The Fox Tomb

(Recorded from the old edition of Notes from the Mound by the Bend, whose text is close to the ancient; here translated into the vernacular.)

The original book is broken, and this tale alone survives; in the margin an old owner wrote: "The matter of the shoal is true, and not strange." The recorder thinks this hits the very mark.

The Wild-Goose Shoal lies where the Turbid River bends. The water slows here and has laid down a gentle slope, thick with reeds, where in autumn the wild geese come down to rest—hence the name. The shoal is seven or eight li from the nearest village, cut off by a dry old riverbed, and few come. Now and then a cowherd drives his cattle past, and only points from afar, never drawing near. At the edge of the slope stands a lone low mound, no taller than a zhang, with grass and thorn tangled so you cannot tell one from the other, no stele, no sign that later hands ever mounded the earth.

Those who pass by mostly go around it, and call it the Fox Tomb. If asked, they say plainly: beneath it are not human bones, but a fox's. The speaker is calm, the hearer calm, as if what was meant were no more than an old willow or a stone lying down—no one treats it as strange. The children, though, love to climb the mound, and are scolded off: the top is clean, they are told, do not tread it. For no particular reason, only thus, as one tells a child not to step on another's threshold.

Strangers who first see the mound sometimes ask: Is a fox truly buried beneath? The old folk turn the question back: Have you ever seen a fox mound its own grave? The stranger thinks, and says no more. The reckoning of the shoal has always been simple: who is buried, and by whom, matters little; that it was buried clean is enough.

In spring the reeds turn green, in autumn white; the grass on the mound follows the seasons, withering and returning, and no one has ever gone to tend it or to level it away. It is simply there, a part of the shoal, like a hump the slope naturally raised. Yet the wonder of the Fox Tomb is not in its strangeness, but in its three generations. The old folk of the shoal tell the tale in fragments; pieced together, it runs roughly thus.

It is said that at the end of the former dynasty there was a fox on the shoal, white-eared, old. How many years it had lived no one could reckon. Only this was remembered: at the ripening of the wheat, a fox would walk slowly among the ridges, neither seizing fowl nor teasing dogs, but taking up the ears the farmers had dropped and carrying them, one by one, to lay quietly at the eaves of the hungry. At first men were suspicious; in time the suspicion faded.

Below the shoal lived a poor man, Zhang the Elder, blind, with no children, living alone. Each morning he felt his way to the door, and there at the eaves would be a fresh bundle of ears, set neatly. Zhang the Elder did not farm, but lived on the village's charity, often unsure of his next meal. That bundle saw him through the hardest days. He felt the ears and guessed some kind soul, and thanked everyone, yet never thanked the right one. In good years the ears came too, only fewer; in bad years they came more, as if fearing he would not hold. The village said Zhang the Elder was hard-fated and fox-blessed; he only shook his head: What fox? It is only that the night wind is kind, and blows the grain to my door. The neighbors, hearing of it, took it for a jest; only Zhang the Elder himself never let that nightly bowl of clear water fail. So for ten years. In the depth of one winter the snow caved in half his thatch, and he was bitterly cold; those few days no ears came to the eaves, yet he found a track trodden through the snow before his door, leading to a neighbor's house, and feeling his way along it he passed the whole winter by the neighbor's stove. When spring came he returned and saw the fox's trace circling his house three times, the prints in the snow shallow and even. Zhang the Elder never spoke of these things to anyone; only each night before sleep he set a bowl of clear water outside the door, and each morning the bowl was empty, set back in its place. So for ten years, until he died.

On the night Zhang the Elder died, someone saw from afar the fox carry dried reeds and circle his door three times, as if to see him off. A few days later the fox lay stiff by the shoal, white as a branch after snow. Zhang's grandson came back and buried it on the slope, mounding the earth—this was the first generation of fox.

Zhang's grandson was called Zhang Shun. He was frail from birth and, grown, could do no heavy work, but herded sheep on the shoal. As a boy he was often bullied, and would hide on the shoal and talk to the sheep. In the flock a lamb lost its mother; Zhang Shun held it and grieved, with no milk, watching it near death. One night he could not sleep and came out to the sheep, and saw a gray fox lying beside the lamb, warming it with its belly, and not leaving the whole night. At dawn the lamb stood and bleated. After that the gray fox came often and grew used to Zhang Shun. Zhang Shun called it "Brother Gray"; the fox neither answered nor left, but sat at a distance and watched him herd, and watched him slowly grow into a man. Zhang Shun's sheep were always fatter than the neighbors'; asked the reason, he only smiled. Only he knew that the gray fox came by night and drove the strayed sheep back to the fold, one by one, and licked the bitten whole. Once he fell in a fever on the shoal and lay senseless; it was the gray fox that went to the village and fetched the hem of the physician's robe, leading men to find him, and so his life was kept. These things Zhang Shun kept in his heart and never spoke aloud.

