Tooth and Claw

(after Concerto for Guitar and Small Orchestra by Heitor Villa-Lobos) 

An old condor descended from the clouds, gliding smoothly on the wind above a forest canopy. As he stared down into the blanket of green, something caught his eye; a small orange spot flashed through holes in the foliage, veered off, and disappeared. 

Below, a little fox slowed, then turned in her tracks. She crept softly over fallen pine needles and through shadowy undergrowth, approaching the base of a dome-shaped hill. She slunk with her snout close to the ground, sniffing. Her white-tipped tail flicked skyward for a moment, then straightened out behind her. 

Treasure glinted seven yards above her; a long-legged rabbit with silvery-bronze fur sat mesmerized in a sunbeam that touched down on the hilltop. He bit a leaf off a shrub and munched it idly in the warmth of the light. 

The fox inched forward, listening for a faint rustling. She made her way slowly around the periphery of the hill, sneaking counterclockwise up its grassy slope. A gentle breeze swept through, lifting the scent of incense cedars and scattering dry leaves across the forest floor. 

A half-chewed leaf dropped from the rabbit’s open mouth. His wet, black nose twitched, and his long ears perked up and swiveled outwards. 

The unexpected snap of a dead branch jolted the fox prematurely into action. Her swiping claw grazed the rabbit’s ear as he dove into shrubbery and scurried downhill. She twisted around mid-stride and scrambled after him. 

He heard her crashing through the vegetation and, in desperation, leapt into a thick wall of undergrowth. Here, he found that he could deftly navigate the darkness, slipping through gaps in the thicket that were too narrow for his pursuer. 

She raged after him, tearing through weeds and brambles. Thorns and burrs snagged and stuck on her brownish-orange fur. Hunger drove her onward even as the rabbit widened his lead. Bounding over large stones and logs brought her momentary, futile gains. The rabbit’s scent faded. The rustling of his footsteps was drowned out by the wind and a dissonant chorus of songbirds. 

Frustrated, she emerged from the undergrowth above an unrecognizable field of jagged tree stumps, muddy tracks, and mounds of dead grass. Much of the ground was blackened, and a stench of decay tainted the air. Frail patches of crabgrass, dandelions, and bull thistle had begun to grow from the debris. She stepped cautiously around the stumps as if arboreal spirits might awaken and rise angrily from their deathbeds. 

A recent storm had washed much of the soot and grime down to the far end of the meadow. There, under the shade of some fir trees, a small stream had become clogged. Murky water had spilled over the bank and collected in shallow pools. 

Tiny paw prints dotted the mud where forest critters had lapped at the puddles. It seemed a fine spot to catch a meal. She crouched behind a split in some moss-covered boulders jutting out from the forest’s edge. From this vantage point, she could see if anything approached the puddles. 

After a while, clouds obscured the sun and released a light drizzle. Seeing no signs of prey, she abandoned the hunt and curled up beside a cluster of gray toadstools to clean herself. She nibbled at her fur, removing burrs and plant debris, then tended to a few minor scratches on her legs. 

As her tongue rubbed over the bumps of an old scar on her hind leg, she remembered the day she smelled her own blood for the first time. 

* * *  

On that day, she’d woken to claps of thunder without any rain. Smoke stained the air. Her family was being driven out of their den. She was struck, then seized by her hind legs, but her mother bit the assailant so hard that he lost his grip. She broke away and ran into the depths of the forest. 

Two nights passed before she gathered enough courage to return to the burrow. The stench of gun smoke had faded, but she couldn’t find her family. Every morning, the little fox laid a mouse in the empty den for her mother. But when night came, she found the mouse uneaten. 

Long ago, the burrow had been taken over by raccoons, and the little fox had grown into an adult and moved on, but memories of the old den often returned to her in moments of weariness. 

 * * * 

Her eyes flicked open to find the sun behind her, illuminating the comb-like leaflets of a large fern. Wind howled through the trees and brought faraway scents. With each sniff, her body tensed. She poked her head out from the side of the boulders and scanned the nearby forest. Finding nothing unusual, she turned nervously towards the high end of the meadow. 

