Note from the fox:
A double bill for my fox reading public, a poisoned gift from nightmare-driven sleepless nights. Both these letters will appear in the first book of the novel.
Dear Arctic Fox,
If you hope to survive, never look down. Only those creatures who wish to rest under the Earth in eternal repose cast their eyes forever downwards, seeking their fathers in the dust. Fox philosophy instructs every cub in the art of survival: keep your nose to the ground, sniffing for grubs; but bend your eyes forever skyward, watchful for predators.
Those who pass through the gut of a wolf did not ingest this lesson well enough, and their permeable memories slide down the gizzard of the shadow hunter. Those few who have survived a pack attack speak of the wolves as ghostly creatures, appearing out of the ether without warning; fanged phantasmagoria phantoms. It is said that if you are close enough to the wolf to see his distempered golden iris, then it is already too late; if you can see his pupil, then you will soon study death. Many a mammal has looked up from the plaintive grass to suddenly find themselves surrounded by canine carnivores; yellow eyes reflecting the moonlight and probing for points of weakness in the lunar remains; snarling lips readying themselves for the final kiss. The end of the hunt, on which we focus our scant attentions, grabbed by gore, is in reality only the final stage: it is in the preparations for the assault that the wolves’ skills really lie. Any set of teeth can bite: the trick is placing the circle of fangs within a leap of the jugular, and ensuring that the prey sleeps in ignorance of the creeping approach of death.
The veneer of civilization has not altered the wolves’ hunting habits. You will remember, in a previous letter, that Emerald Wolf informed me that the Soviet wolves were massing, preparing to feast on the Council deer; but that I would be spared their fate, provided I help them dispose of the carcass. Your shocked reply warned me to divorce myself from any alliance between fox and wolf; and believe me when I tell you that if I could, I would. But I am not free, as you are, to select any one of three hundred and sixty points of the compass and roam free of the wolf’s hunting range. In short, do not judge the prisoner as you would the free fox. One must adapt to the world one finds oneself in and not attempt to apply the rules of a lost world on a new one. Those who don’t adapt perish; and their fossilized remains are mementoes of their stubborn refusal to change.
I am no fossil: I am S Fox; I survive. And so, with forewarned eyes, I have watched the maneauvers of the wolves and studied them closely; repressing my desire to howl a siren of warning to the sleeping children of the Council of Creatures. You chide me for this, distant cousin, in your gentle way; and in truth, the razor blades of conscience slash me too; but what can I do? Who I am to craft the destiny of the world; a leaf buffeted by the winds of broken fortune; blown this way or that; disliking the wind for its gruff caresses, but knowing that without this wind, the only direction is downward. Who mourns the leaf and who would ask it to shape the tree from which it was cast?
And besides, even if I were to cry wolf, I fear the High Council would not hear me. They are sleepwalkers, and will not let reality take hold of them; living in a dream world and passing through this one with eyes tightly shut; fastened against an unwholesome reality. Had I the power to make them see what I see; and the courage to make them read what you read; I still do doubt their ability to defend themselves; so divided and introspective has the High Council become. The Founders of this Ministry, lost heroic creatures of myth and memory, could not be as the degenerate inheritors of the Republic. How far they have fallen; well beyond the confines of a leaf’s remit.
And continuing on the topic of powerless leaves, the Council creatures at large tire of the bickering High Council and their pointless initiatives and stillborn programmes; and they slowly lose faith in their leaders; and without even being aware of it, they grow ever more enamoured with Alpha Wolf, who publicises the minutes, often subtly altered to his own advantage.
But let me return to the wolf; and to the pack that I am bound to study. Alpha plays one faction of the High Council against another, fostering and fermenting discord and distrust among the erstwhile allies; but none of them even realise they are being played. This is the genius of the grandmaster. The great puppeteer sets one against another; and in the aftermath, soaks up more and more power; taking this role and then another as his own; or investing it in his demented damsel wolf, or one of his other wolfen brethren.
The biggest prize was Security, which he kept for himself; and Justice, which now belongs to Councillor Beta Wolf. Long before my time, Alpha had himself appointed the head of Mammal Resources, and used this post to gradually promote more wolves to the High Council; a united force in a disjointed realm. They keep a low profile, and are still far from a majority, but their numbers are growing; and they silently watch everyone and everything, waiting their time. And I myself, as Emerald Wolf informed me, was hand-picked by Alpha; but without my knowledge and without his exact purposes ever having become apparent. As to how many other Councillors are secretly Alpha’s puppets, I cannot tell. Our job descriptions are not public, and barely even known to ourselves, as my current title, Councillor for Miscellaneous Activities, makes clear.
