In the monochromatic

  landscape, the sound of galloping and whistling was omnipresent.

  Silhouettes crossed paths, chasing each other through the dense

  smoke-laden air. Hooves kicked up ash, which stuck to the fur. Among the

  spectral figures, all white, the color of fresh blood was the only one

  to break the monotony of the shades of gray. The white of sky and ash,

  the gray of air and beasts, the black of raised sabers. Screams of

  agony. Tamo raises his sword but holds back at the last moment, when the

  shape that appears turns out to be a fox. The fox let out a short,

  distinctive hiss to identify itself. It was Betelaste, one of his

  cousins. An arrow whistle that Tamo parried at the last moment with a

  sword stroke. The arrow, emerging from the smoke, headed straight for

  his heart. He hears more arrows. Their whistling is followed by the dull

  sound of pierced flesh and the clatter of a weapon. With his cousin

  gone in the smoke, Tamo has no time to wonder if he is one of those who

  have fallen. If among the surrounding noises, it's the sound of his

  flesh that resonates, absorbing the energy of an enemy arrow. Still

  galloping, a white figure approaches, spear raised. The fox deflects a

  blow, whistles his blade, gallops in a circle, cloud of ash, slices off

  an arm. Screams of pain, he slits a throat. A young dog falls to the

  ground. After a brief exchange of glances, Tamo resumed his gallop,

  trampling the dying dog.

  The

  pounding of his heart was the only thing that brought a little order to

  the chaos. Through the screams, through the dust burning his throat and

  eyes, through the vibrations of battle. A beat that resonated within

  him and reminded him that despite appearances. He was still alive. For

  the others, however, it would have to wait until the end. Count the

  spectres of ash and see who had fallen. At least he knew Pastel wouldn't

  be among them.

  ***

  Almost

  a year had passed since Mamalou had announced the end of their story.

  Now they were writing this story in their own blood, to make sure that

  it existed. Things had changed very quickly. The first months of languor

  and disbelief were followed by the arrival of the first rumors from the

  east and, before the fox clans had really had time to organize and

  understand what lay ahead, the refugees arrived and, just a few weeks

  later, the fires and attacks.

  "It's

  always too late when you realize you're going to fall, after you've

  been warned, after you've lost your balance. When you realize you're

  going to fall, you're already on the ground" Tamo thought, on the

  evening following the seventh day of fighting.

  They

  had settled down to eat. After praying for those who hadn't returned,

  they studied the few items they'd had time to loot from some of the

  slain enemies. A few short swords, some commonplace leather equipment

  with no seals or indicators of provenance. They hoped that once on the

  other side of the mountains, someone would be able to help them find out

  who had made them. Clatoudo placed a small purplish leather bag among

  them. "I managed to get this off one of the wolves with a red ribbon."

  He tossed said red ribbon, torn from the corpse's arm a few hours

  earlier. Betelaste bent down to pick up the pouch and empty its contents

  into his hand.

  There was dried meat, a rudimentary wooden whistle, but also a small, stone-cold, pale cube.

  "What's that? It looks like a dice without the numbers."

  "What's it made of?"

  "It's

  the color of bone but... it looks like stone. Maybe it's an amulet?" He

  handed the stone to a fox nearby, who observed it before passing it to

  Clatoudo.

  "Pfff, an amulet to the god of cubes?."

  "Maybe the elders can tell us what it is," said Tamo's father.

  Tamo

  held the small cube in his hands. Its corners were rounded, its surface

  polished. It looked as if it had been handled often. The only detail

  was a small hole in one of its corners, which looked as if it had once

  been used to pass a string through.

  After a few minutes of commentary and study, they put everything away and settled down to eat.

  They

  had settled in a circle in a depression in the ground on the hillside.

  No one had even bothered to wash their coats, except to clean a wound.

  There wasn't enough water, and anyway it was better to camouflage

  oneself in the desolate landscape into which the invaders had

  transformed this part of the plains. Tamo leaned against a hewn boulder

  with a sigh, chewing on a piece of dried wildebeest. The meat was

  tasteless. He looked around. A smooth stone floor and the remains of a

  stone structure that, according to legend, had been fashioned by the

  gods. On the hillside, the negative of a cube appeared to have been dug

  out and then paved with black stone. On the side of the hill, the

  remains of an alcove sheltered the wounded. This place was sacred to his

  clan. Rituals were performed here, and no one would ever deign to eat

  here. "And here we are now." Tamo thought. The echo of their chewing had

  replaced that of their singing.

