Fic: Vixen
Title: Vixen
Fandom: Rosemary Sutcliff, Eagle of the Ninth
Rating: G
Beta: sineala
Disclaimer: So not mine. :(
Prompt: hc_bingo, amnesia
Summary: Cottia becomes a fox. (Literally.) Hijinks ensue!
Also at AO3, here.
In the thin light of the early dawn Cub woke Esca with a paw on his arm. Esca started from his bed - so odd, still, to sleep in a bed, and not a pallet across Marcus’s door - and his hand went to his knife; but it was only Cub, tail wagging, and some creature hanging from his mouth. In the pale gold light, its fur seemed like embers, and it writhed, too, like fire. A fox, then.
Why would Cub bring him a fox?
Cub set the fox gently, gently on Esca’s bed, and leaned his head on the covers next to Esca’s arm. Esca stroked his rough fur. “What have you brought me, Cub?” he asked, and Cub wagged his tail and licked Esca’s hand.
It was a vixen, just grown up. She seemed strangely unalarmed to find herself so near a human. Indeed, she picked her way daintily across the straw pallet, one paw drawn up as if injured; and Esca held very still as the vixen sniffed delicately at his fingers. A fierce black thorn stuck from her injured foot.
Then she looked at Esca, and at the sight of those inquisitive amber eyes he was sure. “Ah, Cottia,” Esca said.
He hoped the sound of her name would bring her back to herself. But she only dug her soft pointed nose into his hand, and whined, and remained a fox.
He stroked her back. He could feel her ribs through the thick red-amber fur, moving in and out with each breath: so thin, she was, as if she had not eaten in ages. And perhaps she had not, with no fox-mother to teach her to hunt.
She must have come all the way from Aquae Sulis. So far - and such a long time it would take. Had she forgotten her human self already?
She nipped at his fingers. “All right then,” he said, and swung her into his arms. She tucked her head into his shoulder, her ears brushing his chin as they flicked, listening. “Let’s get you some food, my girl.”
***
Sassticca liked small and furry things almost as much as Marcus did. She filled a chipped bowl with milk for Cottia to drink, and found some scraps of meat - “Poor thin thing,” she said, stroking Cottia’s fur - and, when Esca asked for it, brought out burnt wine to clean her thorn-stuck foot.
As Esca washed her wound in the stinging wine, Cottia pressed against his arm, and shivered, fur rippling; but she made no sound beyond a soft panting. “Sa, sa, it burns; but it will save the foot,” Esca murmured, and fondled her ears. She did not try to nip him.
“An odd fox, that,” Sassticca said, hand on her hip.
“Odd enough,” Esca agreed. “Have you any old linen I can bind her foot in?”
Sassticca did - and more milk, too, for such a brave fox - and soon Cottia, well-fed and thorn-less, fell asleep. Esca bundled her up in his cloak so only her black nose poked out, and went to see Marcus.
Marcus had always been her favorite. The sight of him might call her back to herself.
***
Marcus did not believe him.
It had not even occurred to Esca that Marcus might not believe him. “But the founders of your own city were wolfkin,” Esca said, astonished.
“They were suckled by a she-wolf, but they were not wolves,” Marcus said, blinking sleep from his eyes. He sat up, shivering a little in the cold air. “They did not, how did you say, put on the skins of other animals and - ” He shook his head sharply. “Esca! People turning into animals? It is impossible.”
“Nay; it is true,” insisted Esca, almost angry. “It is an old story among my people: my own great aunt was foxkin, and I am sure the Seal People sometimes take sealkin wives.”
Marcus met anger with anger. “Is this a joke, Esca?” he asked. “I said yesterday I wished she were here. Is this some mockery?”
“No!”
Cottia squirmed in his cloak. Esca thrust back his temper. He did not want to waken her till Marcus had said he would try to call her back. “Marcus, if you had seen her when I cleaned her foot, you would know she is not fox-bred. She knew - ”
Oh, she was waking. Her paws batted at his arms: she wanted out of the swaddling. “She knew not to fight the healing, though it hurt, and no animal knows that,” Esca said, in a rush, and gave Marcus the most meaning look he knew. They had almost died for each other, more than once. Marcus must believe him, or Cottia might die to them.
But Marcus only stared at him, perplexed, the Mithras brand between his brows half-hidden in the crease of his frown. His hands clasped tight around his raised knee through the blankets. “Esca,” he said, almost pleading. “Esca, it cannot be so. In all the empire I have never heard of such a thing.”
Through the cloak, Cottia nipped Esca’s hand. He almost dropped her, and she popped out of the cloak’s confines, and leaped onto Marcus’s bed. She looked about regally, bandaged forepaw held high, like a queen who expected her hand to be kissed.
