The Heart of a Fox by T. Isilwath
Chapter Two
Joanna stood perfectly still, her fishing spear poised at the ready, waiting for the precise moment to strike. Long weeks of hunting and fending for herself had honed her skills considerably, and she knew exactly when to throw the spear into the water in order to earn her a fish to eat. Her throw was deadly, and a moment later a large gray-striped fish lay flopping on the stream bank. She was on it immediately, knife at the ready, slicing and putting the fish out of its misery in one cut as she thanked it for sacrificing its life for her, then she gutted it quickly and placed the carcass in a woven reed basket alongside the carcasses of the other two fish she had caught.
‘That’s enough. One I’ll bake and I’ll dry the others. Between the fish and the rabbit I snared, I won’t have to hunt until the day after tomorrow.’
Squatting down, she cleaned the spear carefully. Proper maintenance of her tools was paramount because making a new one was not always possible, nor was it an efficient use of her time. Economy of resources was essential and it had served her well over the twenty-five days she had been in the forest. Picking up the basket, she took her spear and made her way back to camp.
Her hair had been roughly braided and tied back with strips of cloth because the one thing she did not have was a mirror. Not that her appearance meant anything to her because there was no one else to see or impress. The trees cared not for how she looked, nor did the creatures with which she shared the forest. Some days she doubted that Michael would even recognize her now; this dark-eyed sylph she had become. She was thinner but stronger, her body whipcord lean, and her muscles were defined and well-developed. She had assimilated into her new life and her body had adapted, falling back on years of teaching and her own genetic memory.
Deprived of the modern world, she had connected to the earth in ways she never had before. She walked in balance with the wilderness, and things Michael had tried to teach her about the old ways that she had never quite understood were startlingly clear to her now; as clear as the whispers of the trees and the voice of the wind.
Michael had once told her that her animal totem was Cougar (one of the Cherokee’s most sacred animals) and she had to admit that she did have a certain affinity for the big cat even if she didn’t necessarily accept it as her own personal Medicine. There were times, however, when she felt very predatory and almost feline, and she could feel the power of the solitary hunter coursing through her veins. Sometimes she wondered if she was more animal than human now.
There were three things that reminded her of her humanity, three things she held onto in order to keep from losing her focus: her journal, her disease, and her dreams.
She wrote in the journal every night. It marked the passage of time and helped her distinguish one day from another. In a world where life was unchanged from day to day, it was easy to lose track of time. If it were not for the entries in the journal, and the calendar in her insulin pump, she would have completely lost all sense of time. For her, and the forest, the world was a season, and the season was Summer. In the pages of the blank tome, she recorded all of her dreams, activities, adventures and discoveries. She hoped one day to share it with Michael and Elisi, to sit with the Storyteller and relay all of her tales, and to look back on her time in the forest from the familiarity of her modern day home.
The daily doses of insulin, carefully parceled out in the minimum units required, never let her forget where she had come from and all that was at stake. She had managed to reduce her insulin intake by a third and she hoped it would be enough. The twice weekly changing of the infusion set reminded her that cleanliness was essential in order to prevent infection, and compelled her to bathe every other day, weather permitting. She also used those days to perform the ritual of going to water as a way of purifying her spirit as well as her body, and every night she prayed to Spirit for her continued good fortune. She prayed before the fire, sending her prayers up to the heavens with the smoke, but she knew she was living on borrowed time. She only had four vials of insulin left, and each day that passed her supply dwindled even more. She estimated that she had about 115 days’ worth of insulin remaining with her current usage. After that, she was on her own.
In her dreams she was back home in western North Carolina, in the small apartment she shared with her fiancé where he made breakfast on the days when he did not have to work and sent her off to class with a nuzzle and a bagged lunch. She dreamed of the little comforts of the modern world, of hot showers and blueberry pancakes and indoor plumbing. She saw her grandmother sitting on the porch of her tiny home, rocking in her chair as her age-wizened fingers separated flax from seed. And many of her dreams featured Michael: his smile, his voice, his gentle touch. He had been the cornerstone of her world for eleven years, and she was bereft without him. She missed him as one would miss a limb, and she had no idea if she would ever see him again.
Recently, however, she had begun to dream of her new home underneath the king tree and of a red fox who came to visit her. It seemed that Michael was reaching out across the years and distance that separated them, and he had come in the form of Fox. Fox settled into her dreams, crawling on his belly into her hollow to lick her fingers and curl at her feet. He ran with her along the game trails of her imagined hunts, his light paws making no sound on the ground beside her, his furry tail flashing red and white amid the deep forest green. In her dreams Fox comforted her and she was not alone.
********
Joanna paused on the trail and listened. It had been many days since she had heard a voice other than her own, but she always checked to make sure she was the only human in the area. Her explorations had revealed a dirt road about two miles away, and she sometimes haunted it, perched in a tree out of sight, listening for words she recognized with her limited knowledge of Japanese, searching for answers to questions she could not ask for herself.
