In the last blush of autumn, the King of the Forest requested an audience with the King.

The King was so delighted that he agreed at once. The audience was held in the King’s hall, the burnished tile laid in gold and green, the fire stoked high with ash logs and cinnamon sticks. The amber light of sunset left pools at the King’s slippered feet, and the court stood on their toes in anticipation.

The Fox was not so fine as the King of the hall, though his paws were clean and his coat glossy. As a gift, he’d brought a clutch of rabbits, which the King sent to the kitchens to be prepared with cabbage, peppercorn, and the last of the orchard’s fresh apples.

“For what purpose do you beg an audience with the king?” the King boomed. It was clear he was pleased to have so strange a visitor. “Are you a witch, come to make mischief? Or do you lament some previous mischief, having been cursed by a witch yourself?”

The Fox sat neatly in a pool of light, and cast a strange shadow upon the floor that was not like the King’s shadow or the shadow of the court that stood against the walls, but seemed a dark and mottled jade, as if from the depths of the forest. “It is not for me to judge, if I come to make mischief,” the Fox said.

“Then you are an envoy, sent to fetch my knights on a quest to find an island lost in the mists, or a fountain beset by monsters.”

The Fox flicked his tail. “I do not come for your knights.”

“Then who do you come for?” The King leaned his elbow on his knee. He was well known for his love of strange and puzzling things, and delighted most of all in riddles he couldn’t pull apart.

“I come for one with a secret that none yet have guessed, nor even thought to exist.”

The King looked at his court, amused. “Who keeps secrets from me?” He laughed and turned his eyes to his barons, his knights, his ladies of the court.

“Your majesty,” the Fox said, “far and wide, you have sent your messengers, your knights, and your birds. So far and wide that even deep in the forest, where we have little care for your doings, we have heard that the King must be married on this very day, a year and a day from his father’s death.”

The King put a hand to his chin, amused.

“It was said,” the Fox continued, “that any may endeavor to win his hand.”

The King threw back his head, and laughed.

When at last he stopped, wiping the tears from his eyes, the Fox continued, quietly, embarrassed, “I come for the man who will take me to husband, or to wife, whichever he so chooses.”

The King shook his head, flashing a quick grin to his court, who chuckled behind their hands. He looked again to his barons, his knights, his ladies of the court, as if to ask if they had arranged this audience, to mock him for his reticence. “You amuse me, beast, so I will play your game. In the north, I am offered the metal of the earth that shines like the sun; in the south, butter and milk from fat cows that feed on sweet grass; in the west, vellum pages laid with gold and aquamarine; in the east, deep woods flush with game. What do you offer?”

“It is said,” the Fox replied, “the King has not yet learned to bear the weight of his crown, that it has made him quiet. I think it is not your crown that troubles you, but the death of your father. Once your father held your secret inside the chambers of his heart so you need not carry it alone.”

The joviality drained from the King’s face and his hand tightened on the arm of his throne. The court’s laughter, too, vanished. The King came to his feet, still gripping the arm of his throne. “Do you come to insult me, beast? To threaten? I should send my dogs on you, to be cast in the pot with the hares and the cabbage.”

“If you agree to tell me your secret, I will keep it safe in my heart where none may find it but that I speak it with my own lips. This, I hope, will make you happy.” The Fox looked at the King with bright eyes, and they were the warm amber of sunset. “If you do not,” the Fox turned his eyes to the barons who gathered like crows to a funeral, the knights who eyed the fox like a pack of hunting dogs, the ladies who, like cranes, were not as disinterested as they seemed. “If you do not,” the Fox said again, “you will marry another, who may find your secrets easy to barter and sell.”

The King cast his glance along his court, caught in the last red embers of sunlight. None met his eyes, and an old fear rose in his chest.

The King turned his gaze to the Fox, who was very small among the court, before the King most of all. He had not shown his teeth or his claws, and yet the King had not been so afraid in a long, long time. The silence too was long, and it seemed that even the sun paused in its descent to see what the King would say.

At last, the King spoke, “Very well.”

