Chapter Text
“Tale of the Kitsune” (the oldest surviving Japanese tale about the shape-shifting fox, written by the monk Kyoukai in the late eight or early ninth century):
There lived a man named Ono. He fell in love with a very beautiful lady he met at a vast moor, and soon they became lovers. He married her a year later, and they lived a happy life.
Years later, his beautiful wife gave birth to their son. Simultaneously, their dog also gave birth to a pup. As the pup grew up, it always barked and growled at Ono's wife. She always avoided the pup (now a dog), and became very tense when it was around. One day, it suddenly attacked her violently. She ran and ran and when she got cornered, she had no choice, but to reveal her true form, which was a fox-like creature, in an attempt to scare the dog away.
When she saw that her husband saw her transform, she panicked and leaped over the fence and tried to flee. As she was escaping, Ono called out to her, "You might be a fox, but I still love you! My heart will always be yours. I still want you to stay with me forever. Whenever you want to come back home, you will always be welcome."
That night, and every night after that, she came home to her husband and child. She slept in his arms, and they continued to live happily ever after. From that day onward, the fox was called "kitsune" because kitsu-ne means come and sleep, and ki-tsune means always.
Source: http://japanlover.me/cool/kakkoii-information/tale-of-the-kitsune-fox/
PROLOGUE
1965 – London
Elspeth Smith was alone. She had accepted that she would always be alone, but that did nothing to fill the emptiness inside her – she felt like her skin was a brittle shell surrounding a hollow center, and one day the surface would crack. She would blow away like dust in the wind.
Elspeth was lonely, but there was nothing that could be done about this. She wasn’t like other women. She wasn’t even like her parents. Elspeth learned at a young age that she was adopted. Her parents couldn’t help her to understand herself, and they no longer talked to her. They couldn’t even tell her who her biological parents were, and Elspeth looked but she couldn’t find them either.
Her search for the truth about herself had led her to a career as a secretary in a Social Services office, but she soon found out more about herself in the bookshelves of the mythology section at the library. Kitsune… yes, that seemed to fit. Knowing the name for what she most likely was didn’t offer much solace though. She was still alone.
“Weirdest fucking kid I’ve ever seen. What kind of kid doesn’t like a puppy?”
Elspeth looked up from her desk, surprised by these words. She was even more startled to see a puppy in her coworker’s arms. She shrunk slightly in her chair as the puppy started to rumble with a low growl at the sight of her, but Elspeth hid her fear and asked her coworker, “What kid?”
He gestured to a closed door with the hand that wasn’t holding the puppy. “There’s a little girl in there. She was found living on the streets. We’ve since learned that her parents are dead. I thought a puppy might cheer her up and give her something to play with while arrangements are being made for her, but she freaked out when I brought it into the room. Isn’t that weird?”
Elspeth nodded, though she could think of a reason why a child might be scared of a puppy. It couldn’t be though… the odds of it, of finding someone like herself. Elspeth couldn’t stop thinking about it, and she slipped away from her desk when no one was looking.
She entered the room where the girl was staying. There were chairs, a table, crayons and drawing paper, but the little girl – she must have been 5 or 6 years old – was huddled in a ball in a corner of the room. Her long brown hair was hiding her face.
When the door clicked shut, the girl shivered at the sound. She whispered, “Please don’t bring it back. I don’t like dogs.”
“I didn’t bring the dog back.” Elspeth crossed the room and knelt before the girl. “What’s your name?”
“Gertrude. I like to be called Trudy.” The girl looked up and she wiped her blotchy cheeks dry. “What are you here for? People came to ask me questions already, and I told them everything I know.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Trudy. I’m Elspeth.” She hesitated. This girl was smart, much more so than she should be for her age, so Elspeth had to be careful not to make her close up. “I only have one more question for you: why don’t you like dogs?”
The girl hugged her knees closer to her chest. “I… don’t know how to explain it. Not in a way that would make sense to anyone.”
“Maybe I’m not just anyone. Maybe I will understand.”
The girl bit her lip for a moment, but then she started talking, “Dogs see me in a way that people can’t. People look at me and they just see a girl, but dogs know that there is something different about me. I can’t hide from them. They make me show what I am, and then people can see it, too.”
