Earth and Sky 2 modified

EARTH AND SKY



Chapter 2





You Can’t Tell A Hen By The Colour Of Its Comb





When hunger calls and the lemon washed moon-rise high above the frost thin air, and the owl hoots its lonely weary work ridden cry; that’s the time a fox goes out hunting. 

When hunger gnaws at your guts and the Man-beast is asleep; that’s the time a fox goes out hunting. 

When quiet solitude lays on a scent of musk, and makes a raid on a hen house possible; that’s the time a fox goes out hunting. 

When the feel of the earth that once was mud, tears your pads, like the ripples of a shark edged saw; that’s the time a fox goes out hunting. 

When the taste of the last meal is a distant memory and starvation beckons; that’s the time a fox goes out hunting. 

When the bewitching voice of the chase tells you to go forth and reap; that’s the time a fox goes out hunting. 

When frosty air cuts into your fur, and hair bristles up to keep a body warm; that’s the time a fox goes out hunting. 

When others depend on you to survive, and your life does not belong to you only; that’s the time a fox goes out hunting.

It is stark cold as Charley wakes for the night’s work.  Rats shuffle, weasels stalk dumbfounded rabbits,  The stems of grass, once green, lay dead now, corpses left from a life last summer, upright, withered, frost burnt crosses on Calgary Hill, edged in silver with ice-drop diamonds.  The trees spread filigree foliage, tracing moonlight on a tapestry of navy blue where an owl flies silently, ghostly, ranging the empty sky.  Squadrons of Teal skit in close formation, as they haunt the sky.  Silently they weave lest for an occasional plaintive whistle that echo’s the wilderness of Siberian Steppes.  Mallard paddle across the sky in pairs, like steam ferries, noisily chattering, with the cackling din of a mother’s union tea party.

The scent of danger cuts into the fox like a razor blade sliding down his throat, telling him to go out, or starve.  Rusty iron traps lay in wait, snares profuse in unexpected places, and poisoned bait will tempt him. 

He must be careful or die. 

He knows that he must earn his existence by the power of his own industry.   

The fox measures a metre from whiskered muzzle to tip of his white tail, which is an orange shade of red, like the rest of his coat; he has a white chin, upper lip and underside frames his scimitar flashing teeth.  His black ears, feet, legs and nose are the first and last signs of danger to a small rodent.  Amber eyes with black vertical pupils shine like the light in a pumpkin lamp at Halloween: they are designed to locate and mesmerize.   

Autumn has passed, but still haunts him.  The autumn of his life creeps upon him.  The element of winter feels colder.  His bones ache more than before.  His mate, Delilah carries a valuable cargo inside her belly; his genes. 

He is hungry and thirsty, as he looks out of his darkly foreboding earth, like a monk in a dank monastery.  The single entrance to his home faces south and avoids the bitter winds.  It has a primitive chamber of bare earth where he can lay safely away from man or cold.  With no more than a scat for a nameplate by the entrance, it tells another fox in smell language to ‘KEEP OUT’. 

He trots with Delilah to the spring not far away that rejoices in being free and pure.  The water has escaped the bondage of underground lakes, drained from the forest plateau above.  It gurgles from the earth in salutation of all that is liberated, from its layer of subterranean limestone, filtered into crystal healing, life giving water.

The two foxes drink their fill, of the clear freezing water.

The winter cold moon is low in the sky, the fox views his domain.  The boundaries of his territory are marked by his scent, a musk message to keep others out.  It is well past dark, and Charley sniffs the ground outside Delilah’s earth, a little way from his.  She emerges looking hungry and vexed.  Her face is sharp with a gleam in her eye, vicious, and wicked.  She could tear him apart with the least provocation, but then her face turns to a softer hue, as she stares at him with vertically slit pupils, eerie and witchlike.

Delilah’s earth is an abandoned badger’s set.  She does not like digging, so she has thrown out the old dried grass and bedding that the badger used and now lives on bare Spartan earth.  She will give birth to her cubs here, and bring them up over the next few months. The entrances number three, and stretch deep underground, before arriving at the chamber, where she calls home. 

‘Do you smell the cackling fowl?’  He says in the telepathic language of fox, as they taste the air, on a breeze laden with the scent of chicken that wafts over them, like a medieval feast. 

Would the Man-beast miss them?  A fox would not even consider such nonsense.  The Man-beast believes he is God of the Earth, the omnipotent arbitrator of all laws that govern life.  The Man-beast does not remember what it is like to go hungry, like Charley has gone hungry.  The Man-beast has not had to fight with brothers and sisters to survive, as Charley had. 

Instinct tells Charley to go and catch food, or he will starve, and so will Delilah and his cubs. 

As the moon lingers, gradually sauntering above the black laced filigree of trees, the fox makes ready to parley with wilderness.  Hunger niggles, when stark winter bones and freezing flesh, become lean as the shadow of a cloud, and action makes caution fly, leaving only danger.  The frozen ground is hard as ivory.  No insects, no slugs, no worms, earth seems bereft of life, and the austerity of arctic desert ground, makes animals conscious of survival.  It is for Charley and Delilah to keep alive a little while longer, spring would soon arrive, and safety for another year.  Rats and mice hide in their burrows, safe from the biting winds that howl, wolf like, through the trees.  There is as much to hide a mouse, as a piece of the ice that covers the surface of the rain splashed but now frozen earth.  No opportunity for a fox to stalk its prey.  There is not one easy meal to be found. 

