The wood door felt cool along the skin of her earlobe as she listened to the receding footsteps in the hall on the other side.
After supper, she had claimed fatigue and retired to her room after dismissing the staff for the night. She turned the lock in the door and the metal mechanism clicked into place. Her own room was a remarkably impersonal space—although it wouldn’t be so surprising to those who knew Zan. She usually spent more time in the basement laboratory than her bedroom which was mostly filled with functional furniture—the bed and dresser on one side of the room, the wardrobe next to the window overlooking a small back yard, and a changing screen at one corner.
She came away from the door and went over to a small round stand next to the bed. On it were two framed photographs—one of her parents, the other of her uncle—a book about the chemical elements, the key to her room, and the heavy jade medallion with etched foreign symbols from her uncle’s safety deposit box. She took off her father’s fox amulet and placed it before the photograph of her parents.
“You made me what I am,” she said aloud to the picture of parents, but quietly, conscious that sudden loud noise carried through the walls. She then glanced at the photograph of her uncle. “And you tried your best. But I won’t simply let this go. I must know what you found.”
The picture of Uncle Elliot remained silent.
“I’m sorry.”
Zan went over to the window and pulled aside the drapes. She unlatched it and then turned to the dresser where the gas lamp was burning. She blew it out and the room immediately plunged into darkness. Moonlight streamed in through the window, silver beams illuminating strips of the floor and across her bed. She made her way to the changing screen without tripping and quickly shed all of her clothes. She raked fingers through her hair, dislodging pins which clattered onto the floor. The room was slightly chilly, but she ignored the goose bumps forming along her arms as she crouched naked among her discarded clothes, hair tumbling past her shoulders and her face, obscuring her vision.
Was there ever a time that she had consciously willed the change to come over her? If there was, it had been a long time ago when she had still been a child. And afterwards, the change had always been about suppression. It wasn’t acceptable to go about society as a naked animal—snarling out instinct and primitive desire. If she had wanted to yip in delight or to hunt down small rodents in her path, the urge had to be stifled.
Uncle Elliot had said that it was unacceptable to have such lack of control and inhibition. She was to use her energies to become civilized—physically, spiritually, mentally, intellectually. Her uncle had mentioned that the fox was inherently an intelligent and curious creature, but that wisdom couldn’t be obtained without some modicum of restraint.
The entire change came almost frighteningly easy. Energy pounded up from her toes and curled around her spine, arching her backward. Hands and feet became paws, a tail erupted from the base of her spine, wrenching a gasping breath from her throat. She snapped her teeth as scent and sound became more acute and whatever color in her night vision bled into black, white, and gray.
She padded to the other side of the screen, claws clicking softly on the wood floor. She passed by the open door of the wardrobe and stopped. A tall mirror hung on the inside of the wardrobe door, reflecting the shape of a black fox with glinting eyes.
I am still myself, yet I am not.
She shook her head at the thought and prowled toward the window, putting two forepaws on the sill. Uncle Elliot meant well, but her mind was still hers despite her different physical shape.
She nudged the window open with her nose and stepped onto the ledge two stories above the ground. Gingerly, she made her way down the ledge to the corner of the house and leapt the small gap from the ledge to the top of the stone wall that separated her back yard from the neighbor’s. She teetered for a moment on the stone and then crouched low when she heard the barking of a dog and the rattling of its chain.
The wall terminated into small steps down to the ground and into a bit of hedge that separated the backyards from the houses on Warden Street from those facing the parallel street to the north. She crept through lawns, yards, and the sides of houses, avoiding feral cats and guard dogs. Eventually, she ended up on one of the major roads, Doresse, which ran southwest to northeast and straight through the heart of Old Amanthus.
Although her perspective was different now than during the day in her human form, the dark strange shapes of the old city still graced the rest of the city with a menacing air. Even without knowledge of the streets, she would have oriented toward the city center unerringly. With her heightened sense of smell, she could detect the rotting core of Amanthus quite easily. But the stench was oddly different as well. A human nose would have been unable to detect the difference between the city rot and the rot of decaying refuse. But to an animal nose, city rot had a distinctive tang with a hint of sulfur.
She kept to the shadows although the streets were practically deserted and she heard the clatter of carriage wheels and horse’s hooves only once from one street over. After one particularly long sprint, she rested in the shadows of the Museum with a view down Market Row. A few lampposts lit the street but it was mostly dark. As she breathed for a moment, she became aware of something—either the sluggish movement of energy counter to the current of the street or the presence of something with eyes. She pricked up her ears and glanced quickly around her. She saw and heard nothing. With an irritated swish of her tail, she bounded into another shadow to the next street, heading deeper into Old Amanthus. Perhaps she was just paranoid and that in reality, there was nothing.
Further down Doresse Road, the dilapidated buildings of Old Amanthus stuttered upward like thin crooked piles of rubbish emitting some sort of foul odor. A few blocks from the old city’s cemeteries, she turned into an alleyway transformed into an alien landscape in the darkness and thin moonlight. She crouched in the shadow of the stoop leading up to the shop that she had visited earlier—Eridanus Amulets.
