Red Foxes, Part Three

The final revision for my portfolio of my short story, Red Foxes. It was written as fiction but I'm quite tempted to turn it into fantasy.

She’d gone to three more cities, taken several more buses, and eaten at many more small restaurants. Quinn felt restless and uneasy as she stared at the large pond in the middle of the park, ringed by long grass, water lilies floating about on top of the water. Seafoam green wooden bridges criss-crossed the pond, as people casually strolled over, occasionally stopping and excitedly pointing in the water as they saw the orange and white Koi that swam in its depths. It was the third time she’d come to see the pond, three days in a row, and she still hadn’t stepped on the bridge, just stood or sat at a distance… watching.

                The first day she’d come, she’d been too twitchy to do much, waiting for the red foxes to appear again, to prove that they had followed her again. The second day, she’d still been jumpy, but she’d been able to make herself sit on the cropped grass beneath the oak tree for an hour. That’s when the young girl had come up to her, flouncing around in her purple sleeping beauty shirt and tan capris, golden blonde hair pulled back into a half pony-tail, green eyes as wide as her smile, white sandals kicking up leaves. She had seen Quinn and decided to plop down next to her, to talk to her. It seemed a lot of people found Quinn approachable.

                “You have funny eyes,” the girl had said, staring at her face, “Why are they different colors?”

                “I was born with them.”

                Quinn hadn’t been sure what to do, did this girls parents know she was talking to a stranger?

                “You have pretty hair though; it’s a lot whiter than mine. Mommy says I have princess hair. Do you have princess hair?”

                Quinn teased at the waves that had escaped her braid, staring at the white-blond strands in-between her fingers.

                “I don’t know.”

                “Didn’t your mommy tell you?”

                Quinn smiled slightly, a bitter smile, “She didn’t tell me I had princess hair. She brushed it for me though, every day. Made sure there were no knots.”

                The brushing of Quinn’s hair was a painfully sweet memory. Her father and mother had married too quickly, and he’d split when things had gotten bad. She only had vague memories of him, the scent of his cologne, the scratch of his two-day old beard against her cheek when he had kissed her goodnight, the faint slurr of the edges of his words. Her mother woke her up the day after he’d left and announced that she was going to start brushing Quinn’s hair for her in the mornings. Something that was just for the two of them. Her mother had put on a lovely smile; she was in a manic mood, but on the downward spiral. Quinn lied; her mother didn’t brush it for her every day. Many a day her hair went untouched by her mothers’ hands and Quinn was left to brush and braid her own hair, and then take care of her mother’s. Those days were hard.

                “Oh…” The girl dug the heels of her sandals into the ground. Her mother was going to have a hard time getting out those dirt stains. “Your mom sounds nice.”

                “She was a good person…”

                Quinn’s mother had tried to be good, had wanted to be a good mother. It wasn’t Quinn’s place to judge the actions of her mother. Some days, the depression was better than the mania. Not in those last few weeks, but in the middle… the sedated sadness was easier to handle than the frenzied overkill joy, where anything could happen if her mother’s mind alighted on the idea. Skipping school to go to the beach was one thing, renting a car on a vacation with the top down so you could speed around mountain roads and cliffs was another thing altogether. Her mother had tried to be good, but some things still scarred. The midnight talks of death and despair over whiskey, the weekends where Quinn cleaned and cooked while her mother lay listless on the couch, the manic days when her mother would take her out, only to constantly talk about the red foxes all over the place, the cursed red foxes.

                “Are you here for the Silver Koi?”

                “Silver Koi?” Quinn’s eyes returned to the little girl, dragging her away from the past.

                The little girl nodded matter-of-factly, smiling as if she had a huge secret to share.

                “Mommy says that there’s a Silver Koi fish in that pond. If you find it, you get a wish. I want to find that fish. I’d wish for lots of pretty things, for me and my mommy. What would you wish for?”

                Quinn had found herself the sole victim of the innocent stare of the young girl, and no answer to give.

                “I’d wish…. I’d wish for…” Quinn couldn’t think of a good answer for a little kid. You don’t say things like, ‘I wish  my mother wasn’t crazy,’ or , ‘I wish my father gave a damn,’ because little kids wouldn’t understand that. She could say, ‘I wish the red foxes would disappear,’ but then she’d have to explain that knowing a child’s curiosity, and did she dare make the child aware of the creatures?

                “Oh, mommy’s calling! Good luck finding the fish!”

                She jumped up and waved, running off to leave Quinn alone, staring at the sparkling water of the Koi pond… which was why Quinn had come back the next day. What would she wish for if she could wish for anything? She fiddled with the scarf around her neck again, this one a pale gray with lavender flowers on the corners. Her mother had worn this scarf more than once on a down day, running her fingers over the lavender flowers. Pressing the cloth to her nose, she inhaled, her memory giving her the faint scent of the flowers, what the scarf might have smelled like once.

                The bridges began to clear as people took their kids home, or headed off to eat, the afternoon crowd slowly clearing off with the sun as it faded. She eventually  approached the bridge, hesitantly placing one foot in front of the other, testing the boards before she walked. In the dark, the water was an inky black, with flashes of white from the fish that swam underneath.

                “Which one of you is silver?” she whispered to the fish, getting no answer.

Author's Note

Any/all help/critique is loved.