SaJAF

Story about Just Another Fox:

Chapter One.

Jerkema was born in a burrow. In it lived her mother, and her mother's mother, and her mother's mother's mother, and so on – the burrow was not the deepest, in a side den where spring waters had brought dry sand and last year's leaves. The walls smelled of warm earth and milk, and outside, beyond the curved entrance, a stream sounded all the time. It ran over the stones twenty fox-jumps from the burrow, and Jerkema recognized its voice before she learned to distinguish the rustle of mice under the snow. She was three springs old now. She knew every bend of the stream, every snag where dead fish got stuck in autumn, and every flat stone from which it was comfortable to drink without wetting her belly. In the mornings, when the sun just touched the tops of the pines, Jerkema would come out of the burrow, stretch, arching her back so that her vertebrae cracked, and her first order of business was to go to the water. The stream was the beginning of the day. That summer was warm, but not dry. The mushroom smell of rot rose from the fallen pine needles, and every evening Jerkema heard a moose sigh heavily somewhere in the thicket as it came to drink. She drank at dawn, before lying down in the burrow, and again at dusk, when the world became gray-blue and cautious. The water smelled of mint, iron, and something distant that she could not yet name. On an ordinary day, of which there were most, Jerkema woke around noon because a sunbeam had broken through some fragments of earth or tangles of branches or something like that. Jerkema yawned, licked her nose, and lay there listening to the chickadees calling above the burrow. Toward evening, when the shadows lengthened and the earth began to give off a damp chill, she went out. She was in no hurry. First – check the old marks near the path that led to the spruce forest. The smell of urine left a week ago had faded, and Jerkema renewed it, squatting on her hind legs. Then – a slow walk along the edge, where last year's weeds stood like a wall, and below, in the dry grass, voles and rats rustled. Jerkema walked with her muzzle raised, and the wind brought her hundreds of memories and events: where a hare had run, where a fox from the neighboring territory had left its trail, where elderberries had ripened in the bushes. She did not always hunt right away. Sometimes she just sat on a hillock from which the stream was visible, and watched water striders dance on the shallows. Her ears caught sounds, and if somewhere in the field a vole gave a piercing squeak, she would get up and walk there with a measured, springy gait. Hunting was a familiar thing: freeze like a stone, listening to the ground, then a high jump – and BAM! voila, the prey is caught under her front paws. If she was lucky. But there would always be food because once in a while you get lucky. She ate on the spot, shaking the dirt from her fur, and drank from the stream already at dusk. The water was cold, clean, and after it she wanted to lie down and close her eyes. Jerkema returned to the burrow when the stars came out from behind the clouds, and tossed and turned in her bed for a long time before falling asleep. So went the most ordinary days of the most ordinary fox. The stream was unchanging. It knew her plans and goals better than she did. The first changes Jerkema felt not with her nose, but with her paws. She came to the watering place at her usual time, stepped onto the stone, lowered her head – and froze. The water smelled different. Not that living, green smell mixed with sand, but something sharp, foreign. Jerkema recoiled, sneezed. The water was clear, but on the surface, near the bank, there was a rainbow film shimmering like oil on a puddle after rain. She did not drink. She stepped back, walked along the stream upstream. There the smell was weaker, but still foreign. She found a place where water gushed from under the roots of an old birch, and carefully took a few gulps. The taste was strange – not bitter, not sour, but somehow empty, as if the water had been robbed of its essence. Jerkema snorted and went off to hunt. The next night she approached the stream again. The film had grown wider, and now it smelled not only of oil but also of something rotten, made by bald monkeys, that had no place and could have no place in the forest. She went around familiar spots: near the beaver dam the water stood murky with white flakes; at the riffle where the stones licked the bottom, the current carried brown foam. Jerkema tried to drink from a puddle on the path, but the puddle had dried up during the day. For the first time in three springs of her existence, she went to sleep without having drunk. Within three days the stream had become unrecognizable. The smell stung her nostrils even when Jerkema was in the burrow. She came out during the day, which was unusual for her, and stood at the entrance, twitching her nose. The water had turned from clear to murky, the color of... well, she didn't know what color that was back then, and a gray slime appeared along the banks. The water striders were gone. The little frogs that always sat at the water's edge were gone too. Jerkema stopped drinking from the stream. She found an old upturned root where rainwater collected in a hollow, but it was stagnant and bitter from rotting leaves. She licked dew in the mornings, wiping moisture from blades of grass, but that was not enough. Her tongue grew dry, and even her fur lost its softness. The food began to disappear as well. Mice, sparrows, voles appeared less often, and those that did appear smelled strange – their meat carried the same... chemical spirit as the water. Jerkema would drop her catch without finishing it. Once she found a dead muskrat on the bank. The creature was bloated and gave off such a stench that the fox backed away, covering her nose. Everything in the forest was changing. The birds stopped calling. The badger's tracks on the path vanished. Even