But the shop was shut tightly—closed—and no light flickered at the windows indicating that any of the occupants were present or awake.
The whisper of voices caught her attention and quickly, she slipped from deep shadow to deep shadow until she was standing at the edge of one of the old cemeteries surrounding the Temple. She saw two cloaked figures a few paces away arguing over the timing of the tithe day and the full moon. She looked up and saw that the moon was indeed full, but it was cloudy as well. Deep blue clouds coiled like serpents around the moon, diluting its gleam to a pale gray-blue. The remaining light shone on the weathered tombstones in the cemetery like faint motes on bobbing corks in a black sea.
“It is a sign,” said one of the cloaked figures. “You know full moons always mean a terrible portent. Bad things happen during full moons. People get attacked by werewolves. Thieves steal into houses. People get murdered in their beds. Evil sorcerers and wicked witches summon demons to do their bidding.”
The other figure scoffed. “You’ve been listening to too many children’s bedtime stories of bogeymen—stories in which the sole purpose is to scare children into good behavior. I say we take the full moon as good tidings on this tithe day. Good luck for our future endeavors, won’t you say?”
“But what about all those rumors about the night being the mother of all ills? Surely, the moon is merely the indicator of the height of the night’s powers.”
“If the High Priest heard you babbling like that, he’d send you to a real doctor to have your head examined. I’ve heard that mesmerism works wonders.”
“But….”
“Come on!”
Zan moved to follow the two figures hurrying down a path through the cemetery. It led to the Temple which looked like a giant bleached skull in the night with the moonlight reflecting off its dome and classically straight columns. She suddenly stopped when she passed the first tomb marker. Her fur raised at the same disquieting sensation she had at the Museum. She wasn’t afraid of the dead—no, they were safely buried and rotting beneath her paws. This thing watching her was alive. But whatever it was, she could not catch a scent. She was perhaps upwind from the position of the watching thing. She hoped that it would decide to keep its distance.
She turned her head and thought she caught a glimpse of a pair of shining eyes. Blood pounded in her ears; she bolted after the figures ambling towards the Temple.
There were other worshippers of the pagan gods gathering inside the Temple. But despite the large open space at the center where everyone was congregating, none of the people noticed a small black fox sitting on her haunches beside a column, watching the activities.
At the center of the room was a pedestal holding a large black bowl made of obsidian. The worshippers began forming a loose circle around the pedestal. One person came forward to put a small wooden crate at the base of the pedestal. She heard the crate squawk and with a brief sniff of the air, determined that the crate contained a live chicken. Some other people began lighting their own hand bowls. The scent from the censers irritated her nose so she curled up into a ball and put her nose in her tail to filter out the air.
The worshippers began chanting in the language of the Ancients and the light of the lamps they held flickered. The drone of their voices would have been a peaceful lullaby under other circumstances, but there was no mistaking the steady pull of energy as it was suddenly given direction. The energy flowed into the Temple, straight toward the bowl on the pedestal.
Slowly, the energy became thicker and with the combination of the smoking incense, breathing became difficult as well. She wondered at the purpose of the Ancient chants, wondering what they were trying to achieve when she saw the bowl expand.
She abruptly sat up and took a breath and sneezed. The chanting continued uninterrupted as something black emerged from the bowl. A pungent rotting stench followed it. A thick black tentacle oozed down the pedestal like a fast growing vine and wrapped itself around the crate. Then she watched, paralyzed, as the tentacle took the crate into the bowl.
The crate exploded. The chicken screamed.
Bits of wood and a spray of blood erupted from the bowl and pelted down on the closest worshippers.
She yipped, terrified, and raced out of the Temple and past the cemetery. At the last tombstone, she paused to catch her breath.
Then a presence began tickling about the back of her awareness. Something was watching her again. She whirled around and saw the gleaming eyes. She had not been mistaken before.
A black fox lounged insolently on top of a particularly large tombstone, watching her. A male. And he was lazily swishing his tail in an amused manner as if he were playing with his food.
Zan bared her teeth in challenge.
You do know the saying about curiosity, don’t you?
His voice had filled her head, but with the combination of her recent scare and adrenaline rush, it had only made her more irritated.
I’d say you got more than you bargained for roaming about the old city without preparation. Didn’t I tell you not to go haring off to places unknown tonight?
And I thought I told you to stop following me, she replied.
He leaped down from his perch and padded toward her. You may have told me, but I promised nothing. He took another step and she backed away, ears lying flat against her head.
Don’t touch me.
Or do you mean the contrary? I heard no protest when I had my hand around your neck.
She growled.
Ah, you’re definiately a troublesome little baggage. But then his amused tone turned hard. Go home, little vixen. This is no place for you.
I’ll have more to say about that the next time I see you.
Then she slunk back into the shadows of the streets, fuming about the fact that he witnessed her moment of weakness. But leaving that aside, she was oddly comforted that he had been watching over her the entire time.
