Pumpkin Pie Forest

For Mr. Williams.

When the boy and the fox entered the wood, it was awfully cold, and awfully late, and they were awfully far from home. The fox was halfway between his winter and his summer coat, his fur a mess of red and auburn on marshmallow white. He trotted close to the boy’s heel, little clouds of white fur hanging around him like snow.

Oliver watched him awhile, mesmerized by the foxes cautious walk, the way his paws–unmuddied, still, despite the weather–barely met the ground. The way dry, crunchy leaves and wildflowers were left undisturbed in his wake.

Oliver tried to mimic the foxes gentle trot, but the leaves still crunched beneath him. The daisies and cornflowers were still left muddied and ruined, framed by his footprints. He wrinkled his brow and gave up.

Fall had decided to make its final stand that evening, its harshest wind cutting through Oliver’s little orange raincoat. It nipped at his goosebumped skin. He looked up, examining the furious grey clouds that tumbled round the horizon.

There were no soft mourning dove songs, no rustle in the blackberry bushes, not even a worm crawling along the mud, all the creatures had been driven away to their homes. Only the trees did not falter as the forest shivered in the shadow of the storm. Trees who were a collage of furious green and cinnamon and swayed in lazy defiance. They reminded Oliver of his grandmother's pumpkin pie. He stopped to reach for their branches, which, despite being moist and slick with rain, were still warm from the fading sun. The fox doubled back and scowled, gently nudging at him to continue down the thin trail.

As they walked, Oliver began to wonder where he was going. He felt stupid, not knowing such a thing. He had no idea where he had come from either. His brain felt like it was made of fluff or warm milk or bedtime stories. He had read about that once in one of his adventure books: people going crazy when they got lost. Mom hadn't liked that, Oliver remembered, she seemed very upset with Dad for reading that sort of thing to him and complained all night about how he had slept nestled between them. It did not scare him now, though, as he drug his feet through the dirt. He could not bring himself to care.

As they walked, the chill intensified. Oliver had begun to shiver, his knees buckling beneath him with each step. The cold made Oliver anxious, and so did the quiet. He decided he could not take the fox’s silence any longer.

“Where are we going?” He whimpered, watching the smoke roll off his words and fade into the cold.

The fox's tail stopped its swaying.

“Wherever we need to be.” The fox replied, his ear twitching away an invisible fly.

“But how do you know we won’t get lost? We’ve been walkin’ a while and I gotta be home for dinner and-”

The fox stopped, then glanced backward at him.

“Do we need to get lost?” The fox asked.

Oliver’s teeth began to chatter. He burried his chin into the neck of his jacket, his words muffled through the down.

“Well no. No, I don’t think.”

“Then that's not where we need to go, so we can't get lost.” The fox shook out his coat. Some of the white winter fuzz flew away. Even then, as the bits of fur lay in the mud, they retained their pristine white.

“But lost ain’t a place!” Oliver protested.

The fox considered this for a moment but shook his head.

“Lost is a place. It's where the tired things go.”

“That's- that’s notta thing.”

The fox scoffed. Or at least he came as close to a scoff as a fox can. “It most certainly is. It's the place for the things that are done with what they do.” “I’ve lost toys.”

“Then your toys were tired of you.”

Oliver’s face turned bright red, his voice cracking before he could spit out his argument. The fox looked back at him gultily. Oliver was not thinskinned, but his day had been a long one, and the heaviness of his forgotten hours tugged at him. “Oh, Oliver, I didn’t mean it like-”

Oliver ran past him, the fox tripping over himself to keep up. He called after him, panic rising in his voice. Oliver ran and ran until he couldn’t hear the fox anymore, and his lungs burned with cold air. He sat down in a little clearing, knee high grass ticking his chin. He shivered, both from his anger, and from the wind that beat him harder now. It tusled his hair and tickled at his eyes. He cuped his hands together and blew into them just the way his father had taught him when they had gone camping. His father had taught him to tie knots as well, and how to set up a snare for the rabbits. Only, Oliver had not liked the snare. It seemed unfair, and the rabbit they caught were chewy like old bubblegum. When his father had asked if he wanted to be a cub scout, Oliver had refused, sure that if he didn’t like the taste of rabbit, he would not like the taste of bear.

Oliver was driven from his thoughts of bears on spits and his father‘s disappointed eyes when three bright scarlet cardinals flew down from their perch in an old oak tree. They looked up at him with their little black pepper eyes, hopping from foot to foot. He shooed one away as it pecked urgently at his rainboot, but it flew right back, flying circles around his head and singing its little song. One of the cardinals landed on his head, sang its own little song, and rustled around in his hair. Oliver giggled as they all burst into song, hopping around by his feet. They only begun to sing louder and more urgently, drowning out his laughter.

Oliver had never been this close to a cardinal before. They always stayed on the fence outside his window, marching about with their bright red mohawks. He could see how pretty they were now, the way their redness caught the light and mixed like watercolor with purples and pinks and sunshine. He reached out to touch one, one that sat atop his boot. It sung louder than the others, its chest puffed to keep cold out. Oliver shivered, jealous of its fluffy down.

The fox burst into the clearing, startling the birds away. They continued their song from the treeline, but it was muffled and torn away by the wind. The fox padded over to Oliver, his tongue lolling from his mouth.

“There you are,” he panted.

“You ruined their song!” Oliver pointed to the little birds, who were now just specs of red on green.

The fox turned to look at the cardinals and offered them a polite nod. Their song faded away as they slowly took flight, disappearing into the dark grey sky. “I feel like I know them,” Oliver said with a smile, watching them fade away. “Of course you do.”

The last cardinal flew one final circle around Oliver and the fox, before disappearing into the trees.

