Mia would have laughed were she not in shock. Uly was always at his funniest whenever he came close to dying.
“I don’t know if you’re real or not,” she said, “but if you are, help me.”
Uly sniffed at the trap. “How?”
“Um,” Mia said. She remembered how Miss Potter’s fingers had released her mom’s paw. She pointed with her muzzle. “Maybe if you hold this part down…”
Uly pinned the jaws to the ground with his forepaw while Mia used her small front teeth to jerk and tug at the silver sliver. It wiggled loose, bit by bit, until the silver jaws shrieked and then fell open.
She stretched her hind paw, her toes, but then a sharp pain made her pull back, sucking through her teeth. She was hurt. But she was free.
She blinked at Uly. He was still there. The darkening muzzle. The sunset eyes. The scent of flower buds.
“I…,” she said. “I’m not imagining you?”
He laughed. “I hope not.”
He touched his nose to hers, and a tingling spread through her muzzle and straight to her heart, which started to beat happy again.
Mia stared at the trap on the ground, its jaws open, as harmless as a dead snake.
“What’s wrong?” Uly said. “You’re free.”
The trap had opened so easily. If Mia had known this trick when her mom’s paw was caught, then she could have saved her. She never would have gone through any of this.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.”
Her ankle had swollen to the size of an apple. But it didn’t feel like any bones were broken. She got up and tried a few steps on her injured paw.
“Ow”—step—“ow”—step—“ow!”
Uly smiled. “You’re lucky I don’t make you cross through a swamp or climb any hills right now.”
Mia scowled and then softened. “Fair.” She collapsed to her side. “How did you survive that fall? Are you invincible or something? Because that would have been good to know.”
Uly smiled his lopsided smile. “My mom snuck down to the caves the night you told her I was there…”
* * *
He’d been shivering in the pool when the whisper came.
“Uly?”
“Mom?”
He was so excited to hear her voice that he’d splashed out of the water and then had to lie flat until the bats settled again. After his mom had cleaned the mud from his fur, she gave him the squirrel she’d brought from the stores.
“Uly!” she said, staring at his stump. “Your poor little leg…”
“It’s okay, Mom!” Uly said brightly. “Now I don’t have to carry it around anymore.”
His mom hadn’t laughed like Mia had. But she was a mom. It was her job to worry about him.
While Uly ate the squirrel, she told him how Mia had faked an injury to figure out which vixen was his mom.
“Pretty smart,” Uly said.
“Yes.” His mom smiled. “Pretty pretty too.”
Uly just wrinkled his muzzle and swallowed more innards.
Long before the squirrel was finished and before his gurgling stomach was full, he stopped eating. He stared at the squirrel’s remains. He may have had his mom back, but they weren’t safe. They still needed to find a way to escape the Lilac Kingdom.
Uly remembered that Mr. Scratch had wanted Uly’s mom to kill her own son.
“Aren’t you still hungry?” his mom asked, nosing the squirrel closer.
“No,” Uly said, stomach whining. “I mean, yes, but … we need the blood.”
He told her his plan.
They sniffed through the caves until they found an opening into the chasm with a lip of rock that jutted out into the mists, right beneath the vixens’ quarters. Then, they returned to the cave’s entrance, where Uly rolled around on the squirrel’s remains. Mercy grabbed him by the scruff and dragged his blood-soaked body up the hill.
* * *
Mia’s mouth hung open. “So you pretended to die when your mom shook you?”
“Yep,” Uly said.
“And then she dropped you onto the rock sticking out into the chasm?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What if she’d missed?”
“She didn’t.”
“Wasn’t that … terrifying?”
Uly shrugged. “Sure. But it’s easier playing dead than being dead.”
“Well, yeah, but…” Mia smiled when she realized something. “You didn’t even hiccup.”
“No, I did,” he said, laughing. “But I held it in. It hurt.”
