Three

The fox ran though the dense forest as quickly as his paws could carry him, darting around thick tree-trunks and across twisted roots as easily as if he were gliding across a frozen pond. The tangle of trees could not slow him, nor could the thorns around his paws; this was a fox who had lived in forests all his life. But somewhere along the way his teeth slipped their grip on the flute he had stolen. It was lost to the underbrush, and it wasn't until he was far beyond that he realized he'd dropped it.

Gradually the blind panic of having nearly been caught began to abate, and the fox eased his pace a bit. He began to wonder where he was. The forest was thick all around him, dim and quiet. There were no birds singing here, and no squirrels rustling in the treetops, and no rabbits scurrying for their burrows at his approach. The silence lay like a thick blanket around him, and the gloom began to close in on him...

Then another step brought him abruptly into sunlight.

So sharp was the boundary between where he had been and where he now was that he wondered how he hadn't noticed it coming. He found himself at the edge of a small garden of tidy rows of colorful flowers, with one unfortunate bloom knocked over by his tail. More flowers were beyond these, and tall hedges, and flat-hewn stones arranged into paths between them. He glanced back over his tail; the forest was still there, rising like a wall behind him.

The fox had never seen a garden before. He promptly forgot all about the forest and the flute and the man, and began to explore. The stone path zigzagged and split and doubled back on itself between the hedges in the manner of a maze; this didn't at all worry the fox, who trotted across flowerbeds and beneath shrubbery as if they weren't obstacles at all. Delicate perfumed scents of unfamiliar flowers led him on, as did the taste of distant water on his tongue, since he was rather thirsty.

Before long the taste of water was joined by its sound, the faint murmuring of a fountain. Along with it he could hear a soft voice singing a song:

The sun it kissed
the morning mist
and shone upon the flowers.
The flowers grew
with morning dew
and opened up their petals.
The petals teased
the knees of bees
who kissed each one good morning.

He did not know this song, but he understood the words. They weren't the same sorts of words which his mother had used to tell him fairy tales, nor were they the same words that woodland animals use in rare idle conversation. These were different. He couldn't quite put his paw on how.

His ears and his tongue agreed that the song was coming from the same place as the water. He was close now, and his pace quickened as he sought it out; the water giggled, the singing sweetened, and the fox took a shortcut under one last hedge—

It was a fountain, made of grey basalt, splashing into a small pool. Alone on the ground beside it sat a woman in a white dress. She was not beautiful; her short auburn hair had bits of straw in it, she had dirt on her hands and her cheeks, and her fair skin had the scrapes and bruises of someone who had no fear of climbing wherever she needed to get to. If the fox could guess ages he would have figured her to be a bit into adulthood, but not much. She looked as one who had spent more of her life beneath sky than beneath roof. Her eyes were dark as stormclouds just before it rains. Her dress was dirty from tending to the flowers.

She didn't seem surprised to see him. "Hello," she said.

"Hello," he replied, astonished that such an unusual animal could speak.

. o O o .

Mr. Odonson was having an extremely difficult time finding his way through the forest. If he hadn't believed with all his fiber that trees aren't very smart, he would have testified to their eagerness to tangle their branches before him, to raise their roots to trip his feet. He quickly lost his way and became completely unsure whether this was the direction the fox had stolen his flute. He was tired and his clothes, formerly respectable, were hanging from him in tatters. But still he persevered and pressed on, driven by nothing more than the momentum of his own stubbornness.

Once, long ago, a monk on pilgrimage had stopped by his shop. Pesky gentleman, that monk was, showing more interest in Mr. Odonson than in the musical instruments for sale. After being followed around in silence for the better part of an hour, Mr. Odonson couldn't take the attention any more and had demanded to know what the monk wanted. So the monk told him a story of a wealthy but unhappy man he'd met on the road one day. The monk stole his horse with all the man's belongings on its back, and left it an hour's travel further along the man's path. The wealthy man was outraged and despondent at having been robbed, said the monk, but when he found his horse again he was suddenly joyful as he hadn't been in years. At this point Mr. Odonson had decided the monk was trying to hint that he was going to steal something from the shop. He'd asked the monk to leave immediately.

