The Fox Tree

By Sammy Powell and Buddy Finethy

What happens when two suburban kids make a strange discovery in the woods behind their house? Will it change their lives forever? Their search for the answer begins as they sit under the branches of the giant “Fox Tree.”

“The Fox Tree” is the first book in The Fox Tree Chronicles series, a continuing s

• Language: English
• Publisher: BDI Publishers
• Release date: Aug 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9780997044577

Book preview

Chapter 1.

Sissy

The trail was overgrown a bit, as the summer had been unusually rainy, but Sissy had been coming this way for years and knew the path well. Last year’s leaves crackled under her feet as she carefully held back the thorns and vines and headed to the Fox Tree in the woods behind her house. She liked being able to disappear so quickly into the forest, even though she could still hear the sound of cars on the neighborhood streets nearby. The Fox Tree was a huge oak tree where a mother fox had raised her family one summer, and it stood alone in a clearing just on the other side of the woods. Sissy and her brother Little John were young at the time, and it was forever after just the Fox Tree to them. They could see the tree in the distance from their bedroom windows as it towered over everything around it like a giant watching over his kingdom. A man had come out to look at the tree and told them it was probably more than two hundred years old. Sissy liked the idea of something that old being there in the woods just behind her house.

The forest was a grand thing to have nearby—there were always rabbits and chipmunks running through the backyard and squirrels sitting on the fence. If you listened, you could hear the sounds of all the animals that made the forest their home. Sissy had seen a lot of them and was sure there were other, more dangerous creatures living in the forest as well, but for some reason, they didn’t scare her. Well … they didn’t scare her in the daytime. In the evening, though, when the sun was going down, the forest was a spooky place. She and Little John would sit on the back porch and listen to the woods come alive as the light faded, and they would imagine the things that roamed around the Fox Tree at night. But for now, Sissy scampered on down the trail, her blonde ponytail bouncing behind her. The sun was shining bright, and she just knew that there were no wild animals wandering around the forest on such a beautiful summer day.

She left the forest behind as the trail widened out a bit and opened up into the clearing beneath the limbs of the huge tree. Sissy and Little John’s dad, Mr. John Polk, would come out each winter and cut down the thorns and thistles. And, he’d made them some seats out of big logs – the sitting logs they called them - and given them an old plastic trunk to hold some of their things. Sissy thought that Little John hogged the trunk with his football and toys – all she had in there was a bag of rocks and fossils that she had collected over the years.

Rocks and fossils fascinated Sissy, especially the fossils. She had always called them fossils, but they were really just pieces of clay pottery, beads, and other mysterious items that she had found in the woods near the Fox Tree. Her favorite thing was the blue arrowhead she’d discovered while helping Little John bury some Halloween candy. His great plan was to bury it so he could dig it up later like squirrels do with nuts. It didn’t work too well as you can imagine.

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There were pieces of pottery to be found if you looked hard. Sissy had stopped saving all but the biggest pieces, and the ones with markings on them. But, try as she might, she could not make any of the pieces fit together again. Her dad said that they probably came from different pots and vases and that it would be impossible to find a match. Still, both Sissy and Little John had spent hours under the Fox Tree trying.

Sissy liked the pottery, but the blue arrowhead was special, and it was by far the most beautiful thing that either she or Little John had ever