On the twenty-sixth of February, there was a change in the weather so sudden that it had the quality of a sign. A strange balm came upon the air, and for the first night in ninety there was no frost. It wouldn't last, the naysayers at the pub predicted: any plant foolish enough to show its nose would have it nipped off soon enough. But the next day was just as warm, and the day following, and the day following that. Steadily, the sky began to clear, so that by the end of the first week of March, it was a gleaming swathe of blue above the valley, busy with birds; and the naysayers were silenced.
Spring had arrived; the gymnast season, all muscle and motion. Though Will had lived through eleven springs in the city, they were wan imitations of what he witnessed that month. More than witnessed, felt. His senses were brimming, the way they'd brimmed that first day outside the Courthouse, when he'd felt such union with the world. His spirits, which had been downcast for months, finally looked up from his feet and flew.
All was not lost. He had a head full of memories, and hidden amongst them were hints of how he had to proceed from here: things he knew nobody else in the world would have been able to teach him, and perhaps nobody else in the world would understand.
Living and dying we feed the fire.
Suppose they were the last.
Jacob in the bird. Jacob in the tree. Jacob in the wolf.
Clues to epiphanies, all of them.
From now on, he would have to look for epiphanies on his own. Find his own moments when the world spun and he stood still; when it would be as though he was seeing through the eyes of God. And until that time, he would be the careful son Hugo had asked him to be. He'd say nothing to stir up his mother; nothing to remind her of how death had followed them. But his compliance would be a pretence. He did not belong to them; not remotely. They would be from this time temporary guardians, from whose side he would slip as soon as he was able to make his way in the world.
iv
On Easter Sunday, he did something he'd been putting off since the mellowing of the weather. He retraced the journey he'd taken with Jacob, from the Courthouse to the copse where he'd killed the birds. The Courthouse itself had the previous year inspired much morbid interest amongst sightseers, and had as a consequence been fenced off, the wire hung with signs warning trespassers that they would be liable to prosecution. Will was tempted to scramble under the fence and take a look at the place, but the day was too fine to waste indoors, so he began to climb. There was a warm gusty wind blowing, herding white clouds, all innocent of rain, down the valley. On the slopes, the sheep were stupid with spring, and watched him unalarmed, only darting off if he yelled at them. The climb itself was hard (he missed Jacob's hand at his neck) but every time he paused to look around, the vista widened, the fells rolling away in every direction.
He had remembered the wood with uncanny accuracy, as though despite his sickness and fatigue - that night his sight had been preternaturally sharp. The trees were budding now, of course, every twig an arrow aiming high. And underfoot, blades of brilliant green where there'd been a frosted carpet.
He went straight to the place where he'd killed the birds. There was no trace of them. Not so much as a bone. But simply standing on the same spot, such a wave of yearning and sorrow passed through him that it made him gasp for breath. He'd been so proud of what he'd done here. (Wasn't that quick? Wasn't that beautiful?) But now he felt a bit more ambiguous about it. Burning moths to keep the darkness at bay was one thing, but killing birds just because it felt good to do so? That didn't feel so brave; not today, when the trees were budding and the sky was wide. Today it felt like a dirty memory, and he swore to himself there and then that he'd told the story for the last time. Once Faraday and Parsons had filed away their notes and forgotten them, it would be as though it had never happened.
He went down on his haunches, to check one final time for evidence of the victims, but even as he did so he knew he'd invited trouble. He felt a tiny tremor in the air as a breath was drawn, and looked up to see that the wood itself had not changed in any detail but one. There was a fox a short distance from him, watching him intently. He stood on all fours like any other fox, but there was something about the way he stared that made Will suspicious. He'd seen this defiant gaze before, from the dubious safety of his bed.
'Go away!' he shouted. The fox just looked at him, unblinking and unmoved. 'D you hear me?' Will yelled at the top of his voice. 'Shoo!' But what had worked like a charm on sheep didn't work on foxes. Or at least not this fox.
'Look,' Will said, 'Coming to bother me in dreams is one thing, but you don't belong here. This is the real world.'
The fox shook its head, preserving the illusion of its artlessness. To any gaze but Will's, it seemed to be dislodging a flea from its ear. But Will knew better: it was contradicting him.
'Are you telling me I'm dreaming this as well?' he said.
The animal didn't bother to nod. It simply perused Will, amiably enough, while he worked the problem out for himself. And now, as he puzzled over this curious turn of events, he vaguely recalled something Lord Fox had mentioned in his rambling. What had he said? There'd been some talk of Russian dolls, but that wasn't it. An anecdote about a debate with a dog; no, that wasn't it either. There'd been something else his visitor had mentioned. Some message that had to be passed along. But what? What?
The fox was plainly close to giving up on him. It was no longer staring in his direction, but sniffing the air in search of its next meal.
'Wait a moment,' Will said. A minute ago, he'd been wanting to drive it away. Now he was afraid it would do as he'd wished, and go about its business before he'd solved the puzzle of its presence.
'Don't leave yet,' he said to it. 'I'll remember. Just give me a chance-'
Too late. He'd lost the animal's attention. Off it trotted, its brush flicking back and forth.
'Oh, come on-' Will said, rising to follow it. 'I'm trying my best.'
The trees were close together, and in his pursuit of the fox, their bark gouged him and their branches raked his face. He didn't care. The faster he ran, the harder his heart pumped and the harder his heart pumped the clearer his memory became
'I'll get it!' he yelled after the fox. 'Wait for me, will you?'
The message was there, on the tip of his tongue, but the fox was outpacing him, weaving between the trees with astonishing agility. And all at once, twin revelations. One, that this was not Lord Fox he was following, just a passing animal that was fleeing for its fieabitten life. And two, that the message was to wake, wake from dreams of foxes, Lords or no, into the world
He was running so fast now, the trees were a blur around him. And up ahead, where they thinned out, was not the hill but a growing brightness; not the past, but something more painful. He didn't want to go there, but it was too late to slow his flight, much less halt it. The trees were a blur because they were no longer trees, they'd become the wall of a tunnel, down which he was hurtling, out of memory, out of childhood.
Somebody was speaking at the far end of the tunnel. He couldn't catch hold of precisely what was being said, but there were words of encouragement, he thought, as though he were a runner on a marathon, being coaxed to the finishing line.