A man in a fur cap and buckskins stood statuesque on the hilltop, surveying the area with one hand shielding his eyes from the sun. Barking broke the silence. A pack of hounds leapt out from the foliage behind the man, their raucous bellows echoing across the wilderness. They ran straight past him and raced down the hill. 

The fox darted into an expanse of spread-out pines beside the water, searching frantically for open ground to gain momentum. She ran upstream to the source of the flow and, hoping to shake off her scent, dove into the river. 

The chorus of canines grew louder as she paddled, her paws scraping through a slimy layer of algae. Breathing heavily, she climbed out at the far bank and headed for higher ground. The lead dog arrived on the other side and splashed in after her. 

Tallgrass gave way to rocky ground and steep hills. Here, her heavy pursuers would surely struggle to keep up. The higher elevation would hasten her escape. 

The hillsides were covered in chaparral shrubs, and stones of various sizes protruded from dry earth. Halfway up the first hill, she began to feel a light burning sensation in her legs, but the incessant yapping of the dogs kept her moving. She lost her footing several times, and rocks broke loose and tumbled down the slope. 

She stopped to rest at the plateau atop the hill. It was darkened by the long shadow of a larger plateau to the northeast. The landform resembled a massive misshapen tree stump, a stepping-stone to the mountain beyond. 

Even if she were to catch a second wind, there were no safe escape routes. To reach the higher plateau, she’d have to negotiate a treacherously steep ravine. She looked down into the chasm; the bottom was obscured by gnarled bushes and knobby trees jutting out from the cliff wall. 

She turned back to the path she’d just climbed; the two largest dogs were waiting on a ledge some forty meters below, unable to continue the risky ascent. Three smaller dogs had passed them and were on their way up. Judging by how they maneuvered the slope, they wouldn’t be thwarted so easily. 

She paced around the far end of the plateau, then stood near the edge, squinting into the wind that snaked through the chasm. For a moment, the gusts slowed. Beneath her raspy panting, she heard the thumping of her heart. 

She shut her eyes, and memories of the forest bubbled up in her mind. She heard the haunting screech of a wounded barn owl as she cornered it in the depths of a swamp. Felt the twitch of a mouse’s fragile legs as it went limp in the grip of her claws. Saw the blur of the elusive rabbit whose stride was elegant and purposeful. His savory smell still lingered in her memory, and saliva dripped from her open mouth. 

Then her eyes widened, and she spun around, tail poking up like an exclamation point. The head of a small black dog peered over the far side of the plateau, growling softly. The fox arched her body and took a step back, her puffed tail lashing wildly. 

Now she was the rabbit. Without a second thought, she stepped to the edge, aimed herself towards the nearest ledge, and leapt down into the gully. 

She hopped the first two mounds of protruding earth effortlessly, but the third broke apart under the force of her impact. She slid forwards, then backwards down the slope, clawing madly at shrubs and dry earth. Further down, she got caught in a mass of tangled vines and pulled herself up and across the trunk of a long, bent tree that grew from the side of the northeast plateau. She climbed the rest of the way along twisted branches and a patchwork of tough weeds. 

Below, on the smaller plateau she’d departed, the lone black dog stood howling. She breathed a sigh of relief and slowly made her way across the larger plateau and down the next slope, knowing one false step could be her last. 

There was more space at the bottom than she’d anticipated. The ravine floor stretched into hollowed-out limestone deposits beneath the mountain. The soft flow of a spring emptied into an underground reservoir. She discovered a cave in the rock face and climbed in. The air inside was dry and cool. Exhausted, she lay down in the corner and wrapped her fluffy tail over her eyes. 

For a long while, the fox wore a calm expression as she slept. But late that night, her ears began to twitch. 

* * * 

Pitch darkness. From somewhere came a low vibration. She began sniffing her way through a much smaller tunnel than she’d remembered. An orb of hazy white light materialized in the murk, growing larger as she approached it. With each step, her claws tapped against a hard, slippery surface. 

