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FOX09T Book 1 Chapter 3

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FO9T Book 1 Chapter 3

    Timothy gasped for breath and crawled deeper into the rubbery green fronds of the strange vegetation, deeper into the covering darkness and away from the hunters.  His heart was beating so fast he feared it would explode at any moment.  His head was so dizzy from fear and exhaustion that he knew it wouldn’t be much longer before he blacked out.  And then the monsters would have him!
     Again came the sound of the thundering hooves of his pursuers’ horses.  Timothy flattened himself out on the cool mud beneath the close canopy of dense leaves.  He tried to control his heaving breathing and his urge to retch.  He could now hear the hunters’ horses trampling the forest brush nearby.  The hunters knew he was somewhere in the thickets of this dense grove.  It’s just a matter of time, he thought. I’m so doomed.  He could hear the hunters shouting to each other.  Their throaty voices where deep and gravelly and boomed like cannon.
     
     “I tell you I saw the intruder and it’s no Visitor!  It’s a boy!  A live boy from the Other Side!  Several sprites witnessed him fall from the sky and they’ll confirm that it’s a boy we’re looking for, Commander!”
     
      “Sprites will confirm any nonsense out of pure mischief, Lieutenant!  And if there’s a boy stupid enough to come spying in Foxwood, he’d be the first – and the last!  Boy, beast or demon, it’s no matter to me what manner of fool this intruder is! Whatever’s loose in this wood had better be noosed, bagged and ready to be turned over to the Council of Princesses by sundown!  Or it’s your head, Lieutenant!”  “Aye, aye, Sir!”
    
         Timothy could hear the hunters’ horses snorting and their heavy hooves stamping at the brush as the hunters closed in on him, getting closer and closer to his hiding place.  He could hear the hunters whacking and jabbing at the brush with long spearlike pikes.
     
          The hunters were now so close that Timothy could hear them coughing and breathing heavily.  They sounded as tired of chasing as Timothy was of being chased.  Through a gap in the leaves and vines, Timothy could see a bit of the clearing just in front of his hiding place.  A lone shaft of sunlight in the otherwise dim and dark forest illuminated this one particular spot quite well.  Two of the mounted hunters stopped their steeds in the very spot and proceeded to consult with each other.
    
Timothy finally had his first clear look at his pursuers.
     Werewolves! his brain screamed.  Werewolves on horses!  But then again, not really werewolves, either.  Maybe something worse!  They talked to each other just like men and they stood upright just like men.  He could also make out that their faces were somewhat human beneath the dark black fur and glowing yellow wolf eyes, and their massive clawed paws were very much like human hands. They wore clothes like men – but the sort of clothes that men wore when they wanted to frighten and intimidate other men.  Lots of black leather.  Black leather thigh-high riding boots and black leather breeches held up with thick black leather belts.  They also wore long black leather riding coats that reached all the way to the ground when they dismounted from their horses. There were ornate sheathed daggers adorning their belts.  There were big black bullwhips coiled at the ready on their midnight-black stallions’ saddles.  Their dark silky tunics under their coats bore strange insignia as if denoting ranks and honors.  Timothy figured they must be military soldiers, or some sort of secret police force or security guards.  Maybe they were the world’s baddest motorcycle gang – just on horseback.
     “I think there’s something hiding just in there!”
     This is it!  thought Timothy, his mind suddenly a chaos of conflicting impulses.  Should I freeze?!  Should I run?!  Should I give myself up?!
     “The hounds are here, Sir!  We’ll have him sniffed out and flushed in no time!”
     The hounds! Can this really be happening?! This can’t be happening! This has to be just a really, really realistic bad dream!  Angry tears began rolling down the desperate boy’s cheeks. This is all because of that Dr. Gwen and her stupid dream clinic! Maybe she’s even doing this to me in my head for trying to protect Larissa…
     Larissa!
     Could Larissa be out here in this woods being hunted, too?!  The idea terrified and electrified Timothy.  All thought of his own safety evaporated in that instant.  He began a frenzied shuffling backwards on his belly through the mucky mud and the stubbly undergrowth that tore at his clothes and cut into his knees and elbows.  Larissa may be on the run, too!  Lost and scared out here with these wolfmen hunting her!  They can’t have her!  I have to save her!
     Timothy’s sudden movement alerted the Wolfen Guardians and several of them began frantically ripping through the very thicket the boy had just been hiding in.  The hounds had indeed arrived and had begun their mournful canine baying upon picking up Timothy’s scent.  More disturbing was the sound of the Wolfen pursuers beginning their own far more terrifying howling as the prospect of an impending capture brought their hunters’ blood to a boil.      
     Timothy froze in place at the sound of the wolves howling.  Then he felt the clawed hands close around his ankles and begin roughly pulling him backwards in the dark thicket of thorny brambles. He heard his own voice screaming, as if it were coming from someone else:
     “Get your hands off me, you, you – you damned dirty werewolves!”
     And then he realized he was being pulled underground!  Pulled down into some hidden earthen tunnel!  The horror of it!  Was he about to be eaten alive in some dank subterranean wolf’s lair?  Timothy felt himself going numb all over.
     But then there was someone behind him, someone punching him in the back with little punches, shoving him forward through the pitch black tunnel that was not large enough for him to stand all the way up in.  It occurred to Timothy that this person might be a rescuer rather than a murderer, especially when he heard the funny reedy voice behind him in the dark screeching out:
     “Run, boy, run, with everything you’ve got!  Or we’ll soon both be stew for the wolf brothers’ pot!”
       By this time, Timothy’s mind had become quite thoroughly overwhelmed and he was running on “automatic pilot.”  He allowed himself to be directed without questions through the dark network of tunnels, which branched off in alternative forks several times, by whomever it was that his strange serendipitous benefactor might be.  All he knew was that he was still alive and couldn’t hear the sounds of the mounted werewolves anymore. And that was enough.
                