—

The King and the Fox were married that very day under a bower of apple boughs braided with copper leaves. The King wore blue like a storming sky and sheets of rain beneath bruised clouds, as if to make himself distinct from the Fox and the autumn leaves that shivered around them, umber and crimson and flax. The King kept his eyes on the twisted trunks of the apple trees and the last shriveled apples clinging to the branches that smelled of a dim, sweet rot. The Fox flicked his tail against the King’s boot. The court whispered behind their hands and looked over their fingers at their King, as if he had grown unfamiliar. He did not look at them, nor even the lady he had once promised to marry, who had chased him down the hall and clasped his arm. “What of your barons, your knights, your ladies?” she’d whispered. “They say it is a trick so you need not marry a real queen.” She looked down, and then, barely, “A fox…”

When the wedding was done, the King stood a long time looking at the brown leaves fluttering against the withered apple trees. The sky overhead grew dark and darker still with gathering rain, and he squinted as the cold blustered in the air. He didn’t watch his court disperse for fear of what he might see in their eyes.

He thought the Fox might slink away too, but the creature waited, silent.

His court thought that he had brought the Fox here, that he had lured this beast to his hall so that he might hoard the kingdom for himself and cast aside the friendships and properties of the women who’d come before him. That he harbored a terrible secret, terrible enough to marry a fox.

At last, drops of rain hitting his cheeks, the King said, “Now they will speak of nothing else.”

The Fox stared ahead into the shadows in the apple trees.

“Will you barter with my barons, present favors to my knights, preside over my ladies?” The King pressed his hands to his face.

“You might have refused me,” the Fox said quietly.

The King made a noise in the back of his throat.

“If you worry they will search after your secret, you must give it to me. That is why you married me.”

The trees grew grey in the disappearing light, and the King imagined how the Fox must have stalked over oak roots and streambeds and clover fields to his gate. “What interest does a fox, even a lord among beasts, have in marrying a king?”

When he looked at the Fox, he did not understand the animal expression, and for a moment, a wild fear bubbled up in his chest. Was the fox the trickster? Some spirit who had cheated him into this arrangement, and would now betray him?

Shaking, he turned and strode back toward the manor.

—

Inside, the Fox on his heels, his barons were quick to settle around him. They gathered in the King’s hall like a flock of crows, their cloaks black wings and their expressions cold. The sun was gone, and the torchlight was a hard copper that cut strangely over the barons, their noses sharp as beaks and their hands lost in the shadows. Stranger still, it cut over the Fox so it seemed he guttered among the dust motes. The King felt like a crow himself, huddled and unblinking, a harsh, garbled shriek building in his throat.

“We seek an audience,” the barons said, “with our king and his new queen, the King of the Forest.” They watched the Fox as if he were already dead and only the King’s presence prevented them from picking out his eyes and gouging open his belly. “What can a fox offer us?  Will you trick our enemies? Is your tongue clever, whispering sweetly to the trees, that you may gain its secrets?”

“Are your forests as flush as the east’s?” the King added, for he felt he must speak with his barons, and he found a sharp, mean desire to pick at the beast’s belly too.

The Fox bristled, his small body wiry, his head darting between the King and the barons as if he might snap at either. “Is a fox only tricks and secrets?”

Guilt pulled the King’s head to the side, away from the crimson body at his feet. But what was he to know of this strange beast?

“A good queen,” the barons said, “is generous. She gives with both hands, her left and her right. Her people love her for her gifts, and she does not hoard her rings and cups like a dragon, greedy of its hoard.”

“Oh dear,” the Fox said in mock concern. “Surely there is some misunderstanding.” He worked his paws into the weave of the rug. “It must be that your hunters, your cooks, your servants have never told you where they acquire their bounty, their apples and chestnuts, their blackberries and mushrooms, hare, deer, boar. You must think they pull it out of their skirts and shoes! You must not realize I have always been generous with my forest.” The Fox’s mockery turned hard. “Perhaps we might pull a pelt from your walls and bind it around your belly, stitch it to your wrists, your ankles, your throat, and cast you into the trees.”

“You are but the fox that we send our men after when it steals our hens,” the barons said.