She stepped out of the tunnel onto dusty soil. A cloud of dense fog and a putrid, skunky stench hung in the air. She could see only a few yards in any direction. She swiveled her ears outwards, listening for the familiar sounds of wildlife, but heard only a faint, monotonous hum. 

As she neared a massive gray wall, the droning hum grew louder. A row of cylindrical openings jutted out from its lower exterior. They reminded her of hollow logs but were the color of slate rock. 

Perturbed, she turned away from the irritating hum and trotted downhill. The fog began to separate, and the land ahead plummeted into a massive, dried-out riverbed. Cracked, chalky white crust crumbled under her paws. Fish vertebrae and mollusk shells littered the trench. 

She recoiled at the sight and clambered back uphill, kicking up clouds of powdery dust in her wake. Her breathing had become shallow. The air felt thin and lifeless, and her muscles were weakening. 

* * *  

She woke, panting heavily, dizzy from the rush of consciousness returning to her body. The descending notes of a canyon wren’s song eased her slowly back to reality. She spotted the bird perched in the gnarled trees that reached above the cave. Its long, brown beak poked out above a white puff of chest feathers. 

She yawned, stretched her limbs, and breathed in the fresh mountain air. A gurgle of trickling water came from somewhere below. She followed the sound to a spring at the bottom of the ravine and lapped its cold, clear water for a long while. 

Feeling refreshed, she prowled and sniffed around the boundaries of the ravine. The corridor was cloaked in perpetual shadow, surrounded by cliffs too steep to ascend. Only the birds defied the towering walls. They fluttered in from above and slipped in and out of crevices, coming and going as they pleased. 

Finding no alternatives, she returned to the cave for further exploration. The reverberations of a flapping bat led her to an opening in the far wall. This crawlspace led deep under the mountain and eventually widened into a bowl-shaped chamber covered in fungi and lichens. Winged creatures abounded. As she intruded upon their lair, they squealed and escaped through a fracture in the upper wall that was partially blocked by a web of long roots. 

She dug her claws into roots that hung down to the sandy floor and climbed up into a bright, foreign landscape. Joshua trees with thick, snake-like branches rose from the plains like outstretched hands. Under the high sun, the sand-covered hills glowed with an orange-brown hue like the fur on her back. 

To the west, perilous mountain ridges sealed off her homeland. While the western side of the peaks was lush with flora, the eastern side was surprisingly barren. With a layer of jagged stones jutting out of its exterior, the mountainside looked like the wall of a crude, ancient fortress. 

She turned to the mountains for a moment, hesitating. The forest was all she’d ever known. Surviving on her own was a struggle, but the woodlands had provided her with a good life, and she was grateful. However, she no longer felt safe there. The crashing of toppling trees and the stench of smoke had scared away many forest dwellers. Prey had become increasingly scarce. 

She headed east and found that the warm, soft sand was easy on her paws. The countryside was an endless beach without waves. The wide-open space felt liberating. Few obstacles would impede her progress. 

Before long, her stomach was growling. She began sniffing around for desert fauna. To her surprise, most of the critters sensed her approach and vanished before she could even get a good look at them. 

She snuck in one hard chomp on a chuckwalla’s tail before it wriggled into the crevices of a rock formation. She tracked an elf owl for miles, only to find its nest in the top of a large, spiky cactus that was impossible for her to climb. Its squealing hoots sounded almost like laughter. 

That evening, she lay belly-down atop a small dune, keeping watch over the sand below. Her patience was rewarded when a fringe-toed lizard popped out of hiding. It saw her and burrowed back into the sand, but she dug faster and snatched the scaly reptile in her powerful jaws. 

By sunrise the next morning, a long trail of the fox’s little paw prints could be seen across the dunes. They zig-zagged between colossal stones and circled around creosote bushes, forming a dotted line that meandered in spots where she’d stopped to marvel at desert wonders. At one point, she’d been fooled by the vivid pink blooms of a grizzly bear prickly pear cactus. From far off, she’d mistaken them for exotic birds. 

