The Sill by the Window
Every winter, when the snow came down soft and deep and the woods went quiet and white, Tuva did the same thing each evening at dusk. She climbed onto the kitchen stool, opened the window just a crack against the cold, and set a little dish of food out on the snowy sill — a scrap of meat, a crust of bread, whatever there was.
Then she waited, her breath fogging the glass. And every evening, just as the last light went blue, he came. An old red fox, his coat the colour of warm embers, stepped quietly out from the dark line of the trees. He crossed the white garden on careful paws, climbed up to the sill, and ate while Tuva watched from inches away, close enough to see the snow caught in his whiskers.
He never once let her touch him. But he never ran away, either. And when he had finished, he would look at her for one long moment with his steady amber eyes, and then slip back into the woods. Tuva loved him more than almost anything in the whole wide world.
What Mormor Knew
One night, as they sat together by the fire, Mormor set down her knitting for a moment and looked into the flames.
“He's been coming a long time, that one. That fox has come to this very window every winter since before you were even born, Tuva. I used to set the dish out myself, long ago.”
Tuva thought about that — a whole fox's life of winters, coming to the same small window in the snow. Mormor's needles clicked softly, and her face was warm and kind in the firelight.
“He's old now, my love. Older than any fox I have ever known. And foxes, even the wisest of them, do not get so very many winters.”
Tuva did not quite understand what Mormor meant, and she did not want to. She only knew that tomorrow, at dusk, she would open the window again, and he would come. He always came.
The Night He Didn't Come
But one night, he did not come. The snow fell harder than Tuva had ever seen it, swallowing the garden and the fence and the trees until the whole world was white and hushed and still. She set the dish on the sill, just as always. She waited.
The blue light came, and went, and slowly turned to black. The food sat there untouched, disappearing little by little under the falling snow. He did not come. Tuva waited until her toes went numb with cold, and Mormor told her gently that it was time for bed.
But she could not sleep. She lay in the dark and thought of the old red fox out there, somewhere, alone in all that snow. And at last, very quietly, she climbed out of bed, pulled on her boots and her thick red hat, and crept out of the door into the deep and silent dark to find him.
Under the Spruce
The snow was up to her knees, and the cold pinched at her cheeks, but Tuva pushed on, following the faint old paths between the trees, calling for him softly, again and again, her small voice the only sound under the great white sky. And then, at the foot of an enormous spruce, where the snow lay heavy on the drooping branches, she found him. The old red fox was curled in a hollow among the roots, his ember coat dusted with snow. He lifted his head a little when he saw her.
But he did not get up. And Tuva understood, in the way that children sometimes understand the very biggest things all at once, that he was terribly tired, and that she could not carry him home, and that she could not make him young again. So she did the only thing she could do. She took off her own warm red hat and tucked it gently around him.
“I'm here. I'm right here. You don't have to be afraid.”
Then she lay down in the snow beside him, as close as she dared, and sang him Mormor's old lullaby, soft and low, until the snow had stopped falling and the whole wood was full of quiet stars.
What the Morning Kept
When Tuva woke, it was morning, and she was tucked up in her own warm bed, with Mormor sitting beside her — and she knew, even before she asked, that Mormor had gone out into the snow in the night and carried her home. Together, hand in hand, they walked back to the great spruce in the pale gold light. The red hat was still there in the snow. But the old fox was gone.
All that was left was a fox-shaped hollow where he had lain, and a single line of pawprints, leading away into the deep of the trees, and ending where the new snow had quietly filled them in.
“He chose to go, my love. That is what the old ones do. But the warmth you gave him — every winter, and on his last cold night — that was real. That still counts. That always counts.”
Tuva cried a little, and that was all right. She was sad, but she was not broken. And that evening, when the light went blue once more, she climbed up onto the kitchen stool, set out a fresh dish of food on the snowy sill, and opened the window just a crack — for whoever, out of the quiet white woods, might come next. She left it open all the night long.
Because that is what you do, when you have loved something dearly, and then let it go. You keep the window open.