Slip from the night, orange sound and silence. Trees rustle goodbye, goodbye, dance little fox.
Rooftop exhales, leap and shadow — dry paw prints on the wet roof of evening.
Kitsune pauses; licks the dirt off her careful toes, then places them back onto concrete, oil, gum. Indifferent million streets. Tomorrow she will dance. Tonight she will run.
Far away on the basement floor the moles ready the rooms. Each stuffed with leaves in the corners, saplings bent into hangers for summer suits, forest dresses. Water in bowls caught only in moonlight. The ballroom is being strung up with vines and globes of fireflies. The foxes are coming. Whisper, whisper, music.
Outside the crows gather, don’t chatter, curious and religiously eager, redline frontline ready to run interference, against the humans.
This is where the kingdom of the sunny field, the shaded river, the mossy rock cave and the dry summer wanting sorts out its rulers, singers, lords and ladies. Where the foxes dance. Where the last of everything not human gathers — and brings the new year of magic. Beyond the world. Beneath it. Right in front of it.
Kitsune just barely dodges the bus. Only one girl, not on her phone, catches the oblique glimmer, gold eyes alight. Animal human, human animal. She squirms in her seat. Why must she sit so long?
10:30. The moles hear the first knock on the basement door. Scraping of leaves. Creak of trees, questioning wind. Foxes never answer — they only ask.
Come in come in.
The oldest mole, a hundred before the Rubicon was crossed, bows low, welcomes with a hand made of mantel, to enter. Enter all. His smile is still a surprising crooked edge of mouth and whiskers, wistfulness, pulse of diamond veins and dirt. Pulse quickens, earth softens. Somewhere off in Guangzhou a gingko, tap root working on rock for millennia, pokes through into something new. Delicious. Delirious. Giddy.
Orange red torchlight flickers down the hallways in rivers, rivers, of only If.
Possibility. Subterfuge. Gathering of night in the held breath. Knots that weave in and out of orange threads; dancing shadows.
The youngest mole, the one who contemplated the naked slug of new star suddenly buried in her den at Tunguska, strikes a match against the stone wall of the ball room. Blaze. And the fireflies — not to be outdone, dance in their globes.
World beneath world, lights up.
Dignitaries pass. Enter the Lady of the South Stream, that feeds the Nile, fox that floats the ships and flows the grains, that most importantly — keeps the pharaohs asleep. Night is a whisper on animal ears. Deep desert. Dream of teeth.
Enter the Lord of the Floating World. Ice, is kept connected by fox feet. Hunting. Chase across the fractured sea. The wind from Siberia is welcome for the wolf howl, the big events, the shotguns of men. Wind is run, run, and run.
Somewhere down beneath the basement, in the furnace room of a world that hummed with heat long before the humans burned wood — another mole — the one with the eye crossed by scars and geologic plates, readies the music. Each year, he hammers out of pure copper a spike, longer than his imagination and shorter than the machinations of a little shop; an anvil. He pours acetate of mint and tincture of pomegranate over it to temper, calm the buzzing atoms and focus their excitement, for just a second, before the spike is driven into the waiting core.
It’s always foxtrot — but the tempo — that changes with the moods of gravity. Electrodynamics. Flux. Flow. Desire.
Three hammer strokes. Bam! Bam! Bam.
The spike vibrates. Walls sing.
Word is a creature unleashed. Crawls its way up the walls, to the globes of fireflies; as a hum and then a roar and then cadence. Put your feet to it. Dance. The foxes clasp paws, bend, then begin.
Kitsune could not find a partner.
She was surely the prettiest fox, but she was also small, and scrawny. Her land was a hungry one.
She looked wistfully on at the dancers, the buoyant, exuberant tidal flow of the room. Sea of orange, pulsing. She didn’t quite fit. The big foxes from the North, with their thick winter coats and dresses, liked their foxtrot muscular, forceful almost.
She was far too elegant and fleet for that.
She decided to wander off to her room, and curl up around the bowl of moonlight water.
And then there was a tap on her shoulder. Elegant, polite.
