This was so not implicated in the terms of the deal I struck with a desperate fool in the tavern. It was an easy job. No murder, no casualties, no harm to another being. It’s incredibly rare for such conditions to fall into my lap. I just had to be able to disarm a couple of traps, pick a few locks, and skip my merry way to the locked closet at the back of this antiquity shop.
The owner had supposedly stolen this relic from a woman in a village two continents away from here. Someone who couldn’t speak the same language, but bemoaned the loss of her necklace while also watching the huts around her burn from the short-lived company of invaders. The dark-skinned man who paid for my help insisted he was her nephew and that getting her that necklace would be the only way to break the depression that had settled over her in the months since the colonists left.
Shaved head, dark tattoos on his forearms, and piercing eyes that spoke to his sincerity, I believed him. “Nice…” I stare at the figure that crept out of the shadows to stop me from leaving this stop, “sword?”
Who the hell is defending shops with swords these days?
It’s not even something she can comfortably hold. Not an oversized dagger or a thin rapier, this is the kind of broadsword orks are said to carry into battle from tales of the past. Both hands gripping the enormous hilt, her knuckles white, she quivers as she holds the weapon to my throat.
At least six inches shorter than I am with wisps of brown hair that threaten to overtake her hazel eyes, she lacks no ferocity as she responds to my question. “Nice neck,” she huffs, her shoulders visibly straining to keep the weapon aloft as the tip hovers dangerously close to a major artery.
I don’t dare move lest I force her to respond and cut something I’d rather like to keep attached for the time being. “Well, thank you. I’m quite attached to it. Why don’t you lower that weapon a tad bit and we can have a nice conversation while you get a better look?”
She does lower the sword, but only to press the tip into the fabric of my vest, leveled incredibly close to my fluttering heart. “Who are you?”
That’s a loaded question. I’m a bundle of things. A trickster. A Demi-god. A person who definitely shouldn’t be in this store at two in the morning well before the moon has fully settled and the sun has had a chance to stretch its golden rays across the land. I’m bored and in the business of filling desperate hopes with my eclectic talents.
“Reynard,” I murmur, my chest hardly moving as I keep from giving her a reason to fully impale me right now. “And you?”
She grits her teeth, the sword bobbing hazardously in her weakening grip. “You don’t get to ask questions, thief. What are you here for?”
“If I tell you, will you simply hand it over?”
Those hazel eyes flick towards the dried herbs hanging from the ceiling as she rolls her eyes. “Of course not.”
I shrug, perhaps too brazen in my bodily movement as she pokes me with the sword. “Careful with that thing or you’ll never find out what I’m here for.”
Irritation sparks in her eyes, the woman a rabbit unused to dealing with a fox, she hovers between simply killing me to be done with this altercation and staying true to her own moral code. I can use that to my advantage. I desperately lack a strong moral compass. Besides, I’ve actually used a sword once or twice in my life.
“You’re the third thief this week. I just want to know what you want and then you can leave.”
Sounds too good to be true in my opinion. “It would be incredibly dangerous for your own health to simply let me leave, Miss.”
“I’m sure I can handle you.”
In her defense, my reputation hardly proceeds me in these parts. There’s a small town east of here that begged me never to return after a fire that got out of hand and the missing of several girls that had little to do with me. Several officials in the nearby court have been warned about my presence, but I haven’t seen wanted posters just yet and they’ll never be commissioned since there are plenty of artists who would like to stay in my good graces. Not many gods listen to the prayers being sent their way with anything more than ambivalent need for entertainment, but I, in my limited capacity to care and bring forth change, do everything I can to meet the needs of my followers.
Reynard, the magician. Reynard, the artist. Reynard, the forgotten.
My name is never something that carries in more than a reverent whisper. Not since I was cursed to immortality in a world that would never give me the time of day I needed to become as powerful as the gods watching from their mountain or those power-hungry entities lurking around river bends and at the mouth to the cave that leads to the powers below. Ambition got me into trouble. I reached for more than I deserved and I’ve learned that lesson well enough to understand the boundaries of my curse. They said I would live and be forgotten, I would exist and never find satisfaction, I would crave death and be left to wither.
Well, two decades have passed. Life is as good as ever. I have lived and I’ve been forgotten and I’ve never needed to look back while I swindle the rich out of their possessions and then slip away to the cool embrace of night.
This little spitfire is the first to even catch me moving around in the night and, for that reason only, she has my interest. “What do you get paid to watch over this place?”
