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If you are simply a fox, then I must be the complicated one. —Kij Johnson
Jean was her father's only heir. When he died, the orchard passed to her. It was a lonely property, miles upriver from the village proper, though well situated, hugging the river on one side and sloping gracefully toward the hills on the other. "Too much work for a girl on her own," the villagers fretted, but Jean was tall and strong, and showed no inclination to find herself a helpmeet. Few would have agreed to live there anyway, for the hills may have been the King's in name, but were in fact a refuge of vagabonds and goblin men and maybe trolls.
Jean saw lights in the forest sometimes, fey lanterns that winked out when you looked at them straight on, and at certain times of the year heard the wild laughter of some travelling camp mixing with the goblin market. Some in the village swore they'd seen their women travelling with goblin children. Others told tales of hags who hid in the hills year round, in hovels make of sticks, convinced they were the queens of goblin palaces.
Jean did not wander into the forest without good reason, though her outermost trees brushed branches with its bristly pines, but neither was she troubled by thieves or worse creatures. Her apples remained unmolested until Jean herself strode out to pick them, and they were second to none in all the county.
Jean's life on the edge of the hills might have been a lonely one, had it not been for the back-and-forth between her cottage and the village inn. Jean and Katy, the innkeeper's daughter, were of an age, and closer than two pips in an apple core. They visited each other nearly every day. The path that wound along beside the river was fresh the whole year round, whether the rest of the world was covered with new grass or banks of snow.
Other girls' mothers might not have liked the frequency with which they trod that path alone, for it was also the route the goblin market took as it wended its way down the valley and skirted the village before plunging back into the woods on its own, mysterious errand. But Jean did not have a mother, and Katy's mother trusted in Jean's self-sufficiency and her own girl's good sense. The two friends were each others' guardians.
"Bah! Graceless caterwauling," Jean groused, when the market passed her cottage by, and slammed her shutters.
"Shall we sing?" asked Katy, looking up from her needlework and smiling.
"Oh, yes," said Jean. So they sang about Gypsen Davy, and the Bonny Swans, and they sang "Morning Has Broken" because Katy liked that one, and their voices twined around each other in the close and friendly room.
Jean liked her little world, and disliked anything that threatened to disrupt it. If Katy's world were a little bigger, because Katy lived down in the village and went to market every week even when the inn was empty, and had relatives in town who visited whenever they could, Jean did her best not to notice it. She loved her father's orchard, and she loved her friend, and that was that.
So it came as a greater shock than it should have, when, one day in autumn, Katy said, "I am going to marry John."
"Your cousin?" Jean said stupidly. "From town?"
"Yes, of course my cousin," said Katy, laughing a little. "He has only been waiting to better establish his credit with the guild. Now he is ready to buy his shop outright and," here Katy blushed prettily, "begin a family."
Jean was silent. John had brown hair, and easy manners, and liked Mr. Loveworthy's cider. She could not remember much more about him.
"Well, Jeanie," said Katy after a moment, "have you nothing at all to say?"
"John, who is John?" Jean blurted. "He is a simpleton! He cannot make you happy."
Katy's eyebrows shot up. "He is not, and he will," she said sharply. But then she looked carefully at her friend, and gentled her voice. "Jeanie, thirty miles is not the easiest distance in the world, but you know I will visit whenever I can. I promise we shall never be strangers."
And then there was nothing for Jean to do but take Katy in her arms and wish her every happiness, and tell her she was sorry she had such a selfish old grouch for a friend, and resolve within herself to make Katy's wedding day the sweetest of her life.
The months leading up to the wedding involved more conversation about tablecloths and lace and garlands than Jean had bargained for. It seemed that Katy, who had never cared one whit for such things, could talk of nothing else. Jean humoured her gamely, and tried not to let on that she missed their lively old evenings of reading plays and poetry together.
At last spring came. Mr. Loveworthy beamed proudly as he gave his daughter to John. There was dancing and punch and toasts that went on longer than necessary, and all good things weddings should have. Lizzie and Laura, who had come of age that winter, caught the bouquet between their joined hands, and laughed until their cheeks turned pink as the peonies lining garden. They saw the bride and groom off in a carriage festooned with ribbons and shoes.