“It is a fox,” Marcus said.
“No - ” said Esca, horrified, for it was the worst thing Marcus could say.
But Marcus went on. “A fox - with fur the color of Cottia’s hair, yes, like Baltic amber, but still a fox, with a fox’s ears and a fox’s nose and a fox’s - ”
And as suddenly he stopped, transfixed, staring at the vixen’s eyes. Cottia stared back, amber eyes unblinking. “Oh,” said Marcus, helplessly, and help out his hand. She sniffed his fingertips, and his shock softened into a smile that threatened to spill off his face. “Oh, it is...”
Cottia nudged at his palm with her nose, and his voice faded away.
“She is still human, in the eyes,” Esca said. His heart was a stone in his throat. “I hoped she would recognize you.”
Marcus looked up at the distress in his voice. “I think she does,” he said, as Cottia licked his hand. Esca shook his head, mute.
Marcus seemed to misinterpret his misery. “I am sorry, Esca. I should have believed you, for you have never lied to me.”
“That is not what I mean,” said Esca, wretchedly. “She knows you, but it did not bring her back to herself.”
Marcus rumpled Cottia’s ears. She gave her head a shake, and snapped her thin sharp teeth at him. He pulled his hand away just in time. “I do not understand.”
“With the foxkin,” Esca explained, “and the sealkin, and the others of that kind - if they stay too long as foxes, they forget that they are human too, and then they cannot change back.”
Marcus’s face grew grave. “But she can’t have been too long a fox,” he said, and the pleading was in his voice again.
Esca shook his head. “She must have come here from Aquae Sulis.”
Marcus looked graver still. He swung out of the bed, kneeling awkwardly so he was eye to eye with Cottia. “Cottia,” he said. “Cottia, sweet, it is Marcus. Please come back to us.”
Cottia pressed her warm black nose to his, and licked his cheek. Then, with a sly look, she crept into the warm hollow he had left in his bed, and curled up with her tail over her nose.
Marcus looked ill. “What can we do?” he asked, his fingers light on the soft red-gold fur at her neck.
“We must see if we can find a thing she recognizes from her human life,” Esca said.
***
They took Cottia to the bench where she and Marcus had met, and the place at the end of the garden where Esca had gone to fetch her after Marcus’s wound was re-searched; and they would have gone into Kaeso’s garden too, except that it was swarming with slaves.
“Why are they all here?” Marcus asked, holding Cottia to his chest. She leaned her snout on his shoulder, sniffing at his red cloak, and then plunged out of his arms into the snow.
“They lost Cottia,” Esca said. “They are back early to look for her, perhaps.”
And indeed, even as he spoke, Aunt Valaria’s voice rose above the wall between the gardens. “Cottia!” she called, all girlish softness replaced by a centurion-strident tone. “Cottia, where are you?”
The vixen’s tawny ears pricked. She stood still in the snow, quivering, her injured foot poised in the air; and Esca held his breath.
And then, Nissa’s voice, higher and thinner: “Ladybird! Oh, ladybird!”
And suddenly the vixen was gone, and Cottia stood in the snow, shaking her unbound red hair about her like a mantle to hide her nakedness. “Turn around,” she said, all dignity in her voice. “Around!”
But they were already turning, Esca’s face burning from the sight of her. He flushed brighter at the feel of her fingers on his neck, as she unclasped his cloak.
“All right,” she said, after a moment, and they turned again. She had wrapped Esca’s ragged cloak around herself. Ragged though it was, she stood with her chin high, and would have looked forbidding indeed but that she kept hopping from one bare foot to another in the snow. Her legs and arms were scratched, and there was a thorn-hole in her hand; but she was Cottia again, and Esca could have hugged her.
“Cottia!” Aunt Valaria shouted. “Come out this instant!”
“I am here,” Cottia called, resigned.
And then - Esca did not quite see how it happened - he thought Aunt Valaria came over the wall, but of course that could not be.
Aunt Valaria seemed not at all surprised to see her niece naked in the Aquila garden. She ran to her, pulling her tight in a hug - then pushed her away, kissed both her cheeks soundly, and gave her a good fierce shake. “Do not ever,” she said, “do not ever do that again, Cottia sweet.”
“You were going to marry me to that odious official!” Cottia cried. “Odious indeed! He smelled of fish sauce! And he was as old as Kaeso, and - ”
“Marry you to Gratidius!” Aunt Valaria replied. “Hardly! He asked us, but he was not half rich enough for you.”
“But I heard - ” Cottia began.
