If you believe that a story must begin at the beginning, you are probably new to stories. Foxes, who are older than stories, know that beginnings are a trap in the woods, glimmering beautifully until they spring shut, catching only what was meant to escape. If the Fox had to mark the heart of her story, it would not be the weaving of the bag, or the first thing she put inside, or even the first impossible thing that came back out. It probably would be the moment she opened the bag and, instead of a feather or a nut, found a memory.
But since you are probably human, and you are likely at your own beginning, we will start with the weaving.
Part 1
Once upon a time (which is also how a clever hand folds the corner of a moment into a memory) a Fox weaved herself a bag for her treasures. A simple bag, just big enough to carry the impractical loot one collects while out exploring.
This is a story about that fox. It is, of course, also a story about the bag, and a little about the stones and berries and acorns the bag accumulates, and a lot about the sorts of things that end up in bags even when you didn’t mean to put them there, like lint and memories and entire rivers.
The girl who wrote this story is not in the story, well not exactly. But you can tell she was involved, because there are drawings in the margins, and at the bottom of several pages is a cryptic code that, when held up to a mirror and squinted at, reads: “PROPERTY OF RAEV, HANDS OFF.”
The Fox lived in a time when magick was something that happened to other people in other places. She was practical, as foxes must be, and tired of losing her treasures to the fundamental inadequacy of paws.
So she sat by the stream and began to weave. It is hard to say exactly how she managed it. There was no fabric in the woods, nor any thread, nor any of the normal tools with which bags are normally constructed. But foxes are experts at improvisation, and it is possible that she started with the wind itself, tangled it up with moss and spiderwebs and stitched it all together with the hollow bones of a magpie. The drawstring she braided from her own whiskers.
The bag took her three days to complete. It was brown and rough. Slightly lopsided the way handmade things always are.
For a week, the bag performed exactly as intended. The Fox went about her business hunting, exploring, collecting. The bag held her treasures without complaint. It was a good bag. A sensible bag. A bag that understood its place in the order of things.
The Fox was satisfied. Every evening she emptied her finds onto the den floor, arranged them by color and scent, and put them into the bag. There was a pleasure in this invented ritual.
The Fox grew attached to the bag, or maybe the bag grew attached to the Fox. She brought it everywhere. She told it stories as she ran through the woods, and sometimes the bag seemed to hum along, rustling its drawstring, enjoying the story. She had no children and no mate, so the bag became a kind of companion, a secret twin.
The Fox noticed that when she left the Bag behind, even for an hour, she missed it. She felt untethered, as if a piece of herself were hanging from a hook on the wall, waiting for her to come back. And so the Fox and the bag became inseparable.
Children do this with prized possessions, and as you know, all foxes are children at heart, even until their end.
Part 2
One early morning, the Fox awoke to realize that in the night, she had somehow misplaced her entire collection of coins. Panicked, she checked the bag and found everything safely stored within. Except now there seemed to be more room than before, as if the bag had quietly organized itself in the night.
Curious, she found a branch twice as long as the bag was deep. She lowered it inside, expecting it to stick out awkwardly. Instead, it disappeared completely. The bag simply made room.
Puzzled, she tried a boulder larger than her own body. It went in easily. It didn’t make the bag heavier. It didn’t change the bag’s shape.
Within days, she was archiving the world itself. A fallen log. A small pine tree, roots and all. An entire meadow’s worth of wildflowers, their stems, petals, roots, and the rich earth they grew from. The sound of the magpie in the trees. The glint of the sun on the lake.
If you are thinking this is not a normal fox, or a normal bag, you are correct. (And if it turns out that this is just how bags work in your world, well then you may as well put this story down.) But likely, you are not thinking strangely enough.
The Fox tried an experiment. She thought of her favorite nap-spot, a patch of moss behind a stump. She reached into the bag, and there it was: the smell of moss and dry pine, warm from the sun, pressed into her nose and paws.
That night, the fox did not sleep at all, but watched the bag from the far side of the room. The bag did not sleep either.
Part 3
Day after day, year after year, the Fox continued to fill the bag, its depths seemingly infinite.
She tried a section of the stream itself, the water, the rocky bed beneath, the muddy banks, and even the little fish that darted between stones like silver thoughts. All of it flowed into the bag as if it were the most natural thing in the world, which perhaps it was.
She took a hollow in the stone hillside, forged by hammer, and put it in the bag.
She imagined her home and put it in the bag. Not just the den under the twisted oak, but the feeling of returning to it. The scent of safety. The particular way light falls through leaves at different times of day.
She took the warmth of fire and put it in the bag.
She took her curiosity and put it in the bag.
She took her anger and her fury and put them in the bag.
She took her hunger and put it in the bag.
She took her hopes and her longing and her wonders. And she put them in the bag.
Part 4
The Fox grew old the way wild things do, suddenly and all at once. Her muzzle faded to silver. Her steps became careful. Her eyes developed a particular depth.
New memories appeared in her mind, memories of places she had never been. Creatures she had never met. She remembered the taste of foods she had never eaten. The warmth of dens she had never slept in. The terror of a dark shape in the mists.
One night, she dreamt of a girl with freckles and multicolored eyes.
The girl finds her bag, and without asking, takes it for her own.
But the Fox does not give chase.
Her eyes closed, the Fox puts her dream in the bag.
Raev finished writing and set down her pen. The bag sat beside her desk, brown and rough and patient, exactly as the Fox had described it. She reached inside.
“Once upon a time,” she wrote, “there was a simple man who married a magpie…”