Her chin tips to the side. “This is my home. I’m paid only to keep watch of the relics people leave to me.”
Oh. Well, then. I would have liked to know that before I blatantly broke into her beautiful…
My eyes flick around the cramped space. I don’t think the word to describe this place is ‘home.’ It’s definitely not a mansion or anything equivalent to any of the stately houses I usually occupy. It’s hardly more than a hut filled with shelves on every wall and additional storage smashed into the center of the space with walkways designed for the width of a thin fairy between them. That’s the only reason I knocked the golden lamp off the table by the door. If she kept it tidier, I would have done a much better job of getting in and out.
Anyhow, I’m here with a very important objective and I don’t think her poor shoulders can manage this sword for much longer. “Would I be able to outbid the price of this item?”
“Probably not.” I’m fairly sure she’s straining not to roll her eyes at me again, her chin forced up to meet my gaze for this tense conversation. “What were you after?”
It’s in the cabinet she has me pinned against with her exceptionally long sword. Just an amulet. Something someone’s family wants back. A priceless heirloom. Not worth getting impaled over, but important nonetheless to the man who agreed to pay me and then offer his loyalty in my quest for petty revenge against the powers that cursed me.
I don’t want to give up my immortality. It’s quite nice. That being said, I’m not invincible and this sword is pressing hard enough to put a tear in my vest as she struggles to keep it aloft. There’s no time to be incapacitated by this wisp of a woman with warrior ambitions. I hardly think she would be happy about me lying comatose on her floor with a slowly healing sword wound.
The last time someone got a lucky shot in, I woke up in a shallow grave, sore and stripped of my earthly possessions. I’m not inclined to go through that experience again. It was a terrible pain in my ass to haunt him for the next several months before he begged for mercy and then agreed to my idea of penance.
“I asked you a question,” that dreadful tip jabs me unnecessarily hard in my chest as she punctuates her words. “What are you trying to get?”
I’ve learned that it’s always best to play dumb and reveal my intelligence later. This case can’t be any different, so I let the lie slip between my teeth like a mouse creeping along the floorboards in every attempt to avoid a slumbering cat. “Some necklace. It has a blue gem.”
“I don’t have anything like that here.”
Odd. I really didn’t expect her to meet my lie with her own. “You don’t have any necklaces or none with blue gems?”
My question has her cornered. I know there’s an amulet here. It doesn’t have a blue gem, but I’d like her to look towards the spot that houses the rest of her jewelry. Since she doesn’t take her eyes off of me, I’m most certain that my informant was correct and it resides in the cabinet at my back.
“You should be more clear of your objective before breaking into places,” she counters, her left hand wavering more than her right as the mass of the sword continues to drag her down.
This is it. We’ve had a pleasant little conversation, but it’s more than time for me to move on. My escapes are typically taken down and jotted into little novels that marvel at my speed and finess. I am a fox after all, clever and elusive. That being said, this particular plan isn’t one that I need anyone to commemorate.
“What’s that behind you?”
When there’s no distraction to be had, one must make it. My brisk, shouted question isn’t much, but it’s enough to crack her concentration. Her simmering gaze leaves me as she whips her head around. I don’t wait for her to see that we’re alone in this place besides the stuffed shelf and the dust motes that filter through the dim lantern lights. It is far from my plans to be impaled, so I have to move first.
Using my height to my advantage, I lean back against the cabinet and kick out my right leg. The air leaves the woman in a startled gasp. Her hands release the blade. I’m gone before she has a chance to listen to the blade rattle against the worn floorboards.
Well, not gone. Just not visible.
Holding my breath, I watch her rub her midriff and then scan the cramped aisles. She bends down to retrieve the sword, but lets the tip rest on the ground, dragging it alongside herself as she makes a slow circle around the perimeter of the room.
Patience has never been a strong personality trait for me. I should stay here an hour or so, my back pressed to this carved wooden box while she does her checks and then drifts off to a restless sleep in the bed kept in the low rafters. When the metallic grind of her sword on the uneven floorboards has moved to the far end of the room, I let out a slow breath and push off of the cabinet.
I just need two seconds.
Grabbing one of the two handles in the center of the smoothed wood, I ease the right door open. There’s no creaking. No whining of hinges long left closed and forced to move against their will. Nothing to give me away.
