Run with the Wind (11 page)

‘Now,’ he panted, ‘you can rest. No one will trouble you here.’

From the Grand Canal at Inchicore, the foxes had crossed the River Liffey to the Phoenix Park, and were now in the grounds of the President’s House, Áras an Uachtaráin.

Twelve

Creatures Great and Small

A
handsome jay flew into a clearing and settled rather jerkily on a stone. For a moment it lifted its crested head and stared at the foxes lying in the undergrowth. With a flash of its bright blue wing feathers, it retreated, perched on an ivy-covered bough for another quick glance at its visitors, and disappeared. In the branches above, two jackdaws sitting side-by-side like love birds, also viewed the unusual sight of so many foxes with considerable interest.

The sun was rising now and its rays were reaching into the undergrowth. Everywhere ivy was sprouting up through the thick carpet of dead leaves, and Vickey could detect the scent of winter flowers on the grassy bank beyond the trees.
Beyond that, in fields bounded by white railings, flocks of starlings and wood pigeons walked hither and thither, busily picking up what food they could for breakfast.

‘It’s so quiet and peaceful,’ said She-la almost absentmindedly.

Scavenger, who over-heard her, laughed. As a hardy little fox who spent most of his time pitting his wits against man and his fun dogs, he found the idea of someone thinking that the city was quiet and peaceful highly amusing.

‘Why do you laugh?’ asked Vickey. ‘Will man hunt us here?’

Scavenger shook his head. ‘You’re safe here.’

‘Aren’t there choking hedge-traps?’ asked Sinnéad.

‘Not here,’ said Scavenger.

‘What about fun dogs?’ asked Fang, rising and coming over to them.

‘Very few,’ Scavenger told him. ‘Man keeps them out.’

He motioned towards the big house with his nose and added: ‘I sometimes see two small ones over there, but they just seem to be pets. They never bother me.’

‘Are there any shooters?’ asked Vickey, mindful of her experience in the meadow back at Beech Paw.

‘No, no shooters,’ said Scavenger. ‘You’ve nothing to fear in here.’

Old Sage Brush had been lying alongside Black Tip listening to the conversation. ‘You haven’t said anything about food,’ he remarked to Scavenger. ‘And what about the strange
sounds I can hear on the wind?’

‘There’s some food all right. Birds, frogs, that sort of thing. But they don’t keep any chickens here, or ducks. That’s why I have to go out at gloomglow to man’s place.’

‘I saw no chickens there either,’ said Black Tip.

‘There are none. But there are plenty of chicken bones and meat if you search around for it and avoid the fun dogs.’

‘Where?’ asked Hop-along.

‘On the streets, in bags, places like that.’

‘You mean man’s rubbish?’ asked Sinnéad. The idea disgusted her.

‘Why not?’ said Scavenger. ‘Man throws away more than he can eat. It’s just a matter of picking it up when the fun dogs aren’t looking.’

‘But how do you survive?’ asked Vickey. ‘As you said yourself, man’s place is full of dangers.’

‘It is,’ said Scavenger rather cockily, ‘but you get used to it, and it’s nice to come back here.’

It was a way of life that obviously didn’t appeal to the country foxes who liked wide open spaces as far away from man as possible, and fresh food caught in the wild, or when man wasn’t looking. Old Sage Brush was still cocking an ear to the wind. ‘You haven’t told me what those strange noises are. I seem to hear the sounds of birds, or cats, only they’re not the sort of sounds I’ve heard before.’

The others listened intently. The lack of sight had increased
the old fox’s hearing immensely, and it was only now as they stopped talking and turned an ear to the wind that they could make them out too — faint noises — but they were there.

‘It comes from the Land of the Giant Ginger Cats,’ Scavenger told them.

‘The what?’ asked Skulking Dog, rising to his feet.

‘The Land of the Giant Ginger Cats,’ Scavenger repeated, and sensing that he might have alarmed them, added: ‘Don’t worry, they can’t harm us.’

‘Why not?’ asked Fang.

‘They’re in pens. It’s a sort of a farm, but it’s not like any you’ve ever hunted on.’

‘Tell us about it,’ said Black Tip.

‘Well, to start with, the ginger cats are bigger than all of us put together.’

The others laughed, and Skulking Dog said: ‘I suppose there are giant mice as well?’

‘There are,’ said Scavenger. ‘Bigger than rats. Bigger than fun dogs. Bigger than anything you’ve ever seen before.’

