So focused upon the voices, and Komu so stealthy, I leapt straight into the air and screamed with terror when he stepped on my brush. I spun, biting, hissing, and Komu met me with an equal cry of fear and alarm. A great, fighting outcry, a second of lashing and screeching at one another, then we dived around the corner as the door banged open.
“Bring the bullseye!” a man shouted.
Boots clunked, two men dashed onto the boardwalk. The bullseye lantern swept down the street.
The door was wide as I darted forward in a sprint. Komu was not so quick to take advantage and I had to hope he followed as I tore into the jail, then down the passage. A couple of drunks passed out in cells tonight. And Demik there waiting, clutching the bars.
I wedged my way in, scrambling, frantic. Terrified, fur on end and back arched, I bit him sharply when he tried to pick me up. I wasn’t here for a visit.
Komu shot through the bars like an eel. Demik gasped.
I gaped at him, teeth clattering, yikkering softly. Hurry, hurry, hurry.
Demik didn’t understand. Now with better sense than to touch me, fingers bloody, he only shook his head, staring from one to the other.
The men were coming back in, talking, thumping around.
I seized Demik’s trouser leg in my teeth, yanked, then squirmed and struggled back through the bars.
“I can’t,” he hissed under his breath, kneeling down. “I’m too big, Summit.”
Again, I gaped, clicked my teeth, jumped at the bars.
Komu crouched beside him, ears flat and eyes wide, even more terrified, having had no idea what to expect here but thinking I’d had only a visit in mind.
Demik shook his head again. But he changed for me. As the men thumped the door shut and clattered down the lantern, Demik’s body twisted, shrunk, and he shook out of his own clothes on the floor.
“What was that?” In English.
“Another fight?”
“No, something in here … wasn’t it?”
I demonstrated the widest opening in the bars with my head.
Demik tried, wedging his skull in there, but he was right. A full inch too tight, not even close, no matter how he twisted.
Steps were coming along here in the dark.
I bit the bars, dug at the floor. There was the cage. The tiny cage that was my home for months, for seasons. A steamer whistled and bellowed. It rolled and pitched against the waves. Down the coast from Skagway to Seattle. Then we came back. The man working for Sunny Sam’s returned to Juneau. Steamer, rain turned to snow, mud, thaw. I cowered in the cage at the mouth of a shop. Sunny Sam’s of Seattle now selling from Juneau. So sick I could hardly see, hardly smell. Lying in the cage all day while children poked and hit the bars and dogs barked. A woman came often to see me in the evenings. She slipped me a dead mouse, a bit of egg, or dried fruit. Yet it was too late. I could also hardly eat, even for her.
Then, night, a night like this. I lay flat, dying—would never be away, never be free. Never be with my mate or family again. And she was there. In the night when she was not supposed to be. A young man with her.
“This is her. The fox they’re keeping in this cage. He’s a brute. He never lets her out. Never. It’s padlocked. I bet she’s been in there for months and he doesn’t know what to feed her. She can hardly move in there, look at her. She’ll die if we don’t help her.” All in English, all clear with meaning.
“And you’re going to help with that?” The young man. “You really will kill her.”
“Not if we’re careful.”
It was an axe. They held the cage and swung the axe and carefully chopped through the top of one side. The noise roused me, the crashing and shaking of the cage brought back some of the old fear. I stirred, woke, remembered flight.
The man wedged the axe in as a pry. The woman twisted the cage. There were stars above me.
I dragged myself out, muscles shaking with the effort, and found my paws in mud.
“Go now, you’re free. Run.”
I looked up at the woman and man in starlight, the broken fragments of the cage. They were human beings. Yet they knew about freedom and starlight anyway.
I ran.
As the man in red and black stomped down the passage. I flattened my body, hissed at Komu and Demik, and they also pressed themselves in among Demik’s clothes.
We lay perfectly still in the darkness as the man tried to see inside.
“What the hell…?” he breathed. “Indian? Hey, Lewis? That Indian’s in the third cell, right?”