Elspeth sat in stunned silence when the girl stopped talking.
The girl looked at Elspeth, and then her cheeks flushed. “See? I told you that you wouldn’t understand.”
“No, I do. Trudy, I understand everything.” Elspeth glanced at the door, saw it was still closed, and then looked at the girl again. As the girl watched her carefully, her eyes widened as a fluffy black tail suddenly appeared behind her. The fur billowed, buffeted by a noncorporeal breeze. “You’re like me, aren’t you Trudy?”
Trudy nodded and a fluffy white fox tail appeared behind her. She wrapped the tail comfortingly around her legs, but it didn’t shift the fabric of her dress. “The man didn’t see my tail,” she announced, as if expecting Elspeth to chastise her in the way a protective mother would. “I kept it hidden behind me when the dog scared me.”
“Good girl,” Elspeth said. My girl, she was already thinking.
The adoption went perfectly, but there was one issue that Elspeth didn’t foresee. She had been wrong. Trudy wasn’t a kitsune like her. She was a fox – Elspeth hadn’t been wrong about that – but she was a different kind of fox. She was a gumiho. Elspeth figured this out when the girl insisted she was hungry, no matter what she fed her. Trudy asked her adoptive mother for a special type of meat that her late parents said ‘made her strong.’ Elspeth thought she knew what the meat was, but she still didn’t know what to do.
Elspeth took her to a doctor when the girl started losing weight. The doctor called it ‘failure to thrive’, but he couldn’t help. He stuck Elspeth’s crying little girl with needles, ran tests, and found no answers. As little Trudy became paler and weaker, the doctor eventually started talking about being prepared for the worst. When Elspeth asked him what he meant, he said that she should make the girl comfortable, and make plans… And then Elspeth knew what she needed to do.
Elspeth visited several funeral homes until she found the perfect one, which was run by the perfect man: he was alone, he was trusting, and he was kind. Elspeth came to visit him, and she told him mostly the truth. Her little girl was sick, and the doctor had told her to make preparations; the only thing she hadn’t been honest about was Trudy’s imminent demise. No, her mother wasn’t going to let her die.
The funeral director, whose name was Mr. Howell, went above and beyond to try to comfort the grieving mother. He invited her into the kitchen to offer her a hot drink. He showed her the selection of tea and coffee in the kitchen cupboard, but he didn’t have one she liked, and would he be kind enough to go to the store and buy it? Yes, he was kind enough.
While he was out, Elspeth went to the basement to get what she came for. No one was in the basement but the dead. She opened the drawers in the wall until she found one that was occupied by an unembalmed man whose chest was stitched closed. Elspeth’s stomach squirmed at the thought of what she was about to do, but she would not let her little girl die, and she needed this. Elspeth pulled on a pair of gloves and cut the stitches with a pair of scissors. The man’s ribs had already been cut, so she easily extracted the liver. The bloody organ shivered gelatinously in her hand as she deposited it in a bag that she hid at the bottom of her purse. Then she stitched the body closed so that Mr. Howell wouldn’t suspect anything, and she disposed of the bloody gloves.
She was upstairs and waiting at the kitchen table when Mr. Howell returned with the tea that she requested. She honestly felt bad making excuses to leave without having a drink, but she had to get the liver on ice. Mr. Howell didn’t help her guilt by continuing to be so nice. He even offered her a business card, saying, “My personal number is written on the back. If you ever need anyone to talk to, please call.”
No one had ever been so nice to her. She looked at him – really looked at him for the first time. He was in his 30s (around her age) with tanned skin, wavy brown hair, and kind brown eyes. He was lovely. So, she said, “You know, I think I will call. Thank you.”
Six months later, Elspeth became Mrs. David Howell of Howell’s Funeral Home. At first, she told herself that dating a funeral director and mortician was just an easy way to get continued access to the organs that her daughter needed to be healthy, but eventually Elspeth had to admit to herself that she liked him. He was wonderful with Trudy too, whom they were both overjoyed to see was recovering from her mysterious illness. They had become a family, and they had even decided to grow their family. In 1968, Elspeth gave birth to a son, whom they named James. Elspeth was completely happy, and she could never foresee this feeling ending.
