“We’re fine.” He kissed me.
“You’ve been remembering.” Mej still held my shoulder. It wasn’t a question. “Coming all through this land, now… You’ve been asleep for two days. You know what happened to you, don’t you?”
“Yes…” But I cried against Demik’s chest and couldn’t say more.
“It’s all right.” Demik rubbed my back. “You don’t have to think about that now.”
“Of course she does,” Mej said more gently. “She doesn’t have a choice anymore.”
Mej kissed my head while I cried against Demik’s skin. Others moved, hands touched me. Komu and Ondrog had sat up as well. Komu by Mej, Ondrog forming the final part of the triangle and just having woken.
“We’ve got you,” Mej went on. “It’s all right to remember. You’re safe now. These wolves are thawing us out. I don’t know if they’d have helped us at all without Ondrog. He’s been talking with them. Rest. Remember. We’ll still be here in the morning.” As if Mej had known all along. Almost as if he’d been waiting for this to happen, while Demik had been encouraging me to remember.
So, for the first time ever, I cried with real, skin tears for my mate. I cried for the life I had lost, as well as his, for our unborn kit that I had destroyed instead of allowing Black Ice’s one offspring to be born, and for the missing years between then and now. I cried for having led this new family into disaster and for relief that they were still here. And I cried, finally drifting into sleep with my own grief, for the certainty that Black Ice had been watching out for me all this time, guiding me to a new, surrounding love that would always be there for me when he could not, shielding me, still holding on through Demik, Mej, Komu, and Ondrog, and I hadn’t even known.
Yet I knew now, and I cried for gratitude at how blessed I had been—and how blessed I remained.
Chapter 23
The wolves who had rescued us apparently spoke only Lucannis. We were dependent on Ondrog to translate and communicate. Even with him they were standoffish—looking forward to us pushing on.
I hardly saw them at first. Ondrog was out often, but the other three mostly stayed with me, sometimes with other wolves and foxes who came in to sleep with us.
Occasionally, though, it was only us: Demik, Mej, and Komu around me, sometimes with Ondrog.
We ate moose stew with much hot water and rich fat that helped build our strength and hydrate us. We stayed bundled in sleeping skins and blankets. Glad for a chance at skin, but having nothing to put on and keep warm, many of our friends stayed mostly in fur. I could not keep to fur—too grateful for the chance to be with the others and hold on with arms and hands. Even to cry those real tears that had spent years waiting on me.
One morning, a day or so after I first awoke with my own life before my eyes, our hosts left us, Ondrog returned with food, and, after we ate, we found the five of us once more alone in the den.
Demik was so worried for me, and I think the others as well, though they showed it in other ways, that I had to tell some of what I remembered. Ondrog was only silent and watchful, Mej unusually quiet, Komu anxious, chewing his nails.
I told them I came from Bowl Lake, that I was named for my dam and grandam: Glacier and Far View. How I’d fallen in love with Black Ice and we’d had six perfect months together before he was gone. How I’d followed until I’d lost him and, in so doing, lost myself and eventually fell prey to another sort of trapping. Put to use by humans for entertainment and profit until I forgot even what I was, my thinking broken by my own grief and unknown winters in fur without changing. I still was not sure how long I’d been in fur, but none of us had ever heard of a fox going so long she forgot how to speak.
Demik kept apologizing, wishing he had been able to do something. “If we’d known… We should have done more for you, Summit. I didn’t know you were hurting like this.”
I shook my head and Mej said, “Neither did she. What did I tell you?”
He met Demik’s eyes for a second, then looked to me. We were all bundled close. Ondrog across the fire, Komu lying propped up on his side by Mej. While Demik and Mej sat to either side of me in our nest of sleeping furs.
“With us, you remembered what you needed to,” Mej continued, touching my chin with a finger to get me to look at him. “Your own personality before the horrors you went through, what you knew and what you loved: dance, running, good food. And … that connection. You loved us because some part of you knew those were the good things—the moments of your life you wanted back. You might not have remembered his name, but you remembered his touch made you feel safe.”
