Scary Stories for Young Foxes Read online

  Roa let out an involuntary whimper. He licked his lips and made a backward wiggle. Then, folding his ears, he plopped to his belly and crawled beneath the leaves.

  THREE

  IT WAS DARK in the hawthorn bush. But then a soft wind blew, flickering the leaves, and patches of light cleaned the shadows from the silhouette.

  It was Miss Vix.

  Roa had never seen his teacher upset before. She had always taken the kits’ bites and scratches with the patience of spring. But here, in the hawthorn bush, her lips were curled around the black of her gums, the whites of her teeth. Her eyes were narrowed in dark, gooey slits.

  “Miss Vix?” Roa whispered.

  A shudder ran from his teacher’s ears straight to the tip of her tail. She tried to take a step toward his voice, but then wavered and missed. She turned in a half circle, then sat down again. Her gooey eyes stared at nothing.

  Roa looked at his teacher’s paw, sticky with black. “Are you hurt, Miss Vix? Do you want me to find Alfie and bite him for you?”

  Miss Vix’s head swayed. Her breath sounded choked with cobwebs.

  “What’s she doing?” Mia whispered from outside the bush.

  Roa didn’t answer.

  “Miss Vix?” he said. “Are you okay?”

  Miss Vix lifted her snout. And she saw him through the goo. Her muzzle tightened into a snarl, but then she shook her head back and forth, like she was trying to escape a sneeze.

  A sound bubbled from her throat. “Run.”

  Roa’s ears flattened. “Run where?”

  He had never done anything in the Eavey Wood without his teacher’s permission.

  Miss Vix’s teeth made that horrible clicking. Klik klik—klik klik. The sound woke the nerves in Roa’s toenails.

  “Run where, Miss Vix?”

  Her breath made a rattling sound. With it came the stench, dark and warm. The scent of butterfly dust was gone. As if the yellow had swallowed his teacher from the inside out.

  Roa dropped to his belly and scooted back out of the hawthorn bush.

  “Did you pass the test?” Mia asked in a chipper voice. “Are you guys married now?”

  Her giggles were cut short when there came a snapping of branches and Miss Vix stumbled out of the leaves. The other kits saw their teacher’s gooey eyes, her snarled lips, and they backed away, whiskers alert.

  Bizy whimpered, lifting her paws. “M-maybe we should go.”

  “Yeah,” Marley said, backing up. “I think I hear Mom calling.”

  Roa planted his paws. “I’m staying.”

  Mia’s tail thumped uncertainly.

  Their teacher stared at them with her black goo eyes. Her teeth dripped.

  “Thaaaaaaaat’s enough class for me today,” Mia said.

  She tried to scamper away, but Miss Vix struck like a snake, snagging Mia by the tail. Mia let out a deafening yelp before kicking free of their teacher’s teeth and disappearing into the hawthorn bush, where she fell silent.

  Bizy whimpered. Marley flopped on his side in submission. Roa froze. Their teacher had never bitten any of them before.

  Miss Vix’s gooey eyes flashed back to the three kits, Mia’s fur sticking out of her fangs. Miss Vix lunged at each of them in turn. Roa. Marley. Bizy. As each kit flinched out of her jaws’ reach, the next caught her attention and she rounded on them.

  Roa backed away from his teacher, heart thumping. He wanted to stay put. He wanted to sniff out the butterfly dust beneath the yellow and coax her back to the surface … but his paws betrayed him. He turned his muzzle toward the den and started to pad away.

  Behind him, there came a chomp and a tiny yelp. “Yipe!”

  Bizy. She didn’t even get a head start.

  Roa broke into a run.

  There came a scuffle and another yelp. “Aroo!”

  Marley. He wasn’t laughing anymore.

  Roa started to sprint.

  Three yelps from three of his siblings. The yellow stench had swallowed Miss Vix. Now it would swallow them too.

  Roa ran through the dappled shade of the Learning Tree and leapt onto the sun-touched moss of the tumbled oak. In the warm light of morning, he second-guessed himself and gazed back toward the hawthorn bush. There was still a world of things to learn. Miss Vix was going to teach them the nap-and-capture technique. She was going to teach them how to tell if a mouse was playing dead. She was going to teach them how to swim.