Later Zhang Shun married A-qiao of the next village and set up house; the gray fox no longer entered the village, but stood far off on the shoal head, gazing at the three rooms of thatch. When A-qiao bore her first child she labored hard a day and a night and nearly died. At midnight the family heard a thin whine at the door; they opened it and saw the gray fox lay a stalk of green grass on the threshold, look once, and turn away. A-qiao boiled the grass and drank it, and bore the child safely. That child was Xiaoman. On his wedding day the village was loud with cheer, and the gray fox crouched on the shoal head, watching until the lamps went out. When Zhang Shun stepped out he looked back and thought he saw that gray shape, and though he seemed about to speak, in the end said nothing. Later, when times were good, he would now and then come up to the shoal and stand a while before the empty den, as before the old place of a friend. Zhang Shun came later to think that the gray fox was perhaps no fox at all, but a strand of good will from the shoal, borrowing a fox's shape to keep him company through those years. Later still, Zhang Shun's house prospered and moved into the town; on the shoal remained only an empty fox den, and the patch of trampled grass at its mouth. The gray fox died of old age in the den, and for some days before its death it lay at the mouth of the empty den, gazing toward the town. Zhang Shun, hearing, came back and buried it beside the mound of the white-eared fox, the two mounds together—this was the second generation of fox.

The third generation was white, daughter of the gray fox. She was born knowing, and understood human speech, yet never drew near. Zhang Shun's son Xiaoman, who came to tend the graves at the festivals, once saw the white fox standing upright on the mound, from afar like a ball of snow, faintly bright where the sun struck. Xiaoman tossed her a cake; she smelled it, drew back, and would not eat. When anyone approached the mound she vanished, quick as a shadow dropping into the grass. Year by year Xiaoman grew taller; year by year the white fox remained, the two never speaking, yet as if acquainted. Xiaoman grew and left to study away; each time he returned he would climb to the shoal, and the white fox was always there, like a kinsman who does not speak.

In the years the dynasty changed, war came year on year, and the shoal nearly lost its people; the fox clan scattered too. The white fox kept alone to the three-generation mound and did not leave. One spring, refugees came down the old riverbed and pitched shelters on the shoal, short of food and clothes. The white fox went out by night and brought wild hare and mountain yam, laying them quietly at the shelters' edge. The refugees at first were afraid, but in time took them, none knowing from whence the mercy came. The shelters came down and the people went; the shoal grew cold and quiet again, and only the white fox remained. A band of routed soldiers passed the shoal and saw her; they drew bow to shoot, but she did not flee, only gazed calmly at the man. Suddenly the soldier's horse stumbled and threw him; when he rose, the fox was already in her hole. The soldiers gone, the villagers peeped into the hole and found the white fox lying straight and proper, breathless, her ears and eyes clean, as if waiting for someone to come before she would close them. So they buried her with the two before, under the one mound. On the day of burial the old men set to and opened the old mound, and saw the earth was indeed laid in layers—white above, gray between, white below—with no difference but the color of the fur to tell them apart. In their order they laid the white fox at the top, filled the earth, and mounded it again into the one. No one spoke, as if they were only moving an acquaintance to a fitting dwelling. From then the shoal had only the Fox Tomb, and no fox.

A traveler who asked was shown the mound by an old man in the fields, who said: See the grass, green every year; the fox is gone, the grass comes of itself. He said also: The fox had three generations—one saved men, one kept them company, one kept watch over them; none ever harmed a soul. The traveler asked how he knew three generations lay in one mound. The old man said: The earth is laid in three layers; the old folk handed down the word, and it is not wrong. He said further: Years back, at the Clear Bright Festival, a child would stand before the mound and pile small stones into a little tower—no one knew whose child; the next year he came again to pile, and then came no more. The child, some said, was like Zhang Shun in his early years; others said like no one at all. The children of the shoal change with every crop, and few now recall how the Fox Tomb came to be, only that it is a place to be gazed at from afar. Here the old man paused and looked at the sky, and said: The fox is gone, and the child is gone too.

The traveler stood beneath the mound. The wind passed and the grass leaves stirred faintly, as if some very fine sound were there, not to be caught—like a sigh, or like the noise of someone tidying things. The sky was near dark; he climbed into his cart and went slowly off. The shoal fell quiet again, and only the river sounded far off, flowing without hurry.

Some years later a wandering adept passed the shoal, looked at the mound, sighed, and said to his follower: This mound has virtue. The fox's three generations surpass many a man. The follower asked on what ground; the adept did not answer, but bent and picked up a white stone and set it squarely on the mound top, as if to supply the stele that was missing, and went away.

The Fox Tomb stands to this day, grass and thorn still tangled, no telling one from the other. The villagers neither sacrifice to it nor shun it; passing at the festivals they only give it an extra glance. Now and then a cowherd child takes shelter from rain beneath it and says he hears the sound of claws scuffing earth within, very light, stroke after stroke, like someone putting in order a house long unlived in. The elder says: Don't talk nonsense. The child says: It's true. The elder says nothing more, leads the cow, and walks slowly off; after a few steps he looks back once at the mound, and the sky is already dark. The next Clear Bright, someone did see a small child crouch before the mound and pile stones into a tower; he had piled but half when his mother called him in to eat, and the tower was left there, and the wind and rain slowly took it apart.

(The recorder adds: I once passed the shoal and stood long beneath the mound, and saw nothing, heard nothing, only the grass stirring in the wind. Returning, I set this down, and dared add not a word.)