  Tamo

  thought back to Pastel's golden eyes. "At least that damn stone gave

  him an excuse to flee the battle... bloody Pastel." Tamo held back a

  laugh, which turned into a painful coughing fit. His father, beside him,

  patted him on the back.

  "This

  friggin' ash, huh? Here, drink my son. And don't eat too fast. Tomorrow

  we make our final push and if the spirits will, you'll come out alive."

  "What's the point of living without the plains and the clouds?"

  Another

  man replied, between mouthfuls, without looking at him, "We'll be back,

  Tamo. You know the grasses are already growing under the ashes. Why is

  that? Because it didn't all burn down. Because there are still roots in

  the earth. And the seeds. And the burrows... Some of us will remain

  ashes, but those chosen by the sky will return to reseed these steppes."

  Tamo, his gaze cold

  on the horizon, whispered: "We will seed it with the blood of these

  dogs. Flowers will grow on their corpses."

  "May the spirits hear you!" another fox exclaimed in approval.

  All

  day, his emotions had echoed across the ash plains: nothing. Necessity

  of battle, they had killed themselves like the life around him. But

  suddenly, in the middle of a mouthful, rage engulfed him, taking him by

  surprise, all his muscles clenched, he gritted his teeth, closed his

  eyes. In the dust of his face, tears left their mark. In his chest, a

  burning fire left another mark. Trembling, he felt his father's arms

  encircle and cradle him. He whispered a song for children who hurt

  themselves.

  "The wind glides and glides and glides

  against the clouds, between the grasses

  the fireflies it carries and carries and carries

  the wind glides over your whiskers, between the flowers

  and their pollen he carries and carries and carries

  high...

  The wind glides and glides and glides

  over your face, drying your tears

  and your pain it carries and carries and carries

  far away, between the grasses

  and the fireflies,

  flies and flies and flies over the hills,

  far into the sky of light

  glides and glides and glides,

  high...

  caress the clouds

  your sorrow fades."

  One

  by one, his muscles relaxed. Tamo stretched out against the cold stone.

  He looked up at the gray sky. He watched for an opening to the stars.

  "I'm not a child anymore, Dad. I'm a warrior now."

  "Warriors

  are like trees. The child doesn't disappear, it stays deep down: the

  heart of the warrior, like the little green shoot, will forever be the

  heart of the hundred-year-old trees. Do you want a secret, my son, my

  warrior?"

  "What?"

  "There isn't a parent who doesn't sing to himself at the same time."

  Tamo

  turned his head towards his father and imagined the little green plant

  with tender leaves, deep in what he had always imagined to be an

  unruffled wood. They exchanged a long look and Tamo smiled.

  "How do you always come up with such wise words?"

  "They're not my words, they're the words of the elders. We'll soon find all their wisdom, once we've crossed these mountains."

  Tamo

  no longer feared death, for he had grown up with the promise that death

  was merely a change of plane, a passage to the spirit world, mirroring

  their own. The same steppes, the same clouds, the same clan, but in an

  ethereal realm. Death was a rest. He'd grown up with these stories.

  Spirits and the living crossed paths again and again on these plains,

  coming together for rituals, past, present and future clans in the same

  place, at the same time.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  At

  night, he sometimes woke up sweating and terrified. In his nightmares,

  who would fight in the ashes and, killed, he would not appear on the

  plain of the spirits, with his ancestors. He found himself eternally

  trapped in this desert of smoke, corpses and dust. Eternally alone,

  searching for a presence, his eyes red, his lungs burning, his cough

  full of blood. He woke up again that night with a start. He had risen in

  the warm night, panting, lost. After a few seconds, he recognized the

  stars. He recognized the moon and the bushes. He recognized the sleeping

  figures. He was not dead.

  The

  next day was a frighteningly mundane return to the terrifying ballet of

  ash silhouettes and hissing death strokes. Back into the burning smoke.

  Again. He did not die. He escaped either rest or eternal torment. At

  the end of the battle, in which they had somehow managed to hold off

  their attackers, they galloped south.

  The

  mountains appeared, a line of rocks growing more imposing by the day.

  Despite their exhaustion, they found the unburnt plains, which lifted

  their spirits. As they galloped along, between breaths, they would toss

  jokes back and forth. Exchanging stories was a way of making sure

  everyone was in good spirits. Anecdotes from the plains were exchanged.

  As night fell, they galloped on, between the stars and the fireflies.

  A

  silence settled over them, broken only by the sound of their gallop and

  the heckling of grasses as they passed, in a windless, cloudless life.

  Tamo concentrated on his sensations, for he knew that the memories he

  would bring back might be among the last he would make of the plains.

