a Fox-den Setsu tale, by E.A. King
Prefer to listen? The tale, told aloud:
https://youtu.be/84QclXPM8Yw
An autumn chill wrapped blankets of cloud about itself in the hollows. Along the higher points of the path, the rising sun was wiping a mist of sleep from the trees.
In a patch just beginning to catch the golden rays, sunlight spun jewels into the last spider webs of the year. And there stood a tiny hokora shrine, no bigger than a doll’s house, its moss and stone cradling the memory of long-ago prayers.
A little girl, bundled under mismatched layers against the indecisive weather, walked in silence along the path. Her cold fingers were buried deep within the folds of layered wrappings that smelled of home and damp wool. She paused as the miniature shrine came into view.
Wait….
Had someone else, she wondered, also discovered this lost treasure… this bit of sacred history, now barely more than worn, geometric rubble?
In the exact spot where she’d left countless tasty offerings to whatever spirits had kept her safe along this forgotten shortcut… someone else had brought an offering of their own.
It was a sphere of sorts, just a bit larger than the woolen hat she’ll be wearing again in the coming months. But the color… the color of it… took her breath away.
She stood transfixed.
The sun crept along the strange object—its surface seemed to glow like the fruit of the ripest cantaloupe… or the heart of a deep winter kabocha.
As she watched, the sun coaxed a yuzu-hot flame from its edges. It was a glow so deep, it pulled tears to her cheeks before she understood why.
And just as she thought the moment could hold no more wonder—the sphere… moved.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Like a dream.
Its shape melted before her eyes… re-forming to produce two, tiny, black triangles quietly flanking a pair of black eyes and a nose sparkling in the sun. There was white, too, she noticed… flowing like a gentle river along what clearly was a muzzle, and disappearing down into what must be its tail wrapped snugly about itself.
The girl couldn’t help what happened next.
She felt her body move as if called by memories lost to the cycles of death and rebirth.
She bowed.
She bowed low. She bowed long.
She bowed as if she were in the presence of the kami themselves. Her whole heart rang straight through her, as if her form were simply the support for a great temple bell.
And when she raised her head… there it stood, full in its glory beside the hokora framed by the mist-carved fire of the rising sun.
A fox.
Later, as she would tell her children, and their children, she saw the fox do the most amazing thing before it turned and disappeared:
For a moment… only a moment… wreathed in melon-colored fire, it dipped its tiny head in a silent bow to her as well.
And then… it was gone as if it had never been.
Except…except for the echo it left within the bell that still rang within her heart.
What that echo was, she never said. But it changed her somehow.
In time, her life became… quietly, humbly, like the fox itself… more than it would have been before.
Even now, many, many years after that little girl has gone on and become a spirit herself, we in our small, quiet village, still remember her tale.
And perhaps the memory of her story is why we still smile when we write the character for fox ( 狐 “kitsune”), for within that kanji are the shapes that mean, “wild beast” (犭)… and “melon” (瓜).
kitsune — fox
犭 (wild beast) ＋ 瓜 (melon)
Heisig 6th ed: 2431
The next tale rises with the October moon.