Unaccustomed to the heat, her gait gradually slowed. She ran only briefly, when a dust devil formed nearby. Its noisy, swirling mass reminded her of a large swarm of bees. 

At night, she hunted for beetles, salamanders, and other creatures. Her favorite was the kangaroo rat. Their acrobatic leaping annoyed her, but she took great pleasure in digging up their burrows. Unfortunately, their meat wasn’t as hearty and satisfying as that of the forest prey, so she was often left craving more. 

She learned to nap in the shadows of cacti and stones to stay cool during the day. Often, a recurring dream came to her—over the last of the dunes, she always found the lush coast of a mighty river. Toads and tortoises rustled through a maze of grass and reeds. Ducks flocked along a pebbly shore. Turquoise waters flowed deep and wide. Beneath the currents swam otters, muskrats, and aquatic life she’d never seen before. 

In early afternoons when the heat shimmered and danced, silvery pools of light spilled across the sand and evaporated as she approached. Days bled into nights, and it became increasingly difficult for her to process the passage of time. 

She seemed driven by forces beyond herself. Rodents that materialized in her peripheral vision turned out to be rolling tumbleweeds. Every direction looked familiar, yet she was unsure of which way to go. 

One cloudy morning, a strong gust of wind blew sand into her eyes. Temporarily blinded, she turned her back to the wind and staggered to the shadowy bottom of a sand dune, wincing and blinking. When her vision began to clear, she looked up at the hills with watery eyes, and the flaxen hue of the sand slowly melted away. 

* * *  

In its place appeared a familiar meadow. The almost forgotten buzzing of cicadas and chirping of crickets flowed from neighboring bushes and trees. She stood transfixed before the old woodland haven. In the center of the field, amidst a bed of clovers, a single orange flower had bloomed. She drew closer, inspecting the fuzzy texture of its petals. Its scent was not of a plant, but of an animal. 

The smell of her mother transported her to a world of towering pines that stretched to the heavens. She gazed up at a moonlit kaleidoscope of intersecting branches. The nightscape bobbed up and down from the force of her mother’s tongue cleaning the back of her head. Stars glimmered faintly through gaps in the forest canopy. From somewhere arose a gentle fluttering. 

* * *  

Every so often, shadows passed along the sand; as the wind picked up, they grew larger and darker. A heavy gloom pressed down on the land, followed by the sound of many small wings. The fox opened her eyes halfway. Raindrops spattered on sand, clay, and caliche. Water tap danced across her back. The clouds opened, and the flutter steadily grew to a roar. Slowly, she pulled herself to her feet, soaking up the nourishment that fell. She blinked, and began to walk again, following the forming path of water that flowed downhill. 

After a while, the heat and fatigue that once bothered her began to fade, and her stride relaxed. A large flock of birds flew by, and she followed them as best she could. She trudged forward slowly, but her path didn’t waver. She continued in their direction long after they’d passed beyond the horizon. 

Late that night, she thought some of the stars had fallen from the sky into the desert. Small lights winked into view from across the valley below. A cool breeze hit her at the top of each dune. She heard wings overhead as birds descended towards the lights that lay only a stone’s throw from the furthest slope. 

By the time she reached the top of the last dune, the rising sun revealed an unusual sight. The glittering lights from earlier were now large pits of ash, some still smoldering. Behind these pits was a long, earthen brown wall that encircled a hamlet. 

An opening about as wide as an eagle’s wingspan led into the nearest section of the enclosure. Beyond the wall, sand gave way to carpets of verdant green. Dirt paths cut through grassy animal pastures and fruit orchards. 

Several rows of earthen dwellings formed the town center. From a distance, it looked as if the villagers had shaped the soil into large rectangular prisms and stacked them on top of one another. Ladders were propped against walls, providing access to the upper floors. Tiny gardens grew adjacent to the dwellings. Some of the rows of earth homes intersected perpendicularly, separating green and brown spaces into a pattern resembling a stretched-out checkerboard. A few of these squares contained wells that drew from an underground spring that fed into a pond on the far side of the village. 