Then, her husband found her standing over a body, holding a bloody liver. Elspeth tried to explain herself and the needs that Trudy had. She even showed him her tail. She thought that he would understand since she knew that he loved their daughter as much as she did, but he only became more horrified. She left with Trudy. Her husband was sitting in a chair holding the baby when she left, clutching their son as if he was protecting him from her.
It wasn’t long though until she knew… she wasn’t sure how she knew, but she knew that her husband was crying for her. He still loved her and he wanted her to come back. So, she went back, and they tried to be a family again. Things were different, but he needed her and his son needed his mother, so he was prepared to turn a blind eye as she took from the dead what Trudy needed.
The children grew and they were happy. It became clear that little James was a kitsune like his mother. His tail was white when he was young, but it turned black when he celebrated his 21st birthday, though they didn’t understand at the time what that meant. He took after his father too, who he made proud by going to school to be a mortician. It wasn’t long after that that they lost David in a car accident. Elspeth was devastated by the loss, but she saw her son was really a man now when he carried on for the family. He ran the business in his father’s place and he provided for his sister. He didn’t exactly see her as a sister, though – she was so much more to him.
They announced their engagement to their bemused mother, but when they explained things to her she understood. James and Trudy had dated other people and denied their feelings for so long, but no one had ever understood them the way the other did. It would take some time for Elspeth to become used to the idea of her children being a couple, but she tried to be accepting. After her rocky marriage to a human who never completely understood her, Elspeth could see the appeal in marrying a fox, and her children had yet to meet another fox outside of the family.
In the end, Elspeth found that all that mattered to her was that her children were happy. It wasn’t long after the marriage that their family grew again. They named their first son Adam and their second one Dan. At this point in her life, Elspeth was completely content. She was sitting in the parlor of the funeral home (it was also the family’s home with bedrooms upstairs), watching little Adam crawling on the carpet, while Trudy sat with baby Dan bundled in her arms. Everything seemed right with the world, so she was surprised Trudy started to cry.
“I’m scared for them. For my sons,” Trudy explained to her mother. “What are they? Who will they be like?”
Elspeth looked at the babies as she considered it. “I’m sure they’re foxes. I’ve seen dogs bark at them in their strollers. So, the only question is if they are kitsune or gumiho.”
Trudy nodded, clearly at this point in her contemplations. “You raised me and James. Were there any differences? Besides the fact that I got sick?”
There had been some. James had been a mischievous child, but she would almost call Trudy malevolent – her pranks had always gone too far, people had gotten hurt, and Trudy had never cared. Trudy didn’t need reminding of this, and they couldn’t be sure if this part of her nature really came from the fox. Also, all of her energy was now focused on being a protective mother, so Elspeth wasn’t going to judge her daughter for her past. “Well,” she said. “There was the way his tailed changed color when he became a man.”
They still didn’t know why James had a black tail, though Trudy’s tail had stayed white. They assumed it had to do with how he was a different species of fox. Trudy shook her head, looking at her sleeping son. “This can’t wait until they’re grown. What if they get sick like I did? If they’re gumiho they need to eat what I eat to stay healthy and grow.”
Elspeth gave her daughter a sad look. “You want them to be gumiho.”
“Of course I do! I brought them into the world. I…” Trudy didn’t need to explain it. She was young, but they had all noticed it. James was 8 years younger than his wife, but the difference wasn’t noticeable. He was aging and she wasn’t. They knew it must have something to do with the lifeforce she obtained from the livers, and she was coming to accept that she was probably going to outlive her husband. She didn’t want to outlive her sons. How could she even comprehend the possibility, while holding her newborn in her arms? She couldn’t. Trudy looked at the baby and insisted, “He’s a gumiho. They both are. I know it, and they need to eat what I eat.”
All Elspeth could say was, “I’d suggest waiting until they’re ready for solid foods.”
Trudy nodded. “And let’s do some research. I know you tried to find out what you were through books when you were younger, but maybe there is more we can find out now. When they’re older, I want to be able to explain to them what they are.”
