The Fox Path (prt 2)

This is part two. Part one-- "The Fox Path" 


There once was a man who lived quietly. Like to all who do, though, confrontation finally found him where he lived in his small home nestled away from the nearest village. It had been many months since that time when he had risked and lost his contentment over the heart of a fox. He had given up Sheba, and in return did not even have a bit of the fox's fur with which to remember her. Sometimes in his dreams, though, he felt her pressed against him still, but he always awoke to find himself cold and alone without the fox woman.

Still, the man lived. He survived through the winter off of the food he had gathered, and in the spring he began his planting again. Through it all, he felt nothing, and still he dreamt. It became the worst when one morning, he stepped out the door of his home to find that the air smelled of change, and it was again time to gather his harvest. He stood outside his home, unwilling to begin gathering. Maybe it would be better if he did nothing so that in the middle of the winter the cold could claim him. It would be so easy, if come that time he had no choice but to starve. Maybe then he would stop missing the fox. He was too strong, however, to allow himself to do this, and somehow he knew that his fox woman needed him to live. So everyday at sunrise the farmer knelt in his garden to harvest his food, and after the sun began to fall low he carried in inside to preserve it. And he continued this until one night.

It was the night of the harvest moon, and he stood outside to stare up at it. Although it was large as any moon he had ever seen, it was not the gold that the harvest was supposed to glow. Instead it looked even more icy and dead than ever. Still, this was said to be the most powerful night of the moon's year, and so he knelt in the dirt and prayed to her. A year ago tonight he had begged that the fox would live. On this night, when all was lost, he could beg only that the fox was happy. In his mind he saw her back in her world of faerie people, filled again with life. He pleaded to the moon that this was true, that maybe she had even found some other fox spirit that was more appropriate for her than he. As he prayed, an icy gust of wind hit him, and suddenly the farmer's blood sounded in his veins and he felt his world tip sideways. He could hear his own heartbeat resounding in his ears, and as it pounded, it changed. At first it sounded only as a fast double thump, and then there were three beating awkwardly, and then there were two sets of double thumps. First one would beat evenly, and then the other would flutter behind it.

Around the farmer, the world began to grow a darker and darker gray. He stumbled up to his feet and fell to his bed before he lost consciousness. In his dream, he stood in the nothing, and he was terrified. Around him, there was only a void, and he could feel its cold hands trying to pull him in, and every time he breathed he felt the air pulled out of his lungs and sucked away by the great empty. Into the great empty slowly seeped the moon. It did not shine to light the darkness, but looked only like a silver coin dropped above him. Her presence did, at least, allow him to breathe without the great empty trying to steal away his life with each exhale. As he stared up at her, he felt more pain even than on the night the fox had left, as if all his regrets were pressed down upon him.

Then, in his mind, the moon spoke. He did not hear words, but understood, and the desires of the moon came down upon him.

"One year ago tonight you prayed for the life of the fox, and it was you that saved her from the snake's poison. Now you have knelt again and begged for her happiness, but that cannot be."

Then, through the great empty above him, he saw an image, and the void ripped the tears from his skin. She lay in the empty, and it pulled at her fox fur and ears and tail. It was all he had seen of his fox woman for a year, and he felt that now the image would rip his soul. But in a moment, it was gone and the moon spoke again.

"When you prayed for her, and risked yourself by pledging me a deed, I allowed her to live. That night while you slept I came to her, and stopped the poison from reaching her heart by putting it in you, where your strength could protect it. Now that she is gone to another world, her heart is no longer near enough for her to survive. Her wounds will not heal, and her blood will not move, and she will never wake from the great empty unless you go to her and return her heart. The time is past for you two to find happiness together, but there is still time for you each to live."

The farmer nodded, and found his voice enough to ask, "How do I find her?"

"You must go to the cliffs and climb down to the water. Travel only at night, and follow my path toward the void. Leave tonight, and bring with you nothing except for one stick for walking."

And as suddenly as she came, the moon was gone. For only a moment the great empty tore at him with such force that he tried to scream. The sound was ripped away from him before he could make it, and then he was awake. The man rose from his bed and took a last look at his home before closing the door behind him. Beneath the boughs of a great oak, he found a sturdy walking stick. He did not look back as he walked west toward the cliffs above the vast lake. He stopped only at the rock where he had laid down the fox a year ago before beginning his way down to the water. Below him, he could hear the gentle waves brushing the shore, and now and then the wind stirred the trees behind him, but other than that there was no sound. He was glad of this, for there were many bad things at night that would try to harm him.