the moose, crashing heavily through the thicket, now avoided the floodplain. Jerkema understood: her world was shrinking – that was probably the only thing she understood then. On the fifth day she heard a magpie's voice. The magpie chattered dryly, flew from branch to branch and kept crying out the same thing: "They're leaving! They're leaving!" Jerkema raised her head. The magpie was talking about the beavers, one of whom was named Duzhstperfetc. The old family that had lived in the dam for seven springs had left during the night, abandoning their lodges. Their stone-and-wood dam, once strong, was now leaking, and the stream was growing shallower. Jerkema approached the beaver lodge. The entrance was covered with cobwebs, and the water smelled of rot. She stood there, sniffing, and suddenly realized that she no longer wanted to stay here. The burrow that she had considered home, passed down from mother to mother, suddenly felt foreign. The smell of the threshold, where her own tracks had lain for years, was overpowered by that sweetish-chemical breath rising from the stream and crawling across the ground, seeping into every crack. She lingered for two more days. Her body weakened. Hunting brought no success: even the mice seemed to have left these parts. On the sixth day Jerkema came across another fox. The fox stood at the edge of the field, thin, with dull fur – Michnek – and looked toward the old road. They did not snarl at each other. The strange fox said with her body what words cannot express: "There is nothing left to divide here.", Jerkema returned to the burrow. The sun was setting, and the slanting rays lit the entrance, around which her own scent still lingered – familiar, dear. She walked around the burrow, sniffed every bush, every exit. Here she had first crawled out into the light, here she learned to catch grasshoppers, here she slept curled up in a ball when autumn winds tore the leaves away. In this place was all her past. But the water was gone. And without water, there is no one. Jerkema lay down at the entrance. At dusk, when the stream should have sounded especially clear, she heard only silence. And she understood that she would never hear its voice again. She stood up. Without looking back, she walked in the direction the magpies and rooks were flying – where clean water still remained. Beyond the forest, beyond the fields, beyond the place where the road turned toward the abandoned village. There, where she could start all over again. The burrow remained behind. The wind was already beginning to fill the entrance with dry grass, erasing the tracks, and in a week no one would have said that a fox named Jerkema had lived here. She walked all night, keeping to the shady side of the ravines, and when dawn broke in the east, she saw in the distance a gleam of water – real, living water, untouched by that invisible sickness that had killed her stream. Jerkema quickened her pace, though her paws throbbed and her stomach was empty. Ahead was new land. Ahead was hope. But deep inside, where foxes keep what they cannot forget, the voice of her native stream remained – the voice she would never hear again.

Chapter Two:

Jerkema had been walking for three days when her legs began to fail. Not that they wouldn't obey – they had simply turned into a foreign weight that she had to drag behind her body. Jerkema had not eaten since yesterday morning, except for two beetles dug out from under dry bark. In her stomach there was only a hollow emptiness that made her dizzy. The water she had seen at dawn turned out not to be a lake, but just a large puddle left after the rain. Jerkema drank, greedily gulping down the water (if you could call it water) with a slight taste of waste, and drank until the "water" ran out. Then she lay on the muddy bank, breathing heavily, watching the flying insects circle above the water. They looked like the ones that lived by her stream, but somehow different... Then came the fields. Jerkema did not like fields – there was nowhere to hide, and the wind swept away the smells too quickly; the wind there was generally uncomfortably fast. But the fields ended, a sparse aspen forest began, then a swamp with sour water that made her teeth ache, then again a forest, but a different one, something like a pine forest: the pines stood sparse, beneath them there were no bushes, no deadwood – only stiff grass that whipped her sides. Here the smell was cleaner. Not that sweetish-chemical spirit left behind, but ordinary forest smells – resin, mushrooms, dry earth. But the water was still far away. Jerkema found puddles and also a narrow stream that meandered between hummocks, but every time she lowered her head to the water, she felt that it was not right. Not her water. Not the one that smelled of mint and iron. On the fifth day of her journey, when the sun had already passed its zenith, Jerkema heard a squeak. Thin, insistent, it came from under a hazel bush where old leaves had matted into a dense carpet. She froze, pressed herself to the ground, her hind legs gathering for a jump. Hunger clenched her jaws on its own – her muscles remembered their job even before her brain could understand. And she instinctively jumped and struck the leaves with her front paws, and at that same moment a small gray body twisted out from under them – the fox did not cover it completely. Jerkema lunged forward, her teeth snapped a millimeter from a tail, but the prey had already darted aside, toward the roots. AND SUDDENLY... something squeaked from below: "Wait!", Jerkema froze; she was not yet used to her prey engaging in conversation. She tilted her head, flattened her ears, and stared into the dark space under the roots. The mouse said: "I didn't ask you to eat me," peeking out from behind a protrusion. She was small, even by mouse standards, with gray fur and beady eyes that looked at the fox with surprising calm. And she added: "Besides, I'm useful. Where are you going?", Jerkema did not know what to