Four"I was dreaming," said the woman who called herself Rain. She was kneeling before him on the mossy forest floor, her shoulders hunched forward as if weighted by the dim light from above. She said it again, "I was dreaming." And she told her dream to the fox: and as she spoke, the forest melted away around him and he saw a grey sky instead, and he imagined he heard music rather than words; and then he was in a place he'd never been before, a place that made him feel very small and made his fur stand on end—there suddenly were a rush of rocks and waterfalls and anger, and loud noises came roaring around him, like water crashing against itself. The water soaked him but left fear instead of wet. Dark shapes whirled about him and he saw noplace to hide, but then his eyes fell upon the woman herself, standing motionless, gazing sadly at something beyond the fox. He did not turn to see what it was. The rocks were boulders now, and he tried to leap between them but they receded from each other and then he was falling into a black fog, and he felt the darkness catch him and ask with surprising gentleness: "Are you ready?" The fox tried to find his tongue, but it was dry. "Are you ready?" repeated the voice, more urgently. But this time it was the voice of the woman, and the fox shook himself awake at the sound. The forest was back. It was as dim and as tranquil as ever; he had no sense of how long he had slept. The quiet rang in his ears as the dream of noise subsided. The woman stood over him, her face still calm but her gaze touched with concern. "I do not know how long we napped," she told him gently, echoing his own thoughts. "Time stands motionless, or feels that way. But you didn't wake when first I called. Were you dreaming?" The fox took another long moment to be sure of it all, then asked her in return: "Weren't you?" "I do not dream," she replied. She smoothed out her dress and turned to wander deeper into the woods, and the fox leapt to his paws to follow her. . o O o . Mr. Odonson watched the young girl ignore him as she fretted to and fro in her home, searching for something. This gave him a chance to pay more attention to his surroundings. On the outside, the home had appeared small and neat like all the others; inside it seemed even smaller than it should have been, and stuffed with clutter. Dog-eared books, papers with seared edges, letter openers shaped like tiny swords, glass jars, glass beads, balls of yarn, scraps of cloth, plates with crumbs on them, spoons and butter knives, carved boxes, tin bells, ginger snaps, pillows with tassles, candles burned to their bases: these sorts of things were stacked on bookshelves and stuffed into drawers and piled on her bed, and Tenebrist was looking through and under them all. At first he supposed that perhaps the appearance of chaos was in fact an enlightened sort of filing system. He discarded that guess by the time she'd scattered a fourth pile of spoons onto the floor. The lamps on the walls cast flickering shadows around her. He had the silly idea that they were helping her search; with her slight build and her black tunic, she seemed like a shadow herself. The scent of vanilla hung strong in the air. He peered casually at a shelf beside him which had books on it. They seemed to all be trashy romance novels. "Aha," she said to herself as she relocated a pile of laundry from an antique writing desk to the floor. Revealed on the desk were a pair of straight and slender wands, identical to each other and made of what looked like ivory. She picked them up. "Now we set things right." "We?" questioned Mr. Odonson. "What are those?" "These are magic wands, and that was the royal 'we,'" she replied tersely. She sat atop the pile of laundry, gathered up a half-finished handmade scarf, slipped a wand through one end, and focused her concentration as she carefully began to knit another row of dark blue yarn into it. He watched her eagerly, expecting something more to happen. It didn't. The silence was interrupted only by the tap-tap-tapping of the two wands together. "That's yarn," said Mr. Odonson, as soon as he realized it. Immediately the tapping stopped and he could feel her disapproval upon him. He cleared his throat uncomfortably and made another attempt. "You're knitting?" She stared at him impatiently. "What do you think wands are for," she challenged, "waving in the air? You want serious magic done, you have to knit your spells. Tangible manifestation of metaphysical arrangement, and even if the spell's no good, the scarf is warm on cold days." She turned back to her work and continued her tapping. "See that cape hanging on the wall over there? That's one of my best creations." He saw an empty hook on the wall but nothing hanging on it, and told her so. "Of course you don't see it. It's a magic cape I knitted at the emperor's request. Took me eight months to finish. Only the very wise can see how terrifically resplendent it is. Fools, when they look at it, they see nothing." Mr. Odonson half-reached out to touch it, but stayed his hand short. "Why's it on your wall, and not the emperor's shoulders?" "Be-cause," Tenebrist