The Second Case Begins

The Kitsune Village proper was not a collection of houses, instead homes were carved into the boles of the great, phosphorescent trees, their windows glowing with a soft, amber light like fireflies caught in jars. Graceful, curved bridges made of living wood connected the higher dwellings, and the air was filled with the gentle, chiming sound of unseen bells.

Our arrival did not go unnoticed. From the glowing doorways and shadowed paths, the villagers emerged, a host of beings with bright, curious eyes and swishing tails. Some were in a form much like Xiao Ru's, while others were simply foxes of varying sizes, walking with an intelligence that was quite unnatural.

They swarmed us with a complete and unnerving lack of personal boundaries that was, perhaps, a bit too friendly. A small, red fox with three tails began to playfully tug at the hem of Ashley’s long, glistening trench coat, its sharp little teeth sinking into the material. Another, in the guise of a young woman with sharp, vulpine features, leaned in far too close to me, her nose twitching as she sniffed intently at my collar, her red eyes wide with a feral, analytical curiosity. I stood perfectly still, a statue under the inspection of a pack of inquisitive, otherworldly creatures.

Ashley immediately recoiled, beginning to shake and sweat as she pulled her coat free and hid behind Xiao Ru, who in contrast, seemed entirely unperturbed by this strange, tactile greeting. She raised her hand simply to gain attention.

"Sisters!" she called out, her voice clear and strong. "We have heard of the village's turmoil and have returned to offer our aid!"

She scanned the crowd, her gaze seeking someone of authority. "We request an audience with the clan leader. The matter of the stolen children is urgent."

The air did not so much carry a murmur as it thickened with one—a sudden, low viscosity of shared thought that passed through the assembled foxes. All play ceased. Their eyes, now fixed upon us, were were of supplicants searching for a miracle. Their silent, desperate hope leeched the colour from the world around me, leaving only the stark, monochrome reality of their need.

The assembled foxes, their eyes like burning embers in the twilight, parted for us as we approached the Matriarch’s dwelling. It was a natural cathedral formed from the roots of the largest and most ancient tree in the grove. Its bark glowed with the intensity of a small moon, and a vast, arching doorway, flanked by two stone fox statues, whose eyes held the unnerving stillness of the painted eyes on a funeral effigy, beckoned us into its hallowed gloom.

Before the archway, a shimmering, golden light, like heat haze on a summer's day, pulsed softly. Their haste evaporated. Xiao Ru and Lalika stopped, their bodies assuming a strange and calibrated stillness, as if they were tuning themselves to a sound I could not hear. I steeled myself for some strange new protocol—a recalibration of the soul's magnetic north, perhaps, or a ceremonial shedding of one's own shadow—truly a solemn genuflection I ought naught know as an oupire in the kitsune cage.

"We must observe the old ways," Xiao Ru whispered, her voice barely a breath. "A sign of utmost respect for the Matriarch."

Then, to my lasting bewilderment, the two sisters faced each other and executed their sacred greeting. It was a rapid, intricate dance of hands—fists bumping with a soft thud, palms sliding with a percussive slap, followed by a sharp, staccato snap of fingers. They concluded this astonishing display with a quick, almost violent nod of their heads with their arms wrapping around their ribs. It was a gesture so incongruous, so… profanely modern in its swift, percussive energy against the backdrop of this ancient, fantastical forest, that my mind simply recoiled.

Ashley, beside me, let out a soft, choked sound that was half a groan and half a desperate, suppressed giggle. She closed her eyes, her face a mask of exquisite suffering, as if confronted by the sudden, grotesque vision of a clown at a funeral.

Ere I could attempt the strange protocol, a voice rippled across the surface of my consciousness, as a stone dropped in a pool of mercury. It was a low sound, imbued with the timbre of verdigris on an old bronze bell—at once the deep authority of the bell itself and the soft, weary corrosion of ages.

The greeting is sufficient. Enter.

Xiao Ru, seemingly oblivious to the sheer, unholy dissonance of the moment, simply nodded. She led us through the archway of living roots and into the deep, hallowed melancholy of the Matriarch's dwelling.

The interior of the great tree was a vast, circular chamber, lit by the same soft, phosphorescent glow that permeated the forest, though here it was deeper, more muted, casting long, shifting shadows. The very air felt thick with an immense, palpable power that made my skin prickle.

Upon a dais that was less a construction of roots and more a permanent, localized instance of 'up', sat the Matriarch. She was tall, and her grace was the kind that leaves a faint, harmonic after-image in the air. Her robes were made of a material that seemed to have a different opinion about the laws of physics, causing light to hesitate and then fold neatly into its threads. Her hair was the colour of a question that has just been answered, and her eyes were the gold of a theorem that is both beautiful and true.

And behind her, her nine magnificent tails moved with a slow, languid grace, each a great, sweeping brush of purest white fur, tipped in ethereal silver. They drifted through the air like smoke or seaweed in a slow, deep current, a constant, their weight seeming to convey a power that dried my tongue.

