The Fox and the Train

By Alice Gent

“Sometimes the most important battles are the ones that look like they cannot be won, but we fight anyway. Fight now, little one, or your fear will bring death.”

Isolated in a village surrounded by deep snow, thirteen year old Anna loses herself in the fairytales of the forbidding forest behind her house. Benny, an autistic inventor, becomes her only friend as she watches her family leave one by one.

When disaster strikes in the coal mine, men from the village are trapped underground, including Anna’s brother. The only train to the mine is destroyed and the adults of the village quickly lose hope for their loved ones.

But Anna and Benny refuse to give up and become the miners’ only chance of salvation, travelling through the dark forest alone. Between those frozen trees, things aren’t as they seem and soon Anna finds herself in a beautiful but dangerous fairytale of her own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mirador Publishing
• Release date: Oct 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781912601455

Alice Gent

Alice Gent is the maiden name, and pen name, for Alice Ievins. Alice lives in Bristol where she works as a small animal vet and is dog obsessed. In the year after she graduated from Bristol University, she wrote Sarah’s Footsteps to help her process the amazing experiences she had with the Christian Union over the first three years of University and also work through some of the doubts that were appearing in her own faith. She now lives with her husband, Sam, and Labrador, Summer, and is involved with the student work at Emmanuel City Centre, where she is blessed to have seen many students come to faith.

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The Fox and the Train

By

Alice Gent

First Published by Mirador Publishing at Smashwords

Copyright 2018 by Alice Gent

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All right reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission of the publishers or author. Excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

First edition: 2018

Any reference to real names and places are purely fictional and are constructs of the author. Any offence the references produce is unintentional and in no way reflect the reality of any locations involved.

A copy of this work is available through the British Library.

IBSN : 978-1-912601-45-5

Also by the author

Sarah’s Footsteps

A coming of age story for Christians

If you are a dreamer, come in,

If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,

A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer…

If you’re a pretender, come sit by my fire

For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.

Come in!

Come in!

— Invitation, by Shel Silverstein

The First Chapter

Stories are so delicate, so simple. They are composed of nothing but twenty-six letters, small dots and dashes strung together like a shining spider web, woven into patterns. Or, if they are spoken, they are just syllables of air, each one only lasting a moment before it is lost into nothingness. Yet stories take you places you cannot reach by yourself, places that change you. They can shape the very way you think and thus they are powerful.

Surely every story been told by now? For stories are as old as humanity itself. Ancient tales ground every culture. I bet the very first person came to life with a story on their lips. Surely, it’s the truths embedded in them that makes them pass down the generations. They are the most important of treasure boxes. And then, maybe, fairy tales are the most precious treasure boxes of all. They teach truth and lies and hope and expectations. They give a love for wonder and an urge to seek beyond ourselves. They cross continents and times and fashions. Maybe because they’re not set in any time or place, they become ageless, transferrable. Personal. Just once upon a time, in a kingdom far away…

…a young girl has lost her mother and father.

The girl is dressed in a bright blue coat with the hood drawn up against the cold. A yellow scarf of thick wool sits around her neck. She’s on a track lined with two rows of tall trees, splendid sentinels to summer dying its fiery death. Her laced boots crack twigs scattered across the muddy path as she skips forward on gangly legs. Her nose tingles at the smells of fresh dampness and leaf mould. Birds harmonise their songs together above her, and bright yellow leaves spin lazily down from their perilous perches. The sun shines brightly above, but she buries her face into her scarf against the chilly air, and a gust of wind makes the branches rustle and waves of gold and red swirl pass her. A flash of auburn across the path ahead signals a fox. This place reminds her of her grandfather and the walks they had together as a little child. He might be gone but the trees live on.

She reaches the end of the trees and climbs over the stile. It’s soft with rot and slippery with mould. She is carrying an apple pie in a tea towel and struggles to balance with just one hand. As she crests the top, the wind flips back her hood, revealing bright red hair and a pale, freckled face. The wind stings her warm ears and sweeps her hair across her eyes. She turns onto the overgrown path between a hedge where a few red berries cling and a field of wheat stubble is left from the harvest. Tucking her hair back behind her ears, she secures it again under her hood.

She skids across the old wooden bridge and into the village. She hurries faster and faster down the wide street, between haphazard houses, and into the village square. The damp cobbles are covered in rose petals from Sarah and John’s wedding yesterday. A few men hammer boards down for the market tomorrow, and the sounds of mallets echo loudly from the pale stone walls. On the other side of the square are two crowds of older teenagers talking in tight bunches. The boys laze against the walls with their hair falling in their eyes. The girls in contrast stand tall and elegant in their colourful dresses and jackets, trying to outdo each other in appearance. They barely spare a glance for our girl as she hurries past. One of the boys whispers something loudly and the group laughs. Our girl barely notices; she doesn’t care whether the comment was about her or not.