Mr. Odonson was now beginning to suspect that the monk's story might possibly have had some deeper meaning.

But then all at once he emerged from the forest and found himself standing on a perfectly normal cobblestone street with a row of small cottages along its length. He had found a village. Not a very wealthy village from the looks of it, but it was well cared for; the homes were plain and had meager yards, but they were all neatly kept. He glanced behind him—the forest was still there, a thick and unforgiving wall of trees and brush. The village seemed a far more inviting place.

So Mr. Odonson began to wander the streets in search of someplace to find some food or some rest. The streets were as quiet as they were clean; not only did he meet no townspeople out or about, but he also saw no signs of people, nor the smells and the sounds that would usually be impossible to escape in a place like this.

Eventually he found someone in front of one of the cottages: a portly gentleman, wearing overalls and a wide-brimmed straw hat, tending the yard with a rake. A gardener, Mr. Odonson figured.

"Hello," called Mr. Odonson to him over the fence. "Could you tell me where I am?"

The gardener stopped his raking and stood up straight, and rested the handle of his rake against his shoulder. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a handkerchief, dabbed at his face with it, then returned it to his pocket. "People say that there are dangerous monsters in those woods, so you'd best not go that way," he told Mr. Odonson with a nod towards the direction Mr. Odonson had just come from, then took hold of his rake again and resumed his work.

Mr. Odonson replied, "Yes! I mean, no. I just came from there. No monsters, but I'm trying to find out where I've ended up."

The gardener again stopped, stood up straight, leaned the rake against his shoulder in the same way, dabbed at his face again with the same handkerchief. "People say that there are dangerous monsters in those woods, so you'd best not go that way," he advised in precisely the same tone as he'd used the first time. And then he returned to his business of raking.

Mr. Odonson just stood there, perplexed.

It was clear that the gardener was raking slowly but determinedly at one particular spot in his yard to the neglect of the rest of it. Mr. Odonson watched him for a while. The gardener seemed to take no further notice of him.

"Pardon me?" Mr Odonson asked him, less sure of himself now. "I've no intention of going back into the forest, I was just hoping that you could..." He trailed off when he saw the gardener stand up straight and begin to repeat the same ritual for the third time, and he hurried down the street. Behind him he could hear the gardener repeating the same advice about dangerous monsters and not going that way.

A few homes away Mr. Odonson found someone else; this time it was a young boy playing fetch with a dog. Each time the boy threw a stick, his little terrier would fetch it and bring it back.

Mr, Odonson decided to try a different approach, and involve the boy more in his conversation. "That's a nice little dog you've got there."

The boy noticed Mr. Odonson immediately. He smiled brightly, and said, "Welcome to Spring Town!"

"Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Odonson, much more pleased by this reaction, though the boy's dog was now running in playful circles quite close around his heels, and this made Mr. Odonson a little nervous. The boy continued to smile brightly up at him. "Is there anywhere I can go to clean up?" he asked the boy.

"There's a tavern down thataway," the boy replied cheerfully, pointing along a street. "And there's an inn above it."

"Perfect! Thank you," replied Mr. Odonson with genuine relief. "Say, you're only the second person I've seen here. Where is everyone? Where are your parents?"

"There's a tavern down thataway," the boy replied cheerfully, pointing along a street. "And there's an inn above it."

Mr. Odonson choked back his surprise. "I see," he said. "And what's your name?"

"There's a tavern down thataway," the boy replied cheerfully, pointing along a street. "And there's an inn above it."

Mr. Odonson backed away gently, careful not to step on the terrier. Once he'd moved a few paces off, the boy went back to playing fetch with his dog. Mr. Odonson noticed that each time the boy threw the stick, it landed in precisely the same place for the dog to retrieve.