I feel the moment of the attack is coming soon, and I see in an apparently unrelated event the spark that may fire their ascent. You will remember, of course, your good friend FT Ferret; and knowing she is your friend, I will refrain from passing comment on the veracity of her statement to the Councilors at yesterday’s session of the Council of Creatures. But let me not skip ahead: instead I will describe the weekly meeting from the beginning, so that you may judge the events with all the necessary information; and then tell me if you, like I, can detect the perspicacious scent of the wolf in what transpired.
It began much like the other four meetings I have thus far attended; which is to say, late. If the High Council was an expectant mother, the fetal children would be half-grown before they exited the womb! I had arrived early, in order to finish preparing a PowerPoint I was to deliver on the possibility of attaching fairy lights to the fleece of sheep to enable them to forage at night as well as by day; an insane idea, of course, but one championed by the nominal President of the Council; the senile old dog, Sheba the Afghan Hound. Another six members of the High Council arrived in dribs and drabs, each one more drab than the last drib; and hardly had they sat down than they began to quarrel over meeting protocols: they debated whether the meeting’s timekeeper should use a digital or an analogue clock; they argued over whether the minute taker should use a biro or a pencil; they bickered over the colour of the sheet on which the agenda was written. They would debate the content of air, these rhetoricians of tragic-comedy, but substance is anathema to them. Those who dine on words without meaning will not see through a winter.
Entering unseen among the floating verbiage, the wolves arrived together, precisely nine minutes late, and sat nearest the door; Beta beside Alpha, and another wolf on each side of them; the recently appointed Councillors for Education and Information Dissemination . Last to arrive was G Bear, and her chair creaked under her mammoth frame when she plunged herself on top of it. She positioned herself opposite the wolves, but glances were exchanged between the two groups that made me suspect some form of secret covenant existed between them.
Finally we were all assembled and could begin; but only after TS Otter, Councellor for Poetic Practice, prodded Sheba into speech.
– Hound of Hercules, let us start: lead us into meeting mark. – Otter said, poking the President in the ribs and forcing her to cease brushing her hair.
– Very well, TS Otter; but I would like the records to show that my hair is particularly luscious today, and that… What was I about to say? By the Varta, I was about to say something.
– Agendas have we to discuss; matters of importance much. – Otter rejoined.
– Ah yes, the agenda. Now, where did I place my copy? Oh dear, I seem to have printed ten instead of one. Well, nevermind – at least they’re printed on both sides of the paper. That’s the important thing! So, the first item on the agenda is the Green Agenda Policy, the GAP. Grow the GAP! Councillor Beaver, I believe you’ve been doing some work on this.
— A dam is the perfect example of water conservation, and every gap in the GAP should be plugged by one. Ha ha. I propose a massive reallocation of resources into my dam-building project, the DamPro, and …
– Objection! – cried the objectionable squirrel, Saeurnoce — A dam runs counter to the principle of diversity, since only beavers are capable of building one. Moreover, it is divisive because we would need to divide trees; and this habitat is sacred in the belief system of squirrels. Our GAP must encompass the values of all species. It must be inclusive.
– And what do you suggest, Councillor Squirrel?– asked Sheba.
– A better way of representing the core values of all stakeholders would be the storage of recyclable materials in purpose-built containers of varying size and varying colour. In fact, we should rebrand the Green Agenda Policy as the Multi-coloured Agenda Policy. Down with GAP: up with MAP!
– But what colours, Squirrel? Ay, there’s the rub! The principle of equality dictates that all containers should be the same colour and treated in the same way.
– Diversity demands differences.
– Equality before diversity!
– Diversity before equality!
– I can see this is a divisive issue. Perhaps we should return to the Beaver’s Dam Pro. How about painting the logs different colours on one side, but black on the other? Sheba suggested, demonstrating her famed ability to achieve consensus and compromise.
I felt obliged to interrupt at this point, having noted a slight flaw in their arguments, and keen to move on to my own PowerPoint.
– Councillors, as worthy as this project is, I fear we may have overlooked a small practicality.
– Yes, S Fox is right! What order should the dam’s colours be arranged in? Should it be a rainbow, for example; and if so, how should we take into account the special needs of those mammals who cannot distinguish colour? – Saurnoce question, puffing his tiny squirrel chest out.
