Ondrog froze, growling.
Mej circled as if to herd them together. Gurmin equally resented this and sprang at him. A screaming battle erupted, joined by half a dozen foxes, but split just as quickly as they leapt back, striking one another with their hips and leaping clear, avoiding serious bloodshed but yelling and menacing. Ondrog also sprang among them, not biting, but snarling and warning.
I couldn’t defend my choices that led us here. I couldn’t blame them for fighting in their frustration. What had I offered?
I returned to them at a trot, licked Mej’s muzzle, licked Gurmin’s, nuzzled and crooned for others, sharing scents and flattening my ears, trying to show I loved them.
Pawing Ondrog on my way back past, I got him to lower his head and kissed his cheek as well.
Then I trotted on, slogging through wet snow, toward the rippling northern lights.
Bit by bit, the long procession of foxes followed. For how much longer?
We traveled into the mountains then, into deep snow and new, soft powder. The whole nature of winter changed inland. The wind died down. If a bitter night froze the top crust of snow, our furred pads could carry us lightly across the surface as long as we fanned out. Ondrog, though, struggled even then, keeping to paths under thick tree cover as much as possible.
When there was no freeze and the snow was so much endless white fluff, Ondrog went ahead, packing down trails for us below pine forests or across frozen rivers and lakes, where often the snow had gusted across and lay no more than a brush-length deep on the frozen waterway.
He scared up an elk herd one day, but there was simply no hope for us to catch one of the mighty creatures. By night, we still sometimes caught snowshoe hares or smaller rodents. Once we chewed the bones and few remaining frozen strips of meat off a wolf kill. Now each day, each hour, saw us hungrier. One fox might find enough to eat in this frozen emptiness, but there is a reason total foxes are solitary for much of the year. One range in winter might yield food for one fox. Not a skulk, much less a huge one.
Once we raided a human cache of frozen moose meat in the trees. Another time, a mountain sheep was trapped down a ledge in a deep snowbank. Ondrog managed to get a throat hold and throttle her, but we almost lost ourselves in that ravine and the struggle for the food—an ill-grown yearling ewe who was also severely underweight—was almost not worth the risk to our own lives.
As we went, pushing through the peak of winter, I remembered the long trail of before. Not in a rush, or in one knowable trigger, but by fragments as if of a dream. There had been a time, once, when I’d walked on and on, pushed through snow or panted through summer heat. Searching … searching … desperate for … life.
My own life? That of another? Who had I lost along the way besides myself?
There was the steamer to Seattle.
Before that, there was the cage where I was carried and shown about.
Before that, there was the snare, hands grabbing me, forcing me, weak and half-dead from the snare, into the cage.
Before that, I’d traveled. The snare had not been near my home. I had not traveled far down the river in the cage. Most of my wandering had been on foot, four paws, brush out behind, gliding along in line with my spine, more and more at home in fur as fur became my essence and memories of any life before faded.
Before that … I’d had a reason to set out and travel. A reason about skin and love, touch and passion… A reason that had started it all.
From the moment I’d met Demik and he’d helped me change I’d known I loved him. It was love that I understood: a place of light for me that I knew and craved, overjoyed when Mej and Komu wanted to be a part of that same feeling. Then Ondrog … we had needed each other in a way more than the others had needed me. That was even better, to feel myself able to give something back to them, who all had saved and looked after me.
But it hadn’t started with them. Not even Demik. It had started with … with … snow?
Snow… Plenty to remember… Plenty now…
When the whiteout hit us, we had to shelter in the stunted mountain forest for days. Nothing to eat, snow to drink, and all the time I felt I was clinging to a scrap of memory that I longed to build into a full story, but found none. Only ancient feelings and fragments.