  The hawthorn bush was hidden by the trunk of the Learning Tree. The only movement was the shifting shadow of the canopy.

  “Bizy?” Roa croaked. “Marley? M-Mia?”

  His teacher came sprinting around the trunk, fangs bared, drool streaming, gooey eyes fixed on him.

  Roa’s paws kneaded the moss. “I give up, Miss Vix!”

  Still, she came. Her cobwebbed breath. Her bloodied paw. Her yellow stench.

  “I fail!” Roa shouted at her. “I don’t pass! I … don’t want to do this anymore!”

  It wasn’t until she leapt from the earth, lips curled, teeth gleaming, that a voice echoed deep in Roa’s mind.

  “Never the fields,” his teacher had said when she still smelled like butterfly dust. “Your legs are too little to escape a hunter in the open. If something is chasing you, hide yourself in the most tangled space you can. Do you understand?”

  Roa might not have understood, but his paws did. As his teacher’s shadow swept over him, he slipped off the back side of the tumbled oak, plopped to the ground, and bolted toward the den faster than he thought possible. He heard the crunch of Miss Vix’s paws on the trunk behind him as she landed and then leapt again. When he sensed her shadow in his left whiskers, his legs swiveled and shot him to the right.

  Soon, he could feel the klik klik klik of her hot breath snapping at his tail as his paws leapt and bounded and skittered through the trees. He tried to think of the most tangled space he knew of.

  The briar patch.

  The wood was a blurred confusion. Roa couldn’t tell which way was which. Then he remembered when Miss Vix taught them how to tell directions.

  Whenever you point your muzzle northward, your eyes will grow fuzzy with purple.

  Roa swung his head left, then right, until his vision gained a hazy color, like sunset coming in at the edges. He rocketed toward the purple, crossing through Lumpy Prairie, and then arrived at the briar patch. He wriggled into a whisker-wide crevice and crawled to the heart of the thorny shadows.

  There he crouched, trying to catch his breath.

  Safe …

  Safe …

  A snarl.

  Roa leapt just as Miss Vix’s fangs ripped through the brambles. She thrashed toward him, not even flinching as the thorns tore at her gooey eyes.

  Roa wriggled out of the briar patch and ran. His teacher chased him across the grasses where she’d taught them to pierce the soft earth with their muzzles. She chased him through the tunnel where they’d dug for earthworms. She chased him around the blackberry bushes where they’d plucked dessert, and down Tumble Hill where they’d played Hawks and Hunters.

  At the bottom of the hill was a sunken creek. Roa tried to leap to the far side, but his ribs struck the ledge and he flipped backward, splashing into the shallows with a small yelp. Quivering, he slunk out of the mud and pressed into the shadow of the crumbling bank, trying to catch his breath without making too much sound.

  “Please be a test,” he whispered. “Please, please, please.”

  Moments passed. Flies droned. A raven cawed.

  Roa’s eyes darted left and right. If he stayed in the sunken creek, Miss Vix would be able to drop down on him from above. But which direction should he run? Upcreek or down? Something told him one way would lead to freedom; the other, to his teacher.

  Roa pricked his whiskers. He couldn’t see Miss Vix’s shadow on the opposite bank or hear her cobwebbed breath over the trickling water. He couldn’t smell the yellow stench over the dead fish in the creek. How would he know which way to go?
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  “Craw! Craw!”

  The black feathers of a raven gleamed on a high branch above. Birds had the best view in the forest. They could tell you when something was coming and from what direction. But bird languages were tough. You had to know which birds sang which songs and then remember the subtle changes in trills for what they meant. Roa wasn’t as bad at remembering the songs as Mia, but he was nowhere near as good as Bizy, who seemed to have feathers sprouting out of her ears.

  “Craw! Craw!”

  “I hope you’re saying she’s coming from the right,” Roa whispered to the bird.

  He headed upcreek. Whether Miss Vix had actually taught him something about birds or it was pure luck, Roa would never know. But when he rounded up the lip of the sunken bank, he saw his teacher on the far end, staring into the water, muzzle bleeding from the briars.

  Her head lifted slowly. The moment she caught his eye, she bounded over the water and came after him.