– A gordian conundrum indeed, Councillor Saurnoce, but leaving aside the quagmire of colour for a moment, my misgivings are of a more practical nature.
– Yes?
– Well, great Councillors, although I am not an expert in these matters, I had always understood that dams required a river; and as no such flow of water exists in this Ministry building, I cannot foresee what function a dam would play, other than as a monument to our commitment to diversity and equality.
– Precisely, Councillor Fox – Alpha Wolf said, leaning forward – we must fight reality if we wish to build a New Jerusalem. This dam will be symbolic of the Council’s unwillingness to surrender to the defeatism of negativity, and the wolves support it fully. However, we wolves are poor carpenters, and far too busy in the completion of other tasks to offer any real material assistance, but we will be with you in the spirit of solidarity.
– Well said, Alpha Wolf. – Sheba commented, nodding her head and brushing hair at the same time. — We need unity in the Dam Pro. I propose the immediate discussion of the establishment of a working group to discuss the feasibility of an action plan to…
At this point, FT Ferret burst into the room, with ashen face and panting tongue. We all looked up and stared into her crazed eyes; except Alpha Wolf, who stared at us, measuring our reactions.
– Councillors! Catastrophy! Calamity!
– FT Ferret, what’s wrong? – Sheba asked, dropping her comb in distraction.
– Man!
– Man?
– Man! I saw them. They’ve come back! They’ll kill us all! Who will protect us?
– Calm yourself, FT Ferret. – Alpha Wolf said, turning to her and laying a paw on her shoulder – the Wolves will protect you. Trust in the Wolf. But first, tell us more of what you saw, so that we might decide on the proper course of action.
FT Ferret sat down then — rather too calmly, I thought, in view of her previous histrionics — and proceeded to describe her ‘sighting’.
– I was out foraging, near the river, and then I saw them. There were ten of them, ten bipeds, big and hairless. They were carrying guns over their shoulder, and in a wheelbarrow I saw a dead deer and some dead ducks too. I ran back here as fast as my legs would carry me.
– How far were they from the Ministry?
– Only 30 minutes, as the ferret runs.
– They could be here any minute! – the squirrel said, holding his arms over his head, almost shaking in panic.
– Time itself falls out of joint, and only poetry can set in right. A poem I shall compose at once, and in the wasteland, confine man thus – TS Otter stated boldly, but how he planned to impede the entry of man into the Council with a sonnet was not clear to any of us.
– Poetry will not suffice, good friends. To protect us from the arms of man, we need a more robust defense. We need a military solution. – one of the wolves said.
– I agree. We got to wrestle them to the ground, slap them in the face and bite them where it hurts! – G Bear said.
– Alpha Wolf, how many security wolves do you currently have at your disposal? – Sheba asked.
– We number only 12, and I fear this will not be enough to defend us. However, I am in contact with other wolves, in the forests to the east and south, and I think they could be persuaded to aid us in our defense.
– Call them at once! – the Squirrel pleaded.
– And how many wolves, might we be told, will our Council thus enfold? – Otter asked, looking rather apprehensive.
– Some three score, I think, would be the minimum required.
– Fifty wolves, a number thus, would alter our balance of power much. With such numbers, might we find, all other creatures left behind. — TS Otter warned prophetically.
– How dare you! – Beta Wolf exclaimed, slamming the table. – We put our very lives on the lino to protect you and this is how you reward us! The ingratitude! Are you saying you don’t trust us?
– Our numbers are laid down by law, to prevent dominion of one paw.
– Then we must repeal the law – A Arkvark said.
– Agreed — said C Chicken.
– Baa – said the Token Sheep.
– What evidence do we have that FT Ferret actually saw a man? – Winston the Rabbit King asked, in a moment of insight. – This could have been a hallucination, brought on by the Ferret’s rumoured love of the forbidden mushrooms of vision.
– I know what I saw, and I saw men! – FT insisted.
– I demand a vote! – G Bear said hoarsely.
– Very well, Councillor Bear. – Shena agreed – All those in favour of repealing the Wolf Limitation Statue of the Founders please raise your hand.
The wolves hands shot up immediately, in military unison, and the Bear’s hand was already raised. One by one, the other animals lifted theirs; all except TS Otter and Winston Rabbit. I too voted for more wolf custodians, seeing the way the wind was blowing and bending with it; and so, by ten to two, the motion was carried and Alpha called in the wild wolves from the south and east.