Still, she knows. There’s a screech from across the room that should not belong to the slim creature and then a thud next to my head. Pink glitter explodes. I inhale it, pointlessly waving my arms in front of myself to try to clear the malicious cloud. My invisibility is negated by the fascia substance as it sticks to my face and buries itself in my hair and covers my hands. It’s in my throat, scratching thin edges like cat claws down the expanse. I think an especially irritating chunk has ended up in my left lung. There’s no way to get a full breath in without coughing and clutching my chest.
The she-devil is upon me in an instant. That damned sword plunges towards me. I don’t have very many gods damned options now, do I?
My magic is a river coursing just below my skin. I’m convinced its existence is what keeps my hair an unnatural orange. It takes me less effort than pulling in a breath to call it forth.
The world around me grows larger as I sink to the floor. The reddish hue of my magic sparkles momentarily as I watch the sword sink several inches into the cabinet door well above my head. That would have been a terribly inconvenient blow to my abdomen.
As is, the woman has her foot on the cabinet, trying and failing to tug the piece of metal back out while she snaps questions at me. “Who do you think you are, R…? I’m pretty sure it started with an R. Ricky? Reynolds? Just Rey?”
Ah. The curse. My name is plenty pronounceable, but it seems to flit from the minds of strangers with the ease of a butterfly springing from a flower stem and disappearing into a field. Clearing my throat, I watch as her eyes widen.
It isn’t every day that a fox speaks up for himself.
“Just Rey is fine.”
Gritting her teeth, she tugs on the sword once more and then curses under her breath. “Well, look what you made me do, Rey.”
I sit back on my haunches and let my fluffy tail loop around my white feet while she glares. Several seconds pass as she tries to pull the sword out without much progress. Effectively blocking me from getting to that amulet, we’re at a standstill while she continues to wrestle the weapon.
Sweat shines on her forehead. There’s a rip in her pants. A fresh wound lies just below. “Somebody get a lucky shot in?”
A frustrated groan interrupts her tangle with the sword. That leg kicks out at me. I scamper back several steps to get out of her war path, clearly not the only reason for her to be incredibly mad at the world.
“I could help you,” I offer, an irresistible itch sprouting behind my left ear that I can’t help but scratch.
Glitter sprinkles the floor around me as my front paw scrapes at the itch that won’t stop moving. It takes me a moment to realize the woman has stopped fighting her weapon in the cabinet to turn her entire focus on me. If I could, I would shrink further, but fox is my only shapeshifting trick. Slowly, I let my paw rest on the ground once more as I meet her gaze, the tip of my tail twitching of its own accord.
“I think I would yell at you if you weren’t so cute,” she finally says just to fill the space.
Cute. Ugh. I’m a semi-powerful being with a motive. Cute is the last word I’d like to be used as a descriptor for myself.
Since she’s currently without a weapon and I refuse to be pet and cooed over, I let my magic curl back to the surface. Red flashes, a blink of autumn in the midst of winter. Something, though, isn’t right.
Still a fox, I struggle to pull in a full breath. It must just be the glitter. And I’m distracted by the creature standing before me.
That’s all. Focus. Breathe in. Back to my human shape.
The magic twists in my stomach. It vibrates along the length of my bones. There, yet resisting. I push harder, mentally fighting something that has always been natural.
Above me, the woman says something. I’m too busy dealing with my current problem to deal with her. Red flashes again. My spine crunches. My joints grind together. While my normal transitions happen in the blink of an eye, this one is slow, my left side a heartbeat faster than the right to give me an uncomfortable stretching feeling as my limbs elongate and I stand back at my full height.
Nausea slams into me and I stagger to the side as the woman reaches out. Her hand is on my elbow. She’s still talking. I don’t think she ever stops talking.
Dazed, I let her guide me backwards. There’s a chair. I’m sitting in the chair. Her hands in front of herself, she offers water. I wave her off. This is not how my morning was meant to go.
Before long, there’s a glass pressed into my hand. Cool liquid slips over my lips. It pushes down some more of the glitter. At this rate, it’s going to be trapped in my intestines for the rest of my life.
“Rey, can you hear me?”
The cadence of her voice has interrupted my heartbeat. Her voice has seeped into my ears and pounded against my brain until it swelled to fully press to the rounded edges of my skull. Everything is throbbing. I might still vomit, but, yes, I’m helpless to do anything besides hear her.
“Then, I have bad news for you.”
This whole event has been completely out of hand. How much worse could it be? Regardless, I blink several times and then focus my spinning vision long enough to see the mirror with an ornate, silver handle in her hands.