answer. Foxes don't talk to their food, and yet she was beginning to think – to think in a way that foxes are not usually capable of. After all, prey should not talk to a predator! And yet this mouse was speaking, and her voice was as insistent as the squeak that had made Jerkema jump. Jerkema said, surprised at herself for answering: "I'm looking for water.", "I know," the mouse stuck out her nose, twitched her whiskers. "Everyone is looking. From back there," she waved a paw in the direction Jerkema had come from, "everyone left. Now only death lives there.", Jerkema said uncertainly, as if lost in thought: "I know.", "And that way," the mouse turned her little face toward the thickets, "there is water, but little. And with every day, less. I am Racine. I know everyone here. And I know you – you walked for three days, drank at the puddle, slept under that old oak over there.", Jerkema grew alert. How could a tiny mouse know where she had slept? Racine said: "I am everywhere... Underground, there are more passages than there are paths above. I hear everything the roots say, that's why I'm Racine. And do you know what they say? The water is leaving. Not only where you were, but here too. And the farther you go, the worse it gets.", She paused and suddenly added: "And there's a beaver here. Duzhstperfetc. Have you met him?", Jerkema: "No, but the name sounds familiar.", Racine: "Familiar? That's what humans call déjà vu. He's crazy. He sits in his lodge and tells everyone that he knows everything in the world. About currents, about the weather, about how many branches will fall in a month. And he doesn't know a damn thing. He just chatters non-stop to seem smart. All he wants is for everyone to think he's the boss. But he can't even repair a dam properly – last spring half of his dam rotted because he 'knew' the rotten wood would last another year. It didn't.", Jerkema: "And what are 'humans'? Are they animals?", Racine: "They're something like bald monkeys.", Jerkema: "You could have just said bald monkeys...", Jerkema talked with Racine, and... the hunger receded. Not because she had eaten, but because that squeaky little voice, pouring out words without stopping, distracted her from the emptiness in her belly. Jerkema: "So did this beaver of yours leave too?", Racine snorted: "No, he stayed. He sits there and argues that the water will come back because he supposedly 'sees' everything. But the water won't come back. I can feel it underground – something happened upstream. The humans did something to the river. And now it's dying everywhere you go.". Jerkema lowered herself onto her paws; exhaustion hit her with renewed force. The mouse was talking about what she had feared: that her stream had not been killed forever, but that this death was crawling after her, like that chemical smell she had left behind, but which might be waiting for her ahead. Jerkema: "Show me where the water is.", Racine looked at her for a long moment, then nodded: "Follow me. Just don't eat me. I really am useful. I know which roots are where, where the mice live, and where there is only emptiness.". She slipped into the grass, and Jerkema followed, crouching low so as not to lose sight of the gray speck darting among the stems. The water was in a low spot where several small streams converged. It was not a lake or even a pond – just a large puddle left by the rains, but the water in it was CLEAN!!! Jerkema drank the coolness that spread down her throat, and for the first time in many days she felt that she might be able to stay here. There were a few other animals here: an old crow on a dry pine, a family of hares that kept their distance, and that same beaver – huge, with worn fur, sitting on a pile of branches and muttering to himself. Duzhstperfetc. Jerkema walked around him, sniffed the water, and decided the mouse had been right – this beaver was clearly... something. She dug a temporary burrow on the slope of a ravine, not far from the water, and lay down, curled into a ball. Racine settled somewhere nearby – Jerkema could hear her quiet squeaking and the patter of tiny paws, but she paid no attention. The mouse had been right: she was useful. She warned when strangers approached the water and showed where mushrooms grew after the rain that were safe to eat. But the days passed, and the water receded. At first slowly – Jerkema only noticed because the stone she drank from was farther from the water's edge each time. Then faster. After a week, only a muddy pit with a thin slurry at the bottom remained of the big puddle. Racine squeaked: "I told you – it's leaving. And that idiot beaver still believes it will come back. Yesterday he was telling the hares that he knows when the rain will come. He named the day and even the hour. It didn't come, of course.". Jerkema wasn't listening. She went hunting farther and farther from her burrow, but the mice and voles were themselves leaving the drying places. She only found beetles and the occasional lizard, which she caught on rocky slopes. Her fur lost its shine again, her ribs began to show through her sides. On the tenth day, the water was gone completely. Even the mud dried up, cracked, and became hard as stone. The hares left during the night – Jerkema saw their tracks heading east. The crow also vanished. Only she, Racine, and Duzhstperfetc remained, sitting on his half-ruined dam and muttering that "we just need to wait.". Racine said: "He'll die here. And you? Are you going to stay too?". Jerkema looked at the dry bed where water had been only recently. In her native stream, the water had also gone. Now it was leaving here too. And it seemed there was no place where she could stop. She said: "Let's go further.", They moved toward the sunrise, toward where, according to rumor, a large river flowed. Racine ran beside her, sometimes diving underground to check if other animals had reached the water. The journey was hard – the sun blazed so that the air shimmered above the ground, and even