knew what happened to them, but it was easy to guess. Foxes are not stupid. They had seen their skins used as clothes: wrapped around ladies that smelled as if they had taken an overdose of violets. The ‘disappeared ones’ – they were taken away, killed and skinned.

  He studied the planks above his head. They looked very formidable. What he should be doing was trotting on to the next hut and getting to the railway line.

  ‘O-sollo,’ he said. ‘I would like to help you, but I don’t see how.’

  ‘One of the boards is rotten,’ she whispered. ‘We’ve been wetting on it ever since we’ve been here – always in the same place. If you could gnaw from your side …’

  He sniffed around the areas and found the plank which smelled. He pushed his nose against it. The wood was soft.
The two vixens must have been peeing on that plank several times a day for more than a season to get it in that state. But how to get his teeth to it? The planks were flat. There was nowhere to get a grip.

  Then he thought of something quite extraordinary. Such an idea only came once to a dog fox, even one born of clever parents like his own, and it had come out of an emergency situation. The pressure of the moment had prised something from the depths of his foxy brain which, relatively, equalled that of any human invention. It remained to see whether achievement could be produced.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ he said, proudly. ‘Give me a few moments.’

  ‘You won’t be sorry,’ she whispered back. ‘I’m a vixen of rare beauty.’ Then she added, modestly, ‘We all are in here. It’s only among common foxes that I’m rare. But you’ll … you’ll have a mate to treasure … if you want one.’

  He turned round and began digging with his hind legs, until he had piled earth up under the softened plank. When he had got it high enough, he squeezed his body between the mound and the plank, and then arched his back, pressing down with his four legs. To his intense delight the plank began to move, bending upwards. It was indeed rotten. The wood was like sodden cardboard.

  ‘All right,’ came a voice from above, ‘we can get at it now.’

  Above him, the two vixens tore at pulpy wood, pulling it away in great chunks, until there was a hole half the size of a man’s head. In the meantime, A-cam slipped to the edge of the hut and sniffed Melloon. There were no dangerous scents abroad. He could see no movement either. He went back as the second vixen was forcing her way through the hole.

  When both were safely out, A-cam said, ‘We must make for the railway. It’s gerflan for a start, and they’ll have difficulty following us. Also, I need it to guide me home. Which one of you is O-sollo?’ he added, staring at the twins.

  ‘I am,’ said the one with the darker ears. ‘This is O-fall.’

  ‘Right. Let’s go then. Move from hut to hut until we come to the last one, then I’ll go out, dig us a hole under the fence, and we’ll be free.’

  ‘Free,’ breathed O-fall, speaking for the first time.

  They did as instructed, slipping from one hut to another, but just as they came to the last a barking went up. The foxes in the huts, who until now had been lying in placid, sorry silence just awaiting the next meal, took up the human’s cry, and began shouting to one another.

  ‘What’s wrong? What’s up?’ and ‘Someone’s escaped! Someone’s out! Dog’s spit, why isn’t it me? Why always someone else?’

  The noise was appalling. A-cam realised they had been discovered and his heart began hammering a little. What to do? Remain where they were? He put the suggestion to the other two.

  ‘No,’ said O-fall, firmly. ‘The first thing they’ll do is search the grounds. There’ll be a vehicle full of them here in a moment and they’ll start inside the compound. We have to get out.’

  ‘Will they use dogs?’ asked A-cam.

  ‘And ruin these beautiful furs?’ replied O-sollo. ‘That’s one advantage we have got. We’re valuable. No dogs.’

  A-cam heaved a sigh of relief.

  ‘Good. Very good. Now for that fence …’

  Without waiting to think about it, he trotted over to the fence and found some soft earth. He dug like fury and then shouted to the two vixens, ‘Come on!’ At that moment, he saw a man running from behind the huts. He had a gun in his hands.

  ‘Come on, come on.’

  O-sollo was through and O-fall had her head on the other side when the first bullet zinged off the wire, just above her head.

  ‘Keep going,’ yelled A-cam.

  She was through in an instant. A-cam then scrambled under the wire. Another shot raised some turf an inch from his nose. The two vixens were already running into the shrubland beyond the fence. He followed them, zigzagging. He heard the sound of the last shot, but did not know where it hit.

  Maybe he got me, thought A-cam, and I won’t feel it until I stop?

  He scrambled under a bush and waited until he got his breath back, then he called, ‘Are you two all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ called O-sollo.

  ‘Let’s go again. Make for the railway and get down on the other side of the tracks.’

  The three of them slunk quickly through the shrubs, using the cover to hide their progress. At the last minute they trotted up the railway bank and down the other side. A-cam kept them on the move for a mile before he let them stop and rest. Then they sat down beside the track, to get their breath back.