  Again, Roa ran. He panted in the stifling heat. His heart pounded, ready to burst. If this was a test, how could he pass it once and for all? He needed to find somewhere he could hide where his teacher definitely could not fit.

  “There’s always the mole burrow,” Miss Vix had said. “It’s a tight fit, but if your whiskers can get through, so can you.”

  Roa darted south this time, opposite the purple, to the shallow part of the river. He bounded across the slimy stones, each threatening to roll were he not quick enough. He heard no splashing behind him, but he didn’t stop leaping until he’d made it to the opposite side. Only then did he dare look back.

  Miss Vix skidded to a stop on the bank. Her gooey eyes stared at the river. She tried stepping on the first stone, but the moment her paw touched the water, her body seized and arched backward as if something had snatched her by the muzzle and pulled. Her spine bent so far back she could’ve bitten her own tail.

  Roa shook his head, confused. Miss Vix had never been frightened by water. He wanted to go to her, run his muzzle along her back, make her feel okay again. But fear drove him the rest of the way to the mole burrow.

  The entrance was barely a crack, pinched by tree roots. He was quite a bit bigger than the last time their teacher had made him and his siblings enter the burrow, but he tried to squeeze inside anyway. His whiskers bent against the soil. The roots folded his ears. A stone yanked his hair and squished his stomach so tight he almost lost his mouse-and-blackberry breakfast.

  He was stuck.

  Roa clawed and wriggled, but he couldn’t slide any deeper. The stone dug painfully into the top of his hip. His hind legs kicked, and his tail whirled. He was numb with the fear of being bitten. He stopped struggling. He remembered Miss Vix’s honeyed eyes, her golden fur—the way they used to be—and then he wriggled and kicked with every bit of him that wanted to pass her test.

  The stone crumbled free from the earth, and he slid into darkness. His breath came in sobs. Roots and damp soil cradled him on all sides, close and dark and soothing. His fur prickled in the cool of the underground as his breath quieted and his heartbeat finally slowed.

  Safe …

  Safe …

  …

  Roa kept his eyes on the small, craggy entrance. He waited for Miss Vix to stick her snout into the burrow and tell him he’d passed the test. He waited for her to help him squeeze back into the sunlight, where she would lick the mud from his fur and nibble the briars from his tail and tell him he was faster and cleverer than all of his siblings.

  The wind whistled outside. With it came a sound. A panting. Breath like a spider’s nest. That awful clicking of teeth.

  Klik. Klik klik.

  Roa assured his pounding heart that Miss Vix couldn’t fit inside. She was too big.

  Klik klik klik.

  His ear twitched. This clicking sounded different than before. The breath was higher-pitched.

  Klik klik, klik klik.

  He flattened his ears as a snout slid into the craggy entrance, breathing the yellow stench into the burrow. It sniffed.

  Snff snff.

  Roa’s heart went cold. This was not Miss Vix’s nose. It was too small. Too dry.

  Snff snff snfffff.

  The fur on the muzzle was muddy and slick …

  Snfffff

  “A-Alfie?” Roa said.

  The runt looked terrible. His paws were gnawed bloody. His tongue, now black, dangled between his teeth. And his neck twitched like a broken branch in the wind.

  Roa pressed his back against the earthen wall. There was no exit. No escape. What had felt close and safe was now much too tight as Alfie wheezed and wriggled his small, ravaged body into the burrow. The last thing Roa saw was his own reflection in his brother’s black eyes—as wide and unseeing as a starless sky.

  FOUR

  ON THE FAR SIDE of the Eavey Wood, a small fox arrived back at her den, panting.

  “Mama! Mama!”

  A mother fox stepped into the light. “Mia? Where are your brothers and sister?” She sniffed. “What’s wrong? You’re—you’re bleeding!”

  Mia caught her breath and then started to cry. “I ran, Mama. I ran away.”

  “Hush, hush,” her mom said. “Catch your breath.”

  Mia didn’t wait for her breath to catch. She told her mom the story. She told her how Miss Vix had lashed out and bitten Marley and Bizy and then chased after Roa. She told her about the yellow stench.

  Something in her mom’s eyes changed.

  “What are we waiting for?” Mia asked, her paws itching to go back the way she’d come. “We have to help them!”