“You knew.” I watched his eyes. “You didn’t want me remembering in the first place…”
Mej quickly shook his head. “I was wrong. I was only afraid for you. I didn’t see that you were incomplete.”
“I’m sorry,” Demik said again. “We took advantage of you when you didn’t even know who you were, Summit.”
“No.” I hugged him, never wanting him to think that. “You saved me. Before I met you, if I had remembered, grief was all I had left. I wouldn’t want to be here at all without you. But I do. Because of you. That was my first life in skin. You are my second.” I kissed him and turned to Mej to kiss. “All of you.” Then Komu and Ondrog, leaning over to them. “I love you. When we lose ourselves, yet still have love … we’re never truly lost.”
Chapter 24
Day 135
In a tepee with a gathering of wolves for a meeting about our circumstances, I tried to get Ondrog to communicate questions as to the whereabouts of Lake Minchumina and any possible foxes who lived in the valley. This got us nowhere. They must know these places by other names, or else we were so far from my Bowl Lake Valley they had no grasp of the geography I tried to explain through Ondrog.
I resorted to drawing crude maps with my memory pictures of the places I had grown up and the rivers and mountains where my clan moved up and down in summer and winter, following the salmon or game or forage.
Ondrog explained the map while our very tall, broad-shouldered hosts simply stared, then sadly shook their heads.
They talked quickly together. I knew no more than stray words of Lucannis and could tell only that mountains were discussed.
At last, an elder female took the hide, brushed off the charcoal into smears, and started again with the drawing of a map.
I tried to follow, to figure out what long, winding, up, down, across river that might be. Then the elder she-wolf tapped the center of the hide with the charcoal and said in Vulpen, “Alaska.”
I almost gasped. “Of course. A larger scale? You can show us where we are in Alaska and where the great lake is?”
Ondrog translated while my heart hammered.
The wolf took the charcoal, added a few lines for rivers, a few squiggles for mountains in the east, by the Canadian border, then a dot. She pressed her finger to the dot and spoke to Ondrog. We were on the dot.
“Earth Mother,” Mej whispered in my ear while I felt sick, stricken.
I wanted to turn away, to curl up and hide, so ashamed my face burned.
Just to confirm, Mej reached around me, sitting on his heels in the warm tepee with these elders and stretching to draw lines with his finger at the edge of the hide.
Beyond the border line, he pointed. “Yukon River?”
The she-wolf nodded sagely.
“Dawson City? Gold?” Mej tapped the air just off the surface of the hide.
All the wolves nodded, scowling then. Apparently they had heard all about the strike.
I buried my face in my hands. We had traveled probably 500 miles south from Dawson City to Juneau. Then, instead of striking into the heart of Alaska, another 600 or 700, it was impossible to tell, up along the coast, then north near the border. Now, if this rough charcoal map were any indication, we were probably no more than 100 miles as the crow flies from Dawson City.
With Ondrog’s help, I asked about a great lake, the biggest lake, pointing t
oward the center of the map.
She pursed her lips and sent out one of their number to bring someone else.
Soon an elder male arrived and listened to her explanation, then her apparently asking about a great lake and mountain range.
He listened, nodded, tapped the central southern portion of the map, looked around at us, and said, “Great Valley Lake?”
I gulped. “Yes, yes, please. So vast the far shore is distant mountains? It’s out there? Do you know if there are silver foxes there?”
He did not, claiming it had been a decade since he’d been so far west. However, at that time, there were fox clans living along those rivers.
Then my memory was no longer mistaken—as long as this was the right lake. Only the thousands of miles of mistakes I’d already made in thinking I could find home again, while allowing others to put their faith in me, their lives in my hands, that was the problem. Now I knew. Yet now they had proof not to trust me.
