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January
Winter comes and is not kind to those inhabiting the sewers.
There is a reason foxes live in holes. There is a reason badgers, moles, rabbits, mice, and weasels live in holes. There is a reason, thinks Kristofferson as the first touch of cold frosts over the pipes that make up their walkways. But no one will say it because we aren’t here by choice.
The farmers still sit above the manhole, waiting ‘til dusk with coats sewn from the pelts of less fortunate creatures. Three ugly men. Three defeated men. But they are ugly, defeated men who have destroyed the hill everyone once called home, and no one can return to the hole that is nothing but a hole. Instead, they huddle in their sewer dens as the cold freezes what little dirt remains, avoiding the iced sheets of metal that are painful to tender paws. They shiver in their frigid tombs and eat pre-packaged fruit that tastes sour from the chemicals. So often, Kristofferson daydreams about peaches, full and sweet in the sunshine, that only taste like peaches and earth.
And his father wants to live here with them? Kristofferson doesn’t even want to live here with them.
No. No, that’s not entirely true. He wants to live with Agnes, the pretty young fox with spots, the only girl who had been kind to him after his arrival. He wants to live with Uncle Fox, who went through so much just to get him back, even if Uncle Fox is a little… different. He wants to live with Aunt Fox, who touches him as affectionately as a mother ought to; she will paint while Kristofferson meditates, the brushstrokes scraping on canvas like the tip of a claw.
And Ash.
Ash is an annoying, vindictive, grouchy pest that is even stranger than his father and twice as eager to disprove it. Kristofferson doesn’t know if remaining friends with him is worth it; alarmingly, after their great escape, Ash has taken to Kristofferson with a devotion that is completely unexpected. Kristofferson wonders if he has ever had a real friend before. Probably not.
Now that winter has come, Ash spends most of his time curled up in a tiny hole he’d found in the bricks, cleaning his coat as the fur comes in thicker for the season. He is still annoying, vindictive, and grouchy. He spits.
Still. Despite that. Somehow.
Somehow, Kristofferson wants to live with Ash.
February
“Around this time,” says Ash, in that dark but even-voiced way he does, “we’d be sliding down the hill in the snow. Because there’d be somewhere warm to go. After.”
Kristofferson offers him a blanket.
Ash shakes his head, ears twitching. Kristofferson pulls the blanket back around his own shoulders. “It’s different,” is all he can think to answer.
They are watching the ladder that leads up to the supermarket manhole. Sometimes icicles form on the metal bars—they form long, glistening swords that can be cracked from the base and then licked like a treat. The water isn’t really a treat, but it’s the idea that counts. Kristofferson considers it a mental exercise. Ash is somewhat delusional.
“Are you going to pair with Agnes?” Ash asks.
Kristofferson blinks and looks at him.
“In the winter,” his cousin explains, “foxes usually pair. You know. You know. They marry, or something like it.”
Oh. Kristofferson scratches his ear, feeling a bit odd about that. He’s not exactly sure what to say here, since he’s half-certain that Ash has a liking for Agnes. Or once did. Now, perhaps not. “Not really,” he finally settles for. “I think I’m still a little too young to pair.”
“Some foxes only live for nine years. My grandpa only lived for nine years, and he wasn’t in a sewer.”
“What about you?” There is no one left to pair with, actually, but the words leave his muzzle despite that. Kristofferson is about to apologize, but Ash only shakes his head again.
“No. If you’re not old enough, I’m definitely not old enough.”
“We’re about the same age, though.”
“I guess.”
“Ash?”
In the dark, Ash’s green eyes are like the hills they left. He’s more dirty, ragtag, and frizzled than he’d been even the month before, and somehow it has become a normal part of Kristofferson’s world. “I’m glad,” Ash tells him, staring in that intent way he has that is all his own, “that you’re here.”
And to that, Kristofferson can only think of the soft lights of a toy train.
March
The fog seeps into the sewers. Ash complains because he can’t read his comic books anymore. This is all right, of course, because he’s been reading the same ones for a very long time now. But Kristofferson doesn’t say that.
“You’ll have to meditate more,” is what he says.
“But I do already. I do it all the time.”
“You’re still not focused enough to move onto the next lessons in martial arts.”
Ash looks up at him (he will never grow tall, Kristofferson realizes, not in the same way as his father). He doesn’t smile. It’s rare to see Ash smile. “But I’ve gotten better, right?”
“Yes.” There is a calmer presence to Ash; his temper is less likely to blacken his whiskers. For all of his sullenness, there is also a sense of peace. “But you still act like a cornered animal. The ideal is tranquility and stillness.”