The way down the cliffs was difficult, and he struggled over boulders and ledges. Several times the ground shifted beneath him and he almost fell, but he clung to the rock wall, just barely catching back his life. After more than an hour he felt the grit of the shore beneath his feet, but allowed himself no time to rest. He knew from somewhere within himself that even at his fastest, it would be many nights before he came upon the great empty. The shore stretched out from him in two directions, one to the right and one straight ahead. To the right, the land seemed open and calm, the rock wall almost smooth and comforting next to him. In front, the wall was jagged and the shore grew wet and narrow. In some places, spindly trees grew up from the gray sand, leafless and bone-like, like death reaching up from the sand. The man longed to take the wide, safe path, but the moon shone dully in front of him. Taking his first step, he began to walk the narrow and lonely path.

After walking for only a few minutes, the man came to a place where the sand was only a tiny strip. He tried to press close to the rock to stay away from the water, but when he touched it, he found the rock to be as jagged and sharp as glass shards, and many small cuts formed where he had brushed against it. He gave up, and in those narrow places he walked in the water, which was icy and flooded his boots. When he came to the first of the bone trees, he went even further into the water to avoid it, for it was even more ominous looking up close and walking next to it made his body ache and grow cold. After several hours, he began to be convinced that this tiny world of cliff and water would be all he would see until the great empty took him.

By that time, too, he began to worry. The sky would soon begin to lighten, and he needed sleep terribly. There was no shelter here, though, or a place to find wood so he might warm himself and dry next to a fire. Finally, though, he found a tiny cave, nothing more than a place where time had worn the rock smooth and created a small place where he might lay beneath the ledge. There was still no fire, but as soon as the man lay down and turned his back to the lightening sky he was asleep anyway. The man had no dreams that night, and yet even as he slept it was as if he could feel the great empty. Darkness surrounded him, but it was not the same as the void that had pulled at him the night before. The darkness was just the absence of light, the great empty was something much more terrifying, and he could feel it beating in the distance.

When he awoke, the sun was almost totally below the horizon, and the first of the twilight stars were appearing. As he rolled over to look up at the sky, he realized how hungry he was, and already chilled, and lonely. He had been alone in his home since the fox had left, but compared to now, it had not been so bad while on his own land. As he sat in the sand and looked around he accepted that he would find nothing to eat until he got away from this place, so he drank deep from the icy lake and when the moon appeared he began again to walk. After he had been traveling for more than an hour, he still found no difference in the world around him. Now and again, though, the wind began to rise and stir the black waters next to him. The longer he walked, the harder it blew until it began to gust into his face. Just as the wind was making it hard to move, the man came upon the bone grove.

The shore grew wider, but only so that more of the stark white trees might reach up from the sand. As the wind stirred them, the branches chattered and clinked against each other. With his head down against the noise and the cold, he began to walk in the water. He had not gone far before he felt something strange across his ankle, there and gone before he was sure it had even happened. Steps later, he felt it again, something long and thin that slithered. Before he could go much further he felt it again, but this time it wrapped around his ankle and pulled, and he was tossed backward into the water. As soon as he was down he felt the creatures up his legs and over his wrists and arms and across his chest. He tried to scramble up from the water, but the sand seemed to be trying to suck him down. It was then that he realized how the bone trees had come to grow there, and with all of his strength he shoved his walking stick into the sand and pulled against it. Slowly, he began to rise free. From then he walked through the grove of those who had come before him, for it was better to walk among the dead than to become one of them.

After many, many steps, the man finally reached the edge of the trees, but what he saw beyond them made his heart sink. From the water came a fog so thick that his vision could not begin to penetrate it. The man was afraid to breathe in the strange mist, afraid of it touching him, and afraid of what he might find in the middle of the great cloud. Still, he took his first step inside, and before many more, he began to hear the whispers. For a long time they were so quiet that he could only hear a soft murmur, but the deeper into the fog he got the more powerful they became. They were almost comforting, and before long the clouded air around him began to seem warm and soft on his skin. The whispers became clear, and they lulled and soothed him.

"You've been walking for so long," came a voice in his ear.

"Your limbs all feel so tired," spoke another from a distance.

"It would be so nice to grant your body rest."