Romeo Tango. He introduced himself with a smile that went too far into devious. But he was so handsome. Except…
Hmmmm.
He was the right burnt orange red. But…
His eyes were animal enough, she decided. Held out her paw with a hesitant, kitfox smile.
He took it like he owned it. Her feet spun her out to the dance floor for him; did he own those now?
That smile overtook his face again. Something about his mouth was odd, but she liked his rows of clean sharp teeth. Hunter. He didn’t have to scavenge.
She paused just for a second, before the whirl, before the mad spin, before the plunge into simple motion. Something wasn’t right…
But she wanted it, anyway.
It was only a few minutes before the entire ball room was staring at them.
Tango.
Dirty word like something hushed.
But she responded to him as if in a dream. How he so artfully turned the tempo to what he wanted. Adding beats. She felt herself instinctively wanting to bite; out of some kind of misguided sense of self preservation.
He would let her fight response rise almost to the danger point, then turn her energy into a spin. It took everything she had to keep her balance. She surrendered to her own wildness, and grace.
She felt like she was free like when she was hunting, leaping through the air, and this time, giddy from being captured.
She almost broke — that delicate wild second — and then he spun her again like a joyous planet captured round a new star — and stopped.
She fell. He caught her.
The room was silent as the polar sea. Mass of water. Unspoken astonishment. Still.
Everyone simply stared.
One small, shy Egyptian fox clapped. Hesitantly.
“Kareem,” he said. “My name is Kareem.”
“I lend my story to hers.”
A gasp went through the throng of foxes. Tango. Tango!
This was about Foxtrot.
“Not anymore,” whispered the Lady of the Shaded River.
“I lend my story to hers,” she smiled, bowed slightly to Kitsune and Romeo Tango.
The Lady of the River stepped out from the tight circle of onlookers, bowed low, and held her hand out to the brave Egyptian fox. He bowed back, paced over silent but sure, and took her hand.
Romeo Tango, the rogue, already expected this. Kitsune barely caught her breath before she was moving again. The Lady and Kareem, followed. Observed. Learned each other’s nuances then began to improvise.
Feverish sweat broke out on all of the moles earth-hard brows. They would have to make the music adapt. They’d never done this. What a scandal! What fun.
Kitsune woke up hours later. Curled around her bowl of moonlight water back in her room.
She stretched and yawned a big fox yawn. What a delirious dream.
And then her nose twitched. Caught the scent of another. She sprang up on all fours.
In the corner, tucked in a pile of leaves, was a big red fox. His bushy tail, hiding his eyes.
Romeo Tango.
She relaxed a little. Nope. Not a dream.
Damn.
Against her better instincts she padded over and curled up next to him. A small voice from out in the field, from trees, and the way the water moves, warned her. She almost heard her mother say No!
But not quite.
His bushy tail moved in sleep, to cover them both.
Stars stood on treetops all night, and talked about change. How their little, eternal lives pulsed blue, white, green, and then sometimes red. What should they all do about red?
Stars never solved anything. They only chattered. Kitsune, in her deep dream, promised herself she would ask the crows tomorrow. They were always in the know.
But what could she barter?
“A wolf,” said the big crow.
“A what?!” Kitsune shot back, angry and in painful disbelief.
“Bring us a wolf, if you want your answers. We want to know things from one of them too.”
Kitsune shifted on her paws uncomfortably. A wolf would simply pin her down and eat her. End of story. Foxes never ever messed with wolves.
The crow shuffled left along the power line. His gang all started squawking and he hushed them with a simple look.
“I am Lord of the Rooftops and the Lines,” he said, warningly. “I follow everything back to its source, and back again. If you want to know anything, you come through me.”
“Yeah but,” Kitsune pleaded, “This is freakin Toronto! Where the fuck am I going to find a wolf?!”
She began to turn and walk away, exasperated, when the Crow King stopped her.
“Find where the day runs aground onto night, little fox.”
She stopped. All questions. Huh?
“Have you ever been on a ship, Kitsune?” he asked.
“Of course not! I’m a fox.” She growled for the first time at him. Irritated.