the shadows offered no relief from the heat. Jerkema drank from the rare puddles that Racine found under the roots of oaks, and ate whatever she could find: snails, worms, bitter berries from low bushes. On the third day of their journey, they heard a sound. Not the kind the forest was used to. It was a metallic grinding, a roar of engines and a cracking that made the earth tremble. Racine hissed: "Humans," and darted into the nearest hole. Jerkema froze. She had seen humans before – from a distance, when they came to the stream. But those were rare, cautious humans. But here... the smell of iron, burnt oil, and strange sweat overpowered everything else. And then she saw the trees falling. Huge machines were going through the forest, felling pines one after another. Jerkema ran, ran and ran without looking back. She didn't know where – just away from that sound, that smell, that death. But the machines were everywhere. They had surrounded a section of the forest, and wherever she turned, she ran into a wall of falling trunks and human shouts. She darted among the fallen trees, her paws slipping on sawdust and needles, her heart racing. At some point she saw an opening – a narrow gap between two still-standing pines – and she dashed toward it. The ground disappeared from under her paws. Jerkema fell into a hole, hit her side against hard walls, and before she could understand what had happened, a metal door clanged shut above her. She jumped up, hit her head on the mesh, recoiled, and dashed around the cramped space. It was a cage – sunk into the ground, with a metal floor and walls of thick wire. Jerkema threw herself against the bars, gnawed at them, scratched the floor until her teeth ached and her paws were bloody. But the cage did not give way. From above, over the edge of the pit, a face appeared. A human looked at her without fear, without malice – just looked at her as if she were a thing he had found. His words were barely audible, but they were something like: "Alive, skinny. But alive.", Jerkema pressed herself into the corner, her back against the cold metal. Her world, which had been shrinking day by day, suddenly became the size of this cage. Above, somewhere far away, a magpie chattered. But now its voice promised nothing but the truth that Jerkema already knew: "Caught! Caught!", And little gray Racine, left above, could only run around the edge of the pit and squeak in helplessness, because even the most useful mouse cannot open a cage that humans have closed. Jerkema lay down on the cold floor, curled into a ball, and closed her eyes. She did not know what would happen next. She only knew that her stream remained somewhere far away, the water had gone, the forest had fallen, and now she was here, in this cramped iron box, where there was no sky, no earth, not even the right to be afraid. 

, and so begins the third chapter of Jerkema's story. She woke up from the light. White, even, unlike anything else – the kind of light that never existed for a second in the forest, not even on the brightest noon. Jerkema opened her eyes and saw above her not the sky, but a white surface with lamps, from which nothing emanated. Jerkema was lying on something hard and cold. The air smelled of strange animals, disinfectant, and dry food. The thing she had fallen into turned out not to be a pit, but a transport cage – a box with iron walls and a mesh door – but now the door was open, and the box itself stood inside a larger, more spacious enclosure. Jerkema cautiously stuck out her nose. There was a glass wall, behind which people moved. She tried to jump up, but her legs wouldn't obey. Someone had injected her with something while she was unconscious – her muscles felt like cotton, and her head was heavy. Jerkema pressed herself against the back wall... a second, a minute, an hour, two... "She's come around," came a voice from somewhere to the right. The voice was male, a bit hoarse, with a slight mockery. Jerkema turned her head and saw a fox in the neighboring cage. He was larger than her, with red fur, worn in places, and he looked as if the world owed him everything. He lay on his side, hooking a paw through the bars, chewing on a piece of straw. He introduced himself: "Ensto. – You're new, I see. And what's that you've got there?" He nodded downward, and Jerkema, following his gaze, saw Racine. The little gray mouse sat in the corner of the cage, ears flattened, trembling. Jerkema breathed out: "How did you get here?", Racine squeaked: "I followed you. I thought if I can get anywhere underground, I could get into that thing of theirs. But they lined it with iron on all sides. And they... caught me too.", Ensto: "And rightly so. You two look... how should I put it... edible.", Jerkema was startled: "What?", Ensto grinned, baring his fangs: "Just kidding, just kidding. Or am I? ... Around here, we're not supposed to eat each other. The owner feeds us. It's crap, but you don't go hungry. And you," he turned his gaze to Racine, "little one, but cute. Appetizing too, no less – you're just all...". Racine squeaked: "Back off. I'm useful, actually. I'm learning the human language.". Ensto: "Language? Why learn language? It's right under your nose! In your mouth!", Racine: "Not that language – the one they speak, not the one they speak with. The human speech language. I used to live underground near their houses; you hear all sorts of things there. And here they walk right in front of me, yapping all day long. I already understand some of it.", Ensto snorted: "And what do they say? That we're beautiful and want to eat?", Racine peeked out and squeaked: "Not only that. They talk about prices. About who is worth what. And also... they often repeat one word. 