He stepped closer to the boy again, momentarily curious as to what might happen if he picked up the stick before the boy did. But as soon as he got close enough, the boy smiled the same bright smile as before and said, "Welcome to Spring Town!"

Mr. Odonson took off towards the tavern as quickly as he could walk.

. o O o .

"Would you like some water?" the woman asked the fox. She dipped her hands into the pool to wash them, and splashed some water on her face.

The fox was still crouching by the hedge and staring at her with scrutiny. "You can talk," he pointed out.

"Why, yes!" she laughed. "And you're the first I've spoken with today."

He took another good long look at her, then his thirst got the better of him and he crept uncertainly to the pool's edge, carefully remaining beyond her reach; such is the way of a creature of the wilderness. He took his time lapping at the water. It was cool and had the taste of an underground spring.

At length, his thirst satisfied, he sat on his haunches and licked water from his whiskers. "Were you expecting someone else to come by and talk to?"

She shook her head. "The townspeople don't come here, and they don't usually have much interesting to say. But you, you're a fox, aren't you?" she asked eagerly.

He thought it an unusual question. "I am a fox," he told her with a nod.

"Do you have a name?" she asked with interest.

The fox tilted his head, uncomprehending. "I am a fox," he repeated.

"No, no," she told him, "a name. To say which fox you are. Unless you're the only one?"

"I have many brothers and sisters," answered the fox. He thought briefly of home, and tried to imagine a place without foxes, but couldn't. "There must be some here, too?"

"You're the first I've met," she said with an interested smile. "I've read about foxes, but I have never actually met one before today. I thought foxes only lived in fairy tales."

"Fairy tales!" the fox exclaimed, and almost fell into the fountain.

. o O o .

Mr. Odonson found the tavern without difficulty. Above its door hung a wooden sign with a bottle of wine carved on it; that was as good an indication as any. It offended him to some degree that none of the other storefronts bore any hint of what they were, neither with a sign nor with wares displayed in their windows. It was as if all the buildings which lined the streets were nothing more than theatrical set-dressing. This bothered him somehow.

The tavern was little more than a large empty room with a bar that looked exactly like he expected a bar to look like. There were a few people sitting at tables—and that's the sum total of what they were up to; those who were alone were staring vacantly forward. Those who shared a table were staring at each other, but there was no communication between them, spoken or unspoken.

Mr. Odonson avoided making eye contact with any of them. He took a seat at the bar. Behind it was a bald-headed barkeeper with a thick handlebar mustache who was wiping a glass mug. Mr. Odonson watched him for a while. The barkeep continued to wipe the same mug with dedication, rubbing at some unseen spot. Mr. Odonson watched him for several minutes, and the barkeeper never diverted his attention from that one spot on that one mug.

"I'd like something to drink," Mr. Odonson finally said to him.

The barkeeper set the mug down beneath the counter. "What'll you have?" he inquired, gesturing towards a menu on the wall behind him.

The barkeeper smiled affably while Mr. Odonson studied the list: ales, meads, wines, brews with exotic-sounding names. Being inexperienced in the practice of liquor, he hadn't a clue what any of them were. And each listed a number which he guessed was its price, though Mr. Odonson realized with some unhappiness that he hadn't any money on him; the small roll of bills he'd brought with him from the burning music shop was still in his satchel, in the middle of the forest, on a treestump which he hadn't a prayer of ever finding his way back to again.

He glanced up at the barkeeper. The barkeeper was still smiling the same patient smile at him from beneath that thick mustache.

Mr. Odonson shivered.

"You don't want any of those!" sang a chipper voice from a back corner of the tavern. Mr. Odonson spun around on his barstool—a little too far, as the seat was well-oiled, and so he slipped off it and landed on his feet. He peered into the dim corner.

"Hello? What did you say?"

"You don't want any of those!"

