The Progeny of Able (The Burrow of London Series Book 1) Read online

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  The flaming liquid plunged down the drain sweeping even deeper into the earth. It turned corner upon corner and curve upon curve until it came to the end of the pipe and dripped and streaked brightly across a dark void before slipping into another older pipe. This pipe was silver and crept along a hall which led into a room and finally, after a long circuitous journey, the flame of oil burst with a sputter from an ornate nozzle fashioned at the top of an equally ornate orb.

  Causing a momentary brightening of the room, Gremian jumped and raised his head to look at the light faintly flickering from the crack in the wall behind him. As he did so he withdrew the bloodied sword clenched between his jaws which he had plunged into the heart of the Chairman of the Council. Confused for a moment, the old fox wheezing his last breath below, Gremian approached the broken wall in what had been the royal audience chamber. Baring his brown teeth and squinting his one good eye he peered into the crack and was surprised to see a hidden room behind the one he was in. He watched the wavering flame and allowed himself to become mesmerized by it. Suddenly he felt a great rush of foreboding and, as the old fox died behind him, he let out a slow, low and nervous growl.

  Chapter Four

  Five years earlier...

  The rubbish heap gave off a particular odour of meat and metal in the summer heat, one that only added to the general stench of the landfill. Hill upon rolling hill of trash and decomposition undulated to the horizon and greeted the clear moon with a passing wind of foulness. What a place to go shopping, thought Roe.

  Scanning the landscape below through the single lens of a broken pair of binoculars, the young fox carefully tracked several bulldozers pushing a new pile of trash down the ridge of the far hill. Lights from the night crew created a lens flare too bright for his sensitive eyes and he needed to look away frequently, forcing him to re-adjust the telescope with his chin. Shifting the unwieldy and stiff motorcycle saddlebags he was carrying, he managed to insert his rear paw behind his ear for a much needed scratch.

  “Better not be the fleas again,” he said to himself, remembering the dozen or so times he had needed to break into a veterinary clinic for the necessary medication. He could not understand why they never bothered his uncle. “If you ignore them, they'll ignore you,” the old fox had advised him years ago. Well, he had tried the zen approach and they still seemed to revel in setting up camp amongst his fur and nibbling away. It was almost as if he had offended them in some way.

  Relaxing the saddlebags back into position he crouched again behind the upright binoculars, pushing the two short stacks of newspaper closer together to keep them from falling over. He went back to work keeping a close eye out for anything useful he could sprint down and grab before it was buried by the next load. This was dangerous work, but the Hantsa shifted and processed the waste so quickly there was little chance to find anything of value any other way. They never stopped and there was never a break. New Hantsa came and went regularly but the machine of waste never rested. Shaking his head he marvelled at the amount of refuse being delivered and thought to himself that the Hantsa must keep nothing. Theirs' is a disposable world. In fact, he had little interest in how they lived. Like most foxes, Roe viewed the Hantsa with a nervous fascination and distrust. A creature you viewed with brief wonderment when you saw them flitting about loudly on the street at night. No fox had any desire to enter a house or ride in a car unless life and limb was at stake. Most of all, the world of the Hantsa, the handed ones, was a terrifying and dangerous place for a Fox.

  Returning his focus to the pulsating river of objects, his excellent night vision allowed him to see the detail of every shard as it passed through his field of vision. It was hard to say exactly what he was looking for. The needs of the Foxes are fairly specific and the vast majority of human waste was rubbish to them as well.

  Suddenly, he saw the flash of steel from a pair of scissors before it tumbled and was enveloped by a frothing mass of rubbish. Before his mind registered what he had seen, his legs had sent him leaping into the air. They tucked in behind him tightly and sent him in two great bounds down the side of the hill. Weaving back and forth, he dodged the precarious falling rubble, narrowly leaping over a porcupine pile of broken glass, sliding for a moment on the overturned side of a large champagne bottle, hopping left and right between a short valley of abandoned shopping trolleys, all the while keeping a close eye on the trajectory of the scissors. There was a brief pause in the rumble from above as the next load was being gathered.