She snorted and shook her head in admiration. “Why were you able to do that then but not all the other times?”
“Because I knew if I hiccupped, it might get my mom killed. Or you.”
Mia smiled, then stared at a puddle. She was quiet a moment. “My mom left me.”
Uly perked his ears.
“When I got caught by the human, my mom ran and hid in a bush and wouldn’t come out. Then she fled into the forest the moment she couldn’t smell me. Like she just … gave up.”
Uly hopped close. “She didn’t give up,” he said. “She just didn’t know you were way too smart to be killed by a dumb human.”
He gave her his lopsided smile. She gave one back.
“Welp!” she said, hefting herself to her paws and wincing. “What are we waiting for?” She pointed her nose northward and took a step on her swollen paw. “Ow! Ouch! It’s gonna take me forever to walk.”
“We can’t leave yet,” Uly said.
“What? Why the squip not?”
“My mom’s still back in the Lilac Kingdom,” he said.
“Oh. Right.” Mia suddenly felt very afraid. “How are we going to get her away from Mr. Scratch?”
Uly shook his head. “I have no idea.”
They sat in silence. Even with two of them, they weren’t strong enough to win a fight against a full-grown fox. They were both missing a paw—at least for the time being.
“Blech,” Uly said. “What’s that smell?”
“Oh, that,” Mia said. She looked at the moldy paw. “You don’t want to know.”
She continued to stare at it, head quirked. The paw was all shrunk up, almost like a kit’s paw …
“I think I have an idea,” she said.
THREE
Three nights later …
AFTER THE BATS had flapped into the night, after there was nothing left of Mr. Scratch save blood and tufts,
after Uly hopped out of the cave and Mia and Mercy joined him from the rocks …
the three foxes sat and cleaned themselves. Uly’s mom licked the squirrel blood from his fur while Mia cleaned away the cobwebs and maggots from between her claws. On the third night of their plan, they’d made her paw look exactly like the disembodied paw that had been tossed into the chasm. Then she’d hidden behind the rocks of Mr. Scratch’s roost, laid flat, and made her musty paw creep and flop toward him.
Uly stared at the pools of blood, sparkling darkly with twilight. “Is he really gone?”
“We shouldn’t count on it,” Mercy said. “Your father has returned from the dead before. And the bats left behind no bones.”
They all fell silent, waiting to see if Mr. Scratch would reappear.
“Anyway,” Mia said. “I can’t believe that plan worked!”
“I can,” Mercy said. “Challenge a fox’s pride and he will start to lose his senses. He might even believe he sees the dead come back to life.”
The winds swept in, cleaning away the lilac scent. The three looked out over the rocks, the cliff, the marsh, the hill.
“Do we stay here?” Uly said.
Mia wrinkled her muzzle.
“No,” Mercy said. “This is a foul place. Wynn surrounded himself with difficult terrain—slopes and stones and badgers and wolves—so that no other foxes would challenge him. He feared if they did, he would be beaten.”
“Where do we go, then?” Mia asked, gazing across the chasm toward the
many paths that led north.
“That’s up to you,” Mercy said.
“I want to go back to the Boulder Fields,” Uly said.
His mother smiled sadly. “Mia, would you give us a moment?”
“Oh!” Mia said, hopping up. “Yeah. Of course. Yes.” She hobbled down the hill.
Uly’s mom looked on him with shining eyes. His heart beat uncertainly. Once again, he knew what she was about to say. And he wanted to bite her whiskers to keep her from saying it.
“I thought the moment you set out alone,” she said, “that you would die. That your paw would get the best of you. That something would catch you. Or you’d starve.”
“I almost did die,” he said. “A lot.”
“Yes, but here you are.” She stepped close. “I’m very proud of you, Uly.”
He couldn’t look at her. Instead he stared at his one forepaw, at the dark fur growing along his chest and leg. He was getting bigger. But he didn’t feel any braver.
He sniffed. “I want to go home, where it’s safe.”