He stepped closer to the voice. It came from a young girl standing there in a shadow, smiling at him, her arms folded behind her back. She couldn't have been older than twelve. She was dressed in a black tunic which hid her well where she was standing, which was why he hadn't noticed her.

She remained motionless as he sized her up; suddenly she shouted "Boo!" and he jumped.

"I'm sorry, are you—"

"Real?" she cut him off dryly, and added, "Yes. Yes, I'm real, but those drinks aren't." She grinned a cute grin.

He eyed her with skepticism. "Pardon me for asking," he said in case she might take offense, "but how do you know? Aren't you young to be drinking whatever it is they're serving at this place?"

She giggled. "I'm real but I'm also older than I look. C'mon, let me take you someplace where you can get cleaned up a little. It's not often I get visitors around here!"

. o O o .

"My mother used to sing me many songs of the animals that inhabit our dreams," said the woman, as she made ripples through the fountain's water with her fingertips. The fox was sitting beside her. She could easily have reached out and touched his fur, but she didn't. "None of them are real. Except foxes, now I know that."

"But what about bees?" inquired the fox, still reeling from the possibility that anyone could ever have thought him imaginary. Bees were a safe place to start; he was certain of the existence of bees, because a few stings this past springtime had been particularly convincing. "I heard you singing of bees. Surely you've found some among your flowers?"

"Well, figuratively, of course," she told him. "Bees are the tiny earth spirits which bless each flower with their touch. On a warm day when the air's very still I imagine that I can hear their buzzing and see the dust from their magic."

He tried something a little larger. "Birds?" he asked. "Certainly you must have seen birds in the sky?"

She closed her eyes and smiled upwards, and the breeze caressed her hair. "Birds are the carriers of our hopes, delivering them safe to those who can make them come true. Yes, I've seen them in great numbers, but not here."

"Where, then?"

"In my daydreams!" She looked pleased at the thought.

This is getting us nowhere, thought the fox, and tried a litany of other animals. "Badgers? Pheasants? Grasshoppers? Owls? Skunks? Mice?"

Now it was the woman's turn to appear perplexed. "Animals are make-believe, but you speak of them as if they're real," she told him. His ears drooped, and she amended herself quickly—"Well, you seem real. Perhaps where you come from, these animals aren't make-believe?"

"They're not," protested the fox, sure of himself. "Out there—" he waved his nose in the direction of the tall trees which could be seen rising above the hedges at the borders of her garden—"out there are all the things I've named, and then some."

"I've never been into those woods," the woman told him with a touch of wistfulness to her voice. But before the fox could ask about this, she changed the subject. "I asked your name," she said, "but I haven't told you mine yet. I'm Rain."

. o O o .

"My name is Tenebrist," said the young girl dressed in black. They were in her home now, a cottage which looked like all the others from the outside, but inside it was cluttered with old books and glittery rocks and bottles of powders and dishes in need of washing. "What's yours?"

"Mr. Odonson," replied Mr. Odonson. He was sipping a bitter mug of spiced tea unlike anything he'd ever tasted. Not necessarily the bad sort of unlike, but different enough that he wasn't used to it, though he pretended to enjoy it so as not to hurt his hostess's feelings, especially not when he hadn't the slightest idea as to exactly what she was. His clothes had become mended and relatively clean—become is the best word for it, as he hadn't removed them or noticed anyone working on them; they were simply tattered one moment and only slightly rumpled the next. He wasn't quite sure how this had happened. He decided it was best to make every effort to stay on the little girl's good side.

She sat down across the table from him and scowled a little-girl's scowl. "That's a family, not a name. What's your name?"

He hesitated, not used to being asked for it. "Emmenthaler."

"That's a mouthful!" she laughed. "Emmenthaler Odonson. Did your parents not like you, or something?"

The mug trembled in his fingers.

"Oh, don't worry, I like it just fine," she grinned sunnily to him. "Now, I'm curious, how is it that you came here? Were you searching for something?"

