i

Will knew he wasn't awake. Though he was lying in his own bed in what appeared to be his own room - though he could hear his mother's voice from somewhere below - he was dreaming it all. The certain proof? His mother wasn't speaking, she was singing, in French, her voice reedy but sweet. This was absurd. His mother hated the sound of her own singing voice. She'd mouthed the words when they'd sung hymns in church. And there was other evidence, more persuasive still. The light that came in through the cracks between the curtains was a colour he'd never seen light before: a gilded mauve that made everything it fell upon vibrate, as though it were singing some song of its own, in the language of light. And where it failed to fall, there was a profound stillness, and shadows that had their own uncanny hue.

'These are the strangest dreams,' somebody said.

He sat up in bed. 'Who's there?'

'Aren't they, though? Dreams within dreams. They're always the strangest.'

Will studied the darkness at the foot of his bed from which this voice was emanating; squinting to get a clearer picture of the speaker. The man was wearing red, Will thought; a fur coat, perhaps? A peaked hat?

'But I suppose it's like those Russian dolls, isn't it?' the man in the coat went on. 'You know the ones I mean? They have a doll inside a doll inside - of course you know. A man of the world like you. You've seen so much. Me, I've seen a patch of moorland five miles square.' He halted for a moment to chew on something. 'Excuse my noise,' he said, 'But I am so damn hungry ... What was I saying?'

'Dolls.'

'Oh yes. The dolls. You do understand the metaphor? These dreams are like the Russian dolls; they fit inside one another.' He paused to chew a little more. 'But here's the twist,' he said. 'It works in either direction-'

'Who are you?' Will said.

'Don't interrupt me. I suppose it's a bit of a stretch, but imagine we're in some parallel universe in which I've rewritten all the laws of physics-'

'I want to see who I'm talking to,' Will insisted.

'You're not talking to anyone. You're dreaming. I've rewritten all thelaws of physics and every doll fits inside every other doll, doesn't matter what size they are.'

'That's stupid.'

'Who are you calling stupid?' the stranger replied, and in his anger stepped out of the shadows.

It wasn't a man in a fur coat and a peaked cap: it was a fox. A dream of a fox, with a burnished coat and needle whiskers and black eyes that glittered like black stars in its elegantly snouted head. It stood easily on its hind legs, the pads of its forepaws slightly elongated, so they resembled stubby fingers.

'So now you see me,' the fox said. Will could see only one reminder, in all its poised perfection, of the wild beast it had been: a spatter of blood on the patch of white fur at its chest. 'Don't worry,' the fox said, glancing down at the marks, 'I've already fed. But then you remember Thomas.'

Thomas

-dead in the grass, his genitals eaten off

'Now don't be judgmental,' the fox chided. 'We do what we have to do. If there's a meal to be had, you have it. And you start with the tenderest parts. Oh, look at your face. Believe me, you'll be putting a lot of pee-pees in your mouth before you're very much older.' Again, the laughter. 'That's the glory of the flow, you see? I'm talking to the boy, but the man's listening.

'It makes me wonder if you really and truly dreamt this, all those years ago. Isn't that an interesting conundrum? Did you lie at the age of eleven and dream about me, coming to tell you about the man that you'd grow up to be, a man who'd one day be lying in a coma dreaming about you, lying in your bed, dreaming a fox...' he shrugged '... and so on. Following any of this?'

'No.'

'It's just rumination. The kind of thing your father'd probably enjoy debating, except that he'd be debating with a fox and I don't think that'd fit his vision of things at all. Well ... it's his loss.'

The fox moved to the side of the bed, finding a spot where the light fell fetchingly on its coat. 'I wonder at you,' it said, studying Will more closely. 'You don't look like a coward.'

'I wasn't,' Will protested. 'I would have taken the book to him myself, but my legs'

'I'm not talking to the boy you were,' the fox said, looking hard at him. 'I'm talking to the man you are.'

'I'm not ... a man,' Will protested softly. 'Not yet.'

'Oh now stop this. It's wearisome. You know very well that you're a grown man. You can't hide in the past forever. It may seem comfortable for a while, but it'll smother you sooner or later. It's time you woke up, my dear fellow.'

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'Christ, you are so stubborn!' the fox snapped, losing his air of civility. 'I don't know where you think all this nostalgia's going to get you! It's the future that matters.' He leaned close to Will's head, until they were almost eyeball to eyeball. 'Do you hear me in there?' he shouted. His breath was rank, and the stench of it reminded Will of what the creature had eaten; how well-pleased it had looked trotting away from Simeon's corpse. Knowing this was all a dream didn't make him feel any the less intimidated; if the fox came sniffing for what little Will had got between his legs, he'd put up a fight, but the chances were he'd lose. Bleed to death, in his own bed, while the fox ate him alive

'Oh Lord,' the fox said, 'I can see coercion's going to get me nowhere.' He retreated from the bed a step or two, sniffed, and said, 'May I tell you an anecdote? Well, I'm going to tell you anyway. It happened I met a dog, lying around where I go to hunt. I don't usually consort with domesticated breeds, but we got to chatting, the way you do sometimes, and he said to me, Lord Fox - he called me Lord Fox - he said: Sometimes I think we made a terrible mistake, us dogs, trusting them. Meaning your species, my lad. I said, why? You don't have to scavenge like me. You don't have to sleep in the rain. He said that's not important in the grand scheme of things. Well, I laughed. I mean, since when did a dog ever think about the grand scheme of things? But give this hound his due, he was a bit of a thinker.

'We made our choice, he said. We hunted for them, we herded for them, we guarded their brats. God knows, we helped them make a civilization, didn't we? And why? I said I didn't know; it was beyond me. Because, he said, we thought they knew how to take care of things. How to keep the world full of meat and flowers.

'Flowers? I said. (There's only so much pretension I can take from a dog.) Don't be absurd. Meat, yes. Meat, you'd want them taking care of, but since when did a dog care for the smell of cherry blossom?

'Well, he got very sniffy at that. This conversation's over, he said, and ponced off.'

The fox was by now back at the bottom of Will's bed.

'Get the message?' he asked Will.

'Sort of.'

'This is no time to be sleeping, Will. There's a world out there needs help. Do it for the dogs if you must. But do it. You pass that along to the man in you. You tell him to wake up. And if you don't'Lord Fox leaned over the bedboard, and narrowed his glittering eyes -I'll come back and have your tender parts in the middle of the night. Understand me? I'll come back sure as God put tits on trees.' His mouth opened a little wider. Will could smell the flesh on his breath. 'Understand me?'

'Yes,' he said, trying to keep from looking at the beast. 'Yes! Yes! Yes! 'Will.'

'Yes! Yes!'

'Will, you're having a nightmare. Wake up. Wake up.'

He opened his eyes. He was in his room, lying in his bed, except that Lord Fox had gone, along with that nameless light. In their place, a human presence. Close to the bed, Dr Johnson, who had just shaken him out of sleep. And at the door, wearing a far less compassionate expression, his mother.