“Uly, darling,” his mom said. “Home was never safe. Not for any of us.”
He thought back on the stone den. The hawks. His sisters. The terrible itching. How even the nice parts came crumbling down once his father’s shadow darkened their den’s entrance.
“Almost nowhere is safe for a fox,” his mom continued. “And yet”—she nuzzled his chin into the air—“you came to the Lilac Kingdom, the most dangerous place of all, and you made it safe. You outsmarted your father.”
“But I didn’t do anything,” he said, staring at his paw again. “I only saved Mia in the forest because she told me what to do. I only swam in the swamp when she taught me how. And when we came here, I hid in the cave, too scared to come out.”
“It sounds to me,” his mother said, “like you acted at the exact right moment, overcoming your fear and doing what was needed to save yourself. And Mia. And me.”
He looked at his mom then. At the snip in her ear. At the gray tufts in her fur. He never imagined her as someone who needed saving. She’d always been the one to protect him from the dangers of the world.
“You’ve been fighting so long to survive,” she said, “you haven’t realized you’ve grown up. You’re too big for the Boulder Fields now. And too brave.”
His mom stepped close … and seemed to shrink before Uly’s eyes. She no longer stood tall above him. Their noses were the same height. His head was too high for her to lay her muzzle between his ears.
“Everything you’ve done has been twice as difficult,” she said. “Now”—tears streamed down her cheeks—“I want you to go and live a life that’s twice as sweet.”
Her face wavered in his eyes. “Where will you go?”
She looked west. “I need to check on your sisters. Wynn made me leave them behind in the den, and I’m worried about them.”
Uly sniffed and laughed. “I’m not. They’re pretty tough.”
He and his mom looked at each other. She pressed her muzzle close to his. He felt her warm fur, her breath, the flutter of her wet eyelashes. And then, long before he was ready, she pulled away.
“I can’t wait to tell your sisters what you’ve grown into,” she said.
She licked him once on the nose and then padded off into the night. He watched her grow smaller and smaller and smaller until she vanished behind a hill and did not appear again.
* * *
“You ready to get out of this place yet?” Mia called up to him.
Uly stood and sighed, taking his eyes from the horizon. “Yeah.”
He hopped down the hill. “Thanks for helping me save my mom,” he told Mia. “Even if it was just so I could say goodbye.”
When she didn’t respond, he looked at the expression on her face. Something had broken inside her. He could see it. His mom had just fought and schemed to protect him. But Mia’s …
“I’ll help you look for your mom,” he said. “If you want.”
Mia gave him a sad smile. “That would be nice.”
He nodded. “You know, Mia,” he said, heart pounding, “you’re better than any family.”
She snorted. “You’re weird.”
The clouds began to break, and shafts of silvery light cut toward the ground, burning away the grays and reawakening the autumn colors.
“Are you hungry?” Uly said. “Let’s go hunt something.”
“How the squip are we supposed to do that?” Mia said. “You’re missing a forepaw, and I can’t walk on my hind paw.”
“Right…,” Uly said. “That’s gonna be a problem.”
The foxes trotted north, around the chasm, through the sunrise, and beyond. They came to a wide grass valley awash in greens save the two flickering foxes, one limping as badly as the other.
The first snowflakes started to fall.
“PHEW!” THE BETA SAID. “So Mia and Uly lived happily ever after?”
The little one’s heart lifted.
“Not quite,” the storyteller said from the cavern. “The story isn’t finished.”
The little one’s heart wilted.
The Antler Wood had reached a darkness now that seemed impossible. The stars had winked out, and the moon was in hiding. The trees were deathly quiet.
“I must warn you,” the storyteller said softly. “Not all kits will survive to the end.”
“But”—the beta swallowed—“there are only two kits left.”
The storyteller said nothing.
The beta’s whiskers twitched. “I’m out of here. I’m going to pretend that was the ending so I can sleep tonight.” She padded toward the den, then stopped and looked back at the little one. “You coming?”