  The waste was like clockwork, always a couple of minutes in between the loads, and Roe relaxed when he saw the scissors sticking upright in the side of a plastic suitcase. Scrambling over the debris he was on the verge of grabbing it in his jaws when he heard the tell tale beep directly above him. There must have been a loaded dump truck waiting behind the first, he thought. The ground began to rumble and the garbage to shake around him as the wave of trash came tumbling down the side. Giving the handle several tugs the scissors finally slid free just as a large television came into his field of vision from above. Diving to the side, he did a somersault as the glass and plastic monster crashed into the suitcase, breaking it in half, the two objects continuing down the hill in a violent rain of glass.

  He grunted, and as he half fled and half fell down the slope trying to escape, a diverse mix of projectiles rained down from above. But it was too late. He was swept up into a wave of bent and twisted soup cans and sent tail over snout down the side of the hill. He writhed amongst the muck with flashes of the clear night sky being marred by a whirling mix of plastic flakes and dead fish. His life screamed by, and he was briefly disappointed to realize it was almost entirely filled with moments just like this. Suddenly, he was miraculously thrown free and bent snout first into the base of the opposite hill.

  Rolling onto his back he lay there, breathing the hot night air, covered in filth, with the scissors still clutched between his jaws. Unbelievably, he had escaped the shards of broken glass, the crushing chunks of metal, and being buried alive in the trash-slide. He started to laugh as he groggily glanced at the variety of things surrounding him. A trickle of blood snaked down his forehead and dripped from his snout into the dirt.

  Rolling up off the ground, he staggered for a moment disoriented, checked the scratch on his head, then shook it to clear his vision. He dropped the scissors to examine them and immediately smiled, his brush with death forgotten. It was worth it. Large textile scissors of good quality and very hard to come by lay before him. Once the two halves were separated the single ring handle was a perfect fit between the jaws and the sharp edge of the blade was ideal for defence or for more functional purposes around the burrow. Besides, it was a two-for-one find and could be shared with Shon. His swordsmanship training had been limited to lengths of wood and he was hoping this find would inspire his uncle to allow him a more deadly weapon.

  Tucking the scissors into one of the bags, he craned his neck to look up the steep slope at the Hantsa working in bright yellow uniforms. The great grey eye of the moon looked widely down on them from above. Off to the side, near a safety railing one of them coughed as he exhaled the fumes from one of their burning sticks. As the man leaned on the metal barrier he rubbed the thing out along the glistening metal before tossing it down the side of hill towards Roe. Before he turned to return to his work the Hantsa saw the small Fox standing below. They were a common enough sight and he stared at Roe with glossy unfocused eyes. But, as soon as he dismissed the animal from his mind the picture of it came back to him and he was sure that that picture had been wearing something. He spun around and strained to see in the dusty light but the animal was gone.

  Roe decided he'd had enough scrounging for one night and followed the weaving track between the drifts of rubbish towards home. Besides, one brush with death is enough for one day, he thought to himself.

  Even though the sun was down it was unseasonably hot and he couldn't wait to free his keen sense of smell from th
e constant pounding odour of the landfill. He could see as if it was the middle of a bright sunny day by the clear light of the full moon and hardly needed to slow to pass under the security fence and through the dirt trench he had dug years before. He was immediately enveloped by the gently swaying branches of the immense woodland that surrounded the dumping ground and quickly began to relax. Finding a nearly invisible hole amongst a large hedge of holly, Roe passed through it into a gully and followed a curving path along a small river. The smell began to fade as well as the sharp barks of the Hantsa and their machines. Stopping for a moment in a small clearing, he thrust his snout into the cool water and took a long drink. His throat was parched and his mouth cracked and crusty. It had been many hours since he last drank. Dehydration was especially dangerous but hard to avoid given the limited supply of clean fresh water. This particular stream was fed by a spring away from the Hantsa villages and their waste. It was the main reason his uncle had decided to settle here fifteen years earlier.

