In Search of Leo

Chapter 1

The woods, moonlight, and Mr. Fox

Leo’s leash lay on the porch. A squiggly sash of brown on white floorboards. Abandoned. It looked like a dead snake.

It was still hooked to the collar at one end. Missing its wearer, the contraption looked like a lasso, Heidi noticed.

It was limp and useless now, with no one to rein in. As if the old boy had somehow shrunk and wriggled out of the restraint and had bounded away towards mischief.

A tightness tugged at Heidi’s gut and moved up to squeeze her chest. Terror and guilt collided in the very centre of her being. Every breath of air whooshed out of her. Her throat constricted and her jaws clamped shut.

She would have stood at her porch for a very long time, not knowing what to do next. But the realization that Leo was missing sent her zigzagging from her front yard to the village centre, from the baker’s to the grocer’s, from her neighbour’s to her friends’ in the next village.

A couple of hours of futile pursuit later, she conceded Leo must have run off to the one place he knew better than to have ventured into alone. The woods.

Back home, Heidi packed a torch, a loaf of bread left over from yesterday’s supper, two bars of Mars chocolate, a flask of spiced tea, and a bottle of water in a knapsack. She heaved it on to her shoulder and let herself out through the back door.

The woods, once upon a time a coppice, began where the lawn in her backyard now refused to be mowed. No fence was required to slice the land into proprietorial zones. None could keep the forest away.

Heidi strode through the overgrown grass and disappeared into the woods just as the periwinkle sky was beginning to shed its flimsy colours and give way to the blackness of the night.

It was summer in the village but an in-between season in the woods. Not quite fall. Not quite spring. Summer and winter were playing hide and seek, both uncertain whose turn it was to hide and whose to seek.

Leo, Leo, Heidi called out and flicked on her torch.

Light gushed onto a small patch ahead of her but the surrounding area grew darker, as if all the light of the forest was converging in that compact pool. She pointed the beam to the left and right, near and far. Forest-things scuttled out of view.

The last thing she wanted to do was scare Leo away with a strange tube of light that was too bright, too unfamiliar for him to want to reveal himself. She threw the torch back into her knapsack.

She might as well get used to seeing by the feeble light of the night. She hadn’t brought any spare batteries after all.

Leo, Leo, Heidi hollered as she made her way. Her voice ricocheted off tree trunks. Echoes reverberated around her briefly, then lost themselves to the muddy earth and the opaque air of the night.

Leo, Leo, she called out again. Each cry momentarily interrupted the sylvan nocturne.

Cicadas ceased to shriek. Frogs paused mid-croak. The wind dropped. Restless, rustling leaves cut short their gossip. Owls swivelled their heads noiselessly. Wolf-howls hung from the still breeze in anticipation. Twigs underfoot failed to snap.

The earth adjourned its motion for half a moment like a ballerina halted in mid-pirouette. The universe allowed an interlude for Leo, but he did not respond.

Time moved by a deft hand, and all the nocturnal sounds rose and rushed and surged and roared again all at once, resurrected just as swiftly and abruptly as they had ceased.

Deeper and deeper into the woods Heidi ventured, sparing little thought to how far she had come or how much further she would have to go, or how she would find her way back home. But the brute force of terror, on the strength of which she had begun her journey, was rapidly crumbling.

Something combative had held her together and kept her on her feet thus far. Something resolute and steady had propelled her through the woods until now, but it was quickly unravelling.

The blood that had drummed in her ears and throbbed in her head back at the porch now pooled onerously around her ankles, like dead weight.

Her feet and boots felt like misshapen boulders, plotting to trip her up and slow her down. Her back and shoulders stooped under the weight of her knapsack, like reeds that bowed to the wind.

Her throat was flayed by her insistent cries to Leo, and wouldn’t be soothed by the mouthfuls of water she gulped from her bottle until it was nearly empty. Her voice had whittled down to a hoarse unfamiliar whisper she worried Leo wouldn’t recognize.

She felt unmoored. Like a fallen leaf of autumn being whisked away by a frosty wind.

Heidi ran into a tree and slumped against its trunk. She was spent. Shattered. She let herself slip into a downward spiral of exhaustion, weighed down by tired bones and jagged breath and a splintered spirit.

She kicked off her boots, dropped her knapsack, and curled up in a foetal position. Thighs pressed to her chest, she buried her face between her knees. And for the first time since her mother had died, Heidi began to cry.

Her tears resolutely found a way to bleed through eyes shut tight. Sorrow trickled from a dark, lonely place lodged deep within her and rattled her entire being.

Stupid, stupid boy, Heidi said softly into her knees. Perhaps he was home right now, she thought hopefully. Maybe he was back on the porch, wondering where she was.

There were other possibilities too, she knew, grim prospects she couldn’t bear to think about even though they whispered and thrummed in her subconscious like a plainsong throbbing inside the walls of a cathedral.

She wrapped her arms around her knees and pulled herself into a tight ball, as if to keep all the dark thoughts from coming in, as if to keep herself from falling to bits.

Which is why she didn’t hear the fox approach. Nor did she see him at first.

When she finally felt she could loosen up a little without losing her composure, she looked up and saw that the forest had changed.

Where once everything had been painted in different shades of sable, the moon now peeked from behind clouds and leaves, and cast pools of silvery light that swayed on the forest floor in step with the jiggling treetops.

Beautiful, isn’t it? The words sprang out of the ether beside her.

Heidi whipped her head around. The silhouette of a canid slowly came into view. Shapeshifting spots of moonlight danced on his