Thinking of the distorted images he had seen in the aluminium reflectors, Skulking Dog said: ‘It must be some sort of trick.’

‘It’s no trick,’ Scavenger assured him. ‘They’re the same shape and colour as ordinary mice. The only difference is that they’re huge and they carry their cubs in a pouch on their bellies.’

They all laughed at that, especially the vixens.

‘That’s a good one,’ said Vickey. ‘I wish we had a pouch like that.’

‘Yes,’ said She-la, ‘maybe we could take our cubs to safety quicker.’

‘But Scavenger,’ said Sinnéad seriously, ‘there’s no such thing.’

‘There is,’ he asserted, ‘and more. There are birds as tall as man, and horses with humps.’ He leaned closer to emphasise what he was saying. ‘There are creatures that have necks so long they can eat leaves from the tree-tops without even stretching … and there are some with noses so long they can eat off the ground without even bending.’

‘What about foxes?’ asked Black Tip. ‘Are there any giant foxes?’

Scavenger shook his head. ‘Foxes aren’t allowed there.’

‘Why not?’ asked Hop-along.

‘I don’t know. All I know is that foxes aren’t allowed there.’

‘Where do these giant animals get their food?’ asked Fang.

‘From man.’

‘Oh! I might have known,’ said Hop-along. ‘That’s why there are no foxes.’

‘But are you telling us that man feeds these creatures?’ asked Black Tip.

‘That’s right. I’ve often watched man giving them meat and fish and all sorts of things.’

Old Sage Brush had listened to all this without saying anything. He too was trying to understand what Scavenger was telling them. Unlike the others, however, it wasn’t the idea of the giant animals that stuck in his mind.

‘Tell me about the birds?’ he said. ‘I hear the sounds of many birds on the wind — ducks, if I’m not mistaken.’

‘There
are
many birds,’ Scavenger told him. ‘But they’re not like the ones you know. They’re all shapes and sizes, and some are the colour of the grass, some the colour of the sky. Some are even the colour of the wide eye of gloomglow.’

‘The ducks,’ repeated Old Sage Brush. ‘What about the ducks? Are there many of them?’

‘More than you’ve ever dreamed of. Beyond the wire where the giant animals live, there are lakes, and the water and the islands are full of ducks, and moorhen, and geese, and …’ Scavenger paused. ‘I just couldn’t describe it.’

‘Have you ever been in there?’ asked Black Tip.

‘A few times. But man chased me when I went after the ducks, and put up stronger wire where I got in.’

‘Why does man chase us the way he does?’ asked She-la. ‘Is it just because we kill his chickens and ducks?’

‘Well, that’s why he chased me from the lakes,’ said Scavenger. ‘But there’s another reason.’

‘What?’ asked She-la.

‘You wouldn’t believe it if I told you. I’ll show you before you set off again for the Land of Sinna.’

Leaving She-la, and indeed the others, to think about that, Scavenger returned to the subject of the ducks. He told Old Sage Brush he had prised back a corner of the wire fence not far from a tall beech tree, but had found it too jagged to squeeze in through, and had given up. He had now succeeded in pulling a piece of board from a section of wooden fence on the other side of this strange farm, and was planning to go in that way at the first opportunity.

‘If some of us go with you,’ said Black Tip, ‘we can get enough food for all of us.’

Scavenger shook his head. ‘Some of you are injured. You’re in no condition to go.’

‘Then, we’ll go,’ said Sinnéad.

‘But you can’t,’ said Skulking Dog. ‘You’re in cub. Anyway, it was only my tail that got bitten.’

‘Even so,’ Sinnéad replied, ‘my cubs are still small within me, and I can hunt as well as any dog fox.’

‘And me,’ said She-la.

‘Maybe you two can, but not me,’ said Vickey. ‘My cubs are growing heavy.’ She turned around and went off into the undergrowth.

Sensing that Vickey had suddenly become uneasy, Black Tip followed her. Old Sage Brush and Skulking Dog had reservations about Sinnéad’s suggestion. ‘You’ve just escaped from man,’ Skulking Dog reminded her. ‘You don’t want to risk being caught again.’

‘I’ll be all right,’ Sinnéad assured him. ‘You stay here and look after the others.’

Hop-along hobbled over to She-la. He didn’t want to risk losing his mate either, and he wasn’t happy about the thought of her going out to hunt for him.