CHAPTER ONE
Kitsune fact: Kitsune tend to live in families, and work together as much as possible. Lone kitsune tend to try and make families. Even myobu prefer to drive away nogitsune, instead of killing them. [https://littlespacefox.weebly.com/kitsune-mythology.html]
2011 – London
Phil Lester woke up that morning, convinced that today was going to be the best day of his life. He didn’t have a job when he moved to London recently, and he had taken a small apartment while he searched for employment. The apartment didn’t allow pets, so when he saw a job opening with a dog walking agency, it seemed like a perfect fit – if he couldn’t have his own dog, he could spend the day with other people’s dogs.
Admittedly, he was a bit intimidated by the mental image he had of a dog walker being towed by the leashes of 6 or more dogs (he fell down often enough when he wasn’t being dragged by dogs), but his interview went well with the agency and they told him that he would be started on a trial basis with only one client – a Rottweiler.
The next day, he was happy to find that his client’s home was walking distance from his apartment. A smiling woman in her 40s answered the door. “You must be Phil! I’m Hannah. Come in and I’ll introduce you to Rotty.”
Phil grinned. “Your Rottweiler’s name is Rotty? I like it.”
“Yes, it’s short for Rotten. He’s a bit of a problem child, which is why I’m here to make sure that you two get along. He needs a firm hand. Someone who can show him who is in charge so he behaves himself.”
Phil was beginning to feel a bit out of his depth. He was prepared to give the dog some exercise, but he knew nothing about obedience training. Then Phil relaxed a bit when he met the dog, who was sitting on a bed, chewing on a rawhide toy. The dog looked up at Phil, slobber dripping from his lips, and Phil felt his heart melt. He knelt before the bed and he let the dog sniff his hand, ignoring the drool. Finally, the dog gave his hand a lick.
The owner, who was watching the exchange, cooed in delight. “He likes you! So, are you ready to take him out for a while? He loves Regent’s Park.” Phil nodded, and Hannah handed him a leash to clip onto the dog’s collar. “I’m going to be around the house today if anything goes wrong. You have my number, so feel free to call me.”
Phil’s eyes widened. “Are you expecting something to go wrong?”
“No, it’s just that Rotty has a bad track record with walkers, so I like to be prepared.” She saw the alarm on Phil’s face. “He doesn’t bite! He’s a sweetheart. But he has a habit of pulling and sometimes he gets away from people. I’ve almost lost him before because some people walking him were too scared to let me know that he had gotten away from them. So, please call me if that happens and I will come help you find him.”
Phil nodded, appreciating her straightforwardness. “I hope it won’t come to that.” He looked at the dog and gave him an affectionate pat. “You won’t try to get away from me, will you?”
As they strolled around Regent’s Park, Phil gripped the leash tighter whenever the dog seemed to pay particular interest to anything around them: a squirrel scurrying up the trunk of a tree, another dog chasing a frisbee, and in particular a pond that was surrounded by ducks. The dog was remarkably well behaved though, and he never attempted to escape Phil’s grip on the leash. It made Phil give the dog a stroke to reward him, murmuring, “You’re just misunderstood, aren’t you? You’re a good boy.”
Phil started to relax and enjoy the beautiful day. It was a rare sunny day in London, and he could hardly believe that this was his life now – he was getting paid to walk through a beautiful park with a sweet dog. It was almost perfect.
The only problem was that Phil wasn’t used to walking this much, and he hadn’t realized that he was so out of shape. His legs were killing him, and he stopped when he couldn’t take it anymore, which made the dog turn to look at him. The Rottweiler’s orange eyebrow-shaped markings gave him a surprised expression which made Phil laugh. “Rotty, what do you say about taking a quick break?”
The dog didn’t object, so they walked to a bench under a tree. There was a boy sitting on one end of the bench, so Phil sat on the other end. Phil glanced at the boy and saw that he had fallen asleep in a slumped position with a book in his lap. Phil glanced at the book curiously – Game of Thrones. The boy had good taste in books.
The dog huffed a sigh and looked wistfully around the park.