Oliver stood up, wiping the dew from his jeans. It had already begun to freeze to the denim. He shoved his hands back into his pockets and balled them up into little fists to knock away the numbness.

“Come on then. We should get going. You shouldn’t be late. We cannot be late. There are many things you can be late to, and this, boy, this is not one of them,” the fox said with a slight growl. He snatched the cuff of Olivers sleeve between his teeth and pulled him away, tugging him into the underbrush.

Oliver whimpered, “I’m too cold. I don’t wanna go anywhere. I wanna stay here. Stay with a cardinals. I like the cardinals.”

“I know,” the fox mumbled around the rainjacket sleeve.

Tears began to well in Oliver’s eyes, as he pulled himself away from the fox’s grasp.

“I wanna go home. I’m too cold. I can’t- I can’t feel my toes or nothin’.” “I know. We will go somewhere warm, Oliver. Please,” the fox pleaded, his tail twitching at the tip.

“I don’t wanna go someplace warm. I wanna go home,” Oliver wailed, his cries wisped away by the wind. The fox shook his head and licked the back of Olivers trembling hand only once. His tongue was warm and rough like a cats, tiny needles pricking at his skin.

“Sometimes, Oliver,” the fox began slowly, “sometimes we can’t go backwards. Sometimes we can only go forwards. Do you understand?”

Oliver nodded, but he did not understand. He wiped away his tears of his cuff, which was now marked with two small pin pricks from porcelain teeth. “I just wanna- I just wanna go home.”

The fox sighed and weaved his way between Olivers buckling legs. “Oliver, your home is backwards. We can’t go backwards. Please, come with me. There will be good things.”

The fox pressed him gently from behind. Oliver stumbled forward down the old deer trail. He breathed shakily into his cupped fist and curled his toes into the socks of his boots. The warmth did not last, and he couldn’t feel his feet or hands anymore.

“O-ok. I want a hot coco when we get there though. With three marshmallows.” “You can have all of the marshmallows.”

“Even the yellow and pink ones? My mom says those are no good for you.” The fox shivered.

“Yes. Yes, even the yellow and pink ones.”

Oliver nodded and hurried after him, ignoring the pins and needles that shot through the numbness of his limbs. He cried quietly as the first of the half-rain, half-snow, began to fall.

The fox padded in front of him, turning around every once in a while to shoot him a pitying look or gentle nudge of support. Olivers tears had begun to freeze on his face, his lips purpling like a bruise, but he stumbled on for the promise of marshmallows.

Snow had begun to fall in flurries, the flakes spinning and twirling like lazy ballerinas. They stuck to Oliver’s eyelashes and dusted his hair. He shivered so ferociously the fox twice had to hurry back and grab him by the hood before he fell. “Just a little bit farther, Oliver. Just a little bit farther.”

Nearly all the white was blown from the foxes coat coat then. It mixed with the snow, which had begun to fall so fiercely Oliver had to squint into the darkening night. But none of the snow seems to touch the fox, melting the moment it reached his angry orange coat.

The fox was true to his word. They soon reached a clearing where the snowfall was lighter. It was illuminated by the setting sun, which had almost entirely dipped beyond the horizon, shrouding the world in dark purple and yellow and green. Oliver smiled, feeling the dull sun of his face. He collapsed to the grass and curled up with his knees pressed to his chest, watching as the smoke of his shaky breath mixing with the sunset. The fox sat beside him and wrapped his tail neatly round his feet. “I want my mom,” Oliver croaked through the last of his tears.

“You can wait for her in a meadow. She may…” The fox broke off and stared at his feet, “she may join you soon.”

“Please take me to my mom,” he whispered again, his throat stinging from the effort.

The fox sighed and lay in the crook of his arm. Oliver leaned into his warmth. “I can’t.” “Why not?” Oliver begged.

“I lied to you. You are lost,” the fox looked backwards at Oliver, his eyes reflecting green in the dark, “I’m so sorry.”

Oliver stayed quiet a moment and rubbed his nose, his chapped lips scratching at the back of his hand.

“Please- please take me home. I won’t need any coco. You can have the coco. You can have the marshmallows.”

The fox didn’t reply, only watched the setting sun as it dipped beyond the horizon.

“Enjoy the sunset, boy. Very rarely is it ever this beautiful.”

“I’m scared. I don’t wanna be lost,” Oliver mumbled, his head heavy and his heart begging for sleep. The fox rested his head on Oliver’s chest, his ears pulled flat against his head. Oliver could hear his whimpers.

“I don’t want you to be sad either, fox,” Oliver’s voice buckled, slipping in exhaustion. Tears tore warm paths down his cold cheeks. "I'm so cold." “Don’t cry, be brave.”

“Please don’t leave me.”

“I won’t leave you. I won't. We can go play in the meadow, afterward. It's plenty warm there.”

“Why can’t I go home? Why do I gotta be lost?” Oliver begged, shoulders heaving from the weight of his tears. He could not lift an arm to rub them away. The fox was looked up at him with his infinitely warm eyes, his gentle breath turning to steam on Oliver's face.

“You're a tired thing now. You have only forward to go.”

Oliver was quiet. He didn’t want to be brave, but everything else seemed stupid. The fox leaned up and licked away his tears. His pelt was a brilliant orange now. The color of fire. The color of every other tiger stripe. He looked very nice. “Will you- you tell them I love them?”

The fox curled closer, allowing Oliver to shakily stroke the new fur. He wanted to apologize for running away, but he couldn’t catch the words, they slipped away too quickly. Cardinals danced in the trees above him, singing songs with words he could not reach. They were singing for him, he knew.

“I will. Now shut your eyes, my boy.”

The sun had set beyond the horizon, and the boy was no longer cold.