It also eased her loneliness somewhat. She could not actually speak to them, or join them, but it was nice to hear another voice. She’d never been in a situation where she could not seek out other human beings. Back in her time, if she had wanted to be alone, all she had to do was go into the forest or lock herself away in a room, but she could always come out when she wanted and return to her people. Here she had no such choice. But even though she understood why she could not hop down and talk to them, she still longed for human contact and listening to the voices of the travelers was better than nothing.
From examination of the clothes worn by the passersby and their weapons, she
had determined that
So far her presence had yet to be discovered by any of the small settlements beyond the borders of her chosen territory. From what she had seen of the villagers, they stuck close to home, tending their gardens and venturing into the “deadly” forest only when necessary. One village about five miles to the south had a good-size Shinto shrine complex associated with it and several larger buildings interspersed with some peasant huts. She ventured in that direction only when she had to and only under the cover of darkness to avoid discovery.
In addition to the normal inhabitants of the woods, and the humans who carved a living along the edges, there were other creatures that shared her forest. These creatures felt different, often sinister, and the trees warned her whenever one was near. Sometimes they were brutes, huge and lumbering, with terrible faces more beast than man, and they were not human at all. The trees had no name for these beings, only that they were “Other,” but they Felt of the supernatural, of that power which could not be seen or understood, and she avoided them. Often she would feel them tingling on the edges of her awareness, and she would hide or hurry the opposite way.
None of these Others ever ventured close to her camp, and she often wondered if the trees were somehow responsible for that. She knew the circle of the cedars felt different from the surrounding forest, as if there was an invisible barrier which separated them from the rest of the world. The trees were ancient and powerful, and she suspected that the circle had once been a sacred place. It was possible that the Blessings that had sanctified the area remained intact, continuing to protect the clearing long after its original purpose was forgotten.
She had seen one of the Others up close once, when it attacked a group of travelers on the road and killed several of them while she could do nothing but helplessly watch. It had looked like a minotaur from ancient Greek mythology, half man-half bull with deadly horns and claws. Its victims had screamed and scattered, running for their lives as it trampled and ripped its way through them with a savagery that seemed to be fueled by unbridled rage. Surprisingly it did not eat any of the humans it had killed, but left the bodies where they fell, bloodied and mangled. When it was gone, she had ventured down from her hiding place to see if anyone had survived, but all of them were dead.
She had scavenged what she could from their packs, taking everything she thought would be the least bit useful. These people knew how to survive in the age she found herself. There was no telling when something of theirs that was left behind might make a difference in her own chances of survival, and she felt no remorse or guilt in taking from the dead so that she might live. Among the food, clothing and other equipment was the all important bow and arrows.
There was also what looked like money: pieces of silver with little stamps on them and copper coins as well. These she took because she never knew if there would come a time when she would need currency, but she left the jewelry on the bodies of the women alone. She had no need of baubles, and the small bracelets and pendants the women wore were probably the only wealth they could call their own. She laid out the bodies side-by-side, knowing that someone would eventually come to see to their fate, and when she’d checked on them two days later, they were gone.
The wind in the trees brought the scent of rain, and that did not bode well for her plans to bake her fish. She needed a steady fire to heat the rocks she would use to make the earthen oven and heavy rain would preclude that. Quickly she made her way back to her camp to see if she could get back in time to warm the rocks. Once the oven was ready, and the fish buried in it, it wouldn’t matter if it rained as long as it wasn’t a deluge.
Unfortunately the clouds moved in before the rocks were ready, and she was forced to parboil her fish with Japanese radishes and other vegetables. After dinner she pulled out Iris and sat in the entrance of her hollow to watch the gently falling rain as she played the guitar. The canopy of the trees did much to act as a natural umbrella until the boughs became too saturated to hold any more water, but even then the density of the branches still afforded some protection. Her hollow, of course, was nicely waterproof, at least so far.
Iris didn’t like the damp, but a quick tuning kept her in playing form, and she needed the practice to keep her fingers nimble. She played three songs just as a warm-up, then put Iris back in her case and returned to watching the rain. Around her the king tree breathed, the cadence of its respiration calm and soothing. The tree was content and she felt its happiness surround her.
While not the life she would have chosen had she had a choice, she was not distressed. The forest was peaceful and beautiful, and she felt at one with it. If she was never rescued and returned to her rightful time, she knew she could be, if not happy, at least at peace. Her biggest fear was running out of insulin before she was found, and dying without ever having the opportunity to say good-bye to the ones she loved.
On September 11, 2001 when her parents and siblings had died in the crash of their airplane into the Twin Towers, her greatest regret had been that she had never had the chance to say good-bye. She had carried the survivor’s guilt inside of her for years, blaming herself for living when they had died. If she hadn’t contracted a sinus infection and had to stay behind at home when everyone else went to Boston, she would have been on the doomed airplane and died with them. She wouldn’t have been forced to leave her California home, and everything she knew, to move across the country and live with a grandmother she hadn’t seen since she was seven.
One of the biggest breakthroughs in her grieving had been the Journeying she had undertaken to find her family and have that final talk with them. In the Journeying, her loved ones had assured her that their deaths had been quick. They had admitted to being afraid and confused when their plane was hijacked and diverted, but the actual fate of the aircraft had been kept from them until the last possible moment. In the end, the resulting explosion had killed them upon impact. They hadn’t felt a thing nor did they want her to blame herself for living. She was the only surviving member of her family, and it was up to her to carry on their memory.