“Heard! Heard! Heard half the conversation and bolted! Eavesdrop properly next time,” Aunt Valaria flared, and caught herself, and added in her normal, gentler tones, “Though nice Roman maidens do not eavesdrop at all.”
“Well, I am even less a nice Roman maiden now that I have found my skin,” said Cottia. “I am a fox.”
Aunt Valaria pressed a hand to her forehead. “Just like your grandmother,” she said. “It skips generations, they say. But she did not run away.”
“Well, she was not nearly wed to a beast of a man!” said Cottia, clenching her fists; and she gave a hiss when the movement pulled at the thorn-wound on her palm.
“I have told you,” said Aunt Valaria. “We will not marry you to someone you hate. It would be too much trouble when he sends you back.”
“And I have told you,” Cottia cried, “that I will to marry no one but Marcus!”
There was a short, sharp silence, but for the sound of Cub pouncing at something hidden in the snow. Cottia’s pale face flushed painfully, and Esca ached for her. “Marcus, I am sorry,” she said. “It is a childish thing to say - I did not mean - ”
“Oh, do not say that,” Marcus said. “I will be sad indeed if you did not mean it.”
Cottia stared at Marcus, transfixed as he had been earlier by the sight of her eyes; and it seemed to Esca that something hung in the air between them, and the ache in his chest grew stronger, and strangely sweet.
“Marry me?” Marcus said.
“Only if I can keep my fox skin,” Cottia replied.
“Of course,” said Marcus.
“Cottia,” hissed Aunt Valaria, and the thread between Cottia and Marcus broke as Aunt Valaria twined her arm around Cottia’s shoulders and started to drag her away. “How did you find it, anyway? Have you been going through my things, Cottia sweet?”
They disappeared around the garden wall. “She will be a handful, that one,” Esca said, the ache rising to his throat.
Marcus continued to stare at the last place Cottia had been. He blinked. “Yes,” he said, and sat hard on the bench.
He looked a little dazed; but a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. He began to laugh, with half-anxious joy, and said, “But she was in my bed this morning, the little fox. How could I do otherwise than marry her?”
“Cub brought her to mine first,” said Esca, half-teasing, and at last Marcus looked away from the garden wall. He flung an arm around Esca’s waist, and pulled him to the bench, half-hugging, half-wrestling; and the ache in Esca’s chest eased in the warmth of Marcus’s happiness.
Fandom: Rosemary Sutcliff, Eagle of the Ninth
Rating: G
Beta: sineala
Disclaimer: So not mine. :(
Prompt: hc_bingo, amnesia
Summary: Cottia becomes a fox. (Literally.) Hijinks ensue!
Also at AO3, here.
In the thin light of the early dawn Cub woke Esca with a paw on his arm. Esca started from his bed - so odd, still, to sleep in a bed, and not a pallet across Marcus’s door - and his hand went to his knife; but it was only Cub, tail wagging, and some creature hanging from his mouth. In the pale gold light, its fur seemed like embers, and it writhed, too, like fire. A fox, then.
Why would Cub bring him a fox?
Cub set the fox gently, gently on Esca’s bed, and leaned his head on the covers next to Esca’s arm. Esca stroked his rough fur. “What have you brought me, Cub?” he asked, and Cub wagged his tail and licked Esca’s hand.
It was a vixen, just grown up. She seemed strangely unalarmed to find herself so near a human. Indeed, she picked her way daintily across the straw pallet, one paw drawn up as if injured; and Esca held very still as the vixen sniffed delicately at his fingers. A fierce black thorn stuck from her injured foot.
Then she looked at Esca, and at the sight of those inquisitive amber eyes he was sure. “Ah, Cottia,” Esca said.
He hoped the sound of her name would bring her back to herself. But she only dug her soft pointed nose into his hand, and whined, and remained a fox.
He stroked her back. He could feel her ribs through the thick red-amber fur, moving in and out with each breath: so thin, she was, as if she had not eaten in ages. And perhaps she had not, with no fox-mother to teach her to hunt.
She must have come all the way from Aquae Sulis. So far - and such a long time it would take. Had she forgotten her human self already?
She nipped at his fingers. “All right then,” he said, and swung her into his arms. She tucked her head into his shoulder, her ears brushing his chin as they flicked, listening. “Let’s get you some food, my girl.”
***
Sassticca liked small and furry things almost as much as Marcus did. She filled a chipped bowl with milk for Cottia to drink, and found some scraps of meat - “Poor thin thing,” she said, stroking Cottia’s fur - and, when Esca asked for it, brought out burnt wine to clean her thorn-stuck foot.