They would have left this time—for good. I don’t think even Demik could have believed any longer that I was a messenger from Earth Mother. I was just a vixen, failing at finding my home, failing those who had tried to have faith in me. I didn’t want him to believe. I hadn’t healed Komu’s leg. It only happened to not be broken. Earth Mother didn’t tell me of the logs in the river that would have fallen on Mej and Komu. I only happened to remember that the river was used for the logs and the camp was just above and felt a twinge of instinct that any fox should possess. And I didn’t know how to get us home. But, this time, as the whiteout turned to an endless blizzard around us while we struggled to push on, now starving to death and frantic for a game trail, I don’t think anyone was left who believed in me anymore. If they did, they were very foolish indeed.
With the endless white, now the nearly endless darkness also settled. The night itself making only a normal dark that any furred fox might see through. But the blizzard on top of the night leaving us blind—relying on sound, smell, and whiskers to move at all. Even our noses were partly deadened as they froze, whiskers caked in ice, and ears burned from the nonstop roar of the wind, despite thick fur linings.
Without food, and with the wind and torment of deep snow to struggle through by night, we stopped more and more. We had to curl up for warmth, our bodies in balls with our brushes over our faces, packed close together. This saved our body heat and our lives, but only for a time as we must push on again.
Each stop grew longer. Each effort to move forward more trying.
I could no longer think or plan through the stupor of hunger, just struggle on north and west when I could keep awake at all. Otherwise, I curled up with Demik and the others and slept, sometimes struggling even to lift my head when Mej or Ondrog tried to rouse me.
There came a night when I could not go on. Though the snowfall subsided and the stars even began to glint overhead, I could only blink and cover my nose again with my brush.
A great animal, Ondrog, from far away, seemed to come to me and nudge and maybe even whimper.
Did he growl? Was there danger? It seemed the mighty wolf stood over me and growled. Demik stirred against me.
I blinked, saw stars in a sky like my own silky black coat, flecked in blurry white dots. Night closed in. A wolf whimpered. It … did not sound like Ondrog…
Chapter 15
Before: Day 1
“You must be Summit?”
I looked up, smiled. “Black Ice? You’re the fox helping me?”
“Don’t sound so disappointed.” He grinned, cocking his head in the sunlight and making his black hair fall forward past his shoulder.
“Not disappointed. You surprised me. I was expecting…”
“My sire?” He held out his hand flat for me to touch if I so chose. We couldn’t sniff much like this, but a touch still told something—like a look into one another’s eyes in this form brought so much meaning.
“Yes.” I stroked his fingers, glanced up again. “It’s been many winters since our clans met, has it not? When Cavern said ‘Black Ice’… I should have remembered, but we were only kits last time our paths crossed.”
“Speak for yourself.” Flash of bright teeth in his big smile, following my hand for a moment as I moved mine away. “I certainly remember you. You know what I thought when I last saw you?”
“What did you think?” I shielded my eyes from the sun with one hand, my gathering basket dangling in the other.
“I thought I should stay with you right then—or I’d lose my chance. I thought, ‘Next time I see that vixen she’ll have a mate or two and I’ll be out.’”
“Or two?” I almost laughed. “We mate for life in the Bowl La
ke Clan.”
“As do we. With however many loves Earth Mother sends us.”
“If it suits…” I lifted and dropped a shoulder, still smiling in return to his happy grin and sparkly eyes. He was older than me, a winter or so, and—now that he mentioned it—I did remember seeing him when the clans had gathered a mere two summers before.
“So … what are my chances?” he asked. “Am I to take it that if you have even one admirer I’m chasing my own brush?”
I started to speak but he went on.
“No, you know…” Cocking his head the other way. “I can’t do it. Not with you. Share, I mean. My customs will have to be your customs. One mate, one life.”
“I’m not surprised you’re still seeking even a single romance—if your approach is this pompous with every vixen you meet.”
Black Ice looked quickly away, coughing. “That was not how I … how that should have come out. I meant only … if you already had someone … and if I… Well … it’s… I’m sorry.” Shaking his head.
“I understand what you meant.” I still smiled at him, even more charmed by the sudden reversal. Was the arrogance all show? I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to be gathering with him, and the mosquitoes were bad around the lake at this time of day anyway.
