A silver fox hunted for lunch in the frozen tundra, snuffling for the scents of rabbits and ducks. She pricked her ears at the crunch of frozen snow. A foot, bootless, trudged through the Siberian wilderness and with each step fell through the crust. She trotted up and pulled off the sock. The blue foot looked bony and unappetizing. Fox sniffed at the tufts of black curly hairs on its toe knuckles. The vixen thought of her uncle, who had chewed off his paw to escape a steel clamp.

“What happened?” The fox asked the foot.

You may find it odd that a fox could talk, but what’s worse is the foot answered.

“The man I belonged to was so awful, I broke off with him.”

“What did he do?”

“Not much. But he jabbered a lot, boasted when drunk. ‘I have a lot of women fawning over my every whim, la, la, la. I got tired of running from bed with husbands at my heels.’ Total bollocks.” The foot tromped on through the empty land.

The vixen huffed and ambled off. Her path crossed a man hopping on one foot. His scent of stale kvass stung the creature’s delicate nostrils.

The fox asked him, “Is something wrong?”

“That is the stupidest question in the world.” The man hobbled past the fox. “Is anything ever right?”

Fox scurried after. “I found your foot. What will you give me for it?”

“Nothing. That no-good foot left me stranded in a tavern.” He limped on. “I am lucky to be free, without the ball and chain to drag around.” He studied the fox. “Listen, are you hungry? I have five children I don’t want. And a wife—a real shrew.”

The fox opened her mouth in a grin. She loved shrews, rats, voles, vermin, and moles. “Where they at?”

The man pointed. “In that hollow.”

Fox galloped down the ravine, skidding in thick powder up to her whiskers. At the bottom, she found a boot. She sniffed its odor of saddle soap. The fox called down into the shaft, “Knock, knock.”

I woman’s voice came up. “Who’s there?”

“Cook.”

“Cook who?”

“Cuckoo, cuckoo.”

“So it’s you, my cuckoo husband.” A woman climbed up the lace ladder.

Fox’s whiskers wilted. She was not an actual shrew, but a small, thin woman.

She tugged at the shoe’s lip. “If I could pull out the tongue, I could cook it for the children. Tongue is a delicacy where I come from.”

The fox asked, “How did you get the boot?”

“It’s all I have left from my husband. Some men brought it after he walked out. They said there had been an accident.”

“I know where you can find him.”

The wife held up the flat of her palm. “Nyet, nyet, nyet.” She opened the shoelaces and showed her children crowded inside. “If he wore it, he’d crush the kids, the no-good nincompoop.”

“You could kill him.”

She leaned in. “How?”

“Use the lace to strangle—”

The woman whipped it out of the eyeholes.

“He’s on the edge of the ravine. If that doesn’t work, call me.”

She grabbed a knife, waved it, and set off in the direction the fox pointed her nose.

The fox looked left and right. Let’s get out of this fairy tale before someone blames me for all this carnage, but as the woman hurried off, she turned and said, “Watch my kids.”

“What?” It’s not like I bake pies and such, fox thought. She snuffled the five little ones, each nestled in a curve a toe had left. Delicious scent of plump.

One child asked, “Who are you?”

“Er, your babysitter.” Fox didn’t like to converse with dinner before eating it.

The brood whined, “We’re hungry.”

“Me, too.” The fox licked her chops at their juicy limbs.

Fox hunted and brought back a limp mouse in her mouth.

They turned up their sniveling noses, so she ate it in one gulp.

The fox said, “There isn’t a lot to eat out there. The world is very small. Nights, it’s reflected in the sky’s surface like a shiny plate.”

“What’s on the plate?”

“Empty.”

The children wailed.

Flustered, fox tried to assuage them. “Are you sure you don’t like mouse? Maybe skewered and roasted? Or mashed into a paste?”

They wailed louder.

So ugly, those red, blotchy faces streaked with tears. Why didn’t they grow fur?

“Tell us a story.”

Her ears flattened. Fairy tales stank. The fox usually got the short end of the stick.

Fox tucked in the five youngsters with the sock that had five holes cut by toenails. “Once upon a terrible time, a man forgot his wife and children. One night, in a bar, his foot got so tired of his grumbling, it stomped off into the wilderness. He hobbled out later, when the bar closed, and did not return home. His wife took care of the children. Then the woman came after him and cut off his other leg. ‘There, now they’re even,’ she said, leaving his body with two stumps in the snowy field.”

The children laughed and patted the fox’s soft, thin snout. She nipped at their tiny fingers.

“Tell us more stories,” the youngest girl said. “Fairy tales that aren’t real.”

“Once upon a time, there was a fox that did not eat children, those succulent, delectable, chewy, crunchy dumplings.” Fox stroked the shock of gold hair on her forehead, tucking it behind her tiny question mark of an ear.