As the fox descended, the ground moistened beneath her paws. Up close, the wall looked much higher. She entered an orchard and was welcomed by the pleasing fragrance of desert lavender and cane cholla. The sun’s luminosity exposed rich textures and vibrant hues in the surrounding flora that nearly overwhelmed her. 

From the shadow of a yucca tree, the fox watched a farmer in a colorfully embroidered dress as she carried a basket of fruit down a dirt path. After the woman was gone, the fox began to explore the rest of the orchard. If anyone had noticed the fox’s presence in the village, they gave no indication of it. 

The tail end of the orchard was bordered by pasture. Heat waves distorted her view of the fields. She stopped in a patch of shade to cool down and rest, shivering as she turned to find a pair of dark eyes watching her through the slits in a wooden fence. 

A young foal stared with an innocuous curiosity that rendered the fox temporarily immobile. A little goat approached the foal and nuzzled its side gently with its nose. The two began to play, and the foal chased his friend happily through the tallgrass. Disarmed, the fox lay on her stomach and watched the pair for a long while. They curled up next to a large, gray mare who guarded them as they slept. 

An eerie silence pervaded the village as the fox approached the cluster of adobe buildings. She peeked around corners, nosed through gardens, and wandered under clotheslines full of intricately patterned garments drying in the sun. A little boy in an oversized straw hat stopped folding clothes and looked down over the edge of a roof to catch a glimpse of the four-legged visitor. She trotted through the alleyway below, stopping to nibble berries from a few bushes on the side of the path. 

Hearing footsteps, the fox ducked into the shrubbery of a nearby garden. The boy in the straw hat approached a stone well to draw water. Then he knelt to examine her paw prints in a patch of mud. He murmured something to an old man and gestured towards the far side of the garden. They looked in her direction but didn’t come any closer. 

A short while after they left, the boy returned carrying a basket and a clay bowl. He filled the bowl with well water and placed it beside the basket, beneath a tree. Then he followed the path back to the alleyway and disappeared into one of the adobe houses. 

When the sky began to darken, the fox crept quietly from the trees and circled around the basket warily. She stuck her snout in and found that a fresh cob of maize had been left inside. She seized it with her teeth and carried it back into the shrubbery. 

The next day, the boy returned to the well and saw that the bowl and basket were empty. He scooped them up and headed to the stable to take care of the horses. The fox watched from afar, an orange speck atop a flaxen dune outside the village. 

Late that night, she lay there, remembering what she’d observed inside the earthen walls. She’d smelled an unusual, almost contradictory mixture of scents—animals, humans, fruits, vegetables, tobacco, and flowers—which whirled about and reached her in gentle gusts. But within those walls, she sensed no fear, even from would-be prey. A horse had welcomed a goat among her foals and cared for him as if he were one of her family. One of the foals had grazed and played in her presence, and when their eyes met, he regarded her only with wonder. Humans had seen her a few times but hadn’t pursued her. Their voices were deep, soft, and resonant. Measured grunts, somehow untroubled in their tones. 

Early in the morning, before sunrise, the boy sat alone near the well, wrapped in a warm shawl embroidered with patterns of yellow, white, and turquoise. A freshly cleaned bowl full of water lay on the ground beside him. The fox, on her usual perch atop the hill, contemplated the sea of sand dunes—painted bluish gray by the moonlight—that stretched out into the horizon. She rested her head on the sand, breathed in the cool night air, and closed her eyes until a faint sliver of orange ascended from the gloom. 

Guided by the light, she began to make her way down the slope towards the village, eager for the gifts that the new day would bring. 

DAVID WILLIAM ELSWICK

David William Elswick is a Maryland-based writer with a passion for creative work that encourages relationships between literature, music, and other disciplines. Many scenes in “Tooth and Claw” were inspired by a Villa-Lobos guitar concerto. He is currently working on a collection of stories based on the music of classical composers.