“That’s right. Need the light?”
“Bring it on. Something fishy here…”
The man pressed an iron key into the iron lock. This door also opened outward, into the passageway with the man.
He pulled it with a terrible grating, grinding noise. The cage split open. The stars. The run. Demik’s eyes glinted. Ground-level stars from the lantern. Komu’s were squeezed shut. He blinked. I caught his star eyes, and Demik’s, and moved.
Flat along the wall, I crouched to my belly and froze as the others joined me in line. The man with the lantern hurried past us. They both talked now, staring into the cage.
I dashed to the lit front room, only to find the door latched. The knob was round: smooth.
The men were exclaiming behind us, shining the light everywhere.
I looked to the door, around to the others, and could not think. This was the broken cage, the way clear, the freedom to run. Yet it was not. It was a block, a wall—as much a cage as ever.
Komu was at my flank, seeing the door at the same time. He rushed on, bounding past me, changing as he moved.
“How in hell? What now?” Shouts from the men, bewildered, not hearing the strange sounds of shifting bone and skin.
Demik drove in at me to send me to the door but the change took a moment. They were coming too fast. I leapt right over him and dashed back into the corridor as the bullseye lantern blazed into my face.
Eyes wide and blinded, mouth gaping, full of white teeth, I screamed at them.
“Mary and Joseph! It’s a mad fox!”
“How did it get in here?”
The door crashed open. The men leapt back from me as I charged them, jaws wide, fur puffed, screaming my most blood-chilling battle cry. Then ran.
I tore back past Demik and we fled through the doorway as Komu was already changing. A horrible, painful thing to do back-to-back, and a terrible stress on the body, but he was back on paws and following by the time he hit the boardwalk.
The men were shouting behind us, raising a cry, ringing a bell. But they weren’t shouting about mad foxes. It was all about the missing prisoner.
We tore through the streets, up the hill, and past roads into the mining camps with the sky newly pale blue. It didn’t matter anymore about arguing and debating and deciding what was best for the clan. The cage was broken. Time to run.
Chapter 10
Day 64
The settlement was still restless, many never having gone to bed. But we didn’t get as far as dashing in among them unannounced. Before we even drew close enough for a dog to bark, we ran into Mej and Ondrog coming to find us.
“Earth Mother,” Mej gasped when he saw me sprinting flat out toward him. He dropped to his knees, apparently weak with relief, and I threw myself into his arms.
I licked his face, panting, wriggling, then sprang at Ondrog, who also wrapped his arms around me.
“Holy hell … what are we supposed to do now?” Mej stared at Demik.
Ondrog looked the way we’d come. He spoke calmly while the three of us in fur gasped for air and Mej looked ill. “We’ll go. If they’ve broken him out, the police will be up here within the hour looking for where he’s gone.”
Mej grabbed his own head in both hands. “What have you done? They’ll be after all of us.”
“Not if we’re gone.” Ondrog seized his shoulder, making Mej look at him. “What would you have had them do? Abandon him to die this morning?
Summit was wise. Now you all must make your own choice whether or not to join her.”
I didn’t hear any more of the conversation because I was racing toward the den, Demik and Komu on my heels.
I growled at Komu, changed, then quickly implored him not to.
“You’ll hurt yourself. We’ll all have to be in fur anyway.” Instead, I pulled a robe around my shoulders, slipped on my moccasins, and swept Komu into my arms. “You’ve made your nose bleed even with three.” I kissed his head and wiped away dried blood from his sharp nose. “You saved us.”
Komu was panting with his tongue curled, looking around with wide eyes as Demik also changed and pulled on trousers and moccasins.
“Summit—” He hugged me, crushing Komu between us. “You shouldn’t have come. They’ll be after the whole clan.”
“No, Ondrog is right. We’ll go now,” I panted. “I know what we have to do.”
Demik pulled back, looking into my face, holding my shoulders. “You do?”
“Yes. I … I remember. Or I’ve always known. I don’t know if they’ll listen to me. But they’ll listen to you. And I know…”
“Then come on. We’ll find my sire.”
