The Fox of Richmond Park by Kate Dreyer

Author:Kate Dreyer [Kate Dreyer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Unbound
Published: 2017-08-30T16:00:00+00:00

9

The sky above the building site was aglow with lilac, pink and orange, the sun’s early morning greeting burning the clouds away to wisps. Despite the approaching daylight, Laurie remained at Vince’s side, babbling softly into his ear.

He was fading in and out of consciousness, but the mention of Rita had stirred him enough to give her hope. The rise and fall of his chest was almost imperceptible, but it was there. She had cleaned his wounds as best she could and the blood had stalled, crusts now beginning to form around the small perforations in his neck. A few blinks longer in Blake’s grip and he would have suffocated. Like Bonnie. He’d lost a lot of blood, though, and the fight had drained the very last of his strength. But if she could just keep him from drifting away…

Bailey and Blake had gone. They’d sat with Bonnie for a while, quietly grieving together, before saying their final goodbyes and leaving her body where it lay. Humans buried their dead with a tall stone slab – creating the cemeteries that gave the animals some of their safest, quietest homes – but other animals had their own rituals. Rabbits prayed that their departed would go into the afterlife, an endless field of grass, to be cared for eternally by Frith, their sun god. Foxes, like many animals, had no afterlife or god – Mother Nature was not a god, but the earth itself – and believed only that the dead returned to the earth, to be reborn into the world as Mother Nature saw fit. Once Bonnie turned to dust, she could become grass or air, an acorn or frogspawn. That was why animals killed only to eat, or defend themselves or their family. Their ancestors were a part of everything around them.

Generations of stories didn’t stop some from forgetting, or ignoring, that, though. Selfishness was a new trait, learned from humans who took what they wanted from nature without giving anything in return, and passed down as young grew up around the busy city, where cars, trains, traps and meaningless slaughter taught them that they had to do whatever it took to survive.

The triplets were perhaps the worst of the afflicted, as if a diseased blood coursed through their veins. The swan at the wetlands too, confused by the humans’ artificial barrier, driven to destroy anything that threatened his sanctuary. Laurie was not immune, either. That was why she’d killed Frank. Not for nourishment, or safety, but to prove her strength to a stranger. A stranger she’d thought weak for protesting at the death of a harmless goose. A stranger who, she now realised, was stronger than her in every way.

That stranger was now beside her, taking what might be his final breaths, someone who, in the short time she’d known him, had shown nothing but compassion to the animals around him. Even those out to kill him.

Yet, he was the one suffering, not her.

She spoke to him as he

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