The wolves could not keep us, having prepared themselves for winter with their own numbers in mind. We had to move on, snow or no snow. And the skulk had to move east, not west, when they went.
We crammed back into an allotted tepee to talk, many in fur, curled up tight, many others wrapped in sleeping furs or parkas from the wolves. Of course, we had no clothes.
Mej explained the map to the others, roughly where we were and where my people probably were.
Then I had to take accountability and I stopped him with my own apologies. “I must go on,” I finished. “West. To my home. But you should return to yours. You will come to the Yukon River if you strike out east, and know your way.”
“After all this you’re just going to go off?” Gurmin scowled.
“I don’t understand,” Komu said. “You know right where to go? We know where there should be more foxes? But now you think we should turn back?”
“You can’t trust me.” I looked around to him and Demik at my right. “You want me to be something I’m not. I’m just a fox … who needed help, who forgot why and where I was going. I’m sorry…”
“You’re not serious,” Mej said. “You want them to return to Dawson City? To humans and a marginalized life with nothing? No home and no hunting grounds? Just as Komu says, right at the moment when you know what to do?”
“I think I know. But I can’t ask you to trust me anymore.”
“You don’t have to,” Mej said. “It’s right there.”
Yet many of the foxes in skin were shaking their heads, jaws set, as he spoke.
They went on discussing. I played almost no more part in it, overwhelmed and scared for them.
One more night curled together in the warmth.
Then we thanked our saviors, put on our fur, and struck out in a few hours of sunlight. The days were already getting longer, the sky blue, and the snow an endless, ice-covered blanket for easier going.
With reservations, I expected Demik, Komu, Mej, and Ondrog to follow me now. I couldn’t expect anyone else.
I set out west, eyes finally clear of tears, yet still thinking of Black Ice, of family, honoring him by returning to him in what was now the only way I had. Many soft, furred paws padded after. Even Ondrog was able to walk at times on the surface out here, only occasionally breaking through the crust and struggling.
Pad, pad, pad, shuffle on smooth ice and a blistering day…
I paused, looked around uneasily, disbelieving my own perfect ears.
Twenty-two red foxes and one gray wolf followed me. I stared.
Demik licked the corner of my mouth. Mej flashed his brush at me. Komu crouched down, wagging and smiling.
I wanted to growl, gekker at them, tell them no, go back, don’t trust me. I wanted to weep. They had no reason to follow me, besides their own desperation for something better. Yet … as my struggles for the past winters had shown, maybe that’s all it takes for survival, for pushing forward anyway.
I only licked Demik’s nose in return, then trotted on.
Not a single fox turned east.
Chapter 25
Only Ondrog looked back, turned to the wolf pack that I think he wanted to call out to, yet he remained silent. Should he stay? Would the pack have him? But he didn’t go back and, of course, we couldn’t discuss the matter.
For the next weeks we pushed on through a frozen landscape and deep snow that sometimes made the going impossible in the open. We ranged far out of our way through dense forest or along the leeward side of twisting rivers.
Hunting remained poor and we scavenged more than hunted. Any creature that had succumbed to winter next succumbed to us.
Still, we were nearly starved, once more exhausted, sore, and frozen from countless nights of travel, when I looked up one sunrise, struggling along on the frozen snow crust on a frozen river that often gave way. I stopped. Komu blundered into my brush, though we should have been fanned out across the crust.
He shook his head, looked up, sniffed, and we gazed about us. A few foxes were ahead, including Mej, but they heard the break in our steps and looked around. Mej froze, scenting, glancing to me with his hackles lifting.
Human trappers and hunters were a constant worry in winter, yet we hadn’t had a sniff of a human being since before the wolf pack. I flattened my ears, trying to reassure Mej that no, I hadn’t been alarmed by anything of that sort.
I only stood a moment and gazed around, going on sight more than anything else.
Demik made his careful way over to me, toes spread and balancing precariously on the crust. He touched my cheek with his nose.