We ran through the settlement with Mej and Ondrog, stirring up the dogs with our haste and contagious fear.
In minutes, the whole settlement was gathering. Qualin and Skeen, Vicos and Neeve—everyone I knew here, even little Tem, who’d first netted me in the river—were up and running to see Demik.
Shock, fear, questions. Barking dogs and crying kits. Skeen asked her brother how he got out, were they following, what happened? Qualin told everyone to be quiet while no one listened. Stories flew at Demik about how nasty the humans had been in the past few days since the shooting. Now, with Jones dead, everyone was scared. What would happen to the clan next?
Demik tried to answer, tried to turn to me, but it was a mess of noise and confusion in the dawn gloom.
“Quiet!” Ondrog bellowed like a bull moose from the focal point of Skeen’s front door. He was several inches taller even than most of the dog-foxes. All eyes shifted in his direction. The word he’d used was Vulpen, not Tanana.
Demik stepped quickly up to him, pulling me by the arm.
“This land is not ours,” Demik said to the crowd. “We borrow and share and bless Earth Mother for every bounty and place of shelter and life. Our recent ancestors roamed and lived where the hunting was good and the rivers ran with salmon. We settled here for as long as we could. But it’s over. No, it’s not ours. It’s Earth Mother’s land and always will be. Yet the humans will claim it and take it, and we will be left with black earth and bloody rivers. For me, there is no more time. I must go. I can only implore you to do the same—to keep this clan together as much as we can. All who will, we go now, this morning. As swiftly as we may, before the men are here searching.”
“The same story with fresh urgency makes it no easier to swallow,” Vicos said, facing him. “You’ve talked up flight for countless seasons, Demik. Now, yes, you must go to save your life. And Earth Mother’s blessing be with you. For the rest of us, nothing has changed.”
“Nothing changed?” Demik stared around at them. “They are moving into our homes, taking our dens, claiming our hunting grounds. They arrive with smiles and gently padding steps to lure their prey, Vicos. Stay and look after your family. Of course, we cannot all go. Those who leave this morning will be the scouts. But surely it will be most of the clan. Surely you see what is happening. Now, at last, you must see. Unless you are prepared to fight them, you must be prepared for flight yourselves. This isn’t about me.”
“And where would you have us go?” Qualin asked quietly. “Demik, there are no more shifters along our rivers. We’re alone. You know that as well as any. You know why we haven’t moved on before this morning.”
Demik eased aside, pulling my arm to step up beside him. “We didn’t know where to go before. You’re right.” He looked around. “It could be weeks, or seasons. But we won’t be blind anymore. We’ll go with a guide who came to us from a faraway clan, and who will show us the way back there.”
Murmurs rippled around the group while I shivered, clutching Komu to my chest over the deerskin robe. I swallowed as answers rushed back at Demik. Voices disbelieving, disdainful, or even angry.
“Her?”
“That’s the vixen who can’t remember her own name.”
“She knows where she came from all of a sudden?”
“Did you hit your head too, Demik?”
“You expect us to follow her?”
“It’s suicide.”
Demik was trying to interrupt, Ondrog growling in his skin, Komu showing them his teeth.
I squeezed Komu’s little body against me and said, “I remember.”
They all looked at me, including Demik and Ondrog.
“The Aaqann River Clan’s time here is up,” I said quietly. “You must move on. I’ll take you to … my own clan. We’ll find a new life together.”
“Where are they?” Vicos tipped his head. “I thought you had spent all summer seeking them already, yet still didn’t know?”
Everyone staring at me. “I … I didn’t. But I … remember the path I have to run to … to … make it home. I’ll bring you with me—anyone who can go. We don’t know what life will be like around the men now. We have to move in fur so—”
“In fur? Take nothing?”
“What about the kits?”
“Follow her in fur? Blindly?”
I tried to go on, but my voice was drowned and Komu was gekkering, jaws wide. My heart pounded. Time was slipping away. The Canadian Mounted Police would be here any minute hunting for Demik.