“Crows get captured all the time to serve as lookouts for land. Even though they have GPS, humans still do it just for fun. Tradition. To see if we are still right.”
Kitsune sat back down.
“We are always right.”
She knew this answer in her bones before he said it.
“I understand.” She said. How many animal lives for that answer… for relevance.
Romeo Tango was still sleeping in her room when she slipped back.
She gave him a quick kiss for his dangerous, kind heart, picked up in her mouth two small parcels of food wrapped in leaves from the generous moles, and slipped back out into the night.
Sleep, lover.
Destroyer.
(I’ll be back.)
Kitsune ran all night. Brick gave way to wood, to open lots, to dirt streets, to fields. Finally to forest and the hills.
She stopped briefly only to drop the leaf parcels, eat quickly, and then drink water from a puddle, which she hated. But she was so thirsty. And then she ran again.
Animals always knew the answers before they understood them. She ran West around the big lake, away from the city. She hopped onto the step of a cargo train and was thankful for the rest while the world whizzed by. And then she ran some more.
Exhausted after hours and hours, she finally lay down on a hill overlooking the water. The sun was already coming up. Over the lake. Its bright yellow rays hit the narrow band of hill she was on — and she understood — she was here. When the sun set here, the lake would keep the daylight right until the water touched the edge of night.
Her danger sense flared, and her ears shifted about nervously. But she was so, so tired. She found an old, fallen tree with a hollow spot in it; it wasn’t quite protection but it was the best thing this day would offer. She crawled in and fell into a deep sleep right off.
The wolf was faster than she could have ever imagined.
Her nose had barely twitched at his scent when he was already leaping towards her. She screamed, waking up, and barely dodged the huge mouth with all its terrifying, sharp teeth.
He hit the log hard and took a moment to recover; he had also not expected her to be so fast.
While he recovered for the barest span of a second she scrambled down the hillside towards the water. The wolf growled and plunged down the hill after her.
Shit! She just needed a second to talk to him! She just needed a word before he succeeded in killing her. As she bounded down the hillside in sheer desperation she wondered if she would taste good.
There was a small concrete structure at the lake shore where the hill ended. Something human. Maybe a drain? It was squarish like humans liked, and had bars that let water through but not big stuff like logs. Could she fit through the bars?
No time to think about it. She hurled her tiny fox body at the bars and hoped she could squeeze through.
Barely.
She had just twisted and forced her way in when the wolf was at the bars too. He lunged his huge sharp mouth between them, but couldn’t reach her towards the back of the structure. He raked his clawed paws in after her, and she had to dodge them desperately or get her fur and skin ripped off.
Finally, the wolf seemed to tire, or give up, or just got bored.
“I need your help!” she shouted at the wolf. “I’m worth more to you alive!”
The wolf snarled and renewed his attempts at raking her through the bars.
“I know you understand me! Stop! Just listen. I have you something you want.”
The wolf finally paused. Backed up. Sat on his haunches a few feet away. Tilted his head to the side and contemplated her.
“What?” he said, after an agonizingly long time.
“The crows.” She said, still panting, still terrified. “The Crow King wants to trade information. He says he has something you want, and he wants something too. I came to tell you.”
“Why don’t I just eat you and go see him on my own?” the wolf laughed.
“Because you don’t get to know what you want, until I do.” she almost barked back. Now she was mad. He was so arrogant.
He stood up again on all fours and her courage fled again… he was so damn big!
The wolf turned and padded back and forth in front of the cage.
Kitsune exhaled. Frustrated. Tense. Did it take him that long to think?
“Alright.” The big wolf said.
“There is something I’ve been wanting to know, for a long time. “I’m the only wolf, this far south. There is something I need to bring more wolves here. That old bastard of a bird sees everything. He will know. Maybe after I’ll eat him.”
The wolf chuckled to himself contentedly.
Kitsune rolled her eyes. Yeah right. How are you going to catch a bird? Such an arrogant ass.
“Lead the way, little fox,” the wolf said. “I promise on my word and my story for generations, that I won’t eat you.”