Jean stayed late and helped Katy's parents clean the dishes and set the garden to rights.
"You'll be next, eh lass?" said Mr. Loveworthy.
"You know our Jim's had his eye on you for years," Mrs. Loveworthy added.
"Has he," Jean said mildly, and applied her brush to the roasting pan. Jim had grown into a great, tall boy: hard-working and agreeable, though not as quick as his sister.
"Are you sure you won't stay the night, lovie?" Katy's mother asked, when everything was tidy.
"Thank you," said Jean, "but the stars are out and the walk will settle my mind."
"Be safe, then. We'll see you at market."
"Till then! Goodnight!"
Jean set out along the river bank, away from the last small pricks of candlelight in the drowsing village. The night was soft and green-scented. The low burble of the water seemed to lead her not only away from her neighbours, but back in time, to a smaller, wilder world where time passed without note, and no cobbled, Roman road cast off into great and tempting elsewheres.
Then Jean rounded the bend and heard the goblins. They were holding their own late feast, calling and cackling to each other, haggling and scuffling in a ring of light just inside the lowering canopy of the wood. They noticed Jean, and the cry went up: "Come buy! Come buy!"
In Jean and Katy's world, the goblins were just another set of noises in the night. The two girls had held hands and laughed and made up songs with complicated harmonies to drown their voices ever since they'd heard them first, when they were both fourteen. Everyone knew goblin goods were not for decent folk, as surely as they knew that Kate should marry John from town and Jean should marry Jim, and all of them should live gratefully ever after.
Jean could still taste the frosting from Katy's wedding cake in her mouth.
She slowed on the path, and turned to the side. It was her first clear sight of the goblins, in all her years. They were small and various, some furry as foxes, some bald as turkeys. Some looked like beasts she had seen all her life: hedgehogs and toads and pink-nosed moles. Some were utterly strange: little, gray rabbit-pigs in articulated armour; spindly monkeys with huge, dark eye patches and rings around their tails.
They carried great shoulder-baskets of berries and fruits, some of them taller than the goblins themselves. Though they must have traveled many miles, everything was bursting with perfect ripeness, taut and gleaming brighter than a hoard of gems. Jean saw grapes and persimmons, limes and wintergreen, nubbly, red nuts and star-shaped fruits shaped like giant, yellow apple carpels. Out of sheer amazement at their infinite variety, Jean stepped closer.
But then the wind lifted, and Jean breathed in the scent of apple blossoms from her own trees. That was the best, most comforting smell in the world. Her spine straightened. A moment later the breeze reached the goblins, too, and one by one they fell silent. They lifted their noses or waved their antennae, and stood there quivering at the edge of the road. Their eyes flicked back and forth between the deep, gray shadows of the orchard in the distance and Jean. Then slow, lascivious, glinting grins split their faces, and they started to hiss and murmur again: "Ours, ours. The apples are ripening. Bargain and buy! Cry! Cry! Oh, soon. Yesssss."
"I, I must—" Jean stuttered, and picked up her skirts. The goblins jostled each other, snuffled and croaked, but did not crowd her any more. Off to the side, not touching any of his fellows, posed one with a fox's face, who stood upright and tossed a round, little crab apple from palm to palm, and looked at her with narrowed eyes. Jean stared at him for a moment, and saw that the apple turned green as beech leaves every time it landed in his right hand, and red as blood when it landed in his left. He saw her notice, and winked. Jean broke the fox goblin's gaze and turned her back, breaking into a run as soon as she felt the smooth grass of her own field beneath her feet. All the way, she could feel the pale, greedy eyes of the goblin sellers on her back.
The next weeks passed in a dull and blurry haze. Pink apple blossoms paled to white beneath dreary skies. Jean hired no help that year, but worked herself to exhaustion in the vegetable beds, trying not to notice when teatime and supper passed without the interruption of Katy's familiar voice at the gate. Katy's mother visited twice, with Jim in tow. She took in the immaculate garden, the dusty house, and the distracted girl in front of her, gray-eyed and red-knuckled. "Come down the hill, dear," she told Jean, "and let us cook you a nice meal. You can spend the night in Katy's old bed."