  When

  their beasts were exhausted, they continued on foot, stopping only for a

  few naps in the grass, before finally reaching the mountains.

  The

  plains seemed to climb steadily before transforming, cooler and more

  mineral. "Come on, if we're not too slow we'll be at the end of the

  Valley of Flowers in a week." Tamo's father said.

  "Did you hear Clatoudo? If we're not too slow."

  "Hey, I could see you lugging pots and firewood around for three days!"

  Tamo

  smiled as he brushed his mount, cleaning his rough fur of the last

  traces of ash. "Come on, darling. This is where we part ways." He

  whispered to the beast. "You wouldn't like the mountains, anyway." The

  creature licked his fingers before turning his attention to the fresh

  grass below.

  "Tamo?"

  "Coming," the latter replied to his father.

  There

  were a hundred of them climbing the valley, the survivors of the last

  battles on the plains. Men and women, they were all former hunters

  transformed into warriors by force of circumstance. Many of them were

  also respected leaders in day-to-day and strategic decision-making.

  Since Mamalou's death, they had quickly agreed on an enlightened sharing

  of power, for the good of the fox clans. Yolanda and Talaouane, the

  parents of Natana?o, the fox who had befriended Pastel, guided the

  refugees who had left earlier for the mountains with most of the clan,

  while Clatoudo and Tamo's father fought on the plains and Pastel's

  father, Batto, left with the latter and a few warriors from various

  clans to seek help from the Guidians in the western mountains.

  Each

  had gone off at different times with different groups, in a strange way

  breaking the balance between their temperaments and influences. Tamo

  had noticed that his father had softened since the division of the

  clans. He seemed more anxious, solely responsible for the lives of so

  many foxes. He and the others had argued so much about the best

  decisions to make. Tamo suspected, from his father's frowns, serious

  looks and measured voice, that he missed those altercations.

  "You're never less alone than when you're arguing with your own kind." Tamo murmured, remembering his grandmother's words.

  At

  the end of the day, in the shadow of the mountains, now well and truly

  in the valley of flowers and out of the plains, they turned to look at

  the latter. They could see the horizon of rolling grass and clouds. In

  the distance, they could see the smoke of fires, but no enemy

  silhouettes yet. Nearby, their horses waited, unaware that their fox

  masters would probably never return.

  "Will

  we ever know the meaning of all this?" asked Betelaste, a slightly

  younger fox with light fur. He was the one Tamo had come so close to

  crippling a few days earlier.

  Without

  waiting for an answer, he continued: "Why do this? What madness brings

  these dogs and wolves here to destroy a territory, to exterminate...

  meticulously erase. For what? For whom?" They had all asked themselves

  these questions countless times. No one answered.

  Over

  the next few days, they headed deep into the mountains. They had no

  maps, but could rely on the stars and the stories of their ancestors to

  help them find their way. There was a story about the path from the

  valley of flowers to the sleeping giants, and then about the pass to the

  stone snakes. They occupied their days by telling each other stories as

  old as the clans and, as tradition dictated, they improvised songs

  recounting their exile.

  "Your turn, Tamo!" Betelaste challenged.

  "Ehhh"

  Tamo pondered, looking down at the pebbles at his feet, then raised his

  head, squinting to look at the impressive peaks around him.

  "Between

  the vertebrae of sleeping giants, words echo. They dance from mountain

  to mountain and sometimes, like the giants, fall asleep there. Crossing

  foxes must beware of landslides, but also of lost words that, suddenly

  awakening, could guide them through the meanders of sleeping slopes..."

  Tamo

  smiled and suddenly howled. His cry echoed among the mountains; ears

  pricked up. All that could be heard in the vanished echo was the cold

  breeze and a distant scree.

  "And... that's to watch out for rockslides, is it?"

  "Yes, I suppose so." Tamo said with a smile, himself half-convinced by his metaphor.

  "But in your story it's the scree that awakens the word and not the word that prevents the scree."

  "Ah, let's say it's an invitation to listen to the mountains and not just the scree. Awaken the senses, you know?"

  "

  I'd like to put my sense of smell to sleep when the breeze brings back

  the smell of our droppings at night! It's impossible to bury our poop in

  those damn rocks!" shouted Clatoudo, who was about ten meters ahead of

  them.

  Tamo's father suddenly stopped. "What did you say?"

  Clatoudo turned, a little bewildered by his brother's tone. "It was a joke.... but you can smell them from here."

  "But the wind is blowing from the south. It's not our poop we're smelling!"

