The owls had spoken too soon because when they finally flew back to their wood, their bellies not as full as they would like but full enough all considering, they heard a fair ruckus of snarling and yelping and spitting and found Eustace the Badger squared off against two foxes at the mouth of the supposedly abandoned den. The badger was in the hole, and the foxes were lunging and snapping at him, trying to draw him out, with no success. He had the superior position, and the foxes found themselves faced with all the badger’s sharp bits and no recourse.
“Hey, now,” Armand hooted as he and Abigail swooped down onto an overhanging branch. “Martin, what’s the problem here?”
The male fox glowered up at the owls with one tawny eye. “He says you told him he could take it. You had no right.” A long tooth flashed in the moonlight. For as long as Armand had known, foxes and owls were the kings of two kingdoms layered on top of one another like peat and rock. They did their best not to trespass out of their layer into the other’s, even when in hard seasons the voles and shrews they hunted in common ran thin.
“Now, Martin,” Armand soothed. “My good fox. For all I knew you had abandoned this place; certainly it laid fallow and full of cobwebs for two years at the least. What brings you back to this side of the wood?”
“The men tramped all over our den cutting down the trees,” spat Melinda, Martin’s mate; her eyes hadn’t left the badger. “I’ve got two kits not even a year old huddled in the bracken freezing half to death. This is our den; we dug it, and we need it.”
“Now, Melinda, it’s an ample den you dug here, a beautiful one. Badgers and foxes have denned together in times past, haven’t they? When days were hard? And this ‘train’ with its tearing up the ground and tearing down the trees is making a hard day for all of us. Eustace, lad,” Abigail turned to the hissing badger then. “This den’s too big for just one bachelor. Surely there’s a nook in there you could dig your own door to in a heartbeat with those gorgeous sharp claws of yours. And all of you could get out of the cold, just for today? It’ll be warmer with five of you. We’ll get it all sorted out tomorrow night when we’ve learned more about what the men are up to. Please, friends….”
The badger’s beady eyes, hard and sparkling as jets, softened at Abigail’s tranquil, rhythmic tone. After a minute, he shivered his shoulders in a badgery shrug. “Foxes don’t fuss me none, so long as they keep their teeth to themselves.” And he turned and shuffled down into the den. In a minute or so, they all saw dirt and snow fluffing up from a spot back in the hillside a ways, then Eustace’s head poked out of the hole. “But wake me before sundown and just see what happens to ya.” And then his head popped back into the den.
Melinda growled, but Martin brushed past her. “I’ll get the kits. You go in and bed down, my love. It’s nearly sunrise, and if yesterday is any teacher, the men will be back with their sledges before long.” He shot an eye sideways at Abigail at he went. “You say you’ve got a line on what’s happening? On this, what did you call it, ‘train’?”
“The sheep are listening for us,” Armand promised. “They’ll have something tomorrow night for sure.” Martin tsked a foxy laugh and trotted off into the dark.
“We’ll give you three days, Armand,” Melinda said as she ducked into the den. As her luxurious tail whisked out of sight, the owls heard her voice echo back to them like a ghost’s. “And then we’re handling this the foxes’ way.”
The Rookery 