A Black Fox Running by Brian Carter

Author:Brian Carter
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781408896150
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2017-11-30T17:53:46+00:00

WHAT THE STARS SAID

The Becca Brook was actually more of a stream than a river and it was something he could understand and relate to. There were none of the tidal races of the estuary. The little beaches of grit and pebbles were created and destroyed by floods. Below Leighon it ran under a single-arched bridge and away into the trees. Flat reaches of silence lay in shadow and wherever the sky intruded the depths were honeycombed with sunlight.

Stargrief had left the river to meditate and sit on the hilltop night after night while the stars sang to him. Approaching the old dog fox at times like this was quite useless, although Wulfgar fumed with impatience.

‘For Tod’s sake get going,’ he muttered.

His nose was pressed to the brown sheaths of the rushes. The wind having gathered the scents of many flowers raked the water and made it shimmer.

But Stargrief took his time. From the darkness came the whistle of a curlew. The blood curdled into images behind his eyes and across the plain the golden animals ran, calling his name down the ages.

The restlessness would not be shaken off, and as soon as Wulfgar thought of Teg he did something wild – like jumping in the river or leaping up at songbirds or baiting fitches. And it took nerve to worry a stoat who was guarding a family of kits. Chivvy-yick and his tribe would have ripped the fox’s throat out given half the chance, but like all the creatures on Dartmoor he was busy keeping his young alive.

For Wulfgar a visit to Emsworthy was too painful to endure. Time had not tarnished the vision of her running over the frosty grass, moon-silvered and eternally young.

One morning he left the ponds and stood for a while by the wall. The dog roses were blooming in hedges all down the road from Haytor Vale to Liverton, and although rain had fallen it was not enough to please the farmers. Now the fine, hot weather was back and the swallows were climbing high to attack the swarms of winged insects, and Wulfgar was happy. He dropped his head and tugged at his chest fur before moving off at the trot.

The moor had covered places where men had once worshipped animal gods. From Hamel Down the haze was setting hard like a far-off island and the hills swam into distances of heat. He had tried to reach them before, but they had retreated to reassemble on another horizon. Always there were the hills like waves that would never break, and he ached for that far-away place sunk in silence.

Slowly the shadows of the megaliths crept across the heather towards him. He lay on the sun-dried lichen watching a tiger beetle scuttle over the stone by his front paws to hide under a leaf of hart’s tongue fern. The burring of the honey bees was comforting and summery. About his head hoverflies foraged through the slow drift of sunlight. Less than half a dozen

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