      Timothy’s head crashed into something in the darkness, something made out of wood.  Then he heard the slightly shrill voice once again:
      “Well, open the door, boy, and go inside! We’ll be safe in there – it’s where I reside!”
      Timothy slid hands over the smooth wood until he found a metal latch and managed to figure out how to lift it up to get the door open.  Then the little hands he had felt before were pushing him inside.  He promptly tripped over what he thought might be a large rug on the floor, and he crawled forward until he felt a chair in the dark.  He pulled himself up into it, thankful to finally rest his aching legs.  He could hear the occupant of the underground apartment rustling around in the darkness, still muttering to himself in silly rhymes.
     “A match! A match! My kingdom for a match!  I’ll shed light upon the mystery of what the wolves so hungered to catch!”
     Timothy blinked as a match ignited in the darkness and was then thrust inside an olden-timesy prospector’s lantern.  What he beheld standing there before him was as shocking to him as the mounted Wolfen Guardians, if not nearly as immediately threatening.  The being who had just saved his life was not a wolf, but a fox.  A red fox.  Which is to say, in the same ways that the wolves were like regular men, so, too, was this fox, standing about the same height as Timothy, like a regular man.  But his attire was not military.  Just the opposite.  He dressed like a peasant from the Middle Ages.  He wore velveteen breeches and a cotton blouse with a faded brass-buttoned jacket.  He wore simple scuffed leatherette shoes.  He did not seem to be intent on doing any harm to Timothy, thought the grateful and exhausted Timothy.
       The fox seemed to be almost as startled at seeing Timothy as Timothy was at seeing him.  The fox pulled a pair of frameless spectacles from his breast pocket and fit them onto his nose.  He then leaned forward for a better look at the boy.  Shaking his head, he then picked up a pipe from a well-appointed pipe rack on a small table and lit the tobacco in the bowl with another match.
      “Well, well, well, I must confess, we couldn’t have dreamed up any finer a great big mess!  A boy has fallen from the sky, and the fugitive’s in my quarters! We must now design a most clever lie, before you’re found out by our intrepid reporters!”     
      “Reporters?” asked Timothy.  It was unnerving enough just to hear the wolves speaking like people.  But now he was actually having a conversation with a fox.
      “ ‘The Foxwood Gazette’.  Despicable gossip rag. But you’ll learn that soon enough,” said the fox.
      “That doesn’t rhyme,” said Timothy.
      “Doesn’t rhyme?” said the fox.  “Why should it rhyme?”
      “But you were rhyming everything…” said Timothy sheepishly,
      “Oh,” said the fox.  “A nervous tick.  Happens when I’m in fear for my life.  But that’s neither here nor there.  Now, as to your situation…”
      “Wait a minute. Wait a minute,” interjected Timothy.  “I’m very confused about a lot of stuff right now…”
      “I would imagine so, young man!” said the fox.
      “Is this,” asked Timothy, “really a dream, or is it all really real?”
      “Now that’s a question for the ages!” said the fox. “If you’d like, I think I can set you for an appointment with the Philosopher Fox, and you can ask him that  question yourself.  A bit out of my field, I’m sorry to say.”
      Timothy blinked his tired eyes.  “This is useless.  I’m sure I’ll be waking up soon as this will all be over, anyway.”
      “You know what?” proferred the fox. “We can plot strategy in the morning after you’ve gotten some sleep.  Let’s do that.”
      Then Timothy remembered the certain matter that absolutely could not wait until morning.  He bolted up out his chair.
      “Larissa!  What about Larissa!”
