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There once was an old tree in the woods, the largest one Mieczysław had ever seen.
It’s not there anymore, not really. There’s just a wide, cleanly cut stump in its place, bigger than a table. Bigger than his parents’ bed even. Mieczysław knows because he tried to stretch across it once--when he was running from everything that was wrong at home--and he couldn’t even reach even though he was seven at the time and being seven meant he was getting big.
Someone had cut it down when Mieczysław was six--going on seven!--and his dad had said it was a mean prank and Mieczysław should never do something like that. His mom hadn’t liked it either, so Mieczysław knew it was bad, but she had gotten sick soon after and nothing was funny anymore not even real jokes and not mean pranks.
He’s nine now and he thinks that this giant stump in the middle of the woods is his favorite place to be. Even better than Scott’s because here no one wants to make him talk or gets upset when he cries because even though he’s nine his mom is dead and his dad tries but sometimes it’s not enough.
So Mieczysław visits the stump a lot. He never stays long--if he did, his dad would send out search parties and worry a lot and he doesn’t want that--but just being there helps.
What helps more is playing with the little fox that has a burrow somewhere near the stump. Mieczysław looked it up once and he figures it’s a common grey fox, even though it has more black in its fur than a normal common grey fox.
It likes to hear Mieczysław talk, yips and barks like it’s answering him even, and the only time it ever stops moving is when he’s telling a story.
His mom had lots of stories. She was good at telling them too--not like Mieczysław who tends to get distracted halfway through and sometimes forgets to finish entirely--but the fox doesn’t seem to care that he’s not as good. And Mieczysław doesn’t want to forget them, so sometimes he’ll spend his hour telling a story to a fox.
(He’s not lonely. He’s got his dad, and Scott. But maybe, he thinks, the fox is. No one else visits his stump. So. He can talk to a fox if he wants.)
“My mom said that when someone who is special dreams of the person they love best, the name they call you in that dream is your real name. Your special name? I guess,” he says to the fox one day who cocks it’s head at him and huffs. “Sounds weird. She only said that though because I dream of her and she always calls me by my actual name. You know, the one moms always say when you’re in trouble.” It’s tongue lolls out and the fox pants. It sounds like laughter. “Well, maybe you don’t. I don’t get it. I can dream it perfect but I still don’t always say it right. When I was really little I couldn’t say it at all. I guess I always said mischief. Mom thought it was so funny. She would always smile when she said it be-before…”
The fox pushes against his hand and Mieczysław pats it’s head. “Yeah, sorry. Why don’t you show me the best tree to climb for a little while before I have to go?”
Stiles is eleven going on twelve when he’s allowed back into the woods by his dad.
(He remembers the night that the Hale House burned to the ground, how the smoke roiled out of the Preserve and clung to his dad for days. How his teachers carefully danced around talking about the couple students who were never coming back just like his mom. He remembers seeing the pretty brunette who would sometimes wait tables at his dad’s favorite diner looking pale and drawn at the police station, swallowed up by the sheriff’s bulky jacket while his dad the deputy whispered to her shell-shocked brother.)
The fox curls near him when Stiles lays across the sun-soaked stump and Stiles can almost believe that it missed him.
They doze in the sun and Stiles thinks he dreams of a man wrapped in bandages who calls him ‘Mischief’ and says his name is ‘Hibiki’ and tells him riddles and jokes until he wakes up and the sun is going down. The fox is nowhere to be found.
Stiles’ dad just sighs when he gets home, and picks the leaf out of his hair before ruffling it tiredly. His dad is always tired now. (The sheriff is old, and Beacon Hills doesn’t have enough deputies; that’s what his dad always says when Stiles asks why he’s gone more than he’s home. He says he’s trying to keep Stiles, and Scott, and everyone else safe but that’s hard work. Stiles understands. Well, he tries. His dad is a superhero, basically, and no one ever said that was easy.)
“Klaudia loved that old tree too. Always said that tree was the reason her family came to this town.” Stiles knows, but his dad talks about his mom so rarely that he kind of wants to hoard the nugget of information like it’s some kind of treasure. “Damn vandals. Love you son, I’m on night shift tonight. Call if you need me.”