“But I am a cornered animal. You are, too.”
“There are exits,” says Kristofferson. As if they mean anything.
“You know what?”
“What?”
Ash leans forward, even though it is just them in the room. “I’ll let you into my secret hideaway spot.” He waits. Then: “Don’t you want to know where it is?”
Games. It’s always games with Ash. Because he’s so young, Kristofferson thinks, conflicted with exasperation and interest. He still acts like a cub many weeks younger than he actually is. Only a baby still believes a “secret hideaway” is both secret and important, when in reality Kristofferson already knows where this hideaway is (and it is in no way impressive).
“I’d like that,” he says.
Ash’s fur bristles in pride. He takes Kristofferson by the paw for the first time—Kristofferson can’t help but think, If I were home, I wouldn’t be caught dead with this fox, with this embarrassment that thinks I‘m actually the embarrassment, paw in paw like a new cub—and pulls his friend along the tunnel. Their shadows play up against the walls, caught between rock and the weak light the lanterns provide.
“You can’t tell anyone,” Ash is saying. “Not even Agnes. Not even my dad, okay? You just can’t, or I’ll kill you. It’s for you and me.”
“But I don’t like being dishonest, you—”
“It’s not like that.” He laughs a little. “Like I’ve asked you to do something wrong again. I know better than to do that to you, Kristofferson. You’re too good for that, right?” And oh, wow, there is so much less bitterness in that statement; it’s almost like it was never there at all.
His heart is hot. Shame makes him grip Ash’s paw tighter. Perhaps, were Kristofferson at home, he would still be here.
April
Kristofferson isn’t asleep yet. He’s staring up at the ceiling that he can’t actually see in the dark, picking at the threads of his blanket with a claw. In the pipe over, he can hear his Uncle Fox laughing at something his wife has said.
Ash isn’t asleep either; the noise he makes when he moves is too loud. Sometimes Ash kicks things in his sleep, but right now he is only shifting, restless, just like Kristofferson. Though spring has brought rain to thaw their frozen prison, the water thunders in the sewers, a thousand times louder than it must be. It is so loud that Kristofferson almost doesn’t hear the first whisper.
“Hey. Hey, listen.”
Kristofferson almost smiles. “What is it?”
“Are you going to go back to your dad?”
“He’s feeling much better now.” He tries for non-committal.
Ash is silent a long while.
Kristofferson closes his eyes. He imagines Ash as he can’t see him: whiskers drooping, gaze sad and lost, hiding his face awkwardly in the pillow because no amount of attention from his father will make up for years of painful insecurity. Kristofferson wonders if he will be brave enough to ask.
He is. He is very brave.
“Will you stay?” Ash whispers, voice scratchy. “I don’t want you to go.”
And so, Kristofferson thinks, a strange sort of relief welling up inside of him, as dizzying as an open wound, we will live in the sewer.
May
It’s good to see his father again.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” Dad laughs, ruffling Kristofferson’s ears. “And so tall! You’ve really become a handsome young fox while I was away. Pretty soon, will I have to let you go?”
You’re the sight for sore eyes, Kristofferson wants to say, but he can’t. He just hugs his father tightly. It’s a surprise when he realizes he can touch the top of Dad’s shoulder with his chin. He really has grown taller.
It will be good to be normal again. Normal to have silver-white fur, to meditate in the corner, to practice his kata so that he may stay in shape. Normal to have common sense and athleticism that isn’t wild. Because while Kristofferson is exceptional and well-practiced, he isn’t fantastic, not like Uncle Fox.
(Not like Ash.)
Watching Dad interact with the new family is kind of funny. Ash is very suspicious of strangers, so Kristofferson does his best to get them to interact. Ash tries to tell stories meant to impress, but he only comes off as a bit of an odd goofball, and perhaps that’s not far from the truth. The meal is far nicer than it could have been, anyway.
After dinner, when they are alone, his father says: “That kid, he’s a scrappy thing. Seems kind of crazy. Have you been all right with him as company?”
Kristofferson is surprised when the fur on his tail bristles. He calms himself, breathing deeply through the nose. “We’ve become good friends, Dad.”
“Really?”
“I’ve never had a friend like Ash.” And at least that, however it may be taken, is true.
June
In the summer, Ash grows up a little.
Only a little, Kristofferson notes with a smile. Enough that he is not towered over, and enough that it isn’t painful to watch him try to socially interact. There is still an awful lot of Ash there—only now, Ash thinks twice before he spits, cleans his fur more diligently, and tends to brood rather than sulk. He still wears a towel cape. “I’m not ready to put it away,” is all he’ll say when asked.
