A Likely Story: "The Fox" by Malinda Lo

She was five days northeast of the village of Anshu, forty-six days into her first circuit as King’s Huntress of the northernmost province in the Kingdom.

She shook off the whisper of apprehension that slid down her spine and ducked through the opening into the interior chamber.

Pictures were painted on the walls: dozens, perhaps hundreds, of sinuous, curving animals, some moving among trees, others running together in packs.

She took a step closer to the wall and reached out to touch the nearest image: a fox with its brushlike tail held high as it ran on elegant, delicately rendered paws.

But her face was obscured, and the only sign Kaede saw was the slightest quiver of her mouth.

The shapes on the walls twisted as the flames flared, and she rubbed a hand over her face, drawing in a shaking breath.

She hated the way it made her feel: desolate, lost.

It had become a nightly ritual that soothed her: an accounting of the day’s events, carefully trimmed to the barest facts, devoid of emotion.

There was only one human who went where she did with impunity.

She had russet-colored hair and a pale face with angular green eyes and a thin nose.

Foxlike and lithe, she bent down, and when her lips parted Kaede saw the pointed teeth of a predator.

Her skin parted; blood seeped up to the surface.

Her back arched; her mouth opened in a gasp as all those tightly wound emotions came loose. Anguish, dragging roughly through her; suffocating heartache; absence, deep and vast.

Yet beneath it all was a thin but strong hum of pleasure, as if she had been born to nurture this grief, and now she was finally free to drink from this bittersweet well until she was intoxicated by it.

She knew those eyes, the brown irises flecked with shards of black.

She thought the face above her must be a mirage.

Kaede could feel the heat emanating from her pale skin, and her own body flushed in response.

Her disbelief melted into desire.

This girl smelled, subtly but surely, of blood.

The girl’s face wavered; her hair was red again, and then black.

Kaede stared, transfixed, as the girl’s body changed in the light, morphing before her eyes.

Her shining black hair thickened into a coarse red; her brown eyes narrowed into sharp emeralds; her face lengthened, developing a pointed chin.

Her shining black hair thickened into a coarse red; her brown eyes narrowed into sharp emeralds; her face lengthened, developing a pointed chin.

She realized she was pinned on the ground beneath a woman whose skin was covered with a fine, ruddy down, whose body was taut with muscle.

None of the tales were clear on whether the woman came first, or the fox did, but they all agreed that she could take on the face of any woman, and anyone who succumbed to her charms was sure to die, for she drank all of a person’s spirit, leaving only a shattered husk behind.

She had the accent of the fay—a kind of lilting tone, as if she were singing.

Her nose and mouth became a snout that snapped at Kaede’s arm.

The air seemed to reverberate in her wake.

The woman stayed where she was, drawing back when Kaede approached so that she remained shrouded by the dark, just out of reach of the glow from the Fairy Queen’s ring.

Kaede flinched at the easy condemnation in the woman’s words—and at the uncomfortable truth of them.

At first she had been afraid that the fox-woman would return, but as the night slowly passed with no sign of her, that fear subsided and was replaced by a persistent, familiar ache.

At first she had been afraid that the fox-woman would return, but as the night slowly passed with no sign of her, that fear subsided and was replaced by a persistent, familiar ache. All she could see, in her mind’s eye, was that face looming over her.

A peace seemed to steal over her, quiet and unassuming.

When she went outside, the morning light was soft on her face, and the rain was gentle, too, like a fine mist that cloaked the world in an ethereal tracery of tiny droplets.

“Good-bye,” she said, tasting the misty air on her tongue, delicate and new.