      The fox seemed completely unperturbed. “Larissa?  I’m unfamiliar with a Larissa.  Is she a Visitor to Foxwood?”
      Timothy was frantic.  “But we were together just before I ended up in the woods being chased by the wolves!  She might be out there right now!”
      The fox smiled a smile of his sharp foxy teeth and tried to calm the boy.  “I assure you that even if she is an uninvited Visitor to Foxwood, she will not be harmed by the wolves.  They wouldn’t dare.  If intercepted, she will be most courteously escorted over into the good offices of the Council of Princesses, not a hair on her head out of place.”
       “But, but those wolves!” sputtered an unconvinced Timothy.
      “You’re a boy,” explained the fox, “a variety of intruder.  You’re fair game for the wolves.  This Larissa would be of the girl persuasion, I take it.  The Wolfen Guardians of Foxwood are as dedicated in their protection of the females of Foxwood as they are in the hunting down of any intruders in Foxwood.  Understand?”
     Timothy relented, finally.  “OK, I guess.  I guess I should just go sleep now, and wake up tomorrow …in the real world.”  
     “Good idea,” the fox said quietly. “Why don’t you give that a try.  I’m sure everything will turn out well in the great by and by.”
     The fox provided Timothy with some blankets and insisted he sleep on the small bed in the small adjacent curtained-off bedroom.  Timothy stretched out his weary body and was about to close his eyes for a much-needed sleep when he noticed something else remarkable about his new friend the talking fox (not that a talking fox wasn’t remarkable enough).  As the fox yawned and stretched just before settling down into a large overstuffed sitting chair for his own sleep – Timothy could see that the fox had not just one, but three foxtails.  For just a moment, as the fox yawned a big yawn, all three fluffy foxtails fanned out behind him like a peacock striking its trademark pose.  And the three tails weren’t of standard fox color varieties, either. The fur came in rings of different colors and hues and bandwidths, distinctly different on each tail.  And there were other spots and markings, like fox-fur tattoos, that must have held some significance.
     And then the fox turned off the lantern and all was blessed darkness.
     This was the wildest dream he had ever had, thought Timothy.  It had to be a dream.  But still, it always pays to have manners, so:
     “Excuse me,” said Timothy in the dark.
     “Yes, young man?” answered the fox.
     “What’s your name?” asked Timothy.
     “Why would you want to know that?” asked the fox.
     “You have to know someone’s name to properly thank them for saving your life,” answered Timothy.
     “Well I suppose that’s so,” said the fox.  Then there was silence.
     “Well?” insisted Timothy.
     “Winston,” said the fox.
     “Just ‘Winston’? No last name?” asked Timothy.
     “ ‘Winston the Savant Fox’,” said Winston. “We don’t have a lot of last names here.  But I’m a Savant Fox, so I’m sometimes called ‘Winston the Savant Fox’.”
     “A sav-what fox?”
     “Never mind.  Just stuff you’ll learn about in time.”
     “Well,” said Timothy. “I want to thank you for saving my life, Winston.”
     “Well,” said Winston. “You are more than welcome.”
     There was another moment of silence.
     “Well?” asked Winston.
     “Oh, it’s Timothy. I’m Timothy,” said Timothy.
     “Good night, Timothy,” said Winston the Savant Fox.
     “Good night, Winston,” said Timothy the Boy Who Fell from the Sky.
FO9T Book 1 Chapter 3
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littletigerdrawer's avatar
I wish I was as good at writing as you are! This is an amazing piece of work, and I love the names. I always find it difficult to find the right names for characters. Do you have a method or is it just random?