“Just give me a moment, Rotty,” Phil assured the dog. He reached down to massage the cramped muscles in his calves through his black skinny jeans. While he did this, he found himself glancing at the sleeping boy again. He was around Phil’s age, maybe a couple years younger. Something about his face kept drawing Phil’s attention. Well, not something. It was obvious that the boy was lovely. The long dark lashes of his closed eyes were splayed across his cheeks. His lightly tanned skin was speckled with the occasional freckle. His brown curly hair was shifted by a passing breeze.
Phil returned his attention to Rotty, preparing to tell him that it was time to go, but the dog wasn’t in front of him anymore. Then he saw that the dog was sniffing industriously at the paperback copy of Game of Thrones in the boy’s lap. “Rotty, no!” He hissed in a whisper, tugging lightly on the leash. “You’ll wake him up. Leave it, it’s not yours.”
The dog was ignoring him. He had stopped sniffing the book and was now sniffing at the boy under the book; he was sniffing with such intensity that Phil suspected the boy might have dog biscuits in his pockets. The dog continued to investigate the boy, completely ignoring Phil as his pleading rose in pitch from a terse whisper to shrill commands. It was no surprise when the boy woke up with Rotty now sniffing the front of his black t-shirt. The boy blinked a few times in surprise, looking between the dog and Phil. Then they were both looking at Rotty as the dog went completely still, except for his sides which were vibrating with a growl.
Phil tried to put some authority in his voice as he tightened his grip on the leash. “Rotty, what are you doing?” The dog was baring his teeth. Phil pulled the leash forcefully, but the dog didn’t move an inch – he was strong. Phil looked at the boy. “I… I don’t know what’s wrong with him. Have you got food or something in your pockets? Maybe he wants you to give it to him?”
The boy shook his head slightly. He was stiff with terror.
“Okay,” Phil’s brain was whirring. This could go very badly in the next moment if he wasn’t careful. He knew that this breed of dog had a very nasty bite. Phil stood up and planted both feet firmly on the ground behind the dog. He gripped the leash as tight as he could with both hands. “Alright, I’ve got him. Can you slide off the bench and get away from him? I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s got him like this.”
“I do,” the boy said, but he didn’t stop to explain. He scrambled off the bench and out of reach of the dog’s bite, but instead of running he turned to look back at Phil. He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something. Then his eyes went wide as Rotty lunged for him. Phil saw nothing but pavement as the powerful dog pulled him over.
Phil lay still for a moment, stunned by the sensation of having the breath knocked painfully out of his chest by the fall. As he started breathing again, he heard the sound of a dog barking. Phil looked up to see the boy scrambling into the tree behind the bench while Rotty ran circles around the trunk. Slobber was trailing from his jowls as he barked menacingly. Phil got to his feet. “Rotty! Hey, Rotten. Stop. Heel! You have been a very bad dog. You hear me? Bad dog!”
Rotty stopped running to look at him with sad eyes. His ears pressed against his head and he gave a soft whimper. Then he sprinted away. Before Phil could call the dog or even see where he was running, there was a shout as the boy fell out of the tree, landing face-first in the grass where the dog had been standing a moment before. Phil heard the boy grunt in pain, so he sprinted to his side.
“Hey, are you okay?” He knelt beside him and rested a hand on the boy’s back.
He shifted under Phil’s hand and then got to his knees. His left arm was hanging limply at his side and he hissed in pain as he held it against his body with his right hand. The boy shook his head in answer to Phil’s question. “No, I’m not okay. Something is wrong with my arm.”
“It’s okay. There’s a hospital not far from here. I’ll take you there.” He tried to infuse his words with calmness, though he was freaking out.
The boy looked around, and Phil couldn’t help noticing how pretty his eyes were – brown, but not a boring shade. They reminded him of hot chocolate, the real kind of hot chocolate that you have to warm up on the stove. The eyes shifted to Phil’s face. “Where is your dog?”
“He’s not mine. I don’t know where he is. He ran off right before you fell.”
Phil thought the boy had asked because he was worried that the dog was going to attack him again, but the boy’s eyes widened in alarm. “You have to find him. You can’t leave him here. He’ll find the road, wander into it, and get hit by a car.”