I glanced at him, lashed my brush, buffeting Komu, and opened my mouth to smile.
Demik’s ears pricked. He cocked his head.
I bounded forward, cracked through the crust, scrambled up, and went on at a smooth jog that didn’t break the ice on top.
I’d been here before. I didn’t know where foxes might be. I didn’t know where “here” was relative to Bowl Lake. But, for the first time since Juneau, I was certain I had been in this spot before.
From then on I had to stay alert. Scenting, listening, sometimes even calling out with sharp, “Yi-yi-yi!” calls that echoed down the silent river. By this, the others understood. I was no longer looking for a place, but a people.
We split up to a greater extent than ever before, remaining only in earshot, traveling mostly west but following the frozen rivers, watchful always for any sign of other foxes.
It was a tiring way to travel. After weeks of this, although the days grew longer and the winter storms seemed to have ceased, we were so exhausted we found a hollow in a steep section of riverbank and dug tunnels into the snow. Here, we had a twenty-four hour sleep.
Also from here the enormity of what we were trying to do settled like a dark vail.
I dreamed of Black Ice, of traveling and running and never finding, never being able to beat death or catch the target of my longing. I ran until I dropped, until the night sky cleared, the northern lights flamed, and I lifted my head below a patchwork of shifting color.
I blinked. The lights were gone. The night frozen and silent. Still, it seemed shadows leaped ahead across the icy snow crust. Something flashed, darted, led the way.
I stood to follow, breaking the warm air bubble I’d been curled in against Ondrog’s chest, waking him and Demik.
Then I remembered, as they looked up, that this was a rest we needed. I merely circled and curled down again in a tight ball against Ondrog’s fur. Even so, I could not stop gazing down the river, watching for those shadows that did not return.
At daylight we went on, eating snow to pretend to fill our stomachs, no longer calling out.
We entered a valley, forests of less stunted trees, then a plain of no trees at all, the brush only a blanket of white and network of trails from the animals who remained active in winter. Then the lake: white, smooth, seemingly endless in the freeze in which the far bank was only so much more white. The horizon was broken by the sudden peaks of a vast mo
untain range. Even this might as well have been hundreds of miles away. Here, on the banks of the white lake, was nothing but a gentle slope down to it and a world made up of white and blue.
There were no foxes. No apparent life by scent or sight or sound in any direction besides our own skulk.
So we waited.
We sheltered up the hill in trees, digging snow scrapes. We spent hours every day and night lying on snowshoe hare trails or listening for and digging up tiny burrows, and just managed to keep ourselves alive by wide roaming and our bodies reduced to skeletons stretched over with deceptively heavy coats.
Ondrog suffered the most, growing so weak some days he could barely stand, much less hunt. I brought him all the rodents I caught, while the others brought me meat, and so we went on waiting.
Until, at last, the snow grew wetter and shrunk with a gradual melt. The ice groaned and split, rotten underfoot and no longer safe to walk out on the lake or rivers, and the days were once more longer than the nights.
We watched and waited on the riverbank when the ice finally broke up and the water flowed: when the snow was reduced to soggy strips and patches, on the verge of the fish running again, and the valley burst into life with game and growth, on the tip of a new spring.
Here in this new awakening came the procession of canoes, with all the clan and outfit, rowing down the newly running river to bank on the shores of Bowl Lake.
We watched the landing. Skinny and weak, but upright, our mostly red coats warmed in the new spring sun.
There was a moment in which those climbing from the canoes simply stood and stared while we stared back—tentative as the new growth below our paws.
Then a single female walked up between the others, past the boats, splashing through snow slush and mud, looking right at me.
“Summit?” And I knew her. In her step, her voice, from my own memories. From a lifetime I had reclaimed by remembering, bringing her back with it.
As tears filled my dam’s eyes, I ran to her arms, at last finding home.
Fox’s Night: A Foxy Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (Foxes of the Midnight Sun Book 3) Page 10