Now it was she on the proverbial plane, hijacked by accident and hurtling towards an inexorable fate with no way of telling her loved ones how much they meant to her. Every night she prayed that Michael and Elisi would be comforted and not grieve too much. The Cherokee believed death was part of life, a rest from the physical world, and they did not grieve excessively for the lost loved one because they knew they would see each other again.
The Cherokee spirituality taught to her by her grandmother, the same spirituality that her own mother had rejected, was now one of her greatest comforts. Spirit lived in everything. It had no bounds or limitations; its wisdom was infinite and hers for the asking if she gave thanks and kept herself pure of heart. She had not been abandoned by all that she knew, and she often felt Spirit close to her, especially when the severity of her situation began to get to her.
Every night she asked the question, “Will I die here?” only to receive no definite answer. All she would ever receive back from Spirit was a message for patience and fortitude, which she interpreted to mean that the future had yet to be decided.
Every night she promised Michael that she would find him, either in this life or the next, because they had vowed that they would be together and such oaths weren’t meant to be broken. It was what made the dreams of Fox so important to her, because she felt they were his answer. He could not be with her in body, so he was there with her in spirit, sending his totem to look out for her and remind her that they were never truly apart. As long as they sat under the same sun and looked up at the same sky, no matter what distance separated them, they were still together.
Darkness fell and she lit one of the little tallow lamps she had scavenged from the dead travelers. Her little hollow was getting full from all of the things she had managed to scrounge and make. She had lashed a drying rack together from vines and sticks, and bunches of herbs hung from it. Gathered roots and vegetables were stashed in cloth sacks and tucked into the far corners. Folded clothes and fabric were stuffed by her suitcase, and the reed mats were rolled up next to them. All of her weapons and hunting equipment had their own place near the front of the hollow, and the rain tarp was placed in such a way that it could be pulled across the entrance.
The small lamp provided all the light she needed to perform her nightly tasks and soon she was ready to crawl into her sleeping bag. The soft rain had stopped so she let the tarp stay folded and left the hollow open to the fresh air to keep it from becoming stagnant. Blowing out the lamp, she slipped into her bedding and snuggled into the downy softness of her bag. She hoped that Fox would visit her in her dreams again as she let sleep come up to take her.
She woke late that night because the forest was agitated. Even her stalwart king tree was expressing distress, and that unnerved her. Normally such anxiety was only reserved when imminent destruction of the forest was nigh, but when she asked the trees if she was in danger, their answer was no.
:They are coming,: several of them said.
‘Many? An army? Do they come with fire?’ she asked, hoping that the humans of the age did not try to tame the forest by burning it down.
:No. Soon, oh, soon, soon,: they answered.
It had her rattled and that drove up her blood sugar, something she definitely didn’t need.
‘Is it humans?’
:Others. Others come. Poison. Death.:
So it wasn’t humans, but more of those things that lurked in the woods, and she was heartily glad that she could stay in the safety of the circle of trees. Other than going down to the stream to fetch water, she remained in her clearing, staying silent and limiting her movement. She felt some of what the trees had warned her of when she left the influence of the circle of cedars. There was a tingle creeping up her spine, and it made all the hair on her neck stand on end. If she had ever felt such a feeling of wrongness and foreboding before she did not remember, and it made her want to hide and never come out again.
She huddled in her hollow with the tarp closed over the entrance, feeling much like an ancient Hebrew in Egypt, door marked with Lamb’s blood, waiting for the Angel of Death to pass by. She heard nothing, and if anything the forest was eerily silent, as if it was holding its proverbial breath as well. She took some small comfort in knowing that the threat might not be all that close by. The forest was a singular organism and would react the same way if a danger was within its heart or along its farthest boundary.
Sometime after dawn, she felt the tension snap and release like a broken rubber band, and the anxiety in the trees flooded out of them in a great rush. For the first time since she woke up, she breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed.
‘The danger is gone then?’ she asked.
:Gone. Gone,: they answered.
‘It’s safe to go out?’
:Safe. Safe now.:
‘Good.’
She decided to check the road for any sign of what had passed through overnight. She ate the last of her rabbit and dried fish for breakfast, then put on her hunting leathers, took her spear and hunting knife, and headed out to the road. As she neared the road, she felt anxiety coming off the trees but this time the concern was localized, and she didn’t perceive it as a global threat. It seemed that some of the trees that bordered the road were upset by something that was happening, and she wondered if it was another Other attack on a group of travelers. There was a faint tingle of Other touching her senses, but it was weak and did not come across as being threatening so she wasn’t all that concerned. She was more worried about being discovered so she kept to the trees and stealthily approached the road with caution.
Angry shouts came from the direction of the road, and then the smell of something truly foul being burned as thick, white smoke wafted towards her, almost making her sick. She was trying to clear her head, and get upwind of the horrible stench, when she heard a crashing in the woods made by something running for its life. She was almost to the road when she heard more shouts, this time identifying two distinct male voices, followed by more crashing, and then a horrific, bloodcurdling scream.