My hair. My hair is fine. It’s ruffled wrong, though, because…
Because I still have fox ears. My hands slap against the sides of my head. Just hair. My human ears are missing because there are fluffy, orange ears with black tips on the top of my head.
“What did you do to me?”
“There’s more,” she murmurs, seemingly apologetic as she warily watches me from several steps back.
My gaze follows hers to my side. More specifically, to the oversized orange tail with a white tip flicking mindlessly there. I have a tail. As a human. This is bad.
“What kind of magic is this?” I snap again, brushing more of the damned glitter off of my vest.
Her cheeks light up a rosy red usually saved for summer sunsets. “Mine. I’m still learning. Well…” she backtracks for a few moments, odd syllables wandering out of her mouth before she can reel them back in as she settles on her answer. “I was cursed and now everything I do comes out a little wonky and I think I may have messed up your magic by accident now, too.”
The words come out too quick. They spill past her lips like water over a river rapids. Too fast. It’s nonsense. It makes sense. A curse leaves me as I tip my head back, those ears that are mine yet not meant to be where they currently are scrape against the wall behind me.
I’ve met a handful of cursed individuals in my time as an immortal. Never, though, have I run full force into one that could affect me like this.
“Turn me back,” I murmur more to the ceiling than to her, my hope a doused fire.
I’m going to have to leave this place and face people with fox ears and a tail at all times. Honestly, I might just find a hole somewhere and lay down and never get back up. Nobody is going to take me seriously like this. I’ll be a laughstock, a pariah, a damned caricature that mothers shield their children from.
This is absolutely terrible for business and my eventual plans to get revenge.
“You don’t want me to do any more magic on you. This is-.” The woman who is now the biggest problem in my life stops mid-sentence and then yells with the force of a banshee high on every substance kept in an alchemist’s cabinet. “Hey! Stop that!”
A blue squirrel is standing on the flat side of the sword that she so forcefully stabbed into the cabinet. One moment there, the next he vanishes in a puff of turquoise smoke. My little problem lets out a strangled groan and then punches me in the shoulder.
“Look what you did!”
“I did? You’re the one who lets vermin stay in her home.”
Charging towards the cabinet, she makes a rude hand gesture at me behind her back. “It’s a djinn, Rey.”
Oh. Yeah. About that. “That lamp should have been somewhere far more secure.” When she doesn’t answer, I clear my throat. “Can’t you just wish for it to go back home?”
Her hands are back on the hilt of the sword she’ll never get out of the cabinet door. “This isn’t a fairytale. Real djinn steal the desires of those who disturb their lamps as a way to barter for their way out of their magical prisons.”
Of course they do. The sun is barely up and, yet, this day cannot get any worse. We have to get that squirrel.
Back on my feet, the disorienting parts of her magic wearing off, I cross the room to her. “Come on, scoot over.”
“Like I would trust you with a sword? Absolutely not.”
We’re now shoulder to shoulder, the hairs on my too fluffy tail prickling as it brushes the back of her legs. I have no control over the damn thing. It must be the effects of her magic drawing it back towards her.
I don’t bother waiting for her to move, wrapping my hands around the places hers aren’t already covering, I tug backwards. Nothing. Not even a wiggle. There’s a sarcastic comment creeping up the back of my throat, but I lose it as the woman elbows me in the ribs, her left hand having slid from its spot on the sword hilt.
“You deserved that after kicking me.”
Touché. Instead of arguing, I put my back into pulling the sword out of the cabinet. Assuming her position from earlier, I put my foot against the door and heave backwards.
“Can you at least try to help?” I snarl when the damned blade still hasn’t moved.
“I am,” she snaps back, another sharp elbow connecting with my sore ribs.
That one was definitely on purpose. I don’t get a chance to call her out on it, though. The djinn is back. A puff of blue smoke and then the squirrel is on the flat side of the blade, inches from the woman’s face. She shrieks. The back of her head connects with my chin.
There’s yowls and curses from the both of us and then we fall back into a heap of limbs and struggles. She’s yelling. I’m shoving. Neither of us are getting off of the floor.
Finally, she rolls over, planting her feet to push up. “My tail!”
Pain licks up my back from the nerves in that fluffy appendage that should not be here. I grab the part closer to me and yank. She loses her balance, toppling forward and hitting a shelf on her way down.
Metal clatters. Glass cracks and ruptures, spilling a sparkling purple mixture all over the floor. My female enemy turned short-timed ally splashes into it. By the time she sits up sputtering, her hair had taken on a vibrant, lilac shade.