sighed. "Most people are fools, and who wants something that most people can't see?" Mr. Odonson contemplated this. "Wasn't the emperor foolish to want such a thing at all, then?" Again the tapping stopped. "Huh," the girl breathed. "You know, he described the colors wrong when I presented it to him, too. At the time I thought he was just colorblind." The girl resumed her knitting. The next minutes passed in silence, except for the tapping. Mr. Odonson stared at the empty hook on the wall and believed that maybe he saw something there when he wasn't looking straight at it, but then he changed his mind several times, until he decided that he only thought he saw it because he was trying to. Meanwhile he continued to be perplexed by the actions of this girl. She had brought the fear of impending doom upon him with just a few words but now didn't seem to be doing much about it, and he wasn't convinced that textiles were the answer. "What's an emperor give you in return for a thing like that?" Mr. Odonson asked at length. He wasn't good at smalltalk, but the near-quiet was less comfortable than trying. "Nothing," came the answer. "You mean he had you make it and then didn't even pay you for the eight months?" "I mean," Tenebrist said, "nothing. Peace. Quiet. Leaving alone. No bother, no fame, no responsibilities." Her guest didn't answer that, so she continued. "I got tired of being needed," she said. "Everyone needed something. Frostbitten crops revived, lost pets located, a baby cured of the colic. It got so's every knock on my door was yet another person wanting something of me. If I could do what they wanted, they'd go away satisfied 'til the next time. If I couldn't, it would be my fault. Not that there was very often that I couldn't," she puffed, "but still, what do I get out of that?" "Didn't they pay you either?" Mr. Odonson asked. Tenebrist told him, "Any price I'd ask is too high for half-a-minute's reciting of a few words from a spellbook. Any price I'd ask is too low for becoming the person who's only thought of when a someone needs a something. I enjoy restoring order to a universe which occasionally loses its way, yes, but I found myself becoming more a service than a person. They said thank-you but they never cared to understand what I did or how I did it. They never paid me the attention I needed. No one ever dropped by for tea." Mr. Odonson volunteered, "And that's why you hid yourself here with your daughter." She had ceased her knitting as she had gotten caught up by this conversation. Her words had fallen into the measured flow of a litany that had been assembled and rehearsed countless times in her head, a tidy way to justify herself to others or to herself; but now Mr. Odonson's comment struck a chord deep within her—he could see it in her eyes, which for the briefest instant made him think that perhaps she was older than she seemed, after all—and she returned to her knitting with more determination. "Where's someone to go who mistrusts people any more?" she asked, then reconsidered that. "No, not mistrust. It's less of an emotion than that. Apathy, maybe, if apathy's not an emotion. Where's someone to go who no longer cares? Which brings me to you. Tell me again, what's your purpose for being here?" Mr. Odonson was unprepared to have the conversation turned back upon himself so abruptly, but he had an inkling of what he probably oughtn't say. "No purpose," he replied quickly. "I'm not here to request anything of you." "Oh, pshaw," she shook her head as she continued to knit. "Everyone has a purpose." "I don't," he said. "Pick one." He considered. "The flute." She scoffed, and he felt smaller for bringing it up again. "That's not much of a purpose," she told him, "but it's a start. And who knows? Maybe it'll take you somewhere. Out of my hair, at least. There, there's a map on that table over there. Take it, follow it, and it'll help you find your precious song." "It's not a song, just a flute. I can't play." "What's the difference, and why do I care?" The derision in her tone stung him. The table she'd indicated had nothing on it that resembled a map, but he found it folded up under a plate by her sink. It was crudely drawn with a few lines and a large 'X' on it by the words 'YOU ARE HERE.' He folded it again and slipped it into his pocket, and reached for the doorknob to leave, a bit relieved to be removing himself from this situation— "Hey, where are you going?" came the girl's voice behind him from amidst the tapping. He turned to make sure it was the same person asking him this. "To look for my flute," he answered, uncertainly. "Didn't you say..." "And you're going to find this flute of yours with a map given to you by some strange gal who you never met before today?" Her voice had assumed the gentle, inquisitive lilt as of a little girl wondering what clouds are made of. "What if I'm sending you straight into a pit with a tiger in it? Why should you trust me?" Mr. Odonson replayed the last minute of conversation in his mind to try to figure out where things had started to become strange. "Er, shouldn't I?" "Not saying you should, not saying you