Foxfire by the Pool

The pool water was black as ink, the only light coming from the half-moon overhead and the distant glow of the restaurant where her soon-to-be-ex-husband was probably still laughing with his colleagues. Elena kicked off her heels and peeled off her pantyhose, the night air cool against her skin. She'd told herself she was just coming out for some air, but really, she'd needed to escape the congratulations, the well-meaning questions about "what's next" that made her want to scream.

She waded in, the water shocking her thighs first, then her waist, then her chest as she ducked under. Swimming had always been her escape—even as a girl, she'd slip out at night to the community pool, moving through the water until her muscles burned and her mind went quiet. Now, at thirty-seven, with a marriage dissolving and a career that felt increasingly hollow, the water was the only place she felt real.

She'd been doing laps for maybe ten minutes when she saw it: a fox, its coat the color of dried blood, standing at the edge of the pool watching her. It wasn't afraid. It was studying her with those amber eyes, intelligent and unnervingly still. Elena treaded water, her heart racing for reasons she couldn't name.

"What are you looking at?" she whispered, though she knew the animal couldn't understand.

The fox dipped its head, then turned and slipped away into the darkness of the garden. Elena swam to the edge and pulled herself out, dripping and shivering. She grabbed her towel and followed the rustle of leaves, the soft pad of paws, feeling foolish and desperate and inexplicably hopeful.

She found them under the oak tree: the fox, its coat glossy in the moonlight, and her cat Bast—stupid, fearless Bast who'd escaped the apartment somehow—crouched nose to nose with the wild creature, not hissing or arching her back but simply regarding the fox with what looked almost like recognition.

Elena laughed, a cracked, wet sound. The fox flicked its ears at her and then vanished into the night like smoke. Bast turned, tail high, and wound around Elena's ankles, purring as if nothing remarkable had happened at all.

Back in her apartment, with Bast curled warm and solid against her chest, Elena thought about wild things and tame things, about creatures that slipped between worlds. She thought about the way the fox had looked at her—not as prey, not as a threat, but as something recognized.

She fell asleep with salt water still dried on her skin, dreaming of swimming somewhere deeper than any pool, somewhere where wild things called to each other across impossible distances and sometimes, just sometimes, someone answered.