Racing back to the ballroom with the wolf in tow, Kitsune’s thoughts drifted into deep reflection and unsettling questions. The strangeness of this world. Why was she doing this for simple information? For answers about a fox who insisted on Tango? Something warm, and dangerous flared in a small space inside of her, but she forced it back down. Kept running.
Saturday afternoon was a strange one. Humans called it this; to the animals it was Moon half river and yellow leaves. All the same, if the humans would have seen this odd scene they would have questioned their universe; wondered what they didn’t know and how had they missed this? Animal lives.
A small red-orange fox sat on the rusted rails of an old train yard. Crates, boxes, and abandoned warehouses tumbled irrelevantly out into the distance.
Beside her, on the rails, sat a huge grey wolf. Menacing. Beautiful fragment of a lost world that wouldn’t die. Out of place.
On a power line above the two, legions of crows clutched the air in perfect silence. Waited.
The world waited.
“Romeo Tango is a coyote,” the Crow King said.
“We watched him come in through the lines. Watched him rub iron rusty earth into his fur. Watched him become a fox.”
Kitsune gasped. Nearly fell over. Started panting.
The wolf raised an eyebrow, curious, and shrugged.
She stumbled away from the scene — numb.
Betrayed, but that was too simple of a feeling. There were good things too.
The wolf and the Crow King were talking. Traps. Humans. Garbage dumps and backyard sanctuaries. Rabbit farms to raid. Invisible corridors. Ways back into the world of humans. Revolution.
She couldn’t listen. She was numb. Her new lover was an imposter. This was so wrong.
She’d never felt so free — and yet — it was all a lie.
Back on the basement floor the moles were readying the rooms. Corners stuffed with new, soft leaves. Bowls of water, caught only in moonlight.
But some of them were uneasy. The world was changing imperceptibly. A mysterious fox somehow grasped a paw around the tides of music, of the eternal dance, and was altering it. They were scared. They knew the earth tides. And the animal tides followed. But not anymore, it seemed.
They fed the fireflies and stoked the furnace. Moles readied for another night of Foxtrot. Or maybe Tango. Who knew?
Romeo Tango knew, that she knew.
Yet he seemed unfazed.
“Do you still want to dance tonight?” he asked her, back in their room.
She stared at him in disbelief. Such reckless courage. He didn’t care that the world was falling apart. Or maybe he wanted it.
She resisted her wild urge to say Yes. Yes, Yes, and Yes.
She said Yes.
He smiled.
Somehow he had managed to find an unimaginably gorgeous forest dress for her — in her own colors, from her own land.
She took it shyly, smelled it, and couldn’t believe that it was made of rivers and trees that she knew by name.
You know… coyotes weren’t so bad compared to fox boys…
The second night began like a dream.
Fireflies danced. The ballroom was even more expansive; more welcoming. She glided under lights and gazes like she belonged. Everyone was afraid of him, but honored her.
“My story to yours,” they all whispered continuously.
Rebellion was a sweet tang in the air.
She knew she wouldn’t fall again. Or maybe forever. It didn’t matter.
He had a way of side-stepping her fears; like they were mice in a summer field. Her eyes caught only the sway of grass across the entire meadow, through the hills she’d never been to. His paw behind her back guided her through generations of doubt, animal mistrust, danger, and want.
With each round of fast steps she leaned closer. Gave a little more. He moved with it like this was natural.
And it was for such a beautiful while.
Until the basement doors suddenly shook.
Sent reverberations through the whole dance floor.
And finally burst.
Through the collapsing rubble, dust, and noise — a huge grey wolf lept through. Bounded across the floor like a torrent of water.
Pandemonium.
All the foxes dropped and clung to the ground. Growled low.
Teeth barred.
Wolves were bad news. This couldn’t end up well.
But the wolf surprised them.
He slowed, then trotted easily into the center of the dancers, and sat back on his haunches. Cocked his head side-to-side and surveyed all of the foxes casually.
“There is only one way, to catch the night,” he said.
