What Happened on Fox Street

Then poof! The match burned out, leaving her alone in the unknowable darkness. Mo put her arms around herself, a tent inside a tent. Wind rattled the trees.

Mercedes stood patiently, practically in her underwear, coated with mud, water dripping off her sensitive nose. Was she really here only because of Da? She hadn’t had to show Mo the photo. She’d trusted Mo. She’d wanted Mo to know.

“Ready?” Mercedes asked her. “Because I am.”

“We’re friends again, aren’t we.”

Mercedes wrinkled that persnickety nose. “Only if you swear never to wear that poncho again.”

The Thinker, Part 3

HEADS TOGETHER, they forged a plan. Mercedes would head toward the parking lot, then search the picnic grounds and vicinity. Mo, who knew the hillside and stream area so well, would continue hunting here, in case Dottie wandered in circles and wound up back where she started. In an hour, no matter what, they’d meet at the Den.

Mo’s best friend parted the solid sheet of rain and disappeared.

“Dottie! Dottie!”

No sooner did Mo send the syllables up than they tumbled back down, landing in the mud. Her throat ached from shouting. Her feet tangled in a vine.

At the thicket where she’d found the fur, rain glazed the thorns, making them shine like tiny daggers.

I need you.

Blindly, dully, Mo retraced her footsteps. She sloshed back across the stream, climbed halfway up the hill, slipping and sliding in the muddy tracks she’d made herself, only a few minutes before.

Stop, Mo. A voice that was both hers and not hers whispered inside her. You can do better than this.

Mo pressed her fingers to her temples.

Think. Think like Dottie.

Dottie, with her big heart and small self. Her bare feet and short legs. By now she’d be all worn out. Lemme take a little rest, she’d think. She’d plop down, she’d pull a snack out of her pocket…

As if Mo’s brain had conjured it, a waxy bit of paper blew against her feet. A Dum-Dum wrapper. Sour apple.

Mo opened her mouth to shout-but instead she listened.

Ssssh, whispered the voice inside her. Gently.

Mo stood very still.

Patiently. You know how.

Mo pulled the bright, alarming poncho off and laid it on the ground. Rain wet her in the few places she was still dry, evening her out, making her just the same as the trees, the grasses, the glazed thicket.

Yes, whispered the voice. That’s better.

One cautious step at a time, zigzagging to avoid jutting stones, fallen branches, slumps of rotting leaves. To one side lay the racing stream. The wind gusted.

Mo hadn’t ventured this far into the kingdom all summer. Another powerful storm had swept through here, maybe in the spring. The trees were battered, missing limbs. The spots where they’d broken off were still raw looking, like the gaps on Da’s feet. Some trees had taken their neighbors down with them when they fell, crashing to the ground tangled in each other’s woody arms. Mo stepped carefully, feeling the air grow warmer. Without the thick cover of leaves, the sun would be more generous here. It would pour out great, golden buckets, and that was why the wild mustard and the first black-eyed Susans were already blooming here, and why those black raspberries were plump and ripe.

Berries. Sweet, smeary, eat-till-your-greedy-little-belly-busts berries.

Slowly. You know how.

The voice filled Mo, the way the joy of her father’s singing did, or the perfume of Mrs. Steinbott’s roses, filled her with something she couldn’t name, something that nuzzled her, assured her, carried her forward.

How easily her feet navigated the ground. No twigs snapped. No vines or prickers snagged. The rain began to fall more softly, its thick gray curtain turning pearly and translucent.

The voice was both inside and outside her now.

Just ahead lay a majestic, fallen tree, its bark thick and protective as the shingles on a house. This tree had fallen long before the others. Grass sprang up around it, and silver-green moss grew a furry coat along its ridges. Just beyond it, a tangle of pale purple berry canes snagged the light. The thick clusters of berries appeared lit up from inside, as if each one cupped its own tiny candle. Mo stopped, her heart beating patiently, steadily.

Here you are. At last.

From the other side of the log, the fox raised her head, unsurprised, and gazed at Mo. Her face was long and narrow, her delicate ears tipped forward in greeting. Her red fur was wet and matted, as if she’d been waiting a long time.

I knew you’d come.

The fur at the base of her throat glowed white as a star. Her almond-shaped eyes held Mo’s in a look both loving and searching.

The fox stretched her neck and nuzzled the air. Nothing, nothing about her was frightening. Mo longed to run toward her. Her arms lifted, aching to circle that neck, to press her cheek against its downy warmth.

But as if she could read Mo’s mind, the fox rose up on all fours. She bent her face to something on the ground, hidden from Mo’s sight. The fox’s eyes slowly closed, their light winking out, her beautiful self drawing in, motionless and rapt, as if trying to memorize this moment. Mo didn’t dare breathe. She hung suspended, willing this moment to last forever.

But already time was up. A flash of velvet black legs, and the white-tipped tail streamed out like something in your happiest dream. No one could keep up with her, even in a dream, but just before she disappeared into the undergrowth, she stopped. She looked back with those wise eyes only a shade darker than her fur, eyes that saw so many things you couldn’t.

Foxes and humans can’t mix. That’s how life is. But wherever we both go, we’ll remember.

Swift, silent, an arrow shot from an invisible bow. She was gone.

Mo bent over the fallen tree’s thick, ridged walls. She held her hand over the spot where the fox had been, cupping the lingering warmth in her palm. Cradled against the tree, nearly hidden, something else stirred. A small wild animal uncurled and sat up, yawning and rubbing her eyes with her fists. At the sight of Mo bending over her, Dottie smiled dreamily.

“You said I couldn’t, but I did. Lookit!” Dottie opened a fist sticky with mashed berries, and there, right in the center, like her heart in her body or their house in the center of the street, lay a tuft of hair that at first looked transparent. But then a slender beam of pale, watery sun caught it, and the fur turned just the same color as Dottie’s hair. She looked from it to her big sister and then back again, her sleepy, berry-streaked face coming fully awake, alive with wonder.

Wren Den

DOTTIE CONTENTEDLY SIPPED the last can of Tahitian Treat, while outside, the world dripped away the last raindrops. The sound of the swollen stream played beneath the voices of the birds as they began to sing again. Mo had retrieved the poncho and spread it on the ground, and dried Dottie’s scraped-up feet with a bit of old towel.