The Fox and the Moon (Flash fiction)

I hear my lover’s call from outside the window; the sound of his serenade is unmistakable.  I tiptoe over, trying not to wake mother.  She is asleep by the fire in her rocking chair, strands of knitting trailing from her lap; her loose spun wool caught around the napping cat.  She is a spider in a web and I need to tread carefully.  A log pops in the grate.  I jump and curse her silently; I warned her they were too damp.  Mother snores and shifts in her seat, then sinks back into a slumber.

As I wrap my woollen shawl around my shoulders and fasten it with a carved bone clasp, I remember the night my lover and I first met.  I was running home, late for supper, the cloudless indigo sky was blushing as the sun dipped behind the trees.  The deserted lane, cratered like a pockmarked face, made for treacherous footing and I slipped.  As I sat upon the dried mud, rubbing my sore ankle, I heard the chirp and cackle of two scrapping vixens from within a thicket of thorn bushes. The moon was rising; a mourning moon, on a chill November evening.

When I looked up, he was watching me; his clothes black as a silhouette, face puffball pale in the dusk’s violet glow, his auburn hair bright as a rosehip.  I didn’t cry out; I’m a country girl and know not to spook at the sight of a wild creature.  I simply regarded him as he bent down to examine my sprain, gently slipping my foot from the cocoon of its wooden clog.  It wasn’t broken, he said, but I knew that already.  He held out a rough red hand, chapped and raw, and pulled me towards him.

He walked me home that night, but wouldn’t stay for supper.  Mother had eyed him suspiciously and later she warned, as I spooned hot broth into my hungry mouth, of the dangers that could befall me.

Since then, the moon has waxed and waned, months passing, our love made out in the open.  Our hot breath fogging in the moonlight, sucking each other’s fingers to warm them, seeking out wet heat beneath layers of rough winter clothing; the trees stark branches our four poster bed, moss and leaf mould our goose down mattress.  I wait for my monthly blood with trepidation; there’s something feral about him and I know he’s not for settling.  I can’t get caught - mother would turn me out.  And so, each time, I whisper, “no, not inside me,” and sometimes he listens and sometimes he turns his fox furred cheek and pretends he hasn’t heard me.

I peer outside, the tip of my nose pressed against the glass.  I can make out his manly shape through the darkened pane; standing in his usual place under the oak tree.  I still thrill at thought of him.  Tonight, it will be warmer - already I’ve seen the tiny bright bonnets of snowdrops and the mornings have been damp instead of tingling with frost.    Glancing upwards I spy a budding moon, full and round as a woman’s belly, and I rub my own absent mindedly.  Seeds grow with the moon, mother says.