One baron stepped forward, and said to the Fox, his eyes on the King, “Your tongue is clever, whispering sweetly. Is that so you may gain secrets to sell to our King’s enemies?”

The King’s fear, weighed down by guilt, rushed in again. “Enough,” he said, his jaw tight, and the barons scattered like birds.

—

Back in his chambers, the King threw away his finery in disgust and frustration. The Fox leapt to the bed and curled tightly around himself on a pillow, his tail against his nose. The King stood before a window and watched the dark sky, the streaks of rain. “What interest does a fox have in marrying a king?” he asked again.

“The soft bed, obviously,” the Fox replied, and the King could not help but raise an amused eyebrow at the beast, sunk into his pillow so that he could not see the creature’s nose or feet. “Perhaps,” the Fox continued quietly, “I have hidden in the underbrush while a hunting party stopped to refresh their mounts and sit on the grass to eat. Perhaps I have seen a man put his hand on his knight’s shoulders and laugh, take gifts from his ladies’ hands and call them wonderful even when they are poorly made, cheer his sullen barons with silly stories about unicorns and dragons. Perhaps I have seen him hold his hunting dogs in his lap and wondered what it would be like to be held in such a warm embrace.”

Warmed himself and, perhaps a little embarrassed, to be noticed caring so much, his cheeks flushed, the King looked away. He cleared his throat, and, half amused, “I had less trouble before you.”

“You have not yet told me your secret,” the Fox said.

The King looked at the Fox, who gazed back with gold eyes. “Does the King of the Forest truly wish to be a part of my court?”

“I would like to try.”

The King moved, awkwardly, to the bed, and sat beside the Fox, though he did not look at the umber beast. The Fox had spoken openly so quickly. He should not distrust him. “When I was a child, my brother became very ill. They locked me away so I wouldn’t grow ill too. But I couldn’t bear it, and fled from my rooms to my brother. I wasn’t with him long. He passed on, with my hands on his, and my father was furious at my recklessness. But I spoke before he could be angry with me.

“‘Father,’ I said. ‘I will take my brother’s place, and you will have a son again.’

“I don’t remember what he said, but, in time, he agreed. And so it was said that while I was with my brother, I too became ill, and while my brother recovered slowly, I swiftly grew worse and beyond aid. It was a small burial for the king’s daughter. His son was still too ill to attend. But the boy did recover, with time.”

The Fox’s eyes glinted. “Then you are a liar.”

The King twisted toward the Fox, anger and hurt burning up his throat. But as he opened his mouth to curse the beast, he saw a lazy glint in the Fox’s eye and realized that the Fox did not believe it, only spoke the King’s fears. He turned his head away.

The Fox blinked. “Very well. I will keep your secret.”

The King cast the Fox a suspicious glance, but then his shoulders sagged as the rain grew heavy, beating hard against the walls. “And what are your secrets, beast?”

“I have no secrets.” The Fox yawned, and fell asleep on the King’s pillow.

—

The King was not quick to sleep and still stood at the window when a faint rap came at his door. His page-boy’s protests rose to meet him as he opened the door.

“Do not concern yourself, boy,” the King said, his eyes on the Lady as the child turned, his face wrinkled in frustration. “Go retrieve yourself something from the kitchens. Tell the cooks you must give them their best. The King insists.”

Delight flashed over the boy’s face and he scampered off. The King nodded to the Lady, her arms crossed tightly over her chest and shoulders hunched.

“What could I possibly do for you on my wedding night?” he snapped, then regretted his short temper immediately and how the Lady’s anger rose to meet his own. Hadn’t they both once hoped it would be theirs?

“Was there a curse?” she said. “A witch? Some reason you were forced to accept?” She leaned forward and the way her chin cut across the dark still caused a hitch in his chest.

He looked back at the Fox, a haze of red on his pillow. The Fox’s ear twitched. What was this strange beast? Doubt ate again at his stomach again. He stepped into the hall, closing the door softly behind him.

Her brow pinched in frustration and confusion. “A fox—” Her voice pitched as he held up a hand.

“When my father died, I told you we could not marry.”

