The Bunny in the Fox's Palm novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Floor Plate

Imogen sets Hazel's plate on the floor; Hazel puts it on the table and takes Imogen's chair; at night a half-wild fox lies across her threshold.

The MacMahon house sat at the top of Bellwether Hill.

A maid in a grey dress walked me through it with a lantern, because the power in the east wing was off.

She was thin, with a dishwater braid and a small limp, and she did not meet my eyes.

"Fenella," she said, as if she were reading it off a card.

"Hazel."

"I know. The whole house knows. You bit him."

She said it like a woman describing a miracle.

At the end of a long hall she stopped at a plain oak door.

It had a new iron bolt on the inside, still bright from the file.

"He had the carpenter up at midnight," Fenella said. "Before the hall had even emptied."

I looked at the bolt for a long time.

"He didn't have to do that."

"No," she said. "He didn't."

She gave me a ring with one key on it, which I had not asked for, and a look I could not read.

"Dinner is at eight," she said. "Wear shoes. They notice shoes."

I washed the blood off my chin in a basin and tried not to think about my grandmother's face.

I did not cry.

I wanted to, so badly that my teeth hurt, but there was a bolt on my door and I intended to use it for something better than crying.

At eight o'clock I went down in my own boots and the dress I had worn up the hill.

The dining room was long and warm and smelled of roast duck.

Candles ran down the middle of the table in a line.

Linden sat at one end with a napkin tucked into his collar.

Soren sat at the other with his bitten hand wrapped in white gauze, not touching his wine.

Between them were a dozen cousins in expensive clothes, all of them turned to look at me.

A woman I had not seen before rose from the chair at Soren's right hand.

She had glossy auburn hair and a pearl choker and a smile.

"You must be the little one," she said. "I'm Imogen. Linden's daughter. Soren's, well, you'll see."

She looked me over.

"Kept ones don't sit," she said gently. "It's a bit of a tradition."

She bent and set a white china plate on the floor beside her chair.

She spooned duck onto it from the platter.

Then she waited, and the cousins waited with her, smiling and eager.

I understood that this was the real ceremony.

The hall had been the show, and this was what they came for.

I thought of the bakery.

I thought of getting up in the dark at four with my hands already aching and nobody to tell me when to stop.

I walked to the floor and picked up the plate.

Imogen's smile widened.

I carried it to the table, set it down on the white linen between the candles, and pulled out her chair.

I sat in it.

The silence lasted about as long as a held breath.

"That's my seat," Imogen said.

"It's warm," I said. "Thank you."

A cousin made a strangled noise into his napkin.

Linden put down his fork.

"Soren," he said mildly, from the far end. "Your kept one has some opinions about the furniture."

Everyone looked down the table.

Soren was watching me, with his bitten hand flat on the cloth.

He did not smile.

He did not frown.

He picked up his fork with his left hand, cut a piece of duck with great care, and ate it.

"Imogen, there's another chair by the window," he said.

It was all he said.

Imogen stood very still.

Then she went to the window and sat.

I ate my duck.

It was the best thing I had tasted in months and I hated every bite.

After dessert, nobody spoke to me, but nobody looked away either.

On the way out Fenella brushed my sleeve in the hall without turning her head.

"That plate," she whispered. "Four years ago it was mine."

I didn't have an answer for that.

I went up to my room, drew the bolt, and sat on the bed with my back against the wall.

The house made its night noises.

Pipes, a clock, the old wood settling.

I almost slept sitting up.

Then something scratched at the other side of the door.

It was low and slow, down near the floorboards.

A nail dragging.

I stood up and my heart went to my throat.

Whatever it was breathed in long ragged pulls, and under the breathing there was a thin high whine.

"Who's there?" I said.

The scratching stopped.

I went to the door and put my ear to the oak.

The whine came again, and a thump against the frame.

I knew that smell through the crack.

Cold pine, woodsmoke, and a sharp wild musk I had only ever smelled on the wind.

I slid the bolt back and pulled the door open.

A fox lay across my threshold, red and shaking, with yellow eyes rolled half up into its skull.

There was a white gauze bandage tied around its right front paw.

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