shouldn't," Tenebrist replied matter-of-factly. "All I'm saying is that you show up here out of the blue, and the sun hasn't set but you've already decided that you can't go on without my guidance. You think you need me, but you don't. And you're all ready to walk in any direction I point without having the slightest reason to think that I have your best interests in mind. So why do you choose to trust me?" "I, uh, have to," Mr. Odonson replied meekly. She chided him with her tone. "You don't have to do anything. And even if you did, that doesn't oblige me one whit. It's all about what I choose, and what you choose, isn't it? Our choices define who we are. Whether to trust me or not, that's the question before you now, and you've got no reason in the world to. Maybe I've chosen to help you. Maybe I've chosen to feed you to my pet cat. You don't know either way. So let's make the question even simpler: do you choose to trust me?" Mr. Odonson felt like he was being lectured again. "You said nothing about having a pet cat—" "It's a metaphor. Don't dodge the question. Do you choose to trust me?" "Yes?" asked Mr. Odonson hesitantly. "Now say that again without the questionmark." "Yes," he said. From between the shadows of the flickering lamps, she nodded. "That's a start. Now, begone with you, take a hike, skedaddle." "Thank you," Mr. Odonson said as the house seemed to recede before him until the front door slammed shut in his face. . o O o . The woman and the fox made their way together through the forest. It smelled of pine and felt of pine and had a soft bed of pine needles for paws and bare feet to walk, so the going was easy though they couldn't tell whether they were getting anywhere in particular. It occurred to him that this forest seemed deeper to get out of than it was to get into, but it never entered his mind that perhaps he had chosen a wrong direction; there were no directions here, no bearings. They had no destination in mind nor were concerned with one. It was a matter of going from a place more than to a place, or perhaps it was only about going somewhere with a companion, each trusting the other to have a guess as to where they would end up. The woman hiked her white dress to step over fallen branches which the fox slipped beneath. They had already been wandering for quite some time when sleep had overcome them; it had been another length of time since, but how long was impossible to know. At first the fox had been leading the way for the woman and she followed, steadfast and sure-footed, behind. At some point she had begun to walk beside him. The hem of her dress had become wet with dirt and leaves. And while they walked, the woman filled the fox's ears with questions, nearly spilling over with curiosity about everything in his life. She asked how he kept his fur clean and his tail straight and how he found his way through burrows in the dark. She wanted to know where he went when it rained and whether he minded his paws getting muddy. She wanted to know whether he had a mother, and when he said yes the woman was eager to know all about her and the stories she would tell. The fox told her as many as he could recall and the woman hummed occasionally as she thought about how to put the words to song. Then she asked him why he had left the den he called home, and she asked how many stars he had caught and didn't seem disappointed that he was still in search of his first. ("I would help, if I could fly," she said. "Perhaps I can? I've never tried.") The time and the distance seemed even less important as they wandered together, and the fox began to realize that he was feeling happy. Never before had someone shown such interest in him, not unless they had been trying to catch him or evade him. Her hunger to know every detail about his life made him feel like his life was maybe really interesting. He answered each question without boast or exaggeration. The more he told her the more he thought of to tell, and his paws felt lighter with the telling. She smiled with fascination to hear it all. It eventually dawned on him, however, that she wasn't saying anything about herself. And something deep down—perhaps the memory of his mother's kind reprimands—reminded him that this wasn't right, so he began trying to think up a question to ask her. So lost in concentration was he over it that he didn't realize when she hesitated and stopped, and he found himself a few paces ahead of her by the time he glanced back and saw an uneasy expression on her face. "I planted a rose this morning," she said, answering the look in his eyes. "It was pink, the color of the sunrise, but I think I forgot to give it water. Perhaps I ought to go back and make sure it's okay?" "There is water in soil and sky," replied the fox. He knew not the least thing about gardens, but he'd seen flowers alive in the hardiest of places. "The rose will be fine." She began to walk again, and the fox walked beside her. He noticed she seemed to be moving with a bit more effort and determination, as though wading into a gentle current, and it wasn't long before she stopped again. "My planting spade! I didn't put