  He leapt onto the squat sandy shore on the opposite bank and continued along the river for another mile before diving into yet another hole just wide enough for him and his pack. Shuffling through the dark tunnel, he struggled in places where it narrowed but expertly avoided getting stuck by twisting quickly when it turned vertical in front of him. He burst out of the ground on the top of a soft grassy mound and looked behind him. He had passed below a long imposing fence placed there by the Hantsa, a cliff of heavy stone and a series of dense thorn bushes he and his uncle had spent many years cultivating. He turned back and headed down the slope towards the little valley below, thankful that they were completely inaccessible and safe from view from anyone passing below, Hantsa or otherwise. It was their valley and had been his home all his life. Welling up from the centre, the spring formed a focal point for their small community of exiles and the numerous ancient Hantsa burial mounds, surrounding, had been adapted into the perfect dens.

  According to his uncle they had displaced the remains of many Hantsa when they first began excavating the mounds. His uncle felt that this would bring them bad luck and all of the bones were carefully moved deeper into the earth. Now they were careful not to dig too deep but to make their burrows into a ring within the outer edges of the mounds.

  Just as he was thinking how they were spending considerable time in burrows with the hot weather, he felt a sudden presence to the right and above him. His body instantly fell into a graceful poise dictated by years of training. Relaxing he gave off no scent or physical indication that he had detected the fox following him. His senses crackling he heard the slight shuffle of fur on fur followed by the subtle groan of a bending blade of grass and finally the wind passing between his attacker's ears. He rolled onto his back and acted as a spring board to the body falling on top of him. He pushed and the other Fox spun through the air landing down the mound several feet in front of him. Charging with teeth bared, Roe waited until the lunge brought the fox to within a whisker-width of his throat before shifting his weight to the side, deflecting the attack aggressively off his shoulder. He continued along the trail sighing with disappointment at the unskilled attacker. A sharp call and the sloppy patter of paws indicated to him that the game was going to continue. Feeling the fox jump once again, Roe stopped, then reversed suddenly under the flying arch. He grabbed the sensitive tail in his teeth and slammed his attacker to the ground as gently as he could. Just to put the finishing touch on the fight, he drew the newly acquired pair of scissors out of his pouch and pressed the point to the throat of the small fox clambering in the dirt.

  “Roe! Sorry, I thought you might be invading. Wow, where did you get those?”

  “Mayda, who or what would possibly want to invade our little village? You saw me leave through the same hole eight hours ago. Didn't you think it was probably me on my way back?”

  “Well of course I did at first, then I gave you a whiff from a distance and you didn't smell like you...you smelled more like the place where we....”

  “Yeah okay, I get it,” he interrupted before putting the knife away releasing the petite vixen from the weight of his paws. “You know, you've improved but only a little over the past year. If you want to best me you are going to need to put on a little more weight and start practising more instead of continually hunting for berries.”

  “Or maybe if you allowed me to go to the dump with you?”

  “It's too dangerous and even if you didn't get killed you'd probably only bring back useless trinkets.”

  “Wow, you really stink. You are completely smeared in trash. I don't even know what that is on your shoulder. Why don't you bathe downstream before you come back? Do you want foxes to think you've got the mange? If I come back smelling like you or even looking like you...I guess I don't want to go.”

  “Thanks, Mayda,” he responded, pushing the saddlebags into her ribs. “Here, for now you can help by taking my pack. There are a few other useful bits and pieces in there you can drop off at the potlatch but the scissors I'm keeping.”

  “They are nice but you know Shon will never let you train with them,” she said with a smile, knowing perfectly well what he hoped to use them for. “You've already hurt two of your fighting partners with sticks. They'd be dead if you used one of those.”

  “Just take the packs and let me worry about Shon.”

  “Of course darling, I'm happy to.” she sarcastically sighed.

