The Fox Woman

1. KITSUNE’S DIARY
 
 
There were four of us.
Grandfather was an old fox, of perhaps eight or nine years. Gray ran along his narrow jaw and in a broad streak from his black nose to between his black-tipped ears; it frosted his pelt so that he seemed almost outlined in gray light. His joints stiffened on cold wet days, and he liked to doze in the spring sunlight when he could. He was missing a toe on one of his front paws. When I was little and first realized he didn’t have the same toes I had, I asked him why, and he told me a tanuki-badger bit it off, but I think he was teasing. He was like that.
Mother was simple, even for a fox. My brother and I watched her sometimes catch and lose a mouse a half-dozen times before she remembered to bite it while she still had her paws on it. We were amazed sometimes that she had survived long enough to bear us.
Fortunately, the place where we lived was thick with mice and chipmunks ... read full excerpt from The Fox Woman ebook