“Oh, payback is the best,” I tease, making it to my own feet to skip over her body and chase that damn squirrel to the other side of the room.
He has the amulet in his teeth. It scrapes along the ground as his ridiculous rodent feet easily move him along the floor. There is no way I am letting him take that to my client. I’ll be laughed out of this town and past the next three. That amulet us mine and mine alone.
With my speed and height against his, I catch up in seconds. Hand out, leaning down, I almost have it. The djinn lets out a squeak.
I have him.
This day is finally going to get better.
And then a hundred pound sack of flour slams into my back.
No. Not flour. A raging woman screaming obscenities.
“You have got to stop making my life so difficult!”
The squirrel is at the door. Shoving her off of my back with all of the force it would take to push a boat off to sea, I scramble to my feet and reach out. My hands are so close to his tail. Almost. That amulet is mine.
She grabs my ankle. Blue smoke sifts through my fingers. I have just a moment to realize he escaped before my nose connects with the wooden door.
White stars speckle my vision. Somewhere behind me, there’s an apology. I stagger backwards and wipe my hand under my nose.
Blood. A lot of freaking blood.
The little witch is next to me a moment later, a black cloth in her hands. I press it to my nose as I open the door. There’s no sign of blue in the snow outside.
“He’s gone…” the words trail off of my lips, muffled by the thick cloth soaking up my blood.
“No, he’s not,” she responds, holding up the lamp. “There’s a certain circumference djinn can manage outside of their prisons. He’s out there somewhere.”
Right. Of course. It’s not an ordinary squirrel.
“So, it’s you and me against him?”
The woman has the audacity to tuck the lamp under her arm and smile at me. “You’re definitely on your own.”
I turn back to the frozen outdoors and let out an exasperated sigh. It would probably take me hours to track down that damned rodent in these woods. It would, if I didn’t see the man who asked me to go on this terribly inconvenient mission and stop me in my tracks.
“What is he…”
My question dies before it can fully leave my throat. The djinn finds him immediately, letting go of the amulet. They’re too far away for me to hear, but they definitely speak to one another.
This was all a setup.
I’ve been setup.
As if feeling my presence, the man turns towards me and grins as his visage begins to shimmer and then dissolve. Fucking magic. I have never hated it more than I do right now.
The being that stands across from me, separated by meters of snow glistening in the morning sun, has black horns like a moose. They stretch up towards the low hanging tree branches. The djinn steps down, one moment a blue squirrel and the next stretching into a cat that curls around the shoulders of its new master.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” the woman hisses, punching me in my shoulder as she squeezes into the doorway to stare at the being with me. “Of all the people you could be helping by robbing me, you had to pick him?”
I don’t even know who he is. The guy said I would be helping his family. It was an easy looting job. Yet this… this is now so much more than I ever bargained to join.
“You know him?” I whisper back, my throat nearly too tight to let the words escape.
I capture one nod from her out of the corner of my eye. “My brother and I took different paths when we received our magic.”
Brother. Oh…family drama. That’s really not my thing. I should leave. My job has been ruined and there’s nothing to really keep me here. I should tuck my tail between my legs and slink away before things get any worse.
“Looks like he’s a bit better at it than you, doesn’t it?”
The words pop out before I can rethink them. She doesn’t respond. Instead, her eyes stay on the tall, thin form of her sibling as he raises a hand to her and then turns his back on us, walking away with his amulet and the freed djinn.
“He’s going to end the world.”
The world? Ended? That sounds unpleasant.
I should go. Every fiber of my furry bits is telling me to turn and run in the opposite direction. But, she looks sad under that purple hair and it is partially my fault for this happening.
“Not if we can stop him.”
A tear glimmers on her right cheek. “You’re going to help me?”
I shouldn’t. I should be gone already. The empty lamp clatters to the ground and she throws her arms around my middle.
I guess I’m stuck with her now.
Author’s Note
I know it has been a minute since I’ve posted here, so thank you to everyone who has stuck around to read my next short story. Reynard the Fox is not my own original character, I accidentally met him while researching for a trickster god for this story and fell in love with the lore surrounding this medieval character. He has woven stories along the pages of old texts and been mentioned in Shakespeare’s writing and tricked those in more modern times, serving as inspiration for Disney’s own Robin Hood.
This version, though, of Reynard is mine.
Let me know in the comments if you would like to see more stories with Rey and share your thoughts as well. See you next time! 🙂
Reece Writing 