Red Foxes, Part Five

Final revision for my portfolio of my short story, Red Foxes. I wrote it as fiction but am quite tempted to make it a fantasy.

Day thirty-one found Quinn standing on the bridge, staring into the waters depths intently as her reflection distorted with the ripples caused by the fish below. It had been a slow process, but the day after the little girl had talked to her, she’d slowly made her way onto the bridge. Then Lisa had called and she’d run off, only to find herself returning the next day, and the next, and the next. Leaning against the barrier, Quinn sighed, restless but content to stand and watch the fish. No silver koi, no wish, and no answer.

“Hello there lady. It’s a little hot out today, care for a drink?”

An elderly balding man with swarthy skin and an easy smile stood watching her, offering a sealed bottle of Dasani water. He had graying hair and his face held more wrinkles than a prune, but there was a charm to his appearance, and it wasn’t the fact that he still dressed well for a man of fifty-six. Slacks, a belt, and a button-down shirt, proper shoes and socks were a given. He had foregone the necktie today. A smile tugged at the corner of her lips as she dipped her head in response, hands reaching for the water she was offered. He moved to stand next to her, staring across the water at the other bridges, and the few people who’d decided to brave the day’s heat to see the fish.

“So, do you know yet? What your wish is?”

“I haven’t found a Silver Koi yet Frank, I can’t wish until I find it.”

“How do you know? Maybe the fish only comes when it knows you have your wish ready.”

“How do you know I don’t know what I want to wish for?”

“Because you’re here again. You’ve been here every day for the month of May. If you knew what you wanted from the fish, you wouldn’t still be here staring at them would you?”

She smiled and raised her bottled water, conceding to his point. He’d approached her the second week she’d come, striking up a conversation in a blunt fashion, inquiring as to what drove her to come every single day. Surprisingly, she hadn’t minded at all, and now it was his habit to drop by every other day to chat with her for a couple of hours. They spent most of the time reminiscing, but occasionally, he would start off conversations like this, hitting close to home and waiting for an answer she didn’t know how to give. Quinn took a swig from the bottle, returning her eyes to the Koi, which had swarmed in hopes of food being dropped. Frank pulled a piece of rye bread wrapped in a paper towel out of his shirt pocket, crumbled it up, and dropped it into the water.

“So what’s the story of today’s pretty scarf?”

His voice jolted her out of her daydream, making the blurring orange and white fish suddenly clear.

“Today’s scarf…?”

She fingered the navy blue gauzy material, small rhinestones glittering across the surface, silver dragonflies embroidered amidst the stones. Frank had also had a relaxing effect on her, besides the talking. She found she’d told him more than she’d ever told Lisa Stone, and was never bothered by this fact for a moment. He was a widowed man, and having lost his wife had also lost his two kids to the world of business. Quinn was perhaps a stranger to act as a long-lost daughter for him, she found herself wondering what he had been like as a father.

“It was winter. Cold. We were expecting the first snow soon. She wanted to go for a drive, and decided to have me skip school. Like when we went to the beaches, only no on in their right mind went to the beach in winter, so I didn’t know where she wanted to go. She’d rented a black convertible for the day, left the top down. We went for a drive. It was nice. I was terrified.”

“Where did you go?”

“I don’t know. Down some back roads, out of the city. She always did like driving fast… less cops outside the city. She wanted to drive fast that day, too fast. I remember she was wearing this scarf, and she looked beautiful. Scary and beautiful. Her eyes were wild, they had that look in them, the look I’d come to be afraid of, even though it meant she was happy. I wanted to hug her and make everything stay still.”

Frank stayed mercifully silent throughout, he was a good like that, unlike Lisa who always peppered her with questions. Frank understood that silence was all she wanted.

“It started to snow while we were driving. Mom wanted to catch the snow on her tongue. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back. She forgot to hit the brakes though. We went off road. I don’t remember much beyond the fear that we were going to die. I remember the relief when I realized we weren’t dead, but the car was a wreck and we were in a ditch. She was okay, but she was talking to herself when they came to help us. I kept asking them if she was okay, and they told me she was fine, just some minor injuries. Do you know what she was asking about, Frank?”

The old man shook his head, watching Quinn’s face as she doggedly stared in the water.

“Foxes. If they’d seen any red foxes. She said one had run across the road right before she lost control of the car. She didn’t mention the snowflakes, or the speeding, or even ask about me. When they let us go home, she cried on the couch, cursing the foxes for ruining her day out. I waited until she fell asleep to go to my bed and cry. We almost died, and all she could talk about was those damn foxes. There was no fox Frank, at least, that’s what I used to think.”

“And now?”

“I can’t tell if I really see them, or if I’ve just listened to her talk about them for so long that I’ve made them real.”

Frank pulled a cigarette out of his pocket, placing it against his lips but not lighting it. He’d quit smoking twenty years ago, but had never quite been able to get rid of the craving for the stick on his lips.

“Do you want them to be real?”

Quinn laced her fingers together and stared at her palms. Did she want the foxes to be real? Her memories said they only caused pain, and yet their images still clung to her mind. She couldn’t let go of them, like she couldn’t let go of the scarves. Frank sighed, removing the cigarette from between his lips and walking to the trash at the end of the bridge to throw it away.

“You know lady,” he said quietly, “the silver koi legend wasn’t originally that it granted you a wish. Originally, when it first went around, it was that the silver koi would show you the direction to take to find out what you really wanted. Kind of like a guide. The idea was that if the Koi showed you where to go, by the time you got where you needed to be, you would know exactly what you wanted.”

He lifted his hand and waved good-bye, leaving her to stare in the water. A strong breeze gusted up from the east, sending waves of blessed coolness down her back. Turning away from the water, she ducked her head as another gust came through the park, this time the chill hit her exposed neck. Quinn gasped as the scarf that had been loosely draped across the back of her neck lifted up and away, twisting as it fell into the water of the pond, the material darkening with water as fish attacked it.

A moment of shock held her frozen before she dropped to her knees, desperately fishing for the silken scarf. Her fingertips brushed it once, twice, three times before she managed to get a firm hold of it and pull it out. It was soaking wet and smelly from having landed in pond scum, suddenly looking ages older and significantly less shiny. She stared at the scarf, as it lay like a limp dead animal in her hand, the breeze no longer able to disturb its wet weight. Quinn mournfully looked at the scarf, then upwards as a lone red fox sauntered across the bridge, stopping to dip its paws in the water next to her. Paying her no mind, the fox suddenly lunged forward, making no sound as it batted a single fish out of the water into its waiting jaws. The scales were silver and gleamed brightly as the fish flopped about in-between its teeth. The fox turned its dark eyes on Quinn, and then slowly padded away, shaking the water out of its paws in a comical fashion as it walked.

Slowly, she rocked back onto her bottom, letting her legs hang over the side of the bridge as she rested the still-damp scarf on her knee.

“Silver koi would show me the way, huh?”

She whispered the words to no one in particular as she pulled out her pay-as-you-go phone, and dialed a quick number. It rang once. Then three times. Then five. Finally, someone at the other end picked up.

“Dr. Stone’s office, this is Linda speaking can I help you?”

“Hi Linda, this is Quinn Falleden. Is there any way you could schedule me in for next Wednesday? I’ll be in town and I figured I’d stop by…”

Author's Note

Any and all help and critique is loved.