Charley strains to hear the sound of a cracking twig that may betray an enemy, or the vibrations of a Man-beast’s foot.  He sniffs the air for danger with the patience of a saint’s mercy.  He proceeds to behold his territory, a study of fields and woods in black and silver.  His kingdom is spread out before him, like a royal estate.  Two lights peer like pinhole specks, shining in the void of frost laden air, sharp as sciatica, competing with constellations, to see which could be the brightest gem.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

He trots smoothly as though cushioned on air, an elegant beast, as dainty or fast as he chooses, as he travels past the farm; checking, always checking in case there are any lambs too weak to stand, but fat enough to make a decent meal.  The nearer he gets, the stronger the smell of chicken becomes.  His senses lock on, like a guided missile as he approaches the hen house. 

And suddenly, it is here.  Through the rusty woven fence he sees the wooden hen house.  The rickety door is perfectly in keeping with the dilapidated fence. 

What an invitation. 

He searches diligently to find a hole made by rats but good enough for a fox to squeeze through.  His suspicious nature has protected him well, he sniffs round the wooden shack. 

He feels the rough splintered planks with his nose and contemplates clinically, the analysis of murder; delicious murder.  Murder most foul is the height of a fox’s ambition for without it, he would die.  A fox knows that killing means life.  It is his only cause of survival. 

Inside the shack a cockerel shifts, uneasy, as he senses trouble.  His charges breathe hot breaths of poultry panic.  The cock falls silent.

Outside the shack, the fox perceives his inner self, wound up like a coiled spring, its power emasculated a fragile peg, that, when taken away releases fury and carnage.  The power of this prospect overrules any other passion.

Inside the shack, sedentary chickens sit like queens of excess.  They deserve no mercy.  Their hearts palpitate.

Outside the shack, the fox sniffs round the hen house again, taking his time, his brain furiously, clinically machinating a plan. 

A murder is about to happen.

A fox considers silent, delicious, murder.  It is premeditated, of the highest degree.  The prospect makes his vertically slit black pupils narrow, like an ancient Egyptian cat, gleaming with the sinister coldness, of lustful excitement.  He focuses on the orchestra of fowl that are becoming restless, tuning up for the overture to begin.

The prospect death brings with it excitement.  There is something pure and delicious about killing.  In his mind a fever grows.  It is a disease fuelled by the ever increasing lust for power, now taking precedence over hunger.  It festers quickly, and becomes more infectious than the most contagious pathogen ever created.  It spawns the frenzied intoxication of the fox’s brain, and invents recklessness.  What would happen if the farmer turns up with a gun?  He is too hungry to take heed, as he feels his way with his whiskers and fore legs.  He forgets the cares that beset him earlier, and proceeds with the ruthlessness of Genghis Kahn. 

He squeezes through the hole, as he does, more of the rotten wood breaks off. 

He is inside. 

Premeditated murder finds a mate in manic, uncontrolled slaughter.  He will kill for the joy of annihilation.  The power of taking life that is incumbent on all predators. 

The fox’s saliva drools, like tears of syrup dripping, drawling on the muck matted carpet of straw.  As he beholds the hot bodied hens, his blood boils as he becomes an automaton, sensing his quarry, he prances with excitement.  The imminent hen holocaust is preceded by a cacophony of Armageddon as wings beat dirt sodden soil, feathers break and bones splinter.  Bone crunching blood spurting carnage ensues.

Then, poised like a rocket, he leaps, missile like.  Claws kick, and scrape shit, as hens leap into the air, cockerel’s spurs stab, as air becomes foul, breathing stifled, and sight clouded.

He grabs a hen round the heart and bites her neck.  He loves to feel the crunch of bones, the spurt of fresh warm blood, trickling down his throat, his sharp carnivore teeth sinking, feeling, tasting, living flesh and bone.

.  There is a plaintive squawk that fades and dies in diminuendo, at the end of the performance.  All is silent.  Not a breath is heard or felt.

The head comes off grizzly as a flower; clean as if it was cut with a secateur.  The headless carcass flaps and jumps high into the air as it does a headless jig on the dirty damp muck strewn floor.  Eyes look blankly at the body; the stare of a head removed from the chopping block and put on a spike at the Tower of London. 

He stops his frenzy, to lick some blood.  It tastes sticky, and sweet.  His eyes see only the beautiful paleness and quietness of a blood spattered corpse.

The hen house is all feathers and dirt.  The dying hens kick the earth with scratching, frantic claws.  The smell of ammonia is the only cause of tears.  Killing is as natural as breathing.  ‘Why don’t they run away?’ He could not answer.  They just accepted their fate like depressed zombies.  Warm bloodied carcasses litter the floor until every hen is dead with the gratitude of peace.

Then, subsiding into guiltless pleasure, as though nothing amiss has happened, he feels the stillness of absolute power. 

Back at the hen house he sees nobody so he grabs the nearest hen he can.  He hears a rustle and imagines a Man-beast chuckle. 

So he runs, hen in mouth and retraces remembered steps. 

He trots home with his fat bird, pleased, but his prize soon becomes heavy as he nears Cold Arbour Wood.  Delilah is standing by her earth, ravenous.  Dropping his prize, he turns to fetch another.  She tears skin that stretches like elastic, and eats hot flesh, plucking feathers out with her teeth and using her paws to clean them from her mouth. 

The hen tastes good, like the chicken of his dreams. 

It is past dawn and the great celandine rises to warm Charley’s world.  The trees are silver white with hoar frost, on browning twigs, dripping water and making crystal ice-flakes on the earth. 

He walks to the spring and takes a long drink.  He laps the clear, sharp, tongue tingling water.  His teeth ache with the cold and he tastes ice-blue crystals of heaven. 

The sharpness of the water meet a sudden sharp pain in his belly and it is only now, too late that he realises why the Man-beast chuckled.

2215 words

Doug Austin

5 Castle Ashby Road

Yardley Hastings

Northamptonshire

NN7 1EL

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01604696509