Kristofferson can’t really imagine him without it, anyway.
The sewers are almost bearable. It’s just as well, since Dad grumbles about most of it. Kristofferson commiserates, but it’s not as awful as before. For some reason, it’s becoming home little by little.
Ash follows Kristofferson and Agnes around devotedly. He has no other friends; it makes sense. They become an unbalanced threesome who somehow manage to keep on their toes instead of falling apart. Agnes isn’t fond of Ash (she says that she recognizes the changes in him, but it’s hard for her when all she can see is Kristofferson), and yet she tries, and Kristofferson is grateful. He doesn’t want to tell Ash to go away. That would be… wrong.
“I don’t think I can be an athlete in the sewers,” Ash tells them. They are sitting on a roughly hewn blanket, pretending to picnic. It is a sad affair. “There’s not enough room to run here. I can’t think. I wish we had our own sun.”
Kristofferson shrugs. “Maybe you’ll have to be something else.”
“Like what?”
Agnes always gazes at Kristofferson like Ash isn’t there at all even when he’s talking. She’s doing that now, not saying a word. The spots on her coat are fading into the rest of her color, barely distinguishable, and that is kind of a sad thing. Kristofferson looks away and feels trapped, a bit breathless.
“I don’t know. Can’t you think for yourself?”
Ash’s ear twitches. He makes a face that means he’s trying not to spit. “Okay, yeah. Sorry. I’ll do that.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Don’t treat me like I’m stupid.” Ash stands up and gives Kristofferson an unreadable glance, full of too many things without names. It’s somehow the same and yet somehow entirely different from the way Agnes watches him. “If you want me, you know where to find me. Where no one else does.”
For a second, Kristofferson is speechless. It is more profound than he’d imagined. Then, he realizes Ash must be talking about their hideaway hole.
When Ash leaves, Agnes says, “It’s sweet but weirdly sad, how much he looks up to you.”
Except Ash has never looked up to Kristofferson. No, Ash has a habit of looking straight into your eyes regardless of the gap in height. The friendship between them is an unruly, disorienting thing that disregards the natural order. Looks up to Kristofferson? No. There is a difference. A difference compared to old schoolmates and family and Agnes. A fine line drawn in the dirt that Kristofferson doesn’t dare observe, because he has the feeling he’s already stepped over it.
July
In July, they celebrate Ash’s birthday.
“Happy birthday to me,” the fox sings, curled up in his blankets after the candles have been blown, presents shredded, and well wishes given. There is a little party hat perched yet over his ears. It’s very funny. “The merriest of birthdays to me, to me, to me!”
Kristofferson feels a laugh bubbling up from his stomach. He lets it go. “I’m glad you’re happy.”
Ash rolls around on the bedding. It’s only to hide the fact that he’s touched and embarrassed (Kristofferson knows, but lets him have his pride). When he’s done, he lifts his chin, eyes like moss and grass and tree caterpillars and all other things that Kristofferson sorely misses. “Kristofferson,” he says out loud, as if to himself. “Kristofferson. Kristofferson.”
“Yes, that’s… me.”
“Wanna know why it’s the merriest of birthdays?”
“Sure.”
“Because it is.”
Kristofferson smiles and flicks his ears. “I see. That’s good.”
“Don’t get me wrong. My next birthday will be even better. That’s how birthdays work. I wouldn’t like them so much if it weren’t that way.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Ash looks sideways at him. And in that moment, Kristofferson realizes that his cousin really has grown into a fox, just like he has. This stranger tangled in his sheets with long red limbs and sleek fur—the fullness of his tail and leanness of his ears—is Ash but not Ash. It’s disquieting, like someone has slipped outside and returned as a different person.
But this is still Ash. Ash, with the towel hung around his shoulders. Ash, who speaks gravely, as though everything he says must be said dramatically. Even so, Kristofferson’s heart pounds high in the ear drum and he feels like he’s losing grasp of something very quickly. He wishes he knew what to reach for.
“Kristofferson,” intones Ash once more, eyes crinkling in a rare smile.
Different, like no other. Fantastic.
August
“I can’t do this anymore,” Agnes says quietly. Her ears are folded back and she can’t stop fiddling with the handkerchief folded in her lap. She seems sadder than she has the right to be, is what Kristofferson thinks.
“But I don’t understand—”
“Of course you don’t.” Agnes sighs. “You’re so sweet, you know. And you have the prettiest ears. You’re smarter than any of the other boys.”
Kristofferson stands there, feeling awkward. There is no sense of the admiration she once felt in those sentences; they now feel cheapened by her echo. “So what’s the problem?”