The foxes stared at him, confused. But some words, come from river bottoms and sleep. From echos, between desert mountains. From ocean winds. They take their time. And all the foxes began to feel something so slight, so long gone, from back in their ancestors’ lives.
The wolf took his time. Let it sit. Then he looked over to Romeo Tango, and said, “You.”
Romeo Tango smiled back, mischievously, but Kitsune could feel a little nervousness, just a tinge of fear in him for the first time.
“Whiskey Bravo,” he said out loud to the wolf and the crowd, and did a bow to the wolf. He whispered to Kitsune and laughed a secret little laugh with her, so only she could hear, “He was born in a whiskey barrel.” She couldn’t help a little giggle.
“You all know he’s an imposter, right?” Whiskey Bravo said to the fox crowd. There were a few gasps of surprise, but not many. They had suspected he was somehow different, and their capacity to be surprised, to accept the new, had been blown wide open the past two days. One more incredible thing, was now simply slightly delicious. They wanted more.
“He posed as a scrawny little wolf with my people too,” the wolf said. “I liked him in grey. But I almost killed him for it. Except that we found out we liked the disruption. His example brought me here.”
“Why are you here?” the Lady of the River asked bravely, clasping Kareem’s paw, trembling slightly still at the sight of the wolf.
“To stop us from sliding into myth, and disappearing,” Whiskey Bravo said slowly, with much thought. “From losing our way out of the night, our last sanctuary. I want to take on the immediacy of life and struggle with the humans, instead of disappearing elegantly like our cousins. Bears, eagles. Soon there will be no more tigers left in the world. I don’t want to lose our footing on the ground, like the stars did. Look at the crows. They’re involved. They are thriving, even pests to the humans. While we’re fading away.”
“We have to change, he’s right,” the Lady of River said, a startled but resolute expression on her face. “We need to dance something new. Stumble a little on this earth, instead of shimmering out in grace and beauty.”
The wolf nodded at her, appreciating her quick wisdom. Foxes were always quick. “I want to teach my own people to dance with their feet on the ground again. I need your help,” Whiskey Bravo said.
The room gasped. Help? A wolf?
“We already have our handsome ambassador,” Kitsune ventured, and they all laughed, more at the joy they felt at the surprise of these new thoughts.
Kareem bowed low, as did the Lady of the River to Romeo Tango and said, “We lend our story to yours.” And the wolf, shockingly — amazingly, bowed to Kitsune. “And I lend my story to you, brave fox.”
Slowly the entire ballroom full of foxes and moles bent and gave their stories, their individual mythologies, their ancestors’ tales, to her. For collective courage. She would be their ambassador as well.
The wolf just smiled his huge toothy smile, “See you soon,” he said, then turned around, and trotted out. His work was done.
Kitsune and Romeo Tango began to slow waltz; contemplative, and the movement helped her think. She pulled him a little closer. “What do wolves dance too?” she asked him, puzzled. “Something with leaping and growling? Lots of howling and maybe drums? Taiko?”
Romeo Tango laughed a big hearty laugh. “Sometimes. When they think someone’s watching. This one however, I’ve seen him by himself.”
“And?”
“You won’t believe it.”
“Come on!” A few others joined in her shout. Foxes hated to be baited. And hated suspense worse.
“Ballet” Romeo Tango said.
Again, utter astonishment. Silence like the polar sea.
“If he can learn ballet, we can learn it too. And others,” Kitsune said, thinking.
“She’s right” Kareem said. “Our dance gets more refined each year, more beautiful, and less connected with our world. Hip Hop anyone?”
Foxes openly laughed and nodded. The release of tension was palpable. Slowly, for tonight, they slid back into the ease of their own dance, but began experimenting. Sometimes it was good to shatter ritual. To make new ones. To feel so alive in the process.
Back in their room Kitsune and Romeo Tango snuggled into their corner; fresh soft leaves, warm fur, and bushy tails.
He was soon fast asleep, and she decided she would grow to like his faint snore.
She yawned hugely, exhausted herself but slightly giddy with excitement.
As her deep animal dream began, she reached a paw up to the chattering stars, brushed aside some room, and grabbed a firm hold on the night.