“Okay, I’ll find him, and then we’ll go to the A&E. Don’t try to go anywhere. I’ll be back in a minute.” He gave the boy’s uninjured arm what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze. Then Phil stood up and looked around. He was grateful to spot Rotty in the distance, and he started running towards the dog. Rotty was happily sniffing at a German Shepherd – the dogs were spinning in circles while both trying to sniff each other at the same time – and the German Shepherd’s owner was watching with a bemused expression on her face. Before Rotty even knew Phil was there, he had picked up the leash that was trailing on the ground behind him. He waved in farewell to the owner of the other dog and started leading Rotty back to the injured boy.
“Don’t run off like that again, please.” The dog looked up at him, and he could tell from his eyes that the dog hadn’t forgotten how Phil shouted at him. Phil sighed as he fished his phone out of his pocket. “I’m sorry I shouted at you. Just behave, okay? Let’s see if your mum can pick you up.”
“Hello?” Hannah answered the call. “Phil?”
“Yes, it’s me. Something happened.” He quickly explained the situation to her.
“Oh my God, he’s going to sue me.” Hannah gasped.
“I hope it won’t come to that. Could you come get Rotty so I can take him to the hospital? Sorry about all this.” He was trying to balance his phone between his shoulder and his cheek while he tied Rotty’s leash to the bench where this all had started.
“Yes, I’m about a 10-minute walk from the park. I’m coming. Where exactly are you?” He could hear things clattering on Hannah’s end of the call, and it sounded like she was hastily tossing objects into her purse.
He looked around and described his location in relation to a bridge and the nearby duck pond, and then he hung up with Hannah’s assurance that she would be there soon. Rotty was stretched out on the pavement, ready to take a nap after his exploits, and then Phil looked at the boy. His back was resting against the tree now and his eyes were closed. Phil would believe that he had fallen asleep again if he weren’t holding his body so stiffly, like he was afraid that any movement would cause him pain.
Phil walked over and sat in the grass beside him. The boy’s eyes opened. He glanced at the dog and then at Phil. “He’s tied up,” Phil said. “His owner is coming to get him. She’ll be here soon. Thanks for telling me to find him before we left.”
The boy nodded. “Of course. I’d never forgive myself if he got hurt because you’d left him here alone.” He smiled, and he had a dimple in his cheek that made Phil’s stomach flip for some reason. “I like dogs, even though they don’t like me much.”
“I noticed.” Phil gave a slight breathy laugh, though he wasn’t exactly sure what he was laughing at. Was the boy saying that he was attacked by dogs on a regular basis? The only part of what he’d said that Phil was able to grasp was the fact that he said he liked dogs. Phil found that he was pathetically keeping a mental tally of the boy’s positive characteristics: likes dogs, check, reads Game of Thrones, check, is really nice despite the fact that he is probably in pain right now, check. Suddenly, the fact that he was gorgeous was the least interesting fact about him.
Phil gave his head a slight shake to clear it. “Seriously, how is your arm? Can you wait a few moments to get help, or do we need to go now?”
The boy glanced at his limp arm. “I think it’s dislocated. It’s not that bad until I try to move. I can wait.” He showed Phil the smashed iPhone in the palm of his right hand. “When you went to get the dog, I was going to call my parents, but it won’t even turn on. Completely broken… I must have landed on it when I fell.”
“Oh!” Phil tried to hand him his phone. “You can use mine.”
The boy tucked his broken phone into his pocket, but he didn’t take Phil’s phone. “Thanks, but I can’t remember their numbers off the top of my head. I had them all programmed into my phone.”
Phil nodded in understanding, since he couldn’t recall his own parents’ phone numbers. He opened Google on his phone, preparing to search for something. “What about work numbers? Are they at an office right now? I could look up the phone number of the business and you could call them that way.”
The boy stiffened and looked away. Phil could tell that he’d made him uncomfortable, but he couldn’t imagine why. Maybe his arm was just hurting. “No… I don’t think there’s any way to reach them. Do you mind taking me? I’m sure I’ll be fine once you drop me off.”
“I’m not just dropping you off. I’m staying until I’m sure you’re okay.”