"My flute," he said. He had almost forgotten about it.

She poured him some more tea before he was able to pull the mug away. "Then how did your flute get here?"

He cleared his throat and forced down another sip of the bitter drink. "It didn't," he clarified. "I lost it before I got here. In the forest, somewhere." He decided that wandering through the wilderness in search of a flute was silly enough, so he decided not to go into the part about the thief fox. "I was walking. I didn't have any particular destination in mind."

Her eyes lit up. "Ah, that explains it then. You can't get to this place by trying to; I've hidden it away better than that. The only way to find Spring Town is if you're not particularly looking for it. And in your case you weren't going anywhere, so it's natural that you ended up here."

She caught his quizzical expression. "I'm a very powerful sorceress, you see," Tenebrist told him as she thrust her arms above her head and wiggled her fingers. "And a dangerous one too! You'd do best not to cross me!" And she laughed again, until she could see how unsettled it made him. "Oh, I'm sorry," she said. "You're my guest, and here I am teasing you."

Mr. Odonson shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He decided to change the subject. "You said those drinks back at the tavern weren't real. How do you mean?"

"Oh, the barkeep would have served them to you, and you might have even enjoyed them for a little while until you caught on that something wasn't quite right." She smiled slyly at him. "The catch is that what's in those bottles is exactly what you think is going to be in those bottles. If you're expecting fine wine, you'll taste fine wine. If you think it's going to be swill, it's swill. It's mindstuff, not bellystuff."

He gasped.

"No, it wouldn't have hurt you," she winked, "unless you thought someone had poisoned your drink. No, most likely you would have downed a few bottles and then remembered that you ought to have become somewhat tipsy, and wondered why you weren't, and then it might have come upon you suddenly. I decided to speak up before you embarrassed yourself."

"The bartender's not real either," Mr. Odonson offered as the fact dawned on him.

She beamed. "You catch on quick! No, the bartender's not real, nor are the other people you probably ran into before I noticed you. The houses aren't, either; they're just cookie-cutter copies of each other. I don't even think most of them have an inside."

"So is anything here real?" questioned Mr. Odonson, taking a good long look at the mug he was holding.

"Just my home and everything inside, and you and me, and one other. Oh, and I think the terrier's real, too. He stays around as long as I put food out for him."

"One other?"

"My daughter." She grinned at his startlement. "Toldya I'm older than I look."

. o O o .

The sun began to set, and Tenebrist lit a few oil lamps in her home. She was too small to reach the ones that were mounted high on the walls, but a wave of her hand caused them to spring to life, the flames dancing with eagerness at her smallest gesture, the pale light giving way to shadows flickering along the walls behind her. He figured that this could be magic, or at least clever sleight-of-hand, as was the bit with mending his clothes while they were still on him; but he still wasn't convinced about her being a powerful sorceress, and he had more serious doubts about her being anyone's mother.

"Music is a kind of magic," she told him. She was talking about his lost flute. She had been talking almost without pause since he met her—about magic, about illusion, about casting spells and enchanting objects and reading fortunes and making tea. He understood very little of it but didn't have the opportunity to say so. She spoke more than she listened. He began to think that listening to her was very much like listening to a minister's sermon at the church in his town, and he wondered if this had anything to do with her not having visitors often. "Both music and magic work according to very precise rules. In music you can string any notes together however you like, but they don't mean anything until you put them together in certain ways, right? Well, it's the same with magic. The incantations don't have any meaning until you put them together right."

"Uh-huh," said Mr. Odonson.

"Your flute," she asked him, "was there a faerie in it?"

"Uh-huh," said Mr. Odonson, then realized he was being addressed. He coughed. "I mean, a faerie?"

She laughed, "You really haven't been around musical instruments very much, have you?" He bristled a little at that. "A flute gets its song from the faerie who inhabited the tree which gave it its wood. The more powerful the tree, the more potent the flute."

