Fox Woman Dreaming

Fox Woman Dreaming is part woman, part fox and part spirit of the forest. She is inseparable from her pelt and its wild and regal scent.

The following short story tells a tale of The Hunter and Fox Woman from the perspective of Fox Woman Dreaming. 

I adore mythologist Martin Shaw and his telling of stories.  Whenever I have heard the story of The Hunter and Fox Woman Dreaming, it seems to be told more through the eyes of the Hunter.  Here I tell it through the eyes of Fox Woman Dreaming, from a later point in the story where the Hunter has already demanded she clear her pelt and its scent out of the hut and she refuses. It is no choice for her, she is inseparable from her wild, regal nature.

In the beautiful tradition of these stories, versions differ, and whilst I offer a link below to a telling of the original story by Martin Shaw, I have a different ending here to the way Fox Woman Dreaming leaves.  Perhaps I’ve heard Martin tell it this way before, I can’t quite recall. On reading these stories, we are invited to remember that each character represents an aspect within the individual human psyche, they are not, in their most truest sense, intended to be externalised.

The feminine is inseparable from the regal scent of the wild.

The masculine finds union with the feminine through the heart. It is an initiation into the wild.

Beyond fear and control, they can be free, and they can be together. Both and. This is possible.

……

The next morning, when Fox Woman woke, she felt the empty space to her right. This was not unusual, for he often left in the early hours, but there was something different about today.   

Rolling off the bed, she landed on the floor with an agility that told of her strength, despite her heavy heart.  Lifting her body and head, then straightening her spine, she left the room and went to sit on the porch where she listened to the dawn.

There, through the expanding light, she saw again the cruel flash in her lover’s eyes.  Over dinner the previous night, his gaze had pierced her skin.  When his hand had slammed down on the table, she met his gaze for a few moments, and with a firm, single word “No,” she left the hut. Walking between the dusk shadows of beech, she breathed herself in and out and sang her kin song. There, the cool evening whispered its knowing which was not counter to her own.

She returned to find that the Hunter had made his bed in the other room.  He had made his bed.  He had made his choice, and she would make hers.  The impossibility and absurdity of what he was asking of her cut through to a truth she could hardly bare.  She felt through his cruelty to the fear, and to the feeling he had of not being in control.  The Hunter knew he could not control her and make her stay.  Her pelt, and its scent that permeated the hut, was a constant reminder to him that she was free, and that she was of the otherworld.  Even as they slept, close and entwined, he knew her dreaming took her to places he knew nothing of, places he could not know.  The old words she spoke in the dark hours haunted his days, and he feared he would one day return to find her gone.  She was here with him, or not, by her own song, accompanied by the decree of the fox and the spirit of the forest.  As much as she loved him, and for as long as they were together, she could never be bound to him in the way the boy in him needed her to be. 

Was it foolish to think all those months ago that she could initiate him into his own wild heart?   It was there. It was this that had called her to him, but it faltered.  She knew the crushing pain of reaching for its depths only to find it beyond her grasp, behind walls she could not climb.

Fox Woman went back into the bedroom and lifted her warm pelt from the back of the door.  On touching it, a spark of electricity ran through her muscles, whilst its soft aliveness on the skin of her hands soothed her brow.  Pulling her deep, red hair from her back and over her left shoulder, she threw her pelt over from the right side.  Immediately, its wisdom shrouded her and dissolved all doubt.  As she stood in her truth, she sang the ancient song of temperance and inhaled her regal scent from the hut.  It would go with her now.  Her every movement then became sharper and more deliberate as she made her way towards the door.  The heavy, oak door, crafted by the Hunter’s own hand, creaked open as it always did.  Walking through it, Fox Woman did not look back, she did not stop to take a final glance at the scene that had become so familiar.  Once on the porch, Fox Woman Dreaming’s pace quickened, and soon she was running, on all fours, towards the west edge of the forest.

Sources