Stiles won’t, and they both know it. But pretending he will makes both of them feel better so he just smiles and says, “you know it, daddi-o, I packed you a salad. Have a good night.”
Their mischief is sixteen the night that the nogitsune meets Scott.
Scott isn’t with their mischief, even though the nogitsune can smell him all around the boy and heard him a little earlier planning to live up to his earliest public name, the one that the nogitsune suspects is closer to a true name than anyone thinks.
The boy stinks of terror and prey and dead werewolf, but not a live one so the nogitsune lets him take shelter in the sacred space of the Nemeton even though the dark, hidden part of their soul--the part that wants to own their mischief body and soul, wants to use their mischief to wreak bloody, destructive mayhem until together they draw the elder who bound them so they can finally have their agreed-upon price--whispers that here is a chance to rid themselves of a competitor, that if they just let Scott die then the nogitsune will be the only one for their mischief to love.
They don’t. Their mischief has always had enough affection for the both of them before. That won’t change now.
(It has nothing to do with the way they dream of their mischief playing with them, calling them ‘Hibiki’, and making the most of the fox blessing--equal parts chaos and luck so that they would never be bored but also so they could always get out of the trouble they inevitably got into--that the nogitsune had given their mischief one day when the sun stayed out all through a rain shower. A lucky sign for them. It has everything to do with the fact that the nogitsune is afraid of what would happen if they actually got their wish, if their mischief let them in. The nogitsune has destroyed everyone else who had let them in before, and their mischief has always been, from the beginning, someone that the nogitsune wanted more than that from.)
When Scott wakes up the next day sprawled across the flat bed of the Nemeton, still whole and human but covered in dew and leaves because the nogitsune may not really want him to die but certainly doesn’t like him all that much so harmless pranks are acceptable, he’s apparently so late for school that it gets both him and their mischief in trouble or so their mischief says laughingly the next time the nogitsune sees him.
Maybe next time Scott will come with their mischief. The nogitsune would have someone to dump leaves on and make trip over the roots then. Maybe they will even give Scott a name of theirs. Not nogitsune, but maybe Ikari. The name the elder gave them when she betrayed and bound them to the Nemeton. ‘Anchor’. It’s not a true name by any means but it is serviceable?
Not Hibiki though. That name is only for their mischief.
Stiles is fairly sure that there’s something weird going on in Beacon Hills.
Wolves aren’t native--he’s known that since he met his fox friend and looked up the wildlife native to the area--but he keeps hearing howling, singular, mournful, and echoing. There’s been attacks too, about one a month since that girl was ripped apart.
Derek Hale is back too, has been for almost a week, just in time for the news of the third victim to hit the papers. Stiles has been sneaking peeks at his dad’s notes and there might be preliminary evidence that the girl was Laura, which would explain Derek.
(He can’t help trying to compare the bloated, wrecked face of the corpse with his hazy memories of Laura, almost always framed by the diner that she picked up shifts at. He thinks she’d been working there that night. He can’t think of any other reason she would have survived if everyone else in her family died. It just makes sense.)
Explaining all of this to the fox helps Stiles sort things out in his mind. He’s always done better when he can talk things out out loud, and the fox never is disparaging or incredulous no matter how off the wall Stiles gets.
See, the thing is, Stiles doesn’t believe in coincidences.
It’s something he knows he got from his mother, something he picked up from one of her stories. Knows that she believed, right up until the moment she died, that the reason she got sick was her tree being vandalized.
Stiles believes that too. There’s… something he can’t explain, even to himself, but it feels true.
The fox listens patiently to all of this, rolling on its back, tongue lolling in the heat. Stiles goes back and forth, up and down, and comes to one conclusion.
Clearly, there are werewolves in Beacon Hills. At least one. Maybe more. It’s probably Derek Hale. And the burning of the Hale House wasn’t an accident.
His fox friend yips in what sounds like excited agreement, and nips at his jeans to play. Stiles is pretty sure he can spare another hour.