The Fox

The way the wind blew, Kaede knew it was going to rain soon. The grasses were laid flat to the hillside; the trees shook in the gusting air.

She was five days northeast of the village of Anshu, forty-six days into her first circuit as King’s Huntress of the northernmost province in the Kingdom. Forty-eight days since she had last seen her: the person she had traveled so far to forget. Now she was scarcely a week’s ride from the mountains marking the Kingdom’s border, but she was no closer to forgetting.

For several days, she had been following a dry streambed through the foothills, but today she urged her horse uphill. If the storm was bad, the stream would flood. She headed for a rocky outcropping partially hidden behind two giant oak trees. As she approached, she saw the skeleton of a fallen oak on the ground, its bark encrusted with white lichen. A narrow but well-worn trail led around the tree, where the rocky hillside opened up in a narrow, dark crack just wide enough for a horse to pass through. She dismounted, looping her horse’s reins over one of the branches jutting from the oak, and went inside.

The light from the entrance did not shine far; darkness pooled only a few feet from where she stood. But in the distance, she saw the faint glow of daylight. “Is anyone there?” she called out. Her voice echoed slightly.

There was no answer; the cave felt empty.

She went back outside as thunder rumbled. Her horse stamped, and Kaede put her hand briefly on the mare’s neck. “We’ll be under cover soon,” she said. She untied the bedroll from her saddle and unhooked the lantern, then unbuckled the saddlebags, carrying everything into the cave. She knelt down in the entrance and lit the lantern, and when she shone the light into the cave, she saw a wide open space with a hard-packed dirt floor. The rock walls arched overhead in a ceiling two or three times her height, then sloped down to a lower opening, shaped like a narrow little door, about twenty feet away. This was the source of that dim light.

Holding the lantern, she crossed to the opening and crouched down to peer through. On the other side was a roughly oval space, and on the far side the ceiling went up and up until it abruptly narrowed into a tunnel that ended in a small opening. She saw the sky there like a blue-grey eye. A breath of cool air twisted down from the opening, and below were the ashes of a fire pit.

Someone had stayed here before.

Of course, she should have expected it. She recalled the trail leading around the fallen oak to the entrance of the cave. She shook off the whisper of apprehension that slid down her spine and ducked through the opening into the interior chamber. As she straightened, lifting the lantern in her left hand, black shapes shivered over the walls.

She started, and the hand that held the lantern jerked. The light jumped, and the shapes seemed to jump as well. Her right hand moved automatically to the dagger on her belt, and just as her fingers closed over the hilt she realized what she was seeing. Pictures were painted on the walls: dozens, perhaps hundreds, of sinuous, curving animals, some moving among trees, others running together in packs. She recognized some of the shapes: a deer with branching antlers, a hawk, a wolf, many foxes. As she shone the light over the paintings, the lines seemed to move. She could have sworn that the foxes twisted their ink-black heads to look at her. But when she blinked and looked back, they were only dark strokes on the stone.

She took a step closer to the wall and reached out to touch the nearest image: a fox with its brushlike tail held high as it ran on elegant, delicately rendered paws. It looked like it might leap off the wall straight at her, but the black ink was dry and cool beneath her fingers. She wondered who had known these creatures well enough to paint them with such liveliness.

Thunder cracked again, so loud this time that it felt as though the earth itself had rumbled in response. A gust of wind sang over the chimney hole, sounding a deep, ringing note, as if the hill itself were an instrument. She looked up to see purple clouds scudding over the opening. The rain was coming.