As Esca washed her wound in the stinging wine, Cottia pressed against his arm, and shivered, fur rippling; but she made no sound beyond a soft panting. “Sa, sa, it burns; but it will save the foot,” Esca murmured, and fondled her ears. She did not try to nip him.
“An odd fox, that,” Sassticca said, hand on her hip.
“Odd enough,” Esca agreed. “Have you any old linen I can bind her foot in?”
Sassticca did - and more milk, too, for such a brave fox - and soon Cottia, well-fed and thorn-less, fell asleep. Esca bundled her up in his cloak so only her black nose poked out, and went to see Marcus.
Marcus had always been her favorite. The sight of him might call her back to herself.
***
Marcus did not believe him.
It had not even occurred to Esca that Marcus might not believe him. “But the founders of your own city were wolfkin,” Esca said, astonished.
“They were suckled by a she-wolf, but they were not wolves,” Marcus said, blinking sleep from his eyes. He sat up, shivering a little in the cold air. “They did not, how did you say, put on the skins of other animals and - ” He shook his head sharply. “Esca! People turning into animals? It is impossible.”
“Nay; it is true,” insisted Esca, almost angry. “It is an old story among my people: my own great aunt was foxkin, and I am sure the Seal People sometimes take sealkin wives.”
Marcus met anger with anger. “Is this a joke, Esca?” he asked. “I said yesterday I wished she were here. Is this some mockery?”
“No!”
Cottia squirmed in his cloak. Esca thrust back his temper. He did not want to waken her till Marcus had said he would try to call her back. “Marcus, if you had seen her when I cleaned her foot, you would know she is not fox-bred. She knew - ”
Oh, she was waking. Her paws batted at his arms: she wanted out of the swaddling. “She knew not to fight the healing, though it hurt, and no animal knows that,” Esca said, in a rush, and gave Marcus the most meaning look he knew. They had almost died for each other, more than once. Marcus must believe him, or Cottia might die to them.
But Marcus only stared at him, perplexed, the Mithras brand between his brows half-hidden in the crease of his frown. His hands clasped tight around his raised knee through the blankets. “Esca,” he said, almost pleading. “Esca, it cannot be so. In all the empire I have never heard of such a thing.”
Through the cloak, Cottia nipped Esca’s hand. He almost dropped her, and she popped out of the cloak’s confines, and leaped onto Marcus’s bed. She looked about regally, bandaged forepaw held high, like a queen who expected her hand to be kissed.
“It is a fox,” Marcus said.
“No - ” said Esca, horrified, for it was the worst thing Marcus could say.
But Marcus went on. “A fox - with fur the color of Cottia’s hair, yes, like Baltic amber, but still a fox, with a fox’s ears and a fox’s nose and a fox’s - ”
And as suddenly he stopped, transfixed, staring at the vixen’s eyes. Cottia stared back, amber eyes unblinking. “Oh,” said Marcus, helplessly, and help out his hand. She sniffed his fingertips, and his shock softened into a smile that threatened to spill off his face. “Oh, it is...”
Cottia nudged at his palm with her nose, and his voice faded away.
“She is still human, in the eyes,” Esca said. His heart was a stone in his throat. “I hoped she would recognize you.”
Marcus looked up at the distress in his voice. “I think she does,” he said, as Cottia licked his hand. Esca shook his head, mute.
Marcus seemed to misinterpret his misery. “I am sorry, Esca. I should have believed you, for you have never lied to me.”
“That is not what I mean,” said Esca, wretchedly. “She knows you, but it did not bring her back to herself.”
Marcus rumpled Cottia’s ears. She gave her head a shake, and snapped her thin sharp teeth at him. He pulled his hand away just in time. “I do not understand.”
“With the foxkin,” Esca explained, “and the sealkin, and the others of that kind - if they stay too long as foxes, they forget that they are human too, and then they cannot change back.”
Marcus’s face grew grave. “But she can’t have been too long a fox,” he said, and the pleading was in his voice again.
Esca shook his head. “She must have come here from Aquae Sulis.”
Marcus looked graver still. He swung out of the bed, kneeling awkwardly so he was eye to eye with Cottia. “Cottia,” he said. “Cottia, sweet, it is Marcus. Please come back to us.”
Cottia pressed her warm black nose to his, and licked his cheek. Then, with a sly look, she crept into the warm hollow he had left in his bed, and curled up with her tail over her nose.
Marcus looked ill. “What can we do?” he asked, his fingers light on the soft red-gold fur at her neck.
“We must see if we can find a thing she recognizes from her human life,” Esca said.
***
They took Cottia to the bench where she and Marcus had met, and the place at the end of the garden where Esca had gone to fetch her after Marcus’s wound was re-searched; and they would have gone into Kaeso’s garden too, except that it was swarming with slaves.