'Someone.' As if they're always looking for someone.", Ensto: "Someone... Sounds like a name. Maybe that's the one who'll buy everyone here.", Jerkema said nothing. She listened to herself: the pain in her side had subsided, breathing was easier. Behind the glass wall, someone walked by – a child who pressed his nose to the glass and started shouting something. She flinched, but Ensto didn't even twitch an ear. Ensto: "You'll get used to it. First days are scary, then boring. And then you start listening because there's nothing else to do. And in time..." he squinted, "in time you start to understand.", Jerkema didn't believe him. How could you understand a creature that doesn't speak with its nose or its body, but with some incomprehensible sounds? But after a few days she noticed that the words people repeated most often began to mean something. "Look" – when a person looked at her and pointed. "Quiet" – when she sat still and the person walked away from the cage. "Food" – when the door opened and pellets were poured into the bowl. Racine was right: the language had a system. Jerkema caught intonations, repetitions, connected sounds to actions. She could not have uttered a single word herself – her throat wouldn't obey – but she understood more and more. Ensto treated her studies with mockery. He lounged in his cage: "You think if you learn their drills, they'll let you go? ... No, red one. They'll keep you until this mysterious SOMEONE pays up.", Racine repeated: "Someone... there it is again, everything comes down to him...". Suddenly Jerkema realized: "It's not a name..." She lay with her nose pressed to the mesh, watching people wander between the rows. "It's... how they talk when they don't know who exactly. Like our 'somebody.'", Ensto raised an eyebrow: "Wow. You're not stupid, Orangey. Maybe you really will learn soon. Then you can tell me what they think about us.", Jerkema: "Don't call me Orangey!", In her head were thoughts like: "Words were like pebbles she stacked one by one in her mind. Sometimes she caught whole phrases: 'This fox has been here a long time, we should feed her better,' 'She has smart eyes, look how she looks.' And then something strange happened inside her – not fear, not hunger, but something like that feeling she cannot describe: maybe it was hope, maybe nostalgia, maybe something else – I don't remember anymore what she felt.". Months passed. Jerkema now knew almost all the words people said about her. She could distinguish their gaits, their breathing, even the smell of their moods. She waited. Not for food – for that "someone" that people kept talking about and that Ensto laughed at. Speaking of him – during this time he had become her only interlocutor, not counting Racine, who constantly squeaked under her sides. He was talkative, sharp-tongued, and seemed afraid of nothing. When the day ended and the lights in the store went out, he would say: "You know, you still look tasty, Orangey. And your mouse too. If they let us out, I'd probably eat you.". Jerkema and Racine: "You've said that a hundred times already!", Ensto: "And I'll say it a hundred times. You're attractive. Very.". Jerkema: "Ensto, you said yourself that we don't eat each other here.". Ensto: "I said. But if it weren't for the rule – I'd be the first to jump on you.". Jerkema wasn't offended. She had grown used to his manner of speaking – it was a game, a way to pass those days behind the glass. Sometimes she even began to play along: "They say you're old and have worn out your fur.". Ensto: "That's slander. I just know a lot. I've had three owners before I ended up here. And I was the best everywhere.", Jerkema: "The best at what?", Ensto: "At being a fox. They loved me. Fed me by hand. And you? Nobody takes you because you're skinny and wild. Who needs you?", Jerkema: "Then why, if you were tame, are you in a cage now?", Ensto: "Got lost and lost my collar.", Many months passed, and people only looked at Jerkema. They approached, talked to each other, but left. She didn't know what put them off – whether it was her gaze, in which people read something of their own, or her very stillness when she froze watching them. But one day she heard footsteps that were different from all the others. Unhurried. He stopped in front of her cage and stood still. Jerkema raised her head. A young man. Young, with hair falling over his eyes, and hands in the pockets of his jacket. He didn't point, didn't speak loudly to the seller. He just looked. For a long time. Then he squatted down, and his face was level with her nose: "Angry, huh? Or just tired?", Jerkema didn't know how to answer, and she still couldn't. But she looked at him, and he looked at her, and in his eyes there was none of what she was used to seeing in people behind the glass. No appraisal, no "how much does it cost," no "should I take it or not." There was something else. Maybe it was curiosity. Buyer: "I'll take her.", Seller: "This one? She's been here over a year. Wild. No one wanted her.", Buyer: "I'll take her.", In the cage opposite, Ensto stirred. He got up, walked to the bars, and said quietly, so only Jerkema could hear: "Well, Orangey. Good luck.", The seller was already opening the door, and the young man reached out his hands. Jerkema dug her claws into his jacket as he lifted her, and felt Racine hop onto her back as easily as ever: "I'm with you. Everywhere.", The young man asked the seller something about food, about vaccinations, about where to put the carrier. Jerkema wasn't listening. She looked at Ensto through the glass. He sat in his cage, turned to the wall, and now he didn't seem like an old chatterbox – just a red lump left alone. Then came the street. Cold air that smelled of gasoline and wet asphalt, and the car that swayed gently as the young man put the carrier on the back seat. Racine sat on Jerkema's scruff and was silent. For the first time in all this time. Jerkema closed her eyes. She thought, thought about everything, about the words of humans, about why she understood them, even though according to the words of people reading magazines: "foxes don't think, they only have instincts, because... they're animals, they can't understand humans." And Racine sat behind her scruff and was silent.

