Fever

I hung back behind my mother and sister as we made our way to our den in the forest clearing. I did not know why. My belly was full from the night’s foraging; we were nearly home and about to be warm and safe underground. But something hot had made its way inside my body and was coursing through my veins, making my head swim, making my pulse thrum in my ears.

My mother turned towards me and said sternly, “What are you mucking about for? You’re slowing us down.”

“I’m – I’m thirsty,” I said. “I think I’ll go to the stream and have a drink.”

My sister Iris said, “You mean go to the stream and see that buck we saw earlier.”

“No, no…” I shook my head, both to deny my sister’s accusation and to shake away the cobwebs that spun themselves inside my head.

“Are you all right?” my mother asked.

I said, “I’m just really thirsty. I’m fine.” But my body belied my words. My hind legs gave way, trembling, and my forepaws slid flat on the ground, so that my belly kissed the cold earth. I closed my eyes and tried to push away the image of the buck from my mind.

* * *

My mother, Iris, and I had been clawing through a carpet of leaves and scraping under the mud for grubs under a stand of beech trees earlier that evening, in the gathering dusk, when we became aware of something approaching through the brush. My kind can barely see; more than a few body lengths away the world is a blur. But our noses and ears are keen, and, anyway, very few creatures will bother us for fear of the noxious stream we can spurt into their eyes. Nevertheless, my mother moved at once to put herself between us and the scratching, shuffling noises from the bushes. She sniffed the air for danger and raised her tail preemptively in warning.

Long before it appeared, we knew from its scent and the sounds that it made that the stranger was one of our kind. The undergrowth parted and he emerged, wary but curious. When he was close enough, I could see he was a yearling, sleek and strong, a self-assured, even brash air about him. The strip of white fur on his back caught the meager crepuscular light from above and made the air above him seem luminous.

“Who are you, and what do you want?” my mother said brusquely. The buck pulled up short.

“My name is Basil,” he said affably. “I mean no harm. I’m just passing through.”

“Pass on, then. You’re in our feeding ground.”

“Ahhh,” he said, and looked past my mother at me – and my breath caught in my throat. I felt frozen in place, the way I had been once when I was a kitten outside the den on a dawn forage with my siblings, when a white-tailed kite had swooped down and plucked one of my brothers and flown away with him. My mother had run up to us hissing her rage and despair, her tail shimmying in the air like a branch in a harsh wind – far too late to do anything.

My mother stepped between me and the buck, stamping her front paws, covering my view of him. “No,” she said to him in a menacing tone. “There’s nothing for you here.” I craned my neck to peer over her and saw the buck staring at her, his dark eyes almost lost in the blackness of his face. He shrugged, then turned to amble away in the direction of the stream. He disappeared into the gloom under the trees, like a dream.

* * *

Through the haze in my mind, I felt my mother’s nose nuzzling my snout as I lay shivering on the ground. I opened my eyes. Our eye locked, and for several long moments, we breathed each other’s breaths. There was no hiding from her gaze. I felt myself laid bare, like a dandelion whose seed heads had blown away in a breeze. And through her eyes, I saw what she saw; I saw myself as I was.

“Lily, you’re too young. You’re not even a yearling yet,” she said, hoping to forestall the truth.

“I’m not,” I answered back hotly. “I’m old enough. I’m ready.”

She continued to stare at me. Finally, she sighed. “Perhaps you are at that.” She lowered her eyes. She whispered, almost inaudibly, “I suppose I had hoped you wouldn’t grow up quite so soon. But no mother gets to keep her children young forever.”

All at once she had turned away and was nuzzling my sister homeward. She said back to me, “Be wary of owls. And be home at the den as soon as you can.”

* * *

I headed towards the stream, pulled by an ineluctable force, following my nose to the smell of water. I felt, in waves, frantic and preternaturally calm, so that I would sprint in stretches, then slow down to a more measured stride. Soon I heard the tinkling of the stream, and could whiff, over the scent of pine and water primrose, the strong musk of a skunk buck.

Basil was waiting for me in a patch of short grass by the stream. He had heard and smelled me coming. When I got close enough, I could see his black and white fur shining lustrous under the moonlight; I could see that he was grinning. “You followed me,” he said. It was all I could do not to swoon.

“Yes,” was all that I could say.

“Was that your mother earlier?”