“Yes … well…” He cleared his throat. So strong and casual, then felled by one comment like a naughty kit.
I wanted to hug him. I loved his presumption as much as his quick awareness of shame, embarrassment—knowing he felt empathy for others and a strong sense of his own place with his people and social expectations. Even at my age, I knew it was a rare dog-fox who was charming and sensitive, sure and cautious, bold and respectful, quick-tongued and quick to blush—all at once.
“Would you like to swim?” I asked.
He looked around at his own gathering basket, at the buzzing, savage insects, at me. “It would be an affront to the elders. We’re supposed to work, like everyone else at the gatherings.”
“I didn’t say we wouldn’t work.”
“Yes.” He nodded gravely. “Naturally, what you meant was, ‘Would I like to swim as soon as our work is done?’”
“Our work will never be done. And the mosquitoes are worst right now.”
“Would I like to swim and then take up our work?” he rephrased.
“Yes, please.”
“And, if we are called out?” He went on, answering himself. “It was my idea.”
“You don’t have to do that. I’m always in trouble anyway. My grandam says there are clouds between my ears and sunshine pouring from my lips. No one in my family would be a whisker surprised to find me swimming when I should be gathering. In fact, if you rushed to say it was your idea, they would take you for a liar, and my grandam cannot abide liars.”
“A vixen who has a way with compliments and a discerning air besides.” He bowed. “Very well. I am but a deer mouse in your jaws. Make what you will of me. Am I to take it I must give up my work in the hot sun, take to the water, and swim with you as my punishment?”
“And you have to change.”
“Change?” He looked up sharply.
“Oh, yes, of course. I cannot swim well in skin. And my grandam says never judge a dog-fox until you’ve seen how he is in both skin and fur. You may be dazzled one way but find him sorely lacking in another.”
“You are dazzled then?” Confidence returning in a flood.
“By the sunlight reflecting off the lake. Anyway, if we change, we can outrun the scolding.”
“Summit? I hope you won’t find me too bold, but I think I’m in love.”
“Aren’t we all? The lake and sky? The salmonberries and the duck eggs? The skill of skin and agility of fur? Earth Mother and Sun Father?” I opened my arms, head tipped back. “What’s not to love?”
When I again looked at him, Black Ice was only staring at me, his lips parted.
He didn’t seem nearly so quick to move as he was to talk so I left him, splashing into the water, through the reeds to a rock cluster in my bare feet. I set my empty gathering basket on rocks and stripped my tunic and skirt onto it.
With the cool water up to my shins and the hot sun on all my naked skin, I changed into my sleek black summer pelt and splashed to my chest.
I had to wait for Black Ice, who had simply been watching me.
He joined me at the rocks, set down his basket, stripped, and put on his fur, splashing me as he shifted about. He was a magnificent silver fox, noticeably larger than me in fur, showing far more silver in his coat, all through his body, with black limbs and black face mask, compared to myself—nearly pure black in summer.
I waited without swimming out so I could sniff him over. He stood very still for me. So still, I had just decided he was too stiff, not the free spirit I’d taken him for, when he spun his stunning black brush in a circle, nipped in my face without making contact, and leapt away.
I bounded after him. In an instant we were tearing up and down the shallows, chasing one another back and forth, then dashing into the lake, led by me, but with Black Ice soon swimming past with long, strong strokes. He was a marvelous swimmer. A beautiful, elegant fox in fur. Big and well filled out for his age, making him seem far more mature in fur than skin. The white tip on his brush bobbed buoyantly through the water after him and I bit at it while the motion drew my eye.
Our clans had always intermixed, yet, that day, it seemed we met for the first time. And it seemed the rest of the world vanished.
We swam and played the afternoon away. Black Ice rolled on his back on the shore and nibbled my face and let me pounce all over him and chew his white tip. He didn’t let me win at the swimming chases, though, using all his strength in the water to catch me. On land, I was just as swift and sprinted away from him like a raven soaring over the reeds.