The fourth phase of Jerkema began:

The buyer's name was Lyonya. Jerkema learned that name on the third day, when his mother called and he said into the phone: "Yes, Mom, I bought a fox. No, she doesn't bite. Yes, I'm an idiot, I know." He was young, lived alone in a first-floor apartment, and the smells were extremely unfamiliar for a fox – cheap coffee and something sweet that he was constantly chewing. Jerkema sat in the carrier for the first minutes when he brought her home, watching him open the door. Racine hid in her fur behind her scruff – a small gray lump that Lyonya hadn't noticed yet. He said: "Well, Barsik, come out." "Barsik," he repeated and clicked his tongue. "Here, kitty-kitty.", She came out because the carrier was cramped, and slowly walked around the room. Everything here was extremely unfamiliar: a carpet that smelled of dust, a sofa with a sagging middle, a table covered in papers. Lyonya looked at her with adoration. He didn't understand that she heard every word he said, distinguished when he said "how beautiful" from "we should feed her.", On the second day he noticed Racine. "What the hell is that?!" he yelled when the mouse darted out from under the sofa and ran over his slipper. He grabbed a physics textbook. Jerkema jumped up, darted between him and Racine, and froze, ears flattened. She looked up at him and didn't growl – she just stood there, blocking the mouse with her body. Lyonya lowered the physics textbook. Lyonya: "Yours, huh? Barsik, that's a rat. You can't keep rats in the house.", Jerkema didn't move. She looked him in the eye, and he suddenly squatted down, scratched the back of his head, and said: "Alright, screw it. But if she eats my socks... I'll throw you both out.", Racine squeaked under the bed all night: "Did you see that? Did you see? He almost killed me! And you saved me!", Jerkema didn't answer. She lay on the bedding that Lyonya had put in the corner and thought. He had named her Barsik. To him, she was just a fox that could be named like a cat. She didn't know how to tell him that that wasn't her name. After a week, Fruity appeared in the house. That's what Lyonya called the cat that came in from the street, temporarily claimed the territory around the refrigerator, and left when he got bored. Fruity was old, with worn fur and insolent eyes. He came in through the window, walked to the bowl that Lyonya put on the floor, and ate, smacking loudly. "He likes soup with steam," Lyonya said, pouring warm broth for the cat. Fruity glanced at Jerkema but didn't bother her. Once he came up to her, sniffed her, and gave her a look that said everything without words. Jerkema didn't intrude. She had enough of what Lyonya gave her. But the main event happened on the twelfth day. Lyonya was sitting at the table, drinking coffee and looking at his phone. Then he suddenly stood up, rummaged in the closet, and pulled out a board with colored squares. He set the board in front of Jerkema: "I've been wanting to try this for a long time. It's for dogs, but you're almost a dog, right? Barsik, you're almost a dog.", Each square had a sticker with a word and a picture: "FOOD", "WHY", "WATER", "WALK", "ASK", "WHAT?", "PLAY", "MORE", "POOP", "YOU", "NOT". Lyonya pressed one, and the board played a recorded audio: "FOOD." He pressed another: "WATER." Lyonya: "Come on... Show me what you want.", Jerkema looked at the board. She understood all the words, but she didn't know how to make the board say them. She poked her nose at "WATER" – the board beeped. Lyonya laughed, poured her a bowl. Then she poked "WALK". Lyonya opened the window and let her out onto the balcony. She sat there, looking at the buildings, and thought: this isn't it. Not the forest, not the stream. But Lyonya was trying. After a few days she understood how the board worked. She understood that she could press more than one square, and the board would combine them into a sentence. She pressed "WATER", then "MORE", then "ASK". Lyonya's eyes widened: "You... you did that on purpose?" She pressed more: "PLAY", "NOT", "WALK", "YES". Lyonya cracked up. He laughed so loudly that Fruity jumped off the windowsill and left offended. Then Lyonya took out his phone, filmed Jerkema pressing the buttons, and posted it online: "Look, what a funny fox I have, just like those videos of animals with self-awareness.", Jerkema watched him type. She saw the word "funny". She saw the word "animals". She saw the word "self-awareness" – which people use when they laugh at something that can't possibly be true. She stamped her paw. Once. Twice. So loudly that Lyonya looked up. Lyonya: "What do you want, Barsik?", She looked at him, and in her head a sentence formed that she couldn't say. Not because she didn't know the words, but because the board didn't have letters or names, only basic words like "FOOD", "WATER", "WALK", "PLAY". So she turned away and went to the corner. The next day she jumped onto his table. He was writing something in a notebook – with a pen, blue ink that smelled of plastic and