As we stood before this awe-inspiring figure, Xiao Ru took center stage. With a sudden burst of energy, she launched into another performance of startling incongruity. She began a series of fluid, sharp movements, dropping to the floor, spinning on one hand, then kicking out a leg with rhythmic precision—a full, energetic display of what we… of what humans had called a "breakdance." It was performed with the utmost solemnity, her face a mask of intense focus, her tail swishing in perfect sync with her rapid, popping movements.

The Matriarch, her golden eyes fixed upon her descendant, watched with an unwavering gaze. When Xiao Ru concluded with a final flourish and froze in a pose of suspended animation, the Matriarch did not speak. She simply raised a delicate, white-furred hand and, with a subtle movement of her thumb, offered a slow, deliberate "thumbs up."

My perception of the moment seemed to fracture. The Matriarch, whose age I could only assume was measured in geological time, performed a gesture belonging not to the brittle, fleeting fictions of humankind… of a cheap 90s action film. I turned my head slowly toward Ashley. She closed her eyes, and I could almost perceive the low, thrumming sound of her patience being ground into a fine, iridescent powder. Her silent suffering was a more eloquent confirmation than any word.

After delivering her silent approval, she beckoned Xiao Ru forward with a slight curl of her finger. Xiao Ru approached the dais, her solemnity breaking into a relieved smile. The Matriarch leaned forward, her movement as fluid as flowing water, and stroked Xiao Ru's head, her long, pale fingers gently scratching behind one of her fox ears. At the touch, a look of pure, blissful contentment washed over Xiao Ru's face, her ears bending back in happy, instinctual obedience.

Lalika, perhaps feeling overlooked and now seeing the formula for praise, chose this moment to make her own appeal. She cleared her throat and launched into her own attempt at the dance. It was a flailing, uncoordinated disaster of tangled limbs and awkward stumbles. She spun, lost her balance, and ended the display by nearly falling into one of the glowing roots of the dais.

The Matriarch's face, which had been softened by a moment of affection, contorted into a bizarre and childish grimace. She stuck out her tongue, a pale pink thing against her porcelain features, and gave Lalika's performance a single, emphatic thumbs-down.

Then, a sound issued from this legendary creature, a sound so… undignified that it seemed to break the very laws of fox… of kitsune reality.

"Nggnnyeeeh!" she bleated.

I simply stood there, my mind a blank. The potentially millennia old queen had just approved of one daughter with a cinematic gesture, petted her like a favored animal, and then bleated like a goat at the other. The dissonance was… something.

Beside me, Ashley, who had been a portrait of suffering, now clapped a hand over her mouth, her shoulders shaking with silent, suppressed laughter.

At the Matriarch's bizarre and unequivocal dismissal, Lalika's entire form seemed to wilt. Her pointed fox ears, which had been perked with such hopeful energy, now fell, drooping in a pitiable sadness. Xiao Ru looked at her sister, not with an odd, sidelong glance that was a mixture of deep embarrassment and long-suffering pathos. I couldn’t help but take note.

It was she who broke the strange, lingering silence. Clearing her throat, she stepped forward, her earlier blissful expression replaced once more by one of solemn duty. "Honored Mother," she said, her voice formal and clear, "we have come to speak of the missing children."

At the mention of this grave subject, the Matriarch's bizarre, playful demeanor vanished as if it had never been. The childish light in her sunlit eyes was extinguished, replaced by that deep and terrible sorrow I had noted before. She drew in a long, slow breath—a sigh that seemed to contain the accumulated nostalgia for stars that had already died.

"The Verge has been closed to us," the Matriarch said, her voice the low, resonant sound I had heard in my mind. "The river-nymphs, who were once our allies, have woven a ward at the edge of the deep woods. It forbids our women from passing. They hold our children captive beyond that veil, and we are powerless to reach them."

My mind, ever the investigator's, latched onto the crucial detail. "Forbidding your women," I repeated, my own voice sounding thin in the hallowed chamber. "Women?"

For the first time, the entirety of her attention alighted upon me, as gently and irrevocably as dust. Her head tilted, a slow, deliberate gesture. There was a long silence, in which I had the sensation of being a single note of music, held and analyzed for all its component harmonies and dissonances by a foxy master composer.

"And you are?" she inquired, her voice a soft, silken whisper. "A friend of Xiao Ru's, I presume?"

The Matriarch's direct address to me seemed to startle Xiao Ru from her solemn reverie. A faint blush touched her cheeks as she realized her oversight in decorum. She quickly stepped forward, placing herself slightly between me and the Matriarch, as if to shield me from the intensity of that golden gaze.

"Forgive my manners, Honored Mother," she said, her voice full of a flustered but earnest respect. "This is my good friend; she is the incredible Detective Mei-Ling."

She gestured toward me with a sweep of her hand, her pride in my title evident. "She hails from a city of steel and glass that lies far beyond the eyes of the Capital, a world away from our own."

