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always choose. The path of ignorance.
    Poor Gon , I thought as I sat at my desk. Poor little fox. I stroked the picture of him struck down by stupid Hyoju’s bullet, his fur glowing white as moonlight.
    And there, in that moment, I realized it was Gon’s tribe that I belonged to, not the human family. I was a kitsune , I realized. I was a fox.
     
    Every kitsune has a silver ball that contains part of its essence. Why hadn’t I understood this when my mother gave it to me years before? I’d thought she was just telling me another of her stories, the kind she was always telling me, the kind that I hadn’t really, until that day, believed. The silver ball holds a piece of the kitsune ’s spirit so that when it changes shape it’s never entirely separated from its original form. It made sense now. It all washed over my mind like a clear spring rain, and I stood and walked to the back of the room to gather my things. Sensei turned around when she heard me shuffling the backpack onto my shoulders and cried out, “Midori chan, what are you doing?”
    “Going home,” I said. I slid the door of the classroom open and walked down the hallway. Sensei rushed and caught me by my shoulder as I was walking out the front entrance, but I shrugged her hand off and stared up at her, making the most defiant face I could summon, and said, “Never touch me in such a way again.”
    She slowly took her hand off my shoulder. Her face dropped, all the muscles relaxing, and in this way she revealed the fear I’d instilled in her. When you are a kitsune , you can use your powers to persuade and affect human emotions. It’s a simple trick really, especially because most humans have little control over their own emotions anyway. So even so soon after realizing what I was, I knew how to use one of the powers that is a right of all kitsune .
    At home I put my school things away and pulled my futon from the closet, unfolded it, and sat down, folding my legs under me. I took the silver ball from a box of toys and rolled it around in the palms of my hands, pressing it against my cheek occasionally. It was as warm as my own flesh, and when I held it to my ear I heard a pulse and a thump, a heart beating over and over.
    When my mother came in from hanging out the wash, she found me with the ball held against my ear and said, “Midori chan, what are you doing home already? School isn’t over.”
    “I left,” I said.
    “What?! Why did you leave?” she asked, her face creased with worry. It was the face that I would watch over the years as it became her final mask, it was the face that would make her an old woman before her time.
    “I was sick,” I lied. “I phoned, but you didn’t answer. They had me lie down in the clinic, but I left when no one was looking. I wanted to come home.”
    “Oh my,” she said, and left the room to call the principal, to let him know I’d arrived home safely. When she returned a little while later, she said, “Midori,” and her voice dripped with disappointment. “You trust me so little that you lie to me now?”
    I nodded, but did not say any more. After all, why was I in the care of these people anyway? Simply because my mother had found me lost in the woods one day and brought me home? They were my jailers, for all I knew. Such was my thinking at that moment.
    “Well then,” she said, “now that you’ve gone and done it, you’ll have to clean up your own mess at school. But don’t tell Father! If he knows, I’m not sure what he’ll do.”
    “I won’t tell,” I said, taking the beat of my own heart away from my ear finally. “But you must tell me more about myself,” I said. “About my true nature.”
    “Your true nature?” she said. “What do you mean?”
    “I am a kitsune ,” I said, “aren’t I?”
    She frowned and laughed a little, and put one hand against her face and shook her head. “Midori chan, I should never have told you that story. You’re getting a little old for that