Page 105 of Tsumiko and the Enslaved Fox
“Blissful.”
“You said I wouldsee…?”
“Yes.” Argent lay his cheek against her knees, eyes shut, smirk apparent. “Tell me what you see.”
And he flaunted his tails, fanning them out so she could count. There were no longer seven; he’d somehow leapt to nine.
FIFTY TWO
Fox Dreams
Tsumiko found herself in a forest. Daylight sparkled among the leaves high overhead, but she stood in gloomy shadows. Massive tree trunks stretched as far as she could see in every direction with little more than moss for undergrowth. An old wood. Ancient and empty.
“What is this place?”
Silence gave way to a patter of footfalls, and she turned, only to shrink back against the nearest trunk. A giant animal slipped in and out of view, bounding between the trees. A second soon joined her. Vixens, though they were several times larger than any fox should be. Unless they were Amaranthine.
The females leapt and spun, frequently turning back, flipping their multiple tails. Their yips sounded like laughter, and they seemed to be calling to someone else. A third appeared, gliding gracefully through the trees. Only then did Tsumiko realize that the dimness had leached all the colors from the surroundings. The first two foxes must have been red, for their male counterpart had a ghostly glow, pale silver in the shadowlands.
Swishing their tails under his nose, the females brushed against him suggestively, inviting him into their game of chase, hoping to be caught. But he paid them little mind, fending off their flirtation with an aloofness that struck Tsumiko as familiar.
Surely, this washerfox. Or … a five-tailed version of him.
“Argent,” she whispered.
“Now that is audacity,” said a voice to her right. “Wafting stolen tails under my nose.Tsk.Insulting.”
He stood with arms tucked into the deep sleeves of a regal garment—blaze blue trimmed in silver and white. Barefoot in the moss, this Argent’s hair flowed much longer than her butler’s did, loose down his back, blending into the flow of his tails. Nine of them.
“Argent?” she repeated, needing to know that she was safe.
But the Amaranthine who turned his face wasn’therfox. Not really. His eyes were heavily rimmed with silver, and a similarly shimmering diamond seemed to have been painted onto the center of his forehead. Was this the person Argent would have been?
“I knew what they had done. Senna always was a glutton for gain, and her younger sister was doubly rapacious.” He waved at the pair, revealing silver-tipped claws. “Thatis Nona Hightip, self-styled Lady of Foxes.”
Tsumiko looked more closely, but she couldn’t tell the vixens apart. One had four tails, and the other five. Did the addition of tails come with age or ability? Or perhaps ambition? She asked, “How can a fox steal their tails?”
Argent crossed to her, looming so close he filled her view. Brows lifting, he said, “See for yourself.”
When he stepped aside, the scene had changed.
“What is this place?” she asked.
“A dream.”
“It feels so real.”
Argent’s eyebrows lifted. “Fox dreams do.”
They stood at the edge of a clearing. The woods at their back were unnaturally still, breathless on the cusp of disaster. And the source slunk forward, belly low to the grasses. This red vixen wasn’t nearly as large as the one who’d attacked the wards at Stately House, but Tsumiko felt sure that Argent was showing her pieces of the past. So that made sense. The farm was certainly an antique, just like those in historical reenactments.
A wood hut with slat windows barely hid Nona from view. Indeed, it betrayed her with an explosion of squawking and flapping from within. But the fox showed no interest in the henhouse. She crept out from behind it, stealing toward a woman who’d paused in her work, straightening and rubbing together dirty hands. A farmer’s wife with a vegetable patch.
Fear tightened in Tsumiko’s belly as the vixen stalked her. “Is that Nona?” she whispered.
“Yes,” he replied.
“What’s she doing?”
