Things You Love By Letting Go

Nila found the fox on a Tuesday. Behind the garden shed. In the narrow space between the wall and the world where things go when they need to not be found.

The fox was small. Smaller than Nila expected. Foxes in her head were large and clever and moved like water. This fox was: Still. Trembling. One front paw held up off the ground like a question it didn't know how to ask.

Nila did not touch it. She knew better than to touch it. She went and got Mama and a cardboard box and an old towel that was soft and didn't smell too much like them.

The vet said: Injured paw. Not broken. Needs rest. Needs quiet. Needs time.

The vet also said: Wild animal. Not a pet. When it's ready — it goes back.

Nila heard the first part. She heard the second part too. She put it away for later.

The fox came home in the cardboard box. Nila set it up in the corner of the shed with the soft towel and a bowl of water and the specific silence of someone trying very hard not to be too much.

The fox looked at her. Its eyes were the colour of autumn looking at you sideways.

Nila sat outside the box. Not too close. Close enough. She didn't try to touch it. She didn't try to make it come to her. She just — was there. The way the vet had said was the right way. Let it come to you. Or not. Both are fine. That's the point.

On the third day the fox ate while Nila was in the shed. Not looking at her. But knowing she was there. And eating anyway.

Nila considered this an enormous victory. She told no one because no one would have understood the size of it.

On the fifth day the fox's nose appeared over the edge of the box. Just the nose. Just to check. Just to gather information about the shed and Nila and whether any of it was trustworthy.

Nila stayed still. The nose assessed her. Withdrew.

On the seventh day the fox came out of the box and sat three feet from Nila and looked at her with the autumn eyes for a long time.

Nila looked back.

She wanted to reach out. Her hand knew exactly how the fur would feel. She had thought about it for seven days. She kept her hand in her lap.

The fox looked at her hand. Then at her face. Then it turned around and went back in the box.

Nila breathed out.

On the tenth day the fox walked to her and sniffed her knee and then her hand and then walked away again as if it had simply needed to confirm something it already suspected.

Nila sat very still the whole time. Her heart doing things hearts do when something wild chooses to come close.

On the fourteenth day Mama came to the shed. "The paw is healed," she said. Nila looked at the fox. The fox was sitting in the soft towel. Alert. Bright-eyed. The trembling entirely gone.

"I know," said Nila.

She had known for three days. She had been not knowing it on purpose.

That evening Nila sat outside the box for a long time. The fox sat inside it. They looked at each other.

"You're ready," said Nila. The fox's ears moved. Just slightly. Just once.

The next morning Nila and Mama carried the box to the edge of the garden where the fence met the field and the field went on into the kind of wild that foxes belong in.

Nila opened the box.

The fox came out slowly. Stood on the grass. All four paws. The healed one pressing down firmly into the earth like it was testing how it felt to be whole again.

It looked at Nila. One long look. The autumn eyes. Unhurried. Ungrateful in the way wild things are which is not ingratitude but just wildness.

Then it walked into the field. Not fast. Not slow. Just — away. The way it had always been going to go.

Nila watched until the orange of it disappeared into the long grass.

She didn't cry. Not then.

She waited until she was back in her room with the door closed and the window open and the field visible from her bed going on and on in the ordinary evening light.

Then she cried. The good kind. The full kind. The kind that comes from loving something the right way — which is sometimes the hard way — which is sometimes the letting go way — which hurts the same amount as it was worth.

Which was a lot.

Outside somewhere in the long grass something orange moved. Or maybe didn't.

Nila watched anyway.