The Matriarch's gaze did not leave my face, but I perceived a subtle shift in its depths. A faint, archaic amusement, like the glint of sun on a long-lost coin, stirred within them. The corner of her mouth, which had been a grim, straight line, tilted upward but by a fraction.

"'A city beyond the eyes of the Capital?'" she mused, her voice a soft. "Such a thing is truly possible? I had thought the Empress's gaze, like the many suns, touched all corners of all worlds."

Her words were not a direct accusation of falsehood, but a languid, philosophical challenge. I felt her piercing gaze upon me—a slow and patient dissection. I inclined my head, a gesture of deference.

"This world is but a new and strange dream to me, Honored Mother," I confessed, my voice a low murmur in the stillness. "I was a creature of another place, another time. That I now draw breath here is a paradox I no longer seek to understand."

My gaze drifted to Xiao Ru, who stood in the shadow of her graceful queen like a vibrant flame beside a marble tomb. "Were it not for the charity of your descendant, I would surely have perished. She has been a lantern in a lightless world, and I confess my spirit would have been perfectly lost without her gentle guidance."

A smile, a thing so previously extrinsic to my features now it felt like the cracking of an old porcelain mask, touched my lips for a fleeting instant. I saw the blush that rose on Xiao Ru’s cheeks, a startling bloom of mortal warmth in a place so hard to believe.

A voice, like the slow drawl of poisoned honey, dripped from the shadows behind us. "And I?" Ashley inquired, stepping forward into a sliver of the tree's faint light. "Am I to be forgotten? The architect of your glorious rebirth?"

The pale imitation of a smile on my face twisted into something more genuine, and infinitely more cruel. It was the smile of the sepulchre. I raised my gloved hand as one might present a claw. Slowly, deliberately, my fingers curled into a fist, a promise of violence held in abeyance.

"Never," I whispered, my eyes closed as if in rapture. "How could I forget the author of this exquisite, unending thirst?" I pinched the little vampire’s pale cheek, and she surrendered in protest.

From the dais, a sound answered my declaration. The Matriarch’s lips, pale and thin, were curved into a smile of archaic, terrible amusement. "Your little fox has ever possessed a generous heart," the ancient creature said, her aureate eyes resting upon Xiao Ru with something that might have been affection, or perhaps merely the detached fondness one has for a pretty, fragile thing.

Then her gaze drifted back to me, and the coldness within it was absolute. "But a generous heart is an open door, and one must be so careful what strays are permitted to cross the threshold. A house so warm... invites the cold in."

Her final words were not spoken to me, but laid upon me, an algid and doughy stone upon the breast of a corpse. Invites the cold in—it coiled in the back of my mind, a sleeping serpent, waiting. I could not make sense of it then and there.

I saw upon Xiao Ru's face a troubled confusion that mirrored my own. She looked from the Matriarch to me and then back again, her pupils a beckoning question she did not seem to know how to ask.

The Matriarch's gaze swept over us. "The path to reclaim the lost is not one of fang and claw," she said, her voice a low and resonant prophecy. "It is a road of thorns and whispers, a place of treacherous deception. If you still possess the will to undertake this folly," she continued, "then you must not delay. Your journey must begin by nightfall, when the five Moons are new and the shadows are deepest. You must cross the boundary into the place they call the Forest Tempest, lest the Verge swallow thee whole."

The Forest Tempest. The name itself seemed to carry the sound of whipping winds and unseen, malicious things. The Matriarch had given us our charge. She offered no further guidance. Our interview, it seemed, was concluded.

Then, she simply closed her piercing eyes that seemed to look right through me but a minute afore. In response to this silent command, the very wall of the chamber to her left began to move. Great, thick vines and the living bark of the tree itself drew back with a slow, grinding sound, like the stretching of a waking giant, revealing not a carved exit, but a dark, gaping passage into the woods beyond.

Xiao Ru, her face pale but set with a grim determination, gave a small, audible gulp. She manifested and clutched the luminous bow in her hand and, without a backward glance, marched into the waiting darkness.

I found my own hand had risen to my mouth, my thumb rubbing anxiously across my bottom lip, a nervous habit from a life I could barely recall.

A long, weary sigh came from Ashley beside me. With a theatrical slowness, she placed her hands into the pockets of her leather coat and strolled past me toward the opening, her gait one of indifference, as if she were merely off to procure a bottle of wine.

Lalika was the last to pass before me. She was seemingly undisturbed by the gravity of the moment. A cheerful, vacant smile graced her lips, and she walked with a carefree bounce in her step, her hands clasped behind her head as though she were on a pleasant afternoon picnic. Curiously, her tail did move.

I watched her go, a strange and unsettling creature. Was her cheerfulness a product of some deeper spiritual courage I could not comprehend, or was she, I wondered, simply… stupid?

The question was a pointless one. Shaking the thought from my mind, I took a final look at the still, silent form of the nine-tailed queen and followed the others, stepping out of the hallowed melancholy of the great tree and down into a shadowed forest grove.