  Suddenly, O-sollo cried out.

  ‘What is it?’ asked A-cam, alarmed. ‘Were you hit?’

  ‘No,’ she cried. ‘It’s you.’

  ‘Me?’ he hastily inspected himself all over. ‘Where? I can’t see where I’ve been hit. Tell me.’

  But O-sollo seemed too upset to answer.

  Instead, in a much calmer, softer voice, O-fall said, ‘Oh dear. It’s your tail. The man shot your tail off.’

  A-cam sank to the ground in relief.

  ‘Oh, that. Don’t worry about that. I lost my tail a few days ago – to a dog the size of one of your huts. That’s no exaggeration either. He’s a monster. Why are you staring at me like that, O-sollo?’

  ‘You’ve lost your tail,’ she said sadly.

  ‘If you don’t want him, I’ll have him,’ said O-fall, quickly.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said her sister, ‘of course I want him. He’s my rescuer. I just think it’s sad, that’s all. Anyway, there’s nothing to stop us all living together, in one earth. Is there?’

  ‘I’ve always wanted to live in an earth,’ sighed O-fall. ‘They spoke about these things in the compound, but none of us had ever seen one. We were born there, you see. And we would have died there. What … what’s an earth look like?’

  ‘Look like?’ A-cam scratched his haunch against a bush. ‘I suppose it looks like whatever you want it to. Depends where it is. The only one I know – my parent’s breeding earth – was an old car hulk in the middle of a scrapyard. Traditionally, I suppose, they’re dug out of the ground, under the root of some tree. But I’ve heard of foxes who live under the floorboards of houses.’

  ‘No boards,’ said O-sollo, firmly. ‘Ever.’

  ‘I would really like a traditional earth,’ mused O-fall.

  ‘And you?’ asked A-cam of O-sollo.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘In that case, we’ll dig ourselves an earth, just as soon as we find a suitable place.’

  They walked on for some miles, along the railway embankment, until they came to a wooded area that spilled down on to the track. A-cam spent a long time sniffing round the area, checking for other foxes’ marker posts. When he found none, he concluded that they could make their home in that place. All three foxes were exhausted by this time and they went up into the wood and found a place to rest for the night. The two vixens, although they had never hunted, were willing to learn from A-cam. He talked to them about it first, saying that he was no expert, yet – not like his mother, who could track anything over the poorest ground, and bring it down when she found it – but he would pass on that which he had learned from her. He would also teach them about berries, roots, worms, plants, spiders, insects, beetles, dragonflies, woodlice, fungi, and all things edible, just as his mother had taught him.

  ‘Did your father teach you nothing?’ asked O-fall.

  ‘Camio? Yes, but about town living. He was not such a good hunter as O-ha, but he was a better scavenger. He once told me he had taken a meal out of a man’s hand on the run – he’s very good at that sort of thing. He’s good at storytelling too.’

  ‘Sounds like it,’ said O-fall wryly.

  A-cam glared at her.

  ‘My father is still alive, after being snatched from his home territory which is far from this land, and placed in a zoo just like your fox farm. He escaped, even though there were Alsatians patrolling the zoo, and survived in a foreign place –
alone. He’s a wonderful fox.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ whispered O-fall, but she gave her sister a significant look, which O-sollo ignored.

  ‘So,’ said O-sollo, ‘your parents are Camio and O-ha? They sound good foxes. But now we are on our own. I think we’re a few seasons older than you, A-cam, but because we’ve been locked up since birth we’re going to be a bit of a burden for a while. You’ll probably have to feed us all. But we’ll learn quickly, don’t you worry. I don’t want to be dependent on a dog fox for my food, even if he is my mate …’

  ‘Your mate,’ A-cam said, remembering. It sounded good. How proud of him his parents would be. He had found himself a mate – a very pretty mate. One of rare beauty, when detached from the thousand or so other rare beauties.

  ‘At least,’ said O-fall, dropping off to sleep, ‘we shall never become one of the disappeared ones.’

  A-cam lay awake, long after the vixens were asleep, thinking about what he had said to them. He had been bragging a little and was not as confident as he pretended. Yes, O-ha had taught him a great deal about living off the countryside, and he had to admit he had been a good pupil. He had stored all the descriptions of edible fruit, nuts, fungi, roots and leaves in the back of his brain, and had no problem with bringing them forward. But that was all theory, and he had been lucky so far. Crab-apples, sloes, acorns and chestnuts were easy to recognise, and the two types of fungi he had eaten, chanterelle and grisette, had also not been difficult to identify. But what about when food got scarce, in mid-winter, and they had to take anything they could find? During autumn, there was a wide choice and anything dubious could be ignored. But there would be times when there would only be two choices, eat it or go hungry. Then, he would have to know.