She’s now climbing over a small black iron fence and jumps down into the railway station, holding one hand over her skirts, while the other tries to not drop the pie. There are a few people waiting around the benches and eyeing their pocket watches. They all try to ignore the fact she has come over the fence, and a girl at that. People have grown very good at ignoring Anna. She hurries to the edge of the tracks and smiles, happy to be here before the train.

Anna, says a male voice from beside her.

She turns and lowers her head slightly, so it’s hard to see her eyes beneath her hood. Mr Harth, she acknowledges, wishing he would ignore her too.

He has a small brown beard that is starting to grey and large eyebrows peeking out from beneath his hat. How’s your mother doing? He rocks back and forth on his heels, his hands shoved into his pockets. His frame dominates her tiny stature.

Better, thank you. Grandma has been helping to look after her, she murmurs. Her face becomes shadowed with guilt. She tells herself she has to speak to her today, however difficult it is.

Ah, I’m pleased to hear it. I was worried about you caring for her alone at your age. I heard you turned thirteen last month. You here for Michael? He puts his large hand on her shoulder.

Anna doesn’t flinch but lets her blue hood obscure her face completely and nods.

Any news about Anderson?

She shakes her head.

He sighs and rubs his chin. Ah, pity that. Well, at least he’s not in the casualty list. I always check for him, you know. He’ll be giving back more than he’s taking, I bet, a big strong lad like your brother. They’ll all be home soon, you’ll see.

The air splits with a whistle and smoke appears over the grey tops of the houses. Anna uses this interruption to escape the uninvited conversation and leans over the edge of the tracks.

The train appears in gleaming green. They always seem so big to her. So relentless. A monster of energy and movement. Michael is leaning perilously out of the window and waving his flat cap. Annie! he yells. ANNIE!

As the train starts to slow down, filling the station with thick smoke, he flings his cap to her and she runs to grab it before it hits the ground, laughing. He’s off the train first, as always, and sweeps her up, flinging her around. She squeals with joy.

Finally, he puts her down with a kiss on the top of her hair. Anna’s head only reaches his chest and she always feels so safe with him towering over her. She tries to aim the soot-stained cap at his head and tosses it upwards, but it misses completely.

Ah, Annie I’ve missed you, he laughs as he swipes it up from the floor. Then he flips down her hood and covers her hair with his cap at a jaunty angle, grinning.

You’ve lost weight, says Anna, pulling at his loose shirt beneath the patched jacket.

He gently pushes her towards the gate, into the black and brown stream of people leaving the station. Maybe I’ve been saving myself for your cooking! Come, lead the way home.

Michael has red hair like his sister, cut short due to its untameable nature. He has a strong face with pleasing angles and a stature used to hard labour. You can tell from his grin and quick words that he’s naturally humorous, silly, but that life is at war with him to quell it, stamp out his light-heartedness. Life is hard. You can see it in the crease in his eyes, the sag to his mouth, the way his step lightens to a bounce as his true self can finally come out to play. His personality has been hemmed in too long.

At the edge of town Anna pauses at her close friend Benny’s farmhouse to drop off the apple pie, his favourite. She knows the pie is now somewhat squished, but doubts he’ll even notice. The front garden is large and rimmed by a low stone wall. A large horse chestnut dominates one corner. Anna loves that tree. Years ago, she and Benny built a treehouse up there and had stored all their treasures. Bits of painted pottery, owl feathers, and a spoon Benny had estimated being over a hundred years old. Now their main climbing branch is long removed, and the floorboards of their castle lean at crazy angles. The treasures are still up there in the hollow of the tree, gradually deemed worthless. Anna imagines the bark slowly growing around them, enclosing them and so immortalising hers and Benny’s childhood friendship. But those memories make her sad now. Back then life was so easy and happy and full of adventure, but now it is hard. She has no treasures anymore, except Michael.

She knocks on the farmhouse door and gives the pie straight to Benny’s mother, Jane, and then hurries away before the firm lady can invite them in. Anna wants to spend the maximum amount of time with Michael, and if she lingers Benny would go off on a monologue about his latest invention. Or worse, about Arabella. He couldn’t have chosen a girl less likely to fall for him, and all he ever seems to remark about her is her hair and smile. It’s as if he didn’t realise those things came with a personality and that Arabella’s was awful. Not to mention that she was two years older than him. So Anna waves to Jane, the woman’s greeting words still dangling from her mouth, as she drags a chuckling Michael away from the door, and hopes she doesn’t appear too rude.

They take the well-trodden road back home, rather than the meandering paths of the brooks and fields she has just used. Their journey interweaves them through other walkers and people driving carts or riding weary shire horses, but Anna only has eyes for her brother and pays them no heed. He is laughing and joking and telling her silly little stories that may or may not be true, but she doesn’t care. He doesn’t talk about the coal mines or the suffocating dark or the bad food or the terrible accidents. Those things don’t exist here in the autumn sun that nears the horizon to bathe the world in golden glory. Those things don’t have to exist at all now he’s here, a million lives away.

As Michael and Anna reach the turn to