Mythfits

6- Ella

Clothes, old toys, more clothes, broken furniture, even more old clothes... Shoving the musty old box away from me, I growl in frustration. Rocking back on my heels, I survey my progress- I had been sifting through old boxes of stuff in the attic since I got home, looking for something to help me with my school project on family history, but had made zero progress. It wasn't like I had anything better to do, so I pull the next box towards me and start sorting.

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Two hours and a countless number of boxes later, I finally find a promising-looking book. Leather bound and heavy, with a coppery fox inlay on the front, it looks like it could inflict some serious pain, maybe it would be useful in my conversations with Steve. I open it gingerly, as the spine looks like it could fall apart at any moment. The script is japanese characters, which unfortunately, I cannot read. ( I should have listened to mom and learned japanese!) I flip through the pages carefully, looking for anything helpful; subscript, pictures, stuff like that.

Cursive, in red-brown ink catches my eye. Written above the characters like notes, my mothers handwriting leaps out at me in stark contrast to the blue-black calligraphy. Tracing my finger over the page, I start to read,

After the kitsune has gained all of it's 9 tails, it's golden brown fur changes to a white or silver.

A kitsunes Star Ball is it's most prized possession. It is the embodiment of their powers.

The writing stopped there, but reappeared in snippets, like she was taking notes. I smile, running my hand over the pages, my heart in my throat; Mom had always liked foxes. In fact, when she died two years ago, she was on a trip to Japan to give a lecture on the red fox over at a land conservation place. The ironic thing is that while she was there, she contracted rabies from a flying fox.

I had no idea that Mom had been into mythology too, but it made sense; she had grown up in japan, she loved foxes, and even earned her P.H.D. on rare Japanese fox species and did her thesis on how their rapidly declining population numbers correlated to a new type of poisoned bait that hunters used.
I sigh, Mom's death had seriously affected our family- any death would. Dad had always wanted to be the protector, the head of the family and provide for us, but since Mom died overseas, he had become almost obsessed, like if he didn't find the best job, we would spiral into our doom.

Tearing my train of thought off the past, I reread the text and flip through the pages, glancing at sketches and other excerpts that my mom had written as an idea sparks in the back of my head; if I could translate this book, not only would it help with my family history project, it could also lend me insight into Abbie's problem. I know that she's not a kitsune, but it seems to be a book on magic and mythical creatures, although many of these seem to be spells that only work on mythical creatures, judging from the side notes.....

Stuck between the pages, a loose sheet of paper crackles as I flip the page. I gingerly unfold the paper, as it is not quite yellowed, but definitely old. In the same blue-black ink as the book with my mother's red-brown notes over top, an intricate graph is laid out. At first, I am puzzled, as it isn't clear what the graph is, but as I look closer at the writing, I realize that it is a family tree, going back dozens of generations.

I recognize the characters for my mother's, my father's, and my own name, but the rest are unfamiliar. Obviously, this was written before Abbie was born, judging by the fact that my name is the most recent entry. Saddly, I realize that mom might have updated it with Abbie if she hadn't died before she got around to it.

I trace the lineages of my parents, not being able to read the characters themselves, but looking at my mother's notes, ones like: first to come to america, Local doctor, and Thought to be a kitsune. While most were mundane notes like their profession or status, quite a few, especially further back, were suspected of being kitsunes.