Free The Bone Forest by Robert Holdstock Page A

shock of losing all their hens.
    Who was that "old drummer fox"?
    He looked at the scattered books, searched among them, but found nothing. He called for Jennifer and she came into the room, frowning at the mess. She looked as tired as she felt. It had been a long night, and a long talk, and Huxley had told her much that she should have known before, and explained about the supernatural event that was occurring.
    Not unsurprisingly, Jennifer was shocked, and was still shocked, and had spent an hour on her own, fighting a feeling of nausea. He had left her alone. It had seemed inappropriate to try to explain that in a way she had slept only with her husband, that no man from this, the real world, had touched her apart from Huxley. But that was not how she saw it, and there were other considerations too, no doubt.
    "Drummer Fox and Boy Ralph? That was Steven's favorite story for years, when he was much younger. He was obsessed with it…"
    "I've never heard of it."
    "Of course," she said acidly. "You never read
anything
to the boys. I did all the reading."
    "Rebuke accepted," Huxley said quickly. "Can you find the book? I must see that story."
    She searched the shelves, and the scatter of books on the floor, opened the wardrobe where albums, school books, and magazines were stored, but couldn't find the volume of tales that included Drummer Fox.
    Huxley felt impatient and anxious. "I must know the story."
    "Why?"
    "I think it may be the key to what is happening. What can you remember of it? You said you'd read it to him—"
    "Hundreds of times. But a long time ago."
    "Tell me the story."
    She leaned back against one of the desks and gathered her thoughts. "Oh Lord, George. It's
so
long ago. And I read so many stories to them, Christian especially…"
    "Try. Please try."
    "He was a sort of gypsy fox. Very old, older than any human alive. He'd been wandering Europe for centuries, with a drum, which he beat every dawn and dusk, and a sack of tricks. He either played tricks on people to escape from them, or entertained them for his supper. He also had a charge, an infant boy."
    "Boy Ralph."
    "That's right. Boy Ralph was the son of a Chief, a warrior of the olden days. But the boy was born on a highly auspicious day and his father was jealous and decided to kill the infant by smothering him. He was planning to use the carcass of a chicken for the vile deed.
    "Drummer Fox lived at the edge of the village, entertaining people with his tricks and sometimes giving them prophecies. He liked the boy and seeing him in danger stole him and ran away with him. The King sent a giant of a warrior after the fox, with instructions to hunt him down and kill them both. So Drummer Fox found himself running for his life.
    "Wherever Drummer Fox went he found that humans were tricky and destructive. He didn't trust them. Some were kind and he left them alone. He always paid a small price for whatever he had taken from them. But others were hunters and tried to kill him. At night he would make his bed in their chicken sheds, making mattresses and blankets from the dead chicks—"
    Huxley slapped his knees as he heard this. "Goon…"
    "He used to say [and here, Jennifer put on a silly country voice], 'Nothing against the chicks but their clucking. They'd give me away. Give me away. So better a feather bed than a nice egg in the morning. Sorry chicks...'"
    "And then he'd silently kill the lot of them."
    "Of course. This
is
a story for children." Huxley shared Jennifer's smile. "Anyway, that isn't all. Drummer Fox made the infant Ralph a plaything of the heads of the chickens, threaded on a piece of string."
    Huxley was astonished and delighted. "Good God! That's exactly what had happened in the chicken house. And Steven never saw inside! He didn't know about that particularly gruesome piece of Ash's game. Go on. Go on!"
    "That's more or less it, really. The fox is on the run. He gets what he can from the human folk he meets, but if in danger he tricks the