Page 5 of Foxin' Around

Four

Krystal was impressed and a little frightened as she looked at the beauty of the gardens sprawling around the cabin. Magic really did this? There was real, honest-to-goodness magic out there? Perhaps she should not be so surprised, with some of the creatures she’d seen from a distance, but different species seemed easier to accept and acknowledge than something so otherworldly as actual magic. That such an ordinary looking man commanded something so incredible was amazing to her.

What was his name again? She pursed her lips, her brow puckering thoughtfully as she ducked below low-hanging branches. It was something so unusual that it didn’t quite fit him either. She puzzled over it, rolling sounds around as she walked.

“Siri…no, though that seemed pretty damn magical at the time when it came out,” she mused aloud with a chuckle. “Sereal, Siren, Sir… Syr… Syrix, that’s it. I wonder if that’s his real name or if it’s something crazy that he named himself.”

With some of the inventive names she’d come across, either could easily be the case. With his ghostly pale complexion, brown eyes, and long, vividly red hair, he was pretty, but shewouldn’t have guessed something quite so odd. He kind of reminded her of her childhood neighbor, Sean. She could see him as a Sean. That little boy also had a pale complexion that burned easily, brown eyes, and a shock of red hair, but he was covered every inch with freckles that seemed to be completely absent from Syrix.

No freckles, no moles, no blemish of any kind. Not even a tiny acne scar as far as she had noticed. In fact, he looked almost like some sort of fairy porcelain doll now that she thought of it. And his eyes had struck her as glowing red for a moment.

Krystal shook her head with another quiet laugh. “There goes my imagination again. Just running wild and leaving my common sense behind. Glowing eyes, indeed.”

Planting her hands on her hips, she casually looked over her surroundings. The path split there, no more than a quarter of a mile within the woods. Each segment of the fork in the path was brightened with cascades of flowers growing at each side. “If this were a movie, one of these roads would be bleak and frightening, portending to certain doom.”

The bushes to her left rustled and she jumped as she spun, her fist clenching over her heart. The bush rattled louder, and her jaw tightened, her eyes widening fearfully as she focused on the trembling branches. Flower petals scattered with the bush’s vibrations and her legs tensed in preparation to bolt. Large predators hadn’t seen in this part of the country for nearly one hundred years, but that didn’t mean anything after the Ravening. Her throat tightened and she placed one foot behind the other as she slowly backed one step and then another. The bush bounced wildly, and Krystal prepared herself for the worst.

This was it. She had survived this long and had made it all the way to the cabin only to get eaten before even a full day passed. Oh, the irony burned. Her mouth tightened in apprehension, but her lips parted with a startled squeak when a red, furyface abruptly poked through the flowering bush, its brown eyes gamely meeting hers.

Breathless laughter burst from her as she stared down at the creature in front of her.

A fox! She nearly had a heart attack over a damned fox! Didn’t Syrix warn her that a whole family of foxes lived near the cabin? Krystal flattened her hand over her pounding heart and giggled again.

“Fixi, is that you?” she demanded as the fox crept out onto the path, its large, red ears pricked toward her. She studied it in turn and shook her head. “No, Fixi has more gray and tan coloring to his fur. He isn’t as red as you. Or as big,” she added. “I didn’t know that foxes got so big. You are nearly as large as a good-sized hound. In fact, you are a little bigger than Gus, the coonhound I had as a child… How strange.”

She didn’t normally assign human emotions to animals, but for a moment, she could have sworn that the fox flinched. No, that was surely wrong. The fox’s ears merely flicked. Surprisingly, it did not use the opportunity to scurry away now that it was on the open path. Instead, it continued to watch her with the same curious regard with which she watched it.

“Very strange. You are definitely not Fixi,” she pointed out needlessly. Why did she bother? Was the fox to talk back now? “You must be a member of his family, then. I don’t think foxes live in packs of anything quite that social, but I can’t remember. All the same, you clearly belong here, yeah?”

She didn’t know if she expected the fox to answer her, but she was oddly relieved when it remained silent. It had such intelligence in its eyes that she wouldn’t entirely have been surprised if ithadstarted talking back, but she was also not sure her sanity could handle it, either. But nothing unusual here. No talking foxes, thank goodness.

Krystal gave the fox a small smile. “If you aren’t Fixi, I wonder what your name is. Or perhaps you don’t have one. It is quite possible that Syrix didn’t bother to name all of you roaming the woods here.”

The fox cocked its head curiously at her and she chuckled as she began to relax. It really was adorable despite its large size. It didn’t hurt that foxes were shy creatures that were not known for attacking people. She doubted that even an oversized fox would pose much of a danger unless she cornered it and threatened it directly.

“I think I’m going to call you… Jasper? What do you think?”

The fox twitched an ear nonchalantly and she grinned. It didn’t look the least bit impressed by her name selection.

“Well, I think it suits you. Alright, well I’m going to continue checking out this path,” she said, pointing to the trail directly ahead of her. “I will just leave you to do whatever you do. Bye, Jasper.”

She turned away but didn’t bother to hide her excited smile when she caught the fox’s movement from the corner of her eye as it began to follow in a brisk trot. Perhaps she was lonelier than she had believed. The fox wasn’t Gus by any stretch of imagination. It certainly didn’t have the coonhound’s exuberance, but for some reason, knowing that she had the company made her feel a little better.

Drawing a deep breath of the clean air, she smiled as the tension she’d been carrying for weeks melted away. Now that she had some distance to think objectively about it and was no longer in fight-or-flight mode, she was able to unpack her thoughts and feelings about the situation. Was it ideal… no. Ideal would have been to arrive and find one of her cousins waiting here, or even her elderly aunt and uncle if they had made it through the Ravening. Finding a strange, unknown man on the other side of the door had been frightening since she hadn’tknown what to expect from him. He could have easily hurt her. He could have reached through the door and wrapped his fingers around her neck and—no, there was no use letting her thoughts go there. Regardless of what could have happened, it didn’t. Yes, he could have easily hurt her, but he didn’t. In her book, that counted for something. In this world, actions counted for a lot, far more than sweet words or appearance.

Though she had to admit, he wasn’t hard on the eyes either. Before the Ravening, he was the sort of man she would have admired in passing but would have never dared to approach or exchange words with. To find such a beautiful, soft-spoken man in her family’s cabin honestly was the stuff of fantasies.

“I tell you, Jasper, this world just gets crazier and crazier,” she remarked over her shoulder.

What if this was all a dream and she was still asleep in the woods? Her body ached and she’d been hiking for half the day, but that could all her a part of her dream, too. She nodded, that would track. Who wouldn’t dream of that? Lifting her forearm, she gave it a savage pinch and yelped in pain. Behind her, Jasper responded with a startled yip in turn. She glanced back at him apologetically to find the fox standing with legs braced wide in the middle of the path behind. Her lips twisted in a rueful smile. “Sorry, just had to check.”

Ok, there was a bizarre and very attractive stranger with a soft voice that could melt butter and possessed magical abilities in residence at her family’s cabin.

“Crazy,” she murmured again and chuckled.

Sighing deeply, she lifted her arms above her and stretched languidly. At least it seemed that she had come to the end of the path… and it was well worth it. Just as Syrix had promised, there were all manner of trees in bloom, and the air was heavy with their mingled fragrance. It bore such a hint of familiarity thatshe eagerly breathed it in. Her smile returned, stretching wide across her face.

It was like a bubble of paradise in a frightening hellscape.

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