  When her mom didn’t move, Mia opened her mouth to drag her toward the Learning Tree … but her mom stepped away.

  “Mia.” Her mom’s voice trembled. “How did you hurt your tail?”

  Mia sniffed at the blood scabbing at her tail’s tip. “Miss Vix tried to bite it.”

  “Mia…” Her mom kept her distance. “Think carefully. Did Miss Vix bite your skin?”

  “I—I don’t think so,” Mia said. All she wanted was her mom to lick her tail better. “She … she just pulled out some of the hairs, I think.”

  Her mother looked lost for a moment. Then determined. “Come, Mia.”

  Confused, Mia trotted after her, over the leafy roof of their den and past the sandy loam to the nearby sipping creek.

  “Drink,” her mom said.

  “But Mama.” Mia’s paws wouldn’t hold still. “Roa … He’s in trouble. Marley. Bizy. They’re—”

  “Drink, I said.”

  Confused, Mia dipped her muzzle into the creek and took a small lap. The water was cool and clean on her tongue. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she was. While she drank long and deep, her mom crouched on the bank, watching Mia’s mouth as if she expected the water to leap out of it. When Mia swallowed, her mom gave a deep sigh and trotted away from the den.

  Mia licked the droplets from her beard. “Where are you going? Roa. Bizy. Marley. Alfie … They’re that way.”

  Her mom turned her eyes to the edge of the field, to the shadows of the Learning Tree. “We must leave them.”

  She bounded up Jackrabbit Slope, and Mia practically tripped over her own paws trying to catch up. “But … where? Why?”

  “To the north,” her mom said. “Beyond the forest. Where the yellow cannot follow.”

  “But, Mama.” Mia sniffed, too exhausted to cry. “We have to go back. I left them.”

  Her mom continued on, ducking beneath the drooping leaves of a willow and slipping into a thicket of ivy. “We don’t need to worry about your brothers and sister now…” She sniffed once. “Miss Vix will take care of them.”

  Mia gazed back down the slope. She traced the sipping creek as it curled into the river, which flowed past the Learning Tree. The shadows seemed darker now—the bright spots gray with rising dust. Almost like the Eavey Wood—her home—was going to sleep.

  “Was the yellow stuff…,” Mia said. “Was it all a test?”

 
Her mom leapt down the other side of Jackrabbit.

  “Yes,” she said. “It was a test … and you passed. The other kits still have learning to do. But you…” She glanced at Mia with shining eyes. “You’re all grown up now.”

  “Really?” Mia said, following. She struggled to untangle a knot of ivy with her snout. “I don’t feel grown up.”

  “Well … you are,” her mom said, and with a snip of her jaws, she set Mia free. “You did so well in your classes that it’s time for you to leave the Eavey Wood.”

  Her mom continued downhill at a faster pace. But Mia stopped and quirked her head toward the treetops. Her mom had told her that she would celebrate her Golden-Eyed Day after the leaves fell. And that only then would she and her siblings set out on their own.

  But there were the leaves, still fluttering on the branches.

  “But, Mama,” Mia began.

  “Hurry now,” her mom said.

  Mia bounded to catch up. “You’ll be with me? The whole time?”

  “Every step of the way.”

  “Okay,” Mia said, walking a little more easily now. “That’s good.”

  The world opened before them, new and wide and unfamiliar. And although Mia’s paws still trembled, she tried to walk like a fox whose tail didn’t sting and who wasn’t afraid of the things she’d seen. Mia followed her mom’s sweet apple scent, and she tried to pretend she was more grown-up than her pounding heart would let her believe.

  THE BRANCHES OF the Antler Wood creaked in a soft wind.

  “That’s the scariest part, right?” the beta asked. “That’s as bad as it gets?”

  The storyteller remained silent in the cavern.

  “That wasn’t that scary,” the third kit said.

  “Are you kidding?” said the fifth. He counted on his toes. “One, two, three, four, five foxes died!”

  The fourth cleared his throat. “The yellow stench isn’t real … right?”

  More silence from the cavern. The fourth kneaded his paws and whimpered.

  “Did Mia and her mom ever find another den?” the fifth asked.

  “Patience,” the storyteller whispered.