Oakwing by E. J. Clarke

Author:E. J. Clarke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin

* Chapter Nine *

A WHITE FOX AND A BLACK FEATHER

The rain had stopped, but the dampness left behind made them feel cold in the clear moonlit night. They had built a little shelter out of the sticks and were huddled together for warmth. Aiken had kept a few sticks back and was sharpening one against the other.

“Enjoying that?” asked Olor, shivering slightly.

“You might think sharpening sticks is boring, Featherwing,” said Aiken, holding the point of a stick up to admire his handiwork, “but we’ll see who’s laughing when the foxes come after us next time.”

Rowan was more worried about their absent friend. “Shouldn’t Harold be back by now?”

“He may be a stuck-in-his-ways, sort of dull, annoyingly-always-right kind of bird,” said Aiken, “but he pretty much always does what he says he’s going to do.”

Just then they heard a small splash in the distance, and then another.

“What was that?” asked Olor.

“It’s probably just ducks,” said Aiken.

Rowan wasn’t so sure. She hurried down to the water’s edge to see where the noise was coming from. Dark shapes were moving in the water by the opposite bank.

“Harold did say foxes couldn’t swim, right?” Rowan asked.

“No more than you can,” replied Olor.

Aiken joined her at the shore.

“Then I guess they can’t be foxes,” said a worried-sounding Aiken.

Olor sprang to her feet to come alongside them. Sure enough, there were foxes in the water, headed directly for them. More of the creatures swarmed behind them.

“They’ve been pacing up and down for hours,” said Olor, starting to panic. “And now they decide they can swim.”

“Let’s get up into the trees,” said Rowan.

The fairies’ wings made an urgent harmonic sound as they lifted up into the branches of one of the trees on the island.

“Come on, Cyggy,” shouted Olor down to the swan below them. “You can do it.”

Cygnus was flapping her great wings, but they weren’t strong enough to get her into the sky. Olor looked at Rowan and shook her head.

“Okay, we’ll have to stop them before they get here,” shouted Rowan as she sprang from her branch. Her wings worked hard as she sped through the air toward the foxes’ bobbing heads. She was soon joined by Olor and Aiken, and they buzzed around the foxes like angry wasps, darting in and out. One fox became hypnotized by them for long enough that it was carried away by the current. The other foxes weren’t so easily distracted, and kept heading straight toward the island. Rowan and her friends whipped around and flew back to their shelter. Aiken picked up his sharpened twigs and ran to the shore.

“Come on, then, furballs!” he yelled, holding his sticks at the ready, though his legs were shaking.

Olor and Rowan hovered above him, pulling berries off nearby bushes and throwing them like baseball pitchers at the foxes’ heads, making them growl. The first fox to reach the bank rose ominously out of the river, the water slicking off its back. The creature fixed Aiken with its beady gaze as it shook off the droplets, then slowly prowled closer and closer.

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