Page 34 of License to Kill

It didn’t help.

Without a mate or skulk, I had no reason to return to my den, yet I plodded my way up to the peak along the trails to where the boulders cracked and overlapped, leaving a gap large enough for me to squeeze through.

Only my scent, paw prints, and tufts of black and white fur marked the place as mine. I dug, not because I needed the space, but for something to do, something to offer the illusion of purpose while I waited.

For what, I wasn’t sure.

When the first snow fell in the late fall, the few humans who came to my mountain left, and I was the only one brave enough—or foolish enough—to live where the rocks turned white and icy. I picked my way down the path, and the wind stabbed through my fur.

Long after I should have called for my mate, I remained silent, although my throat tightened with the need to scream, to find some company, and to create a skulk despite knowing the wild foxes wanted nothing to do with me, a predator. They were scavengers.

The wild foxes avoided my territory, and they only came close when I killed prey too large for me to eat alone.

I’d be all right as soon as I could convince myself fur and paws and the freedom of hunting the mountain forests beat standing upright and living among humans. Being alone in the woods surpassed solitude in a crowd.

When I wasn’t hunting, I retreated to my den and curled on the frozen ground, staring at where the sunlight streamed through the cracks between the stones. I wasn’t a fox, I wasn’t a human, but I belonged to neither world.

Where did I belong?

Winter encroached on the fall, and the snow deepened. I was aware of how I should have been hunting for a mate, preparing to turn my den into a place to shelter kits—or puppies. Had Jake already begun pursuing a bitch of the appropriate species?

Had enough time passed for him to believe I was truly gone?

I wanted to forget, but I couldn’t.

I hated being alone in a den meant for a skulk, for the family I couldn’t have, so I left it, padding my way down the mountain over the snow and ice, listening to the hissing wind. When I breathed in deep, the sharp bite of gasoline warned me humans had come to my mountain.

I flicked an ear back in disgust. What use did I have for humans? None.

Not anymore.

Being alone in the woods surpassed solitude in a crowd. How many times would I have to repeat it before I finally believed it and crushed the desire to belong among those who didn’t want me?

I longed to voice my distress, but I choked the cries back, as there was no one to listen.

I found the humans on the edge of my territory, not far from the farm and its plentiful sheep, and they had come as a pack with a herd of vehicles, parking them where the road ended and the forest began. I watched them from the shadows of the forest, and something about their dark clothing bothered me.

If I remembered the details, I would want what I couldn’t have even more.

Hunkering between the trunk of an old tree and the bared branches of a bush waiting for spring, I sat, I watched, and I waited. The humans searched for something while the wind whipped and the snow fell. I breathed in deep, but nothing smelled amiss, nothing that would justify their presence in my territory.

They spent a long time near their vehicles, investigating the ground, watching the road, and waiting.

More vehicles joined them, and I flicked an ear back.

Alone in the woods did surpass solitude in a crowd. There were too many humans in my woods, stinking the place up with their gasoline and other putrid odors from their cars. I remembered when I had been like them, and I hated the persistent memories.

Why couldn’t I have been born a wolf instead of a fox? If I had been a wolf, the memories of ever having been human would have been gone beyond my reach. I remembered what I had been told about the wolves who masquerade as humans.

The wildness took them and killed everything that had made them human.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t forget. With a low chitter and a huff, I left the humans behind, disgusted at myself for having watched them for so long.

The humans persisted, returning to my mountain every day, polluting the air with the stench of their vehicles. They left at night, but their presence frightened away the prey, requiring me to venture farther and farther from the safety of my den in search of food.

I found little, and I voiced my distress in soft cries.

Because of the humans, I would have to leave the den I had dug with my own paws, shaped and packed down through the entirety of autumn and through the winter. In the early hours before the sun rose, I descended from the peaks.