“Why are they all here?” Marcus asked, holding Cottia to his chest. She leaned her snout on his shoulder, sniffing at his red cloak, and then plunged out of his arms into the snow.
“They lost Cottia,” Esca said. “They are back early to look for her, perhaps.”
And indeed, even as he spoke, Aunt Valaria’s voice rose above the wall between the gardens. “Cottia!” she called, all girlish softness replaced by a centurion-strident tone. “Cottia, where are you?”
The vixen’s tawny ears pricked. She stood still in the snow, quivering, her injured foot poised in the air; and Esca held his breath.
And then, Nissa’s voice, higher and thinner: “Ladybird! Oh, ladybird!”
And suddenly the vixen was gone, and Cottia stood in the snow, shaking her unbound red hair about her like a mantle to hide her nakedness. “Turn around,” she said, all dignity in her voice. “Around!”
But they were already turning, Esca’s face burning from the sight of her. He flushed brighter at the feel of her fingers on his neck, as she unclasped his cloak.
“All right,” she said, after a moment, and they turned again. She had wrapped Esca’s ragged cloak around herself. Ragged though it was, she stood with her chin high, and would have looked forbidding indeed but that she kept hopping from one bare foot to another in the snow. Her legs and arms were scratched, and there was a thorn-hole in her hand; but she was Cottia again, and Esca could have hugged her.
“Cottia!” Aunt Valaria shouted. “Come out this instant!”
“I am here,” Cottia called, resigned.
And then - Esca did not quite see how it happened - he thought Aunt Valaria came over the wall, but of course that could not be.
Aunt Valaria seemed not at all surprised to see her niece naked in the Aquila garden. She ran to her, pulling her tight in a hug - then pushed her away, kissed both her cheeks soundly, and gave her a good fierce shake. “Do not ever,” she said, “do not ever do that again, Cottia sweet.”
“You were going to marry me to that odious official!” Cottia cried. “Odious indeed! He smelled of fish sauce! And he was as old as Kaeso, and - ”
“Marry you to Gratidius!” Aunt Valaria replied. “Hardly! He asked us, but he was not half rich enough for you.”
“But I heard - ” Cottia began.
“Heard! Heard! Heard half the conversation and bolted! Eavesdrop properly next time,” Aunt Valaria flared, and caught herself, and added in her normal, gentler tones, “Though nice Roman maidens do not eavesdrop at all.”
“Well, I am even less a nice Roman maiden now that I have found my skin,” said Cottia. “I am a fox.”
Aunt Valaria pressed a hand to her forehead. “Just like your grandmother,” she said. “It skips generations, they say. But she did not run away.”
“Well, she was not nearly wed to a beast of a man!” said Cottia, clenching her fists; and she gave a hiss when the movement pulled at the thorn-wound on her palm.
“I have told you,” said Aunt Valaria. “We will not marry you to someone you hate. It would be too much trouble when he sends you back.”
“And I have told you,” Cottia cried, “that I will to marry no one but Marcus!”
There was a short, sharp silence, but for the sound of Cub pouncing at something hidden in the snow. Cottia’s pale face flushed painfully, and Esca ached for her. “Marcus, I am sorry,” she said. “It is a childish thing to say - I did not mean - ”
“Oh, do not say that,” Marcus said. “I will be sad indeed if you did not mean it.”
Cottia stared at Marcus, transfixed as he had been earlier by the sight of her eyes; and it seemed to Esca that something hung in the air between them, and the ache in his chest grew stronger, and strangely sweet.
“Marry me?” Marcus said.
“Only if I can keep my fox skin,” Cottia replied.
“Of course,” said Marcus.
“Cottia,” hissed Aunt Valaria, and the thread between Cottia and Marcus broke as Aunt Valaria twined her arm around Cottia’s shoulders and started to drag her away. “How did you find it, anyway? Have you been going through my things, Cottia sweet?”
They disappeared around the garden wall. “She will be a handful, that one,” Esca said, the ache rising to his throat.
Marcus continued to stare at the last place Cottia had been. He blinked. “Yes,” he said, and sat hard on the bench.
He looked a little dazed; but a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. He began to laugh, with half-anxious joy, and said, “But she was in my bed this morning, the little fox. How could I do otherwise than marry her?”
“Cub brought her to mine first,” said Esca, half-teasing, and at last Marcus looked away from the garden wall. He flung an arm around Esca’s waist, and pulled him to the bench, half-hugging, half-wrestling; and the ache in Esca’s chest eased in the warmth of Marcus’s happiness.