For the first time, Mej sprang forward. Turning his back to Demik and me, he faced his family.
“Why did she come to us in the first place?” Mej snapped. “Why is she here? What brought her? An accident? A river’s path? Earth Mother’s will? Was she sent? Is she a messenger? Or a mistake? None of us can answer that. You have to decide for yourselves in your own prayers and dreams. But I’ll tell you this: she’s led us where she’s been, which will lead us to her family in the end, if we have the courage to follow one more time. Her instincts saved our lives when we would have been killed in a flash without her. She knows the best course to travel and best way to go. She pried his paw from a leg-hold trap unbroken—hardly even harmed.” Touching Komu. “She freed him from jail under the noses of the Mounties.” Touching Demik’s shoulder. “I don’t know how. And I don’t know how she came to us. But I’ve seen Earth Mother’s miracles flow through her fingers. I’ve seen the Mother’s path in her steps.”
He lifted both hands, taking a breath. “I don’t know what to believe. I can’t tell you how to feel. But I know what I’ve seen before my own eyes. We knew this time was coming. Many of you have been clamoring to go. Demik is right. She’s right. This isn’t our lives. We don’t know what we’ll find out there. But when did we become more afraid of Earth Mother and our heritage than of human beings? I say it’s time to go. Time to follow Summit. Maybe she is the Mother’s true messenger. Maybe she’s not. One way or another, she’s prepared to lead us home. All we have to do is follow.”
Chapter 11
It didn’t feel right, leaving behind kits and a few small families. Yet they could not travel. Kits younger than thirteen or fourteen winters, never having transitioned through the change, were confined to skin. There were those, too, who remained hesitant to leave.
Even so, they were few. Qualin would stay as an elder guide to those who remained behind. Demik and I would guide our group.
Twenty-four strong, making up much of the settlement, we left behind all worldly things for those who would remain to live here—or give up the land to the human sawmill and move in for more security with the Hän people who still lived far south on the riverbank. This included a good deal of gold from Mej and Komu’s gambling and trading. They would be a able to look after themselves
in the human world for seasons to come if that was how long it took for someone to return and lead the families in skin to our new home.
Of course, we had no guarantees. Those in fur might never return. Or might return before the first frost with nothing to show for it. We had twice explored for my family, after all, and twice been back with nothing. I had no proof for them. This time, though, the stakes were life or death.
Demik had exaggerated how much I remembered. Mej had exaggerated my knowing—going too far the other way when he finally decided to join our argument for flight. I don’t know if Mej even believed what he’d said. But Demik did—believed in me. So did Ondrog, I was pretty sure. While others at least wanted to—prepared to take a chance on me.
I prayed I didn’t need to remember exactly where my family came from. I hoped I remembered how to find out. That was what mattered now. With Earth Mother’s blessing, we would also find them before the first deep snows. I had to lead them in reverse, backtracking through my own life story as the memories came that way, starting with the most recent. That meant running back to Juneau and the coast to start the hunt.
We gave hasty requests regarding our possessions. For me, only a few articles of clothing, a headband from Ondrog, and my perfect scrubbing stone for bathing, which I left as a memento in the birch forest beside which I had spent many happy days and nights with my mates. Then we said goodbye—I embraced Qualin, Skeen, and little Tem—and put on our fur, one by one, all meeting at the site of Ondrog’s former den.
By the time the last foxes were joining us, their russet, orange, or mahogany coats shining in the newly risen sun, we heard the approaching hoofbeats of the police riding into the settlement. Dogs barked. Men’s voices called out.
Ondrog, towering over the rest of us like a gray mountain, growled.
Demik, ears pricked that way, dragged his attention from the west to look at me.
I flashed my black brush as I spun away, showing all the certainty I did not feel. Demik moved at my side. With the rest following, we started out east, joining the trail the five of us had followed on that first quest together.
Fox’s Night: A Foxy Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (Foxes of the Midnight Sun Book 3) Page 4