it away. What if it rusts?" The fox was troubled by her sudden change in mood. "Rust is slow," he said as reassuringly as he could, though he knew only slightly more about rust than he knew about gardens. "The spade will be fine." They resumed their journey, but now he was ahead of her again, and she had slowed down quite a bit. No longer did she ask him questions but now she hummed tunelessly, and then she didn't even do that and was silent once again. And gradually the fox came to imagine that an unseen something was trying to impede her progress and tangle her steps, to lay doubt before her and to pull her back to whence she had come. Her every step was deliberate. It was as if she was being called from far behind her; be they forgotten sorrows or half-remembered dreams, they seemed to tease her, beg her, dare her to turn back. Whatever it was, it was beginning to slow her down. She looked somehow older, more worn, in the dim light of the forest. The fox worried more about her, but she shrugged aside the unseen current and kept following each step with another step. The fox remembered the song he heard her singing when he'd discovered her, and suddenly he knew the right question to ask. "Would you sing me a song?" The woman furrowed her brow, and the fox thought she wouldn't. But then she began to sing: softly, haltingly, murmuring scarcely above her breath, so that he had to follow close by her heels to catch the words. It was different than the song she sang earlier; this tasted of melancholy.
"What's that mean?" asked the fox. "I don't know," Rain admitted. "It's something I remember hearing my mother tell herself a few times. She knew I was listening, but she pretended not to notice." She stopped a third time, and looked at the fox. "Do you think my mother will miss me?" "Yes," the fox admitted, "she will be fine, but she will miss you. And to be honest, I don't know the way back to your garden right now. The woods behind us look just like the woods ahead, and we can't see the stars to guide ourselves by." And it was true; the canopy of leaves and branches above them let through what scant light could have been evening, and it seemed long overdue for night to fall, but even if it had they would not have been able to see the sky. "I wonder if they wonder where we are." But saying that only seemed to make the woman worry more, so the fox tried again to nudge her thoughts onto a different topic. "Where are we going?" he asked. She did not look at him. "We are going forwards. Past that we haven't yet reached," she said, "so I don't know, yet." "I meant, there's just about anyplace we could end up if we walk far enough. And if we don't like it there, then we don't need to stop. But it would be good to stop, eventually." "I remember..." she said, with more seriousness than he expected. "Cold." Her voice sounded far away. "Snow, I think. I remember snow. I want to walk through snow." "There's snow lots of places," the fox told her encouragingly, drawing on his limited experience in the world. "If you go anywhere and wait long enough, there will be snow." He flexed his whiskers and tilted his head and studied her thoughtfully. "But you've never seen snow, have you?" he guessed. Now she looked down at where he stood beside her, and she smiled gently to him, though her eyes seemed distant too. "Seeing is not believing," she told him. "Sight can be deceived, but what one knows in one's heart is true. And I know there is snow just as surely as you know your stars." And she began to walk again, pushing against the forest's attempt to weave its particular magic around her once more. This time the fox had to quicken his pace to keep up. . o O o . Mr. Odonson was lost. The sky was lavender with morning, but he didn't recall having been out all night. The map he held looked different each time he checked it, and he passed the same cottage three times—or at least he thought it was the same one; they all looked quite alike—until he figured out that the map was rewriting itself each time he unfolded it, to show him where he was in relation to the streets immediately nearby. Once he'd gotten a handle on that, he was quick to notice that nothing on the map gave any indication of where he ought to be going. He put the map back into his pocket and didn't look at it again. Around him he saw people appear in their yards, beginning their day's chores. They appeared more than arrived; they seemed to show up when he wasn't looking in their direction, and they all seemed to apply themselves with singular dedication to whatever task they had chosen, be it mowing a lawn, watering a flowerbed, or painting a small part of a fence repeatedly. Mr. Odonson remembered the strange townsfolk he had encountered upon stumbling into this place, and he resolved to avoid any further conversations unless they spoke to him first. But without a guide or a map, Mr. Odonson wasn't at all sure which way he ought to go. It occurred to him to question whether the flute itself was worth the bother of searching in the first place, but then he remembered back to the strange girl and the unsettling conversation he'd had