"Lay down in the soft, soft sand and sleep in the warmth. Just for tonight."

"There will be time for travel later."

"Rest now."

"Rest your feet, so tired of walking."

"Rest your legs and your back."

"Your hands are tired of carrying that stick. Let it drop and rest them."

Your eyes are so heavy, let them close."

And even as he kept walking, he felt his eyes shut, and decided that perhaps he could just continue like that for a time, at least give some peace to his eyes. But it was then that he realized how tired all the rest of his body was. Perhaps he could just sit for a moment. Even as he thought this, his knees grew weak and his body slowly began to collapse to the sand. It was then that something inside his chest fluttered and he remember the night he had slept while the fox had died. His voice carried out through the fog as he cried out, snapped open his eyes, and stood as straight as he could. The mists wailed back at him, and the sound was awful, and from the corners of his vision the harpies flew at him. They were little more than a blur, and he could make out only a pale face on each woman. Each one swooped in close to him, but two heartbeats thumped strong in his chest, and he did not even duck as they dove toward his head. Each one disappeared into the fog as it failed to hurt him, and with the death screech of the last the mist was suddenly gone.
He had walked for much farther then he had known, for when he saw the moon again she was growing pale. Ahead of him he also saw that he had reached the far end of the lake, and knew the first part of his path had been survived. He rested just where he had stopped in the sand, and slept in the darkness in his dream for many hours until the moon rose again.

Now it was almost two days since he had eaten, and the hunger was growing in him. He drank again from the lake, for he knew not where he would find water next. Fields stretched on ahead of him, broken only sparsely by trees in the distance. It did not seem quite as cold now that he was away from the water, and the moon guided his path more brightly than she had before. He'd almost begun to believe that he had accomplished the most difficult part of his journey when he got close enough to recognize what trees grew in the field. They were willows, from which the willow men could sprout at night. They would snatch up a soul and carry it back with them to be buried deep in the earth through their roots. But he had no other path, and so he walked quietly through the first of the trees, and did not realize that he was no longer alone until he heard footsteps walking in sync with his own immediately next to him. The figure was illuminated in the moon's light. He was tall and lithe, with long limbs that seemed to sway. His hair was long and yellow, and he was so thin and elegant that he looked feminine and he grinned when the man noticed him.

"Hello, boy, and where are you going with such determination that you would travel through the willow trees at night?"

The stranger looked so harmless that he almost told him, but something in that grin suggested to the man the he should keep silent.

The willow man studied him. "Who is it you seek? I can help you find them. Tell me who you seek and where you go!" The willow man seemed desperate to know, and the more determined and angry he became, the more the man knew he must not speak a word about the fox in the great empty.

His face turned red now against the otherwise green hues of his skin. "Tell me who you seek and where you go!"

The man only answered, "I seek no one and follow only my feet."

"Liar! I should steal your soul right now."

But the man knew that the willow could not, and said, "I do not fear you."

"Maybe you should." He laughed again now and grinned. If you will not tell me this now, you will never again tell anything."

The man tried to ask the willow what he meant, and that is when he understood. No words came from his mouth.
The willow man smiled and bowed. "Thank you," he said in the man's own voice. " I quite like this one." With that he jumped to the nearest tree, where the trunk pulled him in and he was gone. And so the man walked, listening to his feet. He was left alone the rest of the way across the grove. There was a strip of field ahead of him, and after a time he found a fawn lain dead on its side. A flock of crows perched around it, eating at its flesh. When he came near, they looked up inquisitively at first, and then with anger in their black bird eyes. They began hopping and cawing, and then the cawing became words.

"You are the one. The one who created creatures that stood in your field at all times guarding your plants so that we might not eat. We were chased to these forsaken woods to find food, rather than eat the worms and peapods in you garden. It was your knowledge that banished us, and that is why we will eat it now."

The crows became a black cloud around him. He tried to beat at them with his walking stick, but mostly it just swept past the birds, and his head began to feel light. The only thing that saved the whole of his mind was that the crows had already largely filled themselves before he had come upon them. Still, by the time they were done and flew away cackling, he felt empty.

For the rest of the night, he encountered nothing else as the field slowly became more and more a forest. When the sky showed the first sign of light, he found an oak to sleep under, for oak trees offered protection. In his dreams he felt the great empty. It pounded in the distance, though much closer than it had ever been before. That and the beating of two hearts were all he knew until he awoke. It took him a long while to remember why it was that he found himself in the grass in the dark, but had his mind crept back to him, he rose and continued on his path.

