NOT THAT SHE CALLED her little sister’s name. Not yet.
Clumsy human that she was, Mo struggled to keep upright as she made her way down toward the stream. Vulpes vulpes had exquisite balance! When a fox ran-and it could run very, very fast-its tracks traced a single true line. Light and swift, a red fox barely dented the ground with its tracks.
Mo tripped over a sticking-up root, tilted backward, landed on her butt, and slid downhill, digging in her heels just in time to prevent scraping her shin against a rusty fender. Flat on her back, dumb as a turkey on a platter.
But then, as she lay there, something began to happen. Slowly, gently, as if she were dreaming with her eyes open, Mo sensed she was no longer alone. The air turned beamy, the rays of the sun weaving themselves into a beautiful quilt. It floated over her, tucked itself in around her. Aah. How safe she felt. Something was watching over her.
The fox, her fox, was nearby. Mo just knew it.
She held as still as she could.
Still as a stone.
Waiting.
Still as a root.
Waiting.
Till at last, with a sigh, she stood back up. She brushed off her backside and broke the woods’ stubborn silence.
“Dottie!”
The only answer was the squawk of a jay. The wild-flowers drooped. The leaves curled in limp cylinders. As Mo made her way downhill, the angle of the slope sharpened, turning stony and treacherous just before it gave way to the pebbled banks of the stream. Dottie was not allowed down here, period, but she was triple not allowed near the water.
“I know you hear me!”
What if she didn’t? How long since Dottie had left the Den? How long had Mo lain there, waiting? She couldn’t be sure.
The lip of the ravine was all shale, stacked neatly as a high stone wall. The only way down was to jump, and Mo did, landing in slick mud. Most summers the stream brimmed from bank to bank, from here to where the land sloped up again, then flattened out to become the Metropark. Normally it was wide enough for a stone to take three or four skips across it, but this year it had dwindled down to a measly trickle.
If it didn’t rain soon, what would the fox find to drink? By now she probably had kits, who’d be thirsty and depending on her.
“Dorothea Wren!” Mo scanned the edges of the water, and sure enough, a trail of small footprints led straight in. “You’re really going to get it now!”
The Metropark was vast, acres and acres of dark woods. Beyond that lay the ball fields, where on week-days the kinds of strangers anybody would have the sense to avoid-anybody but Dottie-hung out and smoked and sold stuff. And then there were the parking lots where teenagers loved to drink beer and squeal their tires and not look where they were going at fifty miles per hour.
Mo splashed across the stream. She staggered through a patch of wild raspberries, the prickers catching at her shorts and scratching her legs. She had one more fleeting thought of the fox, who’d enjoy those juicy berries. But then thoughts of everything except Dottie fell away. Spruce and hemlock grew here, tall dark trees that blocked the sky and made her shiver. Imagine if you were barely bigger than a fire hydrant. Imagine how confusing it would all be then.
Why hadn’t she gone after Dottie right away, instead of lying there so long, waiting for something that never came? Stupid, stupid!
“Dottie!” The two syllables echoed as if flung off the edge of a cliff or against the walls of a cavern. “Dot…teeee!”
If anything ever happened to that child…
It won’t. I swear on a mountain of Bibles.
The trees began to thin out, and now Mo glimpsed pavement. She ran forward, coming out on a sparkling asphalt desert. No cars. No people. Nothing moved. Two large Dumpsters hulked side by side, like the last things left on Earth.
Mo cupped her hands over her mouth, drew her breath up from her belly, and shouted. “DOTTIE WREN! WHERE ARE YOU?”
A mirage. A hallucination. A rust-colored animal poked up from inside the far Dumpster. Mo froze, her heart beating up in her ears.
“It’s a mama! Her name’s Georgene.” Dottie waved a brown bottle.
“I will kill you,” cried Mo. “I will decapitate you and use your head for a bowling ball! I will…How the heck did you get in there?”
However she’d managed, it must have been easier than getting out. That entailed Mo catching her when she scrambled over the side, odoriferous and soaking-she’d managed to fall into the stream after all. Mo wasn’t even a quarter through her lecture when a car tore into the parking lot, made a few wild circles, ejected a stream of empty beer cans, laid down rubber, and sped back out, music up so loud it thumped in her own chest like a second, demented heart.
“Don’t you see how dangerous…you’re so…so…” Mo slumped against the repugnant Dumpster. “What were you thinking? Never mind. I know you don’t think.”
Dottie rummaged in her thicket of hair, as if the answer hid in there. Cheer suffused her grimy little face, and she plucked out a brilliant blue feather.
“I found it! Now I can make it rain, and Daddy won’t have to work so hard.”
Mo plucked a slimy potato peel from her sister’s shoulder. “That’s nice of you, all right, but magic…it doesn’t always work.”
Dottie was quiet for a long moment. “I wish he was happy. I wish he wasn’t always so doomy.”
“Gloomy.”
“Yeah.” Dottie leaned her revolting self into Mo’s stomach and yawned. “Can we go home now?”
Mo was far from sure of the way back, but Dottie followed at her heels, trusting as a puppy.
“Dot, don’t tell Daddy you got lost.”
“Okay.” She yawned again. “Did I get lost?”
They must be headed the right direction, because here was the same raspberry patch. Setting down Georgene, Dottie picked with both hands, smearing her mouth and chin rosy.
“You’ll get a bellyache.” Mo’s warning was only halfhearted. Dottie never got bellyaches.
Mo sat down, and something partly hidden beneath the matted, dead leaves caught her eye. At first glance it was a mess of crushed berries. Leaning closer, she realized it was a ruby-colored pile of droppings, the size of a small dog’s. But what dog would eat raspberries?
Not a dog. But a Vulpes vulpes.
“Poor Mo.” Dottie patted her shoulder with a juicy hand. “She’s smiling at a poop pile.”
“Not poop,” whispered Mo. “Scat.”
“Scat cat!” Dottie shoved in more berries.
Was this the sign she’d been waiting for? The sign that, if you were patient, if you believed hard enough and held on tight, good things would come? The world would right itself, and all, all would be well?
Mo put a berry on her tongue and crushed it against the roof of her mouth. Sweet, sharp, warm juice shot out. Deliciousness spurted all through her.