The scream galvanized her into action. It was the cry of a man in agony, and the trees around her reflected the victim’s panic. She rushed to the edge of the forest, straining to see what was happening, and arrived just in time to see a red-haired man collapse as he was snared by weighted nets thrown over his body. The man screamed again, rolling, fighting at the netting, and she could feel his terror hurdling at her like a freight train. Before she could run out to offer aid, however, two more men came into view, and she shrank back to avoid being seen. One carried a bow, but it was not drawn with an arrow, and the other was unsheathing a katana, no doubt in preparation for a killing strike.
She froze for a moment, not sure what to do. The snared man was dressed in light colored clothing and did not appear to be armed. He writhed in the net, and she caught a glimpse of at least two arrows sticking out of his body. His pain and fear broadcast out to her as he struggled to free himself.
‘Save him.’
She didn’t know where the thought came from, only that it echoed in her mind like his gasps and whimpers.
‘But I’ll reveal myself,’ she argued, hesitating.
Her eyes fell on the helpless man, knowing that if she did nothing he would surely be killed. Time was running very short. If she was going to do something, she would have to do it very soon. She warred with herself, fighting with the side of her that wanted to interfere and the side that did not want to risk her own safety. The two sides battled as she watched the figure writhing in the net, her breath short and shallow.
When the bull-beast had attacked the travelers, she had known that there was nothing she could do to save them. Here it was only a single victim and two men. She knew, she just knew, that she could overpower the men without any trouble. She had surprise and her alien appearance to her advantage. Even more so she knew deep down in her soul that saving him was the right thing to do. The man with the bow stopped a few paces away, but the man with the katana ran up to the figure in the net. As he raised his blade to strike, all thoughts of dissent were shoved aside, and she made her move.
Screaming a battle cry, she burst forth from the forest, hurling her spear at the man with the bow and striking him in the foot. As he cried out in pain and went down to his knees, she slammed her body into the man with the katana, knocking him away from the prone figure in the net. He fell to one side and, as he tried to right himself, she brought up her foot and kicked him in the head. The blow wasn’t hard enough to kill, but it was enough to knock him out, thus leaving her with only one opponent, and he was trying to yank her spear out of his flesh. He looked up at her in abject terror as she yelled again and ran for him. He screamed and scrambled away, freeing his foot by breaking the thin spear, and he ran down the road as fast as his injury would allow. She did not follow. From what she had seen, the netted redhead needed her help more than she needed to knock out the second man.
Turning around, she walked past the inert body of the first man and moved to the redhead’s side. He was panting, making little noises of distress, and trying to pull the net apart, but his movements were sluggish. At first she was confused because the source of the Other-sense she was feeling appeared to be coming from him, then he rolled and looked at her.
She gasped as two amber-brown eyes stared back at her from a narrow, pale face. His hair was an unruly mop of muted red, and there were things peeking up from on top of his head that looked like animal ears.
‘What on Earth?’
“Korosanai de kudasai,” the redhead choked, his eyes full terror and pain. He looked young, little more than a boy.
She tried to figure out what he was saying from her little knowledge of Japanese. ‘Kudasai… a form of please. Koro is a form of the verb to kill. He’s… he’s begging me not to kill him.’
Empathy touched her heart and she knelt down next him, wracking her brain for the right words. She’d only taken one year of Japanese plus a six week remedial course, and she had no doubts that she knew more Japanese from watching sub-titled anime, than she did from going to class.
“Daijoubu desu yo,” she replied haltingly, trying to tell him he was okay.
“Ta… tasukete kure...” he pleaded.
She recognized the word for help and did her best to look comforting.
“Daijoubu datte,” she said, hoping she was telling him it was all right.
“Onegai!”
‘He’s saying please. Hai is the word for yes.’ “Hai.”
She nodded and began to gently untangle the netting. He had wound the ropes around his fingers, and she noticed that his nails were extremely long and sharp. He said something else, but the words were slurred and she didn’t understand them. He was also growing weaker and his eyes were glazing over.
‘Probably from blood loss,’ she thought worriedly, counting not two arrows, but three sticking out of him.
He’d been shot in the upper portion of his chest just under his right shoulder, in his left thigh and, the worst of them all in her mind, in his lower abdomen. Blood stained his coarse tan-colored clothing in huge, wet swaths of dark red, and she feared he’d bleed to death right there. When she finally freed him from the netting, he was barely clinging to consciousness.
Clear of the net, she got a good look at him and the first thing she realized was that he was not human. The things on his head were animal ears, and they looked remarkably like a fox’s black-tipped ears. In fact, he looked a lot like a human fox. His hair color was the same as the pelt of a red fox and his face, while almost wholly human was fox-ish with a thin nose and narrow chin. His eyes were amber-brown like a red fox as well, and they were round and wide like a European’s eyes not slanted like an Asian’s. But the real clincher that he wasn’t human was the obvious fox tail sticking out of the back of his pants.
