"Hello to you, too!" said the voice, a little cautiously. The fox's
eyes glittered in the cold light, and there was something dark and wet
and glistening on the side of the muzzle as it moved its head to one
side, almost quizzically.
"Well?" said the voice. "It's getting light and we must reach the
forest before they discover that we're gone." The fox looked around.
"And before someone gets cross about all this." Behind it, the other
eyes moved in the darkness, and there was a crunching sound from the
egg store. Victoria shuddered, then stopped herself. She could imagine
what they'd done to the eggs.
"How do you know I'm not cross?" said Victoria, and she said it
rather crossly because she didn't want to sound afraid. "Look at this
mess! And the waste! Who do you think is going to have to clear it all
up? And you've no idea how furious Turnip and The Hag are going to be!
There'll be hell to pay!" And then she giggled at the thought of those
two huge mouths, gaping as hers had done, and then Turnip, wobbling
from side to side down the aisle, and The Hag, all angles and bones,
pecking at the piles of slaughtered chickens.
"Hell to pay?" said the voice, speaking each word distinctly as
though they were bits in a jigsaw that didn't quite fit. "I haven't
heard that one before. What does it mean?" The eyes in the egg store
shifted uneasily behind the silver fox, and there was some muttering.
The silver fox turned, and snapped into the shadows. "There'll be hell
to pay if we don't get a move on? I'll bloody give you hell to pay!"
And then it turned back to Victoria. "Hmmm," it said thoughtfully." I
think it makes sense now. But you'd better let us by. We have to go.
It's getting light. Pleased to meet you." And the fox stepped forwards,
as if pushing the air against Victoria, so that she would move back and
make some space between the fox and the back door of the henhouse. But
it staggered a little fatly and somehow Victoria didn't feel she had to
give way.
What a funny thing to say, thought Victoria. She couldn't really be
afraid of something that could slaughter chickens as though it were the
most natural thing in the world, then say, "Pleased to meet you" so
primly, and not know what "hell to pay" meant. She giggled again. They
had been greedy!
"But what about me?" she asked. "How will I explain all this? You
can't just come in here, have a midnight feast and then scoot off into
the forest and leave me to clear up after you! I'll be in awful
trouble! They'll never believe talking foxes! And how did you get in
here in the first place? And where have you come from?"
"Look," said the fox, "there isn't time to explain. We have to go.
We were so hungry and afraid, and we knew that we would die if we
didn't escape. And then, across the fields we found this! Can you
imagine the smell! The delicious feathery smell of chickens!" Victoria
gagged. "Hundreds of them! Some of us had only heard of chickens! Until
tonight it was only stories! And then here we were, famished and
frightened, out of our own cages, the smell of our own dead at last out
of our nostrils, and this huge building in front of us, full of the
most delicious fresh, tender chickens!" The silver fox licked its
chops, and the dark patch on its muzzle disappeared.
Another voice growled out of the darkness behind the silver fox. It
was low and urgent. "Come on, Vix, get a move on! We've got to go!" And
the owner of that voice, a second, bigger fox, stepped carefully into
the light, followed by seven or eight others. They were all a deep
red-brown, with big, bushy tails and bright eyes. "This is just a small
human. It won't stop us. We can get by. And if it does try...." There
was something menacing in its tone, but they all walked a little
unsteadily. One had a beard of feathers and another shook one of its
back paws to dislodge an eggshell. A feather fluttered to the ground.
They shifted uneasily and looked unsteadily around.
The big, red fox raised its lips on either side of its muzzle and
bared its teeth.
Victoria stepped back. She was thinking fast. "You've escaped from
Mr Slaughter's Fur Farm! Oh, let me come with you! I know about the
world outside! I've been to school - I know the roads and where the
forest starts!" And then she shivered, but not with cold. She paused
and the foxes pressed forward. "And I know about the hunt." They
stopped.
The big red fox looked at her with hot eyes. "You're a human like
the rest of them. You look after chickens, just as humans looked after
us. Why should we trust you? Why should you want to come with us? Come
on, Vix, let's go." And it pushed forward again.
Victoria's shoulders slumped. For a moment she had thought of
something that she had never allowed herself even to dream about.
Escape! She didn't really know much about the world outside, and the
village where she went to school was a small and unfriendly place. The
children were from the farms around and at the end of lessons everyone
began the trudge to distant farmyards across the fields. Twice that she
could remember, she'd been with The Hag and Turnip into Trough, the
market town where all the buildings had towered over her, and where
they'd eaten greasy chicken and chips in a bar. She hadn't liked it -
the bar or the chicken - and had eaten only the chips. The farm was a
miserable place, echoing with faint and fading memories of her happy
childhood; and the world outside was dark and unfriendly too.