Jean thought about that, about staying in Katy's house, sleeping between soft sheets that still might smell faintly of Katy. Waking up and seeing Jim at the breakfast table. "No," she said, struggling for politeness. "I can't. Maybe...maybe a little later in the year, once the peas and beans have flowered."
The fox goblin turned up on the same day the apple blossoms fell, making way for the first hard, green nubs of fruit.
"You keep a fine orchard," he said from behind her, while she was working in the vegetable garden. She turned, keeping a solid grip on her rake. In daylight, he was both fox and not-fox; eyes too large and paws too dexterous, and a coat that seemed to shift as she watched, now a red summer pelt, now a man's quilted jacket, now a weaving of leaves and bark. It strained her eyes when she tried to focus on it.
Jean looked down at him without answering.
"Odd to keep just two kinds of apples, though," he continued pleasantly. "Do you graft, at all?"
"I have no need," said Jean.
The goblin raised an eyebrow at her gruffness, but did not pursue it. Instead, he settled himself on the stump at the edge of the plot, apparently with every intention of staying and watching her work.
"Why do you not pull up those weeds?" he asked after a few minutes.
"That's clover," Jean replied absently. "It keeps the potatoes happy."
"How interesting," said the goblin.
He was silent until she reached the end of her row. Then: "Strawberry?" he inquired. Jean looked up. He had them in a little wicker basket with a hinge. They were tiny and wild.
Jean displayed hands that had been shovelling horse manure all morning. "No, thank you."
Jean saw the goblin frown, but he covered it with an airy, "Your loss," and popped a berry in his mouth.
"My gain, come August," Jean retorted, gesturing at the seedlings behind her. "Potatoes are more filling than strawberries."
"You have no soul," said the goblin, and Jean laughed.
The goblin sidled closer to the row where Jean was working and flicked his fingers. Jean tracked the motion and saw that a beetle had landed on one of her plants. It was bumbling about on a leaf barely large enough to support its weight, scoping the territory. It looked like it was thinking of settling in. Jean reached over, but the fox beat her to it, and popped the beetle in his mouth the same as he had the strawberry.
"Hm," said the fox, and began methodically checking the rest of the seedlings for pests, working his way down the row with his tail in the air, peering at the undersides of leaves.
After that, the fox goblin visited every week.
"These will be dark, almost purple when they ripen, yes?"
Jean nodded.
"And the others?"
"Red and green; very crisp."
"I've better," said the goblin.
Jean glowered at him. "Better than blue ribbon cider twenty years running?" she asked. "These were good enough for my father. They are good enough for me."
The goblin reached into his pocket and pulled out a mature apple, redder than Jean's would be, but with a soft, green blush on one side. "This," he said, sounding like a roadside magician with a magnificent trick, "is a brand new strain, from across the sea."
He scooped Jean's knife up from the stump where she'd set it alongside her twine and trowel. Jean listened to the delicate pop as the knife sank into the apple. "It's thin-skinned," she noted. "It will not last in the cellar as long as mine do."
"But what does their longevity matter, since you use half of them for cider? These are sweeter and brighter. Taste."
"Hawk your goods at market," said Jean, turning back to her work. "You were never invited here."
"They are hardier than yours," the goblin cajoled, even as he sidled back out of her way. "Scab will not touch them."
"Ha," said Jean, but she glanced at her own trees, which always lost a portion of their yield to blight.
The days lengthened, and the weather worsened. The clouds would neither disperse nor open up and rain. The beetles had come back to torment her vegetable crop. No matter how much time she spent on hands and knees, their leaves looked sickly and full of holes.
The goblin had not been by in several days. That morning, as she stood on a ladder, checking the apple leaves again for signs of spot, she had caught herself muttering arguments to an imaginary fox: what witticisms she would throw at him to let him know she did not want his wares or company.
She was just descending from a tree when she heard a bright, "Good day, Miss Jeanie!" from below.
"You! I told you I do not want—!" Jean spun on the ladder and blinked down—at Jim, who stood at the base of the tree, blinking in confusion.
"Oh," said Jean, flustered. "I am sorry. I thought. I do not know what I thought."
"I thought you might like to go for a walk," said Jim. "I know my company isn't as good as Katy's, but the gooseberries are finally ripe out past the old bridge, and it's a fine day for picking."