‘A fox. He’s a fox…’ She knew the word for fox. ‘Kitsune.’ “Kitsune desu ka?” <Are you a fox?>
He looked up at her, blinking slowly. “Hai…” he replied, his voice growing faint, and she noticed that he had razor sharp canines on both jaws. <Yes.>
“Daijoubu desu yo. Tasukeru,” she stammered, fumbling for words. <You’re okay. I’ll help you.>
She hoped he would understand. Of course how to say: “You’ll be okay. I just have to pull this arrow out of your chest.” had never come up in her conversational Japanese classes. Right now, the phrase seemed much more appropriate than, “Please tell me how to get to the train station.” She’d have to take that up with her professor when she got back.
It was frustrating for her because it was obvious that he was petrified, and she didn’t know how to tell him that she wasn’t going to hurt him.
“Buji,” she said, remembering the word for safety.
That he seemed to understand because he nodded. “Doumo Arigatou.” <Thank you very much.>
“Douitashimashite,” she responded automatically. <You’re welcome.>
She reached over to put a hand on his shoulder, but accidentally jostled the arrow in his chest, and he let out a strangled cry of pain.
“Gomen. Gomen nasai,” she blurted hurriedly. <I’m sorry. I’m sorry.>
His answer was a low wail as he dropped his head back to the ground. Her heart ached for the pain he was in, and sunk as she wondered if there was any hope of saving him. There was a time element as well. She knew that the one who got away would probably come back to check on his friend, and she didn’t know how soon that would be. Besides, there was nothing she could do for him there. She had to get him back to her camp where she could at least try to treat his wounds.
“Ikouze,” she said, trying to get her arm under his shoulder. <Let’s go.>
He moaned, but did not protest, and tried to roll over. She got behind him, lifting him up from underneath his left shoulder. He hissed in pain as his stomach muscles contracted around the arrow in his abdomen, but kept twisting his body around to his right side. Once there, she supported him under his right arm, taking his weight so he wouldn’t put pressure on his injured right shoulder, and let him rest a moment because he was breathing heavily.
“Onegai. Hayaku,” she pleaded. <Please. Hurry.>
He groaned and shifted, pushing off with his good leg. She braced and took all of his weight, noting that he wasn’t all that heavy. Then she lifted him up from under his arms, gritting her teeth as her thigh muscles strained, and pushed him into a standing position.
“Yoshi,” she told him. <Good.>
She took a moment to grab the nets, slinging them over her shoulder because there was no way she was passing up the opportunity to obtain them. In the two seconds it took her to rise to her own feet, he was already doubling over, but she caught him before he could fall and braced him against her body.
‘Okay, now what?’
She moved beside him, supporting his left side. He was trying to balance on the injured leg, but she could see that it was barely usable.
“Ikouze. Hayaku,” she urged, giving him a push. <Let’s go. Hurry.>
He nodded, gasping, and took a small step.
“Yoshi. Motto,” she persuaded. <Good. More.>
He said something in response, but she had no idea what it meant. She looked at him, and he gave her an odd look in return, but then slowly slid one hand around her shoulder. He was taller than her, but not by much, and his injuries made him lean forward, which put them at almost the same height.
“Ikouze,” she repeated and guided them towards the forest. <Let’s go.>
They moved slowly, limited by his tiny, hopping steps. She could tell each movement was agonizing to him, but he kept going, and she was amazed at his tolerance for pain. He was reaching the limits of his endurance, however, because his grip on her was weakening.
“Sumimasen,” he said. <I’m sorry.>
“Ii desu yo,” she replied. <It’s okay.>
His next sentence was jibberish, and she shook her head. “Gomen nasai. Sukoshi shika nihongo wa hanasenai,” she replied, repeating one of the lines she had memorized diligently in preparation for her homestay. <I’m sorry. I only speak a little Japanese.>
“Sou ka,” he answered with a little nod. <I see.>
They went a little further and he stopped, panting, his body leaning heavily on hers. “Sumimasen,” he said again, then used his right hand to point to the arrow on his belly. “Dokuya.”
“Dokuya?” she repeated.
He nodded. “Un. Doku. Oni-gumo.”
“Oni-gumo…” ‘Gumo is a variant of the word for spider…’ “Wakaranai.” <I don’t understand.>
He let out a little sigh and squeezed his eyes shut as his body trembled with another wave of pain, and this time when his legs gave out there was nothing she could do to stop him. He moaned and collapsed, his eyes rolling back into his head. She went down with him, falling to her knees, trying to cushion him.
“Iie,” she begged, shaking him. <No.>
His eyes cracked open but his pupils were dilated. “Dame da,” he breathed faintly. <It’s no good.> “Sumimasen.” <I’m sorry.>
He gave another soft gasp then passed out, his body going limp. She stayed next to him, looking around and feeling momentarily at a loss. They had only gone a very short way, but at least they had made it into the forest.
She moved to rub her temples, but her hands were stained with blood.
“Damn.”