  They trotted together past the spring and just before the young vixen turned to drop off the treasure in the communal mound she said with a bold smile, “You know it hurt when you bit my tail but I didn't mind when you jumped on me and if you take a bath I may even dance with you tomorrow night during the festival.”

  Then she spun back and shouted facing away from him, “See you later, Roe.” Flicking her tail from side to side, as the saddlebags swung between her jaws, she disappeared behind a tuft of grass.

  Roe watched her go, then turned away remembering how she had come to their village just a few years earlier. The remnants of her starving family had survived an unusually harsh and cold winter only to have died within a week of arriving. She was alone and she was young and he knew she had a crush on him. But Roe could not help but be unconcerned with the vixens amongst their small population. At sixteen Roe wanted nothing but to continue fighting. He'd already bested all of the foxes his age as well as those older in the training ring. Only his uncle Shon remained and he knew he wasn't far off from beating him as well. What he really wanted was a challenge, he thought, as he swung the scissors in the air, something more than this village will ever have to offer.

  Shon's mound was situated to the side but higher than the rest, indicating his status as elder and the leader of the skulk. The blue moonlight wreathed it in a pool of soft colour and he could hear the cadenced chant of his uncle at prayer as if the dead Hantsa had been resurrected beneath.

  Pawing at the ground near the entrance as was the custom before entering another burrow, he heard the chanting pause briefly.

  “Roe, please come in.”

  Entering the tunnel Roe placed the scissors on the floor near the door. A guest, especially the guest of an elder, never brought a weapon across the threshold of a host's den. He looked at the smoothly packed dirt walls and floor and at his uncle facing away leaning over a book open on a low marble dais. Around the inner wall a single copper tube was mounted, swerving along the corridor out of view. Wicks protruded from the pipe at regular intervals only one of which was lit producing a thin oily flame. The amber glow made the room cozy and welcoming.

  “First there was Able and then there were many and all were ruled beneath the Art.”

  Roe listened to the traditional prayer without interrupting. His uncle's voice was deep like the legendary elders of old. Not many developed the voice of command as Shon had done, he thought, and few lived so long these days.

  “You've been to the piles today? No you don't need to answer. I think anyone could smell that you had
. Did I not specifically ask you to stay away for a few weeks and especially as we approached the day of the festival?”

  “You did, uncle.”

  “Then why did you go?”

  “Uncle, I think I am old enough to see what is safe and what isn't. Shon's Spring is getting low on supplies and since the rest of the skulk would never go against your command it falls to me. Don't you understand that I deserve more from you besides unjustified restriction after restriction? Why couldn't I go? Why have you been getting so tense these past weeks?”

  Roe stopped, he hadn't intended to start an argument this quickly. He wanted to speak to his uncle as grown fox to grown fox. Shon remained turned away from him, waiting.

  “I'm sorry Shon, but I didn't do any harm, and look what I found,” he said indicting to the scissors outside the door, “I was as secretive as ever. I saw nothing but what I always see. Piles of trash and those same empty green woods.”

  Shon glanced at the pair of scissors, then back to Roe.

  “You think you see. You see nothing Roe. You can't see the beauty plain in front of your eyes. All you see is a lack of opportunity and a violent end. You've risked all of us today.”

  “How? Maybe if you shared some of the burden of whatever you are protecting us from we would all be safer and you could be happy for once. Maybe you would be surprised. Even by me.”

  “My burden was never meant to be shared, nor was the secret of where we live. Roe, when we came to this place fifteen years ago you were only a pup and it was just us. It was meant to remain that way. Somehow word has got out and as other exiles arrived I couldn't turn them away. Everything has been a balance. Your exposure to other foxes born in the Light of London has been good for you, for your spirit, but it comes at a great risk.”

  “What risk uncle? I don't understand I've spent the last sixteen years of my life doing what you say. I've never asked about your past or London or other Foxes. I've never asked about my parents...”