metal. Jerkema watched his hand move, how letters formed into words, how words became thoughts frozen on paper. She understood that this too was a language. Not a sound language, but a drawn one. One that could be left behind. Racine helped her, because Racine remembered the letters from the magazines people read at the pet store – only here they were a little different, not printed. Lyonya went to the kitchen for coffee, and she was left alone with the notebook. She took the pen in her teeth – awkward, heavy, ink dripped onto her tongue. She pressed the paper with her paw and tried to trace the first letter. It came out as a crooked line, like a stick. Then a second. Then a third. When Lyonya returned, she was sitting on the table, and in front of her lay the notebook open to a blank page. On it was written, clumsily, smudged, almost unreadable: "I wa – gxErK--EWA, Ol hE BAoçN~", Lyonya froze. He looked at the paper, then at her, then at the paper again: "This is...", Jerkema looked at him. She waited. She didn't know what would happen next – laughter, a scream, another video online. But Lyonya suddenly sat down on a chair, put his phone face down, and said quietly: "Zherkeva?", Jerkema stamped. Lyonya: "Gepkeva?", Jerkema stamped harder. Lyonya: "Zherkema?", Jerkema stamped softer than the first time. Lyonya: "Zherkéma?", Jerkema stamped even softer – he was close. Lyonya: "Jerkema?", Jerkema finally blinked. Lyonya looked at her for a long moment, then smirked, but not the way before – somehow differently. Lyonya: "Jerkema, then," he said. "And I've been calling you 'Barsik'." He reached out his hand, and she cautiously touched her nose to his palm. Racine peeked out from behind her ear and squeaked so quietly that even Lyonya didn't hear: "Well, finally."

For special lovers, dedicated to how I created this book about myself: In the spring, when Jerkema was five springs old, Racine died. It happened quietly – the mouse curled up in a ball in the corner behind the bookshelf, and in the morning Jerkema found her cold. Lyonya wanted to throw the little body in the trash, but Jerkema lay down in front of the door and didn't move until he took a little shovel and buried the mouse in the yard, under an old bush of forget-me-nots. "Okay, Jerkema... okay.". Racine was old. She had lived longer than mice are supposed to, and Jerkema knew that. But knowing and feeling are different things. After Racine's death, the apartment became quiet. Fruity stopped coming – whether he died, maybe he was hit by a car, maybe someone took him in, or maybe he just went far away – and Lyonya didn't even notice exactly when Fruity stopped coming. Jerkema was left alone among humans. In those days she began to read. Lyonya noticed that she would sit for a long time by the bookshelf, running her nose along the spines. He thought she was interested in the smell. He didn't know that she could already distinguish letters – the ones in the books were printed, like those in the magazines at the pet store that Racine had remembered. At first Jerkema only recognized the titles: "Forest", "Animals", "Water". Then whole sentences. Then pages. Reading was hard for a fox. The books were not at eye level, and her paws didn't turn the pages the way she wanted. But she learned to press the book to the floor with her front paws and run her nose along the lines. Lyonya once caught her at it, stood there, scratched his head, and said nothing. He only bought her a soft rug later. By seven springs she was writing more clearly. Not beautifully, but Lyonya could make it out. She wrote short notes on scraps of notebooks: "WANT FISH", "OPEN BALCONY", "FEELING SADDD". Lyonya kept them in a shoebox. Sometimes he showed them to his friends, and they laughed: "Come on, you wrote that yourself, joker." Lyonya didn't argue. He just put the notes back. But the real breakthrough was the laptop! Lyonya bought a new one and left the old one on the table. Jerkema watched for a long time as his fingers ran over the keys, as letters appeared on the screen. One night she stood on her hind legs, leaned her front paws on the edge of the table, and poked her nose at the keyboard. An "a" appeared on the screen. She tried again – "b". Then "v". That's how she learned to type. With her nose. Slowly, letter by letter, erasing mistakes with accidental touches. By ten springs she could type whole sentences in a minute. By twelve springs she stopped speaking about herself in the third person. It didn't happen suddenly. Just one morning, when Lyonya had gone to work, I sat down in front of the laptop, opened a blank document, and typed: "I want to write a book." I looked at those words and understood that they were true. Not "Jerkema wants," but "I want." I wrote for a long time – all spriYng and all summer, even part of autumn. I remembered. I remember how I began to write the first chapter. I lay on my stomach in front of the laptop, and the light from the window fell on the keyboard. I closed my eyes and imagined the burrow – the very first one, the one in