He had thought, once, it would not be so. He did love her. She was biting and serious in ways he was not. When his barons impressed the importance of a marriage, insisted he keep his promise to his father, he’d laughed. He’d ignored their pinched mouths, which were quickly followed by a reticence to report their monthly accounts, delays when his men sought passage through their lands, meager fare at his visits to their homes. She had seen the danger, their seriousness, like a distant tumbling of stones, when he would brush it aside. In only a few weeks, she’d charmed all his barons, set their minds at ease, and plucked at her long friendship with their wives.

She’d done it, unasked, yet he feared she resented it, that she believed a king shouldn’t need her aid. Should he not be ruthless or cunning enough? Should he not bluster and roar, and bring them to heel? Wasn’t that what his brother would have done? But then who was to say what his brother would have done? Yet she was so certain what it was to be a queen and a king. It made him wonder what else she was certain about, what other molds she would balk to bend or break.

The Lady’s arms tightened across her body and she looked at her feet. “Somehow, despite everyone’s displeasure, despite my own warnings, I thought the day would pass and you would be unmoved. Somehow, you would please everyone anyway, as you always do. The promise of marriage would pass from everyone’s mouths and thoughts, and if we might not be married…” she trailed off, and he could see the tension in her throat, how the tendons stood out like strings. She dropped her chin again.

There was no reason to respond, to stand alone with her in the dim light of the hall, his heart pounding and the torchlight bright in the water that rose in her eyes. But when he moved, it was not to reach for the door. He took her shoulder in his hand and only barely restrained the desire to draw her into his arms.

“Your court would have loved me,” she whispered.

His hand tightened on her shoulder and he imagined how the ladies would have smiled, how their eyes would have grown bright as stars when she gave them the rings from her fingers. How she would have teased the knights, more cutting than they even with each other, and they would have loved her even when she asked who had given a hound a helmet, who had armored this sparrow. Never would the barons have dared to smudge their accounts before her watchful eye.

“You could aid the Fox in winning their affections,” he said.

She stepped back, pulling against his grip, and disbelief clouded her face.

“I am married, either way.”

She set her hand on his and, gently, pushed him away. “If I must.” She searched his face another moment, and he didn’t know what she hoped to find or what she saw. She started to go, but paused. “If you had some secret you wished to share,” she said, “couldn’t you have told me?”

He opened the door again, a sad smile on his lips.

—

The knights gathered in the green, wet with rain like a pack of dogs, their swords at their hips and their feet unstill. With the knights came the Lady, dressed in dusky burgundy with red jewels on her fingers and dripping from her neck. The Fox sat beside the King, the King’s hand nearly but not quite laid on his back. The knights watched the Fox as if he were newly flushed from the brush and they awaited only the command to catch him in their teeth. The King felt like a hound himself, though whether the bark building in his chest was a snarl or cheerful yip he could not tell.

“What can a fox offer us?” the knights asked. “Will you lie to our enemies and opponents on the field? Will you steal their secrets to whisper in our ears?”

This time, the King didn’t add his voice to theirs, but kept his counsel.

The Fox showed his teeth.

“A good queen,” the Lady said, her eyes on the Fox, “gives much to her knights. Jeweled rings and plated cups, silver pins and copper brooches. Kerchiefs pressed to the Queen’s heart and embroidered with hounds and hunting dogs, wildflower fields and deep forests, white harts and unicorns.”

“What favor would you ask of me?” The Fox asked. “My tail? My coat?”

The knights’ eyes flickered to their king, furtive and prying.

“A queen must give of herself,” the Lady reminded.

“A fox tail would be a great favor from a Queen,” the knights said, “if she drew it off her neck to place in our hands.”

“And an even greater favor from me,” the Fox snapped. “Would you have me strip away my skin? Am I only honest if you can see my bones? Perhaps we should put a wolf skin on your back and pin it to your spine with a javelin.”

The King wondered, had his knights ever had to change their bodies? Were they worried what their bodies showed, and sought to hide it? Beneath their bones, did they fear they were liars for cutting away one skin to wear another? He looked at the Fox and felt a desire to lift the beast in his arms and hold him against his chest.

The knights barked with laughter. “Then what can you give us? You are but the fox that we hunt with our hounds.”

