A World Without Her

Her fingers passed through mine.

The passage closed, cutting off the fire and the woman's scream. I knew I had loved her. Then that knowledge became a fact without a face, and the fact disappeared too.

I woke in mud beneath a dead man's ribs.

They were my ribs now.

I lay at the bottom of a ravine, breathing through blood, with coarse gray fur covering my limbs. Three thin tails trailed behind me. Somewhere above, a broken lantern swung from a branch.

"The vessel was abandoned here," said a voice inside my head. "Its former occupant died before your arrival. You have displaced no living soul."

I tried to remember my name.

"Evander Vale," the voice supplied. "The vessel's name matches yours. The resemblance helped establish the passage."

"Convenient."

"Rare, rather than convenient."

I liked the voice less immediately.

It called itself the Wayfarer. It explained that I was in the higher realms, in a body descended from the White Fox Court. The family had considered its mixed coloring and incomplete blood seals a disgrace. They sent their adult heir to an ancestral sanctuary with two guards who returned without him.

The ravine suggested what had happened on the journey.

"Will they come looking?"

"They searched for three days. His death has been entered into their records."

"Good."

The word surprised me. So did the certainty behind it.

The Wayfarer had another piece of news. This realm rejected souls born beyond its boundaries. My borrowed flesh could slow the rejection, but not prevent it forever.

"You must awaken all nine blood seals and claim the sovereign source. Only authority over the realm can make your presence permanent."

I looked at the muddy water beside my paws.

"I'm meant to become king?"

"More than king."

"I can't stand."

"Then begin there."

Its voice thinned. The passage had exhausted it, and it would sleep until a sufficient surge of power woke it.

"One final instruction," it said. "The memories you chose to seal belong to a life of attachment and injury. Do not force them open before your soul is stable."

"Who hurt me?"

No answer came.

For several days, I survived on rainwater and roots. I dragged myself beneath a ledge when hunting birds passed overhead. When strength returned, I discovered I could take human shape: a lean man with pale eyes, uneven dark hair, and scars this body had earned before I inherited it.

Being a man made some tasks easier. Being a fox kept me alive.

I learned which ruins had fresh air beneath them, which mushrooms stored magic, which creatures hunted by scent instead of sight. I buried the broken lantern because its metal could reveal my hiding place.

Then I began the long work of surviving.

Five hundred years did not feel like a single stretch of time. It felt like a thousand small decisions not to die.

I spent eleven winters beneath the roots of an ironwood. I lost a century to a stone chamber where the magic was thin but steady. I learned to sleep with one exit behind me and another in sight.

Once, a merchant offered me a place by his fire. I almost accepted. Then he asked whether I belonged to anyone, and something inside me recoiled so violently that I left without taking the bread.

I could not explain that fear.

I did not argue with it.

There were kindnesses I trusted at a distance. A shepherd left water in a cracked bowl during a drought. I drove wolves away from his flock without letting him see me. A woman planted herbs near an abandoned shrine, and I kept the ground warm through an early frost.

I never stayed to be thanked.

My first three seals strengthened. The fourth remained closed, a pale knot behind my heart. Every attempt to open it brought a familiar sensation: hands pulling something out of my chest.

I stopped before the sensation became a memory.

At last, the valley where I hid grew empty of magic. Leaves yellowed despite the spring rain. I could no longer remain without starving the roots around me.

I packed three dried fruits, a shard of flint, and the little bone blade I had made for human hands.

Traveling openly felt like stepping naked into a crowd.

I kept to forest shadows. Near the first road, two winged couriers descended to water their horses.

"Another village searched," one said. "Every white fox taken."

"Alive?"

"The queen's orders. No injuries, no mistakes. The captain who broke a prisoner's leg disappeared last month."

"What does she want with them?"

"What does an immortal madwoman want with anything? I've heard the palace floors are covered with their skins."

I pressed myself deeper beneath a bush.

They spoke of the Shadow Queen, who had seized her throne fifty years earlier. She searched every court, every border, every old sanctuary for white foxes carrying foreign traces in their souls.

Foreign traces.

I looked down at my filthy gray paws and felt grateful for every insult this body had suffered.

When the couriers left, I traveled away from the road.

By evening, I reached a stream. A woman lay beside it, dressed in white, blood soaking her side. Her sword rested just beyond her fingers.

She lifted her head when she heard me.

"Please," she said. "Help me."

I stopped.

The wound was real. I could smell it. I also saw the patch of dry grass around her, untouched by the rain, and the absence of tracks leading to the bank.

Something wanted me closer.

I turned away.

"You'd leave me here?"

The accusation struck a place I could not name.

I ran before it could become an obligation.

Thirty miles later, I stopped beneath an ancient tree. My breath scraped my throat. The forest was quiet, but not naturally quiet. No insects moved. The leaves hung still despite the wind above them.

A woman's laugh touched the inside of my skull.

Soft. Exhausted. Terribly pleased.

"Five hundred years," she said. "I've finally found you."

My fur lifted along my spine.

I had no memory of that voice.

My soul was frightened of it anyway.