Suddenly Jean missed Katy with a vivid, lancing pain, as if all the missing she had tried to set aside while she worked the farm came rushing into her heart at once. She was pathetically alone, with only a hundred fruit trees and one vaguely sinister, inscrutable goblin for company. In her haste to conceal her expression from Jim, she found herself agreeing to walk with him. She left her ladder where it was, and together they set out.
The gooseberries were very fine on the far side of the river, and the sun even peeped out to warm their shoulders as they picked.
When she came back in the evening, she found scab on her trees.
Jim came back the next afternoon. Jean felt haggard, and knew she looked it, too. She had spent the morning cutting and hauling branches, trying to stop the spread of the blight. Jim looked at her doubtfully, but convinced her to rest, sat with her for half an hour, and made conversation and ate apple cake made from the last of last year's preserves.
After he had gone, Jean went back outside to burn the branches. The fox goblin was sitting on the garden wall. "I did tell you," he said, in a meaner voice than he'd ever used before, "your trees are weak. You had better plan for worse than a little apple scab. At least this crop is still edible."
"Get gone!" Jean snarled at him. "What do you care if my orchard thrives or fails? I do not want your aid! Or," she nodded at the burnished red apple that had appeared again in his hand, "the fruits you've been thrusting on me since summer began."
"You are too proud," the fox goblin growled back. "Your solitude is unnatural. One way or another, it will play you foul."
Jean struck a match, and tossed it on the brush pile.
That night, Jean dreamt there were goblins all around her house, beating on the door and clamouring at her windows, climbing up the fruit trees and shaking them, ripping the young apples from their branches and pelting them at the ground, at each other, at the walls of her house. Biting into their green skins and spitting out tart, sour juices that glistened on their chins.
She dreamt that Katy was sitting in the middle of the orchard in a white dress with a blue sash, singing to herself, and she would not, or could not, hear the goblins all around her. She didn't even look up. She did not defend the trees.
The air in the morning felt cold and raw, unkinder than any August in Jean's memory. She dressed in haste, put the kettle on the hob, threw open the door, and gasped. Every level surface—the ground, the garden wall, the table where she prepared her seedlings—was covered in hail.
Jean ran around the side of the house, crunching hailstones beneath her boots. When she reached the orchard, she staggered, and nearly dropped to her knees. Torn branches were everywhere, leaves ripped clean off in the wind. It looked as though a funnel cloud had roared down the slope and hovered there, just above treetops. Jean turned around and went back inside. She poured water for tea, and washed her face and made her bed. She cut a wedge of cheese and two slices of bread, and by then the tea was steeped, so she put it in a bottle in her pocket, tucked the bread around the cheese, and went back out.
Long hours later, Jean was slumped against a tree, slowly winding her twine with blistered fingers. All of her apples were pocked by the hail. Two new saplings were so battered she did not think they would live.
"It would be such a shame if the fireblight caught hold of these trees," the fox goblin murmured in her ear, no longer even trying to disguise the contempt in his voice. "They're always so susceptible to it after hail."
Jean flew into a rage. With the last of her power, she surged to her feet and spun, lunging at the goblin behind her as if she meant to wring his neck. Her clutching hands seemed to pass right through him, he danced out of the way so fast, and he wasted no time in turning and dashing for the garden's high stone wall.
Jean scooped an apple off the ground and flung it at him. It struck him in the temple, snapping his head back, but he caught it in his hands before it fell to the ground. "Do not dare!" she screamed at him. She caught up another apple and hurled it.
The goblin looked down at her from the top of the wall. He raised his brows and tossed the first apple from hand to hand a few times, as he had with the crab apple the first time she'd seen him. "You," said the goblin, panting and grinning, "have it entirely within your power to stop me."
Jean sat down so she would not fall down. The fox goblin stood on one leg, like a misshapen waterfowl, and fished something out of his pocket. He tossed it to Jean, winked madly, and vanished over the wall without waiting to see if she caught it.
Jean picked up the apple that had fallen into her lap. Though the goblin had tossed it from a height, it had fallen against the cushion of her thigh, and was unbruised. Its flawless red skin gleamed in the dying rays of the sun. She held it to her nose and smelt its tart sweetness. Turned it over in her hands. Drew her knife.
