The Fox by Arlene Radasky

bruise. I was awake.”
    I held my hand up and looked at it. “I could see the pencil in my hand. I could hear the wind outside. But it was as if I were looking out of someone else’s eyes and my eyes at the same time. I felt as if someone else were listening and watching, not-not outside my head but inside my head.”
    I recalled the odor that came before her visit, burning peat. “Everything in my room looked different,” I continued. “I distinctly remember looking at my mirror, and thinking it was the same, yet not the same. She whispered her name in my ear, and then she was gone. I had several visits like that, short, with little or no information exchanged, until I went to university and took my first Pre-Roman Celt class, George’s class. It was as if I lived then. Déjà vu, if you like. That class seemed to allow Jahna to come through easier. We didn’t have real conversations, but as close as you could come. Like channeling or ESP. I’ve had a few vivid scenes pop into my head, like the placement of the bronze bowl we found. She showed me where to look.”
    I stopped, glancing at Marc to see his reaction. He was leaning back in the chair, arms crossed, smiling, and looking as if he were waiting for a punch line.
    “Don’t you dare laugh. I’m serious.”
    My room’s radiator rattled into existence. It was already too warm in the small room for me. Small rivulets of sweat started creeping down my sides and under my breasts. I reached over, turned the radiator valve to the off position, and jumped when Marc’s chair legs hit the floor with a sharp bang. His arms were still crossed but his face now wore a look of disbelief.
    Staring at me, he said, “Aine MacRae.” He shook his head and continued. “You can’t expect me to believe we found that bowl through a ghost! We’re trained investigators. We use science and scientific tools to find artifacts. Are you trying to tell me that a ghost pointed to the bowl? Am I to believe a ghost does all your research for you?” He looked at me, waiting for me to refute all I had just said.
    “Yes. I mean, no.” I paused and regained my composure. “So far it’s only been the information about the bowl that I’ve been able to prove.” Palms up and beseeching, I said, “She’s real to me, Marc. Just because you can’t see or hear her doesn’t mean she isn’t real. Jahna isn’t a ghost. Well, maybe she is but…. I think she was alive then.” I got up, crossed the small room, and anxiously rifled through a box in the corner. “Here it is,” I said, finding my notebook.
    “I knew we were leaving something behind. The rest of you were ready to say the grave was empty, that we’d found everything, and then, on that last morning, I moved the rock and found the bowl. I knew just where to look. Here, look at my notes. I wrote down the feelings I had from Jahna the night before. I saw the bowl under the stone and when I went back to the tomb, I went right to the rock.”
    I held my notebook out, turned to the page I had been looking for. Marc, with wrinkles of doubt on his face, wouldn’t take it.
    “This is a drawing I made. The design is on the bowl I found.” I shook the notebook. “Jahna came to me and told me about it and showed me where to look. I’m not crazy, Marc. She is real to me.”
    He looked at me with the hooded eyes he wore when he disagreed with or, worse, disbelieved someone. I slammed the notebook to the bed. I was determined to get Marc to understand. I took a deep breath and stood tall, all five feet-two inches of me, ready to defend my story, ready to fight for what I knew was the truth. I knew it in the deepest reaches of my soul. I stood in front of his chair, fists and jaw clenched, looking down into his skeptical eyes and declared in a controlled voice, “I believe Jahna and I have a shared history. I think she is an ancient ancestor of mine. I believe my family, the MacRaes on Skye, can be linked back to her somehow and I