Previously: The writer gave her pregnancy to Esmée to carry. Now, far away in the desert, she feels Esmée’s labour begin inside her own body.

前情提要: 作家曾将腹中的身孕交由埃斯梅代为孕育。如今远在沙漠荒原，她感知到了母体与生命的同步呼应。

The Fox Child

“Aikira? What language is that?”
“Kitsune whisper. Look at her face. Pretty vixen. And her father’s wild. A fox child. It’s logical.”
“Mphf. Logical.”

One Clench, Two Bodies

The writer is at a desert well, under a watching lens, when a clench comes low in her back. It’s old and familiar, and it isn’t hers. Chinese says 母子连心, mother and child share one heart. Here the heart is shared three ways: the child, the woman who carried her, and the woman whose child she was.

Washed in Gold

She arrives at Overton and can’t move. Something warm runs over her feet. Gold, beading on the flagstones, her dress soaked through. Mikhail carries her upstairs and washes her, shoulders, breasts, belly, feet sticky with gold, reverent and holding back, and it costs him every second of it. The KGB trained him for a great many things. Lady’s maid wasn’t one of them, although his experience with Elena claims otherwise.

“What’s with the showers?”

A Name from the Fox

Esmée is swearing at God in Romani when the writer walks in. May the devil’s own mules kick their stones to dust. Then a girl, tiny and furious, with sly fox’s eyes.

The Japanese kitsune is a cousin of China’s 狐仙, the fox spirits of the old tales: clever, shape-shifting, and dangerous to underestimate. Aikira’s name carries that bloodline. So does the question in her parents’ faces when the writer holds her: is she going to take her back?

She gives her back. She kisses them all, hard, so they’ll stop being afraid.

[Start the series here →]https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/the-european-records
© 2026 I.Ph. de Lange / CYcrds OÜ. All rights reserved.

Lost in my brain labyrinth? Start with the compass →

在我的脑内迷宫里迷路了？从指南针开始 →