He then slyly returned the meeting to the Dam Project, and encouraged us to occupy all mammal citizen’s time with this inspiring dream. It would be, he maintained, a welcome distraction from their fear of man and a useful symbol of Council productivity and purposefulness. He also persuaded us to allow him to set up a daily informative newsletter for the duration of the crisis, to be called The Wolfen Press. Its purpose, he explained, was to assuage mammals’ fears of the sudden increase in wolf numbers; and also to keep them informed of the threat of man, and what they needed to do to protect themselves against it.
So, you see, good cousin, if I may return to the beginning, it is in laying the groundwork that the wolves’ greatest skills lie. Although they do not know it, the bumbling Councillors are being surrounded, and shall soon reside in a wolf’s belly. As for me, I will survive because that is what foxes do. We are no apex hunters, and cannot control other creatures by dint of fang and muscle, but we survive nonetheless.
We survive.
Yours ever
S Fox
Dear Arctic Fox,
While others may wish to see their name in lights, I only wish to see my name painted by your fair hand, dancing across a lilac envelope; for on looking at this fair sight, the carousel of my heart turns once more and life casts off the frozen inertia of these stolid Ministry Days. While I devour your words, and feast upon a friendship hardier than the trunk of the bonetree, meaning is returned to life and the servitude of the Ministry daze banished by your labour of prosaic love. And your letters, like some hominid fish of biblical repute , feeds many times my minnowed mouth; and the black dog of melancholy is barred from my house again and again by your words; starved of despair by your tunneled sentences; connecting our hearts over distances innumerable.
And yet, there is a bone that sticks in the throat. You charge me again to deny the wolf; and in this denial assert my true self. You warn me off court intrigue and shuffling; and bid me make haste to your northern lair; so that we might huddle the Winter away together, watching the skyfire of the aurora play out its eternal dance. But this vision cannot be; and the more desperately I call it up, the bitterer my tears when it dissolves in the salt bath of my eyes. I am chained by contract to this place; and by curiosity — a matador of felines — which entreats me to study the rise of the wolves, and this I can only do here. We foxes, of course, are solitary creatures for the most part; and free of the battles for hierarchical dominance that besets all pack creatures and infects the social animals. And yet, we foxes were not always so; for with the dog and the wolf we share a common antecedent, the gregarious Canoidea of the Oligocene; a beast beyond even the memory of myth, but brought to posthumous life by the worthy owl scholar, Lazarmutt Dawkinovulpe. Perhaps a throwback genial gene and his hoary ancestor’s army has overcome the palace guard and demands proximity to creatures that foxes by their new nature would avoid most assiduously.
Whatever the cause of this fox deformity for the traps of society, it is by now academic, since escape is no longer an option. In my last letter, I spoke of the hunting habits of the wolves, both wild and domestic, and they play the part I set for them truthfully; which is to say with deception and cunning. When they begin the hunt and assume their formation, they are at first so distant from one another that one wolf can barely see another; but their ring shrinks stronger, slowly at first and then with dizzying alacrity. The noose circle grows ever tighter so that no neck, however nimble, may escape its curt contraction. Let me lay aside these generalities now and turn to the concrete slippers of reality.
Pondering the murky waters of my morning coffee, I glanced through the first edition of the Wolfen Press, Alpha Wolf’s new pamphlet of propaganda; but I was so shocked by what I found there that my cup fell to the floor and shattered there, staining my patch of carpet; the lawn of my life. The first page headline, in gothic script and hammer-font size, screamed out ‘Man Attacks Ferret!’; and it went on to detail, in alarmed tones and with gory prose, FT Ferret’s fabled description of the gun-toting figments of her crafted imagination. There were now, it appeared, two dozen men in military fatigues, committing acts of unspeakably lewd bestiality on the cadavers of despoiled forest creatures. Beta Wolf had created an artistic depiction of the event; and half the front page was taken up by the craven image of one man eating a ewe’s brain with a ladle, while another committed acts of gross indecency on her rear; and this drawing should not have passed the censure of any censor, if it had been submitted to one.
The article quoted verbatim FT Ferret’s appeal for wolf reinforcements to protect our besieged and defenseless Ministry. She insisted that all the mammals demanded the protection of the wolf and the institution of immediate martial law for the duration of the crisis. The bottom of the page quoted an excerpt of her speech, in shocking cursive red and two inches high, it asked: ‘Who will protect us?’
To be continued
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