Scary Stories for Young Foxes by Christian McKay Heidicker

Author:Christian McKay Heidicker
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

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The swamp grew darker—stranger than before. The trees stretched to great, tangled heights, their twisted branches nearly touching the sky before plummeting toward an algae moon that rippled on black waters.

Uly stopped to catch his breath. Mist coiled around his paws.

“Mia?” he whispered.

His voice was lost beneath the chanting of frogs.

El-dirtch.

El-dirtch.

El-dirtch.

In his darkest moments, Uly feared he’d never left the crack. That everything that had come since—the forest, the furless terror, this swamp—were all part of the same nightmare. He was afraid that his life in the Boulder Fields had been nothing more than a dream he would never have again.

“Mia!” he called, slightly louder.

There came a ruffling from above. He looked up and found a bone-white bird perched on the mossy limb of a cypress tree. Black stripes banded the bird’s eyes. Spiny feathers jutted out the back of its head. Its neck was as coiled as a snake.

“Um, excuse me?” Uly whispered.

He wasn’t sure if a bird of the swamp would be able to understand a fox of the stones, but he was willing to try.

“Ms. Bird?” Uly whispered again.

The bird’s neck uncoiled, and she tilted a yellow eye down at him.

“Did you see a fox come this way? A fox like … me?”

The bird stared. Then it slowly recoiled its neck and pointed its bill toward a hole in the canopy. There, a solitary star glowed strange and red in the sky.

“She went … that way?” he asked.

The bird just stared and pointed. The star flickered.

“Okay,” Uly whispered. “Um, thank you.”

He followed the star, and the way grew easier. The ground was slimy but solid, and protected by a tunnel of cattails. The star provided the only light, bathing the tunnel in a bloody hue. Uly hadn’t hopped far when he saw a tail bobbing ahead.

“Mia!” he called, relief tingling through him. “I’m sorry about what I said. My sisters told me about the yellow. And they lied all the time. So yeah, um, sorry.”

The tail continued to move through the darkness.

“I’m sure your siblings are fine,” he said, trying to catch up. “They probably just—hey, will you slow down a second?”

The tail exited the cattail tunnel and came to a halt.

As Uly drew closer, the tail dulled gray, developing stripes in the strange starlight.

“M-Mia?”

He froze. This was not Mia’s tail. Not Mia’s tail at all. Before he could even hiccup, the tail’s owner whirled, reared up on its hind paws, and screamed.

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