with her, and he decided it best to have some goal to work towards; this way if another strange person invited him into another strange home, he could say, Sorry, busy, and have the benefit of the truth. This town didn't look all that different than the town he'd left mere days ago. They probably weren't all that similar in fact, but he never really had paid all that much attention to the architecture of— "What's he doing?" whispered a deep masculine voice behind him. "I don't know," replied a sweet soprano. "Maybe he's fallen asleep?" Mr. Odonson turned around quickly. There was nothing behind him but a pair of cottages, quaint in the same way as all the rest, with cookie-cutter picket fences and neat little mailboxes closed up tight. He stared blankly at the scene. Seeing things that aren't there, he knew that's a good sign of impending mental collapse, but what about not seeing things that might be— "He's definitely not asleep," the baritone said. "Maybe he's thinking!" The soprano replied in a harsh whisper, "Shush! He'll hear you!" "Hello?" called Mr. Odonson. "Excuse me, who are you?" The baritone grumped. "There, now you've done it!" There was the sound of an a-hem, and the voice spoke up quite loudly. "You see a pair of mailboxes before you!" it said. "They look quite different from any mailboxes you've seen before, and you feel a sense of impending dread when you look upon them." "Er?" Mr. Odonson addressed the empty air. "Yes, I see the mailboxes, but I don't see anything particularly special about—" "You feel compelled to reach out and open them!" boomed the baritone. Mr. Odonson replied slowly, "Not really. Whom am I addressing?" The baritone began to speak again but was cut off with a tch from the soprano. "Please pardon our gossiping, but we were wondering at your odd behavior," it purred. "Who ... are you?" Mr. Odonson asked. "Please excuse our rudeness!" the soprano replied sweetly. "We're just a pair of mailboxes. And by odd behavior we meant that you were just standing there, doing nothing. Are you lost?" Mr. Odonson took closer note and saw that, in fact, one mailbox had a blue flag and the other a pink, and each mailbox's flag waved slightly when it spoke. "Yes," he said. "And I'm more certain of this than I've been of anything else since I found myself here. Yes, I am lost, and the only reason I'm admitting this to you is because you asked me first." The mailbox with the pink flag gasped prettily and fluttered its flag. The other gave a robust laugh and said, "Well, maybe we can be of help! We happen to be experts at seeing that things reach the places they ought. Where are you trying to get?" "It's not a where, it's a what," Mr. Odonson replied. "I am looking for my flute." "Oh!" the baritone bellowed, and the soprano added helpfully, "A macguffin! A macguffin," she continued, answering him before he'd even had a chance to ask, "is an item which has no specific meaning or purpose other than to advance the story. You're simply lost without it, and your story is dead in the water!" "It's not all that important, really, I'm not lost without it," Mr. Odonson offered. "You don't have it, and you're lost, right?" demanded the mailbox with the blue flag. "Don't contradict me when you're wrong." Mr. Odonson had to concede that point. "So, what did you say about advancing the story?" "Well, obviously you're here so that we can help you find your macguffin," said the baritone, and Mr. Odonson chose not to argue the point. "In fact, we can give it to you right now!" "Can but won't," added the soprano quickly. "We've got to give you a challenge first!" And the baritone chortled, saying, "Yes! A challenge!" "A challenge?" echoed Mr. Odonson. The baritone said, "Yes! So, hmm, which shall it be?" "How about the one where the farmer has to move a fox, a goose, and an ear of corn across a river?" suggested the soprano. "No, I never understood that one," replied the baritone. "How about the lady-and-the-tiger puzzle?" "You always like that one best, love," the soprano said warmly, as if it were used to the baritone getting its way. "Go right ahead." There was the sound of a throat being cleared. "In this puzzle there is neither a lady nor a tiger," the baritone announced. "They're just part of the name. What there is is your flute in one of the mailboxes, and in the other is unspeakable doom!" "A very small cat with stripes like a tiger's," the soprano chimed in. "And sharp claws." "The point to this game," continued the baritone with perhaps a hint of annoyance in its voice at having been interrupted, "is that one of us mailboxes always tells the truth, and the other of us always lies. So if you ask one of us which is the mailbox that has your flute in it, we might tell you the unspeakable doom one, instead." The voices went quiet while Mr. Odonson sized up the situation. Had he ever faced a logic puzzle before, he would have quickly learned that he despised them. "One of you always lies?" Mr. Odonson asked. "Yes!" replied the baritone proudly. "How do I know that's true?" Mr. Odonson asked. "Because it's one of the rules of the game," came the reply. "Uhm, how do I