Hastily, she wiped her hands on the ground to wipe off the blood. Since he was in no condition to help her, she had no choice but to carry him. Putting him in a fireman’s carry was out of the question because of the chest arrow, and also because he would bleed all over her leathers. While small blood stains weren’t difficult to get out of her buckskin jerkin, large ones were, and she had no way of making a new set, at least not easily, and brain tanning took weeks. She could use the nets and make a travois, but dragging it would leave a very obvious trail, and she wanted to conceal her tracks. The man who got away might come looking for his victim, and he might bring friends, and there was no way she was going to lead potential enemies right to her camp.
She took off her leathers, leaving on the black T-bar support bra and black spandex bike shorts that she wore underneath them, and tied them around her waist. Then she wrapped the unconscious man up in the nets to make an impromptu sling that she tied around her shoulders. She braced him into the small of her back and used her legs to pick up her burden.
While he might not have been terribly heavy, he was still dead weight, and she was trying to cover her tracks as much as possible. Even though it was cold and wet, she took to traveling up the stream that ran by her camp, trusting her boots to give her adequate traction on the sometimes slippery rocks, and approached the camp from the opposite side that she normally would. When she finally got him to her camp, she was exhausted, covered in sweat and his blood, and uncertain if she could do anything at all for him.
The cedars greeted her and reacted to her situation with alarm, but they did not seem to think that her guest was a threat. She took her rain tarp and laid him out on it so his blood would not stain the ground and possibly draw unwanted attention to her camp, then tried to decide what to do next.
‘Get the arrows out.’
To get the arrows out, she first had to get him out of his clothes so she could see the wounds, and she set about removing his blood-soaked garments. He was dressed as a peasant in a pair of loose tan pants with overlapping gussets to accommodate his tail, a matching cloth belt, and a short cream-colored kimono tied with another belt. He wore nothing on his feet, and his soles were rough and calloused, no doubt from years of going barefoot.
Even though they were horribly stained, she tried not to damage the clothes so she could attempt to repair them later. The pants came off when she broke the arrow shaft and lifted the material over it. The kimono was a different story, and she had to do a lot of gentle persuading to get it off without ripping it further. Then she shoved the blood stained clothing into a net and tied that into the stream so the blood wouldn’t dry before she had a chance to clean them.
With him now naked, his inhuman appearance was even more obvious. His body was definitely that of a young male, but his lower abdomen and pubic area were covered with soft, downy white hair like a fox’s underbelly. His head hair was the red fox color, shorter on the top, but growing long enough on the sides to cascade down his shoulders to the middle of his back, and his black-tipped fox ears poked out of it like two fuzzy triangles. The hair looked coarse, but was actually very soft and silky to the touch.
Turning him over to see if any of the arrows had pierced him clean through, she saw a narrow strip of red fox fur running along his spine from the nape of his neck all the way down to his backside and ending at the base of his fluffy fox tail. Other than that, and the white hair on his belly, he was hairless on the rest of his body. His skin was tan and smooth, but she noticed the remnants of numerous healing wounds and some scars that looked like whip marks on the back of his shoulders. His nails were sharp claws, about an inch long on his fingers and half as long on his toes. They were dirty from his earlier struggles, but she noticed that there was no blood underneath them.
Looking at his battered form, she tried to decide which arrow to attack first and went with the one in his thigh. Of the three, it was in the least critical place and had much less chance of causing a severe hemorrhage. Grabbing it by the broken shaft, she gently pulled it out, trying not to yank too hard and rip his flesh even more than it already was. She was also afraid that the arrow was barbed and might catch on his thigh muscle to do even more damage. It turned out that the arrow wasn’t barbed, but the metal tip was coated with a pungent black paste that clung to the head even after she had pulled it out of his body.
‘Poison. That was what he was trying to tell me about the arrows. He was telling me that they were poisoned. Doku oni-gumo he said. He also said dokuya. Doku must mean poison. These arrows are tipped with the venom of a poisonous spider,’ she reasoned. ‘Which means it paralyzes the victim. Damn.’
If the poison paralyzed, then it was no wonder that he kept getting weaker. The very fact that he’d been able to stand up and walk what little distance he had managed must have been a supreme effort. What she didn’t know was if he would be able to fight off its effects or if the damage was permanent.
‘Get the rest of the arrows. Treat the wounds as best you can. If he dies, it won’t be because you didn’t do everything you could.’
She went after the arrow in his chest next, being as careful as she could. It appeared to be located too high up to have pierced any vital organs, and the bone of his shoulder blade had prevented it from going through his back. It too was poisoned, and the wound bled more profusely than the one on his thigh. She blotted it with gauze from the first aid kit, but she knew she didn’t have enough bandages. She would have to use what she had, then boil some of the clothing she had scavenged and cut them up.
The last arrow was the one in his abdomen, and it was the one she was most concerned with. If it had pierced his bowels, the fecal material in the colon could contaminate his abdominal cavity and cause infection. She knew from all of her studies in wilderness survival that belly wounds were the worst.
To get the last arrow out without further ripping up whatever it had gone through, she had no choice but to perform an impromptu surgery. She built a fire and sterilized her hunting knife in the blaze, then gently and carefully cut the flesh around the arrow shaft to widen the wound. Blood gushed out of the hole along with the stench of ruptured innards, and she shook her head.