“For one, you spend most of your time with Ash. Not me. Not me, and we’re supposed to be going steady, Kristofferson. We’re supposed to pair this winter.”
“I didn’t know that,” he says.
“You would. If you weren’t looking at him all the time.”
It’s uncomfortable. Hearing Agnes say Ash’s name, talking about him like this, it’s uncomfortable. He deflects. “You said yourself that he looks up to me. I can’t just send him away. That would be cruel.”
Agnes brushes a bit of dirt off of her shoulder. “I said you were looking at him, not out for him. No. Maybe that’s wrong, as well. You’ve been looking at each other.”
Kristofferson stares.
When nothing else enters the stale air between them, Agnes sighs again. She stands, tall and beautiful and just like any other fox. “And it happened so fast,” she murmurs, clutching her chest like it hurts. “So fast. We don’t live very long, especially away from the sun, but even so. It was too fast, Kristofferson.”
Yes, he thinks, arms taut at his sides. It was.
“Besides, I don’t want to compete with Ash,” is the last thing Agnes says to him as his girl. “He’ll cling to your ankles until you kick him black and blue. I can’t win against that kind of crazy.”
And then Kristofferson is alone again.
He remembers cracking acorns. He remembers whispered rumors at school. He remembers callous words about his father. He remembers the hard floor on his back and the table brushing his snout. He remembers the crunch of the apple crate on his back. He remembers the taste of apple ginger snaps.
He covers his eyes and prays for the taste to leave his mouth.
September
In September, Kristofferson avoids Ash.
“Are you ignoring me?” the young fox demands every time their paths cross. But Kristofferson brushes past him like a ghost and does not meet his gaze. He just keeps going.
“I don’t understand,” Ash says, sounding lost behind him. “Kristofferson?”
Don’t. He wills the world to end, for sunlight to break through their cell. Please don’t.
In the evening, sometimes Ash leaves for hours at a time and doesn’t come back until the night lights have been extinguished. “I think he’s crying,” Aunt Fox says softly, one evening of thunderstorms and silence shared between herself and Kristofferson.
And that is unbearable. He’s the one that feels like crying.
Kristofferson doesn’t mean to speak, but he does. It comes out without a thought at all. “Why does it have to be me?”
If he’s lucky, Aunt Fox won’t know what he’s talking about. He isn’t lucky. Aunt Fox sets down her brush in the cradle of the easel, the click of wood calm and precise and deliberate. “I don’t approve. Not in the slightest. Know that.”
Kristofferson wants to sink into the ground, but there is nowhere to dig.
“However,” she continues, “Ash is so much like my husband. And like me. Neither of us are very good at letting go of things that we want. There is no other fox in the world for me, even if I shouldn’t have married him. That tenacity is Ash’s birthright.”
“But me,” despairs Kristofferson.
“You tamed him,” Aunt Fox says, smiling the best she can despite the circumstances they find themselves in. “Take it from me, Kristofferson. When you tame a wild animal, then comes the hard part: taking responsibility for them.”
(Ash comes back well into the early morning; Kristofferson waits outside of the sewer space he shares with his father until he can hear claws clicking on stone. Ash’s eyes look swollen and sore; he ignores the other fox. When he turns the corner and is swallowed by blackness, Kristofferson realizes that he himself is not so brave.)
October
No one can stand it anymore. “If we don’t find a new home, I am going to go insane,” states Badger, each syllable fixed in place like a stamp. The sentence takes a while in its entirety, so definitely is each section emphasized.
Uncle Fox’s smile is all teeth. “I’ll think of something. You have my word.”
There is no way they could have lasted in the sewers forever. Kristofferson knows this. He recalls the sweet touch of daylight baking his fur and trembles in excitement. The sewers are like apartments; they are hardly homes.
Everyone splits into groups. They sneak out at night through the grocery store’s storage room. They explore the hills and return before the sun breaks with their news, enthused over this piece of land, that hole in the ground, a tree with no scars. Aunt Fox paints pictures of what they find.
“I guess you can still be an athlete,” Kristofferson tells Ash, when given the chance. Ash looks at him askance, as if he’s cussed.
“I’ve decided to be something else.”
“What?” Kristofferson asks, stunned, and then more properly, “What?”
Ash’s ears flick. He walks away without answering.
November
The world, Kristofferson has heard it said, turns over and over again. Spins, like a chicken’s egg whirled across the floor. He imagines it turning very slowly. He hopes, at least, that it’s very slowly. Otherwise, wouldn’t the passengers be dashed to the floor?
