Furthermore(44)

“Oliver, please,” Alice said, irritated now. “Don’t be such a—”

There was no time to finish that sentence, I’m afraid. No time at all, no, because Alice was suddenly screaming. It was all fairly embarrassing, actually, because the ordeal was over and done with in only a moment.

Alice fell to the ground at Oliver’s feet and righted herself in a hurry, dusting off her skirts and whipping around too quickly, trying to get a look at her assailant.

But Oliver’s face froze her still.

He was staring at something with a look of shock she could not have anticipated. She thought nothing in Furthermore could surprise him. She thought he’d seen it all. Apparently not.

This was a fox.

An origami fox. A sheet of rust-and-white paper folded expertly into a real, live, deceptively lovely animal.

It scampered about and made little fox noises and yipped and jumped and chased itself; and when it trotted along toward Alice, she wasn’t afraid at all.

Oliver had nearly climbed a tree in fright, but Alice stepped forward, hand outstretched, ready to pet the paper fox. It bounded forward and nuzzled her hand before plowing into her legs, and she laughed and laughed and touched the top of its head, awed by the coarse paper of its fur.

“What’s your name?” she whispered, crouching down to greet him. Or her. She didn’t know. “Are you a boy or a girl?”

The fox jumped around her and bit her skirts, tugging on her clothes. For a fox with no teeth, it had quite a bite. Still, she felt no danger. Her new fox friend held her in place until finally she pet its head again. “Will you let me go?” she asked.

Slowly, it nodded, stepped back, and fell into a bow.

“You understand me?” she asked, astounded.

Again, the fox nodded.

“Alice,” said Oliver, his voice high and shaky. He was rifling through his bag with great urgency. “Could we please get going?”

“Do you know anything about paper foxes?” she asked him. “Have you ever seen one before?”

Oliver looked up, startled, his maps clutched in one hand, his notebook in the other, and shook his head. “Furthermore is made up of hundreds of villages,” he explained, now flipping through the pages of his notebook, “and I’ve only been to sixty-eight of them.” He paused, scanned a few pages, gave a disappointed sigh, and stuffed the notebook back in his bag.

Alice was surprised to see Oliver so anxious.

“I haven’t any idea where this fox came from,” Oliver continued, “but he’s not from here, and your father—well, your father never mentioned a paper fox in his entries, so this can’t possibly be good. No, this can’t possibly . . .”

“His entries?” Alice said, surprised. “You mean that notebook belonged to Father?”

But Oliver wasn’t listening. He’d unrolled a few map scrolls and was reading them upside down and then right side up, collapsing paper staircases and poking open miniature doors and unlocking tiny windows and finding nothing behind them. He even gave the maps a good shake to see if anything new would fall out, all to no avail. He was looking increasingly worried, which Alice, bless her heart, found highly entertaining.

“It’s not right,” Oliver was saying, jabbing at different parts of the map with one finger. “It’s not as it should be. There’s nothing here about a fox.” He shook his head, hard, and rolled up the scrolls he’d so hastily unfurled.

“Oliver,” Alice tried again. “Is that Father’s journal you’ve got there?”

Oliver’s jaw twitched. “What? This? Oh,” he said. “Yes, well, it was all part of my task, you know, to help m—”

“May I see it?” Alice asked, stepping forward. “Please? I’d dearly love to see what Father wrote down.”

Oliver was clinging to his messenger bag so tightly he was nearly vibrating in place. “I’m afraid that’s not possible,” he said. “The Elders put very firm magical restrictions on the items I’ve been loaned for my journey, and if they’re handled by anyone but me, they’ll know.”

“Oh,” said Alice, crestfallen. She knew how tasks worked and she could imagine the Elders having done such a thing. But more importantly, Alice was still operating under the assumption that she could trust Oliver; she thought she’d be able to tell when he was spinning a lie.

So she believed him.

Oliver was visibly relieved, but Alice, who was once again distracted by the paper fox, didn’t seem to notice.

Oliver cleared his throat. “We, um, we should really get going.”

“But he looks so sweet,” she said. “Can’t we bring him along?” Alice had little to hold on to in this strange land and she was proud to have discovered something Oliver had not. She wanted to contribute something important to their journey and couldn’t bring herself to give up on the fox just yet.

But Oliver was shaking his head. “Don’t be fooled by Furthermore,” he said as he shoved the maps back into his bag. “Please, Alice. Remember why we’re here. If we don’t stick to my original plan, we might never reach your father.”

Any reminder of Father was enough to set Alice’s spine straight. “Of course I remember why we’re here,” she said quickly, cheeks aflame. “No need to remind me.”