The trees and underbrush grew thick in the forest, and many times he had to catch himself with the walking stick to keep from falling. He felt the hunger now worse than ever, and thirst was growing in him too, and the further he walked the more he missed having at least his thoughts to keep him company. The moon hung still bright in the sky, but the trees grew thick here and blocked out much of the light before it could reach him. Every now and again the man heard the rustle of animals of wings, but he saw nothing move in the brush, and after many hours it began to grow thinner and the ground grew harder beneath his feet. The trees fell off into brush, and then the brush was gone and there was only rock. Ahead of him there was black sky with one silver coin of a moon. The ground was a solid slab of black almost completely smooth below his feet, but before he had followed the moon for long, the landscape ahead was disturbed by something. He could not tell yet what it was, but it moved slowly in the distance.

The closer he came to the creature the more he became filled with dread. By the time he recognized it, it was too late for him to get away. He had heard of the creatures from stories when he was a boy, although now he could not remember its name. It was a man, but it was dead and its skin hung from it like loose clothing, and it smelled of rot. As soon as he was close enough, the dead thing left its trance and ran at him, but the man swung his stick and knocked it off its feet.

"You are alive," it said from the rock. "You are alive as I will be again."

And with that the creature leapt back up and was at him before the man could react. It reached one hand out and into his chest, and he could feel it moving around inside him. He was suddenly very ware of the two hearts within him. He felt the dead man reach for the fox's heart, but the man forced it aside and instead its hand wrapped around his own. It ripped back out of his chest, and for a second he saw his heart before it and the creature were gone.

The man did not fall, for he still had one heart within him. It was smaller, and weaker in his body, but it still beat and slowly he walked. His blood beat less now, and he could feel nothing, but the moon stayed in the sky ahead. He continued ahead and with each step his body grew wearier and more frozen with so much less moving blood. When he felt almost ready to fall, he saw something sitting on the rock before him. It was a small girl, but he knew that everything he found here only wished him harm. As she sat with her back to him, he tried to tell her to take what she wished. That he had already lost his heart and his mind, and had nothing left to give. But when he opened his mouth he made no sound, for he had forgotten that he had lost his voice, as well. The girl turned, though, and when she looked at him he saw that she had no eyes.

She laughed, and said only "I have waited for you."

He saw her rise from the flat black rock, and then he saw nothing at all.

He was grateful that the land was so flat, and he used the walking stick to guide him. He did not need to see the moon any longer, for now he was close enough to feel the great empty pulling at him. It grew stronger and stronger with each step. After what felt like an eternity of walking, blind and empty, there was a voice and he could feel now the void ripping at his skin.

"You may take nothing further," it said, and there was no expression in its words. Each fell dead the moment it was spoken.

Regretfully, he dropped his walking stick, for it was the only thing the man had kept to guide him. But when he did, nothing changed.

"You may have nothing to protect you from this point forward," the voice spoke again.

And so the man knelt and took off his shoes and then clothes, and the air was ice upon him. Still, he was not allowed to pass, and the voice spoke a last time.

"You may bring nothing into this world through me."

It was then that the man knew who stood before him. He only nodded his head. He heard the creature rustle forward, and he felt the touch of death, and then he was within.

He could not tell whether or not he was still blind, for there was nothing for him to see. He could feel the great empty around him, but this time there was nothing for it to pull upon. There was no body for it to drag away, and no heart for it to horde. He felt it only as a total lack of all things; no breeze, no air, no lifeblood.

He did not know how he moved now, but suddenly he came upon the fox. She lay naked in the nothing, and her fox ears poked up from her auburn hair. He stood above her, and knew that once he gave her back her heart, it would be he that laid in the great empty forever. So he lay down next to her, and pulled the woman close in his arms. He felt their heart shift, and for just a moment he saw her eyes open.

They were silver and alive, and then everything was silver for an instant before the black returned.

He lay like that for forever, and then he felt a kiss on his cheek, and somehow he opened his eyes. She was sitting up next to him, and she smiled as he looked at her. At first, she was all he saw, but as he took her in close to him, he realized that they were again upon the edge of the cliff where he had left her a year ago.

"But the moon said we could not be together," he said as he buried his face in her neck.

She kissed him once, and said, "Sometimes there are second chances."