Despairing, she opened her mouth to speak, but all the foxes
suddenly pricked up their ears together and their heads swung sharply
towards the open door at the far end of the henhouse.
Victoria heard the crunch of footsteps on gravel. Two people: one
grinding heavy boots into the frosty ground, and one scrabbling across
the yard like one of the chickens that now lay motionless on the cold
concrete floor.
The crunching stopped and a huge form filled the distant doorway. A
deep and nasty voice thundered into the silence of the cavernous
henhouse. "Oi! Brat! Where are you? What the bloody hell's going on?
What happened to my bloody tea? There'll be bloody hell to pay when I
get my hands on you, you miserable little worm!"
Victoria cowered against the blast of that voice, and trembled. She
stepped back behind the row of cages by the narrow sludge-yard door.
The silver fox looked up, curiously, and watched her reaction. The
other foxes backed towards the darkness of the egg store and looked
over to the silver fox, pushing against each other in panic. They
remembered similar bulks and voices from the Fur Farm.
Then Victoria saw the silhouette of The Hag against the morning
light that squeezed between Turnip and the sides of the doorway. The
scrawny woman tried to push round Turnip's enormous bulk, but he seemed
to be frozen, a solid lump of darkness blocking out the light.
"What is it? What's the matter? Move out of the bloody doorway you
great, wobbly lump of blubber!" The Hag shrieked crossly. "Where is
she? Let me get my hands on that nasty little beast and I'll wring...."
And then she was silent too.
But not for long. His thunder and her wail howled out the same three
words: "My bloody chickens!" and they stumbled into the henhouse,
flailing their arms, banging open and shut the doors of the empty cages
and scooping up great armfuls of bloody feathers.
Victoria leaped. Her gloved hand grasped the icy handle of the
sliding door and pulled it sharply down. It slid silently into the
wall, and before Turnip and The Hag could overcome their befuddled
astonishment enough to see into the gloom beyond the carnage that
immediately surrounded them, ten shadowy figures had slipped through
the sludge-yard doorway and out into the enveloping mist that hung over
the open vats of steaming sludge.
"This way!" hissed Victoria urgently, and she dashed sure-footed
along the narrow brick path, all slick with dew, that ran between the
two sludge-ponds and out towards the far edge of the farmyard. The
foxes followed: first the silver, then the red, and then the other
seven in a line behind. The last and smallest one paused a moment,
shook a soggy bit of eggshell from its paw, and trotted fast to catch
the others up.
Back in the henhouse, the voices thundered and wailed. "Oi! Where
are you? I'll bloody murder you! All my bloody chickens, in one fell
swoop! I'll bloody slaughter you when I get my hands on you! Leave the
henhouse door open, will you! I'll bloody henhouse door you! There'll
be hell to pay....!"
And then the voices faded as Victoria reached the clean air by the
fence. She leaned panting against the bars of what had been her cage
and now was just an easy fence to cross between two worlds. She looked
across the fields towards the wood. The frost was melting and the grass
glistened in the early light. Long shadows, cast now by the sun and not
the moon, sent playful fingers towards the towering trees and
Victoria's eyes watered with the cold. The foxes slipped past her,
through the posts of the fence, and into the field. She looked back at
the henhouse and the steaming sludge pits; and then ahead, over the
fence, over the fields, towards the wood, under the brightening blue of
the sky.
The silver fox stopped about twenty yards away, and turned. Its
voice filled her head. "Come on! They'll be after us! Get a move on!"
Victoria scrambled over the fence and ran with all the passion of
her heart across the field's melting frost towards the wood, her
footsteps dark against the frosty grass. The line of foxes, led by Vix,
moved red and silver quick across the field towards the great oak that
raised its arms high above the smaller trees. At first, the silver fox
was almost invisible against the silver frost, but as they ran the
frost faded in the rising sun, and the fox began to gleam. It wasn't
hard to keep up - none of the animals was able to run very fast after
that night's huge feast.
As they reached the shelter of the trees and that great oak, the
last of Victoria's footprints faded in the warming air and Turnip and
The Hag burst out of the henhouse and into the sludge yard. The sludge
steamed.
With a sudden rumble the sludge truck from the village rounded the
end of the henhouse and came to a stop beside the panting pair. The
door of the truck swung open and the driver, dressed in neat blue
overalls, leaped nimbly down.
"Mornin', Miss Agatha! Mornin', Mr Turner! Ain't it just the most gorgeous fine spring mornin' you ever seen!"