The little one’s ears flattened. She looked from her sister to the cavern and then back again. She wanted to hear the end of the story, but she didn’t want to be left in the Antler Wood all alone.
“You know the way home,” the beta said, and padded away, tail fading into the night.
One little fox.
“You’ve lasted a long time, little one,” the storyteller said. “Longer than I expected.”
This bolstered the little one’s heart.
“Last chance to return to the den.” Danger crept through the storyteller’s voice. “Your siblings are all curled up with your mother. You could join them.”
The little one whimpered. The last part of the story might not end well. The darkness might crawl in through her ears and never leave.
It wasn’t too late. She could scurry out of the Antler Wood. Right then. Over the bones, beyond the cave, past the trap, beneath the branches, through the grass, across the creek, around the stone, over the log … to home.
One little fox stayed put.
“Very well.” The storyteller’s eyes flashed in the darkness. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. One last part of the story. The scariest of them all. When Mia and Uly must learn the true meaning of sacrifice…”
THE SNOW GHOST
ONE
WINTER CAME and caressed the sky, gently laying the sun to sleep. Snowflakes wove a chill through the air and covered the valley in white. The trees lost their points, and the rocks, their edges. Ice blossoms cracked their petals across puddles and streams. And the world grew soft and sparkling against a pink horizon.
“Remember,” Uly whispered, “your back paw is heavier now, because it’s carrying the weight of two paws.”
“No duh,” Mia whispered back.
She crouched low, hind paw hovering off the snow. The mice had tucked themselves beneath the ice for the long sleep and could no longer be sniffed in the open air. This made hunting tricky, especially with an injured leg.
Mia pricked her ears and listened for muffled skritchings. She thought she heard something three tails away.
“Shh,” she said.
Uly frowned. “I didn’t say any—”
“Shh!”
She fixed her eyes on the skritching spot while lightly creeping sideways u
ntil her nose was facing northward. Purple shadows gathered in her vision. Mia wiggled her hips, preparing to launch herself in an arc, round her back, and then pierce her muzzle through the snow—just like Miss Vix had taught her.
She leapt off her front paws, and—
Her hind paw plummeted through the crust, swallowing her leg.
The skritching sound skittered away.
Mia scowled. “Don’t … say … a word.”
“Wasn’t gonna,” Uly said. “You, um, want some hel—”
“No.”
“Okay, sheesh.”
As she struggled to pull her leg free, Uly sniffed the frosty wind. He caught a faint salty scent and followed it.
Winter was the most vicious predator. Every fox knew that. Kits were supposed to spend their first autumn growing fat as pumpkins so they could survive the cold season. But Mia and Uly hadn’t really had the chance. Their stomachs stuck to their ribs. Their legs were skinny as sticks. And the cold brought an ache in his stump and her hind paw that made every step painful and hunting nearly impossible. Their guard hair, thick and red and newly grown, was the only thing keeping their tails, not to mention the rest of their bodies, from freezing to icicles.
The salty scent led Uly to a trail of pawprints that ended at a disturbance in the fresh snow. Something had been hunted here. The carcass had been dragged away, but the area was spattered with blood, kept bright and red by the cold.
“Mia!” he called. “I found something!”
She shook the snow from her leg and limped over to him.
“That’s it?” she said, muzzle wrinkling. “A few drops?”
He shrugged. “Beats what you caught.”
She scowled.
“Sorry,” he said.
He licked the red from the snow crust, and she joined him. Magpies watched from the trees, waiting to see which fox would collapse first.
Once the snow was licked clean and saltiness tingled in their bellies, Uly continued hopping through the drifts, and Mia hobbled behind him. He’d promised to help search for her mom. But after miles of traveling, they hadn’t caught so much as a whiff of apple. And now the scents were all frozen up.
Scary Stories for Young Foxes Page 16