‘Should I just put him out of his misery now?’ she wondered, as she gingerly pried apart the layers of muscle and flesh to dig out the arrow.
It made a sickening sucking sound as it came free, and she looked into the wound to see how bad things were. The twisting, glistening cords of his intestines gleamed wetly in the light she shined down into his belly, but amazingly the arrow had only nicked his small intestine causing the source of the smell. She knew the nick wasn’t good, but at least it was better than a full severing, and digging a little further down showed that the arrow had missed his colon and his kidneys.
‘He might make it. If his intestine heals without getting infected, he’ll be okay. That’s if he survives the poison.’
She blotted and cleaned out as much of the blood and ooze as possible, happy to see that he was already starting to clot, then got out her sewing kit and boiled some thread to sterilize it. She sterilized the area around the wound with alcohol and began to carefully sew him up, thankful that he showed no signs of waking. She used a smoldering branch to cauterize the wounds on his shoulder and thigh, took the gauze and bandages in her first aid kit to wrap him up, and slathered the gauze pads with anti-bacterial cream.
Triage procedures complete, she moved her bedding to one side of the hollow and spread a reed mat down nearby. Then she took the bedroll from underneath her sleeping bag and put it on top of the mat for cushioning. She cut open one of the cloth sacks she had and used it as a makeshift sheet to drape over the bedroll, and placed him on top of the new “bed,” covering him with another sack-made-sheet and two blankets from her stash of bedding.
‘I’ve done all I can. The rest is up to him.’
Leaving him in the hollow, she cleaned the bloody tarp and his bloodied clothing, hanging them from a clothesline she made from a length of rope strung between two trees. Then she cleaned herself up and went to hunt on some nesting grounds she had discovered a few days earlier. She took one of the nets with her, weighted with stones for throwing. If she was lucky, she could catch a few ground birds with a well timed throw when they flushed. Her hunting skill was all the more important now that she had another mouth to feed, and she knew he would need a lot of food to fuel his recovery. If he lived.
It took her a long time of careful, stealthy stalking, but she managed to approach the nesting site without the birds knowing she was there, and she snared three Japanese Quail. She boiled the skin and bones to make a broth which would be gentle on her patient’s wounded innards, but offer hydration and nutrition, and be easy to spoon into his mouth until he could feed himself. The meat she spiced and roasted on spits over the fire, eating her fill and storing the leftovers in a cool cache where it would keep for a day or two. In the warm, humid climate of the jungle, nothing lasted long before it began to rot.
While the meat cooked, she worked on making more bandages from the spare clothing she had. Her guest’s wounds were still oozing blood, and she knew they would need to be cleaned and re-covered. She took a pale yellow, geometric-patterned kimono that she had taken from one of the dead traveler’s packs and sliced it into strips which she then boiled and hung to dry. When she was done, she settled into the hollow to rest and observe her new addition.
Lax in sleep, he looked painfully young, and she estimated that he was probably no older than sixteen or seventeen years of age. His face was beautiful, if a man could be called such, and he reminded her of a young fop. The Japanese would call him a Bishounen or “pretty boy” for his effeminate, fine-boned looks and long-lashed eyelids. His fox ears were drooped, almost buried by his thick reddish hair, and the only part of them that she could see were their black tips.
She stayed awake long after nightfall, lighting the hollow with the tallow lamps so she could keep watch over him. He appeared to be resting peacefully and did not seem to be having any trouble breathing. He hadn’t moved or shown any sign of waking, but she considered that a blessing because she had no doubt that his wounds would be very painful if he were conscious.
As she stared at him, she marveled at the strange turn of events. In the course of a single afternoon, she had not only broken her commitment to solitude and revealed herself to the people of the time, but she had also brought a stranger to her camp. Granted, there had been no way that she would have left him to die once she had saved his life, but the situation still had the potential to go very badly for her if he turned out to be an enemy. Not to mention the irony that the one she had saved was a kitsune, a fox, and the symbolism was not lost on her. Michael’s most powerful totem now snored softly in her hollow bearing a human face and mostly human body, and she wondered if he wasn’t what the dreams had been trying to tell her about all along.
Silently she prayed to Spirit, hoping to be answered in her dreams. She prayed for her new guest’s health, for his survival and recovery; and she prayed for clarity, for understanding and acceptance of this new turn of events. She knew it was no coincidence that the fox had been sent to her, she just wasn’t sure exactly what it all meant. Hopefully the answers would come to her, but in the meantime she checked on his wounds before retiring for the night and was happy to see that they had stopped bleeding. Blowing out the little tallow lamps, she crawled into her own bedding and settled down to sleep. Even though she now shared her hollow with a stranger, she felt no fear. He was a fox after all, and Fox would never hurt her.
Morning brought deterioration in her fox’s condition. He developed a high fever, and now his body burned as he undoubtedly did battle against his wounds and the poison. His little whimpers of pain woke her, but he did not seem to be regaining consciousness, rather he jerked restlessly in his sleep, his eyes darting madly underneath his closed eyelids. She checked his injuries and was happy to find no signs of infection or swelling in his belly.