In the morning, Jim climbed up the hill with a cut of ham from his mother and a bouquet of flowers from the path. He dropped them both when he saw Jean, who was hunched in the cold grass with her back against the oldest, most gnarled of the apple trees. There were black smudges under her eyes, and her skin looked as thin and translucent as milk with no cream.
"Dear God, what has happened?" Jim darted forward and skidded to his knees in front of her. "Can you hear me? Jeanie!" He wrapped his big, awkward hands around her shoulders. "You," said Jim, "are coming down to the village with me. Come, let's get you bundled up."
"No," Jean protested faintly. "I can't, I've made a mistake—the goblins—"
Jim blanched, and snatched his hands back as if he'd been stung. He hovered for a moment, indecisive. Then his expression firmed, and he settled his hands again. "No, I cannot leave you here alone, you're quite delirious. Put your arms around my neck."
Jean did not: when Jim lifted her up, she was limp as a doll.
Halfway down the hill, Jean woke up to find herself cradled against Jim's chest. They were both atop Jean's gentle, old draft horse, who pulled her apple crop to market every fall.
"No!" Jean said immediately. "No, I cannot be here! Let me go!"
"Hush," said Jim. "I found you half dead in the grass, Jeanie mine, and raving about goblins. They will not have you!"
"That is not yours to say," croaked Jean, and flung herself sideways. Jim's startled grip was no match for Jean's sudden motion. She tumbled down, not looking beneath her, struck her head hard on a stone at the edge of the river, and fell into the water.
Her vision blurred. The current pulled at her skirts like chilly fingers. She heard Jim shout, and thought for an instant how easy it would be not to surface again at all. Then she swallowed water, choked, and clawed her way back to the bank, gasping and retching. She rested her forehead on the cold, wet grass, then turned and pressed her cheek to it and saw that she had stained it red.
Jean woke again in Katy's bed at the inn. She thought she had been slipping in and out of consciousness, but could not say for how long. She thought it might have been a long time. She registered a swish of skirts and a step both lighter and more urgent than Mrs. Loveworthy's. "Jeanie," Katy cried, and hurried forward, and sank to her knees at Jean's bedside. "Oh my darling, I came right away. Jeanie, what in heaven's name has happened to you?"
"Katy," said Jean. "I missed you."
"I missed you, too," said Katy, kissing her hand. "But I'm here, now; we'll make it better." She reached for a chair and settled herself properly, dragging it close so she could keep hold of Jean's hand. "I've brought you a little broth. Here now, take a sip, and tell me what has become of you since I went away, and together we shall mend it."
Jean shook her head. She did not think she understood how to mend, anymore. She looked at her friend, though, and tried to speak, to make her happy. "I saw the goblins, Kate."
"Seeing is not succumbing," said Katy swiftly. "What else?"
"I spoke with one. He visited me."
"Which?" At Jean's look, she exclaimed, "Oh, come, we saw them from the corners of our eyes a score of times, you and I! And heard the tales told by every village tongue-wagger. Which goblin was it caught my Jean unawares?"
"He had a fox's seeming," Jean murmured reluctantly.
Katy was quiet, then. Jean saw tears start in her eyes. She let go of Jean's hand to brush at them. "Oh, Jean. Jean, don't you remember the tales? Of all the powers of all the beasts in the wood, what is Fox's?"
Jean just looked at her.
"Fox is the illusionist," Katy whispered.
Jean roused herself. She remembered now; she had it all. She said, "No, Katy. You are wrong. All the tongue-waggers are wrong, too." She wet her lips. "Fox may scatter seeds, but he is no gardener. Every illusion he plants—we tend ourselves."
"But...Jim said you burned your trees. You thought they had blight."
Jean closed her eyes. "Yes. Goblins have magic, that is true. But people have stronger magic."
Katy pondered this, stroking Jean's fingers. She said softly, "Then our greatest weakness is in believing we have none." Jean nodded. There was a pressure in her skull; she could feel it growing.
"Katy? Will you bring me an apple? From my own orchard? Do you know, I haven't tasted one all year." She looked up again and lifted her hand to Katy's cheek. "I'll wait here. I'll wait right here for you."
In Katy's eyes was perfect clarity.