He had to resort to tricks, hiding and lurking and doubling back to catch me at all. We got so hot and breathless in our running we dived back in and swam well out into Bowl Lake, a lake like the sea, which some called Lake Minchumina.
We swam, chased, tumbled about until my dam called in gatherers. Then we hid.
It was my idea, and a silly one which Black Ice willingly followed. Of course, though we made ourselves vanish in among the shore rocks, Bramble came skipping down to the reeds, calling for us, and spotted our clothes and baskets right away.
“Mama!” Bramble screamed, running back toward the merged encampment along the river. “Mama! Summit and that yearling have changed and gone off! They haven’t gathered at all!”
Well … there didn’t seem to be much point in cutting things off then. A lost hunt was a lost hunt. My little sister was a great one for helping the mouse get away.
I found Black Ice’s fine, well-shaped ear brushing my whiskers, so I bit it. Oh, it was fun to bite his ears, they were so big and chewy.
Black Ice whipped around to snap at my face, catching a glancing blow with his canines across my muzzle. I yelped, knocked back in the shallow water, shocked.
Black Ice also jumped back. He crouched, gazing at me with wide yellow eyes, his pupils contracted to slits in the bright light. I shook my head and swiped a paw across my muzzle where teeth had whacked into the unprotected bone there. I knew he hadn’t meant to hurt me but it was an uncomfortable place to be whacked by anything—much less teeth.
He crept closer, swishing his brush gently in the few inches of water, and touched his tongue and nose to my muzzle in a kiss.
He withdrew and pawed my shoulder, flattening his ears. Then, as I licked my nose and tried to lick across the whole side of my bruised snout, Black Ice stepped up again. He cocked his ears to me, pricking them once more.
It was a rude thing to do, holding up his ears to me when he’d just been saying he was sorry? But I understood. He was offering me his beautiful, thick ears to chew.
I nibbled along the edge of one, then licked his head and, he tasted so wonderful, I licked all over his face while Black Ice sat there i
n the water, eyes shut and panting, smiling.
Next to come down to the lake was Black Ice’s dam.
For that summons we had to obey.
We clambered, dripping, from the water and through the reeds to her moccasins.
Shaking her finger, she lectured us about being responsible adults now, how we were of age, how we’d mastered our change and it meant we were grown and worked just as hard for our clans as anyone else. How we must set an example of kits and we would not come in to share in the dances and supper tonight: we could gather in the light of the midnight sun until we had put in as many hours of work as anyone else had that afternoon. Maybe next night we could be a part of the dancing and feasting of the gathered clans and respect our elders and parents.
Then she stormed away. I hung my head. To not be allowed to dance…? I could think of no worse punishment. Did Black Ice also love to dance? Was that why she’d chosen such a dreadful fate? I longed to ask him, suddenly longed to see him dance. Even more to dance with him.
I did not mind the rest. She was right. I held nothing against her. But no dance…
Black Ice changed and dressed in his skin with tunic and pants and belt, barefoot. “If we gather quickly, we’ll equal their baskets and still be able to go in,” he said as he saw my drooping countenance. “And I’m sorry, Summit. I never meant to strike you. I misjudged the distance.”
I didn’t mind about that, but the idea we might still reach the dance did stir me. I changed. Still, it would take forever to equal our afternoon’s worth of gathering. The wetland berries we were after grew thick here along the shore but it did not make them easy to reach or to pick.
I started to gather with a heavy heart as the drum beats, bone rattles, whoops and cries reached us with the first dances underway a quarter of a mile up the river’s edge from the lake. I kept turning, watching, having to force myself to pick another berry.
Black Ice touched my shoulder and I jumped. I hadn’t heard him stepping up to me, so focused had I been on the distant music, on feeling the dance inside me, longing to burst out.
Fox’s Night: A Foxy Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (Foxes of the Midnight Sun Book 3) Page 6