which I first opened my eyes. The walls smelled of warm earth and milk. I remembered how my mother licked my nose when I squeaked. I remembered how in the side den the spring brought sand and leaves, and that smell of rot mixed with the smell of the stream. The stream. For a long time I couldn't find the words to make it sound the way I heard it. I tried: "babbled", "ran", "sang", "trindled" – none of it was right. In the end I wrote: "it sounded." Because it always sounded, because that's the simplest explanation, even though what I remember cannot be put into words. Even when I slept, even when I hunted, even when I thought I wasn't listening – it was the background of everything. I remembered every stone, every flat stone from which it was comfortable to drink without wetting my belly. Every bend where the water lingered and became deeper. I wrote those words, and they came out dry, like the earth I walked on later. Dry and precise. That's how I remembered it. Then I tackled the second chapter. About the drought. That was hard. I didn't want to remember how the water smelled of chemicals, how my tongue dried, how I dropped my prey because the meat carried that same foreign taste. But I forced myself. I remembered sitting on the bank and watching the reflections on the stream. How the fish swam with the current, then the current gradually slowed, then the smell changed, then the color, and finally the sound – was it still the same stream if everything about it had changed? One way or another, I had to say goodbye to the burrow, because the stream was not a lifeline. Then Racine appeared. For a long time I couldn't remember her exact words. I only remembered the squeaking and that she talked nonstop. I was angry at myself. I went over our conversations in my head, but they crumbled like old leaves. And then I realized: I don't remember the words. I remember how she sat behind my scruff – yes, maybe it's more correct to say "on my scruff," but I always mean the scruff, because it's a fatty layer, and Racine was behind it. I remember how she said "I'll follow you" when I got caught in the cage. I rewrote the third chapter three times. The pet store, the white light, Ensto. The first time I wrote it too angry. I remembered the cage, remembered throwing myself against the bars, remembered the smell of disinfectant. But when I read it, I understood – that wasn't about Ensto. That was only about me. I threw it away. The second time I wrote it funny. I remembered how Ensto said "Orangey," how he teased Racine about being "tasty" (I wonder if he really meant edibility... well, okay, I won't think about him being a mouse-phile). It came out light, but when I got to the part where he is left alone, I couldn't. Laughter didn't glue together with silence. The third time I just sat down and wrote it as it was. He lay on his side, joking. And then, when I was taken away, he was probably envious in his cage. I just wrote that. The fourth chapter I wrote quickly. About Lyonya, about the button board, about the name. It was recent, and it was still funny. Especially how he guessed "Zherkéma?", "Gepkeva?", and I stamped my paw, the force of the blow depending on how close he got. When he finally said "Jerkema?" I blinked. That was the first time in many years that I felt not pitiful, not hungry, not scared. I felt like myself. Writing about it was joyful – I felt human. And when I finished, I read everything from beginning to end. It came out uneven, sometimes strange, sometimes too fox-like, sometimes too human-like. But it was my life. I, Jerkema, a fox from a burrow, wrote a book about myself. I called Lyonya. He sat down at the table, I pressed the key with my nose – and the text scrolled up. He read for a long time. I sat beside him, my muzzle on his hand, and waited. When he finished, he didn't laugh. He didn't take out his phone. He just looked at me and said: "You really wrote this... Holy shit!". I blinked. Once. Lyonya: "Okay, okay, calm down, Lyonya. So, Jerkema, do you want people to read this?". I poked my nose at the "Y" key. He smiled. Nodded. Then he took the laptop, created a new document, and typed: "The Story about Just Another Fox (SaJAF); Author: Jerkema.". I looked at those words. And suddenly I understood that they would hang on the internet, and people would read them, and most would think it was a joke, but someone – maybe one in tens of thousands – would wonder: "What if foxes really can think? What if they remember water, and voices, and names? What if they just didn't know how to tell it before?". Although it's nonsense... people are hardly capable of believing that without seeing it in person... And for the end, I will write one last paragraph: I lay down on my rug, put my head on my paws, and closed my eyes. Outside the window the city was noisy, but I thought I could hear the stream. The same one from the first chapter. It was still there somewhere, far away, but now it sounded different – not like a loss, but like a beginning.

  , "And that is how I became myself."