“Yes.” I added, scrupulous, “And my sister.”

“Your mother’s quite fierce.”

“She’s very protective. There were nine of us in her litter when she gave birth last summer, but we lost my brothers and sisters one by one. So she does her best to keep us safe, now that there’s only Iris and me.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It was a terrible winter. Sometimes, we couldn’t stir outside the den for days on end. You know the stupor we fall into when it gets really cold. Five of my brothers and sisters starved to death. They just got too weak to forage outside. My mother had to drag their bodies out, to keep the den clean.” I had swung from being tongue-tied to not being able to stanch the flow of words. “We couldn’t – there wasn’t enough food.”

“That’s really unfortunate.”

“Thank God it’s finally started to get warm and there’s enough food to be found.” All at once, I felt my face flush with embarrassment. Even though I had started to gain weight since the winter, I still felt thin and bony, especially now, beside Basil’s solid bulk. I wondered if he was making do with me tonight just because I was available. I wondered how many does he had already been with, if he hadn’t already sired other litters.

“I’m – my name is Lily,” I said, in connection with nothing.

Even as I kept up the spate of words, Basil had been nuzzling my rump, my flanks, and my back, sending shivers shooting from wherever his nose got through my fur to touch my skin. My eyes began to get heavy and slowly closed shut.

Valiantly, I tried to continue. “Iris almost didn’t make it either. She was the runt of the litter, which is why she’s so much smaller than me and not as… not yet mature. It’s surprising she survived when the others didn’t. Ohhh…” He had reached the back of my head; I could feel his warm breath on my neck.

“You’re very beautiful,” he murmured into my ear.

All of a sudden, he stopped and pulled away. I opened my eyes, puzzled. He was looking carefully behind me, and when I saw what he was looking at, I understood. My tail was standing straight up – of its own accord, for I had not even known it had done so until I saw it myself.

Basil turned to look at me, to make sure the gesture was an invitation and not a warning. When he saw that my eyes were heavy-lidded and slowly blinking, he smiled again and grasped my shoulders with his forepaws, his claws like talons digging into my skin, pinioning me. He swung on top of me, and I staggered and sagged under his weight. He mounted me, entered me, and I gasped, my mind flying away, flying like my brother taken by the hawk.

* * *

After an interminable time (the space of several breaths?), the beating of my heart began to slow down, began to fall into a deep, even rhythm. I felt something like a chill breeze waft inside me, a wet coolness that slowly washed away the fever. With a strength I didn’t know I had, I shrugged Basil off me.

He squatted beside me like a large squirrel, still grinning like a fool. He said, “I could stay around for a while. We can do it as often as you like till we know you’re carrying.”

I tilted my head to one side, frowning. Everything seemed suddenly different. The forest sounds had returned, but deeper, somehow more resonant; smells were drifting in more strongly than before. The very air seemed clear and charged. I could see through it to what was to be.

I said, “No, that was enough.”

“But just to be certain…” For once his confident demeanor slipped and his voice took on a tremulous tone.

I was already turning away from him. “No, I’m sure.” And I was. Even as I walked away, I felt that my legs were carrying a different body, a heavier one, assured in its certainty. “I would suggest that you get out of our feeding range by morning,” I said to Basil over my shoulder. “Or else my mother will come after you and spray you till you’re doused in it.” Not as a threat or warning, but just as something that was true.

* * *

My mother knew that I had changed the moment I entered our den that night. She could sense it in me, smell it in the dark, hear it in my heartbeat as it echoed in the close confines of the den. She said, shaken at the abruptness of my transformation, and without much hope, “You know you can stay and raise your litter here if you like. This is still your home.”

I touched noses with her. “I know. But I think it would be best if I moved away. There would be more food for my litter if I foraged in a different part of the forest.”

After a moment’s silence, she said, “Yes, of course.” Her grief was a living weight in the darkness, as if she was crouching over another dying child. She nuzzled Iris, who was soon to be the last one left to her – and who herself would be gone before long.

But I could not dwell much on this. Already my mind was reaching for the morrow. I wondered what direction I should take to find my own den. I began scratching my claws on a stone, sharpening them, in case I could not find a burrow ready made and would have to dig one for myself. I thought of the leaves I would gather and line my nest with. I thought of my kittens-to-be mewling in the leaves, looking up at me with blind eyes.

(April 2013)