  Clatoudo

  exclaimed in surprise, immediately grasping what the other fox was

  implying: "It's the others! Ah, Tamo! It's not the words that sleep in

  the mountains! It's the poop! I've never been so happy to smell a turd!"

  The

  wind blowing from the south brought the discreet but recognizable smell

  of fox droppings to their sharpened sense of smell. As they were

  arriving from the north, this meant they could smell the traces of the

  first wave of refugees that had preceded them.

  Suddenly

  excited, they quickened their pace despite the ground's uncomfortable

  irregularities, trying to make their way towards the smell. Their

  footsteps sent rocks tumbling into the hollow of a narrow ravine. They

  knew that no one was waiting for them, but their hearts swelled at the

  idea of at least discovering the traces of their loved ones, those for

  whom they had been worried for months.

  Once

  they reached the top of a small ridge, they saw another small grey

  valley, filled with pebbles and small shrubs, but soon noticed a shelter

  on the side of a rock face, sheltered from the wind.

  "There!" Tamo simply shouted, running over the rocks with the others.

  "Look out!"

  Pebbles

  tumbled around them, with them. Tamo, eager, smiling but a little

  nervous looked around. Pebbles in a circle to sit on one side... and

  there a pile of branches, kindling for the fire.

  "Traces of a fire." Says someone, pointing to a blackened stone.

  "And here's the source of the smell!" Says Clatoudo, pointing to a far corner of the camp.

  The foxes, once warriors, were now pouncing like children, eager to follow in the footsteps of their friends and family.

  Suddenly,

  someone cried out. Tamo stood up, noticed Betelaste's distressed

  expression and then saw a pile of small stones with a funeral stick

  sticking out of it. "No", thought Tamo simply, as several ran towards

  the mound.

  Murmuring

  prayers, Tamo's father was the first to step forward and carefully

  remove the stones one by one. Little by little, fur, thin arms and face

  were revealed. Someone crouched down, crying, and Tamo approached, chest

  burning, eyes moistened to see the peaceful expression on Fileniou's

  face.

  "Poor boy... poor Marrinelle!" someone gasped.

  "No trace of injury. The disease must have taken him. He's dancing with his ancestors now." Tamo's father murmured.

  In

  flashes, Tamo remembered the boy's laughter, the reflection in his

  eyes, his expressive face, their games. He thought of Pastel, far away,

  who knew nothing about it. Tamo couldn't contain a squeak of sorrow as

  the foxes gently replaced the stones to allow the boy to rest in peace

  forever. He didn't notice, along with the prayers and the sound of the

  wind, a subtle whirring.

  "We'll

  be back, Fileniou. On my life I promise we'll come back for you and

  take you back to the plains with us. You won't be alone in the mountains

  for long." Tamo thought.

  A

  silent shudder ran through the group. Tamo looked up. All eyes, once on

  the stones, were now on Clatoudo. Clatoudo had taken a small pouch out

  of his bag and dropped the strange, pale cube into his hand. In his

  hand, it vibrated and glowed softly, as if a small, cold glow were

  hidden inside, quivering.

  "By

  all the spirits of heaven, this is witchcraft!" Cladoudo raised his

  hand just as the stone's wavering seemed to increase in intensity.

  Cladoudo dropped the cube, suddenly frightened, and stepped back. The

  vibrations suddenly increased, and the roar was louder, clattering on

  the stone near Fileniou's grave.

  Everyone

  was petrified, waiting for something to happen, but nothing happened

  other than the impossible, stupefying movement of the small artifact,

  taken on a sudden life of its own.

  Suddenly, Betelaste grabbed the stone and threw it further. Her wriggling ceased.

  "Wait, we mustn't lose it!"

  "But

  this object is cursed! Why bring it back with us? It's madness, we

  don't know what it is!" Betelaste shouted in exasperation.

  "It's

  stopped. The cube is dormant." Tamo remarked, leaping to the small

  object. It was back to being a small die with no marks. Tamo frowned

  and, overcoming his fear, grabbed the small object. It still had the

  residual warmth of Clatoudo's hand. Seized by an intuition, he walked

  slowly towards the group. A few steps away, he had a strange sensation.

  The cube was tickling him, imperceptibly. The tickling became a

  vibration, then a wriggling and an amber glow. The object's activity

  increased as he approached. Clenching his teeth, he reached over the

  inert body. The stone vibrated even more strongly.

  "It's

  Fileniou. It's Fileniou's body that activates the stone." Tamo heard

  himself say, a cold chill running through his chest. A fear bigger than

  the mountains.