‘Are you sure there are no shooters in this place you speak of?’ Old Sage Brush asked Scavenger.

‘None,’ replied the little fox.

‘At least that’s something,’ said Fang. ‘What’s to stop them getting back out?’

‘Man has his ways,’ said Old Sage Brush. ‘No, I don’t like it.’

‘What don’t you like?’ asked She-la.

‘If man closes the wooden fence, you’ll be trapped,’ said the old fox. ‘Just the way Sinnéad and myself were trapped in the sand-pit.’

‘Unless,’ said Fang, ‘we could do what we do now when we dig an earth — give them another way out.’

This seemed to satisfy Old Sage Brush, and after some consideration, he nodded, saying: ‘Okay. Skulking Dog, you can go to the beech tree, and try and enlarge the hole Scavenger has made in the wire fence. Scavenger, you and the vixens can keep yourselves fresh for the raid. If the wire fence doesn’t provide a way in, at least it will give you another way out.’

The weather continued to be very changeable. A morning
that promised a touch of spring, turned cloudy and by afternoon rain was coming down steadily from a dark grey sky. Behind the green railings, the starlings flocked on to the roof of the big house and the wood pigeons sheltered in the trees. The finches and the sparrows perched on the lower branches and shuffled miserably, and in the undergrowth below them, the foxes curled up and waited.

Snuggling in beside Black Tip, Vickey now confided in her mate that she was again worried about Old Sage Brush.

‘What happens if he can’t continue?’ asked Vickey. ‘If he can’t make it back home to Beech Paw? We couldn’t go on and leave him. Hop-along’s finding the going hard too.’

‘Don’t worry yourself,’ said Black Tip. ‘The old fox is tougher than you think. As long as he can move he’ll keep going. And Hop-along will be all right. She-la has turned out to be a great strength to him.’ While saying this, Black Tip realised that Vickey’s concern about the other two also reflected a deeper and more personal concern, so he asked: ‘But what about you? Will you be all right?’

Vickey didn’t answer right away. Then she said: ‘I thought we’d be back in Beech Paw by now. Instead we’re here in man’s place. Oh, Black Tip, I don’t want our cubs to be born here.’

‘Neither do I,’ Black Tip assured her, ‘and don’t worry, they won’t. We’ll leave for Beech Paw tonight.’

Scavenger’s original intention was to go after the ducks
at gloomglow. But the heavy rain, the failing light, and their increasing hunger changed that. Man, he had noticed, didn’t like the rain, and would have gone away, leaving the place where the ducks were, deserted. Skulking Dog could now start working at the wire fence as there would be no one around there either. Later, when the giant ginger cats were bellowing for their food, and the keepers were inside getting it ready, they could move in on the ducks with safety.

Old Sage Brush agreed that this was a good plan. With a bit of luck they would have an early supper.

Soon the sounds of hungry animals could be heard clearly. It was nothing new to Scavenger, but the others had never heard anything like it before, and they found it frightening. It took Skulking Dog all the courage he could muster to continue tugging at the wire fence only a few feet from the largest ginger cat he had ever seen. Scavenger hadn’t exaggerated one little bit. Up and down its pen the huge animal prowled, great growls coming from deep down its massive throat.

Realising it wouldn’t be long now until the animals were fed, Scavenger came along to tell Skulking Dog that the time had come to make their move. Skulking Dog assured him he was making progress, and off the little fox went with the two vixens to the spot where he had made the gap in the wooden fence.

There was no one around, and Scavenger quickly hopped through. Not knowing what danger they faced inside, the
vixens hopped in too. On the other side of the fence, they followed a path until they came to a high hedge. The hedge consisted of two rows of beech, and they could see that the brown leaves of last year still clinging to it would give them the cover they needed. Following close on Scavenger’s heels, they nipped into the hedge and ran along underneath it.

The vixens also found that Scavenger hadn’t been exaggerating. There, larger than life, were horses with humps, long-necked creatures eating leaves from the tree-tops, and another with a nose that hung down to the ground. Neither the camels, the giraffes, nor indeed the elephant, spotted the visitors, and so they passed unnoticed up around the back of the elephant house. From there Scavenger led the vixens in a quick dash down towards the lakes, using the cover of any walls or hedges they could find. At one spot the vixens paused, mesmerised by the sight of large blue pheasants in a pen. They had never seen pheasants like them before.