He wonders just how big the world might be.
Maybe sometimes it spins slow and sometimes it spins fast. It would explain why, when Badger stumbles down the ladder to the sewers, shouting for help—the boy, the boy is caught, Ash, he’d told him not to touch it, he’d said, but then the boy, the boy, Ash—there is a good minute where Kristofferson’s vision blurs and swings around violently. His body lurches forward on automatic.
Ash. Ash.
That name in his ears, in his head, in his throat, in his heart. Kristofferson isn’t the smart one at all. He’s not the natural talent. He’s stupid, and emotionally distant, and thinks too much about what others will think instead of just doing and saying what he feels. He’s not honest like Ash. They grew up somewhere, but he’s still not honest.
He runs the entire way.
Runs through brambles. Grass. Pebbles between his digits, dust in his fur. Bushes that scratch long lines down his legs. Keeps a head up to see where Badger is going, to follow the bobbing of Uncle Fox’s pinned tail as they dash through the countryside to where the latest scouting mission had been passing. To Ash. Ash, who may have hated Kristofferson, who may have loved him, but who at least is honest about both.
If he dies, thinks Kristofferson, I wonder what I’ll do. I can’t even imagine it. I think I might go insane. I‘ll go insane and just fade out of the world every once in a while, like Kylie does, because it’s too much to stand.
They reach the hillside and the metal trap that gleams silver in the sun.
Ash isn’t dead.
There is blood, and bone, and fear in Ash’s eyes. But he isn’t dead. Kristofferson chants this to himself as they pry the jaws of the trap from Ash’s mutilated leg. Through Ash’s weak, hoarse cries of pain. Before Uncle Fox lifts his son up in the air with tender hands. He is not, will not become, dead.
How stupid it all seems now. Has the meditation not cleared his mind? The way seems so easy. So right. As right as the way Ash instinctively reaches to Kristofferson when his leg is jostled in Uncle Fox’s hold. Yes, he tells himself, you aren’t without hope. He hasn’t given up on you.
After the excitement has faded, and the well-wishers of the sewers have gone, Kristofferson is the only one left in Ash’s bedroom. Not much has changed since he moved out; there is still a neatness that borders on compulsive and a towel that hangs from the bed like a surrender flag. Ash is in that bed, exhausted and weakened, but he hasn’t surrendered. He’s only resting.
Kristofferson sits by him and takes an injured paw. It’s hard to know what to say.
“Hey,” Ash tells him, voice wavering.
But not impossible. “I like you,” says Kristofferson, and traces the word love on Ash’s arm with the tip of a claw.
December
They move to the new hill in December.
It takes more than one trip, each more dangerous than the last. But they leave the three farmers and their bitterness behind. They leave the cold rooms and supermarket food behind. But not everything—some things, Kristofferson decides as he watches Aunt Fox’s stomach bulge with child and Ash’s smiles come like flashes of light in a thunderstorm, they will take.
Kristofferson carries Ash on his back when they travel. “I can limp along,” protests Ash, but not too hard.
“This way’s easier. The snow is still too packed for your leg.”
“Snow,” moans Ash with some happiness.
“I think you’ll like our new hole,” Kristofferson tells him as they walk, in between the crunch, crunch, crunch of the new snow. “There’s a lot of room and there’s a connecting compartment that I think Dad and I will take. We’ll always be close, then.”
“Not like I need you close,” remarks Ash. But he nudges Kristofferson’s ear with his nose, shy and pleased.
The winter won’t be so bad this time. Not if they’re together. Kristofferson’s mind wanders in the vastness of white that surrounds them, imagining a cozy den with a pantry of stored food and a comfortable dip of earth to sleep in. He imagines burrowing into a nest with Ash, content to simply be as they are—the soft cotton of Ash’s t-shirt pressed to his own, special spots to nuzzle, the terrycloth cape of a superhero draped over the both of them. Listening to Ash complain about his foot, and the injustice of the world, and how perfect that would be, simply to nest with him and listen.
He’s smiling.
“What are you so happy about?” Ash asks.
“Oh, nothing much.” Kristofferson lets the pause hang for a moment. “Hey, Ash—are you going to pair this winter?”
“… If that’s a joke, I’m waiting for the punch line.”
“It’s a lead-in to something good.”
“Okay. I’ll bite. Fat chance. Don’t humor me, I know I’m ugly. Even for a Vulpes Vulpes.”
“I don’t think that at all.”
Ash’s breathing is quiet but close enough to drown in. “Yeah? Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“You can ask me.”
Yes, thinks Kristofferson. It’ll be a good year.