She managed to get a little bit of broth into him, mixed with some herbs for soothing and pain since she was afraid to use her aspirin or other medications because she had no idea how he might react to them. He drank the broth only sporadically, and she feared that he would become dehydrated as his temperature continued to rise unabated.
His fever raged for two days and he thrashed in the bed, twisting the covers and crying out in delirium. Joanna was hard pressed to care for him and for herself at the same time, and she worried about him constantly. Her only hope was that the poison did not seem to be paralyzing him because he could kick and move all of his limbs as he struggled against demons only he could see. Several times he cried out the word “Haha-ue” which was an antiquated term for “mother,” obviously calling for a parent who could not answer. Sometimes he would scream, reliving some horrible nightmare fueled by his sickness.
His pleas and cries were heart-wrenching, and she did her best to calm him. She heavily doped the broth, but it wore off in a few hours as his body burned. Other times, she just sat beside him, talking to him, crooning and singing softly, and petting his sweat soaked hair. He seemed to respond to soft sound and gentle touch, and he liked to have his ears stroked. His eyes would open sporadically, but the pupils were so dilated that she could barely see the color of his irises, and he just stared blankly through them, unseeing.
Numerous times she brought him outside of the hollow and wrapped him in cloth that had been soaked in cold water in an attempt to bring down his temperature. For two days and two nights she tended him without rest or relief, aching and praying that he would either die or be released from his fever.
Finally, in the early morning of the third day, his fever broke and he began to pour with sweat. It rolled in droplets from his forehead and body, soaking the “sheets” until she had to replace them with reed straw that absorbed the wetness but stuck to his skin. Repeatedly she pulled him out to wash his body and change his damp bandages, wrapping him back up in recycled, cleaned cloth and covering him with as many blankets as she had from the supplies she had scavenged and her own blanket shawls. He shivered for hours, but by mid-afternoon the worst of it seemed to have passed, and he fell into a fitful sleep. She cleaned him up again, and freshened his bed, then tucked him back into it.
For the first time in three days, Joanna felt as if she could relax and take a break. She desperately needed a bath, and she had to change the infusion set on her insulin pump lest it get infected, so she went to bathe in the nearby stream. When she was clean and dressed, she set out to make a new fishing spear to replace the one the man had broken, never venturing too far away from camp and sending inquiries to the trees about her guest’s condition.
‘Fox?’
:Sleeps.:
‘Good.’
She worked on the new spear until it was finished, then used it to catch dinner. Now that Fox’s fever had broken, she anticipated that he would wake soon and be hungry. She brought two small fish back to camp and spitted them to roast over the fire. There were two quail from a previous hunt baking in packed clay in the coals, but they wouldn’t be ready for a while. She ate wearily, then pulled out her fox’s cleaned clothes and set about mending them since it was the first opportunity she’d had to sew the tears in the fabric.
After she had finished with the clothing, she had intended to meditate and pray for a bit before banking her fire and retiring for the night, but she must have dozed off because the next thing she knew it was full dark and the fire had burned low. Rubbing her eyes and shaking away the exhaustion that tugged at her mind and body, she crawled to the hollow and lit the tallow lamps so she could see. She checked her blood sugar to make sure she didn’t need to eat, then decided to examine her patient one more time before she went to bed.
His forehead was cool and dry when she placed her hand upon it, and she was very pleased that his fever had not returned. She gave him a tender brush over his skin and an ear rub before peeling back the blankets she had piled on him. She intended to make sure that none of his wounds had reopened or showed signs of infection, but she had no sooner begun to lower the coverings when he suddenly shot up with a cry of alarm and gripped the blankets tight to his body, his eyes wide with shock and concern.
“Nani shiteiruno! Yamete!” he cried, his cheeks flushing deep red with embarrassment as she stared at him, stunned.
Clearing the cobwebs from her brain, she managed to make out enough to know that he was telling her to stop what she was doing. “Yamete” meant “Stop!” and “Nani” meant “What?” so it was a fair bet that he was saying something along the lines of “What are you doing! Stop!” and judging by the blush tinting his cheeks, his nakedness had something to do with it.
He skittered backwards, dragging the blankets with him until he hit the wall of the hollow, and stared at her with his amber-brown eyes, his breath coming in frightened pants.
“Kutsurogu,” she told him, trying to sound soothing. <Relax.>
“Nani?” he replied, eyes even wider, then said something else that she didn’t recognize but probably meant, “What the hell do you mean relax!”
She sighed heavily and shook her head. She really was too tired to deal with his modesty, especially since she’d seen him naked repeatedly over the past three days, but at the same time the way he was clutching the blankets to his chest made him look like a blushing virgin who feared he was about to be ravished, and she couldn’t help but chuckle. He gasped, no doubt thinking that she had to be insane to laugh, but that only made her chuckle more, and his next near-hysterical statement made her break out into full giggles.
She knew most of her humor was fueled by her exhaustion; her mind’s way of reacting to the situation when she was tired almost beyond reason. The very fact that she could even make out a fraction of what he was saying with her muddled brain was a miracle in and of itself. She really would rather not have had to deal with him when all she wanted to do was sleep for eighteen hours straight, but there was naught to be done for it.
Her fox was awake.