The King spread his arms, chuckling. “Come now, perhaps he has only seen you too clearly. The Queen may not often head the hunt, but the ladies do ride along behind, and who but a fox knows the dens and warrens best?”

The knights considered.

“I think you are jealous of the Queen’s glossy coat, that yours will never be so fine,” the King laughed. “Now. Let it not be said my knights are ungenerous. You ask what the Queen may give you, but what will you give the Queen?”

The knights answered, “To the Queen we give our swords, which reach far and strike fast.”

The Fox shrugged. “Your King needs this, but the birds see further than you, and I use my own claws to catch rabbits.”

The knights chuckled amiably and elbowed their companions’ sides, and it seemed for a moment that all were pleased and content.

But the Lady spoke, doubt in her eyes and a snap in her voice, “Surely, the Queen will learn to wear ribbons on her body, no doubt.”

“Yes, and learn to walk on two legs,” the King muttered. The Lady frowned at him, and, frustrated, he flicked his hand in dismissal. The knights fled from his gaze, their tails between their legs.

—

The King was slow to rise the next morning and, as the sun cast out strings of gold against the sky, he yet sat on the edge of his bed with his hands hung between his knees. The Fox had slipped away before dawn for an early breakfast and only as he stole past the dozing boy and into the King’s chambers did the King raise his head. He looked away again, but, hesitant, ran a hand across the Fox’s back when the Fox settled beside him.

“What troubles you?” the Fox asked, leaning gently against the King’s leg as the King scratched the scruff of the Fox’s neck.

“I’ve already shared my secret. What of yours?” The King’s head drooped, and he pulled his hair, thick and black like clouds piled atop each other at night.

“I have no secrets.”

The King scoffed. “A strange beast like yourself, I don’t believe it.”

The Fox flicked his tail lightly against the King’s thigh, but gave no answer.

The King leaned forward over his legs again. “After my brother died, I imagined them learning who had taken his place. I imagined how they would look at me, what they would say. It never came to pass, yet still I dreaded it. What will they say now?”

“‘How strange, our King is entertaining a Fox,'” the Fox said. “And then you will laugh, and say many clever things about my bushy tail and my sharp teeth and my terrible morning breath. To say nothing of my table manners.”

The King chuckled.

“Soon,” the Fox said, “they will grow bored of it.”

“Will they?”

The Fox crawled, tentatively, into his lap, and when the King didn’t push him away, settled with his chin across the King’s leg. “I think so.”

The King let his hand fall onto the Fox’s back. “Very well. We will have it your way. Today, we must speak to my ladies.”

—

The Lady took them then to the ladies of the court, who gathered in their sewing chamber, fingertips busy and red with working needles and wool. They did not watch the Fox or the King, so busy were they at their work, their heads dipping and bobbing like cranes, their skirts spilling like trailing wings. The King felt like a crane himself, attentive and proud, a warbling laughter rising from his belly.

Before the ladies spoke, the King said, “Think wisely on what you will ask from your Queen.”

The ladies considered him and then answered, “Then we will only ask what our Queen might offer us, and let the Queen give his own answer.”

The Fox did not look to the King, or the Lady, but sat among the ladies of the court, watching their careful fingers and quick eyes. “I can teach you to hunt mice,” the Fox said, “to dig dens that will keep you warm in the winter, to tumble with a litter of kits.”

The ladies shook their head.

“Then, I can teach you to groom your coats, to be wary and quick, to be stealthy and watchful.”

The ladies’ eyes glinted. “That, we already know.”

“Such is needed in a Queen,” the Lady said, her chin raised and eyes on the air as if to suggest no queen had yet been found, “to complement our King’s charm.”

The Fox replied, “And if we were to take the skins from your floors and hang them across your back, to process into the forest like an elven court of centaur, satyr, and nymphs?”

The ladies laughed. “Such skins are familiar to us. What women in the woods is not a hag, a witch, a spirit? Who has not accused us of keeping such skins secret beneath our clothes? No, our coats are fine, and they are our own. We don’t need yours.”

“It seems, then, that with your two coats,” the Fox said, “you have all you need. Perhaps you have even enough to dress your King.”