know for sure?" "Because," started the baritone, but the soprano interrupted again. "I think he's wondering whether he can trust you, dear." The blue mailbox flag quivered. "When I said all that, the game hadn't started yet!" Mr. Odonson asked sincerely, "Is that the truth?" "Of course!" bellowed the baritone, obviously displeased with the direction things were going. Mr. Odonson studied the two mailboxes carefully as he mulled things over. Then he reached out toward the one with the pink flag—both voices gasped simultaneously—and pressed his hands to the sides of it, and shook it gently. From within came hissing and meowing and other annoyed noises of a cat who wasn't at all happy to be cooped up in a mailbox. "But that's cheating! You're not supposed to be able to do it that way!" protested the baritone as Mr. Odonson performed the same test on the mailbox with the blue flag, and heard the rattle of wood rolling against its insides. He opened this mailbox, withdrew his flute from it, turned around, and briskly removed himself from the scene, ignoring the sputtered protests of the baritone and the futile attempts of the soprano to pacify it. . o O o . The girl sat alone in the shadows of her home, and knitted a blue scarf. But the more she knitted the more it seemed to come unraveled; and the more this happened, the more she was angry with it and with herself. "You've gone too far away, and I haven't enough thread," she said to no one who could hear. "Come back? I need you." And because she was alone, she let herself stop pretending not to care. "Please?" . o O o . There was a change happening, definitely now. The forest seemed to be thinner around the pair as they walked, the ground softer with grass, the branches less tightly woven above them; but where there ought to have been more light peeking through from above, instead there were the murky swath of an overcast sky. The light had a dismal cast to it and it felt cold and it dampened the spirits of the fox who was still deeply worried about his companion. Each step seemed to be wearing more greatly on her. The echo of her words had long gone silent, and her appearance had become haggard, pale, like a leaf dried and bleached by the sun. Fragile, he thought. He fell a step behind and caught up on the other side of her; but as he did, she halted, and fell to her knees. And it was then he could see the glisten of tears down her cheeks, and he discovered that she had been crying. The fox did not know how to comfort sadness, so he sat on his haunches before her and said nothing. He kept his head low to look into her face, but she did not look to him in return. Her tears fell like dew onto the grass on which she knelt. But then the fox felt wet on his forepaws and saw water before him. He took a half-step back but the water followed, and he looked to the woman and it was if she was kneeling in a puddle—no, not a puddle but a pond now, and she was on it rather than in it, its surface like ice but not solid. The water's edge tried to push him back again but he stood firm until his paws began to sink into mud. Try as he might, he could not find a way onto the water as the woman was, and he grew more alarmed as he paced along the edge of what by now was becoming a small lake. He did not see where the water was coming from, but he could hear it, a growing rush of noise as from a waterfall. It sounded far away at first, but no longer. "Rain!" he remembered her name and called out over the noise, and then he looked at her. She was no more the woman she had been. Kneeling on the surface of the water her body was much larger, and misshapen; but as he watched, he realized that the shape was not wrong but different: she fell forward onto her hands and crouched as he would crouch, and her neck was longer. She had a tail now like a lizard's, and what was left of her dress became leathery wings that she spread wide from her back. She seemed to be unravelling before him, her appearance unwinding itself like the shatter of an eggshell, no longer able to contain her body. Another torrent of sound hit his ears, and he remembered his dream and was afraid. But she looked at him—she looked at him, those same dark eyes he'd come to know, though all the rest of her turned the same stone-grey as the sky. Gingerly she lifted what was now a forepaw, larger itself than the entire fox, and held it out towards him with care. As she did so there was a loud crash of thunder above, shaking the trees; whether it startled her or called to her the fox did not know, but in one sudden movement the highest branches broke as she reared up against them. With a leap she pushed through the forest canopy and was in the sky, beating new wings against heavy air. He saw her silhouette clearly for one last fraction of an instant, and she was long and lean and strong, and he did not need any word for dragon, because he knew her name. . o O o . Mr. Odonson grasped his wooden flute—tooth marks and all—tightly in both hands so that it would not be taken from him again. From somewhere far beyond the tidy little homes that surrounded him, he felt the rumble of a distant storm. |