This was news to Mr. Odonson.

She levelled her gaze towards him. Though she seemed so young, he felt like he was a young boy again under the scrutiny of his own father, and he found it as uncomfortable now as he had then. "Faeries, magic... you don't believe in any of this," she said, almost accusing. He shook his head slowly.

She shrugged, and then suddenly her eyes were that of a little girl's again, and her tone was brighter. "Well, don't worry about it, Emmenthaler. May I call you 'Em?' You can sleep here tonight; I'll prepare a cot. As soon as the sun's up, I'll find your flute for you and then you go back to wherever it is you came from."

"Er," said Mr. Odonson. "I don't particularly have anyplace to go back to. I mean, my home was destroyed in a—"

She waved him quiet. "Wherever you'd like to go, then. Anywhere else is fine by me, but I don't want you sticking around here."

He was taken aback by her words, and began to apologize for having offended her. "Oh, shush shush shush. It's very hard to offend me, and believe me, you'd know if you were on my bad side. I'm sorry. I suppose you deserve to know why you mustn't stay."

She picked up the mug of tea she'd given him, still half-full, and took a drink from it before continuing. "I told you that I have a daughter. What I didn't tell you is that she mustn't ever leave this town. Everything you've seen outside this house, everything that I created—well, except the dog—all the rest is for her. She's lived here all her life. This is her reality. She's never once set foot into that forest you came out of. It has to stay this way."

The air fell quiet, until Mr. Odonson asked, "But what does this have to do with me?"

"As soon as I sensed your presence here, I knew I had to find you before you found my daughter. I told you that I can read fortunes," she said, and Mr. Odonson vaguely remembered her having mentioned something about that amidst all the things she'd told him this afternoon. "A very long time ago I found out that she is fated to meet a stranger who will lure her away from me. I mustn't ever let that happen."

"Why? Would she be in danger?"

Tenebrist frowned at him. "She's the only one who wouldn't be."

. o O o .

"So you must believe in rain, at least," the fox offered, "since you've been named for it." They strolled together through the hedge maze as evening fell around them. The woman kept to the stone path; he generally kept off it, though he did make a small effort to avoid knocking over any more flowers.

"Of course!" she told him happily. "The rain is what makes the flowers grow."

"But," he hazarded a guess, "you've never actually been in the rain, walked through it, gotten wet?"

She looked at him with as much astonishment as if he'd just turned blue. "What do you mean, walk through it? The rain is inside the clouds." She pointed towards the sky, where the soft clouds were tinted by the fires of sunset. "There. And I don't see any easy way to get up there, do you?"

The fox hadn't had much success in that area, so he ignored the question. "I think you don't actually believe in bees or birds or rabbits or rain."

She stopped walking and bent down to trade gazes eye-to-eye with the fox. "I believe in them plenty. I believe in them as much as I can dream of them, or sing to them, or hear fairy tales about them. I don't need to see them to believe in them."

"But there is rain!" exclaimed the fox. "And there are rabbits and things! I've seen them! But you can see me, and you don't believe me. How can I convince you?"

"Show me!" she dared him, laughing playfully.

The fox considered this. He glanced towards the dense wall of trees and thorns that bordered the hedge maze; he paced along the edge of the wall of trees until he found a gap between them that looked to be fairly free of sharp brambles. He glanced back at the woman briefly, then slipped into the forest and was gone.

Rain crouched at the spot where he'd disappeared, and pulled a branch carefully aside, and followed him close behind.

. o O o .

Tenebrist knew it immediately. The little girl was talking at Mr. Odonson about how she told fortunes, then suddenly she sat up shock-straight and knocked over the mug of tea.

"I'm sorry," apologized Mr. Odonson, though it wasn't his fault. He looked for a napkin.

She gasped, "Oh no. No no no no. You weren't the one."

"But I can help you mop that up—"

"No. You weren't the one."

Four