The ladies looked to the King, and he smiled in return. It couldn’t be said he had neglected his ladies, but perhaps he had held them at a distance, when he need not do so.

The Fox added, “And, perhaps, too, there is nothing you might give me.”

—

The next day, the Fox was gone, and he did not come when the sun rose, or when it reached its peak, or when it began again to sink.

The King waited in his chamber, and as the sun rose, and then sank again, a ruddy shame rose in his chest. How unkind he had been to a creature who had left his home to come with embarrassment on his cheeks and far more love than the King deserved, who, he realized, had understood him all too well. He had spoken harshly, made light of the Fox’s love – when he had not made it cruel – and for what? Fear? Doubt? Shame?

The King shook his head and went to the stables to saddle his horse.

Outside a light snow fell, the mud of the yard beginning to freeze, the grass curled and brown. The Lady rushed to meet him, her eyes desperate. “Leave it,” she pleaded as he tightened the saddle on his mount.

He didn’t look at her. “I can’t leave my Queen to possible peril.”

“Perhaps the beast ran away. Perhaps he was frightened by the hackles rising all around him. You have seen how they look at him, at you. Perhaps he was right to go.”

He pulled himself onto his horse and looked down at the Lady. He wanted to reach down and touch her chin, to take her hand as he had so many times before, but he couldn’t now imagine what a marriage with her would have been. “A King does not abandon his Queen.”

The Lady’s face tightened into rage and confusion as the King spurred his mount out the gates and into the forest.

—

The King did not ride far into the forest, the chill turning his nose and ears red. He stopped at a frozen stream that ringed an open glen, the ground rimed with frost and the tree branches rattling with the cold. There, he dismounted and called, “I request an audience with the King of the Forest.”

At first there was no answer, only the low wind in the trees and the little water trickling beneath the ice. But out of the chilled hush a woman stepped from the bare bushes, a fur coat over her ears and shoulders.

“For what purpose do you beg an audience with the King of the Forest?” she asked.

The King held out his hands. “I fear he was displeased with the hospitality of my court, and with me.”

 “Well,” she shrugged. “How would you treat a fox, but to a sharp knife and quick boil in a pot of soup?”

“If that is what he thinks of me, then I have been a far more abysmal host than I imagined.”

“What of its secrets? It is a liar, to not have shared them.”

The King chuckled wearily. “Then we are all liars. If he has not shared his secrets, perhaps it was not yet time. Perhaps I was not as trustworthy as he.”

The woman smiled lightly and knelt to reach into the stream. Out of a break in the ice, she pulled a damp fox skin, empty of all its bones and meat and blood.

Grief and fear went through the King’s chest, and he stumbled forward, his hands out to clutch the skin. But before he could reach it, the woman laid the skin across her knees, the water spilling down her legs, and said, “Don’t look so sad. It’s my skin.”

The King felt like he had been struck and he came slowly to the ground. “Then you are the Fox?”

She smiled at him, and her eyes shown bright and gold.

“I think it is not true that you have no secrets,” he managed.

She smiled bigger. “I am a fox,” she said, “and a hare, a deer, a wolf, a woman, and a man. The King of the Forest is many things.”

He reached across the stream and touched the skin on her knees, felt the damp fur, which he ought to have touched more kindly, for the Fox had understood him better than he had known. “Will you return with me?”

“It is true what I said, that in the forest we don’t care for your doings. But you were in such pain, to be alone, and you needed to share your secret just as you need your barons’ eyes and your knights’ swords and your ladies’ wit. I wanted to come to your court and love you. But there’s nothing in your court I need. Or not enough.” The Fox smiled again. “But I still hope I might sit in your lap sometimes with your arms around me.”

The King reached out and tangled his arms in hers, his chin on her shoulder. “I would like that very much.”

—

It was said for years after, for so long as their King lived, that the King would sometimes go into the forest alone and none could say how long he would be gone or what he did there, though there was a knowing glint in the ladies’ eyes when he was away. But he was always buoyed when he returned, and it was always said that the forest held the King’s secrets.

___

Copyright 2025 Sarah McGill